Gardening: Windsor Framework 'didn't solve plant sales problem'
The Windsor Framework has not provided a solution for Northern Ireland consumers who want to buy plants from online retailers in GB, a trade body has told MPs.The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) made the comment in its submission to an inquiry being held by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.It said the situation remains "impossible" for some retailers.The framework is Northern Ireland's post-Brexit deal, which covers trade and human rights.
What is the post-Brexit deal?
It is an amended version of Northern Ireland's original Brexit deal, the Northern Ireland Protocol.It created a trade border between GB and NI as the way to prevent a hard border between NI and the Republic of Ireland.That created significant problems for businesses like NI garden centres, which faced a range of new labelling and inspection rules, as well as an outright ban on selling some plants from GB.The framework, which was agreed by the UK and EU in 2023, included some significant measures to ease the trade in plants and seeds from GB to NI.This included a simplification of labelling rules.
'Investment and cost'
However, the HTA said while the easements have helped physical retailers, like garden centres, they are "no solution" for plants sold online from GB or mail order retailers to NI consumers.It said that this is because every individual parcel still requires an official plant certificate.It assesses that "the only solution" is for businesses to pay for an NI distribution centre for their goods and dispatch consumer packs from there.It added: "There is no solution that is available for this issue that does not involve significant investment and cost for businesses, if they are even willing to make that investment."The government says it is committed to "the full and faithful implementation of the Windsor Framework as the only credible and sustainable solution for Northern Ireland, ensuring smooth trade and the avoidance of a hard border."It is also seeking a new agri-food deal with the EU.Such a deal could help remove many of the checks and controls on plants and food products being sent from GB to NI.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Spectator
5 hours ago
- Spectator
Dominic Cummings has run out of answers
On Wednesday, The Spectator dispatched me to Dominic Cummings's Pharos lecture in Oxford. Packed into the Sheldonian theatre were an interesting crowd. I spotted several X anons, my A-Level politics teacher and Brass Eye creator Chris Morris. For many in the audience, this was a rare opportunity to see their hero; for one or two hecklers, it was a unique chance to harrumph at the villain of Brexit, lockdown, and Barnard Castle. You can read a transcript of it here. I'm a Cummings fan. Having first discovered him via our political editor's books, I began reading his blog as a teen. I worked through the reading lists, defended his eye test in my student magazine, and heralded him as the future of the right in an article only last year. Throughout my career, he has been a unique guiding light. Which is why, I'm sorry to report, Wednesday was a disappointment. With the speech being entitled 'What is to be done?' – a nod to the originator by Britain's premier Leninist – one was expecting a call to arms. We sat in the audience sat ready to be given our marching orders. But this was no declaration of revolution. Instead, for those of us habituated into shelling out £10 a month for his Substack, it was dispiritingly familiar. This was Dom's Greatest Hits – David Bowie at Glastonbury, but with more references to the European Court of Human Rights. For 'Starman', take a condemnation of deranged MPs addicted on the old media. For 'Ashes to Ashes', try Whitehall ignoring Cummings over the pandemic and Ukraine. For 'Rebel Rebel', take parallels with post-Napoleonic Europe and the idiocy of a permanent civil service. But unlike with Bowie, one was hoping to hear a few new tunes between the earlier works. There were the usual spicy turns of phrase. The Home Office was said to be waging a 'constant jihad' against talented would-be migrants; Whitehall was condemned for hushing up 'the industrialised mass rape of white English children by Pakistani and Somali gangs over decades' while importing 'people from the exact same tribal areas responsible'. Speak for England, Dom. But as eye-catching as this was – and several other attendees texted me cheering him on – it wasn't new to any habitual X user. We have always known the rape gangs were there; we have always known the state was covering it up; we are now braced for the inevitable whitewash when Keir Starmer's inquiry reports in 2037. Even his concluding recommendations – replacement of senior officials, closing the Cabinet Office and Treasury, reforming procurement, more focus on science and technology, decentralisation, and a wider reading of nineteenth-century Russian literature – were well-trodden. The talk could have been packaged as A Very Short Introduction to Dominic Cummings in the style of the handy, generalist tomes one can pick up at Blackwell's across the street. Yet my trip to Oxford was far from fruitless, and not only because