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Why being against Brexit may well not be a problem for Andy Burnham – politicalbetting.com

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  • eekeek Posts: 33,905

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
  • eekeek Posts: 33,905

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 91,949
    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham have scored.

    Plenty of time yet for Spurs to go all Spursy.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 37,411
    edited May 24

    Chelsea 2-0 down to the Mackens, who if things stay as they are will be in Europe and Chelsea won't be.

    H'way the lads!
    The Wearside spelling is Haway.

    The Tyneside spelling is Howay.

    I pronounce it closer to "How-Air".
    Thanks; bonny lad (IIRC; memory is failing a little with time!) Haway the lads.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 10,789
    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    I’ve always said that the Tories won’t get back to dominant status until they have a leader from the upcoming generation who is prepared to take the party back to its traditional pragmatic pro-European stance.
    Part of me wonders if Brexit was really the end of half a century of Heathism with Thatcher being a slight aberration.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 89,587
    edited May 24

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed on them, either.
  • eekeek Posts: 33,905

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham have scored.

    Plenty of time yet for Spurs to go all Spursy.
    Except it requires Everton to score twice and I just don’t see that
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 25,447

    Nigelb said:

    Today's picture is for Sunil.
    Does he recognise the line ?

    I was on the Island Line trains yesterday.

    It still has the clickety-clack effect (i.e. the rails haven't been continuously welded) so it's both warmly nostalgic and soporific.
    Here’s another for Sunil. Hint. It’s not Hastings.

    Somewhere on the Highland Mainline.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 35,218
    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003
    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 55,424

    Nigelb said:

    Today's picture is for Sunil.
    Does he recognise the line ?

    I was on the Island Line trains yesterday.

    It still has the clickety-clack effect (i.e. the rails haven't been continuously welded) so it's both warmly nostalgic and soporific.
    Here’s another for Sunil. Hint. It’s not Hastings.


    Is that the Essex rifles arriving to take up their positions, in a commandeered train?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 37,411

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham have scored.

    Plenty of time yet for Spurs to go all Spursy.
    Everton need to score twice though. I know one or two people who''ll be very sad if West Ham go down.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 25,447

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham have scored.

    Plenty of time yet for Spurs to go all Spursy.
    Everton need to score twice though. I know one or two people who''ll be very sad if West Ham go down.
    I remember when Everton and Spurs were regarded as two of the "big five".
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 35,218

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 40,147
    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 59,834

    So Byline Times say they have an archive of Reform Candidate former twitter account. If that's as bad as it gets, I am sure the Guardian types will be outraged (just as they were about him joking about rugby players with big knockers and water boarding people who eat their chips by the sea), but it isn't exactly that different from stuff Farage tweets (albeit he is usually a bit more careful to leave some wiggle room).

    https://x.com/BylineTimes/status/2058504286460420470?s=20

    Reform candidate leans heavily anti-immigration and tweets at the likes of Dapper Laughs and Dan Wooton isn't exactly even takes £5 million off a crypto billionaire.

    There're trying to make somthing of him calling for the police to release the name of the Southport suspect in this tweet. Invoking the Bulger case was supposedly "incendiary".

    They can name him if it’s in the public’s interest, like they did with the Bulger killers.

    @Makerfield_RFK to @OliLondonTV — 29 July 2024

  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 136,842
    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    I’ve always said that the Tories won’t get back to dominant status until they have a leader from the upcoming generation who is prepared to take the party back to its traditional pragmatic pro-European stance.
    There is no point the Tories being LDs 2. Maybe accepting a return to the single market eventually but only after a generation has passed
  • stodgestodge Posts: 16,672
    Late afternoon all :)

    Fairly warm even here in downtown East London where the smell of the barbecue mixes with the hint of a breeze off the Estuary.

    As one of that rare breed, a 2015 LD voter who voted Leave in 2016 (apparently not as rare as I think, 30% of the admittedly small 2015 LD vote did the same), I find the sheer reflexive defensiveness of those on the "winning" side curious.

    We aren't going back, certainly any time soon yet the slightest hint of even the possibility provokes a near Pavlovian response.

    I didn't vote Leave for notions of a Global Britain akin to the Crimson Permanent Assurance but simply because we couldn't go on as we were with our half-hearted, rebate obsessed membership. Ever since Messina, there have only been two credible positions - either completely in, leading the way, enthusiastically forEuropean Union or completely out, on the sidelines but wishing the project well.

    Thanks to the Conservative Party of blessed memory, we ended up doing neither the one nor the other.

    We wasted so much time and effort while the much more serious problems of the country went neglected and unresolved.

