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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Why I’ve backed Diane Abbott to be next Labour leader

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    AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 23,763
    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Brave Sir Ivan ran away he bravely ran away etc
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Brave Sir Ivan ran away he bravely ran away etc
    No. He left the Brexiters to stew in their own juice.
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    AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 23,763
    surbiton said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Brave Sir Ivan ran away he bravely ran away etc
    No. He left the Brexiters to stew in their own juice.
    when the going got tough

    he legged it
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    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Brave Sir Ivan ran away he bravely ran away etc
    LOL, if you had to work with the Three Amigos as your bosses would you not be running Alan. After 9 months they will have a 3 word cunning plan and Brexit will be in it twice.
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076
    edited January 2017

    surbiton said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Brave Sir Ivan ran away he bravely ran away etc
    No. He left the Brexiters to stew in their own juice.
    when the going got tough

    he legged it
    pockets stuffed with public cash, when asked to do something other than ponce about , he runs.
  • Options
    AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 23,763
    malcolmg said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Brave Sir Ivan ran away he bravely ran away etc
    LOL, if you had to work with the Three Amigos as your bosses would you not be running Alan. After 9 months they will have a 3 word cunning plan and Brexit will be in it twice.
    well if he could stomach working with Osborne the 3 amigos are merely light relief :-)
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    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,006
    Just an aside, but if Rogers hadn't been such a pro-EU, Eeyorish curmudgeon then the 'deal' might actually have been worth the name and we'd still be in.
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    EssexitEssexit Posts: 1,956
    A good thread header TSE, but surely the definitive example of Corbyn's poor handling of the media is this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7Qk5XgD6dE
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    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144
    Dura_Ace said:

    The next Labour leader will positively, absolutely have to be a woman so maybe DA isn't beyond the realms of possibility. She also brings treasured BME status to the role. If she wins a GE she'd be the first PM since Spencer Perceval (who was also mental) to wear a wig.

    Time Diane moved on though from that Carry On Cleo look:

    http://d3l2rivt3pqnj2.cloudfront.net/highres_images/easyart/4/2/422413.jpg
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    It's not April 1st is it?
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941
    Young Sophy not going a bad job so far.
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    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    Theresa May seems unambiguous so far in her interview: "We will have control over our borders and control over our laws." Exactly what she said, in the latter respect, in her conference speech - that the jurisdiction of European law in Britain will end.

    She's denying her opponents a soundbite by refusing to say, bluntly, that "we are leaving the single market," but that is the clear implication. As was pretty obvious from virtually everything that May has said since becoming Prime Minister, the EFTA/EEA route is a non-starter. Looking at the correct relationship between the EU, and the UK as an external partner to the EU.
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    AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 23,763

    Just an aside, but if Rogers hadn't been such a pro-EU, Eeyorish curmudgeon then the 'deal' might actually have been worth the name and we'd still be in.

    quite.

    I love the spin that Sir Ivan who? the consummate professional has told the government what Brussels will accept, but appeared incapable of explaining to Brussels what his own nation needed to stay in

    One way diplomacy
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited January 2017
    May says she is aiming for 'a really good, ambitious trade deal with the EU to enable UK goods and services to have access to the single market' rather than keeping membership of the single market in Sophie Ridge interview on Sky News
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    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,006
    Mr. Brooke, not only that, a consummate professional wouldn't send a resignation e-mail critical of his employer, and helpful to those with whom his country will shortly be negotiating, to so many people its emergence into the glare of publicity was all but guaranteed.
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    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    Theresa May seems unambiguous so far in her interview: "We will have control over our borders and control over our laws." Exactly what she said, in the latter respect, in her conference speech - that the jurisdiction of European law in Britain will end.

    She's denying her opponents a soundbite by refusing to say, bluntly, that "we are leaving the single market," but that is the clear implication. As was pretty obvious from virtually everything that May has said since becoming Prime Minister, the EFTA/EEA route is a non-starter. Looking at the correct relationship between the EU, and the UK as an external partner to the EU.

    We may not be in the EEA but there is no reason we cannot rejoin EFTA, Switzerland is not in the EEA but is a member of EFTA for example
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    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076
    edited January 2017
    A hard rain is gonna fall, it will be as hard as you like and more expensive, good old Tories.
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    TGOHFTGOHF Posts: 21,633
    Pretty clear we are leaving the EU. Wonder if the Remoaners will hear the clear message this time.
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    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146
    malcolmg said:

    A hard rain is gonna fall
    Idiot wind.
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited January 2017
    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
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    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/818046954366259200

    She does know that outcomes require means to achieve them, right?
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    AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 23,763

    Mr. Brooke, not only that, a consummate professional wouldn't send a resignation e-mail critical of his employer, and helpful to those with whom his country will shortly be negotiating, to so many people its emergence into the glare of publicity was all but guaranteed.