I revisited a couple of my favourite student hostelries. A Q and A with Steven Edginton followed. The US Video Editor of GB News has made a name for himself by asking prominent figures on the right questions the left-leaning media never would. I particularly enjoyed his exchange with Liz Truss, exposing the ex-PM as the clueless, over-promoted and self-obsessed charlatan she is. His approach to Cummings was no different. At times in his speech, the former Number 10 adviser had almost seemed to have forgotten he had been in government: more 'here is what I would do' than 'here is what I should have done'. Edginton pinned him down on his own record, especially on the central and most spectacular failure of the last Conservative government: immigration. Cummings was quick to distance himself from the Boriswave. He was out of government by the time numbers exploded, he argued. Instead, a combination of Boris Johnson's desire to make up with the Financial Times and powerful bureaucratic forces – the Treasury's addiction to human quantitative easing in particular – meant a new immigration system designed to prioritise high-skilled workers was hijacked to take numbers three times higher than the levels that when Britain voted to Leave. Combined with the ECHR preventing the Royal Navy from stopping the 'stupid boats', this meant a total betrayal of the promises Johnson made in 2019. Edginton also asked for Cumming's views on how mass deporations and other remigration policies – citing the US and Sweden as examples – would be with voters. Having tied both Nigel Farage and Richard Tice in knots over this, it was refreshing to hear Cummings explain or why Reform UK are squeamish. Farage formed his views 'in the 1990s and 2000s', and it is 'very hard for [him] to adjust to a world where the conventional ideas of that time are broken down'. Farage and Tice are in their 60s. They are surrounded by a distinctly unimpressive coterie of hangers-on, media personalities and court eunuchs. Are they serious about confronting the institutional resistance and media uproar a sensible centrist approach to immigration would require, or will they fail just as the Tories and Labour have done? The latter, on the available evidence. Will he embrace the vibe shift, or only gesture towards it? They are yesterday's men. Yet seeing Cummings in conversation with Edginton, I couldn't help but get the sense I was watching a new right confronting the old. Edginton ended by asking his interviewee if, after the failure after failure of government after government do what they promised, whether democracy was overrated. Cummings replied by suggesting his hope was to 'find a way of reviving the regime' rather than seeing it 'replaced'. But what does that look like? Another attempted takeover of the Tories? The much-heralded but little-seen Start-Up party? Or a new mass movement, like the 'Looking for Growth' group from academic Lawrence Newport that Cummings has promoted? I've met with Newport and agree with much of his analysis. But Britain's future will not be saved by a few over-eager young men scrubbing the Bakerloo. Who are the coming generation? They have grown up absorbing the analysis of Cummings. They are conscious of living in a Britain blighted by his failure to deliver the reforms of which he has spoken for so long. They live in the Britain of Scuzz Nation, of Yookay Aesthetics, of Nick 30 Ans. Their hope is exhausted. They have enormous respect for Cummings and Vote Leave. But they will not compromise with a regime that they despise. Cummings may still struggle to use the language of mass deportations; to tomorrow's right, they are but a necessary first step. Cummings is still a prophet. Most Brits say the country is in decline, feel poor, hate politicians, and have little hope for the future. For those of us familiar with Cummings, this is all unsurprising. We are a country falling ever further into stagnation and inter-ethnic violence, labouring under a performatively useless political class. A crisis point is being reached. Welcome to Weimar Britain, where politics doesn't work, everyone is getting poorer, and the streets are filled with violence. Can the country be turned around by reviving the existing regime? Or is a different form of government required? And if Cummings was – and is – the man to turn Britain around, why did he allow himself to be outwitted by a patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation? Why did he topple Johnson without a clear plan to replace him? Will he embrace the vibe shift, or only gesture towards it? He is a Lee Kuan Yew afficionado. Does he still have that iron in him? He has spoken about stepping back. That would be a waste. Robert Jenrick is only a phone call away. Commentators as disparate as friend-of-The–Spectator Curtis Yarvin, Tory MP Neil O'Brien, and my former colleague Henry Hill have all spoken of the need for an Anglo Meiji Restoration – a hard reset of our governing institutions, political class, and economic geography. It is a project requiring the sort of dedicated revolutionary vanguard that I hoped Cummings would call for on Wednesday. His talk was a missed opportunity. The burning questions of our movement remain to be answered.