    God help me, I'm starting to sound like Reform or Restore but the answer to the last 50 years isn't to blame civil servants or deport large numbers of the population - we all know that.
  • FrankBoothFrankBooth Posts: 10,789
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    I’ve always said that the Tories won’t get back to dominant status until they have a leader from the upcoming generation who is prepared to take the party back to its traditional pragmatic pro-European stance.
    There is no point the Tories being LDs 2. Maybe accepting a return to the single market eventually but only after a generation has passed
    There is if you believe in a Heathite consensus.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 59,748
    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    "We intend to go down as gentlemen!"
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 37,411
    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    Needs to be Spurs 1 Everton 2 for the Hammers to stay up.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 136,842

    HYUFD said:

    FPT - I think I'd prefer another Labour majority to either a Labour-Green coalition or a Labour-LD one.

    Any of them would encourage Labour to pander to its nutter progressive side, and do really stupid shit.

    I wouldn’t, I don’t want a Labour government hammering us with tax thanks. I would only prefer a Labour majority to a Labour Green or Labour SNP government which would be even worse
    A Labour-LD coalition would let men with penises into women's toilets by 9am on day one, and would be on the very next flight out of Heathrow to group trombone Maroš Šefčovič before nightfall.

    This would continue for months, all the while filled with the repulsive pomposity LDs display on a daily basis until the whole population of the UK felt physically sick and was begging for the atom bomb to end it all.

    No thanks.
    I am not as bothered by trans lib from the LDs than I am about higher tax from a Burnham majority government
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 40,147

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
    There's a law against people illegelly migrating to the UK. Why isn't that law enforced in the same way?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 55,424
    edited May 24
    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    I’ve always said that the Tories won’t get back to dominant status until they have a leader from the upcoming generation who is prepared to take the party back to its traditional pragmatic pro-European stance.
    There is no point the Tories being LDs 2. Maybe accepting a return to the single market eventually but only after a generation has passed
    I never said that the Tories coming to their senses would happen quickly. It will take the next generation, untainted by the recent long decade of scandal and failure, to be able to do it.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 136,842

    HYUFD said:

    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    I’ve always said that the Tories won’t get back to dominant status until they have a leader from the upcoming generation who is prepared to take the party back to its traditional pragmatic pro-European stance.
    There is no point the Tories being LDs 2. Maybe accepting a return to the single market eventually but only after a generation has passed
    There is if you believe in a Heathite consensus.
    Not happening while Farage believes he is Maggie 2 and Burnham is more Wilson than Heath
  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 5,791

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    "We intend to go down as gentlemen!"
    Should never have got rid of Moyes.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 40,147
    West Ham 3, Leeds 0
    Aston Villa 2, Man City 1
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 37,411
    West Ham 3-0 up now. At least, although it's the last knockings, going down fighting.
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
    But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.

    I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.

    You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.

    The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.

  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 37,411
    Ho many b****y minutes can be added on!!!!
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 59,748

    Nigelb said:

    Today's picture is for Sunil.
    Does he recognise the line ?

    I was on the Island Line trains yesterday.

    It still has the clickety-clack effect (i.e. the rails haven't been continuously welded) so it's both warmly nostalgic and soporific.
    Here’s another for Sunil. Hint. It’s not Hastings.

    Is it in Scotland?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 46,462
    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
    everything has to be London centric
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 28,781

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
    But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.

    I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.

    You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.

    The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.

    It is not solely due to EU law, but EU law is a problem. One of many.

    Other EU countries do have this problem. Other developed EU nations are also struggling to invest in infrastructure.

    The problem is governments, both domestic and EU, have piled on layer after layer of paperwork all with good intentions but now it is almost impossible to do anything because of it.

    And we interpret EU law with a dogmatic "the law must be applied" mentality which some EU nations take more flexibly.
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003
    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
    everything has to be London centric
    Blame the treasury Green Book, any party that can genuienly fix the London centric nature of all treasury funding that comes through that process, goiving a fairer share to the regions, will become popular quite quickly. (I have hope that Burnham has this in his targets).
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 22,024

    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
    everything has to be London centric
    Blame the treasury Green Book, any party that can genuienly fix the London centric nature of all treasury funding that comes through that process, goiving a fairer share to the regions, will become popular quite quickly. (I have hope that Burnham has this in his targets).
    Burnham hasn’t even won the byelection yet
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 59,748
    Bloody Everton!
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 40,147
    Spurs 1, Everton 0, full time
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 46,462

    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
    everything has to be London centric
    Blame the treasury Green Book, any party that can genuienly fix the London centric nature of all treasury funding that comes through that process, goiving a fairer share to the regions, will become popular quite quickly. (I have hope that Burnham has this in his targets).
    I will not hold my breath on that one
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
    But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.

    I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.

    You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.

    The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.

    It is not solely due to EU law, but EU law is a problem. One of many.

    Other EU countries do have this problem. Other developed EU nations are also struggling to invest in infrastructure.

