There's a tonne of additional Brexit-related changes coming down the pipe. We're not done with the upheaval yet!
I've laid out the timeline for these changes below.
30 June 2021: Deadline to apply for the EU Settlement Scheme in the UK.
1 July 2021: New EU VAT regime, affecting sales into the EU market by non-EU firms. Elimination of VAT exemption on low value consignments (previously up to EUR 22) so all goods imported into the EU will be liable to VAT. ec.europa.eu/taxation_custo…
1 July 2021: HTA licences required to import or export human tissue and cells between GB and the EEA. hta.gov.uk/importing-and-…
1 July 2021: Marriage Visitor visas required to visit the UK to get married for people or their family who are from the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein (unless they are Irish citizens, or have gone through the EU Settlement Scheme). gov.uk/marriage-visa
1 October 2021: National IDs are no longer valid for most travel to the UK. Instead, passports will be required. Impacts school trips, language and cultural exchanges etc.
(NOTE: National IDs are mandatory in most EU countries, so many children won't have passports.)
1 October 2021: Importers of animal products will have to pre-notify officials. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
1 January 2022: CE mark will no longer be valid for goods on the UK market. New UK mark required instead, at extra cost and double the certification effort. (UK manufacturers will also need CE marks to sell their products in the EU.)
1 January 2022: Introduction of customs declarations on all goods coming into the UK, as well as safety and security declarations. Deferred customs declaration scheme ends.
NOTE: This has already been delayed, so could end up delayed again. gov.uk/guidance/delay…
1 January 2022: Physical SPS checks begin on animal products, and on high-risk plant products coming from the EU to the UK.
Again, like the customs declarations, the UK Government may decide to delay this again rather than face reality. theguardian.com/politics/2021/…
March 2022: Final "Phase 3" regime of inspections begins for plants and plant products imported from the EU to GB. Includes identity and physical SPS checks. gov.uk/guidance/impor…
30 June 2022: EU's 18-month temporary equivalence decision on UK CCPs expires, affecting financial operations. (EU clearing members are meant to have reduced their exposure to UK CCPs by then.) esma.europa.eu/press-news/esm…
Late 2022: EU European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) scheme begins, requiring advance registration before travel to the EU, for a fee. Cost expected to be 7 euro. ETIAS will be valid for 3 years. ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/w…
1 January 2023: End of grace period for registering chemicals in the UK under the old system.
Duplicate registration effort (UK and EU) required going forward.
Please let me know if there are any other upcoming deadlines I've missed. Thanks.
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Over the course of their reign of error, the Tories have grown the national debt from £1 trillion to £2.5 trillion.
In the same 13-year period, we have witnessed crumbling schools and hospitals, increasingly leaky water pipes and sewers, and other widespread structural failures.
There have been no big infrastructure projects to point to and say "ah, that's where the money went..."
So from the beginning of time until 2010, the nation debt grew to £1 trillion.
From 2010 until 2023, it grew by an additional £1.5 trillion to £2.5 trillion.
And yet if you look around, you can't really see where most of the money has gone.
Tory cronies must be sleeping on beds made of gold.
Have so few ever stolen so much in so short a time before? The only thing I can think of that might compare was the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Not exactly a great bedfellow.
In a way, it's a bit like the thefts at the British Museum. Nobody noticed anything much, then once they started looking properly they saw that thousands of priceless items had been looted over an extended period.
The same goes for the Tories. The focus is always on individual scandals which blow up then quickly fade away. But when you take a big step back and look at their actions as a whole over their entire 13-year term, you'll find our own museum is standing empty.
And they're going to get away with it.
Correction: they got away with it.
Only in fantasy mirror world will a successor government investigate its predecessor.
In the real world, Labour know that would signal an unending tit-for-tat war. So they'll poke around a bit, and done.
Reminder: thanks to Brexit, you can no longer watch Now TV, iPlayer etc. in the EU. We no longer benefit from the EU roaming law applicable to streaming services.
Apologies. Several people have reminded me that iPlayer is different.
You used to be able to watch PAID streaming services across the EU before
Brexit. You can't any more.
Ok. Deep breath.
I got one thing wrong in my original tweet, which I corrected in my second tweet of the thread, above.
But maybe it's still not clear enough so I will try and explain better.
The relevant EU law applies to PAID services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify and so on) but not to free ones.
That was my mistake in my initial tweet.
The EU law means that EU users are supposed to be able to access EXACTLY THE SAME content all over the EU as they can in their home EU country. By that, I mean if you're for example an Austrian Netflix user and you go to France, you should have access to every Austrian Netflix program. (But you won't have access to Netflix France programs, because those are for subscribers who ordinarily live in France.) It's done based on the home country of the subscriber.
But for example if you have a UK Netflix account you can't see all UK Netflix programming outside of the UK, but only a courtesy subset Netflix chooses to show you as a "traveller". Same applies to Prime. (Amazon even displays a message to warn you that not all the content's available. See screenshot, which I took after connecting to my UK Prime via a French VPN to pretend I was in France.)
Relevant explainer from the UK government...
Relevant EU law on "cross-border portability of online content services in the internal market"...
And finally, when I said "roaming" in my first tweet, I didn't mean it in the narrow sense of mobile roaming (had I meant the latter I would have said "mobile roaming". I definitely know the difference.) I just meant "roaming" in the sense of going all over the place.
1. Brexit means Brexit. But what does Brexit mean? Or Brexit?
2. Put 3 Brexiters in a room, and they will emerge with 4 versions of Brexit.
3. The BBC news team will find a way to interview both sides of a Möbius strip.
4. "Will of the People" is like QED at the end of a scientific proof.
5. The taunt "Coming over here, picking all our fruit" doesn't have quite the ring you thought it would.
6. 17.4 million people equal a majority of an electorate of 46,500,001, and a population of 67 million.
7. All the following conspire to block the One True Brexit: Remainers, judges, Labour, most Tories, other MPs, Lords, mass media, experts, economists, ECHR, the woke, business leaders, foreign firms, lawyers, facts, stats, the EU, did I mention the EU?, oh and the EU of course!
The Tory approach to asylum seekers involves layer after layer of lies, like a rotting onion.
1) It is not inherently illegal to come to the UK to claim asylum. That's why most claims are eventually granted.
2) They're not being put up in 4* hotels in 4* hotel conditions.
3) Most hotels are not 4* or anything like it from the start. Even the few that are aren't supplying any of the services to asylum seekers that give them a 4* rating for normal guests. A.S. are being crammed in with strangers, something that never happens with paying guests.
4) The overall conditions asylum seekers find themselves in are as far from a holiday as you can imagine. Most will have a little over one pound a day to spend on absolutely everything other than the room and board provided them.