SMEs betrayed by Brexit trade deal – Yorkshire Post Letters

I HAVE read the EU trade agreement and there are quotas limiting UK trade, despite what the British people were told.

I ordered a new printer from Epson UK for my small consultancy business on January 17. After several promises it has left the depot in Germany where it has been held by United Parcel Service due to “Brexit difficulties” and I hope to have it soon, after nearly five weeks.

If these two large, international companies have difficulties, what hope is there for the rest of us?

There are over a thousand pages of complex legalese, interlinked with references to other complex agreements such as the World Trade Organisation and the United Nations.

The citizens of the United Kingdom were told there were to be no barriers to trade with Northern Ireland and that any form could be torn up. Well we all know where that ended!

The agreement Boris Johnson negotiated should be renegotiated immediately. We will probably be able to keep the title.

From: Alan Chapman, Beck Lane, Bingley.

THE EU has told the UK shellfish industry that thousands of tonnes of oysters, mussels, clams, cockles and scallops landed in Yorkshire ports are 
banned from the bloc indefinitely (The Yorkshire Post, February 9).

Yet the same products caught by continental fishing boats in the same waters are most acceptable. A further example: the EU is poised to lock Britain out of its banking market, declares the Governor of the Bank of England

Add these points to the vindictive fiasco in Northern Ireland.

In recent years the EU has grossly benefited from a £100bn annual trade surplus with Britain, thus we the people of the UK have the answer. Stop buying everything made in the EU.

From: Terry Palmer, South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley.

RICHARD Wilson, chair of Leeds for Europe, suggests we rejoin the single market and customs union (The Yorkshire Post, February 9). Why would we do a stupid thing like that after fighting since 2016 to rid ourselves of the EU shackles?

If the powers-that-be cannot circumvent the EU’s purposely put-in-place red tape to thwart us then ignore it and buy/sell using other sources. Just stop this whingeing. We’ve left – and good riddance if the EU vaccine fiasco is anything to go by.

From: Martin Hemingway, Foxhill Court, Leeds.

IT was a pleasure to read an article by Bernard Ingham (The Yorkshire Post, February 10) that offers some positive suggestions on how this wealthy country can work with and support developing countries.

We have differences over Brexit and I suspect over the word “woke” which I, as an older person, interpret as “active and aware” like the fine, mainly younger people in Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter.

We also differ over apartheid in South Africa, a vile system that, among other things, pushed the original population into small, resource-deprived areas – a pattern we can still see elsewhere in the world – and in which sanctions were of value in bringing about change.

On the positive side, Sir Bernard suggests we should be sharing our massive order of vaccines with those countries, particularly Africa, Asia and the Caribbean that form part of the Commonwealth and in which fewer than one in every thousand have had a dose, compared with one in five in the UK, and sets Boris Johnson the moral challenge of doing this. This is constructive.

Sir Bernard then goes on to discuss the potential role of trade, not only in helping the UK which has shot itself in the economic foot with Brexit, but in supporting development in those same countries, ensuring that aid goes to those that need it and not into the tax-haven accounts of some rulers.

Again Johnson is challenged to provide responsible leadership and to produce and publish his programme for doing this, and doing it promptly. Again, this is constructive and we will wait to see what, if anything, comes of it.

I hope these challenges have been forwarded to the Prime Minister.

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