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isomer1

Shipping costs in the pandemic

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Thought about putting this in the general discussions but figured maybe some are sick of hearing about Covid related things. 

Anywho, there's been a lot of talk about the sky high shipping charges for rc models lately. Obviously Brexit makes that doubly hard for many. As an American I read the BBC regularly to find out what's actually going on in the world. I thought this article about the general shipping challenges faced in 2020 and now in 2021 might be off interest:

BBC News - Shipping crisis: I'm being quoted £10,000 for a £1,600 container'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55740063

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Yeah, I saw that as well. I think it will hit all imported goods. Good news for home grown manufacturers though, as they will finally become competitive with the far east. Last week I got a t shirt off Ebay from a UK seller. It had 2 manufacturers labels in it, It had been made in Bangladesh, then exported to Mexico, then finally exported on from Mexico into the UK. Most of the cost of it must be going into shipping it from one side of the map to the other, and then back to the middle again. Seems like madness to me. 

And as you mentioned the pandemic.....

Rant warning

And good on you for looking at the BBC news for the view outside the states, but they're not exactly impartial when it comes to reporting the news.  When the news finally came out about the new variant in the UK, the first thing they did was to run a story emphasising 'There's no evidence that the new variant is any more deadly than the first one'.  That's twisting words to form the idea in people's heads that 'It's ok, it's no worse than the first one, we're fine. 'No evidence', means exactly that, no evidence one way or the other. Which means it's not news, so don't report it. They could have equally said, 'There's no evidence that the new variant is not a lot deadlier than the first', it means exactly the same thing but forms a different idea in the casual listeners head. 

Rant over.

I think anything imported into the UK is going to get more expensive this year.  We've left the EU, which is causing bottlenecks in the ports, we're in the middle of another lockdown so demand is going to be high for hobby type stuff for the home.

 

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Also my main source of internet news.. There’s a mixture of price increases due to unavoidable and unpredictable circumstances, like factories having to shut and ports being understaffed. Bottle necks of shipping routes and the closing of boarders to contain the virus, but there’s also those who are profiting from this situation, for example being able to delay containers then sending one for the price of 5 and maintaining the bottle neck to keep the prices high and not caring if the containers you delay are full of perishables.. Also deplorable behaviour of those involved in taking huge amounts of tax payers money to then overcharge for essential PPE and medication. Unfortunately, there is no real Karma and these evil people can and will happily get away with this.

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12 minutes ago, MadInventor said:

but they're not exactly impartial when it comes to reporting the news

I kind of agree disagree with this.. They try too hard to be impartial which makes them write often conflicting viewpoints in an effort to be fair and unbiased.. Often giving airtime to totally baseless opinion.. This feeds in to validating those who have a more misguided approach to consuming news.. legitimising crackpot theories to be fair to those that hold them..  Also the news night style interview where the sole objective is to be aggressive confrontational and ‘catch someone out’  Common sense says there are things politicians either won’t or can’t answer in an interview, so spending 5 minutes shouting the same question at them and slamming them for being evasive isn’t actually good journalism. There are many more civilised ways of conducting an interview and highlighting when the government isn’t doing a good enough job... (my rant over)

 

I should add.. that on the BBC news sites, the detailed analysis sections and not the headline pages is where you find more fact and less discussion...

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