But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
Sadly it's not an outlier. Nearly all the polls post referendum have been within MoE of the actual result. Nobody has really changed their minds on the abstract issue. Though there have been shifts on the practicalities. So in that sense the poll is only news in that it confirms the last 15 months of polling on the abstract issue. No Bregret but no buy in to this huge national project either.
The huge national project was EverCloserUnion - something which the EEC/EC/EU made no secret of.
But apart from some posh Liberals and Heathite Tories, who thought that Britain would become the dominant force in a USE, Britain never bought into it.
Look at how those who voted in both 1975 and 2016 swung so hard against the EU. Yet those Leave voting oldies had spent 40+ year taking European holidays and driving European cars and watching European football. All the economic and cultural factors we were told would make Britain feel more European and yet the political trend went the opposite way.
Likewise it was regularly said in the late 1990s that when British people started using the Euro on holidays and when British business began using the Euro for their transactions there would be a surge in support for Britain joining the single currency. I even remember the likes of M&S and Debenhams showing prices in both Sterling and Euros - they don't do it now.
On topic the deal hammered out at cabinet yesterday means that the Tories will sing with a single voice today.
The compromises needed there to achieve that may mean that the EU will be unenthused about what is on offer. In negotiation terms this should reflect Britain's final offer, take it or leave it, but that only works in my experience when walking away from the table is a credible option. I am not sure that is the case here.
There was an odd comment on R4 this morning "Britain's insistence on scrutinising and requiring the EU to justify its monetary claim has soured the atmosphere and made European negotiators pessimistic as to where any deal will be done"
If they really thought they wouldn't be asked to justify their position then they simply don't see this as a negotiation. In which case no deal: we are not supplicants
The UK went through an exercise of trying to prove it has no legal requirement to pay anything. That's irrelevant and unserious. The whole point of the negotiation for the EU is to create a legal obligation for the money. If it existed already they would demands something else.
The closest analogy I can think of is a group of friends that decide rent a house for a week with planned meals and activities. One of the party, Jim,pulls out the day before. Should he pay his full share, including for the booked meals and activities, none of it or part of it? The money is significant for Jim. The full amount means he won't be able to take a substitute holiday. The extra amounts per head are less for the others but when they go back to tell their partners that it will cost a bit more than they thought, their partners will say, why should you have pay itt. Get Jim to pay. He's the one mucking you around.
So there isn't a hard and fast rule. The group think they 70-30 majority justified in taking a maximalist line. Whether Jim will go along with it depends on how anxious he is to keep in with the group. One thing for sure, the group no longer trust Jim very much.
Actually the more accurate analogy is that Jim has been carrying most of the rest of the group for years; paying for meals and always putting his hand in his pocket to buy a round. He has been taken for granted by the group and has now had enough and decided not to take part in the shared activities any more as they are ungrateful and keep demanding more and more.
Now they are moaning because he won't keep buying rounds even after he has gone drinking elsewhere.
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Yeah two years. I think most people can live with that rather than lose sovereignty forever.
It's amazing to see unreconstructed lefties lamenting the end of Thatcher. How brainwashed have you lot become by the EU?
Or perhaps an indication of how far the Tories have fallen. No longer economically liberal, outward looking and ambitious. A nostalgia ridden jingoistic rump
Apart from taming the unions (which pr obably could have been achieved without pitch battles) what elso good did she do?
She understood the greenhouse effect and was an early advocate of policies to prevent it.
I think it's clear that many of the privatisations have been vindicated by history.
No it isn't.
Really? You think companies like Rolls Royce, Jaguar, British Airways should still be in state hands?
To me it's simple. If you can have meaningful competition - then privatise and regulate appropriately. If you can't - then privatisation probably isn't a good idea.
Whilst I generally agree, I fail to see how the above works for the water industry. IMO that was a privatisation too far.
It's also interesting to think what state our power supply might be in if we'd not privatised the CEGB. Would we have a 'greener' energy supply, or a less green one? Would prices be higher or lower?
I'm mildly supportive of Corbyn's proposal to nationalise water. Certainly I think you can't have meaningful competition in water. From your comment I'm not sure if you agree on that - but it's clear to me that charging what the market will bear on water, having competing pipe networks etc. is not practical...
But only mildly supportive as I recognise nationalising anything sparks panic among many... It's a tough battle to get people to stop thinking ideologically about it. Anecdotally I hear relatively little complaining about water service compared to trains for instance - so trains might be a more logical place to start.
Plus with water you have to explain why buying the company at xx billion does not actually have to lead to tax increases. Whereas allowing train franchises to expire is easier for people to understand.
I think Corbyn has a stronger case in water companies are avoiding corporation tax, investors are making excess profits etc... rather than playing whack a mole with that - if we just become the shareholders then that problem seems to go away?
Energy I don't know a great deal about. What does worry me is the idea of foreign unfriendly powers being involved...
On topic the deal hammered out at cabinet yesterday means that the Tories will sing with a single voice today.
The compromises needed there to achieve that may mean that the EU will be unenthused about what is on offer. In negotiation terms this should reflect Britain's final offer, take it or leave it, but that only works in my experience when walking away from the table is a credible option. I am not sure that is the case here.
There was an odd comment on R4 this morning "Britain's insistence on scrutinising and requiring the EU to justify its monetary claim has soured the atmosphere and made European negotiators pessimistic as to where any deal will be done"
If they really thought they wouldn't be asked to justify their position then they simply don't see this as a negotiation. In which case no deal: we are not supplicants
The UK went through an exercise of trying to prove it has no legal requirement to pay anything. That's irrelevant and unserious. The whole point of the negotiation for the EU is to create a legal obligation for the money. If it existed already they would demands something else.
The closest analogy I can think of is a group of friends that decide rent a house for a week with planned meals and activities. One of the party, Jim,pulls out the day before. Should he pay his full share, including for the booked meals and activities, none of it or part of it? The money is significant for Jim. The full amount means he won't be able to take a substitute holiday. The extra amounts per head are less for the others but when they go back to tell their partners that it will cost a bit more than they thought, their partners will say, why should you have pay itt. Get Jim to pay. He's the one mucking you around.
So there isn't a hard and fast rule. The group think they 70-30 majority justified in taking a maximalist line. Whether Jim will go along with it depends on how anxious he is to keep in with the group. One thing for sure, the group no longer trust Jim very much.
Forget the 70-30 majority bit. That was predictive typing for the word "are" because I referred to a 70-30 majority further down. With predictive typing I will eventually reveal something I want to keep hidden.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
A really bad misreading of the data. Almost all of the educational split between Leave and Remain is actually down to age. When a vastly larger number of young people go to university now compared to 30 years ago your education predictor is simply an alternative age predictor. If you are relying on all those graduates remaining pro EU as they are then you are in for a very nasty surprise.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
The best predictor of Brexit voting was being economically marginalised. Educated voters were more inclined to Leave in areas of poor economic activity, and less educated people to Remain in areas of strong economic activity. This parallels the paradox of immigration and house prices. Brexit voting was more common in areas of stagnant or declining population and house prices, and Remain in areas of inward migration and house price growth. The JRF did a good analysis on this:
I expect a continued gradual decline in economic activity, particularly in Brexit voting areas, but am less certain of how the voters will react. They will probably shift to a rather dystopian factionalism between right wing populists and left wing populists.
Edit: Scotland and NI are different to the above, which really apllies to England and Wales.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
It's not correlated with education, it's correlated with age. Less old people went to university than younger people.
The young are told repeatedly how wonderful the EU is in the education system. As people get older and gain more life experience they realise they were sold a load of old bollocks and vote accordingly.
Re the header I'm a few years older that TSE. I was sitting in an A Level History lesson at school discussing I think Peel when the Deputy Head flew in breathlessly and announced that " Thatcher's resigned ". It's the closest I've ever come to experiencing ESP. You could hear everyone in the lesson thinking " This is it. This is History. This is what A Level students will right essays on in 150 years time and we're living it. "
I remember being told too.
I was in the lounge ahores.
The modern EU is largely her creation, via the Single European Act.
No it isn't. It's that of Monnet and Delors.
The Single European Act was as far as the UK could, politically sustainably, go and if you read Charles Moore's biography you'll see she had strong reservations even over aspects of that.
She had it whipped through the Commons, and described the Single Market as "an overriding positive goal" in 1985.
Though perhaps you are right, and Maggie was less astute than she appeared.
The Single Market was consistent with what the Tory party and most of the UK had ever wanted out of Europe: a genuinely free trade area for both services and goods. The fact that it has not been fully achieved in respect of services (the UK's strength) 30 years on was and is a major frustration.
What Thatcher didn't want, and what I think we can now say with confidence the majority of Brits didn't want, was the political union that came with it. As early as Maastricht the balance was switching in the EU towards political union across an ever widening sphere. Some Tories were persuaded off that the trade off was still a net gain, others were not. By now those not persuaded have a very clear majority in the party but it has indeed been a long and bitter struggle.