    The problem is governments, both domestic and EU, have piled on layer after layer of paperwork all with good intentions but now it is almost impossible to do anything because of it.

    And we interpret EU law with a dogmatic "the law must be applied" mentality which some EU nations take more flexibly.
    but in the case of high speed railway, I assume you agree that we in the UK are miles more expensive that just about every country within the EU that builds high speed railways ?

    Spain, France, Italy and Poland are having no trouble building new high speed railways in recent years (whilst HS2 has been under construction), every one of them has EU law layered on their state.
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003
    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
    everything has to be London centric
    Blame the treasury Green Book, any party that can genuienly fix the London centric nature of all treasury funding that comes through that process, goiving a fairer share to the regions, will become popular quite quickly. (I have hope that Burnham has this in his targets).
    I will not hold my breath on that one
    at least he acknowledges the problem

    literally never heard any other politician suggest it needs major reform
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 50,671
    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    Not enough sadly. They'll be blowing bubbles in the Championship next season. But not forever I'm sure.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 8,082

    Nigelb said:

    Today's picture is for Sunil.
    Does he recognise the line ?

    I was on the Island Line trains yesterday.

    It still has the clickety-clack effect (i.e. the rails haven't been continuously welded) so it's both warmly nostalgic and soporific.
    Here’s another for Sunil. Hint. It’s not Hastings.

    Is it in Scotland?
    Getting warm! Not in the highlands, BTW.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 32,559

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    "We intend to go down as gentlemen!"
    Should never have got rid of Moyes.
    Yeah.
    Davey Moyes sure took his revenge today, didn't he?
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 55,424

    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
    everything has to be London centric
    Blame the treasury Green Book, any party that can genuienly fix the London centric nature of all treasury funding that comes through that process, goiving a fairer share to the regions, will become popular quite quickly. (I have hope that Burnham has this in his targets).
    Burnham hasn’t even won the byelection yet
    Andy will win it comfortably, for us, and then save us all.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 58,872
    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    Not enough sadly. They'll be blowing bubbles in the Championship next season. But not forever I'm sure.
    Somewhat unfortunate to go down with 39 points. Highest number for a relegated team in 15 years.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 59,834
    https://x.com/theipaper/status/2058564916009664748

    An “embarrassing” tranche of messages set to be released will expose the “cosy relationship” between Government ministers and disgraced peer Lord Peter Mandelson
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 41,579
    The league and the refs can go fuck themselves. We've been up against them all season because they wanted their story of a big club getting relegated.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 50,671

    So Byline Times say they have an archive of Reform Candidate former twitter account. If that's as bad as it gets, I am sure the Guardian types will be outraged (just as they were about him joking about rugby players with big knockers and water boarding people who eat their chips by the sea), but it isn't exactly that different from stuff Farage tweets (albeit he is usually a bit more careful to leave some wiggle room).

    https://x.com/BylineTimes/status/2058504286460420470?s=20

    Reform candidate leans heavily anti-immigration and tweets at the likes of Dapper Laughs and Dan Wooton isn't exactly even takes £5 million off a crypto billionaire.

    There're trying to make somthing of him calling for the police to release the name of the Southport suspect in this tweet. Invoking the Bulger case was supposedly "incendiary".

    They can name him if it’s in the public’s interest, like they did with the Bulger killers.

    @Makerfield_RFK to @OliLondonTV — 29 July 2024

    The Bulger killers were not named until they'd been tried and found guilty. It was child A and B up to then.
  • RandallFlaggRandallFlagg Posts: 1,493
    MaxPB said:

    The league and the refs can go fuck themselves. We've been up against them all season because they wanted their story of a big club getting relegated.

    Think Blues, Wrexham, Sheffield United, Millwall, Norwich, and plenty of other Championship teams are breathing a sigh of relief Spurs stayed up to be honest. You might have well beaten our 111 EPL points record if you'd gone down.
  • BartholomewRobertsBartholomewRoberts Posts: 28,781

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
    But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.

    I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.

    You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.

    The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.

    It is not solely due to EU law, but EU law is a problem. One of many.

    Other EU countries do have this problem. Other developed EU nations are also struggling to invest in infrastructure.

    The problem is governments, both domestic and EU, have piled on layer after layer of paperwork all with good intentions but now it is almost impossible to do anything because of it.

    And we interpret EU law with a dogmatic "the law must be applied" mentality which some EU nations take more flexibly.
    but in the case of high speed railway, I assume you agree that we in the UK are miles more expensive that just about every country within the EU that builds high speed railways ?

    Spain, France, Italy and Poland are having no trouble building new high speed railways in recent years (whilst HS2 has been under construction), every one of them has EU law layered on their state.
    Absolutely, through a multitude of reasons, some in and some out of our control.