Wales Online
6 hours ago
- Wales Online
Nigel Farage's vow to reopen mines in Wales 'a backward-looking vision'
Nigel Farage's vow to reopen mines in Wales 'a backward-looking vision' The Reform UK leader was in Port Talbot on Wednesday where he vowed to reopen the town's steelworks and bring coal mining back to the Welsh Valleys Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne ) Reform UK chief Nigel Farage has outlined a series of proposals including the abolition of the default 20mph speed limit, prioritising "Welsh people" for housing queues and reinstating coal mining in Wales. Wales Online readers are, on the whole, not convinced. Moreover, he has declared his party's aim to "reopen Port Talbot's steelworks". Despite Tata Steel currently owning the operational steelworks, the remaining blast furnaces were shuttered in 2024 with plans to construct an electric arc furnace for steel recycling. This transition is resulting in the loss of thousands of jobs. At a press conference in Port Talbot, when pressed about the funding for reigniting the blast furnaces - an idea deemed unfeasible by industry specialists - he acknowledged that the total cost would be "in the low billions", meaning it would need substantial investment from the UK Government. Farage, in a WalesOnline article, mentioned that Reform UK's would "allow coal, if suitable, to be mined in Wales". When asked if people would actually want to work down mines, he responded that they would if they were paid enough. The latest opinion poll in Wales indicates that his party is on track to secure its first seats at the Senedd in the forthcoming May 2026 election. Currently, the party's presence in Wales is limited to councillors, yet a recent YouGov/Barn Cymru survey for the election for the Welsh Parliament next May places Reform UK as runner-up with 25% of the vote. They are trailing narrowly behind Plaid Cymru, who are forecasted to receive 30%, and passing Labour which stands at 18%. Moreover, Reform said they would stop any properties from being used as accommodation for asylum seekers, will end funding for the Welsh Refugee Council, and will abolish the Welsh Government's "Nation of Sanctuary" policy. Article continues below He further pledged to establish an Elon Musk-inspired department aimed at reducing costs. He said: "A Reform UK Senedd will also save hundreds of millions each year by cutting bureaucracy, waste and bad management. The establishment of Welsh DOGE will help us uncover where there is woke and wasteful spending and we will make sure those funds are redirected to frontline services." Commenter Shane1976 says: 'I cannot believe how gullible people are. Where is the money coming from to [reopen] the steel works and the mines? Where are the miners coming from? This man promised the world with Brexit and Welsh voters believed him and Wales is worse off for it.' Ironside agrees: 'It was Mr Farage's idea to leave the EU in the first place when he was with UKIP and the Brexit Party. He fooled the British people, including myself, that leaving the EU would make things better instead Brexit has been a total disaster for the UK and Wales." Thebear2025 adds: 'I honestly do not believe him. He is just saying what he thinks the people of Wales want. While I think Labour definitely have to go, I don't think Reform is the answer to our prayers and will backtrack once in power the same as the other parties do.' Tigerbay replies: 'Reform will do well in Wales, but only because of the mess the other parties are making!' Exess60 wonders: 'As far as the steel works goes, do the good long suffering people of Port Talbot really want to revert to the filthy fog that blemished their environment and caused so much ill health for over a century? Surely that was yesterday, not the future!' DaisyDD writes: 'We want mining again in the Valleys. Our lads need work and it kept our communities together. Face it we are getting ready for war and need to be more self-sufficient for our steel. Opening Port Talbot's blast furnaces with coal again is a great idea. It should never have been allowed to close.' Numbersontheleft replies: 'I am not a Reform supporter but there are a lot of really good points in Farage's speech. It's simply wrong that steel will no longer be made in Wales. "Getting rid of the nation of sanctuary, blanket 20mph and