Exactly. Which is why Dave's deal was so important.
"It is recognised that the United Kingdom, in the light of the specific situation it has under the Treaties, is not committed to further political integration into the European Union. The substance of this will be incorporated into the Treaties at the time of their next revision in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Treaties and the respective constitutional requirements of the Member States, so as to make it clear that the references to ever closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom."
You guys really won't take yes for an answer, will you; it doesn't bode well for the negotiations.
On topic the deal hammered out at cabinet yesterday means that the Tories will sing with a single voice today.
The compromises needed there to achieve that may mean that the EU will be unenthused about what is on offer. In negotiation terms this should reflect Britain's final offer, take it or leave it, but that only works in my experience when walking away from the table is a credible option. I am not sure that is the case here.
There was an odd comment on R4 this morning "Britain's insistence on scrutinising and requiring the EU to justify its monetary claim has soured the atmosphere and made European negotiators pessimistic as to where any deal will be done"
If they really thought they wouldn't be asked to justify their position then they simply don't see this as a negotiation. In which case no deal: we are not supplicants
The UK went through an exercise of trying to prove it has no legal requirement to pay anything. That's irrelevant and unserious. The whole point of the negotiation for the EU is to create a legal obligation for the money. If it existed already they would demands something else.
The closest analogy I can think of is a group of friends that decide rent a house for a week with planned meals and activities. One of the party, Jim,pulls out the day before. Should he pay his full share, including for the booked meals and activities, none of it or part of it? The money is significant for Jim. The full amount means he won't be able to take a substitute holiday. The extra amounts per head are less for the others but when they go back to tell their partners that it will cost a bit more than they thought, their partners will say, why should you have pay itt. Get Jim to pay. He's the one mucking you around.
So there isn't a hard and fast rule. The group think they 70-30 majority justified in taking a maximalist line. Whether Jim will go along with it depends on how anxious he is to keep in with the group. One thing for sure, the group no longer trust Jim very much.
Actually the more accurate analogy is that Jim has been carrying most of the rest of the group for years; paying for meals and always putting his hand in his pocket to buy a round. He has been taken for granted by the group and has now had enough and decided not to take part in the shared activities any more as they are ungrateful and keep demanding more and more.
Now they are moaning because he won't keep buying rounds even after he has gone drinking elsewhere.
Not actually so, but Jim thinks he's been carrying the group.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
A really bad misreading of the data. Almost all of the educational split between Leave and Remain is actually down to age. When a vastly larger number of young people go to university now compared to 30 years ago your education predictor is simply an alternative age predictor. If you are relying on all those graduates remaining pro EU as they are then you are in for a very nasty surprise.
Plus let us not forget only around 40 to 45% of even today's 25 year olds are graduates, still a minority even if significantly larger than the 10% or so of over 65s who are graduates
I'm mildly supportive of Corbyn's proposal to nationalise water. Certainly I think you can't have meaningful competition in water. From your comment I'm not sure if you agree on that - but it's clear to me that charging what the market will bear on water, having competing pipe networks etc. is not practical...
But only mildly supportive as I recognise nationalising anything sparks panic among many... It's a tough battle to get people to stop thinking ideologically about it. Anecdotally I hear relatively little complaining about water service compared to trains for instance - so trains might be a more logical place to start.
Plus with water you have to explain why buying the company at xx billion does not actually have to lead to tax increases. Whereas allowing train franchises to expire is easier for people to understand.
I think Corbyn has a stronger case in water companies are avoiding corporation tax, investors are making excess profits etc... rather than playing whack a mole with that - if we just become the shareholders then that problem seems to go away?
Energy I don't know a great deal about. What does worry me is the idea of foreign unfriendly powers being involved...
I might certainly be persuadable over water renationalisation. However it would have to be done with a due consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the move, and most of all fairly.
It should not be the usual nationalisation = good, privatisation = bad (and vice versa for the Conservatives).
IMO railway renationalisation would be a disaster in the medium and long term. Privatisation has, paradoxically, been a massive success, albeit a success with flaws.
One of the reasons why Mrs Thatcher was a believer in climate change is down to the Falklands War.
The people that showed her climate change was happening were the people that gave such accurate weather reports to the task force to liberate the Falklands.
She was a scientist, and understood the science.
Bloody hell, that is bonkers. She had a bad chemistry degree, ffs. You do realise there are different sorts of science, do you? You don't put an eminent botanist in charge of a hadron collider.
And it's not about understanding the science, anyway. The scientific claim about AGW is broadly comprehensible, and coherent, but that doesn't make it right. It means it could be right. Go and read one of the better conspiracy theories about, say, 9/11 (plane fires not hot enough to melt steel etc.) In the absence of evidence to the contrary, some of them are coherent and comprehensible. That doesn't make them right. I used to do litigation about bad stuff happening to ships and/or their cargoes. Every single case involved scientific expert evidence, and all the expert opinions I ever saw looked on the face of it coherent and convincing, until you saw the equal and opposite report commissioned by the other side. And these are "what happened a couple of years ago" studies, not what might happen in 30 years time.
Btw Steven E. Jones (9/11 conspiracy fan) is a professor emeritus of physics, so he understands the science, right?
And btw 2 if Thatcher seriously thought AGW must be a thing because of some relatively accurate 3 day weather forecasts, that's an embarrassing fact which all true conservatives should suppress.
I shall be having a drink later today with a bunch of old gits. We split about 3 - 3 on the referendum vote, but it's not been mentioned much since. If we repeated the vote it would still be 3- 3, but the consensus (5 - 1) is 'we're leaving and that's the end of it.'
I've found the same general feeling elsewhere. It seems to be only 'the posh elite' who are obsessing now. And that's because being superior people, they are unused to not getting their own way. The BBC may be trying to keep the corpse of argument going but even they have a world-weary tone.
It's gone, it's pushing up the daisies, it is no more etc. Juncker and Barnier have extinguished the last flickers of life. The subject is boring, and the 'normal' Remainer voters are also bored with it.
Did May choose to do this a couple of days before the German election in a misguided attempt to avenge Selmayr’s leak of the Downing Street dinner and Merkel’s subsequent ‘illusions’ comment shortly after she called the June election?
On topic the deal hammered out at cabinet yesterday means that the Tories will sing with a single voice today.
The compromises needed there to achieve that may mean that the EU will be unenthused about what is on offer. In negotiation terms this should reflect Britain's final offer, take it or leave it, but that only works in my experience when walking away from the table is a credible option. I am not sure that is the case here.
There was an odd comment on R4 this morning "Britain's insistence on scrutinising and requiring the EU to justify its monetary claim has soured the atmosphere and made European negotiators pessimistic as to where any deal will be done"
If they really thought they wouldn't be asked to justify their position then they simply don't see this as a negotiation. In which case no deal: we are not supplicants
The UK went through an exercise of trying to prove it has no legal requirement to pay anything. That's irrelevant and unserious. The whole point of the negotiation for the EU is to create a legal obligation for the money. If it existed already they would demands something else.
The closest analogy I can think of is a group of friends that decide rent a house for a week with planned meals and activities. One of the party, Jim,pulls out the day before. Should he pay his full share, including for the booked meals and activities, none of it or part of it? The money is significant for Jim. The full amount means he won't be able to take a substitute holiday. The extra amounts per head are less for the others but when they go back to tell their partners that it will cost a bit more than they thought, their partners will say, why should you have pay itt. Get Jim to pay. He's the one mucking you around.
So there isn't a hard and fast rule. The group think they 70-30 majority justified in taking a maximalist line. Whether Jim will go along with it depends on how anxious he is to keep in with the group. One thing for sure, the group no longer trust Jim very much.
Actually the more accurate analogy is that Jim has been carrying most of the rest of the group for years; paying for meals and always putting his hand in his pocket to buy a round. He has been taken for granted by the group and has now had enough and decided not to take part in the shared activities any more as they are ungrateful and keep demanding more and more.
Now they are moaning because he won't keep buying rounds even after he has gone drinking elsewhere.
Nearly there.
"Now they are moaning because he won't keep buying rounds and wants to stay in their members-only club and take advantage of the bogof on white wine spritzers on a Tuesday night"
I'm mildly supportive of Corbyn's proposal to nationalise water. Certainly I think you can't have meaningful competition in water. From your comment I'm not sure if you agree on that - but it's clear to me that charging what the market will bear on water, having competing pipe networks etc. is not practical...
But only mildly supportive as I recognise nationalising anything sparks panic among many... It's a tough battle to get people to stop thinking ideologically about it. Anecdotally I hear relatively little complaining about water service compared to trains for instance - so trains might be a more logical place to start.
