Brexit Britain unable to afford basic public services

They would not do it either - new machines, bottles, labels, processes and storage.
Complete distraction from the issues and to appease the 1.3% and telegraph readers.

Bigfoz wrote:

Ah yes, pint bottles of wine. 

Let's see: Bottled largely in the EU, or FOR the EU market, so bottling subject to the EU regs on measures (the regs we seem to be thumbing our noses at). So how many bottlers are going to bottle up a special size for the UK with associated tooling / bottle costs? Or will we buy it in std measures and then pour it into smaller bottles here? Yet another one of those Brexit benefit" stories, that while it may be true, is not very likely. Yes it's possible, but who's going to do it outside of maybe 3 wine growers in Kent.

Look - we voted for it, so we're damn well going to sell British wine in pint bottles and then blame the Europeans for not buying it from us (never mind if they do even buy British wine at the moment).

David9694 wrote:

Aah, the little niche that is British winemaking. I don't think we make the quantities (nor the quality most years) for much of an export market. 

The other thing is that wine is marketed here in a distinct way, i.e. 99% comes in a 750 ml bottle, making 6 x125 mm glasses or 3 x 250 mm.  My wife doesn't drink, so I would welcome a wider variety of sizes, particularly the 375 mm half-bottle which are hard to find, although many restaurants do them.  No, I don't want the sad / single serving bottles the supermarkets do. 

The minibar in my Christmas hotel had a tin of red and a tin of white, and you can buy vacuum wine cartons with a tap, but on the whole UK folk play along with the "wine snob" mode, serving it in stem glasses - whereas in France vin ordinaire is often consumed from a Tetrapak carton in a tumbler. 

Maybe someone should try offtering the 1pt wine format, see if people in these days of shrinkflation want to buy it. 

See! We're only just considering it and already we've got a customer.

I'm sure Johnny Depp would be interested. 

David9694 wrote:

Aah, the little niche that is British winemaking. I don't think we make the quantities (nor the quality most years) for much of an export market. 

"British wine" was wine mass produced in Britain from very cheap imported grapes & was truly disgusting. I haven't seen it on sale anywhere for 40 years. English wine is made in England from grapes grown in England & is good & rapidly getting better. English sparkling wine, in particular, is consistently excellent, expensive yes but far better value for money, imho, than champagne.

There's some winemaking in Wales but as I haven't ever had any Welsh wine I'm not in a position to comment on it. Having travelled around Wales quite a bit, tho, I'm prepared to believe it has great potential - the climate in the South Wales valleys is near perfect for cool-climate white grapes.

Incidentally, English wine is a very succesful export, with almost £600m-worth exported last year, a third of it to the EU.

A fairly decent red all the way from Abergavenny, well a nice bike ride from Abergavenny at any rate. The Sugarloaf vineyard's a great place for a cafe stop too!  

https://sugarloafvineyards.co.uk/shop/ols/products/deri-coch-red-wine

There's some winemaking in Wales..

There is indeed, and this one is using sheep's wool in an interesting way. Good luck to them

David9694 wrote:

I struggled to find any reliable information about the value/ scale of British winemaking - so interested in the source for £600m. 

Pieces I read left the slightly awkward taste that some of this apparent prosperity is on the back of climate change - I tend to think that if ever you think you're gaining there, it will be stripped away ten-fold. 

Perhaps Sir Tim Wetherspoon of Brexit will be the first out of the traps with a 1 pint wine presentation?

£600m is about right for exports, but it includes some value added products - ie processed in the UK.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/303550/uk-united-kingdom-wine-export...

English produced wine is about 12-15m bottles per annum at a ballpark price of £25-£30 each, which gives ~£400m for English produced wine (Wales, Scotland, NI being rounding errors). This is exported, but not yet on a large scale. 

French wine companies are buying up vineyards here.

After much more of this nonsense my interest will not be so much in whether supermarkets are selling wine in pint bottles but more in whether pubs are selling wine in pint glasses.

David9694 wrote:

...a pint? Why, that's very nearly an armful. 

Oh, did I fake these posts where you assured us the deal was imminent? In all those posts you've shown you claimed that the India deal was about to happen, just because you added "only time will tell" doesn't make you any less wrong or make your claim that Brexit was about to be justified any less dishonest. For God's sake you silly little man, sit down, have a glass of port and a mince pie and perhaps think about next year commenting about cycling on this cycling website instead of only ever banging on about Brexit and your other tiresome rightwing obsessions, complete with graphs.

You didn't fake them but you did deliberately and dishonestly misrepresent them.

You know that wasn't my position as I made it deliberately and abundantly clear to you during our discussion at the time. You can't claim you don't remember that discussion so the only option left is that you lied about its content.

Don't try and belittle me when you're the one who's dragging up discussions from months ago, then flagrantly lying about their content. How devoid of meaning must your life be for you to think that's a worthwhile use of your time?

I'll leave you to your fantasies of photographic memory and the vivid little life you've created for yourself..

And a very happy Christmas to you too sweetie. Hugs.

Nadolig Llawen Celwyddog

I've linked to that previous thread below.

In that thread I said that I'd read it was close to sign off and felt sign off was possible in a relatively short period of time but emphasised multiple times that nothing could be taken for granted until the it was over the line. A certain dishonest individual has sought to misrepresent my views but the thread speaks for itself.

I think if/when the India deal gets done it will put a stop to the tedious 'where are the benefits?' question as it will be an unambiguous benefit.

I'm in favour of increased skilled immigration but I support the idea of a high salary threshold for skilled immigration visas.

Not as tedious as the current real problems and costs that have occured due to brexit. Take the wine industry for a start.

Reading your posts it's a though no downside is currently occurring and to say 'wait 10 years' is some vague assertion, unrelated to what is currently happening.

Hirsute wrote:

Not as tedious as the current real problems and costs that have occured due to brexit.

Seven-and-a-half years ago: "Brexit will mean an extra £350M a week for the NHS, look it must be true 'cos it's written on the side of a bus."

Today: "Where are the benefits from Brexit we were promised?" "Oh don't be tedious."

Unemployment will rise by 500-800,000.

House prices will fall by 10-18%.

How did those predictions pan out?

How much has NHS funding increased since 2016?

Oh huzzah, a graph! A graph that shows spending has risen by £40bn in ten years at almost exactly the same rate as inflation. So where is the £18.2BN a year extra we were promised? Here's a graph for you as you love them so much: cumulative underspend on the NHS since 2010, even including massive emergency injections for Covid, £322BN.

Oh Rendel, sometimes you make it so easy.

What does the Y axis label say?

That's right, it is already adjusted for inflation.

Do you want to try again?

I'm not denying that disruption is occurring.

Short term disruption was always going to occur. I believe that the long term benefits will far outweigh these short term disruptions.

Many others believe otherwise but as the disruption is front loaded and the potential benefits long term it's far too soon to definitively say which side was right.