Christopher Booker writes a regular column in The Telegraph. He is a friend of Dr Richard North who writes the EU Referendum blog. North frequently quotes from Booker's column. And Booker clearly reads North's blog. I noticed that no sooner had a comment appeared from someone name Alan Bell last week, with a link to some work (HERE) Mr Bell had carried out by looking at all 63 Notices to Stakeholders published by the EU, than Christopher Booker has a column about the same thing (HERE).
For the average Telegraph reader, Booker's columns are frequently like a bucket of cold water and none more so than this week's which is sub titled: The documents which explain exactly how much chaos we will suffer when we leave the EU.
He talks about fishermen for example, those who cheered wildly when the referendum result was announced and possible border delays:
"Last Tuesday, for instance, BBC Radio Four’s Today programme interviewed fishermen whose businesses depend wholly on being able to export langoustines and mussels to the Continent. Their live catches have to be trucked to their customers without any delays via the Channel ports. But they have now awoken to what one called the “existential” threat of time-consuming new border controls, which will make this impossible.
"As one Scotsman said, 'you can actually taste the fear, see the fear in their eyes' as the fishermen realise that this will put them out of business. But neither they nor the BBC knew the half of it".
Before explaining the Notice to Stakeholders on foodstuffs says importing any food of animal origin is prohibited unless certain conditions are met - including the UK being listed as an "eligible" third country, a process that can take up to six months and can't even start until after we leave!
And the last point of his column is worth repeating in full:
"In a fractious Any Questions discussion of the chaos engulfing our railways, Jacob Rees-Mogg missed a trick when he was castigating the decision to split off the ownerships of trains and the track.
"It might have lent even more force to his point if he could have explained that the origins of this blunder lay in the 1992 Railways Regulations, nodded through Parliament under the European Communities Act to implement a Brussels directive, 91/440, as a prelude to selling off British Rail.
"The irony was that we didn’t actually have to go as far as we did. All the directive ruled was that the accounts and management of “transport” and “infrastructure” had to be separated, not their ownership. Which is why no other country in the EU was silly enough to follow our example".
