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I assume the "Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border" system was named by Leonard of Quirm?

That said, having a system deployed into production 23 days before it's needed beats the usual sharp focus on delivery deadlines by about 5 days.

Rosie

Or Kent as we like to think of it.

Remember quitters this is what you voted for.

"this is what you voted for"

Not quite true. The majority who voted, voted to leave a business club and join another.

We expected that exercise to be handled with a reasonable degree of care. Given the way this story about HMRC and IT follows the same usual pattern of failure, we should have known that parliament would perform just as well.

That was our only mistake - but don't for a minute think that remaining would have changed the way Parliament seems to fail at most things these days.

The majority who voted for it let their own bigotry get in the way of the facts.

Dress it up however you want, make any excuses you want, the fact remains you were conned by a bus and didn't give two shits about the rest of the country.

Regardless of which side of the discussion you are on, the pommie negotiators have been a bit useless; they seem to have seen themselves as a combination of James Bond and Hercules Hurricane, but in reality they been more like Derek Trotter and George Mainwaring.

And I don't mean that in a bad way either - both Del Boy and Captain Mainwaring are sympathetic characters, just a bit out of their depth.

Given the choice, I'd go with Derek Trotter and Captain Mainwaring every time.

At least they'd have made us chuckle while they screwed everything up instead of giving us a feeling of cringing embarrassment...

How about we dress it up as 'People were asked a question and those that answered gave their preference.'

In the same way you could title this article 'It may date back to 1994 but there's no end in sight for the UK's Chief customs system as Brexit rules beckon' or you could go with 'System from 1994 is still capable and so will be maintained'

Dress it up however you want, make any excuses you want, the fact remains you were conned by a bus and didn't give two shits about the rest of the country.

And you thus demonstrate perfectly why so many remainers haven't a clue about the real problem. You just don't want to listen to any of the reasons that have been given why the EU is a political and financial disaster, even if you disagree with them.

If you actually even pretended a little bit to have read the opposing reasons, and could come up with concrete, factual, reasons why they were incorrect, people might take you seriously. Instead you just bang on and on about "you don't agree with me, so you must be stupid and bigoted". Not a particularly convincing argument.

"If you actually even pretended a little bit to have read the opposing reasons, and could come up with concrete, factual, reasons why they were incorrect, people might take you seriously. Instead you just bang on and on about "you don't agree with me, so you must be stupid and bigoted". Not a particularly convincing argument."

If anyone could actually articulate some that would be good.

What facts got in the way.

The disastrous EU over fishing policy.

The feeding money to the mafia via the Bulgarian government.

The near-fascist governments of Poland and Hungary which take the EU subsidy and laugh.

I could go on but it seems to me that the re-moaners are the unthinking bigots who would rather demean and insult 48% of their fellow citizens rather than accept the the EU only benefited the cosy southern middle class, and, did nothing for the majority.

The referendum was decided 4 years ago, stop whinging like the worlds second worst looser.

Maybe if UK members of the EU fisheries committee had bothered to turn up to meetings, and voted in favour of better policies when they did, and the UK government hadn't decided to put no restrictions on fishermen selling their quotas to foreign boats?

You decided to vote for something that had NO PLAN.

There was NO PLAN proposed.

There was NO PLANning.

The outcome of a decision of this scale, immediately acted upon, with NO PLAN, no idea of how to get a plan, what a plan looks like or where you could buy a plan, if a plan is something that is edible....qwrhif134ibthr3gwphuirfew1t34ehpir4fe134fhur34fe13fqwe

werf134r34134

ah what's the bloody point?

BLUUUUU PPAAAAARRRRSSSPOOOORTS. etc. bolloxs, etc.

I think you are missing the point. The people voted to leave and you (apparently) lost. Rightly or wrongly you live in a pseudo-democracy so the result is no longer something to argue the toss about and giving the jaw a rest at this point would be a good idea.

However, what all the people could reasonably expect was some level of leadership and competency from their Government which is something that Government have either deliberately failed to provide (set the system up to fail) or neglected to provide because the people's expectations of their Government, ie being competent, were too high ...

This, ironically, is nothing to do with leaving the EU per se, it's all to do with the Government being unable to do its job or properly structure and manage its IT systems.

... voted in a non-binding referendum...[0]

but I agree with the last paragraph, the gubmint or gubmint-owned companies messing up big projects is not a result of Brexit, nor specific to the UK otherwise it would not have taken two decades or so to complete that Berlin airport.

And I also agree to please stop that debate here. Brexit is happening, whether we like it or think people were conned or whatever.

(yeah, I think it's a bad idea, I'm sad the UK is leaving, but it is their right to do so, whether the EU likes it or not, and I don't really think either the UK or the EU will benefit from that)

[0] and which could have been used to encourage the EU to get their shit together! That would have been really useful.

and which could have been used to encourage the EU to get their shit together! That would have been really useful.