    Spain have done really well building high speed rail in recent years, but high speed rail serves them well. They need to travel vast distances to travel around the country and it is being built across largely low value, uninhabited land.

    Whereas we travel small distances across high value high planning restrictions land.

    We should not be obsessing over speed. We need capacity and connections.

    We should be connecting cities like across the North that are not well connected, not obsessing with speed on routes that are already connected.

    We need to deal with our planning system. That gold plates all regulations including EU.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 50,671
    edited May 24

    Is Zia Yusuf consciously imitating Donald Trump's style?

    https://x.com/ziayusufuk/status/2058471920106951051

    It’s time to stop PUNISHING people who work the hardest and drowning them in taxes like the Tory Labour uniparty.

    A Reform government will ABOLISH INCOME TAX on overtime pay.

    Britain was built on the hard labour of people who go the extra mile.

    Thank you!

    He clearly is. Very promising sign isn't it.
  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 5,791
    dixiedean said:

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    "We intend to go down as gentlemen!"
    Should never have got rid of Moyes.
    Yeah.
    Davey Moyes sure took his revenge today, didn't he?
    Shades of Charlton and Curbishley. Moyes had just won a European trophy with them ffs. I wouldn't be so sure they're coming back anytime soon.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 12,878
    IanB2 said:

    malcolmg said:

    eek said:

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    These days, Germany is having a lot of the same issues as the UK with building stuff. The rate of high speed rail, particularly actually making the rolling stock, is absolutely glacial compared to China. China have taken the car production model, modernised it, and applied it to train production.
    Indeed, but not remotely EU related, more the Merkel years saw very low capex investment in the countries infrastructure.

    If you want us to become more efficient and effictive at spending money you have a constant, reliable, guarenteed long term stream of cash, do not turn it on and off.

    HS2 is a great example of a hugely complex scheme which we simply did not have the skills for in the country.

    In 10 years we will, we should already be planning what to do next, making use of those skills to do it more effectively and miles cheaper.

    Nothing wahtsoever to do with the EU.
    HS2 should have started somewhere simple (Leeds to Sheffield / Nottingham) while the skills were built up and then a 20-30 year schedule of projects created as HS2 in full and HS3/ NPR were built.

    Instead we start a project and then go make the set of newly competent skilled workers unemployed as we don’t have the next project ready to go
    everything has to be London centric
    Blame the treasury Green Book, any party that can genuienly fix the London centric nature of all treasury funding that comes through that process, goiving a fairer share to the regions, will become popular quite quickly. (I have hope that Burnham has this in his targets).
    Burnham hasn’t even won the byelection yet
    Andy will win it comfortably, for us, and then save us all.
    I'd check your tea. This is entirely not the thoughts I imagined from you.

    Burnham will be a scourge - way worse than Leon.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 35,218
    edited May 24

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
    The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 32,559
    Rob Ford's Makerfield substack preview. Apologies if already posted. Dispels some myths about the place.

    https://swingometer.substack.com/p/the-makerfield-by-election-high-risk
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 59,748

    Nigelb said:

    Today's picture is for Sunil.
    Does he recognise the line ?

    I was on the Island Line trains yesterday.

    It still has the clickety-clack effect (i.e. the rails haven't been continuously welded) so it's both warmly nostalgic and soporific.
    Here’s another for Sunil. Hint. It’s not Hastings.

    Is it in Scotland?
    Getting warm! Not in the highlands, BTW.
    Dumfries line?
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 23,168
    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.
  • ManchesterKurtManchesterKurt Posts: 1,003

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
    But the cost of UK infrastructure has nothing to do with the EU law.

    I will repeat, 27 other EU countries do not have this problem.

    You many want this to be true, but the reality is every other EU country can build infrastructure at a cost much lower than the UK irrespective of EU law.

    The problem is local to the UK and you are chasing a false enemy to blame the EU.

    It is not solely due to EU law, but EU law is a problem. One of many.

    Other EU countries do have this problem. Other developed EU nations are also struggling to invest in infrastructure.

    The problem is governments, both domestic and EU, have piled on layer after layer of paperwork all with good intentions but now it is almost impossible to do anything because of it.

    And we interpret EU law with a dogmatic "the law must be applied" mentality which some EU nations take more flexibly.
    but in the case of high speed railway, I assume you agree that we in the UK are miles more expensive that just about every country within the EU that builds high speed railways ?

    Spain, France, Italy and Poland are having no trouble building new high speed railways in recent years (whilst HS2 has been under construction), every one of them has EU law layered on their state.
    Absolutely, through a multitude of reasons, some in and some out of our control.

    Spain have done really well building high speed rail in recent years, but high speed rail serves them well. They need to travel vast distances to travel around the country and it is being built across largely low value, uninhabited land.

    Whereas we travel small distances across high value high planning restrictions land.

