One of those promises, or manifestos as you put it, was "get Brexit done". Why are you only ignoring the promises that either the Tories fail to fulfill, or otherwise make them look bad?
Brexit Thread VIII: Taking a penalty kick-ing
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innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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They don't outcompete where quality produce is required (restaurants), not do they succeed at smaller shops or markets. Of which we do have plenty still, you make a good point. Perhaps, then the case is that there, with supermarket chains more dominant, they have to cater for the people who here buy outside those chains.
So it's not a total disaster, as in local produce was wiped out. There is plenty for those looking for it. But in supermarkets/larger stores the uniform, low-quality product is what is strongly pushed here, in this case the only thing available on store. It might be a result of oligopoly collusion, or a result of the race to the bottom that sometimes happens (what I meant by crapification) in pursuit of lower costs and higher margins by distributors.
In theory the common market should lead to more choice, more sellers. In practice it has coincided, here, with the appearance of oligopoly structures. Not monopoly, but they do have a very big chunk of sales. But it has also coincided with the late 1980s and 1990s here, when the whole world was going that way. Estonia's path was different, came from a different situation and happened later.
Somehow the transportation costs manage to be low enough that there is a huge trade even in these low-value commodities. I hadn't ever bothered looking but saw today that the Netherlands and France are indeed the world' top exporters of potatoes! I think they just mechanized everything, favour high-yield varieties (but imo tasteless, also a consequence of cultivating loose sandy soils where mechanization is easier), and manage to squeeze prices into minimal levels to out-compete produces elsewhere even with transportation costs on top.
It's really weird that a vegetable that grows just about everywhere in Europe can have such a large long-distance trade. I'm not the kind of environmentalist who worries about the imminent collapse of the sky. I am one who'd rather see what can be produced locally be encouraged and preferred, reducing needless transportation with all its negative effects. The regional branding does not do enough to encourage that, in fact often it does the opposite: producers here like those demarcations to try to promote their products as high-quality for export: hence the idea is increasing trade and movement of goods. A larger market without barriers promotes regional specialization and the attendant increased trade, not a better balance between regional production and consumption.
The UK suffered that early on, with Scotland depopulated for the sake of sheep! Or Ireland and cash crops or corn for England, with the locals forced to depend on potato (setting up the famine later). Large markets structurally encourage a cash-crop model.
I've been reading that there is speculation on agricultural land in the UK recently, some large estates changing hands on assumptions about where the country is heading post-brexit. Logically in the absence of equivalent (to the EU market) free-trade deals a more diversified agriculture in the UK would become more profitable, but the current cash crops for export would decline. Wwhether the UK will really seek trade deals on agriculture or not is still an open question...
Yes, I'm not convinced EnglishEdward would be quite so unconcerned if it was Brexit the government was abandoning.
The entire Brexit fiasco has had little to do with reality, yet you continue to support that with the fervour of a true ideologue!
FriendlyFire
Codex WMDicanious
I get Frozen Pizza which are from Italy 3 for $6 Aud ($3.70 Euro)
Thats what happens when you have a heavily subsidized agriculture and cheap bulk transportation cost.
Potato were a boom to the productivity of argiculture and a life crop saving during periods of drought. The problem with European potato was the lack of genetic diversity making them very vunlreable to diseases like the blight.
Dont bash the potato
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mitsho
Deity
We are talking of two different things
otatoes are agricultural products, you can have them from your "region" and from somewhere else.. Scotch on the other hand is a highly specialized finished product. The two things are produced in vastly different quantities as well. With potatoes, a label "from the region for the region" makes sense, that's about biological and sustainable production. The label "of protected regional origin" for scotch however is something different, a trademark. Scottish Scotch from regional Romanian products - that doesn't make sense, right?More generally, I also get the impression that you suffer from a case of "ye good old times". Are you sure the switch to a more industrialized agriculture wouldn't have taken place in your country as well without the common market? And why exactly do local small scale production produce better tasting potatoes? That is simply not a given, and especially now with advancements in digitization and measurement techniques. "Digital" Agriculture will know exactly how much water a plant needs to produce the tastiest potatoes - or the biggest scale if people (= the market) doesn't care about the taste that much. And in that case you have to blame your fellow citizens for not wanting the same tasty potatoes as you want.
