long scream

The screams of last century's politician Screaming Lord Sutch might not be long enough for what is happening at the moment. I've had a quick look through some of those 'no deal' papers. They seem high level and puffed with pre-ambles before getting to their main points.

A few quick examples:

• For farming and farm loans, the UK Government will unilaterally continue to pay loans started under EU conditions through to 2022. This 'kick the ball further away' is the response to a number of issues but soon gets expensive.
• For banking services, the UK will keep EEA Passporting for EU firms through to 2020. That's all well and good but it is only in one direction. The EU doesn't offer any reciprocity, which means that many financial institutions based in London with major EU business could run into difficulties.
• Similarly, the loss of the Financial Market Infrastructure means that many EU-wide guarantees on financial matters are no longer valid to UK.
• At a consumer level, for plastic card transactions, all the no-surcharge agreements end. Same for phones and anything else. Happy holidays.
• For trade, there's complicated revised rules. A short extract: For movements of excise goods, the Excise Movement Control System (EMCS) would no longer be used to control suspended movements between the EU and the UK. However, EMCS would continue to be used to control the movement of duty suspended excise goods within the UK, including movements to and from UK ports, airports and the Channel tunnel. This will mean that immediately on Importation to the UK, businesses moving excise goods within the EU, including in duty suspension, will have to place those goods into UK excise duty suspension, otherwise duty will become payable. Simple.

Of course, this is the 'no deal' situation although many vox-pop won't really care about any of it except the cost of European selfie-phone usage. But no deal also highlights the un-agreed points of the so-called 'deal'. The politicians are masking everything. It's like looking at that famous screaming Munch picture from the perspective of the two other people on the bridge.

Crackpot politicians swagger with 'wish of the people' intent, hiding the reality of the original lies and the now looming consequences. After 18 months asleep at the wheel, the driver was eventually fired in the certainty of no time left to fix anything.
Even with 7000 civil servants already working on exit, the Treasury has now approved another 9000 more.

It seems to be a case of more people to pedal faster.

That classic disasterous project delivery problem.

I sometimes ride a bicycle turbo session called the long scream. It's designed to be intensive, although it has distractions built in. I'm wondering if distractions are what we're getting now as the finest outputs of our collective government and its supporting machinery are presented?