Northern Ireland Backstop /Select Committee Rooms live

Hope you will come back Pogs and tell us what solutions you know of, or the Commission.

As Laura K said during interview with Johnson 'There are NO technical solutions available at present' and it could take years to find one. Great post Grandad, thanks.

I have not been able to see the select committee report today, but I believe that when technological solutions are referred to by politicians and others, they may be alluding to an adoption of a system we use in industrial safety for HGV driver only deliveries.

Often town centre retail deliveries can only be carried out at night for access reasons. In those circumstances, the HGV driver holds the keys to the retail unit and makes the roll cage or pallet delivery under the lone worker regulations. Those regulations mean that remote monitoring of the driver's safety is required. That monitoring is carried out by having " LTE coded tags" attached to the Cages or pallets that inform those remotely monitoring the vehicle, driver and it's cargo continually as to whether the cages are still on the vehicle or have been unloaded at any delivery point.

The above can be used to check the well being of the driver as should the removal of the cages or pallets from the vehicle at any delivery point suddenly stop then that would indicate that possibly the employee has met with an accident or security incident and assistance procedures can be initiated.

In the above, it can be seen perhaps how that system could be used to monitor goods crossing the Irish border as the information contained within the tags on the vehicles also holds what's is contained within each cage or on each pallet. That combined with the live GPS tracking of any vehicle could inform the border and excise authorise of all vehicles crossing that border and what is on them on a minute by minute basis.

The problems in the above as I view it would be that companies that use the above system link the data from the tags to their own IT stock control systems of which there are very many. Therefore to bring forward a comprehensive border monitoring system, all the above data from all the hauliers continually crossing the border would have to be fed into government IT systems operating on both sides of the border.

In the above, it would undoubtedly take several years to develop such software systems and therefore to think that such could be in place by the 31st of October is simply "pie in the sky". However, had three years ago on signing Artical Fifty the British negotiators had started from a position of Britain will leave with no deal, so lets now see if we can make things better, such systems would now be undoubtedly in place.

However, the incompetence of this Government and its numerous Brexit Secretaries ensured that would not happen.

No, I did not watch today- so please enlighten me. What realistic, practical solutions are envisaged? Please.

There can be no Brexit deal without an Irish solution.

Nancy Pelosi has already said that if we don’t sort out the Irish problem there will be no trade deal with the USA

Important issue!

So pogs what is the solution. It is the most importan5 is due and many of our citizens are dependent on a solution to keep the peace

Jura

I take it you did not have the opportunity to watch the Select Committee ' Exiting the European Union' today.

You have I believe mentioned in the past you sometimes watch BBC Parliament for information.

It was quite informative but I suppose only to those with an open mind and not a preconceived opinion as you hold :-

'there is no solution to the Irish Border None'

If They had to live here they would know that Jura

The truth is very simple, there is NO solution for the Irish border- NONE. Easy.

Suzie

Amen to that.

Sorry POGS I wasn’t knocking the idea of watching - just being flippantly cynical which is far too much my default position these days. What’ll be sad is that all that expertise will be boiled down to some pithy and no doubt misleading tweets and headlines

Suzie

No argument there.

However it's very interesting listening to experts from outside of politics and who work within ' industry and customs ' related businesses .

I am not , nor are any gransnetters knowledgeable in the alternative arrangements that may or may not be feasible but I just thought 1 or 2 gransnetters might be as interested as I am to listen and learn without getting into an unholy row as usually happens when Brexit is mentioned.

Well that would be OK if all horses told the truth?