Brexit Culture News! June 30, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Some may have missed a useful piece in the SBP, written by Colette Sexton, from a couple of weeks back which looked at the Irish film and television industry (that is the film industry on this island, north and south) and how that would be impacted by Brexit.
There’s so many issues – television crews covering sport who criss-cross the island on a weekly and daily basis.
A hard border would have a massive impact on companies, crossing the border with an outside broadcast unit, or a satellite van or even carrying a camera kit.
And a comparison was made with the EU and the processes of inventories and so on that have to be outlined before getting a sniff at entering that state.
This would be totally impractical in NI.
And a very very valid point is made that I haven’t heard articulated before…
Even if we are going to Donegal we pass through the North, going in one end and out the other. It would just be impossible and unworkable to try to do that on a weekly basis.
And here’s another point which I haven’t heard articulated either…
If the border is sealed it will lead to production companies and broadcasters like RTÉ, TG4, TV3 and Eirsport having to negate access to continue the sports coverage they do north of the border. That coverage is crucial, because the GAA and rugby are 32 county organisations and the coverage does not take any cognisance of the border.
All this points to how to all intents and purposes this is a borderless island and has been since 1998. And now the potential for that to change and change utterly wreaks havoc with workers and jobs.
There are some business opportunities – they’re outlined in the piece – though many of them will see jobs lost in the North as the RoI becomes ‘a gateway to Europe for Hollywood and vice versa’ as one interviewee puts it – particularly since this state ‘will be an attractive location for multinational co-productions looking for a home in Europe for financial reasons, an English-speaking crew and cast and to qualify as European content’ , but really they don’t outweigh the massive logistical inconveniences and worse that seem likely to be imposed.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
There’s potentially a Huge impact on Sport. GAA, Rugby which are in part organised on a provincial basis.
For instance Clones would regularly host the big Ulster Championship matches. This year it’s Tyrone v Down in the Ulster final there. A border and you’ve could have all sorts of complications.
You also have London involved in the football championship and New York played in the Ulster Hurling Championship for a number of years.
Hockey, Boxing and indeed most olympic sports are organised on an All Ireland basis.
Then there’s Derry City playing in The League of Ireland.
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Is the SBP not getting just a teeny bit carried away with this: “If the border is sealed it will lead to …”. What? The border might be ‘sealed’? NI and the rest of the UK might have a border with the rest of the EU akin to the border between East and West Europe during the Cold War?
Surely that’s lazy journalism and silly sensationalism?
There are other borders between EU and non-EU European countries and none of them are ‘sealed’ obviously and they all work pretty well. They work because it’s in the interests of all to make them work.
I’d be confident that when the UK and the EU get down to business on it, they’ll work it out. Like SF and the DUP will over the next few days.
(Now filling out their import/export documentation in Irish might be a challenge for a lot of the south’s businesses but again, they’ll manage :)).
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I don’t think they mean ‘sealed’ in a hermetically sealed way, what they mean is that – as with the US comparison, that a range of impediments will come into action technical financial and otherwise across an area which previously they didn’t exist.
There’s obviously borders between the EU and the US and yes they ‘work’ in that one can bring camera and other equipment acrossbut the impediments mentioned in the article exist and that’s the nature of the exercise.
And that’s the basic logic of Brexit, that that which was the same isn’t and that change occurs and all that change is for the worse, however minor in some instances it will be.
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