    Sir Ivan Rogers his own country
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    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076

    malcolmg said:

    A hard rain is gonna fall
    Idiot wind.
    que
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    "She’s a polished television performer"

    When I read this, I just had to laugh out loud - since in my opinion she is anything but. For one thing, she is singularly inept at thinking on her feet, an absolute prerequisite for anyone with serious ambitions of achieving senior political office. This is exemplified by her trademark not to mention highly irritating and so transparent habit of looking skywards whilst blinking at a rate of knots whenever she is struggling for an answer to a question, which is often.
    If TSE is really serious in suggesting such a fanciful proposition then, as a Tory, all I can say with gleeful hope is Yeah, bring it on!
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549

    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/818046954366259200

    She does know that outcomes require means to achieve them, right?

    I don't think she has the nous to understand that. She wraps herself round silly meaningless phrases like "red, white and blue" Brexit. Whatever the focus group means by it.
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    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146
    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    A hard rain is gonna fall
    Idiot wind.
    que
    http://bobdylan.com/songs/idiot-wind/
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    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076
    HYUFD said:

    Theresa May seems unambiguous so far in her interview: "We will have control over our borders and control over our laws." Exactly what she said, in the latter respect, in her conference speech - that the jurisdiction of European law in Britain will end.

    She's denying her opponents a soundbite by refusing to say, bluntly, that "we are leaving the single market," but that is the clear implication. As was pretty obvious from virtually everything that May has said since becoming Prime Minister, the EFTA/EEA route is a non-starter. Looking at the correct relationship between the EU, and the UK as an external partner to the EU.

    We may not be in the EEA but there is no reason we cannot rejoin EFTA, Switzerland is not in the EEA but is a member of EFTA for example
    You re very optimistic
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    EssexitEssexit Posts: 1,956

    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/818046954366259200

    She does know that outcomes require means to achieve them, right?

    Hey, pasting Faisal Islam tweets is Scott's job!
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited January 2017
    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Theresa May seems unambiguous so far in her interview: "We will have control over our borders and control over our laws." Exactly what she said, in the latter respect, in her conference speech - that the jurisdiction of European law in Britain will end.

    She's denying her opponents a soundbite by refusing to say, bluntly, that "we are leaving the single market," but that is the clear implication. As was pretty obvious from virtually everything that May has said since becoming Prime Minister, the EFTA/EEA route is a non-starter. Looking at the correct relationship between the EU, and the UK as an external partner to the EU.

    We may not be in the EEA but there is no reason we cannot rejoin EFTA, Switzerland is not in the EEA but is a member of EFTA for example
    You re very optimistic
    Membership of EFTA is separate from the EU/EEA, in fact the UK was one of the original members of EFTA before it joined the EEC along with Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Norway and Switzerland (the latter two still in EFTA)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Free_Trade_Association
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    Six years at the Home Office and uncontrolled immigration. I am not talking about immigration from the EU.

    She was inept at her job. She only schemed in the background to be PM. And everyone thought it was the bumbling idiot.
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    edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,151
    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    malcolmg said:

    HYUFD said:

    Theresa May seems unambiguous so far in her interview: "We will have control over our borders and control over our laws." Exactly what she said, in the latter respect, in her conference speech - that the jurisdiction of European law in Britain will end.

    She's denying her opponents a soundbite by refusing to say, bluntly, that "we are leaving the single market," but that is the clear implication. As was pretty obvious from virtually everything that May has said since becoming Prime Minister, the EFTA/EEA route is a non-starter. Looking at the correct relationship between the EU, and the UK as an external partner to the EU.

    We may not be in the EEA but there is no reason we cannot rejoin EFTA, Switzerland is not in the EEA but is a member of EFTA for example
    You re very optimistic
    Two words come to mind. Clutch, straw.
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    SimonStClareSimonStClare Posts: 7,976
    Morning all.

    “Labour will return to political sanity and appoint” - er, Diane Abbott…!

    That’s political satire, not sanity.
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    But Edmund you do not seem to understand. They [ the whole EU ] will do anything to protect the German car industry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941
    HYUFD said:
    At least he didn't call her Teresa May!
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    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144

    Mr. Brooke, not only that, a consummate professional wouldn't send a resignation e-mail critical of his employer, and helpful to those with whom his country will shortly be negotiating, to so many people its emergence into the glare of publicity was all but guaranteed.

    Sir Ivan Rogers his own country
    That only works if his own country isn't the EU superstate....
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941
    surbiton said:

    https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/818046954366259200

    She does know that outcomes require means to achieve them, right?

    I don't think she has the nous to understand that. She wraps herself round silly meaningless phrases like "red, white and blue" Brexit. Whatever the focus group means by it.
    To be fair to the PM on the "Red, White and Blue" quote, the question she was asked was whether she thought Brexit should be black, white or some mushy grey in the middle. Her reply does make sense in context.
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    TGOHF said:

    Pretty clear we are leaving the EU. Wonder if the Remoaners will hear the clear message this time.

    Don't you worry. By early 2019 Remainers and Brexiters will all hear the clear message when the WTO rules set in.
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them. The fact they did not even bother meant a Leave vote was inevitable and they have nobody to blame but themselves
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146
    edited January 2017
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them.
    Transitional controls are a standard part of any accession process, and it was the UK that unilaterally waived then in the case of the A8 countries...