Plus with water you have to explain why buying the company at xx billion does not actually have to lead to tax increases. Whereas allowing train franchises to expire is easier for people to understand.
I think Corbyn has a stronger case in water companies are avoiding corporation tax, investors are making excess profits etc... rather than playing whack a mole with that - if we just become the shareholders then that problem seems to go away?
Energy I don't know a great deal about. What does worry me is the idea of foreign unfriendly powers being involved...
I might certainly be persuadable over water renationalisation. However it would have to be done with a due consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the move, and most of all fairly.
It should not be the usual nationalisation = good, privatisation = bad (and vice versa for the Conservatives).
IMO railway renationalisation would be a disaster in the medium and long term. Privatisation has, paradoxically, been a massive success, albeit a success with flaws.
Yes the rolling stock has improved massively and passenger numbers have more than doubled since privatisation on the railways:
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
A really bad misreading of the data. Almost all of the educational split between Leave and Remain is actually down to age. When a vastly larger number of young people go to university now compared to 30 years ago your education predictor is simply an alternative age predictor. If you are relying on all those graduates remaining pro EU as they are then you are in for a very nasty surprise.
Age and education level are the two prime indicators of propensity to vote Remain or Leave. You are correct that education and age are themselves currently correlated and then make the assumption that it is age, not education, that is the driver. We don't know that. In fact, education level is a slightly stronger indicator than age, so maybe that's the driver, or maybe it's a bit of both.
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
It's amazing to see unreconstructed lefties lamenting the end of Thatcher. How brainwashed have you lot become by the EU?
Or perhaps an indication of how far the Tories have fallen. No longer economically liberal, outward looking and ambitious. A nostalgia ridden jingoistic rump
Apart from taming the unions (which pr obably could have been achieved without pitch battles) what elso good did she do?
Abolutely nothing , however she did wreck our industries and replace them with the blood sucking financial services thieves.
To a large extent, the industries wrecked themselves. There are many reasons why this happened, of which governmental policies, union action and mismangement are just three. However it is clear that the rot in these industries started a decade or more before Thatcher became PM.
It would be interesting to hear what, with hindsight, her critics would have had her do?
Other countries governments managed to have good work relations and save their industries. Key was that UK and Tories chose the US model of slash and burn rather than the European model. We see the results today , UK on downward trajectory , all Scotland's oil wasted ( Norway have 1 trillion in bank ) and hardly any European country that is not on a better footing than the UK. Only the elite rich have benefitted from Thatcher's Tory scorched earth policies. Even the easy credit with ordinary people so much in debt they cannot protest anything and hav eto take whatever is on offer was all part of the Tory blueprint to shackle ordinary people.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
It's not correlated with education, it's correlated with age. Less old people went to university than younger people.
The young are told repeatedly how wonderful the EU is in the education system. As people get older and gain more life experience they realise they were sold a load of old bollocks and vote accordingly.
Age and education are certainly associated, making confounding a difficult issue in analysis.
I do think that Tertiary education does influence peoples philosophy and outlook. It is a transformative experience that broadens horizons, part of the reason that it valued beyond economic factors.
Will the political opinions of a graduate age differently to a person who started office work at 16 a few decades earlier, even if they do much the same job in much the same office? I expect so. The life experience 16-23 will be very dofferent, and formative in different ways for each of them.
Do you regret no longer living in the 'invincible green suburbs' of Brent North ?
I fail to see what the landlord can actually do. They are not thy tenents keeper. If they let it out on good faith then they can't be expected to constantly monitor the property, and there are rightly laws and regulations stating that (have to give notice to enter etc etc).
The problem is with cheap labour and immigration here. Not landlords.
Oddly enough, the model of Network Rail has, after a choppy start, proven to be one of the more interesting examples. It seems a hybrid - not quite public, not quite private - and is described as "an arms length public body with no shareholders".
It is currently delivering the big improvement projects at Waterloo and London Bridge and I suspect has more big works planned in the coming years. It seems to be publicly-funded but to operate more in the private sector ethos.
I might certainly be persuadable over water renationalisation. However it would have to be done with a due consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the move, and most of all fairly.
It should not be the usual nationalisation = good, privatisation = bad (and vice versa for the Conservatives).
IMO railway renationalisation would be a disaster in the medium and long term. Privatisation has, paradoxically, been a massive success, albeit a success with flaws.
Well I'm heartened you are open-minded to it.
On railways - I think the correct comparison is not with British Rail then, but with what could happen now.
Given that many of our rail franchises are state-owned, but just by foreign states - with profits subsidising their railways - I don't understand why a British state-owned company couldn't fulfil the same function and keep profits here.
Then add in the fact that we have an example on the East Coast line...
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
One of the reasons why Mrs Thatcher was a believer in climate change is down to the Falklands War.
The people that showed her climate change was happening were the people that gave such accurate weather reports to the task force to liberate the Falklands.
She was a scientist, and understood the science.
Bloody hell, that is bonkers. She had a bad chemistry degree, ffs. You do realise there are different sorts of science, do you? You don't put an eminent botanist in charge of a hadron collider.
No - discounting "good" and "bad" science as types then there is only one type of science - the application of the scientific method to build and organise knowledge and make testable predictions.
Chemistry (good or bad) is a subject but an understanding of the scientific method is required to do chemistry.
I'm mildly supportive of Corbyn's proposal to nationalise water. Certainly I think you can't have meaningful competition in water. From your comment I'm not sure if you agree on that - but it's clear to me that charging what the market will bear on water, having competing pipe networks etc. is not practical...
But only mildly supportive as I recognise nationalising anything sparks panic among many... It's a tough battle to get people to stop thinking ideologically about it. Anecdotally I hear relatively little complaining about water service compared to trains for instance - so trains might be a more logical place to start.
Plus with water you have to explain why buying the company at xx billion does not actually have to lead to tax increases. Whereas allowing train franchises to expire is easier for people to understand.
I think Corbyn has a stronger case in water companies are avoiding corporation tax, investors are making excess profits etc... rather than playing whack a mole with that - if we just become the shareholders then that problem seems to go away?
Energy I don't know a great deal about. What does worry me is the idea of foreign unfriendly powers being involved...
I might certainly be persuadable over water renationalisation. However it would have to be done with a due consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the move, and most of all fairly.
It should not be the usual nationalisation = good, privatisation = bad (and vice versa for the Conservatives).
IMO railway renationalisation would be a disaster in the medium and long term. Privatisation has, paradoxically, been a massive success, albeit a success with flaws.
Yes the rolling stock has improved massively and passenger numbers have more than doubled since privatisation on the railways:
Sorry to be late in responding to some of these; it’s going to be rather a jumbled weekend here. What isn’t being taken account of here is the massive technological jump which started in the 80’s. One only has to look at phones, for example, where there was an enormous amount of development in the private industry, which has resulted in many peple now not having a landline. If reception was better here, I could easily do without one!
Water was unquestionably a privatisation too far, and so were electricity and gas.Maybe if Sid had held on to his gas shares things might have been different, but he didn’t and now we’ve an oligoply, with firms largely controlled outside the UK.
I shall be having a drink later today with a bunch of old gits. We split about 3 - 3 on the referendum vote, but it's not been mentioned much since. If we repeated the vote it would still be 3- 3, but the consensus (5 - 1) is 'we're leaving and that's the end of it.'
I've found the same general feeling elsewhere. It seems to be only 'the posh elite' who are obsessing now. And that's because being superior people, they are unused to not getting their own way. The BBC may be trying to keep the corpse of argument going but even they have a world-weary tone.
It's gone, it's pushing up the daisies, it is no more etc. Juncker and Barnier have extinguished the last flickers of life. The subject is boring, and the 'normal' Remainer voters are also bored with it.
I agree with your 5-1 point - most people accept we are leaving... but the huge question is what leaving looks like. It feels to me like the extreme brexiteers in the Tory party are dictating a much harder Brexit than necessary - a softer Brexit would still satisfy the vast majority of the 52% and bring a similar majority of the 48%. Given where we are now I suspect it would get >70% support. But no, we have to let JRM and the other extremists wreak havoc on the country for their outdated ideals.
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
I think you are overstating public opinion a bit, although it is important, of course. The public had their say in June last year. Now it is about implementation. Mrs May needs to deliver this speech, which she should have made a year ago, as some of us pointed out at the time. But the EU is well past generalities. They have a list of issues and proposals that Mrs May's team will need to address in concrete terms over the next several weeks. That will happen in the now smoke free rooms.
I shall be having a drink later today with a bunch of old gits. We split about 3 - 3 on the referendum vote, but it's not been mentioned much since. If we repeated the vote it would still be 3- 3, but the consensus (5 - 1) is 'we're leaving and that's the end of it.'
I've found the same general feeling elsewhere. It seems to be only 'the posh elite' who are obsessing now. And that's because being superior people, they are unused to not getting their own way. The BBC may be trying to keep the corpse of argument going but even they have a world-weary tone.