the extra 36 MSs are policies any sane party should be supporting. And who wouldn't support improved efficiency and reduced waste in our public sector. The other parties are trying their best to rubbish Reform, but they are clearly worried that Farage is saying the things their voters want them to be saying.' Robo78 believes: 'It sounds like Nigel Farage wants to give us the jobs that no one else wants to do; this will enlarge our brain drain, not tackle it. What we need in Wales is a coherent, long-term strategy that links skills training to meaningful local employment. "Proposals like Farage's often present a narrow, backward-looking vision: one focused on recreating large-scale, traditional industrial jobs that are no longer economically viable, rather than planning for how these vital skills can be integrated into a modern, diverse Welsh economy.' Numbersontheleft retorts: 'So you think steel making, welding, plumbing, robotics, electrical trades, and industrial automation are jobs nobody else wants to do? Whilst in the real world, Wales and Britain desperately need construction trades to build homes and infrastructure. Also manufacturing the things we use, instead of importing goods manufactured in other countries.' Article continues below Would you like to see heavy industry back in the South Wales Valleys? Is Reform the answer to Wales' woes? Have your say in our comments section.
Daily Mirror
14 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
Inflation is killing your savings - what you must do to combat it
Multi award-winning Chartered Financial Planner, Certified Coach, author of The Money Plan, and Sunday Mirror columnist The American economist Milton Friedman once said: 'Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.' Yet for most people, it slips under the radar, affecting our spending power without us giving it a second thought. In recent years, inflation has made headlines more than usual, from the post-COVID stimulus surge to its gradual retreat. I first raised concerns about the risk of rising inflation over three years ago. To me, it felt inevitable. Professional investors and economists should not have been caught off guard by its rise. What was surprising, however, was just how far and how fast it went. Get the best deals and tips from Mirror Money Inflation is a normal part of the economy, and it shouldn't be feared. However, when it gains momentum, it can spiral out of control, leading to a rapid increase in prices. This is what we have recently experienced, which led to the cost-of-living crisis that affected everyone. Inflation and its impact on wealth is often overlooked. I tell my clients that inflation is one of the biggest risks to their money. Why? Because inflation is effectively a constant tax on the value of your pounds and assets, a tax that we all collectively pay. Consider this: since 1989 inflation has averaged around 3%, which to most people would seem modest. But this means you would need to achieve at least a 3% return on your cash savings and investments, after tax and costs, each and every year, to maintain the value of your money. In other words, you need £189 today to buy the same goods which would have cost you £100 at the turn of the millennium, just because of inflation. That's why I advise against keeping excessive amounts of money on deposit for prolonged periods of time. Inflation is like carbon monoxide to your money: it's a silent killer of wealth creation, of which few people are aware. So, what's the solution? The answer lies in investing rather than maintaining cash deposits (savings). The MSCI World index, which is a collection of the world 's largest companies in developed countries, has delivered 10.5% pa average return over the last 20 years for UK investors. Even after accounting for fees and tax, you'll comfortably stay ahead of inflation. This is one reason why the wealthy get richer during inflationary times: they understand that companies can increase their prices and profits, which helps share values rise. You too can participate and grow your wealth over the next 20 years, even if you start small, but you must start. Now, more than ever, it's crucial to focus on the importance of investing to combat the negative effects of inflation. The recent high inflation rates serve as a stark reminder of this necessity.
