“If you voted for Brexit, please realise this is 90% because of your decision”: UK cycle distributor FLi ceases trading

I'm not noticing the stuff I buy getting cheaper. I can't buy from Rose bikes in Germany and others like Hollandbike or Bike-Discount.de I get charged a load of import duties.  Not helpful if you're trying to set up a Dynamo light system. 

let's take an old standby of mine the Shimano 105 GS RD - my memory is getting these for around £30 - I've bought a few over the past 10 years. My last purchase is below at £40.  Deda basic coloured bar tape used to be £5. 

The going rate for this item is now £50 - sure, I can go £46.75 at Tweeks if I shop around and probably incur a bunch of postage costs from individual suppliers for the bits needed for a build. Shouldn't this have come down in price?  

Please do tell me about inflation - another Brexit consequence.  Lucky for you in terms of interest rates, I'm a saver, not a borrower now. 

https://www.tweekscycles.com/shimano-105-rd-5701-10-speed-rear-derailleu...

10s cassette €25, but €20 delivery. 
https://www.bike-discount.de/en/shimano-105-cs-5700-10-speed-cassette

or £46 from Merlin

https://www.merlincycles.com/shimano-105-5700-10-speed-cassette-49206.ht...

If your sole argument is about tariffs and prices, it ain't working for me. 

Where are my Brexit benefits? 

We can, IMHO, go much further in cutting tariffs than we have already but it has started and bike frames and components have been some of the beneficiaries so far.

https://cyclingindustry.news/budgets-tariffs-alterations-go-further-than...

The rules regarding VAT on low value items are entirely separate to Brexit and would have increased a lot of component prices regardless.

That must have made sense in your head. I'll ask again: Where are my Brexit benefits?

A lot of those who voted for Brexit, the ones that aren't frothing bigots, thought (Lord knows how) that Brexit would make things better for them.  It hasn't:  you can't describe any instance where it has.  So what keeps you in the game? 

As all the boomers who voted for it gradually die off, I hope the young take back the future that was stolen from them. 

You complained about the price of bicycle parts.

I showed you that tariffs on some bicycle parts and frames are being eliminated.

We now have the ability to unilaterally reduce tariffs and have used that power to reduce the costs of bicycles and some components.

Now maybe you only buy 105 derailleurs and will never benefit from these reductions but many other cyclists will.

I'll leave you to your melodrama now.

Rich_cb wrote:

You complained about the price of bicycle parts. I showed you that tariffs on some bicycle parts and frames are being eliminated. We now have the ability to unilaterally reduce tariffs and have used that power to reduce the costs of bicycles and some components. Now maybe you only buy 105 derailleurs and will never benefit from these reductions but many other cyclists will. I'll leave you to your melodrama now.

another Brexiter disappearing into a puff of patronising words, unable to explain anything about their choice on any level. 

I didn't request the change (like the majority of people in Scotland) but "on we get with it" now.  At least, not until after Scottish independence - and I don't see that exactly steaming over the horizon.  I suspect that would likely be coming quicker than any reverse of Brexit South of the border though!

However - it does look at bit like on one side "still no benefits" vs. on the other "ah, but we've made changes which could benefit us ... but also other things have changed which explain any negatives".

"Things just happening" is only going to increase with distance from the divorce, so I doubt there's any likelihood that those on either side will conceed that the other was right about the economics of it!

I have no idea - I doubt there will be a net benefit but as stated the argument will never end.  I'd be more sympathetic to other people's view (not that of the elites...) if they'd said that they would even be happy to be poorer because they would feel more free without some rules being set in Brussels.  I didn't hear that argument particularly though.

You can lead a horse to water...

I've explained that I'm in favour of lower tariffs and freer trade than is offered by EU membership.

I've given cycling specific examples of how things have improved in that regard since Brexit.

The fact you can't understand simple explanations with examples is something I can't help with unfortunately.

"Something, something...tariffs, something, something...condescending arrogance".

Where are my Brexit benefits?

David9694 wrote:

condescending arrogance

Mr Pot I presume.

Rich_cb wrote:

The EU is a highly protectionist organisation. High external tariffs on many products mean that consumers pay higher prices. We should take the opportunity to remove many tariffs and benefit from the lower prices and increased standard of living.

