Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
"Legislation to be introduced in subsequent sessions will include:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) Bill. This would require that by the next general election, the NHS receives a £100 million per week real-terms cash transfusion over and above current plans. This will be paid for by savings from the UK’s contributions to the EU budget and other savings from leaving (e.g. we will not pay the billions that the ECJ is ordering us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
£100 million not £350mn. Which Gove ran his leadership campaign based on honouring.
Any discussion about second referendums which ignores the more pressing decision about whether SindyRef 2 can or should be blocked is wide of the mark.
SindyRef 2 is innocent. OK.
If Nicola wins, Brexit will become politically impossible.
After A50 is passed, we are leaving in some shape or form.
The chance of the court saying that A50 is reversible is remote because it would void the whole point of the article - and even if it did it would be completely politically unacceptable for the same reasons.
If A50 is reversible there is nothing to stop the EU offering the most objectionable deal possible in order to force a reversal.
Conversely, and more importantly for the EU, there is equally nothing to stop the UK enacting Article 50, negotiating for two years, deciding it doesn't like the deal, and reversing Article 50. Then the next year enacting Article 50 again and having another go at getting a better deal.
A reversible A50 makes the two year deadline pointless as it lets the applying country chicken out as many times as it likes and then resubmit its application to leave until it gets the deal it likes.
obviously all this is premised on British voters actually coming around to the view that Brexit is a stupid idea, and at this point there's no evidence that they will.
Because it's not. We are still fundamentally incompatible with their superstate direction of travel. Brexit is a necessary thing - imagine the violence and pain that would ensue a few years or decades down the line as we got ever further down the road to European socialist undemocratic serfdom. We got it spot on and dodged a bullet.
Not particularly planning on re-litigating the question of whether Brexit is a stupid idea or not, but one specific point: European socialism isn't really a thing nowadays, not least because if you're in the Eurozone you have free trade and hard currency, which means you're in for a world of trouble unless you have smallish deficits and flexible labour markets.
Once upon a time (and therefore the answer to which I'm most emotionally connected) it was eight for a byte and four for a nibble.
I have however started counting my age in hexidecimal.
I thought it still was eight for a byte?
Where it seems to have changed from what I was most emotionally connected to is in the larger units. EG for me a kilobyte was 1024 bytes while a megabyte was 1024 kilobytes. None of this kibibyte or mibibyte nonsense.
Any discussion about second referendums which ignores the more pressing decision about whether SindyRef 2 can or should be blocked is wide of the mark.
SindyRef 2 is innocent. OK.
If Nicola wins, Brexit will become politically impossible.
Or maybe, if the workers take control of the means of production, Brexit will become politically impossible. Or if Asian killer hornets mass in everybody's living rooms, Brexit will become politically impossible. Or if Mars attacks, Brexit will become politically impossible.
You lost. Your side lost. It's eight months on. Your hobby horse has a broken neck. Time to put it down.
The fear of some Brexiteers (not mine) is that Labour, in league with the more fanatical Remainers will insist on amendments which may not be do-able. And then say it's our Brexit or no Brexit, hoping to reverse the referendum result.
Their cunning plan is to insist that whatever Mrs May negotiates is so unbearable that a new referendum must be introduced. Alternatively, they can delay things long enough for the economy to falter (for whatever reason) and blame on Brexit. Then ask for a rethink i.e. a referendum. We're democrats, you see.
That looks too transparent for me. I know they believe the Leavers are thickos, but really?
I think the idea is to complain endlessly about whatever is negotiated and try to claim political capital as a result. We'd have got a much better deal . You're sacrificed jobs and people because you're incompetent.
What's your view?
The cunning plan fails at "Labour, in league with the more fanatical Remainers insist on amendments which may not be do-able".
In all probability, they won't be able to do that but if they can, May makes it a question of Confidence. She will at that point be even more likely to bulldoze her way through. But if not, she demands an election, which one way or another, she can get.
A huge amount would, of course, turn on the public perception of the crisis - who was being reasonable - but the baseline figures for who's in touch with the public and who's most trusted give May a decent head-start.
This information provides much greater depth and detail in explaining the pattern of how the UK voted. The key findings are: ■The data confirms previous indications that local results were strongly associated with the educational attainment of voters - populations with lower qualifications were significantly more likely to vote Leave. (The data for this analysis comes from one in nine wards) ■The level of education had a higher correlation with the voting pattern than any other major demographic measure from the census ■The age of voters was also important, with older electorates more likely to choose Leave ■Ethnicity was crucial in some places, with ethnic minority areas generally more likely to back Remain. However this varied, and in parts of London some Asian populations were more likely to support Leave ■The combination of education, age and ethnicity accounts for the large majority of the variation in votes between different places ■Across the country and in many council districts we can point out stark contrasts between localities which most favoured Leave or Remain ■There was a broad pattern in several urban areas of deprived, predominantly white, housing estates towards the urban periphery voting Leave, while inner cities with high numbers of ethnic minorities and/or students voted Remain ■Around 270 locations can be identified where the local outcome was in the opposite direction to the broader official counting area, including parts of Scotland which backed Leave and a Cornwall constituency which voted Remain ■Postal voters appear narrowly more likely to have backed Remain than those who voted in a polling station
Mr. Urquhart, must admit to being amused at the Twitter bleating over the Super Bowl.
Which of Trump or the Patriots are most disliked in the US is a tough call. The fact Trump supports the Patriots and the owner / manager and star QB are all Trump fans makes it even tougher call.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
"Legislation to be introduced in subsequent sessions will include:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) Bill. This would require that by the next general election, the NHS receives a £100 million per week real-terms cash transfusion over and above current plans. This will be paid for by savings from the UK’s contributions to the EU budget and other savings from leaving (e.g. we will not pay the billions that the ECJ is ordering us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
What is wrong with another anti-Brexit article from a Remainer? We had a 2016 full of them so why should 2017 be any different? We should respect minority views. And laugh at them...
Any discussion about second referendums which ignores the more pressing decision about whether SindyRef 2 can or should be blocked is wide of the mark.
SindyRef 2 is innocent. OK.
If Nicola wins, Brexit will become politically impossible.
Why?
(Though she won't call a referendum because the prospects for Scotland's finances have worsened significantly since 2014 given the oil price drop and Brexit itself).
