Thread by @mafevema

Excellent
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In Co2 shortage: "Open a can of pop if you said Northern Ireland& treat yourself to another if you knew the reason why: because Northern Ireland remains part of the single market for goods, which means its bottling plants could get their carbon dioxide supplies from the EU.

The rest of the UK had no such luck, with the government forced to pay an undisclosed but doubtless hefty chunk of our money to a US company to keep two CO2 plants open, because … Brexit

As it happens, there’s a dearth of HGV drivers across Europe, and Covid made things worse, slowing the training of new ones. But the problem is especially acute in the UK, where the combination of Brexit and Covid prompted plenty of EU-born drivers to go back home.

Where once a haulier from Łódź might do a trip that took in Leicester and Lyon, the British leg is now so tangled in red tape as to be not worth the bother.

Or listen to Paul Kelly, a major & now struggling turkey supplier in Essex:“The reason we’re having all these issues is entirely because of Brexit and nothing else.” “The people who we used to have coming into the country to pluck& pack our turkeys: they’re no longer allowed in.”

The NHS’s main supplier of blood collection tubes, when explaining the shortage of sample bottles that led GPs to be told to stop performing blood tests for most of this month blamed “transportation & UK border challenges”.Hmm, border challenges. I wonder what those might be.