Many products? Or just very specific products? And the EU is no great outlier in terms of tariffs across the board being very similar to the US. 

quote from a Pew Research Center report below  

"In 2016, according to the World Bank, the average applied U.S. tariff across all products was 1.61%; that was about the same as the average rate of 1.6% for the 28-nation EU, and not much higher than Japan’s 1.35%. Among other major U.S. trading partners, Canada’s average applied tariff rate was 0.85%, China’s was 3.54% and Mexico’s was 4.36%. (Those average rates are weighted by product import shares with all of each nation’s trading partners, and don’t necessarily reflect the provisions of specific trade deals. Under NAFTA, for instance, most trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico is duty-free.) "

I think "many" is a reasonable description.

The full list is easily available, it's not short.

If Canada can manage to have half the average tariff rate of the EU and still prosper we should aim for that.

Tariffs don't benefit consumers, reducing tariffs reduces prices.

In my simplistic view, Freeport's = 14% tariff on 100% bikes sold

versus

EU warehousing = significantly lower tariffs (3-4% on A/B boxes?) on 90% of bikes sold (EU stock) and double tariff on 10% (U.K. stock). The proof of the pudding is when all these big players in the bike industry start closing their massive EU operations to open in the U.K. Freeport's. 

Many manufacturers? And Fairlight can offer 0% duty because of rules of origin, tariff inversion is specific to Freeport's style legislation. 

How long are brexiters going to milk Covid for, I wonder?  What's the next excuse?

Nice to apply some hindsight re : lockdown, etc.  In 2020, we didn't know how Covid spread and it was only at the end of the year that there was a test for it and then a vaccine. No, you're unlikely to acquire it outdoors or from touching a railing  -we know all that now. 

If anything, UK should have acted in February 2020 when it was obvious it was uncontrollable and often deadly.  It would have been over a lot sooner, but hey he got the major calls right, etc. 

Amazing that the near world-destruction of Lockdowns and the origin of Covid virus gets a wide berth from these people, who are amazingly experts in why Brexit failed. Probabky also the ones arguing for censorship and yelling "misinformation!" to shut down opinions they don't like while calling others fascists. 

Why is that?

hairyairey wrote:

Having read the article it's clear the issues aren't just down to Brexit. The lockdowns that were put in place across Europe were in the most part ridiculous. The fact we allowed our politicians to do this to our economies was a huge mistake. There was for example no evidence of the virus spreading outdoors but exercise was curtailed or banned. (I intend to make my feelings known about this to the covid enquiry). Professor Tim Spector of the Zoe covid symptom study (epidemiologist) doesn't believe lockdowns work. I don't doubt that trade with the EU is difficult but so was trade outside the EU before. We couldn't make separate trade agreements. I do feel sorry for this guy though, especially if he thinks it's all because of Brexit.

I wasn't going to comment on anyone's comments, but this one really got me, so here I am.  It's me quoted in the above article.

Here are a couple of points. 

1) the covid lockdowns were a BOOST to cycling and my company and many others in the cycling industry.  They were NOT the reason my business became impossible to run enjoyably and in a profitable way.  You seem to be putting an anti lockdown agenda across, for no logical reason.

2) the new border between us and the UK.  between my companies customers and the suppliers in Austria / Germany and Italy is a major barrier to trade.  Just things like it no longer being super easy to move money out, long delays with shipping, import duty, C79s etc etc are all issues now that weren't in play before the Brexit deal came into force at the start of 2021. 

3) I deliberatly didn't say it iss ALL because of Brexit, I said its mostly because of Brexit.  I know this because I've run the business, its interesting that you think you know more about it than I do.

Mass car ownership and Brexit have much in common - both are set up on and are sustained by a mix of bullshit, bullying/ playing on people's fears, and lies.

Multiple lies of this type were told in the campaign for the referendum; it's not just the loss of all that we had up in the EU I rail against, it is the massive populist right-wing coup that was pulled off in plain sight. All of that is highly relevant to promoting cycling and the safety (from drivers often high on this rhetoric) of cyclists.  The advisory referendum was translated into the "will of the people" by an obliging right-wing press - now here we all are.

Brexiters are very keen on democracy, as are we all when it's going their/our  way. Having studied and even worked in (local) politics a lot of my life, I never had a UK government weaselling out of holding the next General Election on my bingo card. But in the bad old days of Cummings and Johnson, (remember the proroguing of Parliament defeated by a High Court case?) it was on my radar.  These people are not about government for the people. 

