vivweb01blog

This blog was originally published last October. Given the efforts currently in progress to secure a solution to the NI Protocol , I've updated it to reflect changes since then, in the hope that it may contribute to a practical solution for import compliance monitoring. ****** I’ve often wondered why Brussels are so concerned about goods intended for use in Northern Ireland straying into the Irish Republic.... After all, UK was a member of the EU until very recently, and the standards we apply to our goods within UK are still closely comparable with those applied in EU. For the most part, this is likely to remain so, despite our current national obsession with 'going it alone'. Tariffs for UK goods imported to EU are effectively 'zero-rated' under the current withdrawal agreement, so there is little financial incentive to 'smuggle' goods into Eire from NI. The proportion of goods flowing into NI from UK that is destined for Eire is also very small.Why ther

  A midst all the discussion about the perils of global warming, there has been no mention recently of when we might expect the start of the next Ice-Age.... This was a topic that hit the headlines some years ago and was all the rage for a year or two before fading into obscurity. It is probably no coincidence that this media fade-out coincided with the increased coverage in the media about global warming and its wider implications for our future well-being. There is now no doubt that our climate is warming – and doing so quite rapidly. There is also little doubt that our large-scale release of greenhouse gases since the dawn of the industrial era in the early 1800s will have contributed significantly to this process. However, despite the views of some environmentalists, our planet and its atmosphere are chaotic and unpredictable beasts, and the jury is still out on whether ‘man-made’ climate warming is the principal, let alone the only, contributor.  We need to look at past cli