NEW:
BBC has seen the official internal management data for the new post Brexit freight border - roll on roll off lorry outbound flows to EU now at 98% of last February - though was 73% in January... officials say “back to normal”...

That is reference to lorry flow rates - which is what Cabinet Office key committees most concerned about post Brexit in terms of knock on social impact for supplies of everything. Government now confident its “reasonable worst case scenario” of 7k lorries in kent won’t happen...
That is not same as saying trade has normalised - drawing on multiple sources - ferry manifests, Kent checks, french official data - the level of empty lorries on the short straits is around 50%, and was normally around 30%... ...

traffic here was 67% normal in Jan - 82% in feb
Combining those and you get to around 2000 fewer laden export trucks a day in January, still notable fall now. Officials say much was displaced into last year by stockpilers. On other hand French transport sources suggest the higher value Tunnel export empties more like 50-60%
Officials have been tracking the commodity codes on the ferry manifests and have distinguished between freight flows hit so far in 2021 by general COVID downturn - eg clothing and apparel, and post Brexit transition - agriculture, food and groupage
So the impact on trade seems material, esp in agrifood, when consider that average value of a laden lorry going GB-EU is higher than coming other way. We will get the official stats next month, these are not official stats. general picture was tho corroborated by French officials
Here are the inbound RoRo flows, by the way - now at 99% of last Feb. were at 77% jan - this is for example our supermarket shelves continuing to be full.

Other details - 80-90% lorries “border ready”. Turn backs now below 1 in 40. Big manufacturers using “authorised consignor”
Other details - some of the lower traffic on short straits in Jan has diverted to east coast ports eg immingham and harwich - but unclear if that is mainly the early avoidance of French COVID testing - but traffic holding up much better than expected
More details - GB & French officials privately both report very good cooperation - ironing out difficulties in the IT system for lorries changing point of entry etc...
Also officials defining last January’s figures as “normal” I’ve pointed out before that other data sources from BoE suggest they were then already notably down on previous years - BoE used 2018 and 2019 too... https://t.co/pFSNsBSOWL
Full story here - “back to normal” is a quote indicating government thinking. It refers to lorry flow and confidence that the 7k lorries queue worst case scenario that would have impacted eg supermarket supplies, has been avoided:

https://t.co/ABo4Xx0gko

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MISREPRESENTED CONTEXT

1. I am indeed disgusted with attempts to misrepresent and take out of context what I wrote on my blog yesterday.


2. Those who did that highlighted only one part of paragraph 12 which read: “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.”

3. They stopped there and implied that I am promoting the massacre of the French.

4.If they had read d posting in its entirety & especially the subsequent sentence which read: “But by & large the Muslims hv not applied the “eye for an eye” law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t. Instead the French should teach their people to respect other people’s feelings

5. Because of the spin and out of context presentation by those that picked up my posting, reports were made against me and I am accused of promoting violence etc… on Facebook and Twitter.
1/10 With respect, multiple straw men here:
A) If you mean by "legally questionable" either that Senate is barred by constitution from trying an official impeached while in office, or that there are even very strong arguments against it, I have to differ...


2/10 Constitutional structure, precedent & any fair reading of original intent dictate that argument for jurisdiction is far stronger than argument against. On original intent, see

3/10 If you mean argument against jurisdiction is plausible, sure, it's plausible. It's just weak. In practical fact, Senate can try Trump now, find him guilty & disqualify him from future office if there are sufficient votes. And no court would presume to overturn that result

4/10 b) The argument from resources is awfully hard to take seriously. Fewer than a dozen House members act as Managers for a few weeks. They are staffed, as are Senators hearing case, by folks whose job it is to do stuff like this...

5/10 Yes, Senate floor time will be taken up. But it's past time for us to stop thinking of members of either house as feeble, fluttering, occupants of a nationally-funded convalescent home. There are nearly 500 of these people with 1000s of staff and a bunch of big buildings...

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