Suggestion in the Mirror that Brexit-occupied civil servants are costing £100m pa.
At the moment, that's just the re-allocation of existing personnel. The crunch is the fact that the government tends to try for a programme AND Brexit, which may mean more civil servants (but no sign of them yet).
And fully on topic, I disagree with Don Brind's final comments. The Prime Minister said:
"Brexit means Brexit - and we're going to make a success of it"
Half of this is true.
The course is largely set (mainly because it's mostly out of the UK's hands). Labour should certainly be looking to undertake robust Parliamentary scrutiny and keeping options open but mainly to expose the vacuousness in the government's thinking on the subject.
The BBC has obtained a more localised breakdown of votes from nearly half of the local authorities which counted EU referendum ballots last June.
This information provides much greater depth and detail in explaining the pattern of how the UK voted. The key findings are: ■The data confirms previous indications that local results were strongly associated with the educational attainment of voters - populations with lower qualifications were significantly more likely to vote Leave. (The data for this analysis comes from one in nine wards) ■The level of education had a higher correlation with the voting pattern than any other major demographic measure from the census ■The age of voters was also important, with older electorates more likely to choose Leave ■Ethnicity was crucial in some places, with ethnic minority areas generally more likely to back Remain. However this varied, and in parts of London some Asian populations were more likely to support Leave ■The combination of education, age and ethnicity accounts for the large majority of the variation in votes between different places ■Across the country and in many council districts we can point out stark contrasts between localities which most favoured Leave or Remain ■There was a broad pattern in several urban areas of deprived, predominantly white, housing estates towards the urban periphery voting Leave, while inner cities with high numbers of ethnic minorities and/or students voted Remain ■Around 270 locations can be identified where the local outcome was in the opposite direction to the broader official counting area, including parts of Scotland which backed Leave and a Cornwall constituency which voted Remain ■Postal voters appear narrowly more likely to have backed Remain than those who voted in a polling station
They keep repeating this flawed metric of education level. We know that now 50% of youngster go to uni where as it was more like 20-30% of those who are now 50+. So was it education level or age, I would suggest age, which as a result skews the education level stat. They are not independent variables.
Any discussion about second referendums which ignores the more pressing decision about whether SindyRef 2 can or should be blocked is wide of the mark.
SindyRef 2 is innocent. OK.
If Nicola wins, Brexit will become politically impossible.
Why?
(Though she won't call a referendum because the prospects for Scotland's finances have worsened significantly since 2014 given the oil price drop and Brexit itself).
A decision which was supposed to lead to a strong, self-confident global Britain will have demonstrably led to the end of Britain as a nation state. Do you seriously think that things will just carry on as if nothing has happened after that?
For Remainers to keep focusing on the NHS money is, I think, a longer-term mistake. The NHS is going to absorb that sort of real terms increase anyway in the next decade or so (all the more so if social care gets partially folded in). Obviously all £350m/wk won't have come from Brexit, but so what?
Suggestion in the Mirror that Brexit-occupied civil servants are costing £100m pa.
At the moment, that's just the re-allocation of existing personnel. The crunch is the fact that the government tends to try for a programme AND Brexit, which may mean more civil servants (but no sign of them yet).
Anecdotally I know of people being offered promotions of three pay grades to work in DExEU so they can't exactly be beating the talent off with a stick.
Suggestion in the Mirror that Brexit-occupied civil servants are costing £100m pa.
The civil servants have just been moved from elsewhere in the civil service. So not an extra £100m on Brexit civil servants.
There are some additional public servants. This is inevitable given that significant parts of our governance are once again going to be our responsibility rather than being contracted out to the EU. I don't see this as a bad thing.
The Brexit department is also seeking to build up the skills necessary to firstly negotiate a reasonable deal with the EU and secondly to negotiate trade deals with other parts of the world. Once again I fail to see the problem.
But this is getting boring. We have been around these houses too many times already.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Any discussion about second referendums which ignores the more pressing decision about whether SindyRef 2 can or should be blocked is wide of the mark.
SindyRef 2 is innocent. OK.
If Nicola wins, Brexit will become politically impossible.
Why?
(Though she won't call a referendum because the prospects for Scotland's finances have worsened significantly since 2014 given the oil price drop and Brexit itself).
A decision which was supposed to lead to a strong, self-confident global Britain will have demonstrably led to the end of Britain as a nation state. Do you seriously think that things will just carry on as if nothing has happened after that?
Of course not. But the last thing that England and Wales are likely to do is throw themselves back into the arms of the EU, not least because it would play into the SNP's narrative of the rest of the UK being reliant on Scotland.
Much more likely is a stronger two-fingered salute all round.
There have rarely been secomd referendums which completely reversed the original, the Nice Treaty was voted down and replaced by a new Treaty and Denmark and Sweden voted down the Euro and are still outside it. Norway and Switzerland have also voted down joining the EU and EEA respectively in referenda
Any discussion about second referendums which ignores the more pressing decision about whether SindyRef 2 can or should be blocked is wide of the mark.
SindyRef 2 is innocent. OK.
If Nicola wins, Brexit will become politically impossible.
Nicola is facing a 7.5% swing to the Scottish Tories in the latest poll and a comfortable No lead in any indyref2
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
"Legislation to be introduced in subsequent sessions will include:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) Bill. This would require that by the next general election, the NHS receives a £100 million per week real-terms cash transfusion over and above current plans. This will be paid for by savings from the UK’s contributions to the EU budget and other savings from leaving (e.g. we will not pay the billions that the ECJ is ordering us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
He did that but, as us people in the campaign had no authority to make good on their suggestions, it was not helpful to aid the current situation. He was PM and, aside from a couple of lies, didn't set out what he would do if his side lost.
The right thing to do wild have been not to campaign vociferously for either side, so he, as elected PM, could deal with either result.
The BBC has obtained a more localised breakdown of votes from nearly half of the local authorities which counted EU referendum ballots last June.