It's gone, it's pushing up the daisies, it is no more etc. Juncker and Barnier have extinguished the last flickers of life. The subject is boring, and the 'normal' Remainer voters are also bored with it.
Very true my family and friends are similar to your experience.Hopefully May will be decisive today.
One of the reasons why Mrs Thatcher was a believer in climate change is down to the Falklands War.
The people that showed her climate change was happening were the people that gave such accurate weather reports to the task force to liberate the Falklands.
She was a scientist, and understood the science.
Bloody hell, that is bonkers. She had a bad chemistry degree, ffs. You do realise there are different sorts of science, do you? You don't put an eminent botanist in charge of a hadron collider.
No - discounting "good" and "bad" science as types then there is only one type of science - the application of the scientific method to build and organise knowledge and make testable predictions.
Chemistry (good or bad) is a subject but an understanding of the scientific method is required to do chemistry.
To a large extent, science is a frame of mind...
Bang on Beverley. Is the notion of scientific consensus part of the scientific frame of mind?
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
On topic the deal hammered out at cabinet yesterday means that the Tories will sing with a single voice today.
The compromises needed there to achieve that may mean that the EU will be unenthused about what is on offer. In negotiation terms this should reflect Britain's final offer, take it or leave it, but that only works in my experience when walking away from the table is a credible option. I am not sure that is the case here.
There was an odd comment on R4 this morning "Britain's insistence on scrutinising and requiring the EU to justify its monetary claim has soured the atmosphere and made European negotiators pessimistic as to where any deal will be done"
If they really thought they wouldn't be asked to justify their position then they simply don't see this as a negotiation. In which case no deal: we are not supplicants
The UK went through an exercise of trying to prove it has no legal requirement to pay anything. That's irrelevant and unserious. The whole point of the negotiation for the EU is to create a legal obligation for the money. If it existed already they would demands something else.
The closest analogy I can think of is a group of friends that decide rent a house for a week with planned meals and activities. One of the party, Jim,pulls out the day before. Should he pay his full share, including for the booked meals and activities, none of it or part of it? The money is significant for Jim. The full amount means he won't be able to take a substitute holiday. The extra amounts per head are less for the others but when they go back to tell their partners that it will cost a bit more than they thought, their partners will say, why should you have pay itt. Get Jim to pay. He's the one mucking you around.
So there isn't a hard and fast rule. The group think they 70-30 majority justified in taking a maximalist line. Whether Jim will go along with it depends on how anxious he is to keep in with the group. One thing for sure, the group no longer trust Jim very much.
The EU said "we want this money"
The UK said "our analysis says we owe you nothing. Tell us why we should pay you anything"
The EU: "Because we want it"
Negotiations are not about legalities - it's a commercial discussion that then gets translated into legal wording. But the EU needs to be able to make an argument that the UK negotiators can sell back home as to why the UK should pay a large sum. "Just because" doesn't cut it.
I shall be having a drink later today with a bunch of old gits. We split about 3 - 3 on the referendum vote, but it's not been mentioned much since. If we repeated the vote it would still be 3- 3, but the consensus (5 - 1) is 'we're leaving and that's the end of it.'
I've found the same general feeling elsewhere. It seems to be only 'the posh elite' who are obsessing now. And that's because being superior people, they are unused to not getting their own way. The BBC may be trying to keep the corpse of argument going but even they have a world-weary tone.
It's gone, it's pushing up the daisies, it is no more etc. Juncker and Barnier have extinguished the last flickers of life. The subject is boring, and the 'normal' Remainer voters are also bored with it.
I agree with your 5-1 point - most people accept we are leaving... but the huge question is what leaving looks like. It feels to me like the extreme brexiteers in the Tory party are dictating a much harder Brexit than necessary - a softer Brexit would still satisfy the vast majority of the 52% and bring a similar majority of the 48%. Given where we are now I suspect it would get >70% support. But no, we have to let JRM and the other extremists wreak havoc on the country for their outdated ideals.
Is what many people find unfathomable and lead them to say, correctly, that Brexit is being conducted through the prism of internal Conservative Party politics.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
A really bad misreading of the data. Almost all of the educational split between Leave and Remain is actually down to age. When a vastly larger number of young people go to university now compared to 30 years ago your education predictor is simply an alternative age predictor. If you are relying on all those graduates remaining pro EU as they are then you are in for a very nasty surprise.
Age and education level are the two prime indicators of propensity to vote Remain or Leave. You are correct that education and age are themselves currently correlated and then make the assumption that it is age, not education, that is the driver. We don't know that. In fact, education level is a slightly stronger indicator than age, so maybe that's the driver, or maybe it's a bit of both.
If you look at how people voted in the ref then amongst 50 plus educated to degree level most voted remain. So maybe education is more important than age.
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
I believe there was a study saying that was mistaken. The issue is the massive increase in graduates over time - it's not education, but age that was the best predictor of voting.
One of the reasons why Mrs Thatcher was a believer in climate change is down to the Falklands War.
The people that showed her climate change was happening were the people that gave such accurate weather reports to the task force to liberate the Falklands.
She was a scientist, and understood the science.
Bloody hell, that is bonkers. She had a bad chemistry degree, ffs. You do realise there are different sorts of science, do you? You don't put an eminent botanist in charge of a hadron collider.
No - discounting "good" and "bad" science as types then there is only one type of science - the application of the scientific method to build and organise knowledge and make testable predictions.
Chemistry (good or bad) is a subject but an understanding of the scientific method is required to do chemistry.
To a large extent, science is a frame of mind...
Correct, but if I came across anyone over the age of about 14 who didn't have a basic grasp of scientific method I'd regard them as thick and/or poorly educated.
The basic misunderstanding of the uber warmists is not understanding that there are different sorts of claim and that some sorts have higher epistemic status than others. You cannot test the AGW claim by a study of planets where fossil fuels have been extracted and burnt, and others where they haven't, because there is a shortage of candidates. All you can say is, I've gathered lots of data from the only subject I have, and I've made this lovely model. To quote Monty Python, "Camelot!" "It's only a model". "Ssssssh!"
I might certainly be persuadable over water renationalisation. However it would have to be done with a due consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the move, and most of all fairly.
It should not be the usual nationalisation = good, privatisation = bad (and vice versa for the Conservatives).
IMO railway renationalisation would be a disaster in the medium and long term. Privatisation has, paradoxically, been a massive success, albeit a success with flaws.
Well I'm heartened you are open-minded to it.
On railways - I think the correct comparison is not with British Rail then, but with what could happen now.
Given that many of our rail franchises are state-owned, but just by foreign states - with profits subsidising their railways - I don't understand why a British state-owned company couldn't fulfil the same function and keep profits here.
Then add in the fact that we have an example on the East Coast line...
Presumably you have counter-arguments though?
I have frequently said on here that nationalisation and privatisation are just tools, and should be treated as such. They should not be treated as ideologies. Use what works.
There is no 'example' on the East Coast. People who obsess about it fail to mention that SWT were returning far more money at the time than EC, and also the unusual circumstances at the time.
The railways are a really odd one, as they are privatised, but in some ways the government wields more control than it did when nationalised (at least, at some periods). However Network Rail's many recent failures on large projects, and the disastrous DfT-mandated IEP project, shows that governmental control might be far from a panacea.
As I've said passim, in the early 1990s I knew a few BR managers - this was in the period just before privatisation. One said to me that the entire mindset of BR was doing more with less - and they'd done a blooming good job of it since the early 1980s. But that involved managing a shrinking network. I am far from convinced a nationalised BR would have turned around that mindset and supported the massive growth we have seen since privatisation.
I might certainly be persuadable over water renationalisation. However it would have to be done with a due consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the move, and most of all fairly.
It should not be the usual nationalisation = good, privatisation = bad (and vice versa for the Conservatives).
IMO railway renationalisation would be a disaster in the medium and long term. Privatisation has, paradoxically, been a massive success, albeit a success with flaws.
Well I'm heartened you are open-minded to it.
On railways - I think the correct comparison is not with British Rail then, but with what could happen now.
Given that many of our rail franchises are state-owned, but just by foreign states - with profits subsidising their railways - I don't understand why a British state-owned company couldn't fulfil the same function and keep profits here.
Then add in the fact that we have an example on the East Coast line...
Presumably you have counter-arguments though?
My only concern with public ownership of the railways is the grip the RMT has on Corbyn and the hard left. It will be a recipe for excessive restrictive practices and ransom demands from the unions as we are seeing now in parts of the network
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
May is in an impossible position.
She could deliver a modern-day equivalent of the Gettysburg address and she will still be in an impossible position.
Her government is unable to agree a way forward on the most important issue facing the country and her speech will not change that.
A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I wonder if Mrs May feels the hand of history upon her shoulders?
