Getting Brexit done

[Beaker]

Pharma view-

UK pharma manufacturers need to have their EU products tested in an EU lab, which can cost many millions to validate and register. As well as the setup cost, this can add weeks into the supply chain.

UK clinical trials data would no longer be useful for registering products across Europe, and other countries that follow EU regulation. So very little incentive to launch here first, which delays our access to new medicines, and rather chills UK R&D.

We already trade pharmaceuticals rather well with the US, so I don’t see what great additional benefits are to be had.

The upshot of all this is EU products have already transferred out of some UK factories, and I know at least one whose closure was recently announced. All its products moving to Europe.

I’m a chemist, not an engineer. Currently in global logistics, so what happens after Brxt has been my day job for rather a while. So forgive me Sheldrake if I don’t share your optimism.

[jimbob]

Pharma view-

UK pharma manufacturers need to have their EU products tested in an EU lab, which can cost many millions to validate and register. As well as the setup cost, this can add weeks into the supply chain.

UK clinical trials data would no longer be useful for registering products across Europe, and other countries that follow EU regulation. So very little incentive to launch here first, which delays our access to new medicines, and rather chills UK R&D.

We already trade pharmaceuticals rather well with the US, so I don’t see what great additional benefits are to be had.

The upshot of all this is EU products have already transferred out of some UK factories, and I know at least one whose closure was recently announced. All its products moving to Europe.

I’m a chemist, not an engineer. Currently in global logistics, so what happens after Brxt has been my day job for rather a while. So forgive me Sheldrake if I don’t share your optimism.

Exactly.

And whilst pharmaceuticals are an extreme example, the basic idea of testing and being able to prove that one is compliant with the appropriate standards is common to most manufactured goods.

Logistics is the area where the biggest impact of Brexit will be felt. Lean supply chains are cheaper then non-lean ones, but the UK government has decided to make those less effective for any business that buys or sells outside the UK.

UK costs will go up for no gain.

I don't think that blue passports count.

[Bird on a Fire]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

[bjn]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

Depends on the software. A crappy iPhone game, not really, avionics software, f.ck yeah.

[Bird on a Fire]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

Depends on the software. A crappy iPhone game, not really, avionics software, f.ck yeah.

Fair dos.

[jimbob]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

Depends on the software. A crappy iPhone game, not really, avionics software, f.ck yeah.

Yup. A lot of engineering boils down to "what happens if it goes wrong, and how important is it to prevent/mitigate this failure mode?"

It doesn't matter if it's a bridge, a pacemaker, or a plane.

[GeenDienst]

Why do you believe that leaving the EU will stop us being able to export to countries that don't depend on EU standards ?

Ah, yes, the standard false dichotomy.

This piece of magnificent stupidity, all by itself, shows us that there is nothing to see here with this one.

[jimbob]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

Depends on the software. A crappy iPhone game, not really, avionics software, f.ck yeah.

Yup. A lot of engineering boils down to "what happens if it goes wrong, and how important is it to prevent/mitigate this failure mode?"

It doesn't matter if it's a bridge, a pacemaker, or a plane.

Yes, as a derail, I think it's important to realise that engineering is not science, nor is science engineering. Both can and do use the other, but there are different emphases.

Even though I studied physical sciences - by inclination as well as profession, I'm an engineer.

[sheldrake]

Why do you believe that leaving the EU will stop us being able to export to countries that don't depend on EU standards ?

Ah, yes, the standard false dichotomy.

This piece of magnificent stupidity, all by itself, shows us that there is nothing to see here with this one.

Heavy on insults, low on content.

[sheldrake]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

Most of it doesn't. But even for those that do, most of our customers aren't using EU standards anyway.

[Martin_B]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

Most of it doesn't. But even for those that do, most of our customers aren't using EU standards anyway.

Great, so in your part of the economy you may not feel the effects of Brexit too harshly. But do you understand that not all of the economy can react to Brexit to way your industry does?

[sheldrake]

I guess software doesn't have similar issues with standards and compliance and certification?

Most of it doesn't. But even for those that do, most of our customers aren't using EU standards anyway.

Great, so in your part of the economy you may not feel the effects of Brexit too harshly. But do you understand that not all of the economy can react to Brexit to way your industry does?

But the are huge swathes of our economy already exporting to countries where EU standards aren't the benchmark. Most of our exports don't go to the EU
The UK isn't going to have its economy collapse because it adopts the same trading position as Japan or Canada w.r.t to the EU.

