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Old 30th January 2019, 19:14   #1
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Default lettuce famine?by February?.

According to most supermarkets (Aldi&Tesco excepted). If this is the best project fear can do not to much to worry about - don't eat lettuce in the winter and would never buy other than British. Chris.S.
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Old 30th January 2019, 20:38   #2
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Before this thread is inevitably locked, it may be worth countering the dismissal of "more project fear" with the announcement that Barclays are moving £166 billion of assets out of the UK to Dublin. Royal Bank of Scotland has already done similar, by moving £13 billion of its assets to the Netherlands. For an economy particularly reliant on services, especially financial services, this is less than ideal.

Actually never mind, everything will be just peachy. Huzzah!
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Old 31st January 2019, 16:59   #3
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Would that be the Barclays with the CEO and others in the dock for corruption in relation to their dealings with some Arab(Dubai) state? And the RBS that crashed and whose CEO and others was found to less than honest in their dealings and hadto be bailed out by the taxpayer? If yes to both I will continue to buy British lettuce. I wonder what the parameters are the "moderators" use for closing a thread and how they were arrived at? Is it perhaps in here somewhere and I can access it, if so I would be interested to view them. Chris S.
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Old 31st January 2019, 17:52   #4
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Yes, that's right. Regardless of their undoubted wrongdoings, it is companies like these on which the UK's economy is particularly reliant. In total, some £800 billion is leaving the country in this manner. Not to worry, eh? I'm sure the powers that be have a cunning plan to replace it all. At least, insofar as it affects them personally.

By all means, continue to enjoy your lettuce. I'm actually a strong advocate of buying local produce whenever possible. If it's something you particularly enjoy but start to find difficult to source in future winters, you may be able to grow some of your own indoors, even in the coldest of weather. This way, you can ensure you won't have to rely on any imports at all - neither of the lettuce leaves themselves, nor the labour which will no longer be there to pick what will end up rotting in the ground at harvest time in Britain.

G'luck now.
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Old 31st January 2019, 18:51   #5
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Be getting approached by guys in the dark corners of pubs: "I've got lettuce, what do you want, leaf, romaine, iceberg?"
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Old 1st February 2019, 08:43   #6
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Apparently the manufacturers of Magnum ice creams are stockpiling their products. Now, I wonder how many Magnums sell in early April after B day anyway. Seems a bit daft to me. However I rather like them so I applaud the decision. Well done Magnum
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Old 1st February 2019, 09:05   #7
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In the meantime, nearly a third of British businesses have moved or are preparing to move some of their operations into EU locations according to the IoD. But that won't have caused them any disruption or expense - perish the thought! In fact, I'm sure they were all going to do that anyway as a means of creating British jobs for British people. Tally ho!
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Old 5th February 2019, 19:40   #8
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I'm a bit forward with my lettuce concerns- I see in my Aldi they have British Greens grown in Warwickshire so I will convert to that when the time comes. Your a bit long on the doom, will it be worse in Northern Ireland and the republic do you think? Chris S
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Old 6th February 2019, 15:20   #9
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Ok, I know the stuff about lettuce is making light of things, but I’ll give you an honest answer from my own perspective as someone who lives in Northern Ireland. Maybe it’ll give you pause for thought, maybe you’ll dismiss it, whatever. Looking at how this affects and is likely to affect life here I think it’s worth considering the economic and the socio-political.

In terms of my own background, I’ve been back living in NI for nearly 30 years, after spending the latter part of my childhood living about 15 miles from Dublin. My older brother, myself and one of my younger brothers were all born in Belfast, from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. My parents are from a slightly "mixed" background which would have been somewhat less common in those days – my mother is from farming stock in the south-west of Ireland, while my father came from a working-class background in the north-west of England, close to Liverpool. What brought him to Northern Ireland – soldiering? No, both my parents were teachers. They met in what used to be referred to as a “third-world country”, after each had separately chosen to spend several years teaching and giving life opportunities to local kids and families who otherwise wouldn’t have received any education. This involved a bit more than turning up to class and going home to do some marking – building the actual school, for a start! They got married in 1968 and, as my father had opted to do a degree in Queen’s University as a mature student, ended up moving to a mixed area of north Belfast. A lot more areas were mixed (i.e. Catholic and Protestant neighbourhoods) back then.

Sadly, this coincided with the time that the conflict here was just kicking off, and one central aspect of this were the massive campaigns of intimidation and violence aimed at driving out people from one background or another. While I have no loyalty to any creed or faith, our family have a Catholic background and were therefore the targets for the sort of “Burn them! Burn them out!” rhetoric espoused by (among others) Ian Paisley – the founder of the DUP which now props up Theresa May’s government. I’m well aware that similar campaigns of intimidation were waged by republicans against Protestant families, e.g. in farming communities along the border – no “side” comes out of our recent history in a state of blamelessness. Bear in mind though that my parents were in no way politically involved or motivated, just the mother and father of a young family trying to make a life for themselves. They were by no means unique in that regard. However there were two direct warnings given to our family, the second and “final” one apparently to our elderly neighbour and child-minder as she pushed myself and my older brother along the street in a stroller. Obviously I have no direct memory of this, but it came out some years later. The choice was to leave or be burned out, so with one of the job offers my father had coming from a school outside Dublin we were uprooted from our home, our early school years and the life my parents had built for nine years.