    We should not be obsessing over speed. We need capacity and connections.

    We should be connecting cities like across the North that are not well connected, not obsessing with speed on routes that are already connected.

    We need to deal with our planning system. That gold plates all regulations including EU.
    There are massive capacity issues between Manchester and Birmingham, there are massive capacity issues heading into Manchester and Birmingham.

    Reality is, if you came up with the optimal design to meet what you suggest needs addressing it would include HS2 Phase 2B along with NPR from Liverpool to Manchester (which shares HS2 tracks).

    If you are going to build a new railway which will carry passengers between cities apart the distance Manchester is to Brum you are going to build something that can run ~320km/h in 2026.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 59,748
    kinabalu said:

    Andy_JS said:

    West Ham 2
    Leeds 0

    Not enough sadly. They'll be blowing bubbles in the Championship next season. But not forever I'm sure.
    Such is life!
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 41,579

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
    The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
    I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
  • TazTaz Posts: 28,080

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Raducan’tu
  • boulayboulay Posts: 8,876

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 72,351
    edited May 24
    boulay said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
    To be pedantic: no he didn't. He hated the fame that came with it and was a bit of a recluse.

  • boulayboulay Posts: 8,876
    edited May 24

    boulay said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
    To be pedantic: no he didn't. He hated the fame that came with it and was a bit of a recluse.

    I really must get into the habit of being absolutely factual when making a silly joke in future.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 9,224
    edited May 24
    Taz said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Raducan’tu
    Meanwhile, number 7 seed Taylor Fritz is two sets down.... the first big exit?
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 50,671
    Well these Pep and Mo farewells are lump inducing, I must say. It's reminding me of when Lasso left Richmond.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 47,887

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    I’ve heard the Brit’s are now INSISTING that she’s really Romanian, Canadian, Chinese or whatever it was they were insisting she was not 5 years ago.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 12,878
    kinabalu said:

    Well these Pep and Mo farewells are lump inducing, I must say. It's reminding me of when Lasso left Richmond.

    Well that's your reputation for sense scuppered.

    (I do vaguely know what you might be alluding to, but rather choose not)
  • BattlebusBattlebus Posts: 3,238
    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    Sounds like a description of the Liberal Party pre LibDems
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 12,878

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    I’ve heard the Brit’s are now INSISTING that she’s really Romanian, Canadian, Chinese or whatever it was they were insisting she was not 5 years ago.
    I think she's rather lovely and I wish her all the best.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 89,587
    Taz said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Raducan’tu
    Radudid.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 59,748
    Taz said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Raducan’tu
    Uvavu!
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 8,082

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
    The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
    We need to remind newt botherers that newt botherers are not a protected species and could be culled if they are causing a nuisance.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 50,671
    Omnium said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well these Pep and Mo farewells are lump inducing, I must say. It's reminding me of when Lasso left Richmond.

    Well that's your reputation for sense scuppered.

    (I do vaguely know what you might be alluding to, but rather choose not)
    I'm taking that 'reputation for sense' remark and running all the way to the bank with it.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 23,168

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    It is, and she will always have that. It’s such a shame as when she broke through it looked like she could be an all time great, but I don’t think she has enough grit in here. Murray made the most of what he had, worked himself doubly hard in order to try to be near the level of the big three. I see little evidence that Raducanu has the same level of drive. That and her inability to stick with a coach sends a message.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 12,878
    kinabalu said:

    Omnium said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well these Pep and Mo farewells are lump inducing, I must say. It's reminding me of when Lasso left Richmond.

    Well that's your reputation for sense scuppered.

    (I do vaguely know what you might be alluding to, but rather choose not)
    I'm taking that 'reputation for sense' remark and running all the way to the bank with it.
    Do tie the shoelaces before you start off though.
  • solarflaresolarflare Posts: 4,847

    boulay said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
    To be pedantic: no he didn't. He hated the fame that came with it and was a bit of a recluse.

    Subsequently won Wimbledon just to shut everyone up about the Moon thing, as I recall.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 63,498
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
    The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
    I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
    Idea

    For the next infrastructure project, Parliament declares that the route/site is French territory for x years.

    Then we try other legal jurisdictions in rotation
  • stodgestodge Posts: 16,672
    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    It's not as simple as Ben Judah suggests.

    The similarity between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is both now inhabit small areas of strength surrounded by vast oceans of weakness. Occasionally, the LD and Conservative areas overlap as in Godalming and Farnham to give a couple of examples but in London for example the areas of LD strength in the south west saw the Conservatives almost excised at the beginning of the month.

    Conversely, the Conservatives prospered in the south east and other parts of the other suburbs as well as inner south west London where the LDs are non existant and of course both parties have largely been removed from inner east London and even outer east London saw the Conservatives trounced in Havering.