[Little waster]

Biotech view

We ship live cells and reagents on dry ice or in liquid LN2 to customers. The nature of our deliveries are that even a day’s delay at customs makes the difference between our customer getting a viable product they can be invoiced for or them getting a vial of room temperature slime they have to bin and we have to completely right off. 20% of our sales are to the EU, more than we ship domestically, our other significant markets are covered by our existing EU agreements. The exception is the US where the only way it is viable is to have a duplicate lab in the US replicating our work. That isn’t very efficient but necessary.

Our supply chains are similarly JIT, the delay of a single reagent or consumable by even half a day can make the difference between having any product to sell and writing off batches worth 10s of 1000s of pounds and a month or more FTE of labour. Our suppliers can give us no indication of what supplies may or may not be disrupted as their products are sourced and manufactured from all over the EU by manufacturers with similarly opaque supply lines facing exactly the same issue; the “I, Pencil” problem. To mediate this we’ve had to massively increase our minimum stock levels, tying up all our spare capital in dead inventory, a lot of which have short shelf-lives increasing loss through wastage and breakage, taking up all available storage space and all the other business textbook reasons why having cash locked up in stock is a bad idea.

In the last year all 4 of our EU27 employees (out of a workforce of 30) have quit and returned to the mainland due to the uncertainty caused by the insistence by Brexiteers of using their lives as bargaining chips, the generally unwelcoming atmosphere since the referendum and in one case the openly xenophobic abuse they’ve experienced from “definitely-not-racist” racist Leave supporters.

They were all relatively senior (postdocs and the equivalent) and we’ve only managed to replace one “like-for-like” from the UK workforce with the others’ work covered by the other senior staff having to double up their roles or the lab technicians muddling along as best they can with the legacy protocols. This is putting a visible strain on the workforce causing a much higher staff turnover at all levels. Our head of services (a Brit) quit last week citing the stress caused by having to now be head of production as well. Our lab technicians are understandably grumbling that they are now forced to work every second weekend when it used to be only once a month, this caused the only remaining one (another Brit) who knew how to produce cardiac cells to walk suspending that chunk of our catalogue for 6 months. Meanwhile our commerce team are having to now turn away business because of lack of capacity.

Even in the unlikely event that we end up with a good FTA with the EU, covering a sector it’s not clear Johnson has even heard of, and the “man in Whitehall” correctly enumerates exactly how many molecular-biologists-with-a-background-in-cardiotoxicity the UK economy requires in 2023 (I thought command-and-control economies were out of favour), those workers are not coming back.

The CEO isn’t UK-born and has no real ties to the UK and the Germans lead in robotics had already made shifting the lab to Germany and automating production there very tempting, even before Brexit. Post-Brexit if it comes to a choice between being UK-based or EU-based the best we can hope for is he decides to just increase his overheads by setting up a third lab inside the SM. Even then the economic case would be to scale the UK site back to a mere distribution hub. The cheaper lemons the Brexit unicorns are supposed to bring us are not going to factor at all in that decision. Similarly the supposedly onerous EU regulations never crops up in company meetings, in fact the only mention he’s ever made of them is his happiness that they keep out the various backstreet charlatans in places like India and Vietnam injecting people with stem cell “miracle cures” which if they are lucky are just sterile saline as actually injecting someone with random stem cells will prove itself to be a very bad idea faster than you can say “teratoma”.

Under the pre-Brexit conditions we were doing fine, now it is anyone’s guess whether the company will be still here* in 18 months time.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, at least Brexit means far-right thugs now feel emboldened to openly shout death threats at people they think disagree with them in the street right outside parliament, our papers accuse judges who uphold the law as being “enemies of the people” and we have a PM who would rather suspend parliament for weeks on end rather than face up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny (presumably he couldn’t find a fridge big enough to cower in). Thank god we voted to restore parliamentary democracy.

*in both senses of the word.

[bmforre]

Applauding Lil Waster's tale.

[jimbob]

But the are huge swathes of our economy already exporting to countries where EU standards aren't the benchmark. Most of our exports don't go to the EU
The UK isn't going to have its economy collapse because it adopts the same trading position as Japan or Canada w.r.t to the EU.

And you are missing the point.

I'm not talking about the effect of a sudden loss of a huge market, say "only" 20% , which in capital-intensive industries like mine where the difference between boom and massive losses can be the difference between 95% utilisation and 85% utilisation, can be disastrous.

It's that even non EU markets need proof that the products meet their standards. A lot of the time, the UK certification labs have the certification via the BSI.

That's all well and good, but it needs these other non EU countries to recognise the BSI separately to recognising the EU.

That won't necessarily be automatic so requires work and time.

meanwhile UK exporters have an additional cost of getting a new certification from somewhere recognised by their customers (another EU lab) which will make them less competitive and drive some out of business

[Martin_B]

Most of it doesn't. But even for those that do, most of our customers aren't using EU standards anyway.