This information provides much greater depth and detail in explaining the pattern of how the UK voted. The key findings are: ■The data confirms previous indications that local results were strongly associated with the educational attainment of voters - populations with lower qualifications were significantly more likely to vote Leave. (The data for this analysis comes from one in nine wards) ■The level of education had a higher correlation with the voting pattern than any other major demographic measure from the census ■The age of voters was also important, with older electorates more likely to choose Leave ■Ethnicity was crucial in some places, with ethnic minority areas generally more likely to back Remain. However this varied, and in parts of London some Asian populations were more likely to support Leave ■The combination of education, age and ethnicity accounts for the large majority of the variation in votes between different places ■Across the country and in many council districts we can point out stark contrasts between localities which most favoured Leave or Remain ■There was a broad pattern in several urban areas of deprived, predominantly white, housing estates towards the urban periphery voting Leave, while inner cities with high numbers of ethnic minorities and/or students voted Remain ■Around 270 locations can be identified where the local outcome was in the opposite direction to the broader official counting area, including parts of Scotland which backed Leave and a Cornwall constituency which voted Remain ■Postal voters appear narrowly more likely to have backed Remain than those who voted in a polling station
They keep repeating this flawed metric of education level. We know that now 50% of youngster go to uni where as it was more like 20-30% of those who are now 50+. So was it education level or age, I would suggest age, which as a result skews the education level stat. They are not independent variables.
And those who go to college for Micky-Mouse subjects tend to get blasted with 3 years indoctrination of left-wing rubbish.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
This isn't a criticism of Don's article, but there is a kind of meta-paradox here:
...underneath the triumphalism of the Leave camp there is a nagging fear that in the end they will not get their prize. They are scared witless that what has happened in several other countries, where voters given the chance to think again after a referendum have reversed their decision, could happen here.
Messy Brexit negotiations, robust Parliamentary scrutiny, an economic downturn and smart campaigning amongst Labour supporters who voted Leave could bring a shift in the public mood. We are not there yet. It’s premature to make a referendum the goal but it shouldn’t be ruled out.
The reason that some Leavers are concerned that their vote may be "betrayed" (or "sanified" if you're in the "Brexit is mad" camp) is precisely because Continuity Remain supporters explicitly argue that it should be, and propose road-maps for achieving at it, in articles such as this one.
But I don't think that should be viewed as evidence that these fears are reasonable, and that such a counter-strategy is likely to be effective or worthwhile. The fact a certain class of hardline Remainer stokes these fears up in the mind of the opposition should not be seen as validation that they've onto a winner here. Personally,
(1) I can't see a good, clear route to BrexitRef 2 (David H explains better/briefer than I would what some of the issues are here) (2) Were it to be held, even though I can't quite see who would be holding it or what their desired outcome would be, it strikes me that circumstances would have to change in a really substantial way for there to be a result that the likes of Don Brind would prefer. (3) "This time round it will be a fair fight", "sword of truth" etc arguments do not constitute the "really substantial change of circumstances" required for (2) and are wishful thinking anyway - it is a necessary narrative for those who are defeated but are unable to concede (understandably so) that they have been "defeated fairly". If all the heavy firepower that lined up on Remain's side before was not enough, what more will be needed and what more can be brought to the field? Don't expect your opposition to play nice, let alone concede that they were wrong / bigoted / liars / harbingers of great evil or at least socio-political darkness. They can't do that - and, again, understandably so. (4) Another paradox: the endgame suggested by this piece is that a broadly united pro-Remain Labour party can lead an electoral coalition that will wipe out a divided Tory party in a referendum re-run - even though that didn't work out brilliantly last time for them. But the more aggressively Labour Continuity Remainers push for this, versus Labour Leavers, traditional Euroskeptics, and "The People Have Spoken (ps and i'd quite like to keep my seat pls)" MPs, the more it becomes Labour who are fractured on this issue.
Incidentally, the EU is likely to be a long-term problem for Labour - in elections a decade hence, how many "Rejoin the EU and scrap the pound" candidates do you think the Tories will be running? The number on Labour's side seems likely to be rather greater than zero, even if they are only a small faction of the party - and there seems to be some chance of them vying for control of the direction of the party on what they will see as the biggest issue facing Britain. The more Remainers see Labour as a potential platform for their policy, the more split their party could become in the future. It's easy to see the Lib Dems or Tories achieving cohesion on this issue, for Labour the prospects seem messier.
The BBC has obtained a more localised breakdown of votes from nearly half of the local authorities which counted EU referendum ballots last June.
This information provides much greater depth and detail in explaining the pattern of how the UK voted. The key findings are: ■The data confirms previous indications that local results were strongly associated with the educational attainment of voters - populations with lower qualifications were significantly more likely to vote Leave. (The data for this analysis comes from one in nine wards) ■The level of education had a higher correlation with the voting pattern than any other major demographic measure from the census ■The age of voters was also important, with older electorates more likely to choose Leave ■Ethnicity was crucial in some places, with ethnic minority areas generally more likely to back Remain. However this varied, and in parts of London some Asian populations were more likely to support Leave ■The combination of education, age and ethnicity accounts for the large majority of the variation in votes between different places ■Across the country and in many council districts we can point out stark contrasts between localities which most favoured Leave or Remain ■There was a broad pattern in several urban areas of deprived, predominantly white, housing estates towards the urban periphery voting Leave, while inner cities with high numbers of ethnic minorities and/or students voted Remain ■Around 270 locations can be identified where the local outcome was in the opposite direction to the broader official counting area, including parts of Scotland which backed Leave and a Cornwall constituency which voted Remain ■Postal voters appear narrowly more likely to have backed Remain than those who voted in a polling station
They keep repeating this flawed metric of education level. We know that now 50% of youngster go to uni where as it was more like 20-30% of those who are now 50+. So was it education level or age, I would suggest age, which as a result skews the education level stat. They are not independent variables.
Education levels played a key part, a young working class school leaver with no qualifications higher than GCSEs living in the North was probably more likely to vote Leave than an upper middle-class graduate pensioner living in London
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Both American football and Rugby league can be great to watch. So can union, the current England team is excellent. But take it back 10 years ago and boy was that complete garbage to watch (The England team), even when they won. I don't think anything in League or American Football is as poetic as the NZ team at Rugby World cup 2015 was though.
They keep repeating this flawed metric of education level. We know that now 50% of youngster go to uni where as it was more like 20-30% of those who are now 50+. So was it education level or age, I would suggest age, which as a result skews the education level stat. They are not independent variables.
Good point, but more broadly I think the education factor is more of a reflection of a person benefitting from EU membership rather than having any greater political or economic insight, which frankly I think has very little to do with education.