    I'm perplexed by the argument that they should have asked for things that were already in our power.
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them. The fact they did not even bother meant a Leave vote was inevitable and they have nobody to blame but themselves
    I thought everyone hated the EU ?
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    surbiton said:

    TGOHF said:

    Pretty clear we are leaving the EU. Wonder if the Remoaners will hear the clear message this time.

    Don't you worry. By early 2019 Remainers and Brexiters will all hear the clear message when the WTO rules set in.
    So will German car manufacturers and French wine makers if it ever comes to that
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    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    On that general subject, perhaps we can add Brexit to the list of events that can be laid at the door of Tony Blair?

    If we'd not had out-of-control population growth since 2004 then would Ukip have got as strong as it did, would Cameron have felt obliged to offer a referendum to keep a lid on his Eurosceptic problem, and would Leave have been able to gather enough support to get over the finishing line?

    Rubbing peoples' noses in diversity - a tactic that has worked out so, so well.
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    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    But Edmund you do not seem to understand. They [ the whole EU ] will do anything to protect the German car industry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    What has transitional migration controls when we were still in the EU got to do with the German car industry, Germany itself got transitional migration controls in 2004 and still had full single market membership because Schroder was far sharper on this than Blair
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    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them.
    Transitional controls are a standard part of any accession process, and it was the UK that unilaterally waived then in the case of the A8 countries...

    I'm perplexed by the argument that they should have asked for things that were already in our power.
    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.
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    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146

    If we'd not had out-of-control population growth since 2004...

    Look at the huge spike in non-EU migration from 1997 onwards. At no point has EU migration been higher than non-EU. If we're laying the blame at New Labour's door, the problems started well before 2004.
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    EssexitEssexit Posts: 1,956

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    On that general subject, perhaps we can add Brexit to the list of events that can be laid at the door of Tony Blair?

    If we'd not had out-of-control population growth since 2004 then would Ukip have got as strong as it did, would Cameron have felt obliged to offer a referendum to keep a lid on his Eurosceptic problem, and would Leave have been able to gather enough support to get over the finishing line?

    Rubbing peoples' noses in diversity - a tactic that has worked out so, so well.
    Thanks Tony
  • Options
    DromedaryDromedary Posts: 1,194
    edited January 2017
    I had to laugh at this bit:

    "She’s an educated lady, she read History under Professor Simon Schama at the finest university in the world, The University of Cambridge."

    It's an institution that's so fine that its capitalisation spreads even to a preceding definite article that doesn't start a sentence! And the message is so strong, so pure, so elevated, that even a run-on sentence can convey it!

    Seriously, TSE, a person doesn't gain intellect or sense just by going to Cambridge, nor by being lectured by a royalist twat like Simon Schama, who's always known what side his bread is buttered on.

    Being one of her lecturers and perhaps also a sometime supervisor for a course or two was Schama's maximum involvement in her education at Cambridge anyway. She probably had 20 or more academics who had a similar or greater level of involvement with her. What does it even mean to say that she studied "under" him? She was at Newnham and he was a fellow at Christ's, so he wouldn't have been her director of studies.

    I strongly doubt that she got a first. She may have a history degree from Cambridge - in other words, she didn't fail or drop out - but she still seems to be crap at that subject. Here's something she wrote long after she left:

    "From the days when the Norman French invaded Anglo-Saxon Britain, we have been a culturally diverse nation. But because the different nationalities shared a common skin colour, it was possible to ignore the racial diversity which always existed in the British Isles. And even if you take race to mean what it is often commonly meant to imply - skin colour- there have been black people in Britain for centuries. The earliest blacks in Britain were probably black Roman centurions that came over hundreds of years before Christ."
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076

    malcolmg said:

    malcolmg said:

    A hard rain is gonna fall
    Idiot wind.
    que
    http://bobdylan.com/songs/idiot-wind/
    Thank you
  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,006
    Mr. Rook, like killing Scottish nationalism stone dead with devolution. Blair was a strategic idiot.
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076
    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them.
    Transitional controls are a standard part of any accession process, and it was the UK that unilaterally waived then in the case of the A8 countries...

    I'm perplexed by the argument that they should have asked for things that were already in our power.
    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.
    Pigs will also fly
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them.
    Transitional controls are a standard part of any accession process, and it was the UK that unilaterally waived then in the case of the A8 countries...

    I'm perplexed by the argument that they should have asked for things that were already in our power.
    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.
    What we also got was downward pressure on the wages of the low paid and pressure on housing and public services leading to the inevitable Leave vote
  • Options
    Black_RookBlack_Rook Posts: 8,905
    surbiton said:

    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.

    Rather more than a million, I'd wager. In any event, it's a Ponzi scheme: what happens when the imported workers get old?

    And a prediction: many or most of the flood of unchecked migrants that Germany took in will be poorly educated and struggle to find jobs. And what happens when young Middle Eastern men become disillusioned, frustrated, bored and start to resent the society that won't give them everything they dreamt of? Hmmm, I wonder...?
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    edited January 2017
    Been out.

    2-line summary of Tezza's performance pls.
  • Options
    edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,151
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them. The fact they did not even bother meant a Leave vote was inevitable and they have nobody to blame but themselves
    Britain already had the right to get transitional controls on new accession - it could have vetoed their accession otherwise. I suppose he could have asked for something he already had as a ruse to bamboozle fuckwitted people, but there's a fine line between bold, shameless political audacity and transparent bollocks that gets you laughed at.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    If we'd not had out-of-control population growth since 2004...

