Re: Take Back Control?
Okay, codejunky, I'll bite one more time here with an analogy. I'm happy to concede that (like all analogies) it's flawed, but hopefully you'll see what I mean.
Humans, cats, dogs, apes, hamsters are all mammals, right? And they're happy doing mammal things, and going about their mammalian business. Dolphins are also mammals, as are whales and manatees. And they're happy going about their mammalian business, but they've evolved to do in in an aquatic environment, with the restrictions and the freedoms that this provides. That's the UK (and other nations) in the EU ocean, watching the squirrels in the trees.
What if we were to put a dolphin in a nice big (flooded) house, and then drain out the water? Would it survive? No.
What if we drained the water out over a week? Over a year? Would it survive? No.
What if we took a breeding pod of dolphins, and drained the water out over a hundred years? A thousand?
How many generation would it take these dolphins and their descendants to evolve into this new niche, so they can park their webbed arses on the sofa and watch Gogglebox? It'll take a long time because they've evolved painfully and slowly to live in the sea.
The UK, its population and its businesses have slowly evolved to survive in the EU. If we change the ecosystem suddenly, some will thrive, but most will suffer.
Oh, and to tackle one point head-on:
And why replicate? We implement the mechanisms we need and that is how countries have worked before the EU and currently even outside the EU. The EU being the oddity not the rest of the world.
Customs. All goods moving within the UK avoid customs. Goods moving within the EU avoid customs. Goods entering and leaving the EU have to clear customs. Nobody is arguing about this. But a curious aspect that seems to escape so many people is that goods coming into the EU tend to land on mainland Europe. Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe, and geared up to handle huge volumes of cargo passing through customs. Once it's EU-side it can be flung on a ship to the UK where it sails (see what I did there?) straight through. It only has to stop to be lifted off the boat.
Does the UK have enough customs infrastructure to handle the volume of goods that we import from outside the EU, let alone that inside the EU? I'm pretty confident the answer is no, given that we only perform documentary checks on <3% of non-EU goods coming in.
Do the UK ports even have enough physical space to create a customs holding area?
Regardless of your political affiliation, or your opinion of aquatic mammals, the customs issue is very real, and the real world doesn't compromise to politics.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