    The majority of the Conservatives and Lib Dems now in the Commons will be hard for the other three main parties to shift and indeed form a significant bloc to a majority Government.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 23,124
    The US call a halt or so it seems. They lost fair and square. It's dry but informed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3pxqgQ6dTg&t=438s
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 20,916

    So Byline Times say they have an archive of Reform Candidate former twitter account. If that's as bad as it gets, I am sure the Guardian types will be outraged (just as they were about him joking about rugby players with big knockers and water boarding people who eat their chips by the sea), but it isn't exactly that different from stuff Farage tweets (albeit he is usually a bit more careful to leave some wiggle room).

    https://x.com/BylineTimes/status/2058504286460420470?s=20

    Reform candidate leans heavily anti-immigration and tweets at the likes of Dapper Laughs and Dan Wooton isn't exactly even takes £5 million off a crypto billionaire.

    There're trying to make somthing of him calling for the police to release the name of the Southport suspect in this tweet. Invoking the Bulger case was supposedly "incendiary".

    They can name him if it’s in the public’s interest, like they did with the Bulger killers.

    @Makerfield_RFK to @OliLondonTV — 29 July 2024

    He spread the incorrect name that was going around, that contributed to rioting.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 59,834

    So Byline Times say they have an archive of Reform Candidate former twitter account. If that's as bad as it gets, I am sure the Guardian types will be outraged (just as they were about him joking about rugby players with big knockers and water boarding people who eat their chips by the sea), but it isn't exactly that different from stuff Farage tweets (albeit he is usually a bit more careful to leave some wiggle room).

    https://x.com/BylineTimes/status/2058504286460420470?s=20

    Reform candidate leans heavily anti-immigration and tweets at the likes of Dapper Laughs and Dan Wooton isn't exactly even takes £5 million off a crypto billionaire.

    There're trying to make somthing of him calling for the police to release the name of the Southport suspect in this tweet. Invoking the Bulger case was supposedly "incendiary".

    They can name him if it’s in the public’s interest, like they did with the Bulger killers.

    @Makerfield_RFK to @OliLondonTV — 29 July 2024

    He spread the incorrect name that was going around, that contributed to rioting.
    They don't accuse him of doing that in that piece. It's just guilt by association.
  • bondegezoubondegezou Posts: 20,916
    Andy_JS said:

    Nigelb said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Yet these things do not arise anywhere else in the EU.

    There are loads of km of high speed rail built all over Europe without any worries about bat tunnels.

    Why can those other countries manage to build railways, countries with bats, without the need for tunnels ?

    I will give you a clue, it is nothing to do with the EU.
    They don't have so much tunneling through Tory constituencies imposed
    On them, either.
    The bat tunnels are on sections where HS2 is not in a tunnel.

    Neither of which are anything whatsoever to do with the EU, all down to decisions taken by the (Conservative led) HS2 Phase 1 Committee that reviewed the original bill.
    You may want that to be true, and I don't blame you, but it isn't. Natural England has acknowledged advising HS2 that the bat tunnel would comply with the law - the only reason for even considering such a structure.
    There's a law against people illegelly migrating to the UK. Why isn't that law enforced in the same way?
    About 60,000 have been deported since the election.
  • DougSealDougSeal Posts: 13,462

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
    The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
    I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
    Idea

    For the next infrastructure project, Parliament declares that the route/site is French territory for x years.

    Then we try other legal jurisdictions in rotation
    The easiest way of passing an unchallengeable infrastructure project is to bring the whole thing in under primary legislation. That’s how railways were built in the 19th century. They would be a long and detailed bills but that’s the sort of oversight MPs are supposed to give. The habit of successive governments to delegate to themselves powers that were the preserve of Parliament is the reason why we get bogged down in the so-called “process state”. The ability of the law, through the courts, to challenge the executive makes that inevitable when the executive has been challengable since Magna Carta.

    Here’s one they managed -

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/Will4/6-7/75/pdfs/ukla_18360075_en.pdf

  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 17,428
    boulay said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
    Yes. Support the one time wonders. Bob Massie at Lords 1972. 16 for 137. Test debut. Nothing much after. Emily Bronte only writes one novel. Just a better one than anyone else. Keats's annus mirabilis of 1819, aged 23 dying soon after.

  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 63,498
    edited May 24
    DougSeal said:

    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
    The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
    I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
    Idea

    For the next infrastructure project, Parliament declares that the route/site is French territory for x years.

    Then we try other legal jurisdictions in rotation
    The easiest way of passing an unchallengeable infrastructure project is to bring the whole thing in under primary legislation. That’s how railways were built in the 19th century. They would be a long and detailed bills but that’s the sort of oversight MPs are supposed to give. The habit of successive governments to delegate to themselves powers that were the preserve of Parliament is the reason why we get bogged down in the so-called “process state”. The ability of the law, through the courts, to challenge the executive makes that inevitable when the executive has been challengable since Magna Carta.