Long story short, you seem to blame the wrong people in my mind.
EnglishEdward
Deity
My criteria for ignoring promises is whether they are realistic or not.
And some, such as abolishing the fixed term parliaments act,
would be much better discussed in the other UK thread.
The line about food standards in the manifesto is just a paragraph ot two in a lengthy advertising/sales speak
manifesto that few bothered to read, and it is quite impossible to say how many peoples votes it influenced.
That is quite distinct from a single question referendum on one topic where the voting outcome is precisely recorded.
Brexit is not and never has been an ideology or programme or project or plan.
The vote for the UK to Leave the EU was a repudiation by a confirmatory referendum of arrangements (made
without consulting the people) to proceed with the continuing merging of the UK into a European superstate
If anything it demonstrated cynicism by the UK electorate about ideology, namely the European Project..
Which makes this criteria heavily subject to bias, which is why I specifically asked about the Brexit promise. Surely it's a bit unfair to discount things based on how unrealistic you personally perceive them to be?
Black is white and white is black, right? Do give us just a little credit here, Edward.
You may be over 60 and thus be able to remember food markets before we joined the EU, but millions of people in the UK, EU food standards are our standards. Likewise, for those people born after 1993, freedom of movement was a right they were born to, not merely one given to them as adults or teenagers.
EnglishEdward
Deity
Unfair to whom?
I am not a judge or statutory body obliged to consider all representations in detail.
I don't see much point on spending much of my time on things that I regard as unrealistic.
Do you?
.
Things change, they should get used to that.
The UK formally left the European Union end 31 January 2020 and so those people now have no say in what the EU standards will be.
Now I am, apart from Foie Gras, not aware of any intention or plans to prohibit them continuing to enjoy food produced to EU standards.
Furthermore, by lobbyng their UK MP, they have some (albeit individually rather small) say in what the UK food standards will be.
The way I see it people should know what they are eating, where it came from and to what standards it was produced by the
enforcement of food labelling, and then they can make their choice. And If I choose chlorinated US chicken, that is my decision.
The thing is those people demanding that EU standards should continue to be mandated are really denying people the right to choose.
If they have concerns that the UK-USA trade deal will prohibit food labelling and them choosing, well I'd support them against that.
When the British Empire broke up, the people living in its constituent parts lost their automatic right to go and live somewhere
else in that empire, as previously enjoyed by for example the late M Ghandi. It is much the same with the UK leaving the EU.
If anything little will actually change, people will merely have to pay for a visa although, there may be a quota in some instances.
The fact is there was a referendum, and many hee considered democratic national self determination far more important.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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It is indeed funny that the same arguments against brexit could have been made, among the indians also, against the independence of India!
- we'll have a smaller market!
- we'll lose freedom of movement within the Empire!
- we'll have less influence in international affairs competing with other large empires!
- it'll be bad for business!
etc
I'm aware of that missing the good old times. But then again my main charge against the EU is that it locks in the current neoliberalism.
Potato quality varies greatly between varieties. Current international trade is centered only in a few (more like a couple, it seems to me) high-yield varieties. Many others that were commonly farmed (and can still be found) here are much better, they just fon't produce as much. But the supply chain pressure is on lower price per kilogram... So far from what I've seen it's harder to counter that race to the bottom in quality (chasing price) when the supply chain extends across the world. Not just in farming but in everything.
It is a combination of many factors
We have around 500 potato varieties in NL of which around 50 in commercial farming for food. The other for industry or people having their own little vegetable garden. Tradition. I like most the (clay) potatoes of an ex-inlaw sister. Still get now and then some
Last year 80% of the harvest was from clay soils, 20% from sandy soil. NL is a river delta with much river clay and sea clay. The sea clay from sea polders. It was a dry summer.
