Dover sitrep

Sitrep is short for situation report, used it in the RAF, or other did.

Anyway, here is what Brexit is like in Dover.

First of all, the new lorry park/processing centre at the White Cliffs Buisness Park. Well, work is progressing, we saw before Christmas that a new access road had been built off the roundabout beside B&Q, and so that looks like being the main entrance to the facility.

Official news that it was to be used came on January 1st or second, though the location had been cosen last July, so there were several months to have an inquiry or start work in time so that it would be ready before January 1st.

But no work was started. Work only began in Ashford in July, and due to bad weather it won't be finished until at least March. As I said yesterday, May's speech defining Brexit meant leaving the SM took place on January 17th 2017, so four years ago. The Governments had four years to prepare, as leaving the SM mandated a hard border, pretending otherwise was deceitful on a grand scale, which also explains why everything was left to the last minute so that the point of no return had to be passed, so Brexit could not be reversed.

That still gave Johnson from February 1st 2020 to start preparations. But as we know, he was still in denial until the end of the year about the consequences of Brexit, and the NI Secretary was still in denial on January 4th this year.

Anyway, so how is work progressing?

It looks like a couple of JCB diggers have dug trenches in a field, there looks like no other work being done, for something so important I was expecting offices, and an army of workmen, digging, pouring concrete and so on. Of course the offices could be somewhere else, but this is the main/only entrance.

Most official and unofficial lay bys have been coned off, meaning trucks have very limited choices of where to park up if they run out of driving hours. There are two lay bys on the A2 between Whitfield and the top of Jubilee Way, one on either side. The one the port-bound side is coned off, but the one on the other side seems to be open, only the truck parked there had been wheel-clamped. I saw no warning signs that this would happen on the approach to the lay by or it was closed.

All roads except the one leading to Manson off the A2 now have temrary 5t weight limits on them, in theory banning trucks from going down them. Quite where they are supposed to go is another matter.

Last week there was a constant flow of trucks to the port from Manston, where COVID testing and paperwork checks were being carried out, we saw none yesterday, but I guess it was a Sunday.

Jools reported there was plenty of food in Tesco, still shortages of things like tomatoes, cucumber, but not in quantities usually seen.

Each week will now get interesting, but not in a good way.