We spent 25 years trying, to little avail. The EU thinks it has got it's shit together, and it is going to continue digging deeper into it whatever anyone else tries to do. David Cameron came back from Brussels waving his little bit of paper and saying "Look at how well I negotiated, the EU is getting it's shit together. Vote Leave if you don't agree".

Well, he got what he asked for.

From what I hear, the UK spent 25 years being the main user of vetos. The EU is a balancing act between cooperation and national soveregnity (the thing that brexiteers said there was too little of). it is therefore hard to change, and this is by design. In many cases, fixing things would require to give the EU more power to do so. Firing off vetos all the time is not the way to change something.

Yes.. now Poland and Hungary is playing brinksmanship with their veto-powers. Wonder who they learned from?

The UK had the best deal of a large nation in the EU. the fees were low, the influence was high, and the British politicians could blame everything theyy fcked up on the EU. I sincerely doubt that this deal will be offered again.

"We spent 25 years trying"

No we didn't! Only Maggie made a decent effort with Europe and she didn't go far enough or, it seems to me to have overly much interest in Europe, she was more interested in playing monetarism with Reagan and flogging off council houses or industries.

No other UK governments did much more than bleat and whinge, none of our leaders either left or right had any balls or a clue when it came to dealing with Europe, all they did was piss off former commonwealth members while complaining about the iniquities of Europe.

"However, what all the people could reasonably expect was some level of leadership and competency from their Government..."

Competency? Please, tell me why we "could reasonably expect" this from our Government. I'd really like to know.

Ah, blue passports.

They were black. The one I got in 1990, and still have in a drawer at home, is black. The new ones are going to be black, as you can see from the pictures of Home Secretary Priti Patel holding one up on the Home Office website. But for some reason we are all expected to call them blue.

"It's just a very very dark shade of blue. Way darker than anything else you call blue in daily life, but it's not black, it's blue. It's definitely not some weird Orwellian experiment where we repeat something which is blatantly false until you ignore the evidence of your own eyes and call it blue instead of black. It's blue."

Once they've got you into the habit of ignoring your senses, and vacantly repeating what they want, what else do you think they will do?

Ah, blue passports.

They were black.

It's really funny, the only people who seem to care about the colour of the passports are the remainers.

Yes the old ones were black. There were also not machine-readable and the change to the current format was an international decision completely unrelated to the EU. We could, and can, have any colour we like, many EU members don't use Burgundy. No one with any sense gives a damn what colour it is.

Not sure you can blame parliament for this. They have no executive function, that would be the cabinet.

The problem is that the government started far too late. Admittedly Theresa May's decision to leave the EU's Single Market* and Customs Union caught most people, Brexiters, Leavers, Remainers, cabinet ministers and civil servants off guard. Still, I believe it was Spring 2017 and so that should have left ample time to prepare.

From that moment on it was clear that SPS checks would be required at the border so the UK government could have started hiring thousands of vets and building veterinary inspection facilities near ports.

From that moment on it was clear that any goods crossing the border would require export declarations, and that you would want to check lorries for the right paperwork long before they even get to the terminal.

From that moment on it was clear that an estimated 180,000 UK businesses would be faced with customs bureaucracy for the first time and that there was a serious shortage of customs brokers (that figure of 50,000 people you some times hear about) to help them navigate this.

From that moment on it was clear that we needed IT systems to handle the estimated 400 million additional customs declarations that UK businesses would have to make every year.

The government could have started widening the M20 straight away. That was always a bottleneck, because that vital connection to Dover would clog up regularly over strikes, terrorist scares, bad weather or accidents. And that was before Brexit. The Brexit decision made it politically possible to sidestep existing planning and environmental regulations and start the Compulsory Purchase Orders for land and housing that was previously an obstacle to widening the M20.

None of the above is contingent on the deal currently being discussed. The trade deal only removes tariffs, not the other bureaucracy. All of the above could have started in 2017 instead of 2020.

It’s the job of the cabinet to propose these measures and the job of parliament to approve or amend.

* It’s actually called the Internal Market but for some reason in the UK we always have to rename EU concepts that already had English names. Just like the UK is the only country that speaks of the “Common Market” when no such thing ever existed, it was called the European Community from 1957 to 1993, when it was renamed European Union.

it was called the European Community from 1957 to 1993, when it was renamed European Union.

Well no, it's not that simple. Even the EU's own website explains"

"In 1957, the Treaty of Rome creates the European Economic Community (EEC), or ‘Common Market’", which was renamed the European Community in 1993 when it was merged into the newly-created European Union (to indicate that it was no longer just an economic entity). The EC finally disappeared in 2009.

"We expected that exercise to be handled with a reasonable degree of care."

You saw who was pushing for this. You knew what their track record was. What made you think they would change the way they had worked for their entire careers and start handling things with a reasonable degree of care?

We expected that exercise to be handled with a reasonable degree of care.

More fool you.

You could tell it wasn't going to go well by all the wild claims thrown around like 'Easiest deal ever' and 'Done on day one', let alone the competing positions held by various campaigners about whether or not the UK should remain in the single market or what degree of access to the single market should be negotiated (and no mention at all on the customs union).

