!%@ %*#& ^!$*%& @*$^#%! BREXIT!

It took me a while to calm down enough to write this post (something one might question given the title), though I must confess I’m still not quite over it.  Let’s just say that, despite all our best efforts - to include moving to Portugal - we still didn’t manage to totally escape what I’ve been calling the Anglo-Saxon disease.

It shouldn’t take much pondering to figure out generally what I’m talking about and I’ll avoid unreserved political commentary, but if you’ve looked at not only recent political trends in the US and Great Britain, as well as both countries’ general responses to the pandemic before vaccines became available, then you’ll have a good idea of what I’m talking about.  And for those of you who may think I’m being a bit extreme here, a Canadian colleague of mine, who had been renting a home in England as the go-to place between his international development stints, has returned to Canada due to the UK “insanity” associated with Brexit, only to find that, once more, as a result of how people are reacting to the pandemic, finding the French end of his country having a deservedly condescending smirk at their less healthy English counterparts.  Now it seems as if New Zealand has generally avoided the disease (the Anglo-Saxon one as well as the Covid one), but I’ve know enough Aussies to know that they are biting at the bit as much as their American counter parts to be downright stupid - it’s just that they’ve been through the Anglo-Saxon disease on the political front about 10 years ago and took a step back (maybe it started there?), so they’re not about to do that again.  Anyway, as I was saying . . . we thought we’d escaped it.  Fat chance.

The story actually starts a couple of years ago when, not really wanting to watch a movie, we decided to watch a documentary on Amazon prime:  Scotch: A Golden Dream.  It was fascinating.  So for our anniversary that year, Ann bought me a bottle of Macallan 18-Year Single Cask.  Since then it’s been smooth drinking in responsible quantities.  

So imagine our surprise when we moved here and found out that grocery stores here sell liquor.  And that most have a variety of scotch to boot - some stores with a much better selection than others of course, but nonetheless quite the selection.  However, imagine my disappointment when the only Macallan we could find is the 12-year Double Cask.  A fine daily drinker, but definitely shy of the 15 and nothing compared to the 18.  We’ve looked, but have come up empty handed (if you can call trying a nice variety of other high-grade scotches in hopes of finding a suitable replacement empty handed).  Still, nothing is quite as smooth as The Macallan.

Here’s where the Anglo-Saxon disease comes into play.  Having exhausted every option we could find here in Braga and lockdown preventing us from heading into Porto to explore what they might have to offer, and with Brexit looming on January 1, 2021, we decided that while Scotland was still in the EU, we’d just give ourselves a really nice Anniversary-Christmas-New Year’s gift and order a good stock of Macallan from Scotland.  Why not?  So on December 18, 2020, we went online and made our order, and were charged the requisite Portuguese 23.6% IVA.  With a delivery time of “5 to 9” days in Europe, it should have been no problem.  Two days later we got our notice that the order was in DHL’s hands and on its way.

Well, Christmas came and went.  Yeah, that would have been a fast turn around, so we weren’t worried.

Then came news that left us feeling . . . uneasy.  A trucker’s strike on the UK side of the Chunnel, protesting the fact that the UK Brexit folks had yet to come to an agreement with the EU about commercial shipping. The longer that lasted (and the longer the backed up lines of trucks appeared in the news images) the more nervous we became.  

Eventually they struck a deal and goods started flowing again.  Of course only to be held up once again once the new year hit with new border controls due to Brexit despite the agreement (last I heard, UK exports to the EU have dropped by nearly 70% so far this year).  Where was our scotch?

We gave them nearly two weeks and finally contacted Macallan   Almost immediately we heard from DHL.  The goods had been stopped by customs a good week earlier.  They hadn’t arrived in country until nearly a week into the new year.  Did we want them to take care of it or to hire our own customs agent?  We stuck with DHL.

Following what we could on the DHL site and Portugal’s customs site we pieced together that, indeed, we got nabbed by the trucker’s strike and, since the goods then  entered Portugal after January 1, they were coming from a Non-EU country so they had to be stopped and inspected.

They then asked us to pay VAT and customs or, instead, submit all receipts, etc., in particular proof that we purchased the goods when Scotland was indeed in the EU and proof that we paid Portuguese VAT/IVA.  I sent that away, hoping for the best.

A few days later another e-mail.  They want to know whether I’m importing 5 bottles of scotch for commercial purposes or for personal consumption.  So I’m instructed to submit a very detailed list of what I bought and to let them know that, indeed, I drink a lot of scotch (ok, not that much - this is a several year supply of celebrations for us).  The scotch is for personal consumption only.

Finally they’re ready to release the goods.  Except for the fact I now have to pay the customs charges of them processing everything (as well as DHL handling everything) so they could decide that indeed, I bought these before @*$^#%! Brexit, and indeed paid VAT and, if you think about it, 5 bottles of scotch isn’t really the makings of a great commercial venture in a country that will have a bottle of wine with lunch and another with dinner (per person), so I probably am a bit of a lightweight drinker after all.  All to the tune of several hundred Euros.  

All of the customs nightmares I had feared would happen with our household goods shipment came to life with the Macallan shipment.  Well, better that than the shipment valued nearly 100 times that amount I guess . . . .

Finally on February 8 . . . 

Which contained this:

After that, I needed a dram.  Just not of the good stuff . . . yet.

I guess my trials with customs has paid off though.  Ann recently bought something on Amazon.de that wound up in customs, and I was able to handle it on my own (with the requisite fees of course - just because you don’t owe VAT on it or Duty doesn’t mean you don’t have Customs Fees [that turned into a mighty expensive shower stool]).  Now, we’ve now learned to check where goods are shipped from.  Our new motto is, “If it ain’t coming from inside the EU, we ain’t buying it!”  

Now there’s just those couple of kickstarter items that I ordered late last year that we’ll have to deal with when the time comes.  But no more!