Generally speaking the EU is good for educated and wealthy people (more likely to travel, more likely to work for a business that trades internationally, they feel less of an impact from migration), and not so good for less educated and poorer people (for the opposite reasons). Independent of that people can perceive themselves as being winners of losers even if reality is somewhat different, I'm sure there are die-hard EU fans who are actually amongst the losers who think the EU has done them a lot of favours.
Of course Remainers will ignore things like this and carry on screeching that "stupid people voted for Brexit" right up until and probably beyond the point we actually leave the EU.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
I was a guest of the City of Boston at a Patriots game at Wembley a few years back. It was interesting for a couple of hours, but then I started losing the will to live - even with the hospitality. It seemed to be never-ending. I have also done the Bruins in ice hockey and the Red Sox in baseball. And the baseball was by far the best.
Sorry what?! ANY negative polls are fake news?! So it is now literally impossible for Trump to do wrong in his bizzaro world.
The strategy is clear. By the time of next election his base of supporters must be at a point where they do not believe a word they see or hear from news organizations.
Truly chilling. So much for the beacon of democracy and the "shining city on a hill". They have elected a lunatic.
This will not end well. No matter what Plato and co say.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Ugh, are you even British?
English, actually.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the ruck and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
They keep repeating this flawed metric of education level. We know that now 50% of youngster go to uni where as it was more like 20-30% of those who are now 50+. So was it education level or age, I would suggest age, which as a result skews the education level stat. They are not independent variables.
Good point, but more broadly I think the education factor is more of a reflection of a person benefitting from EU membership rather than having any greater political or economic insight, which frankly I think has very little to do with education.
Generally speaking the EU is good for educated and wealthy people (more likely to travel, more likely to work for a business that trades internationally, they feel less of an impact from migration), and not so good for less educated and poorer people (for the opposite reasons). Independent of that people can perceive themselves as being winners of losers even if reality is somewhat different, I'm sure there are die-hard EU fans who are actually amongst the losers who think the EU has done them a lot of favours.
Of course Remainers will ignore things like this and carry on screeching that "stupid people voted for Brexit" right up until and probably beyond the point we actually leave the EU.
Don't disagree with that. I think my point was lots of these factors are interlinked and more complex than these simple and often repeated breakdowns.
For Remainers to keep focusing on the NHS money is, I think, a longer-term mistake. The NHS is going to absorb that sort of real terms increase anyway in the next decade or so (all the more so if social care gets partially folded in). Obviously all £350m/wk won't have come from Brexit, but so what?
I appreciate that David. More accurately, it's the combination of Don's article and Brexit. But that wouldn't have been as pithy. Of course, I could have just moved on silently, like a normal, civilized human being. However, I'm trying to stay in tune with the zeitgeist and wanted to signal my haughty disdain. As if anyone actually cares .
Toodle pip. I shall return when some hitherto unmasticated aspect of Brexit manifests itself.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Ugh, are you even British?
English, actually.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the scrum and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
That makes it worse, as an Englishman, nothing quite girds my loins like watching the England rugby union team in full flow.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
I was a guest of the City of Boston at a Patriots game at Wembley a few years back. It was interesting for a couple of hours, but then I started losing the will to live - even with the hospitality. It seemed to be never-ending. I have also done the Bruins in ice hockey and the Red Sox in baseball. And the baseball was by far the best.
Well now SO, you have lost all my respect as a reasonable sensible poster.....Baseball the best...pahhh...ice hockey definitely has lots of excitement, but BASEBALL...BASEBALL...it goes on as long as American football with even less action. Its like cricket without the batsman ever hitting, T20 cricket where the whole game is basically just three or four 6's been hit.
The only time I have found baseball interesting was when I saw Chapman pitch live from only a few rows back. Seeing somebody throw a ball at 105 mph is quite something. But then he only throws 1-2 innings i.e 10-20 deliveries.
I used to be quite dismissive of rounders baseball, then I grew an appreciation of it when Liverpool were taken over by the owners of the Boston Red Sox.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
The general rule with sports is that if you don't understand them, you find them boring.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
"Legislation to be introduced in subsequent sessions will include:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) Bill. This would require that by the next general election, the NHS receives a £100 million per week real-terms cash transfusion over and above current plans. This will be paid for by savings from the UK’s contributions to the EU budget and other savings from leaving (e.g. we will not pay the billions that the ECJ is ordering us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
He did that but, as us people in the campaign had no authority to make good on their suggestions, it was not helpful to aid the current situation. He was PM and, aside from a couple of lies, didn't set out what he would do if his side lost.
The right thing to do wild have been not to campaign vociferously for either side, so he, as elected PM, could deal with either result.
I think it is more a case that it should have been a moral imperative of the PM to implement the manifesto of the Leave campaign, what with it (the manifesto) and them (the campaign) having official status and all that.
But I get into some of the most vituperative arguments on here when I point out that there was such a manifesto, and keep being told that it is "up to the government".
TBH, when I stop crying with laughter - his point is entirely correct - it's not a ban, and its not about Muslims = it's about vetting procedure.
I think he's gone a bit OTT there on the tweet front - but he's saying again and again it's about the safety of US citizens. It's very hard to argue against as a white hat position. The judge who struck the suit down is an activist for BLM.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Ugh, are you even British?
English, actually.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the ruck and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
Ye I'd agree with this, I have no idea why all the jokes are regarding cricket rules being hard to follow; rugby union has the trickiest rules in all of world sport I think.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
"Legislation to be introduced in subsequent sessions will include:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) Bill. This would require that by the next general election, the NHS receives a £100 million per week real-terms cash transfusion over and above current plans. This will be paid for by savings from the UK’s contributions to the EU budget and other savings from leaving (e.g. we will not pay the billions that the ECJ is ordering us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
He did that but, as us people in the campaign had no authority to make good on their suggestions, it was not helpful to aid the current situation. He was PM and, aside from a couple of lies, didn't set out what he would do if his side lost.
The right thing to do wild have been not to campaign vociferously for either side, so he, as elected PM, could deal with either result.
I think it is more a case that it should have been a moral imperative of the PM to implement the manifesto of the Leave campaign, what with it (the manifesto) and them (the campaign) having official status and all that.