    Look at the huge spike in non-EU migration from 1997 onwards. At no point has EU migration been higher than non-EU. If we're laying the blame at New Labour's door, the problems started well before 2004.
    Actually in 2016 Poland overtook India as the main source of migrants to the UK
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37183733
  • Options
    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    HYUFD said:

    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    But Edmund you do not seem to understand. They [ the whole EU ] will do anything to protect the German car industry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    What has transitional migration controls when we were still in the EU got to do with the German car industry, Germany itself got transitional migration controls in 2004 and still had full single market membership because Schroder was far sharper on this than Blair
    Nothing. What I meant was that there was a huge impression amongst Leavers [ much less now ] that the EU will do anything to keep the Germans exporting their cars to the UK.

    They talked about balance of trade deficits. Forgetting that the EU exports to the UK were just over 3% of their combined GDP whereas for the UK it is 10% of our GDP.

    Yes, the total exports from the EU is higher than our exports to them but that is for 27 countries. Individually, it is not even a can of beans.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144
    TOPPING said:

    Been out.

    2-line summary of Tezza's performance pls.

    Holding the line. Brexit means Brexit.
  • Options
    malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 42,076
    TOPPING said:

    Been out.

    2-line summary of Tezza's performance pls.

    dithering meaningless platitudes I suspect
  • Options
    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    HYUFD said:

    If we'd not had out-of-control population growth since 2004...

    Look at the huge spike in non-EU migration from 1997 onwards. At no point has EU migration been higher than non-EU. If we're laying the blame at New Labour's door, the problems started well before 2004.
    Actually in 2016 Poland overtook India as the main source of migrants to the UK
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37183733
    Why do we have so many Indians coming here ? What was T May doing when she was at the Home Office ?
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them. The fact they did not even bother meant a Leave vote was inevitable and they have nobody to blame but themselves
    I thought everyone hated the EU ?
    Obviously poor countries still love it!
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146
    HYUFD said:

    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    But Edmund you do not seem to understand. They [ the whole EU ] will do anything to protect the German car industry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    What has transitional migration controls when we were still in the EU got to do with the German car industry, Germany itself got transitional migration controls in 2004 and still had full single market membership because Schroder was far sharper on this than Blair
    Do you seriously think Germany had a special deal that wasn't available to the UK? I didn't have you down as quite that ignorant.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them.
    Transitional controls are a standard part of any accession process, and it was the UK that unilaterally waived then in the case of the A8 countries...

    I'm perplexed by the argument that they should have asked for things that were already in our power.
    Certainly the principal cause of the Leave vote was Tony Blair but Cameron and Rogers did little to redress the damage
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,002

    "She’s a polished television performer"

    When I read this, I just had to laugh out loud - since in my opinion she is anything but. For one thing, she is singularly inept at thinking on her feet, an absolute prerequisite for anyone with serious ambitions of achieving senior political office. This is exemplified by her trademark not to mention highly irritating and so transparent habit of looking skywards whilst blinking at a rate of knots whenever she is struggling for an answer to a question, which is often.
    If TSE is really serious in suggesting such a fanciful proposition then, as a Tory, all I can say with gleeful hope is Yeah, bring it on!

    Talking of 'polished performers'

    https://youtu.be/zZ-r7iJZiBM
  • Options
    PongPong Posts: 4,693
    edited January 2017
    This isn't a crazy bet at ~100/1

    Good luck TSE!
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,403
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them.
    Transitional controls are a standard part of any accession process, and it was the UK that unilaterally waived then in the case of the A8 countries...

    I'm perplexed by the argument that they should have asked for things that were already in our power.
    Certainly the principal cause of the Leave vote was Tony Blair but Cameron and Rogers did little to redress the damage
    Old and New Lab were at the heart of our decision to leave.
  • Options
    Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 61,006
    Mr. Rook, it was over a million in 2015 alone, just to Germany.
  • Options
    MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 50,144
    Dromedary said:

    I had to laugh at this bit:

    "She’s an educated lady, she read History under Professor Simon Schama at the finest university in the world, The University of Cambridge."

    It's an institution that's so fine that its capitalisation spreads even to a preceding definite article that doesn't start a sentence! And the message is so strong, so pure, so elevated, that even a run-on sentence can convey it!

    Seriously, TSE, a person doesn't gain intellect or sense just by going to Cambridge, nor by being lectured by a royalist twat like Simon Schama, who's always known what side his bread is buttered on.

    Being one of her lecturers and perhaps also a sometime supervisor for a course or two was Schama's maximum involvement in her education at Cambridge anyway. She probably had 20 or more academics who had a similar or greater level of involvement with her. What does it even mean to say that she studied "under" him? She was at Newnham and he was a fellow at Christ's, so he wouldn't have been her director of studies.