Great, so in your part of the economy you may not feel the effects of Brexit too harshly. But do you understand that not all of the economy can react to Brexit to way your industry does?

But the are huge swathes of our economy already exporting to countries where EU standards aren't the benchmark. Most of our exports don't go to the EU
The UK isn't going to have its economy collapse because it adopts the same trading position as Japan or Canada w.r.t to the EU.

Well, ~45% of our trade is to the EU, and another ~15% is under EU trade deals, so that's ~60% trade because of the EU and ~40% trade outside of it. You can't guarantee that all of that 60% are going to continue trading with Britain.

Japan has already stated that any trade deal with the UK will be to renegotiated terms; you don't think that's going to be a better deal than under EU trade deals, do you? If Japan are successful, don't you think other countries might look to leverage off that?

You said that the UK economy wouldn't collapse. Do you know how much the British economy shrunk in the GFC? 6.25%. That was all it took for Britain to be crippled for years (and arguably still feeling the effects). Britain's economy is only growing at about 1.5%, so it's not going to take much of a reduction in trade for Britain to enter another recession.

[sheldrake]

Japan invited us to join the CPTPP, and I expect we'll join that under the same terms as all the other members. The short term cost of leaving the EU isn't going to be as big as the 2008 crash.

[Bird on a Fire]

Japan invited us to join the CPTPP, and I expect we'll join that under the same terms as all the other members. The short term cost of leaving the EU isn't going to be as big as the 2008 crash.

According to this recent article, Japan is expecting to be able to extract further concessions from the UK are brexit https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/britain ... er-brexit/

[sheldrake]

According to this recent article, Japan is expecting to be able to extract further concessions from the UK are brexit https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/britain ... er-brexit/

Maybe they are, but it doesn't mean they will. It's the opinion of a single academic. There's no reason to always believe the most pessimisstic view of the UK's position that you're presented with; it's tended to be continually wrong in the past.

[jimbob]

According to this recent article, Japan is expecting to be able to extract further concessions from the UK are brexit https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/britain ... er-brexit/

Maybe they are, but it doesn't mean they will. It's the opinion of a single academic. There's no reason to always believe the most pessimisstic view of the UK's position that you're presented with; it's tended to be continually wrong in the past.

It's also obvious as the UK government has decided to negotiate from a position of weakness with a self imposed time pressure, which is not a good place to start from

[Herainestold]

Japan invited us to join the CPTPP, and I expect we'll join that under the same terms as all the other members. The short term cost of leaving the EU isn't going to be as big as the 2008 crash.

According to this recent article, Japan is expecting to be able to extract further concessions from the UK are brexit https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/britain ... er-brexit/

I wonder what kind of concessions the Japanse are looking for? The article doesnt say.

[sheldrake]

According to this recent article, Japan is expecting to be able to extract further concessions from the UK are brexit https://thediplomat.com/2019/11/britain ... er-brexit/

Maybe they are, but it doesn't mean they will. It's the opinion of a single academic. There's no reason to always believe the most pessimisstic view of the UK's position that you're presented with; it's tended to be continually wrong in the past.

It's also obvious as the UK government has decided to negotiate from a position of weakness with a self imposed time pressure, which is not a good place to start from

Up until the election, the EU knew they were negotiating with people who didn't believe in their own negotiating position and who were amenable to helping finding reasons to agree to stupid deals in the hope it would lead to us cancelling article 50 or maintaining a permanent 'vassal' status. They're not negotiating with that kind of government any more. Watch.

[mikeh]

I really don't know why you bother with this clueless c.nt.

https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/count ... dex_en.htm

Because he's also the most articulate proponent of Brexit I have come across

I mean, quite probably true, but still not the most ringing of endorsements for continuing this "that's not argument, just contradiction" level of conversation. May as well equivalently claim that Harold Shipman win the prize for "mass murderer most likely to have an excellent working knowledge of the pathology of the human endocrine system at time of conviction".

As a more general point - remember that this most articulate proponent of Brexit did, in t'old forum, try to claim the publication of a food safety report was a new trade deal, on the basis they'd read a headline in the Telegraph. (Amidst other crock-o-crap samples, that was one that particularly stuck in the old grey matter).

There's plenty of conversation to be had about how the UK can best go about getting Brexit done. By continuing to engage someone without a point, this thread becomes extremely uninteresting. There's a limit to how long it remains interesting or amusing reading the challenges to the layers of b.llsh.t (that does provide some evidence). And I was way beyond my limit about a year back. But that might be just my lack of patience with the desperately ignorant and clueless.

That's my two-cents worth.

[sheldrake]

"publication of a food safety report was a new trade deal"

What are you talking about ?

[GeenDienst]

mikeh is wise. c.nt, obvs., but a wise one. Ish.