But I get into some of the most vituperative arguments on here when I point out that there was such a manifesto, and keep being told that it is "up to the government".
The problem with that is that the PM didn't support VL at the referendum...
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Ugh, are you even British?
English, actually.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the scrum and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
That makes it worse, as an Englishman, nothing quite girds my loins like watching the England rugby union team in full flow.
I could sympathise if you were Scottish.
You must have been pretty ungirded on Saturday, then; not so much a flow as a constipation. The Scots, by contrast, were awesome.
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Ugh, are you even British?
English, actually.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the scrum and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
That makes it worse, as an Englishman, nothing quite girds my loins like watching the England rugby union team in full flow.
I could sympathise if you were Scottish.
You must have been pretty ungirded on Saturday, then; not so much a flow as a constipation. The Scots, by contrast, were awesome.
Great big ponceybooted gaylord.
The Six Nations is silly now that it has this bonus point nonsense.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
I was a guest of the City of Boston at a Patriots game at Wembley a few years back. It was interesting for a couple of hours, but then I started losing the will to live - even with the hospitality. It seemed to be never-ending. I have also done the Bruins in ice hockey and the Red Sox in baseball. And the baseball was by far the best.
Well now SO, you have lost all my respect as a reasonable sensible poster.....Baseball the best...pahhh...ice hockey definitely has lots of excitement, but BASEBALL...BASEBALL...it goes on as long as American football with even less action. Its like cricket without the batsman ever hitting, T20 cricket where the whole game is basically just three or four 6's been hit.
The only time I have found baseball interesting was when I saw Chapman pitch live from only a few rows back. Seeing somebody throw a ball at 105 mph is quite something. But then he only throws 1-2 innings i.e 10-20 deliveries.
Baseball should only be watched through heavy beer goggles
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
The general rule with sports is that if you don't understand them, you find them boring.
There is something in that. But I understand rugby league and that's boring - play the ball, run, pass perhaps, tackle, get up: repeat five times then kick. Repeat for 80 minutes.
I may be wrong but American football essentially seems to be rugby league, give or take the odd rule, with more colour.
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
Perhaps pollsters should literally weigh their samples.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Ugh, are you even British?
English, actually.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the scrum and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
That makes it worse, as an Englishman, nothing quite girds my loins like watching the England rugby union team in full flow.
I could sympathise if you were Scottish.
You must have been pretty ungirded on Saturday, then; not so much a flow as a constipation. The Scots, by contrast, were awesome.
Great big ponceybooted gaylord.
The Six Nations is silly now that it has this bonus point nonsense.
Whatever next? Option for a special 2 point conversion like American football?
In my latest Guardian piece I examine the pros and cons of free speech. Is it perhaps time to see it for what it really is: a tool for hate? https://t.co/t5tf8BI617
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Time-outs are for icing the kicker. The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury. And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
Agreed, the Super Bowl goes on a bit too long, but I prefer American football to rugby.
Ugh, are you even British?
English, actually.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the scrum and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
That makes it worse, as an Englishman, nothing quite girds my loins like watching the England rugby union team in full flow.
I could sympathise if you were Scottish.
You must have been pretty ungirded on Saturday, then; not so much a flow as a constipation. The Scots, by contrast, were awesome.
In addition, the Leaver's fears are well grounded by the court cases and amendments submitted to the enabling bill.
Cheers rog. I often wonder whether anyone reads my posts. They're quite the waste of words, if not! Perhaps I should just submit the better thought-out (and written) ones to The Editor as potential thread-headeers.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
He did that but, as us people in the campaign had no authority to make good on their suggestions, it was not helpful to aid the current situation. He was PM and, aside from a couple of lies, didn't set out what he would do if his side lost.
The right thing to do wild have been not to campaign vociferously for either side, so he, as elected PM, could deal with either result.
I think it is more a case that it should have been a moral imperative of the PM to implement the manifesto of the Leave campaign, what with it (the manifesto) and them (the campaign) having official status and all that.
But I get into some of the most vituperative arguments on here when I point out that there was such a manifesto, and keep being told that it is "up to the government".
Cameron didn't have any moral imperative, as our PM he was entitled to interpret the result however he thought best.
The Remain campaign had the ability to offer concrete assurances of life after either result, but m chose to offer only one side... all Leave could do was offer suggestions. No one should have interpreted what anyone on the Leave side offered as anything else, & people who pretend to misunderstand to make a point just look like silly bad losers
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
"Legislation to be introduced in subsequent sessions will include:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) Bill. This would require that by the next general election, the NHS receives a £100 million per week real-terms cash transfusion over and above current plans. This will be paid for by savings from the UK’s contributions to the EU budget and other savings from leaving (e.g. we will not pay the billions that the ECJ is ordering us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
He did that but, as us people in the campaign had no authority to make good on their suggestions, it was not helpful to aid the current situation. He was PM and, aside from a couple of lies, didn't set out what he would do if his side lost.
The right thing to do wild have been not to campaign vociferously for either side, so he, as elected PM, could deal with either result.
I think it is more a case that it should have been a moral imperative of the PM to implement the manifesto of the Leave campaign, what with it (the manifesto) and them (the campaign) having official status and all that.
But I get into some of the most vituperative arguments on here when I point out that there was such a manifesto, and keep being told that it is "up to the government".
The problem with that is that the PM didn't support VL at the referendum...
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
Knock it off or we'll sit on you.
First you've got to catch me.
Us? Run? you must be joking.
No, we'll just set a trap, and bait it with a huge bucket of £50's (that's how you trap lawyers, right?). We just saved £350m, I'm sure we can spare some.
After A50 is passed, we are leaving in some shape or form.
The chance of the court saying that A50 is reversible is remote because it would void the whole point of the article - and even if it did it would be completely politically unacceptable for the same reasons.
If A50 is reversible there is nothing to stop the EU offering the most objectionable deal possible in order to force a reversal.
Conversely, and more importantly for the EU, there is equally nothing to stop the UK enacting Article 50, negotiating for two years, deciding it doesn't like the deal, and reversing Article 50. Then the next year enacting Article 50 again and having another go at getting a better deal.
A reversible A50 makes the two year deadline pointless as it lets the applying country chicken out as many times as it likes and then resubmit its application to leave until it gets the deal it likes.
obviously all this is premised on British voters actually coming around to the view that Brexit is a stupid idea, and at this point there's no evidence that they will.