When there is too much rain the clay farmers whine because of smaller harvest (potatoes rotting in the ground and ground to weak for mechanised harvestibg).
When there is too little rain the sandy farmers whine because the potatoes grow not big enough.
Yield was last year on average 52 tonnes per hectare. EU average somewhere 30-35 tonnes per hectare.
Now... all those varieties.
We have the Wageningen university. And from the traumas of lack of food of both WW1 and WW2 already after WW1 poldering actions were taken incl Wagening as expertise centre for higher yields. After WW2 this got again a boost of subsidies.
We talk about meanwhile 100 years of national top three priority knowledge expansion on crops cultivation. Wageningen university started in the 19th century as school for farmers and this is still strongly connected. Not an ivory tower university but a centre for regional farmer schools to train 16 year old kids into becoming a knowledgable farmer. Lots of feedbacks between regional farmer associations and "scientists". An uncle of me, with a big farm in a new polder, did nothing else than trials for newly cultivated potatoes.
And that still goes on. Like potatoes that do well in salty watered soils.
Now... that all these new varieties have no taste.... this is already history for obvious commercial reasons. Potatoes have nowadays to compete with rice, pizzas, spaghetti, etc etc. Consumers are also richer than in the 60ies. They want more taste.
And... there is no intrinsic reason why high yielding varieties should have less taste.
Potatoes I buy now insupermarkets are relatively to my youth:
cheaper
taste better
have thinner peel (so thin that I usually eat them including peel and only remove the peel after cooking for some dishes like with asperges etc)
are washed instead of having a second peel of clay when you buy them
and gadgets like purple potatoes, the same substance and purple as from for example red cabbage. And many more now becoming popular. The old genes of the original potatoes of the Andes mountains getting a second life.
And then you have varieties optimised for differing soils, for french fries, for potato starch, for wallpaper glue, etc, etc. And yes ofcyou optimise as well for harvesting techs, for all kinds of pests.
Potatoes is just another field of knowledge.
And what we buy with our wallet is meanwhile determining what gets developed.
Also consumer behaviour needs to emancipate... is emancipating.
The issue is the middleman corporate throwing up hurdles for good consumer emancipation and benefitting from that !
Shortcutting between knowledge and people desired indeed.
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mitsho
Deity
No, the main argument against Brexit isn't a technical cost-benefit one like the ones you list, but an idealistic one of history and morality: Forwards in History, let's create one Europe and afterwards one world. The borders of today don't represent the lived reality of people. let's do away with them. They are an invention of only 200 years ago after all.
First, let me thank @Hrothbern for putting much more eloquently into words what I wanted to say about potatoes. It looks like he also did some research which I would be too lazy right now
. But what I quoted from you is probably the main point. I don't connect the current neoliberalism with the European Union. Sure, it started that way, but there have been other facets introduced and who says, it has to stay like this? I would agree with you that that neoliberalism isn't healthy which is why it is always a bit strange to me that the left parties have been put into a place of having to defend the European Idea over and over again. But that just shows who's clever in Politics and who isn't. In short: You want to get rid of the Union because you think it's intrinsically linked to Neoliberalism, I don't. And I don't think you would be safer from that phantom in a completely lonely Portugal.So you accept that your bias is leading you to make flawed judgements due to the convenience is whatever you decide is or isn't unrealistic?
I mean, you're the person that repeatedly comments on professionally-published pieces with regards to how biased they are. Right? I would've thought avoiding bias would be a default position for you in terms of at least being consistent in your own dialogue.
salty mud
Deity
Says who? You? Some dude on TV?
If this really is the "main argument against Brexit," no wonder remainers lost. This is a very arrogant thing to claim.
Why is it? What is wrong with the statement, regardless of who said it?
History.
salty mud
Deity
It's an opinion being claimed as fact. An opinion that, from years of travelling Europe, is demonstrably false to me.
Which gives us two opinions. Yours, and theirs. Both are being claimed as fact. This is why I was asking what was wrong with it - to try and dig a little deeper.
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