I spotted that the film Star Trek was on TV tonight. Got me wondering about my copy of the Leonard Nimoy book “I am Spock”. I have a signed copy of the first edition. Looking online I see they are selling for upward of £40 depending on condition. Some are even selling for over £100. Strange how people put value on things. I remember he was a really pleasant guy.
I had ordered some face coverings from the USA a week ago. Today I got a card in the post. By ordering direct I need to pay duty on things coming in to the country. This can easily be 20% of the order value (or less depending on which of several thousand categories it belongs to). With a no-deal Brexit this will start to apply to anything delivered from Europe. A complication a lot of people don’t think about. And there are a lot more.
I see similar things with the independence campaigns for Scotland and Wales (not Ireland). Do people realise they will have to change their vehicle licence plates, their driving licence, their passport – and don’t get me started on the pensions issue.
There seems to be a tendency to reduce things to simple political yes/no choices for a lot of things, when the real world is a lot more complex.
Take for example the rule of 6. In Scotland they have added in the “two household” rule. So if you see six people meeting how do you know if they are from more than two households? Well, you would need to check the identity of everybody in any group of more than 2 people. And you could only hope to fine people if you could prove somebody knew there were more than two households meeting. The simple number 6 makes it easy for the police to enforce – the two households rule is virtually impossible to enforce. Sadly it shows a naivety in some of the rule making.