There were occasional visits back north in the intervening years, and I chose to come here when it was time for me to start my own degree in 1990, so border crossings became a regular occurrence for me - the first few times in my dad’s car, once or twice as a bus passenger and then for about three years as a hitchhiker. There would be long, slow-moving queues as each vehicle and its passengers was visually checked, some being pulled over for more extensive searches which could involve removing the passengers and entire contents of the car to be set on the ground (regardless of the weather conditions). Any time I hitched a lift with a lorry driver, at the border we would have to pull away from the main road between Belfast and Dublin for the load to be checked. There was a huge yard there, which may still exist, big enough to accommodate perhaps a couple of hundred HGVs – this would be woefully inadequate today, of course. I remember getting a lift in a HGV one particularly wet day, and on the approach to the turn off for the customs check the driver told me I was welcome to stay in the cab rather than going out into the rain to try my luck with the passing traffic – I didn’t need much persuading. It took about an hour and 20 minutes before we got going again, on a trip which if uninterrupted would have taken no more than three hours.

Skip forward, and this has all disappeared since the signing of the international treaty generally known as the Good Friday Agreement, for which Ireland and the UK act are co-guarantors as members of the European Union. Take a quick look at this short clip which summarises a more in-depth report from yesterday’s local news - https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-north...e-irish-border Today, there are no customs checks, the same food and animal welfare standards apply in both jurisdictions so agricultural exports are virtually seamless and do not incur tariffs. There are three members of my extended family alone who live on one side of the border and cross it every day to go to work – one who lives in Donegal and goes the few short miles into Derry, one who goes from south Tyrone to Monaghan town and one who goes from the shores of Lough Neagh to Dundalk in Co. Louth. All this is possible this because there is an open border, one which you only notice because of the signs informing you of the change in units for measuring distances and speed limits (i.e. miles/kilometres). There’s no risk of a lengthy delay in the middle of your journey because of a queue at a checkpoint, or because you’re the one who’s been randomly selected. It isn’t necessary to have to leave an hour earlier than the normal journey time, on top of your actual commute, EVERY SINGLE DAY, to allow for this possibility. How welcome would be the prospect of such disruption to the mundane functioning of life on your trip from Chester to Liverpool, or from York to Northallerton, or from Tunbridge Wells to Crowborough? How would you like to have to apply for a green card and an international driving licence in order to go from Gloucester to Cardiff, or Carlisle to Glasgow, or Newcastle to Edinburgh? As things stand, this is what we are facing.

I live in the north and cross the border in excess of 30 times a year, between travelling for rugby matches, on short trips to see friends or family (all the rest of my family still live in the south) or just for a quick weekend away. Moreover, I’m in the throes of setting up a new tourism business – a project for which I’ve been planning and preparing for nearly five years. Before the EU referendum had even taken place, I had already spent close to £3000 alone on fees for acquiring planning permissions, water discharge permits etc, and once I count the outlay on preparatory site works the total invested to date comes to some £10000 of my own savings. After a health crisis a few years ago, I had to give up my day job and haven’t been able to go back to it, so this is it for me – the only route I have back to making a half-decent living. My business will rely particularly heavily on cross-border visitors having trouble-free access to come and stay here, but the border issue puts all that in jeopardy. Agriculture and tourism are two of the biggest sectors of the economy here, and both are substantially threatened by Brexit, particularly by a no-deal Brexit which would see the re-introduction of checkpoints - whether “at” the border or “near” the border.

But aside from the disruption to economic and community life here, there is also the prospect of what can arise from the re-introduction of a border in terms of violent interventions. Through the period of the conflict here, there were a number of attacks on border checkpoints, such as the one where an innocent civilian’s family was held at gunpoint while he was chained into an explosive-laden van and forced to drive it into the middle of a checkpoint. He shouted to warn the soldiers as they approached him, but was killed in the explosion along with five of them as he tried to get out of the van. This was far from the only proxy bomb attack carried out at a checkpoint. I don’t want to be caught up in the middle of something like that, nor do I want anyone else to. The re-imposition of a border creates the circumstances where this could once again become a tangible risk. Is this realistic? Well, in the past few weeks we’ve had dissident republicans set off a car bomb in Derry city centre, and a horrific murder carried out by loyalist gangsters in east Belfast. Does that sound realistic enough?

Of course, none of this will have the slightest impact on the safely cocooned politicians in GB, ignorant in both senses of the term, who airily pronounce that the issue of the border is merely a “gnat bite”. But in reality, it will deal a substantial blow to the fragile and hard-won progress towards a peaceful, equal society here, with horrific consequences. Thanks for nothing.
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Old 6th February 2019, 15:53   #10
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I can only imagine what it was like and totally understand your very real concerns for the future.

Living in the South West of Scotland I can remember the security getting ferries over to Larne and Belfast - not funny or pleasant.

I really hope that common sense wins out however I fear it won't.

Thanks for your post

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