    I strongly doubt that she got a first. She may have a history degree from Cambridge - in other words, she didn't fail or drop out - but she still seems to be crap at that subject. Here's something she wrote long after she left:

    "From the days when the Norman French invaded Anglo-Saxon Britain, we have been a culturally diverse nation. But because the different nationalities shared a common skin colour, it was possible to ignore the racial diversity which always existed in the British Isles. And even if you take race to mean what it is often commonly meant to imply - skin colour- there have been black people in Britain for centuries. The earliest blacks in Britain were probably black Roman centurions that came over hundreds of years before Christ."

    That is spectacularly embarrassing!

    *Professor Simon Schama starts deleting bits of his CV...starting with ever being at Cambridge.*
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    On that general subject, perhaps we can add Brexit to the list of events that can be laid at the door of Tony Blair?

    If we'd not had out-of-control population growth since 2004 then would Ukip have got as strong as it did, would Cameron have felt obliged to offer a referendum to keep a lid on his Eurosceptic problem, and would Leave have been able to gather enough support to get over the finishing line?

    Rubbing peoples' noses in diversity - a tactic that has worked out so, so well.
    No, no and no so you are absolutely right. For example in the 1999 European elections UKIP got 7% and 3 seats but by 2004 that had risen to 16% and 12 seats
  • Options
    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    edited January 2017

    surbiton said:

    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.

    Rather more than a million, I'd wager. In any event, it's a Ponzi scheme: what happens when the imported workers get old?

    And a prediction: many or most of the flood of unchecked migrants that Germany took in will be poorly educated and struggle to find jobs. And what happens when young Middle Eastern men become disillusioned, frustrated, bored and start to resent the society that won't give them everything they dreamt of? Hmmm, I wonder...?
    You mean like the 3m Turks already there ? They are German ! Their children are becoming world cup winners.

    You have understandable difficulty to understand this. To you, a foreigner is always a foreigner including their children.

    Get it straight. Many of the Britons today are sons and daughters of immigrants.
  • Options

    HYUFD said:

    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    But Edmund you do not seem to understand. They [ the whole EU ] will do anything to protect the German car industry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    What has transitional migration controls when we were still in the EU got to do with the German car industry, Germany itself got transitional migration controls in 2004 and still had full single market membership because Schroder was far sharper on this than Blair
    Do you seriously think Germany had a special deal that wasn't available to the UK? I didn't have you down as quite that ignorant.
    Transition arrangements for immigrants were available to Blair/Brown but deliberately chose not to use them thinking the immigrants would eventually become British Labour voters.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited January 2017
    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    If we'd not had out-of-control population growth since 2004...

    Look at the huge spike in non-EU migration from 1997 onwards. At no point has EU migration been higher than non-EU. If we're laying the blame at New Labour's door, the problems started well before 2004.
    Actually in 2016 Poland overtook India as the main source of migrants to the UK
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37183733
    Why do we have so many Indians coming here ? What was T May doing when she was at the Home Office ?
    The number of Indians has pretty much flatlined, the number of Pakistanis has started to fall, it is Poles which saw the biggest rise with Romanians and Bulgarians also growing
  • Options
    AlanbrookeAlanbrooke Posts: 23,763
    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,146

    Transition arrangements for immigrants were available to Blair/Brown but deliberately chose not to use them thinking the immigrants would eventually become British Labour voters.

    How? EU citizens have no reason to seek British citizenship and hence get the right to vote in national elections.

    Labour's motivation was purely opportunistic as a way of boosting the economy and thinking we could steal a march on France and Germany.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them. The fact they did not even bother meant a Leave vote was inevitable and they have nobody to blame but themselves
    Britain already had the right to get transitional controls on new accession - it could have vetoed their accession otherwise. I suppose he could have asked for something he already had as a ruse to bamboozle fuckwitted people, but there's a fine line between bold, shameless political audacity and transparent bollocks that gets you laughed at.
    Oh for goodness sake Cameron did not even bother, negotiations are meant to be tough but for fear of being 'laughed' at Cameron got a joke renegotiation which the British people saw as amounting to nothing leading to their Leave vote and the end of his premiership
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html

    Looks like you will be getting plenty of invites for coffee!
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    Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    surbiton said:

    surbiton said:

    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.

    Rather more than a million, I'd wager. In any event, it's a Ponzi scheme: what happens when the imported workers get old?

    And a prediction: many or most of the flood of unchecked migrants that Germany took in will be poorly educated and struggle to find jobs. And what happens when young Middle Eastern men become disillusioned, frustrated, bored and start to resent the society that won't give them everything they dreamt of? Hmmm, I wonder...?
    You mean like the 3m Turks already there ? They are German ! Their children are becoming world cup winners.

    You have understandable difficulty to understand this. To you, a foreigner is always a foreigner including their children.

    Get it straight. Many of the Britons today are sons and daughters of immigrants.
    And many of those sons and daughters of immigrants want to see tighter checks on immigration. And voted leave for that reason. Inconvenient facts which you have to ignore because you want to cling to your delusion that racism underlies concern about immigration.
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    dr_spyndr_spyn Posts: 11,290
    Buyer's remorse...

    Abbott, Labour Leader, a woman with such talent that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown failed to use it.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    edited January 2017
    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    But Edmund you do not seem to understand. They [ the whole EU ] will do anything to protect the German car industry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    What has transitional migration controls when we were still in the EU got to do with the
    Nothing. What I meant was that there was a huge impression amongst Leavers [ much less now ] that the EU will do anything to keep the Germans exporting their cars to the UK.

