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Amazon order shows how we’re all paying the price for Brexit

Staff at the Amazon Fulfilment Centre in Peterborough. Photograph: Doug Peters/PA. - Credit: PA

A reader points out how Brexit red tape is impacting Amazon order

This is the amazing journey of a tiny cheap item of a pair of Creative Earbuds ordered from Amazon UK costing just £6.99 and the time this small package took as it travelled from Rome, Italy to Oxford UK.

I have ordered these same earbuds from Amazon UK several times before Brexit and they always arrived immediately with no other countries or border crossings involved or en route stops. They just came straight to me in the mail in a tiny jiffy bag. So, what is this palaver below all about? Perhaps Brexit and a fed-up European Union flexing its muscles at the arrogance of the UK PM and his cohorts?

This past weekend G7 met in Cornwall to discuss among many things climate change and the state of our planet due to pollution of all kinds. Climate change, and global warming, we are told is caused by pollution of air travel and excess road travel among many other causes.

The mind boggles at this little item having journeyed from Rome on Mon 7 June, to Bergamo, Lombardy on Tues 8 June, to Tilbury UK on Weds 9 June, back to Mouscron, Belgium on Weds 9 June, and then back to Tilbury UK again on Thurs 10 June continuing onto Rochester Medway on Thurs 10 June, and then to Amazon depot at Hemel GB on Fri 11 June to be finally delivered to me in Oxford later that day. I am gobsmacked!

I have two questions:

1. How much does a journey like this cost in petrol/diesel and man/woman power and travelling time, thereby adding huge pollution to the planet by this totally unnecessary performance for just one tiny package?

2. One has to ask, was this extraordinarily prolonged exercise caused by Europe flexing its muscles because of Brexit?  Britain and its Brexiteers, it would appear, have shot themselves in the foot!

What have we gained by leaving Europe? What has Britain gained other than its false feeling of superiority and a new blue passport!

Mimia Umneygray

• Have your say by emailing letters@theneweuropean.co.uk. Our deadline for letters is Monday at 9am for inclusion in Thursday’s edition. Please be concise – letters over five paragraphs long may be edited before printing.

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