Because it's not. We are still fundamentally incompatible with their superstate direction of travel. Brexit is a necessary thing - imagine the violence and pain that would ensue a few years or decades down the line as we got ever further down the road to European socialist undemocratic serfdom. We got it spot on and dodged a bullet.
Not particularly planning on re-litigating the question of whether Brexit is a stupid idea or not, but one specific point: European socialism isn't really a thing nowadays, not least because if you're in the Eurozone you have free trade and hard currency, which means you're in for a world of trouble unless you have smallish deficits and flexible labour markets.
So high tax and spend is deeply cooked into the pie. Prefer light touch almost Thatcherite rebalancing of the state? Hard luck. You have nobody to vote for in Euroland.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) Bill. This would require that by the next general election, the NHS receives a £100 million per week real-terms cash transfusion over and above current plans. This will be paid for by savings from the UK’s contributions to the EU budget and other savings from leaving (e.g. we will not pay the billions that the ECJ is ordering us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
The real mistake was the renegotiation. Simply doing that implied that the EU was unacceptable as it stood, and that he would make the difference. All this achieved was muzzling those in favour of our memberaship, allowing those opposed to ask for the impossible, and for him looking daft when he came home with some technical proposals that couldn't be sold.
Had he instead appointed the Leave campaign in late 2015, told them to produce a white paper audited and signed off by the OBR with public funds, and got back to reminding people why we joined in the first place while forcing Vote Leave to defend their white paper (as in indyref), I think it would have been a very different referendum.
But we are where we are, and the disunity amongst those opposed to the Government is pretty clear - I can't see Don Brind's idea of a united Labour party on this happening in a generation. I'd be quite happy to see some amendments pass this week though, more to give the Government a kick up the backside and remind them that they don't speak for the whole country, however many times they can say 'the will of the people' in 60 seconds.
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
Which is imaginative, but what Single-Source Oakeshott forgets is that in fact Vote Leave published a Brexit framework (what you or I would call a manifesto) which unambiguously built in a bill for giving additional funding for the NHS:
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
He did that but, as us people in the campaign had no authority to make good on their suggestions, it was not helpful to aid the current situation. He was PM and, aside from a couple of lies, didn't set out what he would do if his side lost.
The right thing to do wild have been not to campaign vociferously for either side, so he, as elected PM, could deal with either result.
I think it is more a case that it should have been a moral imperative of the PM to implement the manifesto of the Leave campaign, what with it (the manifesto) and them (the campaign) having official status and all that.
But I get into some of the most vituperative arguments on here when I point out that there was such a manifesto, and keep being told that it is "up to the government".
Cameron didn't have any moral imperative, as our PM he was entitled to interpret the result however he thought best.
The Remain campaign had the ability to offer concrete assurances of life after either result, but m chose to offer only one side... all Leave could do was offer suggestions. No one should have interpreted what anyone on the Leave side offered as anything else, & people who pretend to misunderstand to make a point just look like silly bad losers
There you go. Up to the government...no one promised anything... But it was an officially-appointed Leave campaign, and the manifesto was produced by them.
Dave is no longer PM. Theresa is. She should have looked at the official campaign and taken her direction from them.
There you go. Up to the government...no one promised anything... But it was an officially-appointed Leave campaign, and the manifesto was produced by them.
Dave is no longer PM. Theresa is. She should have looked at the official campaign and taken her direction from them.
You do realise that the courts have ruled that manifestos are meaningless?
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
The general rule with sports is that if you don't understand them, you find them boring.
There is something in that. But I understand rugby league and that's boring - play the ball, run, pass perhaps, tackle, get up: repeat five times then kick. Repeat for 80 minutes.
I may be wrong but American football essentially seems to be rugby league, give or take the odd rule, with more colour.
I'm not sure that your comments on League would go down too well in Wakey, Mr H.
In the time it takes to complete a scrum in Union, in League you could have completed 3 sets of six.
No wonder League players switch to Union as a form of semi-retirement.
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
I'd imagine it is associated with poverty/perceived opportunity - i.e. both the vote and obesity are associated with the same underlying cause
I used to be quite dismissive of rounders baseball, then I grew an appreciation of it when Liverpool were taken over by the owners of the Boston Red Sox.
I enjoyed my time at Fenway Park.
Do you think Liverpool should try switching sports?
I've played rugby (union) and football. Both very different in terms of the physical nature of the game. Rugby being a free-flowing sport, tackles require some element of controlling the ball, whereas American football is much more of a collision sport than contact. Trust me, the padding is necessary.
What no thread on the greatest superbowl? Biased failing media...just because the Trumpian Patriots won.
As a rugby union fan, I just can't do a thread on American football.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
Seconded. I happened to be up feeding the baby during the fourth quarter and watched it through to full time. Impressive skills and athleticism but it's still a fundamentally boring and repetitive game. Couldn't be bothered with overtime.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
The general rule with sports is that if you don't understand them, you find them boring.
There is something in that. But I understand rugby league and that's boring - play the ball, run, pass perhaps, tackle, get up: repeat five times then kick. Repeat for 80 minutes.
I may be wrong but American football essentially seems to be rugby league, give or take the odd rule, with more colour.
I'm not sure that your comments on League would go down too well in Wakey, Mr H.
In the time it takes to complete a scrum in Union, in League you could have completed 3 sets of six.
No wonder League players switch to Union as a form of semi-retirement.
And then go back when they don't cut the mustard.
But I'm libertarian on people's pleasures. If people enjoy league or American football or whatever, good luck to them. Doesn't mean I have to.
(Re Wakey - I think its status as a 'rugby' city is greatly exaggerated. Average attendences last season were about 4500 IIRC, which is hardly representative of a hotbed of support. It'd be interesting to see how a football club would get on if one could be established to a reasonable standard in the city, by comparison).
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights. Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look, He thinks too much; such men are dangerous...
Excellent Don. That is my hope as a fervent remoaner that negotiations will prove so tortuous that the Tories will start to split, again, over this and we will end up with another referendum where hopefully facts will overshadow the lies we had the first time round. £300m for the NHS. Bollocks.Immigration slashed. Bollocks.
The latest line from the Leavers is that this was a suggestion not a commitment:
...