    They talked about balance of trade deficits. Forgetting that the EU exports to the UK were just over 3% of their combined GDP whereas for the UK it is 10% of our GDP.

    Yes, the total exports from the EU is higher than our exports to them but that is for 27 countries. Individually, it is not even a can of beans.
    The vote to Leave was ultimately to control our borders, people knew there may be some short term economic costs (though likely less than the worst Remoaners expect) but they were prepared to put immigration control over economics
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    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,426

    Dromedary said:

    I had to laugh at this bit:

    "She’s an educated lady, she read History under Professor Simon Schama at the finest university in the world, The University of Cambridge."

    It's an institution that's so fine that its capitalisation spreads even to a preceding definite article that doesn't start a sentence! And the message is so strong, so pure, so elevated, that even a run-on sentence can convey it!

    Seriously, TSE, a person doesn't gain intellect or sense just by going to Cambridge, nor by being lectured by a royalist twat like Simon Schama, who's always known what side his bread is buttered on.

    Being one of her lecturers and perhaps also a sometime supervisor for a course or two was Schama's maximum involvement in her education at Cambridge anyway. She probably had 20 or more academics who had a similar or greater level of involvement with her. What does it even mean to say that she studied "under" him? She was at Newnham and he was a fellow at Christ's, so he wouldn't have been her director of studies.

    I strongly doubt that she got a first. She may have a history degree from Cambridge - in other words, she didn't fail or drop out - but she still seems to be crap at that subject. Here's something she wrote long after she left:

    "From the days when the Norman French invaded Anglo-Saxon Britain, we have been a culturally diverse nation. But because the different nationalities shared a common skin colour, it was possible to ignore the racial diversity which always existed in the British Isles. And even if you take race to mean what it is often commonly meant to imply - skin colour- there have been black people in Britain for centuries. The earliest blacks in Britain were probably black Roman centurions that came over hundreds of years before Christ."

    That is spectacularly embarrassing!

    *Professor Simon Schama starts deleting bits of his CV...starting with ever being at Cambridge.*
    According to BBC website she once played Lady MacDuff alongside Michael Portillo as MacDuff (as in the Scottish play).
  • Options
    Apparently GCHQ were first to identify the Russians were hacking the US Democrats files.

    Not sure if this will mean Trump is more friendly or less friendly to the UK.
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    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941

    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html

    It's always amusing to see the 'average' man admit to 50% more partners than the 'average' woman.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164

    HYUFD said:

    surbiton said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    But Edmund you do not seem to understand. They [ the whole EU ] will do anything to protect the German car industry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    What has transitional migration controls when we were still in the EU got to do with the German car industry, Germany itself got transitional migration controls in 2004 and still had full single market membership because Schroder was far sharper on this than Blair
    Do you seriously think Germany had a special deal that wasn't available to the UK? I didn't have you down as quite that ignorant.
    It got a deal which it took and Blair refused
  • Options
    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549

    Apparently GCHQ were first to identify the Russians were hacking the US Democrats files.

    Not sure if this will mean Trump is more friendly or less friendly to the UK.

    No one can prove this. This could be GCHQ publicity.
  • Options
    HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 117,164
    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    daodao said:

    HYUFD said:

    A Canadian 'authority' who says a trade deal could take a decade to negotiate is hardly the same thing as saying the Canadian government warns of Brexit catastrophe
    But Sir Ivan Rogers said that the same thing and he is/was in a position to know the real situation in Brussels. He is going because HMG didn't want the unpalatable truth revealed at this stage, namely that the only real options on the table are not to trigger A50 or have a painfully hard Brexit. Frankly, the EU27 hold the whip hand.
    Sir Ivan Rogers must share much of the blame for Brexit in the first place due to his complete failure to get an effective renegotiation and even the Eastern European migrant break Blair rejected but most EU leaders took in 2004. Given his record then he was hardly the best person to get the best possible deal now
    The deal you're dreaming of was never going to happen, as was obvious at the time. Anybody who follows European politics knew this. Cameron must have known it. The goal was to get him through the election without saying whether he supported in or out.

    The reason countries could get transitional migration controls was because they had individual vetoes on accession. That's a completely different situation from the one where they're already in, and you're asking elected politicians to volunteer to screw their own citizens to keep a foreign country's voters happy.
    Plenty of new countries likely to come into the EU in the next few years, Albania and Bosnia Herzegovina and Macedonia are all candidate countries and Cameron and Rogers could have got transitional migration controls on future accession countries like them.
    Transitional controls are a standard part of any accession process, and it was the UK that unilaterally waived then in the case of the A8 countries...

    I'm perplexed by the argument that they should have asked for things that were already in our power.
    Certainly the principal cause of the Leave vote was Tony Blair but Cameron and Rogers did little to redress the damage
    Old and New Lab were at the heart of our decision to leave.
    Indeed but it was Blair and Brown who are the most to blame
  • Options
    OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 32,062

    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html

    It’s St Albans coming second that makes me furiously to think!
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    DromedaryDromedary Posts: 1,194

    Transition arrangements for immigrants were available to Blair/Brown but deliberately chose not to use them thinking the immigrants would eventually become British Labour voters.

