(23) There will be trouble ahead

I could have called this post “January Blues”; however, I think it is more judicious to go to the heart of the problem with only calling to mind what happened over five years and a half.

It is impossible as well to separate the most vocal person associated with it, Boris Johnson, and what is happening at the moment.

And then, this is a nice song.

A bridge, in London, hopefully going and coming from somewhere ...

You would ask what is the relation with a cheese blog?

Well, you only need to know and realise, whatever the BBC narrow viewpoint, what is going on with food imports ion the UK. (By this I mean to say that this is my views and should not reflect on any organisation that I happen to be working for, I used to be a tory supporter, then you can draught your conclusion as to this from my discourse below).

So, lets put thing into perspective and look at the history.

About 72% of the UK electors voted in favour of Brexit in June 2016 by a result of just below 52%. This was after a campaign when only two people were vociferous, and both of them in favour of Brexit with some contestable argumentation, and the opposition dancing a simulacre of a dance waiting to know in which direction the wind was blowing.

Anyway, to be fair it is in the past. However, there should be an important point to be noted: contrary to the Scottish independence proposition there was no implementation plan concerning Brexit, just a point of policy with no clear idea as to the future and a populist idea, remember the American situation if you please and be free to make any possible corelation of your choice…

As to what is happening now about Boris Johnson, he wants to be trusted by the British public 5 years on whereas there is still no correct implementation and he violated so many rules without being decisive. When a person is in charge of any organisation he decides, he check the implementation, and when problems arise, he should be able to say stop and correct mistakes with a truthful and meaningful apology; whenever necessary as the old adage says “the buck stops here”, meaning one person takes charge and do not blame X or Y, or even circumstances, but act on it.

Now, let’s look at the Brexit situation. This was decided over 5 years ago, no problem with that. It took over 3 years and many prevarications to obtain a treaty that was unsatisfactory as the British wanted to do everything their own way and the EU wanted respect of their rules and regulations; and by the way the British respected and implemented theses rules and regulations before.

However, during these 3 years the UK government knew that they would regain sovereignty over their own border, that they had to prepare to implement new rules and checks at the borders for people and goods. Whatever the new rules for importation and exportation of products, they had had the time to built up the border force, prepare for a bigger administration, and at least reassure business that something was done.

Through this tumultuous time, every time you heard the news, it was all about uncertainty and the fact that almost nothing was done. The time to dream is when you are asleep, when you are in government you should think about the people that you represent, therefore action is needed and you should err on the side of caution but at least do something and prepare for something; prevarication usually means that you lose resources and time without doing much.

Talking about the role of government and their employees, have you noticed if you have travelled abroad recently, these last 2 years when the covid threat was active, that the forms you had to fill up when abroad to come back were not user friendly. What I want by this is that civil servants have a sense of power, after all they represent the government, but are mainly not able to think about their customers, their own constituents. At least in America they say: “government of the people, by the people, for the people” (Abraham Lincoln), and even if many officials forgot about it as they go ploughing for big business, the principle is sound in any democracy. Instead of serving the people the pervading sense if of a repressive mentality, even the police in the UK never really had this way of thinking.

And then the civil servants have their own specific way of thinking that is intricate. They make you go through loops to understand their needs.

Administration is always a part of a job that is not very rewarding but necessary, however, when you have to do it and feel like you are taken for a ride just for the joy of it, there is definitely no satisfaction!

With all of that said and done, we need to consider communication. This is many part of many mistakes or the way that people feel. It is always better to have a simple message, ask BJ, but it is always the hardest part, especially if people that the message is directed at only listen and understand it thinking of something else: the result is only partial. Then you have the problem of targeted or partial communication versus global, once again the audience needs to focus on the content of the message. And then you have to have full disclosure when communicating: if your audience act when they are not supposed to, this is not helpful. As many people say when in opposition: “it is a shamble”.

To go back to the more recent 2 years, it is true that there were a few problems. We had the covid situation and this did not help, commiseration to any who suffered, and my post is not about this problem at all. Please do not take this the wrong way. However, this would have been a good time to use people working at home and in a safe environment set up the required administration, or more accurately help the existing administration to grow, as to prepare for any implementation of the new rules and have a dialogue with businesses.

The result is obvious nowadays when you look at the queues at any exit point of the border.

And then you have the problem of transportation. This was already exacerbated by the lack of qualified drivers, if you make them unproductive by a 1 to 2 days stop at the border, then it is no wonder that the system breaks down.

Once again, the result is a shamble. Food is not available and certainly in no way as abundant as to when Brexit was not in force. And this is before you account for the 20% price hike on top of scarcity. And because of Brexit, products are coming from further afar when available; this in turn means high pollution creation.

Only large businesses can afford to play the Brexit game as described above. They can employ people to deal with any extra paperwork needed and have big warehouses to answer the new shipping requirements. We need to import stuff in bigger quantities with the new rules to facilitate any border control, there is no flexibility planned in the current system.

So, as I said before this is my January blues!

The worst about this is that this situation is more or less the same over all of the food and drink industry importing products from the continent. Everybody is suffering from delays at the border.

Then you have to think as well as the quality of the products. If refrigerated for longer during transport (first of all, the temperatures are low at the moment, so the extra pollution is not catastrophic yet and the suffering of the goods not too extensive), the said products arrive with a lower quality than before. Then you have the unproductive time when you have to wait for the goods to arrive, and then you have the uncertainty of the delivery time.

At the end of this chain, the customer is suffering. He is lucky when he is delivered, and then the business has to suffer once again when the customer complain and credit have to be given or the goods not accepted.

Therefore, once again, this situation only improves the dominance of the large to extra large businesses and is a huge catastrophe for small enterprises all over the UK.

Once again this is only my views, and if you can trust a person that had a simple message with no plan as to implementation, and that this same person do not take charge or do not know what is going on under his own roof…

Whatever you do,

remember,

give life to your taste buds, and above all, enjoy real cheese.