National Health Service (Funding Target) us to pay to multinational companies trying to avoid UK taxes)."
Not much of a suggestion about that.
Cameron should have outlined what he intended to do in the event of Leave winning. In the absence of that, all the Leave campaigns could do was suggest what could be done
Perhaps he should have appointed an official Leave Campaign which then produced an official Leave manifesto?
The real mistake was the renegotiation. Simply doing that implied that the EU was unacceptable as it stood, and that he would make the difference. All this achieved was muzzling those in favour of our memberaship, allowing those opposed to ask for the impossible, and for him looking daft when he came home with some technical proposals that couldn't be sold.
Had he instead appointed the Leave campaign in late 2015, told them to produce a white paper audited and signed off by the OBR with public funds, and got back to reminding people why we joined in the first place while forcing Vote Leave to defend their white paper (as in indyref), I think it would have been a very different referendum.
But we are where we are, and the disunity amongst those opposed to the Government is pretty clear - I can't see Don Brind's idea of a united Labour party on this happening in a generation. I'd be quite happy to see some amendments pass this week though, more to give the Government a kick up the backside and remind them that they don't speak for the whole country, however many times they can say 'the will of the people' in 60 seconds.
Up to a point yes that is a good observation. But there was a campaign and a manifesto. Compared with eg. GE manifestos it wasn't a million miles away from the usual time and content. Well of course winning political parties are beholden to implement their manifesto commitments.
Theresa May should have felt it morally imperative to implement Vote Leave's, no matter her own particular persuasion. We Remainers would have cried blue murder about how it would have negatively affected the economy (much as we do now), but no one could have argued with the legitimacy of it.
There you go. Up to the government...no one promised anything... But it was an officially-appointed Leave campaign, and the manifesto was produced by them.
Dave is no longer PM. Theresa is. She should have looked at the official campaign and taken her direction from them.
You do realise that the courts have ruled that manifestos are meaningless?
Larkhall is where they paint the kerbstones red, white & blue and routinely smash the green lamps on traffic lights. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but..
Comments
Where it seems to have changed from what I was most emotionally connected to is in the larger units. EG for me a kilobyte was 1024 bytes while a megabyte was 1024 kilobytes. None of this kibibyte or mibibyte nonsense.
You lost. Your side lost. It's eight months on. Your hobby horse has a broken neck. Time to put it down.
All that padding and protection, it makes a worse spectacle than rugby league.
In all probability, they won't be able to do that but if they can, May makes it a question of Confidence. She will at that point be even more likely to bulldoze her way through. But if not, she demands an election, which one way or another, she can get.
A huge amount would, of course, turn on the public perception of the crisis - who was being reasonable - but the baseline figures for who's in touch with the public and who's most trusted give May a decent head-start.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38762034
This information provides much greater depth and detail in explaining the pattern of how the UK voted. The key findings are:
■The data confirms previous indications that local results were strongly associated with the educational attainment of voters - populations with lower qualifications were significantly more likely to vote Leave. (The data for this analysis comes from one in nine wards)
■The level of education had a higher correlation with the voting pattern than any other major demographic measure from the census
■The age of voters was also important, with older electorates more likely to choose Leave
■Ethnicity was crucial in some places, with ethnic minority areas generally more likely to back Remain. However this varied, and in parts of London some Asian populations were more likely to support Leave
■The combination of education, age and ethnicity accounts for the large majority of the variation in votes between different places
■Across the country and in many council districts we can point out stark contrasts between localities which most favoured Leave or Remain
■There was a broad pattern in several urban areas of deprived, predominantly white, housing estates towards the urban periphery voting Leave, while inner cities with high numbers of ethnic minorities and/or students voted Remain
■Around 270 locations can be identified where the local outcome was in the opposite direction to the broader official counting area, including parts of Scotland which backed Leave and a Cornwall constituency which voted Remain
■Postal voters appear narrowly more likely to have backed Remain than those who voted in a polling station
https://twitter.com/Toure/status/828404311231197184
(Though she won't call a referendum because the prospects for Scotland's finances have worsened significantly since 2014 given the oil price drop and Brexit itself).
So not an extra £100m on Brexit civil servants.
"Brexit means Brexit - and we're going to make a success of it"
Half of this is true.
The course is largely set (mainly because it's mostly out of the UK's hands). Labour should certainly be looking to undertake robust Parliamentary scrutiny and keeping options open but mainly to expose the vacuousness in the government's thinking on the subject.
The Brexit department is also seeking to build up the skills necessary to firstly negotiate a reasonable deal with the EU and secondly to negotiate trade deals with other parts of the world. Once again I fail to see the problem.
But this is getting boring. We have been around these houses too many times already.
And time-outs? Are these designed to just slow everything down and dissipate away any excitement that might have built to that point?
Donald J Trump - May 2015
"@delonte3ast: Tom Brady is about to win the next 5 Super Bowls and visit @realdonaldtrump in the White House." Very cool!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/828574430800539648
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/828575949268606977
Much more likely is a stronger two-fingered salute all round.
The "protection", specifically the helmets I'm quite sure makes the game actually more dangerous long term specifically with regards to brain injury.
And there is nothing more boring in the whole of sport than a scrum that takes five minutes, I say that as someone who watches union.
The right thing to do wild have been not to campaign vociferously for either side, so he, as elected PM, could deal with either result.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4194048/KATIE-HOPKINS-liberal-brainwashing-schools.html
...underneath the triumphalism of the Leave camp there is a nagging fear that in the end they will not get their prize. They are scared witless that what has happened in several other countries, where voters given the chance to think again after a referendum have reversed their decision, could happen here.
Messy Brexit negotiations, robust Parliamentary scrutiny, an economic downturn and smart campaigning amongst Labour supporters who voted Leave could bring a shift in the public mood. We are not there yet. It’s premature to make a referendum the goal but it shouldn’t be ruled out.
The reason that some Leavers are concerned that their vote may be "betrayed" (or "sanified" if you're in the "Brexit is mad" camp) is precisely because Continuity Remain supporters explicitly argue that it should be, and propose road-maps for achieving at it, in articles such as this one.
