England with its brexit and its inept reactions have fucked the life of 11,000 hauliers MOST of which whom will never take a job delivering to england for at least a year. I have listened to 20 I know

Bloody hell some ones built a hall of shame for the SNP.

https://t.co/qxyMnUS4iX

1. Derek Mackay sending text messages to a sixteen-year-old boy telling him he was really cute.

2. Mhairi Black bringing a drag queen called Flowjob to a primary school

3. Derek Mackay spending £230 million on ferries that were not built

4. John Swinney overseeing an exam fiasco leading to marks being inflated

5. John Swinney being responsible for teaching primary school children about anal sex, rimming and pornography.

6. Natalie McGarry resigned the SNP whip because of fraud offences relating to the Women for Independence group. She pleaded guilty was convicted and jailed, but later had the conviction quashed. She still faces trial for embezzlement.

7. SNP coverup over the Covid outbreak connected with Nike in Edinburgh

8. SNP Government involved in clinical waste storage scandal

9. SNP MPs Chris Law, Ian Blackford and Brendan O’Hara had expenses claims totally £760,000 from the UK Parliament. They were the three with the

Amid all the announcements today, it's easy to overlook that the OBR has updated its scenario on a no-deal Brexit. It exposes an undeniably hard reality for the Govt that claims that the UK would "prosper mightily" under no-deal next year.

(Short thread)

1. Key chart: a no-deal/WTO/Australia-style Brexit would delay the point at which econ output regains its pre-virus peak by "almost a year to the third quarter of 2023."

In the upside scenario, this cross-over point could be at the start of 2022; in the downside, in 2025. Grim.

2. Next year, a no deal Brexit would reduce real GDP by around a further 2% - as a result of immediate disruption to the border and uncertainty facing businesses. That's on top of the Covid-related contraction.

3. While there's some short-term border disruption, most of the costs come in the medium term: from lost employment; productivity losses; lower business investment.

Exactly the opposite of what the Chancellor said to @AndrewMarr9 on Sunday.

4. Underneath these numbers, output would fall *below* the Covid levels for several key sectors: Manufacturing, professional services, financial services, retail, energy.

All trade intensive sectors that have been spared the same drop in output as the non-tradables this year.

1/ What are the ‘new’ demands the UK says the EU has made in the Brexit talks and are they actually new? There are 3 specific areas of contention that have emerged, one each on state aid rules, the Level Playing Field/Governance, and fish. None of them should be a total surprise.

2/ First, on state aid. The UK says the EU wants the Commission and European Investment Bank to be given carve-outs from the subsidy control provisions in the deal. It says this would create an unfair imbalance, because there would be no similar exemption for British authorities.

3/ This is particularly relevant in light of the bloc's €750bn Coronavirus recovery fund. It has already been delayed by an internal political row, and the EU is keen to ensure that isn't exacerbated by legal disputes with the UK next year. Brussels denies this is anything new.

4/ The Commission is an ex ante regulator, meaning it is called in to pre-authorise state aid spending by EU countries. The EU wants the UK to set up its own independent regulator to approve subsidies in the same way. If it does so, many of the state aid problems will fall away.

5/ LPF/Governance. This is about the 'ratchet clause' which the EU has relabelled as 'equivalence' of standards. It addresses what happens if one side raises its standards on say environmental or labour rules in the future and the other doesn't, creating a competitive imbalance.

As @michaelgove admitted yesterday we are expecting significant disruption in our #trade flows with the EU in coming days. The fact he is willing to say this confirms what most of us feel, that problems are building. This thread is a summary of what I have learnt in the past week

DISCLAIMER I run a trade body and spent the week in my back bedroom on the phone to members, reading the media and on zoom calls. I’m not on the ground and I am not in the operation rooms. So my info is second hand and partial. No one has a complete view. IT IS HIDEOUSLY COMPLEX

The first obvious problem is the number of different actors involved. On the commercial side - within 1 exporter there are multiple depts. There is also the buying company and the logistics company. They all have to sync. 1 load of goods involves multiple commercial actors.

On the government side its even more complex. In UK there are dozens of departments and agencies involved, and the same if not more in every member state of the EU. there are hundreds of thousands of decision makers involved.

They all have the same rule book though - YES true but its 1200 pages long and it's 15 days old - also - here's the thing with red tape, it's open to interpretation. (It's why lawyers tend to drive nice cars) and so being BORDER READY means different things to different actors.