Pay your money, place your bets.

[patman post]

The Remoaners it seems are singing two songs at the same time.

Queue's as long as your arm in Dover with mega-parks being built.
But also...
No deal, no trade and we are all going to starve as trade will tank.

Simple answers Remoaners, which is it? You can't have both!!

Neither scenario is the end of the world. But either seems a bad outcome. Both together would be worse...

[Javert]

This vote shows your view of everything as a zero sum game, so I won't vote specifically.

The Mega parks are already being built.

In fact, I was at a meeting last night with the consultants for the HMRC where they are looking for feedback on the proposals for an inland border clearing post about one mile from my house.  It's the smallest one of all, but the ones in Kent are / will be much larger.

On a through the looking glass perspective, I can tell you that what I heard last night was what I would normally expect to discuss about two years before such a facility is scheduled to start operations.  The supporting documents for the approval are not yet submitted, mainly because HMRC hasn't provided information and keeps changing their mind.  Therefore the site has not been formally approved by UKGov.

Keep in mind this is a site that they are claiming is due to be operational in 6 weeks from now.

For this site to be running at the expected capacity, it would require physical adjustments to the traffic flow at roundabouts and a nearby motorway junction.

I don't know this because the people presenting this site figured it out - I know it because there was a site of slightly less traffic flow proposed to be built right next to that spot, where the traffic plan called for these adjustments, and even then, planning permission was refused by the secretary of state (after being approved by the local council but called in on our recommendation), partly on traffic grounds.

As you can imagine, such road adjustments cannot be proposed, approved, and completed in 6 weeks, so even if this does by some miracle go into operation it will be based on the current traffic arrangements, portaloos, and so on.

This most certainly has the potential to cause traffic gridlock in the local area, and potentially right back onto to the motorway, regularly, depending on what the real traffic volumes are versus their numbers.

... and this is the smallest of the proposed sites across the country.

The main point is though that what I take out of this is either a) this is a complete shambles that will be a disaster if it's really needed or b) the government is secretly planning to cave in to the EU and this won't really be needed or c) The government is just going to let any kind of smuggled goods, people, whatever, into the country and hang the consequences. 

Oh and did I mention that truck drivers app where they will be notified in real time about the situation and whether teh site is already over capacity so they need to stop somewhere else (presumably making them miss their ferry if they are outbound).

Needless to say, this app doesn't exist and has not been fully tested.

So my impression is that these sites are more of a bluff than something that anyone at HMRC or UKGov seriously thinks are going to be operating in any meaningful way on January 1st.

[Nick]

The Remoaners it seems are singing two songs at the same time.

Queue's as long as your arm in Dover with mega-parks being built.
But also...
No deal, no trade and we are all going to starve as trade will tank.

Simple answers Remoaners, which is it? You can't have both!!