    That is not the reason. A high level of immigration has been supported by all major political parties since the 1950s and 1960s for the simple reason that employers want it because it helps keep labour costs down. Blair and Brown would not have been so stupid as to believe that the immigrants would mostly eventually become Labour voters. I doubt they cared a hoot what Labour's voteshare would be 20 or more years after they left politics.

  • Options
    David_EvershedDavid_Evershed Posts: 6,506
    edited January 2017
    Sandpit said:

    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html

    It's always amusing to see the 'average' man admit to 50% more partners than the 'average' woman.
    But mathmatically possible.
  • Options
    rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,426
    isam said:

    "She’s a polished television performer"

    When I read this, I just had to laugh out loud - since in my opinion she is anything but. For one thing, she is singularly inept at thinking on her feet, an absolute prerequisite for anyone with serious ambitions of achieving senior political office. This is exemplified by her trademark not to mention highly irritating and so transparent habit of looking skywards whilst blinking at a rate of knots whenever she is struggling for an answer to a question, which is often.
    If TSE is really serious in suggesting such a fanciful proposition then, as a Tory, all I can say with gleeful hope is Yeah, bring it on!

    Talking of 'polished performers'

    https://youtu.be/zZ-r7iJZiBM
    The thread header certainly made me laugh out loud. So utterly, inconceivably bonkers that the Labour party is probably going to go right ahead and do it.
  • Options
    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549
    Ishmael_Z said:

    surbiton said:

    surbiton said:

    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.

    Rather more than a million, I'd wager. In any event, it's a Ponzi scheme: what happens when the imported workers get old?

    And a prediction: many or most of the flood of unchecked migrants that Germany took in will be poorly educated and struggle to find jobs. And what happens when young Middle Eastern men become disillusioned, frustrated, bored and start to resent the society that won't give them everything they dreamt of? Hmmm, I wonder...?
    You mean like the 3m Turks already there ? They are German ! Their children are becoming world cup winners.

    You have understandable difficulty to understand this. To you, a foreigner is always a foreigner including their children.

    Get it straight. Many of the Britons today are sons and daughters of immigrants.
    And many of those sons and daughters of immigrants want to see tighter checks on immigration. And voted leave for that reason. Inconvenient facts which you have to ignore because you want to cling to your delusion that racism underlies concern about immigration.
    Isn't it a good thing that immigrants start behaving like any other people ? So why not have some more ? Despite all these immigrants, our unemployment kept on falling.

    Maybe, they were adding to the economy , not taking anything away.
  • Options
    surbitonsurbiton Posts: 13,549

    Sandpit said:

    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html

    It's always amusing to see the 'average' man admit to 50% more partners than the 'average' woman.
    But mathmatically posssible.
    Some of the "partners" could be professionals too !
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,590
    Ishmael_Z said:

    surbiton said:

    surbiton said:

    And we got good economic growth out of it. Also, our pensions "problem" has been all but mitigated by adding almost a million new [young] taxpayers.

    Germany will also get the same benefit soon.

    Rather more than a million, I'd wager. In any event, it's a Ponzi scheme: what happens when the imported workers get old?

    And a prediction: many or most of the flood of unchecked migrants that Germany took in will be poorly educated and struggle to find jobs. And what happens when young Middle Eastern men become disillusioned, frustrated, bored and start to resent the society that won't give them everything they dreamt of? Hmmm, I wonder...?
    You mean like the 3m Turks already there ? They are German ! Their children are becoming world cup winners.

    You have understandable difficulty to understand this. To you, a foreigner is always a foreigner including their children.

    Get it straight. Many of the Britons today are sons and daughters of immigrants.
    And many of those sons and daughters of immigrants want to see tighter checks on immigration. And voted leave for that reason. Inconvenient facts which you have to ignore because you want to cling to your delusion that racism underlies concern about immigration.
    Personal anecdote alert - all the people I know (immediate family, friends) who voted Leave are 1st/2nd generation immigrants - and tried to persuade me to join them.... (I voted Remain) Living in central London biases the results of course.

    The motivations were interesting - since they had all jumped through the hoops of the complex, expensive and lengthy legal process to stay in the UK from outside the EU, ease of movement wasn't an issue for them. A tale of having to get a visa for going to France is a joke to them...

    Interestingly it was immigration, but with interesting concerns -

    - "Why are the people running the country determined to import violent fuckwits without any checks, when I have x cousins at home who don't hate the UK and want to live there?"
    - "I came to this country because it was the UK. Not [insert third world country]"
    - "In my country we were colonised by the French. I don't want to live in a country partly run by them"

  • Options
    HYUFD said:

    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html

    Looks like you will be getting plenty of invites for coffee!

    Anyone fu coffee?
  • Options
    kyf_100kyf_100 Posts: 3,963
    I stuck the princely sum of £2 on Abbott last week at 129/1 after thinking about her path to power. My fevered imagination goes something like this:

    It's 2019. Corbyn knows he's not going to win. He stands down, citing his age (also the fact his egotistical streak won't *let* him be remembered as the man who led Labour to it's worst ever defeat).