    Here’s one they managed -

    https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/Will4/6-7/75/pdfs/ukla_18360075_en.pdf

    Yup - I’ve long advocated a return to the Railway Act style of legislation for big infrastructure projects.

    I’ve heard it said that the modern legal profession would try and challenge such - which makes the law makers hesitant to start a legal fight on the primacy of Parliament.
  • TazTaz Posts: 28,080
    Nigelb said:

    Taz said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Raducan’tu
    Radudid.
    I’ll give you that, 😂👍
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 12,878
    I've been considering the header. No doubt the gears could be heard from dark corners.

    So... as I've previously said Burnham will be a disaster. Full on faceplant. What he'll also do is propel Reform into government because his EU stance. (Actually his silly on the fence stance - in, out, do the hokey cokey, and there's still the grinning loon Burnham. FFS turn around!)

  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 5,791
    edited May 24
    algarkirk said:

    boulay said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
    Yes. Support the one time wonders. Bob Massie at Lords 1972. 16 for 137. Test debut. Nothing much after. Emily Bronte only writes one novel. Just a better one than anyone else. Keats's annus mirabilis of 1819, aged 23 dying soon after.

    And, of course, who could forget Babylon Zoo's seminal Spaceman.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 13,439

    Unpopular said:

    Andy_JS said:

    Report in the Sunday Times that some civil service unions might refuse to cooperate with an incoming Reform government.

    I'm not Reform, but this yanks my chain.

    The voters are in charge. If they elect a Reform government you bloody well jump to it, same as Green, Labour, LD, Conservative, YourParty or anyone else.
    I think it would be a mistake. The ability of the British State to capture political movements, and moderate them, is a defining feature! Look at the Labour Party, or even the SNP cohort in Westminster. Wasn't one of them looking for a seat in the Lords recently? If Reform are denied their proper place, victory would make them even angrier than it normally does.

    Civil Servants are obviously free to resign if they don't want to, or feel they are unable to, implement the policies of a Reform Government.
    If the Civil Service or even a fraction of it failed to co-operate then that is Gold for the government. Serious sackings and probably removal of accrued pension rights.
    The story is rolling strikes because Reform is threatening job losses. Of course that’s not the actual reason but it stays the right side of the law
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,878
    stodge said:

    Nigelb said:

    This may be triggering for some Tories.

    It’s not clear to me whether the relegation of the Tories into the Lib-Dems of the Right will hold long term. But if it does the Tories becoming an essentially southern, upper middle class, free market party will soften their stance down from the hardest of Brexits only over time. Already some 40% of their voters polled said they’d vote Rejoin in a referendum.
    https://x.com/b_judah/status/2058451267316281511

    It's not as simple as Ben Judah suggests.

    The similarity between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is both now inhabit small areas of strength surrounded by vast oceans of weakness. Occasionally, the LD and Conservative areas overlap as in Godalming and Farnham to give a couple of examples but in London for example the areas of LD strength in the south west saw the Conservatives almost excised at the beginning of the month.

    Conversely, the Conservatives prospered in the south east and other parts of the other suburbs as well as inner south west London where the LDs are non existant and of course both parties have largely been removed from inner east London and even outer east London saw the Conservatives trounced in Havering.

    The majority of the Conservatives and Lib Dems now in the Commons will be hard for the other three main parties to shift and indeed form a significant bloc to a majority Government.
    While I agree with the general thesis, do you think the Conservatives are still going to have about 120 seats at the next election? My sense is that they are likely to be in the 90-150 range so 120 is definitely possible - but they could equally be 25% down or 25% up.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 59,834
    https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/2058595580545294592

    “US and Iran agree in principle to a deal, then disagree on every single clause.” a European official speaking to Faytuks Network says
  • boulayboulay Posts: 8,876

    algarkirk said:

    boulay said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
    Yes. Support the one time wonders. Bob Massie at Lords 1972. 16 for 137. Test debut. Nothing much after. Emily Bronte only writes one novel. Just a better one than anyone else. Keats's annus mirabilis of 1819, aged 23 dying soon after.

    And, of course, who could forget Babylon Zoo's seminal Spaceman.
    And Joe Dolce “Shaddup a ya face.”
  • ThomasNasheThomasNashe Posts: 5,791
    edited May 24
    boulay said:

    algarkirk said:

    boulay said:

    Once again Raducanu will never win a second Grand Slam. Simply not up to it.

    Even if that's true, one grand slam is one more than the great majority of British players have achieved.
    Indeed. Just look at Neil Armstrong, walked on the moon once. Never repeated the feat but he dined out on it for the rest of his life.
    Yes. Support the one time wonders. Bob Massie at Lords 1972. 16 for 137. Test debut. Nothing much after. Emily Bronte only writes one novel. Just a better one than anyone else. Keats's annus mirabilis of 1819, aged 23 dying soon after.