Hardly a surprise, then, that so much Tory in-fighting took place in the years after the vote, including several campaigners changing their minds about their previous positions once they realised that they hadn't actually known what the hell they were talking about, plus a few more who had obviously lied.

"The majority who voted, voted to leave a business club and join another."

Who are you, that you speak for everyone who voted leave, and know their principal reason for voting that way? It seems to me that there were many many reasons why individuals voted to leave. Leaving a business club may have been yours, but why does that now qualify you to claim that everyone else backed your view?

The only thing more tedious than listening to Remainers moan about losing, is listening to the winners moaning about how they didn't mean it to end like this, and it's not their fault. You won. Get over it.

We expected that exercise to be handled with a reasonable degree of care.

By who? Johnson, Farage and Rees-Mogg? (Oh, and we shouldn't forget David Davis I suppose).

Even for politicians, they're clearly more interested in themselves and their personal aggrandisement than actually governing. Has any of them shown any aptitude in the past for actually carrying out their grand plans?

What sold it to you? Was it the in-depth planning they did beforehand? Was it the careful accounting, where they laid out the figures on how the economy would fare? Perhaps it was the wealth of experience in the firms they planned pay to provide, eg, ferry services? Possibly it was the grasp of international law which allowed then to forget that Northern Ireland even exists?

Argue it on emotional grounds all you like, but if you're trying to say you looked at the case put out by Vote Leave and thought, "that looks like a reasonable degree of care", then I have to question your judgement.

When they said "£350 million for the NHS" did you believe them, or did you think "I'm sure that's just a minor slip up and definitely not a foretaste of what's to come"? Really, what was your reaction to that?

Try reading about the latest fuss around Holyhead. Lots of lovely new jobs are set to be created to handle the Customs details of the 1200 lorries a day which go through there. These jobs are set to be created in Birmingham. Anglesey will get thousands of acres of concrete to park the lorries on.

At least Kent will get both.

Better get back to developing the "Read Data From Files, Fiddle Around With It Then Send It To The Virtualised Mainframe" system.

Trade Involving Trucks Soon to Upset People ... TITSUP ...

I can't believe everyone's so lockdown depressed they haven't done one in this thread yet!

"Look a lorry's Coming" would be catchier ...

'Another IT system supposed to ensure the smooth departure from EU border arrangements is the "Check an HGV is Ready to Cross the Border" system, formerly known as Smart Freight, also set to go live in December.

'It is designed to ensure HGVs carrying exports from the UK to the EU have the necessary paperwork before they get to port.'

Wouldn't it be better to ensure HGVs carrying exports have the necessary paperwork _before they leave the warehouse?_

After all, planes don't take off if there is no landing slot booked (AFAIK).

That is correct, it would be even better if lorries couldn't leave the warehouse without correct paperwork. The practical problem is that you can't enforce it, short of putting inspection posts etc. near every warehouse in the UK that occasionally stores goods for export.

A more manageable solution then is to do it nearer the dozen or so exit points on this island but not near enough so the roads around terminals are clogged up by lorries with faulty or missing declarations. That is what the Farage Garage is for, a holding pen for lorries until their paperwork is in order.

I expect that we'll see ANPR on the major roads entering a zone (such as Kent but there will be around ten more of those) that check a lorry's registration number against a database. If the database suggests not all the correct paperwork is in place these lorries will be instructed (with matrix panels?) to go via a Farage Garage first. A bit like you sometimes see automated systems that divert lorries that are too heavy onto a diversion route.

Bureaucracy being what it is you probably require an HGV to carry the paperwork,

That was the widely reported quote by the prime minister, when asked about his response to business concerns.

The article proves that it is also now a government policy, and well on the way to being successfully implemented in a few weeks time.

That was the widely reported quote by the prime minister, when asked about his response to business concerns.

No, it was his response to businesses who wanted the political organization set up to do what they wanted, irrespective of what the voters said.

Think of what your reply would be if someone suggested that Facebook should be allowed to define the rules for GDPR. That will give you the right context for his response.

How it comes out in the wash. Then we can laud or lay the blame.

Then we can laud or lay the blame.

That's a rational response that won't be a majority view. Most people (on both sides) will continue to blame the other side and those of us in the middle will continue to marvel at the lack of most people to argue from a rational basis even when both side is using the same "facts" to prove their point.

Let's face it - most people are just not capable of being rational when they care deeply about something - especially something where they have been taught to despise the other side. The same is seem in the US with the 'pubs and dems.

"That's a rational response that won't be a majority view."

It's really not very rational.

If you said "I'm going to give all my money to this nice man I met in the pub", and I replied "He's a scammer, don't give him anything". The rational response is not "maybe, maybe not, lets see how it all comes out in the wash".

Sometimes I love old school, but I get the feeling this isn't one of them. What's this old system written in? Maybe my mom wants to come out of retirement?!!