The long arm of history on her collar, more like.
I wonder if it is significant that today is the first day of Autumn? Symbolism and a declining leader giving a speech in a sidelined hall in a foreign city.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
It's not correlated with education, it's correlated with age. Less old people went to university than younger people.
The young are told repeatedly how wonderful the EU is in the education system. As people get older and gain more life experience they realise they were sold a load of old bollocks and vote accordingly.
Age and education are certainly associated, making confounding a difficult issue in analysis.
I do think that Tertiary education does influence peoples philosophy and outlook. It is a transformative experience that broadens horizons, part of the reason that it valued beyond economic factors.
Will the political opinions of a graduate age differently to a person who started office work at 16 a few decades earlier, even if they do much the same job in much the same office? I expect so. The life experience 16-23 will be very dofferent, and formative in different ways for each of them.
David Goodhart is good on this - he thinks that the expansion of tertiary education is one of the biggest social revolutions since the 60s, but is never written about as such. The fact that almost all students are residential (ie they leave their families, old friends and move to an entirely different part of the country) helps to boost their 'Anywhere' sentiments, more than say Spain where most people just go to the local university and there is less of a hierarchy.
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
One of the reasons why Mrs Thatcher was a believer in climate change is down to the Falklands War.
The people that showed her climate change was happening were the people that gave such accurate weather reports to the task force to liberate the Falklands.
She was a scientist, and understood the science.
Bloody hell, that is bonkers. She had a bad chemistry degree, ffs. You do realise there are different sorts of science, do you? You don't put an eminent botanist in charge of a hadron collider.
No - discounting "good" and "bad" science as types then there is only one type of science - the application of the scientific method to build and organise knowledge and make testable predictions.
Chemistry (good or bad) is a subject but an understanding of the scientific method is required to do chemistry.
To a large extent, science is a frame of mind...
Correct, but if I came across anyone over the age of about 14 who didn't have a basic grasp of scientific method I'd regard them as thick and/or poorly educated.
The basic misunderstanding of the uber warmists is not understanding that there are different sorts of claim and that some sorts have higher epistemic status than others. You cannot test the AGW claim by a study of planets where fossil fuels have been extracted and burnt, and others where they haven't, because there is a shortage of candidates. All you can say is, I've gathered lots of data from the only subject I have, and I've made this lovely model. To quote Monty Python, "Camelot!" "It's only a model". "Ssssssh!"
I know but PB is so often the home of the pedant and I was just getting into the flow
BMG also had Remain ahead in its final EU referendum poll and Leave won by 4%
Yes BMGs final poll before the referendum had remain on 53.3 and leave on 46.7 per cent - a 6.6 per cent lead for remain. If they are as equally wrong now as they were then the true picture is leave 54 remain 46 now!
Are we really going to start using polls with marginal results to seek to overturn the referendum when the majority of pollsters got it wrong in June 2017 and June 2016.
As for the young vs old debate there was a recent poll which showed young people would rather have equality than freedom - by about 60 to 40 - whereas older voters would rather have freedom by a huge margin.
I am afraid that truly shocked me - almost saying you would rather live in a dictatorship where everyone was 'equal' irrespective of their work or efforts than have freedom? Quite scary actually. Is that why so many love the EU - although it delivers neither real freedom but has created huge inequality.
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
That's pretty gloomy if even the Leavers are giving up.
Erm, I half-heartedly voted Remain. Everything that has happened since EUrefday has left me wishing that I had made a bit more effort and campaigned for rather than merely voting for Remain. I am just strongly opposed to the pathological snobbery of anyone (this doesn't as far as I know include you) who would rather pretend to think (or perhaps really does think, I dunno) that 52% of their countrymen are xenophobic bigots, than accept that losing is losing.
Sorry to be late in responding to some of these; it’s going to be rather a jumbled weekend here. What isn’t being taken account of here is the massive technological jump which started in the 80’s. One only has to look at phones, for example, where there was an enormous amount of development in the private industry, which has resulted in many peple now not having a landline. If reception was better here, I could easily do without one!
Water was unquestionably a privatisation too far, and so were electricity and gas.Maybe if Sid had held on to his gas shares things might have been different, but he didn’t and now we’ve an oligoply, with firms largely controlled outside the UK.
Hold on - we're told by some PB geniuses that technological change will reduce the need for rail travel. In fact, the uptick in passenger numbers correlates well with the start of the Internet. Correlation != cause, but it's an interesting coincidence.
And I think I disagree with electricity and gas privatisations: they were generally for the best, I think.
I'm also interested if the people who complain about foreign ownership of our industries want our companies that own foreign ones should sell them (and there are many).
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
Yes surely it is time for May to go beyond , we are leaving , to how we are leaving.
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Not if we don't adopt any of the new rules.
Excellent so we'll see Commerzbank charging their customers for research via the trading desk?
On topic the deal hammered out at cabinet yesterday means that the Tories will sing with a single voice today.
The compromises needed there to achieve that may mean that the EU will be unenthused about what is on offer. In negotiation terms this should reflect Britain's final offer, take it or leave it, but that only works in my experience when walking away from the table is a credible option. I am not sure that is the case here.
ants
The UK went through an exercise of trying to prove it has no legal requirement to pay anything. That's irrelevant and unserious. The whole point of the negotiation for the EU is to create a legal obligation for the money. If it existed already they would demands something else.
The closest analogy I can think of is a group of friends that decide rent a house for a week with planned meals and activities. One of the party, Jim,pulls out the day before. Should he pay his full share, including for the booked meals and activities, none of it or part of it? The money is significant for Jim. The full amount means he won't be able to take a substitute holiday. The extra amounts per head are less for the others but when they go back to tell their partners that it will cost a bit more than they thought, their partners will say, why should you have pay itt. Get Jim to pay. He's the one mucking you around.
So there isn't a hard and fast rule. The group think they 70-30 majority justified in taking a maximalist line. Whether Jim will go along with it depends on how anxious he is to keep in with the group. One thing for sure, the group no longer trust Jim very much.
The EU said "we want this money"
The UK said "our analysis says we owe you nothing. Tell us why we should pay you anything"
The EU: "Because we want it"
Negotiations are not about legalities - it's a commercial discussion that then gets translated into legal wording. But the EU needs to be able to make an argument that the UK negotiators can sell back home as to why the UK should pay a large sum. "Just because" doesn't cut it.
Fair point about both parties not recognising the need of the counterparty to sell the deal to their stakeholders. Both parties are guilty of this. The deal effectively is a load of cash and a limited UK extension of Freedom of Movement, which the EU27 want, against a time limited continued access to the EU system, which we want. The problem is that British people don't see why they should pay to partially retain the status quo. They don't realise that with their Leave vote they technically voted to break the treaties with the EU, which means the status quo is an extra that needs to be negotiated. These negotiations are burdened by the false premises that predicated our Leave vote.
One of the reasons why Mrs Thatcher was a believer in climate change is down to the Falklands War.
The people that showed her climate change was happening were the people that gave such accurate weather reports to the task force to liberate the Falklands.
She was a scientist, and understood the science.
Bloody hell, that is bonkers. She had a bad chemistry degree, ffs. You do realise there are different sorts of science, do you? You don't put an eminent botanist in charge of a hadron collider.
No - discounting "good" and "bad" science as types then there is only one type of science - the application of the scientific method to build and organise knowledge and make testable predictions.
Chemistry (good or bad) is a subject but an understanding of the scientific method is required to do chemistry.
To a large extent, science is a frame of mind...
Bang on Beverley. Is the notion of scientific consensus part of the scientific frame of mind?
To some extent, but any scientific theory must make testable predictions whose accuracy decides the fate of the theory. To that extent the consensus is that the theory works or does not.
Having said that, the common method is for theories that survive to continually improve and make better and better predictions. Nonetheless we have no real idea about the universe and how it works. No one really knows what an atom is or a magnetic field but we have developed models that seem to work and describe the behaviour of reality very well, but it would be a huge leap to imply that reality is as our theories picture it.
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Not if we don't adopt any of the new rules.
Excellent so we'll see Commerzbank charging their customers for research via the trading desk?
I've no idea. I didn't want to move to Frankfurt...
Mark Stone on Sky reporting from Florence in front of the Basilica Santa Marie saying that Theresa will deliver her speech in a disused hall to the side of the Basilica set out with chairs for the vast press interest but the EU leaders are wondering why she is conducting her speech in Florence rather than having a conversation with them in the negotiating room in Brussels
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
That's pretty gloomy if even the Leavers are giving up.
Erm, I half-heartedly voted Remain. Everything that has happened since EUrefday has left me wishing that I had made a bit more effort and campaigned for rather than merely voting for Remain. I am just strongly opposed to the pathological snobbery of anyone (this doesn't as far as I know include you) who would rather pretend to think (or perhaps really does think, I dunno) that 52% of their countrymen are xenophobic bigots, than accept that losing is losing.
