Broken Brexit, UK gone crackers or is it lack of?

Again, no apologies for this one being on a topic that will touch a few nerves. Last week I went back to the UK for a couple of days on business, I also took the opportunity to sort out somethings for the few days we will spend back in the UK over Christmas.

One of the things I needed to do was buy some Christmas crackers as we are going to relatives to eat on Christmas Day and we agreed to bring the crackers, simple to do you'd think, oh how wrong I was.

Marks & Spencer, history when we lived in the UK said they were good, and the local one in the La Canada shopping centre here in Marbella stocks them already, they are of course post Brexit significantly more expensive in Spain than they used to be. As I needed them in the UK, why not buy them from M&S in the UK. Seems sensible, you would think.

So off I went to M&S at the Meadows, aside from Christmas shop being a lot smaller than I remember, as apparently most things were on-line order only I was told "Oh sorry we have run out of crackers". "Why?" I asked, well since Brexit it seems supply chain problems exist as elsewhere in the world is less hassle to deal with, particularly the EU. So I can get M&S crackers in Spain and ship them to the UK, but not in the UK. Bonkers.

So I moved onto the next store, literally Next at the same shopping centre, a similar story, although to be fair I haven't tried ordering them to Spain, but essentially the same supply chain issue exists in the UK.

On the way back I had to drive past Sainsburys at Watchmoor Park, success lots of crackers, so picked up three boxes of the Habitat ones as they seemed the closest to my original intended purchase of M&S ones. OK at the self checkout apparently my purchase needs approval, for two reasons it turned out, crackers are treated like fireworks (the "bang" is the problem so I was told) so the over 18 check applies and you are only allowed two boxes, because of supply chain issues. These days I laugh when someone asks me for proof of age. "Why?" (related to the why was I only allowed two boxes) I asked for the third time and got a similar story as I had in both M&S and Next. So I bought my two boxes, went out and bought a third box ten minutes later after a quick coffee in Starbucks.

My first experience of supply chain issues directly attributed by the store to Brexit was summer 2021 when I foolishly wanted a cucumber on a Saturday afternoon in Morrisons only to be told since Brexit if you want this stuff at the weekend you need to come on a Saturday morning. Since then I have come across this numerous times and now it has decided into a crackers situation...