👨🏾‍💻 OK. So the @Independent is such a rare thing these days. There are a couple of things to highlight in this article.

Firstly, Rules of Origin generally are a WTO concept not EU concept. The Single Market recognised the UK as equivalent #Thread

Dear fellow musicians, performers, technicians etc. Here’s a thread about how our lives are going to change re touring/working in the EU in 50 days time. Think of it as a kind of Bad News Advent calendar. Here goes 1/

First things first, you’ll need a passport with at least 6 months left on it. And you’ll need full travel/third party/health insurance, since if you get ill or have an accident every penny of your care will have to be paid for 2/

To work or do a gig you’re going to need a work visa, just like you do for the USA. But here’s the thing. Work permits & visas and the conditions attached are a matter not for the EU but for the member states themselves 3/

Yes, every member state controls who comes in and who doesn’t and what the rules will be for work and residency. It’s almost as if the Brexiters have been lying about this ALL ALONG. EU members CONTROL THEIR OWN BORDERS 4/

So you’ll need to get a work permit for every country you’re intending to work or gig in and the rules are often different, as are the rules on eg taxation of that work (eg Spain has a withholding tax, France does not) 5/

"The tangible benefits of #Brexit." A thread.

For the EU, the tangible benefits of Brexit have been immense. Not just in the way it has galvanised support for the EU across the bloc, but in the way that the UK has made itself...

/1

...the least competitive advanced economy in the world. Don't forget -- we're no longer a trading partner of the EU, but its main trading rival, and considering both their population and economy is 7x bigger than ours, we don't stand a chance.

/2

(Remember Boris Johnson's famous mutterings about business...? Something that could only have been said by a man born into fabulous wealth and privilege...)

/3

But the big win for the EU has been in the sheer, gob-smacking, eye-watering amount of assets that have been stripped from the UK and moved to banks and financial institutions in Dublin, Paris, Frankfurt etc.

$1.6 trillion as of October this year.

That is an INSANE amount.

/4

I'll try to put it into perspective: $1.6 trillion is over half our entire GDP. It's 1/64th of the WORLD'S entire GDP. If you stacked it up in $100 bills, it would reach FOUR TIMES the height of the International Space Station.

/5

Update from MEP @PeterLiese, health spokesman for the largest party in the EU Parliament (thread):

He maintains #AstraZeneca is treating people in EU as "2nd class citizens" and that doses have gone from the EU to the UK.

"They gave 3 different explanations in less than a week"

Carrot: He's says objections are with AZ behaviour, not vaccine's efficacy

"There's been a lot of talk about AZ being a bad vaccine - very strange fake news in German media. It's definitely not true"

"If someone offered me AZ, and it’s my turn, I wouldn’t hesitate for a minute"

“The AstraZeneca vaccine has not as good data as the vaccines from BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna but still it is a good vaccine. In October, we would have been happy to have a vaccine that has an efficiency well above 50%."

Stick: "AZ gave 3⃣ different explanations in less than a week why there is a shortage of supply on the European continent and why they want to deliver only 31 million doses instead of 80 million that they committed to in the contract until the end of March."

1⃣ "1st explanation was different supply chains. This is wrong because in contract with the EU, two plants in the UK are mentioned for the supply on the continent and at least until a few days ago the final finishing of the vaccine [for UK] has been in a plant in Dessau, Germany"

🚨🚨🚨🇪🇺🇬🇧🚛🚒🇪🇺🇬🇧🚨🚨🚨 serious #brexit story alert - companies now starting to see penny drop on what rules of origin does to supply chains (food for example) but Brussels seems deaf to both EU & U.K. pleading. A bellwether? 😬 Stay with me. 1/


So first the problem: its a tad complicated but basically goods that are imported into UK and then 'hubbed' onwards into Ireland or other parts of the EU are facing full EU tariffs - this is particularly bad for food stuffs, which attract high tariffs. Why is this? /2

It's a function of the Rules of Origin clauses that mean that goods have to sufficiently "originate" in the UK to qualify for zero-tariff entry to EU (and vice versa).

But to qualify, you have to do something to the goods - process them or add value - not just punt them on /3

The brilliant @AnnaJerzewska does a better job than me of explaining, but the important thing is that this is a nightmare for companies that 'hub' /distribute products through the UK - and that's both EU and UK companies /4

So both the @Foodanddrinkfed and EU groups like @CAOBISCO_EU (chocs etc) say they want the EU Commission to fix this with a derogation/waiver that takes into account proximity and interdependence of EU/UK supply chains. /5