Yes apologies I realised after (the six minutes!) that you had voted Remain or at least it was nagging at me.
I think most Remainers accept they lost; it is also legitimate to look at the motives of the winners.
Plenty of polls showed that immigration was top of the list of reasons for voting Leave. Now of course the correct answer is that (as a Leaver) one is hugely in favour of immigration, it's just that we would like to control it, and I accept that. There is also another bloc that, surely, is anti-immigration whoever is pulling the strings. That doesn't make them xenophobic racists, of course.
But regardless, your comment was pretty gloomy and I hope I don't have to agree with it after the speech.
Fair point about both parties not recognising the need of the counterparty to sell the deal to their stakeholders. Both parties are guilty of this. The deal effectively is a load of cash and a limited UK extension of Freedom of Movement, which the EU27 want, against a time limited continued access to the EU system, which we want. The problem is that British people don't see why they should pay to partially retain the status quo. They don't realise that with their Leave vote they technically voted to break the treaties with the EU, which means the status quo is an extra that needs to be negotiated. These negotiations are burdened by the false premises that predicated our Leave vote.
Equally if the EU was upfront and said "this is a payment to retain the benefits of access to the Single Market" that would be a good reason. But they have presented it as a settlement of legal obligations.
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
Sorry to be late in responding to some of these; it’s going to be rather a jumbled weekend here. What isn’t being taken account of here is the massive technological jump which started in the 80’s. One only has to look at phones, for example, where there was an enormous amount of development in the private industry, which has resulted in many peple now not having a landline. If reception was better here, I could easily do without one!
Water was unquestionably a privatisation too far, and so were electricity and gas.Maybe if Sid had held on to his gas shares things might have been different, but he didn’t and now we’ve an oligoply, with firms largely controlled outside the UK.
Hold on - we're told by some PB geniuses that technological change will reduce the need for rail travel. In fact, the uptick in passenger numbers correlates well with the start of the Internet. Correlation != cause, but it's an interesting coincidence.
And I think I disagree with electricity and gas privatisations: they were generally for the best, I think.
I'm also interested if the people who complain about foreign ownership of our industries want our companies that own foreign ones should sell them (and there are many).
It would indeed be interesting to know the reasons for the increase in passenger numbers.
Having said that, if I could find a train which took me acoss the Thames around the Dartford Crossing area I would much prefer to use that, as against the frequent interminable delays, especially Northbound. Colchester area to the Sevenoaks area. Currently it’s at least three changes. The Crossing is a privatised utility, please note.
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Not if we don't adopt any of the new rules.
Excellent so we'll see Commerzbank charging their customers for research via the trading desk?
I've no idea. I didn't want to move to Frankfurt...
"If we don't adopt any of the new rules" is, in financial services for example, a nonsensical statement. Perhaps it is likewise in others - if we don't like the new widget specs we need to comply with to sell our widgets in the EU we won't adopt them - I have no idea.
But for all practical purposes @YellowSubmarine is right, it is taxation without representation.
And after the transition period it is also taxation (in the form of necessary compliance with the rules) without representation.
Sorry to be late in responding to some of these; it’s going to be rather a jumbled weekend here. What isn’t being taken account of here is the massive technological jump which started in the 80’s. One only has to look at phones, for example, where there was an enormous amount of development in the private industry, which has resulted in many peple now not having a landline. If reception was better here, I could easily do without one!
Water was unquestionably a privatisation too far, and so were electricity and gas.Maybe if Sid had held on to his gas shares things might have been different, but he didn’t and now we’ve an oligoply, with firms largely controlled outside the UK.
Hold on - we're told by some PB geniuses that technological change will reduce the need for rail travel. In fact, the uptick in passenger numbers correlates well with the start of the Internet. Correlation != cause, but it's an interesting coincidence.
And I think I disagree with electricity and gas privatisations: they were generally for the best, I think.
I'm also interested if the people who complain about foreign ownership of our industries want our companies that own foreign ones should sell them (and there are many).
We don't have gas here, so I won't comment on that. But every time I think of our largely foriegn-owned electricity supply industry I come over all Victor Meldrew.
Because I can, every year I hunt around for the cheapest deal and go through the hassle of switching. Sometimes that switch has been cocked up and involved tedious calls to call centres. But I am lucky because I have the internet, the time and the wherewithall to switch. My father-in-law (85) and my mother (80), have no internet (nor the confidence) to switch, so get lumbered with subsidising us. As does my brother and his wife because they are just too busy trying to survive to find the time to switch.
I fail to see how privatisation and the energy 'market' has done anything for improving the wealth or wellbeing of the nation... Switching is inefficient and harms productivity, profits are being filched off to foreign companies (and governments), and the market favours some over others. All-in-all a terrible idea!
Sorry to be late in responding to some of these; it’s going to be rather a jumbled weekend here. What isn’t being taken account of here is the massive technological jump which started in the 80’s. One only has to look at phones, for example, where there was an enormous amount of development in the private industry, which has resulted in many peple now not having a landline. If reception was better here, I could easily do without one!
Water was unquestionably a privatisation too far, and so were electricity and gas.Maybe if Sid had held on to his gas shares things might have been different, but he didn’t and now we’ve an oligoply, with firms largely controlled outside the UK.
Hold on - we're told by some PB geniuses that technological change will reduce the need for rail travel. In fact, the uptick in passenger numbers correlates well with the start of the Internet. Correlation != cause, but it's an interesting coincidence.
And I think I disagree with electricity and gas privatisations: they were generally for the best, I think.
I'm also interested if the people who complain about foreign ownership of our industries want our companies that own foreign ones should sell them (and there are many).
It would indeed be interesting to know the reasons for the increase in passenger numbers.
Having said that, if I could find a train which took me acoss the Thames around the Dartford Crossing area I would much prefer to use that, as against the frequent interminable delays, especially Northbound. Colchester area to the Sevenoaks area. Currently it’s at least three changes. The Crossing is a privatised utility, please note.
Urrm, have you ever been able to do that journey, privatised or nationalised? (or was there, in the vague and shadowed recesses of my memory, a train ferry across the lower reaches of the Thames)?
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
Slightly OT, I saw a comment from Verhofstadt in response to Johnson's split allegiance accusation...
"It’s perfectly possible to feel English, British and European at the same time."
That entirely sums up how I feel, which is why Brexit is so painful.
Or Welsh/Scot and British
I am part English part Welsh, my wife is a Scot, and my three children and four grandchildren were all born in Wales.
We consider ourselves Welsh/Scot and British but none of us would call ourselves European.
Though you certainly are european, even if you do not consider yourselves as such
No -none of us consider we are European and never will
My wife and daughter have had recent DNA tests re their origins and they show that the family are entirely British with some small links to Scandinavia.
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
I am sure Corbyn can read a teleprompter , the same as May can.Both are not natural orators.However you are blinkered whatever he does.
One of the reasons why Mrs Thatcher was a believer in climate change is down to the Falklands War.
The people that showed her climate change was happening were the people that gave such accurate weather reports to the task force to liberate the Falklands.
She was a scientist, and understood the science.
Bloody hell, that is bonkers. She had a bad chemistry degree, ffs. You do realise there are different sorts of science, do you? You don't put an eminent botanist in charge of a hadron collider.
And it's not about understanding the science, anyway. The scientific claim about AGW is broadly comprehensible, and coherent, but that doesn't make it right. It means it could be right. Go and read one of the better conspiracy theories about, say, 9/11 (plane fires not hot enough to melt steel etc.) In the absence of evidence to the contrary, some of them are coherent and comprehensible. That doesn't make them right. I used to do litigation about bad stuff happening to ships and/or their cargoes. Every single case involved scientific expert evidence, and all the expert opinions I ever saw looked on the face of it coherent and convincing, until you saw the equal and opposite report commissioned by the other side. And these are "what happened a couple of years ago" studies, not what might happen in 30 years time.
Btw Steven E. Jones (9/11 conspiracy fan) is a professor emeritus of physics, so he understands the science, right?
And btw 2 if Thatcher seriously thought AGW must be a thing because of some relatively accurate 3 day weather forecasts, that's an embarrassing fact which all true conservatives should suppress.
The expertise of expert theorists is in creating convincing narratives in science, economics, politics or other theoretical fields.
The expertise of expert doers is in creating excellent practical outcomes in brain surgery, plumbing, business or other practical domains.
University gives you the former expertise. Apprenticeships give you the latter. We need more of the latter.
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Not if we don't adopt any of the new rules.
Excellent so we'll see Commerzbank charging their customers for research via the trading desk?
I've no idea. I didn't want to move to Frankfurt...
"If we don't adopt any of the new rules" is, in financial services for example, a nonsensical statement. Perhaps it is likewise in others - if we don't like the new widget specs we need to comply with to sell our widgets in the EU we won't adopt them - I have no idea.