But I don't think that should be viewed as evidence that these fears are reasonable, and that such a counter-strategy is likely to be effective or worthwhile. The fact a certain class of hardline Remainer stokes these fears up in the mind of the opposition should not be seen as validation that they've onto a winner here. Personally,
(1) I can't see a good, clear route to BrexitRef 2 (David H explains better/briefer than I would what some of the issues are here)
(2) Were it to be held, even though I can't quite see who would be holding it or what their desired outcome would be, it strikes me that circumstances would have to change in a really substantial way for there to be a result that the likes of Don Brind would prefer.
(3) "This time round it will be a fair fight", "sword of truth" etc arguments do not constitute the "really substantial change of circumstances" required for (2) and are wishful thinking anyway - it is a necessary narrative for those who are defeated but are unable to concede (understandably so) that they have been "defeated fairly". If all the heavy firepower that lined up on Remain's side before was not enough, what more will be needed and what more can be brought to the field? Don't expect your opposition to play nice, let alone concede that they were wrong / bigoted / liars / harbingers of great evil or at least socio-political darkness. They can't do that - and, again, understandably so.
(4) Another paradox: the endgame suggested by this piece is that a broadly united pro-Remain Labour party can lead an electoral coalition that will wipe out a divided Tory party in a referendum re-run - even though that didn't work out brilliantly last time for them. But the more aggressively Labour Continuity Remainers push for this, versus Labour Leavers, traditional Euroskeptics, and "The People Have Spoken (ps and i'd quite like to keep my seat pls)" MPs, the more it becomes Labour who are fractured on this issue.
I don't think anything in League or American Football is as poetic as the NZ team at Rugby World cup 2015 was though.
Generally speaking the EU is good for educated and wealthy people (more likely to travel, more likely to work for a business that trades internationally, they feel less of an impact from migration), and not so good for less educated and poorer people (for the opposite reasons). Independent of that people can perceive themselves as being winners of losers even if reality is somewhat different, I'm sure there are die-hard EU fans who are actually amongst the losers who think the EU has done them a lot of favours.
Of course Remainers will ignore things like this and carry on screeching that "stupid people voted for Brexit" right up until and probably beyond the point we actually leave the EU.
Truly chilling. So much for the beacon of democracy and the "shining city on a hill". They have elected a lunatic.
This will not end well. No matter what Plato and co say.
My problem with rugby is that it's quite difficult to follow and the rules. There was a farcical moment on Saturday when the ref called that the ball was out of the ruck and then penalised the England player for diving on the loose ball. And the scrum is a complete waste of time.
Toodle pip. I shall return when some hitherto unmasticated aspect of Brexit manifests itself.
I could sympathise if you were Scottish.
The only time I have found baseball interesting was when I saw Chapman pitch live from only a few rows back. Seeing somebody throw a ball at 105 mph is quite something. But then he only throws 1-2 innings i.e 10-20 deliveries.
I enjoyed my time at Fenway Park.
But I get into some of the most vituperative arguments on here when I point out that there was such a manifesto, and keep being told that it is "up to the government".
19m
He'll be saying I'm not a real cat next...
I think he's gone a bit OTT there on the tweet front - but he's saying again and again it's about the safety of US citizens. It's very hard to argue against as a white hat position. The judge who struck the suit down is an activist for BLM.
Excellent post and very well reasoned.
In addition, the Leaver's fears are well grounded by the court cases and amendments submitted to the enabling bill.
Great big ponceybooted gaylord.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/06/30/the-weight-of-brexit-leave-vote-is-higher-in-areas-of-higher-obesity/
There are a lot of obvious jokes to make, but there's also potentially something rather deep going on here that would be well worth understanding properly.
I may be wrong but American football essentially seems to be rugby league, give or take the odd rule, with more colour.
In my latest Guardian piece I examine the pros and cons of free speech. Is it perhaps time to see it for what it really is: a tool for hate? https://t.co/t5tf8BI617
The Remain campaign had the ability to offer concrete assurances of life after either result, but m chose to offer only one side... all Leave could do was offer suggestions. No one should have interpreted what anyone on the Leave side offered as anything else, & people who pretend to misunderstand to make a point just look like silly bad losers
No, we'll just set a trap, and bait it with a huge bucket of £50's (that's how you trap lawyers, right?). We just saved £350m, I'm sure we can spare some.
Had he instead appointed the Leave campaign in late 2015, told them to produce a white paper audited and signed off by the OBR with public funds, and got back to reminding people why we joined in the first place while forcing Vote Leave to defend their white paper (as in indyref), I think it would have been a very different referendum.
But we are where we are, and the disunity amongst those opposed to the Government is pretty clear - I can't see Don Brind's idea of a united Labour party on this happening in a generation. I'd be quite happy to see some amendments pass this week though, more to give the Government a kick up the backside and remind them that they don't speak for the whole country, however many times they can say 'the will of the people' in 60 seconds.
Dave is no longer PM. Theresa is. She should have looked at the official campaign and taken her direction from them.
https://twitter.com/herrkloeckner/status/828589220839247872
In the time it takes to complete a scrum in Union, in League you could have completed 3 sets of six.
No wonder League players switch to Union as a form of semi-retirement.
Mr. Ears, I think/hope posts are often liked without necessarily being replied to. I know that I don't always reply to that effect.
Mr. Quidder, agreed, the bonus points are stupid.
I've played rugby (union) and football. Both very different in terms of the physical nature of the game. Rugby being a free-flowing sport, tackles require some element of controlling the ball, whereas American football is much more of a collision sport than contact. Trust me, the padding is necessary.
But I'm libertarian on people's pleasures. If people enjoy league or American football or whatever, good luck to them. Doesn't mean I have to.
(Re Wakey - I think its status as a 'rugby' city is greatly exaggerated. Average attendences last season were about 4500 IIRC, which is hardly representative of a hotbed of support. It'd be interesting to see how a football club would get on if one could be established to a reasonable standard in the city, by comparison).
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous...
Theresa May should have felt it morally imperative to implement Vote Leave's, no matter her own particular persuasion. We Remainers would have cried blue murder about how it would have negatively affected the economy (much as we do now), but no one could have argued with the legitimacy of it.
'MAKE US GREAT AGAIN Residents in Larkhall erect sign welcoming US President Donald Trump to the South Lanarkshire town'
http://tinyurl.com/hqzmnb2
Larkhall is where they paint the kerbstones red, white & blue and routinely smash the green lamps on traffic lights. Correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation, but..