The Passport Office is hiring 700 extra staff, but they will be working for a contractor called Teleperformance. Very reassuring. It's a French company, by the way.

Pro-Brexit Next boss Simon Wolfson has called on the government to "reverse the self-defeating barriers it has placed on overseas workers supporting our economy." (The Guardian) Next says prices to rise by 8% in autumn amid ‘chronic’ staff shortages. theguardian.com/business/2022/…

You want to know why there aren't queues of lorries on the other side of the Channel? It's because most have to clear UK customs before they even set off, which can take days. So don't be in a rush to import something at the last minute. We physically don't have space at ports for goods to come in and clear customs on arrival.

Baroness Mone, Conservative member of the House of Lords: "Your (sic) a low life, a waste of a mans (sic) white skin so don't give us your lies. Your (sic) a total disgrace. Now you deal with the police enquiries including your nut case bird." Her lawyers said this did not appear to be in the language of a well-educated and articulate baroness (Guardian).

Article states incorrectly: "Booster jabs are now being offered to all adults over the age of 18."

https://twitter.com/bbchealth/status/1466764777179467784

I mean, even if they were being offered to all age groups, you would still have to wait at least three months from your second jab, you couldn't have a booster the day after your second jab.

Woke trade policy??

https://twitter.com/IOExport/status/1466754236398587904

Speaking at a conference, former business minister Vince Cable said: “The whole idea that gender, human rights and labour standards should be part of trade agreements is virtue signalling and it’s deeply unhelpful and actually is blocking sensible trade agreements.”

Just been turned away for a booster at a walk-in clinic (had second jab in early July) - told very forcefully that there has been no official instruction to give it after less than six months. The staff there said it was the fault of the media that loads of people were showing up asking for boosters sooner. Actually it was Sajid Javid who told a Sky reporter to go and get a booster now as you can now get them sooner.

Home Office and Justice minister Tom Pursglove says the UK wants to get back something like the Dublin agreement to return migrants to the EU, after only five people were returned this year.

So basically we want everything back that we had in the EU. Pursglove said there had been most definitely an improvement in the prevention of small boat crossings. More than 23,000 people have crossed the Channel this year compared with 8,500 last year.

Yesterday I was teaching a woman just arrived from Turkey about life in the UK.

It took a while to explain the nuances of Brexit, eg they are in a customs union with the EU, while we aren't, and we have a border in the Irish Sea.

She said, "So what was the point of Brexit?" "Well, a lot of people thought that in the EU too many people from Turkey would come over here."

Again I've seen the Guardian casually using the phrase "as the economy bounces back after the pandemic". Why do journalists repeat this government propaganda as if it's normal and factual language? Rishi Sunak is set to confirm that the “pause” on public sector pay that affected 2.6 million teachers, police and civil servants will be lifted in April, as the economy bounces back from Covid. theguardian.com/society/2021/o…

This story has just been brought to my attention while discussing the UK's efforts to make trade deals. I wonder if they have now fixed the problem - they copied and pasted the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and accidentally signed up to EU rules.
independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi… Amazingly I even gave a talk about the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement while at the Department for International Trade and drew attention to this issue, but I was not in a division that dealt with trade deals. Others brushed off my concerns anyway.

I believe that most terrorists, from incels to Islamist extremists are bored and frustrated people - usually young men - who sit on their computers and find an ideology to justify their desires to do violence.

https://twitter.com/ChassNews/status/1449276499807326209

We tend to attribute a lot of significance to terrorists as if they've thought a lot about their ideology, but I think their personalities are the main factor. They could have become members of drug gangs and stabbed someone in a non-terrorist killing. They just want an outlet.

My local Tesco Express was half-empty today with remaining products about to expire. It has suddenly made the stockpiling of tins before Brexit worthwhile. Of course, some people think I'm making this up for the fun of it, so here's the pitta bread I got that expires today.

The EU's "Handbook for EU Exporters of plants and plant products to India" published in January this year mentions the UK as an exporter of apples to India in 2019. So it doesn't look like there has been a "50-year ban" as claimed by ministers. "With the ongoing ban on imports of Chinese apples, the EU exporters hold a chance for sizeable increase in the market share. Also, the trade dispute between India and US has halved the imports of apples to India from US providing improved opportunity for EU suppliers."

The protocol wasn't designed to operate in reality, David Frost says. "The situation is now urgent. The UK and Ireland have a huge, and very direct, interest in finding solutions here. But we need constructive and ambitious discussions with the EU which deal with the actual reality." irishtimes.com/opinion/david-…

A new report by the Board of Trade actually contains the line "Without trade, the average UK consumer would be a third worse off." This part is great too.

To stop Brexit all the government needed to do was to tell us that you would pay an extra £82 for a £200 coat. Or that you wouldn't be able to bring a ham sandwich into the EU, or tour the EU as a musician. But they didn't boast about these Brexit benefits, did they? The field behind your house will be torn up and turned into a lorry park and drivers will use the hedges as a toilet? They didn't mention that.

Thanks @Charlesknight for finding this gem.
dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9… First one is buy cars made in the UK. How many cars are they expecting me to buy?

I was sacked from the civil service for asking a question but the government is sending in gunboats. And they said oh of course we don't mind you asking a question, but you have to understand HOW we do things in the civil service. Then didn't tell me how to do it.

You don't need to know much about the WTO and international trade law, but it's important to understand that under WTO rules we must apply our MFN tariffs to any country with which we have no trade deal, i.e. not discriminate. See them here: gov.uk/guidance/uk-ta… We set our own MFN tariffs, which can be reduced to zero if we want but can't be higher than our maximum bound tariff rates set at the WTO. Trump unilaterally imposed tariffs on China trying to use national security and "public morals" exceptions but the WTO struck some down.

When I was in the Department for International Trade I asked whether some of our plans would be legal. The answer was that it would take a long time for them to be legally challenged. Afterwards I was sacked. I found out that we would be making up the rules as we went along and would try to charm other countries into accepting this. I was told they would even be grateful for what we were doing. And challenges at the WTO would take a long time.