But for all practical purposes @YellowSubmarine is right, it is taxation without representation.
And after the transition period it is also taxation (in the form of necessary compliance with the rules) without representation.
If we want to sell on a commercial basis we will need to comply with standards, just like we do with the US.
But that's not "taxation without representation" - the key point is that a company that doesn't export in the EU won't have to adopt the standards if they don't want to, unlike now. For example, I could see a niche whereby someone produces washing machines that wash and dishwashers that clean.
But, but, but they'll all be frothing, reactionary Brexiteers by the time they're forty. Or so we're told.
As things stand the devastating demographic challenge for for the Brexiters is education. Every study shows it's the best predictor of how folk voted in the Referendum. And every year what % of the folk who die in Britain are Graduates ? And every year what % of 21 and 22 year olds Graduate ? Now there s ample time for Brexiters to fix that. We won't be having another Referendum anytime soon. But the specific campaign Leave ran was brilliant but left unchanged won't survive the tide of history.
A really bad misreading of the data. Almost all of the educational split between Leave and Remain is actually down to age. When a vastly larger number of young people go to university now compared to 30 years ago your education predictor is simply an alternative age predictor. If you are relying on all those graduates remaining pro EU as they are then you are in for a very nasty surprise.
Age and education level are the two prime indicators of propensity to vote Remain or Leave. You are correct that education and age are themselves currently correlated and then make the assumption that it is age, not education, that is the driver. We don't know that. In fact, education level is a slightly stronger indicator than age, so maybe that's the driver, or maybe it's a bit of both.
If you look at how people voted in the ref then amongst 50 plus educated to degree level most voted remain. So maybe education is more important than age.
My instinct is that the world has changed. People nowadays expect greater international connections. They might not see the EU as a bastion of international democracy, but they see the EU breaking down barriers in a way they expect and approve of. They see immigration control more like bureaucracy than self determination. These are people that are young now but will grow older with their beliefs.
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
Corbyn's a much better speaker imo - more empathy
Ranting at a meeting of his supporters is one thing - standing on the World stage is a very different proposition and anyway, he hasn't a clue what he wants on Europe
Slightly OT, I saw a comment from Verhofstadt in response to Johnson's split allegiance accusation...
"It’s perfectly possible to feel English, British and European at the same time."
That entirely sums up how I feel, which is why Brexit is so painful.
Or Welsh/Scot and British
I am part English part Welsh, my wife is a Scot, and my three children and four grandchildren were all born in Wales.
We consider ourselves Welsh/Scot and British but none of us would call ourselves European.
Though you certainly are european, even if you do not consider yourselves as such
No -none of us consider we are European and never will
My wife and daughter have had recent DNA tests re their origins and they show that the family are entirely British with some small links to Scandinavia.
Er... and which continent are both Britain and Scandanavia in?
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Not if we don't adopt any of the new rules.
Excellent so we'll see Commerzbank charging their customers for research via the trading desk?
I've no idea. I didn't want to move to Frankfurt...
"If we don't adopt any of the new rules" is, in financial services for example, a nonsensical statement. Perhaps it is likewise in others - if we don't like the new widget specs we need to comply with to sell our widgets in the EU we won't adopt them - I have no idea.
But for all practical purposes @YellowSubmarine is right, it is taxation without representation.
And after the transition period it is also taxation (in the form of necessary compliance with the rules) without representation.
Slightly OT, I saw a comment from Verhofstadt in response to Johnson's split allegiance accusation...
"It’s perfectly possible to feel English, British and European at the same time."
That entirely sums up how I feel, which is why Brexit is so painful.
Or Welsh/Scot and British
I am part English part Welsh, my wife is a Scot, and my three children and four grandchildren were all born in Wales.
We consider ourselves Welsh/Scot and British but none of us would call ourselves European.
Though you certainly are european, even if you do not consider yourselves as such
No -none of us consider we are European and never will
My wife and daughter have had recent DNA tests re their origins and they show that the family are entirely British with some small links to Scandinavia.
Er... both and which continent are both Britain and Scandanavia in?
Sorry to be late in responding to some of these; it’s going to be rather a jumbled weekend here. What isn’t being taken account of here is the massive technological jump which started in the 80’s. One only has to look at phones, for example, where there was an enormous amount of development in the private industry, which has resulted in many peple now not having a landline. If reception was better here, I could easily do without one!
Water was unquestionably a privatisation too far, and so were electricity and gas.Maybe if Sid had held on to his gas shares things might have been different, but he didn’t and now we’ve an oligoply, with firms largely controlled outside the UK.
Hold on - we're told by some PB geniuses that technological change will reduce the need for rail travel. In fact, the uptick in passenger numbers correlates well with the start of the Internet. Correlation != cause, but it's an interesting coincidence.
And I think I disagree with electricity and gas privatisations: they were generally for the best, I think.
I'm also interested if the people who complain about foreign ownership of our industries want our companies that own foreign ones should sell them (and there are many).
It would indeed be interesting to know the reasons for the increase in passenger numbers.
Final thought for the morning. May's proposal will leave the UK in a " Taxation but no representation " state for 2 years. We'll pay almost full dues for transition but lose our MEP's , Commissioner and Council of Ministers representation on Brexit Day. For a bunch of Sovereignty fetishists who ran with " Take back Control " as a slogan that's a fairly astonishing short term achievement.
Not if we don't adopt any of the new rules.
Excellent so we'll see Commerzbank charging their customers for research via the trading desk?
I've no idea. I didn't want to move to Frankfurt...
"If we don't adopt any of the new rules" is, in financial services for example, a nonsensical statement. Perhaps it is likewise in others - if we don't like the new widget specs we need to comply with to sell our widgets in the EU we won't adopt them - I have no idea.
But for all practical purposes @YellowSubmarine is right, it is taxation without representation.
And after the transition period it is also taxation (in the form of necessary compliance with the rules) without representation.
Surely EU "... taxation without representation ..." is better known as the Norway Option?
No -none of us consider we are European and never will
My wife and daughter have had recent DNA tests re their origins and they show that the family are entirely British with some small links to Scandinavia.
Fog in the channel, Britain not part of Europe.
What was the definition of 'entirely British' DNA?
Comments
But apart from some posh Liberals and Heathite Tories, who thought that Britain would become the dominant force in a USE, Britain never bought into it.
Look at how those who voted in both 1975 and 2016 swung so hard against the EU. Yet those Leave voting oldies had spent 40+ year taking European holidays and driving European cars and watching European football. All the economic and cultural factors we were told would make Britain feel more European and yet the political trend went the opposite way.
Likewise it was regularly said in the late 1990s that when British people started using the Euro on holidays and when British business began using the Euro for their transactions there would be a surge in support for Britain joining the single currency. I even remember the likes of M&S and Debenhams showing prices in both Sterling and Euros - they don't do it now.
Now they are moaning because he won't keep buying rounds even after he has gone drinking elsewhere.
Certainly I think you can't have meaningful competition in water.
From your comment I'm not sure if you agree on that - but it's clear to me that charging what the market will bear on water, having competing pipe networks etc. is not practical...
But only mildly supportive as I recognise nationalising anything sparks panic among many... It's a tough battle to get people to stop thinking ideologically about it. Anecdotally I hear relatively little complaining about water service compared to trains for instance - so trains might be a more logical place to start.
Plus with water you have to explain why buying the company at xx billion does not actually have to lead to tax increases. Whereas allowing train franchises to expire is easier for people to understand.
I think Corbyn has a stronger case in water companies are avoiding corporation tax, investors are making excess profits etc... rather than playing whack a mole with that - if we just become the shareholders then that problem seems to go away?
Energy I don't know a great deal about. What does worry me is the idea of foreign unfriendly powers being involved...
https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/brexit-vote-explained-poverty-low-skills-and-lack-opportunities
I expect a continued gradual decline in economic activity, particularly in Brexit voting areas, but am less certain of how the voters will react. They will probably shift to a rather dystopian factionalism between right wing populists and left wing populists.
Edit: Scotland and NI are different to the above, which really apllies to England and Wales.
The young are told repeatedly how wonderful the EU is in the education system. As people get older and gain more life experience they realise they were sold a load of old bollocks and vote accordingly.
"It is recognised that the United Kingdom, in the light of the specific situation it has under the Treaties, is not committed to further political integration into the European Union. The substance of this will be incorporated into the Treaties at the time of their next revision in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Treaties and the respective constitutional requirements of the Member States, so as to make it clear that the references to ever closer union do not apply to the United Kingdom."
You guys really won't take yes for an answer, will you; it doesn't bode well for the negotiations.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/07/20/how-much-do-non-eu-countries-give-up-for-access-to-the-single-market-more-than-brexiteers-will-like/
It should not be the usual nationalisation = good, privatisation = bad (and vice versa for the Conservatives).