    Who takes over? Unless something drastic changes between now and 2020, a Tory victory is a dead cert. McDonnell doesn't want it, because he knows he's so linked to the Corbyn project failure in 2020 will mean he has to stand down - and a McDonnell loss in 2020 would still discredit the Corbyn project.

    Enter Abbott. Shadow home sec. Close to the Corbyn project. And the optics! Black, female, right on...

    She will allow the Labour party to lose in 2020 while feeling good about itself.

    The left can then tut at the country on twitter for "not being ready for it's first black female PM etc" without the need to disavow the hard left policies the Corbyn project stands for, allowing a more plausible candidate from the left to become leader after 2020 and fight a ropey and disunited dog-days-of-the-Major-years Tory party to become PM in 2025.

    Abbott is the best candidate the left can put up in 2020 because it will allow them to lose without drifting back to the centre. For those reasons, she's still worth a punt.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,590
    edited January 2017

    Dromedary said:

    I had to laugh at this bit:

    "She’s an educated lady, she read History under Professor Simon Schama at the finest university in the world, The University of Cambridge."

    It's an institution that's so fine that its capitalisation spreads even to a preceding definite article that doesn't start a sentence! And the message is so strong, so pure, so elevated, that even a run-on sentence can convey it!

    Seriously, TSE, a person doesn't gain intellect or sense just by going to Cambridge, nor by being lectured by a royalist twat like Simon Schama, who's always known what side his bread is buttered on.

    Being one of her lecturers and perhaps also a sometime supervisor for a course or two was Schama's maximum involvement in her education at Cambridge anyway. She probably had 20 or more academics who had a similar or greater level of involvement with her. What does it even mean to say that she studied "under" him? She was at Newnham and he was a fellow at Christ's, so he wouldn't have been her director of studies.

    I strongly doubt that she got a first. She may have a history degree from Cambridge - in other words, she didn't fail or drop out - but she still seems to be crap at that subject. Here's something she wrote long after she left:

    "From the days when the Norman French invaded Anglo-Saxon Britain, we have been a culturally diverse nation. But because the different nationalities shared a common skin colour, it was possible to ignore the racial diversity which always existed in the British Isles. And even if you take race to mean what it is often commonly meant to imply - skin colour- there have been black people in Britain for centuries. The earliest blacks in Britain were probably black Roman centurions that came over hundreds of years before Christ."

    That is spectacularly embarrassing!

    *Professor Simon Schama starts deleting bits of his CV...starting with ever being at Cambridge.*
    Ignoring the AD - BC screwup....

    Honest question - would the Roman army have ever had a black Centurion? They were very racist - the.... Latin word word for those of African origin.... was used as an extreme insult (see a speech by Cicero) in the ugliest sense. But then again, the Romans, in the end, made just about anyone a citizen and the army contained every nationality they included in the Empire
  • Options

    Dromedary said:

    I had to laugh at this bit:

    "She’s an educated lady, she read History under Professor Simon Schama at the finest university in the world, The University of Cambridge."

    It's an institution that's so fine that its capitalisation spreads even to a preceding definite article that doesn't start a sentence! And the message is so strong, so pure, so elevated, that even a run-on sentence can convey it!

    Seriously, TSE, a person doesn't gain intellect or sense just by going to Cambridge, nor by being lectured by a royalist twat like Simon Schama, who's always known what side his bread is buttered on.

    Being one of her lecturers and perhaps also a sometime supervisor for a course or two was Schama's maximum involvement in her education at Cambridge anyway. She probably had 20 or more academics who had a similar or greater level of involvement with her. What does it even mean to say that she studied "under" him? She was at Newnham and he was a fellow at Christ's, so he wouldn't have been her director of studies.

    I strongly doubt that she got a first. She may have a history degree from Cambridge - in other words, she didn't fail or drop out - but she still seems to be crap at that subject. Here's something she wrote long after she left:

    "From the days when the Norman French invaded Anglo-Saxon Britain, we have been a culturally diverse nation. But because the different nationalities shared a common skin colour, it was possible to ignore the racial diversity which always existed in the British Isles. And even if you take race to mean what it is often commonly meant to imply - skin colour- there have been black people in Britain for centuries. The earliest blacks in Britain were probably black Roman centurions that came over hundreds of years before Christ."

    That is spectacularly embarrassing!

    *Professor Simon Schama starts deleting bits of his CV...starting with ever being at Cambridge.*
    According to BBC website she once played Lady MacDuff alongside Michael Portillo as MacDuff (as in the Scottish play).
    Abott and Portillo went to the same comprehensive school at the same time.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,941
    edited January 2017

    Sandpit said:

    this looks like trouble.

    I'm working in Wolverhampton most of this month


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4098820/People-WOLVERHAMPTON-say-sexual-partners-UK.html

    It's always amusing to see the 'average' man admit to 50% more partners than the 'average' woman.
    But mathmatically posssible.
    Yes, if there are a relatively small number of very promiscuous women in the sample.

    To get an average of over 40 though, that requires either a large number of 'professional' women in the sample, or a lot of keen amateurs. Welcome to Wolverhampton!
This discussion has been closed.