Finally, Trump was the perfect conduit from capitalism to the downtrodden - "those liberals don't understand you, they look down on you: I get you, follow me, I am on your side", capped-off with "make America great again" - the type of rallying cry requiring no elaboration or quantifying - take from it whatever you want to hear rather like Brexit which is whatever we say it is.  There's plenty of pictures of UK political figures cozying up to him at the time and the influence (back to the referendum voting map) of this was as palpable as it was ugly. 

The lockdowns did that to us!

You plumped for Ukraine?

I've never been able to get excited about it since it peaked in 1981 when a teenage me watched the disappearing skirts of Bucks Fizz, although Wogan made it watchable of course.

#brexthick 

Wasn't just racists that voted Brexit.

####'s did also!

joe9090 wrote:

Wasn't just racists that voted Brexit.

Any of my fellow Brexit voters who voted that way because they are racist must be deluded. The old immigration system prioritised immigration from majority white countries and actively discouraged immigration from majority non white or pre colonisation non white countries.
Hopefully we will eventually get an immigration system that provides a safe legal route for asylum seekers, stops illegal migration and prioritises migration from countries we have historically had close links with like the Commonwealth. It seems strange that while we were in the EU people from Commonwealth countries who's ancestors died in their thousands helping us fight a white racist regime were denied entry while the ancestors of said regime could come and go as they pleased.

We'd better stop the free movement of people within the United Kingdom and between the U.K. and Republic of Ireland then.  And while we're at it also pressure Australia and New Zealand to stop their free movement. Don't want to be racist do we! I mean it's literally nothing to do with Geography is it? 
The British government purposely changed immigration law in the 60's to stop the free movement of mainly non white Commonwealth citizens into the U.K. but yeah EU free movement is racist. We could have had EU free movement AND Commonwealth free movement if we so wished. 

We stopped free movement of British citizens (non white) then a few years later embraced free movement of other nations citizens (white). I can't see a single thing that's racist about that situation. Free movement of both would not have been racist I agree but that's not what happened.

This quote is from a mildly pro remain article about Brexit & our colonial past by the rapper Akala;

Europeans who spoke entirely different languages, came from countries that Britain had in living memory gone to war with, had been prioritised for citizenship over people whose land, labour and resources literally built the country.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/battle-of-britishness-i...

Very interesting and well worth a look. As a white working class Brexit supporter I found it quite a challenging read.

All very interesting but I'm struggling with your logic. So free movement amongst European countries is bad (majority white)  but free movement amongst the Union of the U.K. nations themselves and these nations and Ireland is not bad (majority white) (as is Aus/Nz free movement) Is the new U.K./Aus youth mobility deal also bad? (majority white) 
And now we've got rid of the hated EU free movement we can introduce Commonwealth free movement to right the perceived historical wrongs.  How do you think that would go down with your average Brexiteer? Mm let me think.

Some brexiters (big brain Dan Hannan for example) have championed CANZUK free movement but have been oddly silent on Commonwealth free movement, why do think that might be? 

I'm not against the concept of free movement of people in an agreed area, I'm against race being the deciding factor especially when the group that were stopped were not even immigrants but British citizens who's countrymen had just been killed in their thousands to free the very Europe they were now banned from and the same Europe that colonised, raped and pillaged their countries years before. I think including ROI/UK deal is neither here nor there as both countries agreed to keep the free movement that was there pre independence and the citizens of both countries seem very satisfied with the deal, unless you know something I don't? I'm unaware of the AUS/NZ deals so I can't comment.

You haven't answered my questions re how free movement of Commonwealth countries citizens would be received by Brexiteers if it were proposed now. With open arms right? And what about CANZUK free movement? What about an African area of free movement that would discriminate White europeans (and others).  Free movement is also one of the key goals for Africa’s Agenda 2063.

While in the Schengen area non EU nationals are able to take advantage of that particular perk to travel freely around Europe for a few months, although of course the U.K. decided we didn't want to be a part of that sort of nonsense while members did we! Oh no! What, give foreigners the ability to come and go across our precious border! Good God no! 

In regards Australia/Nz free movement it's quite simple,  it's highly similar to the EU free movement that you so despise. 

And to be clear the only area of free movement you're against is the EU one because of something to do with a British decision to not continue Commonwealth movement to the U.K. ? That just seems massively incoherent