Isn’t this just a disaster:
Dear fellow musicians, performers, technicians etc. Here’s a thread about how our lives are going to change re touring/working in the EU in 50 days time. Think of it as a kind of Bad News Advent calendar. Here goes 1/
— Howard Goodall (@Howard_Goodall) November 11, 2020
Or, perhaps:
So, let us ponder this. These are the rules that while we are in the European Union apply to everyone coming to play music in the United Kingdom who comes from outside the European Union.
Once we’re outside the European Union we will be able to have something a little more sensible in place.
What is the benefit of trade? Specifically, what is the benefit of trade in music to people in Britain? Why, it’s the ability to hear music being performed by foreigners. That is, as always, it is imports which are the benefit of trade, not the exports. Exports being our work, training, capital, which goes abroad to pleasure foreigners of course.
So, we leave the European Union, we leave this monstrosity of bureaucratic nightmare and this is being sold to us as a bad thing? There might be a logical error in that.
So, hooray, Brexit is killing exports as it kills imports? No, if a British band wants to play the Continent and make some money to return to Britain, it’s work for them that perhaps they’d rather not do, but the alternative is not leisure, and the result is commerce that benefits everyone. Fortunately, to the extent that the Continent wants British performances, I suspect they will work something out.
But what’s really being said here is that EU regulations to maintain their walled garden from cheap foreign upstarts (even ones from the UK) end up being a disincentive to said exports. So these “world class performers” remain in the UK to perform and provide more entertainment to the locals here than to some dodgy foreigners in foreign. Don’t forget that a lot of these performers exist solely because of the UK’s taxpayer funded arts subsidy. If the foreigners in foreign want to watch these “world class performers” they are free to visit the UK, stay in our hotels, enjoy… Read more »
So, more protectionist pleading then?
The UK has a massive business worth billions as the live music touring centre of Europe and the Middle East. US artistes fly in, rehearse with their already assembled package of equipment and staff then flog around Europe for months. They fly these guys around the world and billions lands in UK bank accounts. Make that difficult and they just won’t come. Our infrastructure, already weakened by Covid, won’t take the hit and the next thing you now not even Coldplay will be able to play here. It is a massive business but margins are small which is why U2… Read more »
The comments around mobile phones is also a load of garbage, it isn’t necessarily legally mandated but mobile companies aren’t going to arbitrarily change contracts .
Many networks offer something closer to global roaming – 3 started the trend and others have copied. Or you can choose a network without roaming but is a bit cheaper, which suits the poorer customers rather well. The EU insists that the poorest customers, who rarely travel abroad, subsidise the wealthier ones who flit from country to country. Bizarre, when you think about it.
Not remotely bizarre. The people who make the rules are likely to be the ones who jump on an Easyjet for a weekend break abroad, and they benefit.
This guy likely overestimates the sheer pigheadedness of the EU bureaucrats. Although they have a remarkable record of cutting off nose to spite face.
However did the Beatles cope in Hamburg without mobile phones, permission from a supranational body etc?
I seem to remember The Beatles’ careers were killed off because Germany refused to import their live music.
Oh, wait….
Just wait till the EU adopts California rules and the band leader has to offer the minstrels paid overtime, annual leave, NI contributions, medical plan, one year maternity/paternity leave, three months severance pay, &c &c. (And that band had bloody well better be demographically representative re melanin and gender.)
Sounds as though the obvious way to go to the EU is via Ireland.
Can people really compete on these gigs anyway?
If you’re a cello player in Tipton, are you really going to be able to compete with cellists in Riga to play at for an orchestra in Latvia? By the time you add in your flight, that’s your fee gone. OK, there’s some superstar sopranos and soloists, but there doesn’t appear to be any problem with that as a global thing, with Russians at the Royal Opera, Japanese at the Royal Ballet, Chinese doing piano recitals.
Same with actors and technicians on movies. Most of the supporting cast in movies are locals.
The bit about the difficulty of getting a mobile SIM in France sounds like a load of b******s to me. Last time I did it, I went to the phone counter of E-LeClerk – the big supermarket chain – & they sold me one on the ID of my UK passport. Some years ago but I still top it up on line. Having a French number’s useful. Maybe that’s changed. But if so that’s nothing to do with the UK leaving Europe. That’ll be a French domestic change. That you need a French residency to have a French mobile. I’d… Read more »