    And, of course, who could forget Babylon Zoo's seminal Spaceman.
    And Joe Dolce “Shaddup a ya face.”
    Ultravox will certainly never forget that one.

    Though, of course, Joe's effort was the better song.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 12,878

    https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/2058595580545294592

    “US and Iran agree in principle to a deal, then disagree on every single clause.” a European official speaking to Faytuks Network says

    I've no idea if this is true or not. It does seem true though. Trump has massively overpowered his enemy and comprehensively lost.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 35,218
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    ...

    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    kinabalu said:

    We'll keep working our way back to eu babe - with a burning desire to rectify a serious mistake but all in the fullness of time and without the stress and angst that came with leaving.

    No you won't, and if you did, we'd just take us out straight away again.

    You fuckers aren't going to win.
    But if support for Brexit remains where it is, let alone sinks further, surely the issue will be re-opened at some point?

    The big advantage Brexiteers have at the the moment is that support for rejoining seems to shrink when people realise the terms on which we would need to re-enter (i.e money and free movement).
    No. Your total failure to read the tea leaves correctly and think in only one dimension is your problem.

    Not mine.
    Nobody wants to go back to status quo ante referendum because the last decade would look a complete waste of time and effort.

    The minor flaw in that argument is that it was a complete waste of time and effort.
    From the header,

    The reporting is quite balanced: about 8/10 Labour voters would rejoin, including pluralities in all the Leave-voting constituencies. But there is reluctance to reopen divisive debates. (This could be a brake on Labour rejoiners - though exhaustion also a brake on Reform in places like Makerfield)

    In other words, Brexit is a ghastly heirloom that we're stuck with for fear of a family argument leading to the rewriting of someone's will. As I may have said before.

    Then the questions become:

    Is there a threshold where the pushback on joining doesn't have to be feared?

    If so, what is that threshold?

    If so, will passive factors cause that threshold to be reached?

    If so, when?

    If so, what do we all do in the meantime?
    Other questions:

    Brexit has been unpopular because its implementation is associated with some disastrous policies on immigration, and a general feeling of drift, malaise, and decline. What's the expiry date on this equation?

    Is it feasible as time passes to continue to blame the country's many problems on some barriers to trade that came in in 2019?

    How can a Government perform well and still leave room for 'everything being shit due to Brexit'?

    Is is not inevitable that any Government that wants to govern well run into retained EU legislation, or things like the ECHR, and want to alter these laws to prevent bat tunnels, theme parks being stopped due to jumping spiders, and the other EU-origin absurdities making Britain ungovernable and uneconomical?
    there are high speed railways being built all over EU countries with no bat tunnels, think you need to re-assess where our troubles lie.

    France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and many other EU countries are all capable of building infrastructure at a fraction of the cost we do in the UK.

    Something other than EU membership hampers our ability to invest in this country!!!
    It has nothing to do with 'ability to invest' - the bat tunnel was a direct result of Natural England enforcing the EU's 2017 Habitats and Species Regulations, which are part of retained EU law.

    If we wish to prevent future bat tunnels, we need to remove the retained law, and remove Natural England's legal right to enforce such laws without reference to Ministers. Doing so would mean we would no longer be aligned with EU species regulations, and make the prospect of rejoining harder and less attractive. But it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that we should keep the country in a Miss Havisham-like state of being ready to marry the EU in the future, when their laws are serving our needs so poorly.
    Or we do what the rest of the EU does and ignore the bits that are awkward / expensive / pointless and use some other means of mitigation
    We have shown ourselves completely incapable of taking that laissez faire attitude, ever since trading standards prowled the greengrocers of the land searching for people selling bananas by the pound.

    It was hard then, but would be impossible now, with quangos that are established for the sole reason of enforcing these things, and staffed by people obsessed with doing so. Ministers have no legal right to intervene with these people and say 'come on son'. So how, practically, would we do what you suggest?
    So it is in reality a UK problem then rather than an EU issue ?

    If we could sort ourselves out locally, like the other 27 countries, it would not be a problem ?
    The law is legally binding, meaning even if we did do a wink wink nudge nudge fudge, some newt-botherer could still sue and hold things up. I don't know how (or whether) they manage this on the Continent, but I don't see how we successfully manage to have a whole load of laws that we don't enforce.
    I think a lot of it is simply overzealous officials and Parliament being too scared to tell the courts to go fuck themselves by using primary legislation to override adverse rulings.
    They are overzealous, but the entire point of these quangos is to enforce these laws without reference to parliament or ministers. You could legislate to take that away, but effectively you are still disapplying retained EU law.
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