IMO railway renationalisation would be a disaster in the medium and long term. Privatisation has, paradoxically, been a massive success, albeit a success with flaws.
And it's not about understanding the science, anyway. The scientific claim about AGW is broadly comprehensible, and coherent, but that doesn't make it right. It means it could be right. Go and read one of the better conspiracy theories about, say, 9/11 (plane fires not hot enough to melt steel etc.) In the absence of evidence to the contrary, some of them are coherent and comprehensible. That doesn't make them right. I used to do litigation about bad stuff happening to ships and/or their cargoes. Every single case involved scientific expert evidence, and all the expert opinions I ever saw looked on the face of it coherent and convincing, until you saw the equal and opposite report commissioned by the other side. And these are "what happened a couple of years ago" studies, not what might happen in 30 years time.
Btw Steven E. Jones (9/11 conspiracy fan) is a professor emeritus of physics, so he understands the science, right?
And btw 2 if Thatcher seriously thought AGW must be a thing because of some relatively accurate 3 day weather forecasts, that's an embarrassing fact which all true conservatives should suppress.
I've found the same general feeling elsewhere. It seems to be only 'the posh elite' who are obsessing now. And that's because being superior people, they are unused to not getting their own way. The BBC may be trying to keep the corpse of argument going but even they have a world-weary tone.
It's gone, it's pushing up the daisies, it is no more etc. Juncker and Barnier have extinguished the last flickers of life. The subject is boring, and the 'normal' Remainer voters are also bored with it.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/sep/20/london-council-finds-35-men-living-in-one-three-bedroom-house
Do you regret no longer living in the 'invincible green suburbs' of Brent North ?
"Now they are moaning because he won't keep buying rounds and wants to stay in their members-only club and take advantage of the bogof on white wine spritzers on a Tuesday night"
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2015.png
He then goes on to say there will be an 'awful lot of people' who will be listening to her and doesn't seem to realise that is exactly why she has bypassed 'smoke filled rooms' and gone full on public with huge coverage which will be seen across Europe and indeed the World.
It is quite the most important speech she will ever give and how it is seen both here and in Europe will not only determine her further role in the process but how we Brexit.
The EU need to be careful as a wrong move by them at this point could have a big influence on UK public opinion and whoever wins that will determine the type of Brexit
and hardly any European country that is not on a better footing than the UK. Only the elite rich have benefitted from Thatcher's Tory scorched earth policies.
Even the easy credit with ordinary people so much in debt they cannot protest anything and hav eto take whatever is on offer was all part of the Tory blueprint to shackle ordinary people.
I do think that Tertiary education does influence peoples philosophy and outlook. It is a transformative experience that broadens horizons, part of the reason that it valued beyond economic factors.
Will the political opinions of a graduate age differently to a person who started office work at 16 a few decades earlier, even if they do much the same job in much the same office? I expect so. The life experience 16-23 will be very dofferent, and formative in different ways for each of them.
The problem is with cheap labour and immigration here. Not landlords.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2015.png
Oddly enough, the model of Network Rail has, after a choppy start, proven to be one of the more interesting examples. It seems a hybrid - not quite public, not quite private - and is described as "an arms length public body with no shareholders".
It is currently delivering the big improvement projects at Waterloo and London Bridge and I suspect has more big works planned in the coming years. It seems to be publicly-funded but to operate more in the private sector ethos.
It's a model worth considering in other areas.
On railways - I think the correct comparison is not with British Rail then, but with what could happen now.
Given that many of our rail franchises are state-owned, but just by foreign states - with profits subsidising their railways - I don't understand why a British state-owned company couldn't fulfil the same function and keep profits here.
Then add in the fact that we have an example on the East Coast line...
Presumably you have counter-arguments though?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/07/theresa-may-european-parliament-brussels-eu
EU parliament is a non-public smoke filled room, is it?
This does not feel like a good day to be British.
Chemistry (good or bad) is a subject but an understanding of the scientific method is required to do chemistry.
To a large extent, science is a frame of mind...
What isn’t being taken account of here is the massive technological jump which started in the 80’s. One only has to look at phones, for example, where there was an enormous amount of development in the private industry, which has resulted in many peple now not having a landline.
If reception was better here, I could easily do without one!
Water was unquestionably a privatisation too far, and so were electricity and gas.Maybe if Sid had held on to his gas shares things might have been different, but he didn’t and now we’ve an oligoply, with firms largely controlled outside the UK.
The UK said "our analysis says we owe you nothing. Tell us why we should pay you anything"
The EU: "Because we want it"
Negotiations are not about legalities - it's a commercial discussion that then gets translated into legal wording. But the EU needs to be able to make an argument that the UK negotiators can sell back home as to why the UK should pay a large sum. "Just because" doesn't cut it.
It is only this afternoon after all
"It’s perfectly possible to feel English, British and European at the same time."
That entirely sums up how I feel, which is why Brexit is so painful.
The basic misunderstanding of the uber warmists is not understanding that there are different sorts of claim and that some sorts have higher epistemic status than others. You cannot test the AGW claim by a study of planets where fossil fuels have been extracted and burnt, and others where they haven't, because there is a shortage of candidates. All you can say is, I've gathered lots of data from the only subject I have, and I've made this lovely model. To quote Monty Python, "Camelot!" "It's only a model". "Ssssssh!"
There is no 'example' on the East Coast. People who obsess about it fail to mention that SWT were returning far more money at the time than EC, and also the unusual circumstances at the time.
The railways are a really odd one, as they are privatised, but in some ways the government wields more control than it did when nationalised (at least, at some periods). However Network Rail's many recent failures on large projects, and the disastrous DfT-mandated IEP project, shows that governmental control might be far from a panacea.
As I've said passim, in the early 1990s I knew a few BR managers - this was in the period just before privatisation. One said to me that the entire mindset of BR was doing more with less - and they'd done a blooming good job of it since the early 1980s. But that involved managing a shrinking network. I am far from convinced a nationalised BR would have turned around that mindset and supported the massive growth we have seen since privatisation.
She could deliver a modern-day equivalent of the Gettysburg address and she will still be in an impossible position.
Her government is unable to agree a way forward on the most important issue facing the country and her speech will not change that.
https://twitter.com/markmcdsnp/status/911137819699105792
I suppose she gets a Brownie point for honesty.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/bmgherald-final-eu-referendum-poll/
Are we really going to start using polls with marginal results to seek to overturn the referendum when the majority of pollsters got it wrong in June 2017 and June 2016.
As for the young vs old debate there was a recent poll which showed young people would rather have equality than freedom - by about 60 to 40 - whereas older voters would rather have freedom by a huge margin.
I am afraid that truly shocked me - almost saying you would rather live in a dictatorship where everyone was 'equal' irrespective of their work or efforts than have freedom? Quite scary actually. Is that why so many love the EU - although it delivers neither real freedom but has created huge inequality.
https://twitter.com/mxsba/status/911148675019264000
And I think I disagree with electricity and gas privatisations: they were generally for the best, I think.
I'm also interested if the people who complain about foreign ownership of our industries want our companies that own foreign ones should sell them (and there are many).
I am part English part Welsh, my wife is a Scot, and my three children and four grandchildren were all born in Wales.
We consider ourselves Welsh/Scot and British but none of us would call ourselves European.
Having said that, the common method is for theories that survive to continually improve and make better and better predictions. Nonetheless we have no real idea about the universe and how it works. No one really knows what an atom is or a magnetic field but we have developed models that seem to work and describe the behaviour of reality very well, but it would be a huge leap to imply that reality is as our theories picture it.
I think most Remainers accept they lost; it is also legitimate to look at the motives of the winners.
Plenty of polls showed that immigration was top of the list of reasons for voting Leave. Now of course the correct answer is that (as a Leaver) one is hugely in favour of immigration, it's just that we would like to control it, and I accept that. There is also another bloc that, surely, is anti-immigration whoever is pulling the strings. That doesn't make them xenophobic racists, of course.
But regardless, your comment was pretty gloomy and I hope I don't have to agree with it after the speech.
This does not feel like a good day to be British.
I believe it could just be a good day to be British. The worry I have is whether she is able to provide an inspirational speech which is very necessary but we may as well wait and see.
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
Having said that, if I could find a train which took me acoss the Thames around the Dartford
Crossing area I would much prefer to use that, as against the frequent interminable delays, especially Northbound. Colchester area to the Sevenoaks area. Currently it’s at least three changes.
The Crossing is a privatised utility, please note.
But for all practical purposes @YellowSubmarine is right, it is taxation without representation.
And after the transition period it is also taxation (in the form of necessary compliance with the rules) without representation.
Because I can, every year I hunt around for the cheapest deal and go through the hassle of switching. Sometimes that switch has been cocked up and involved tedious calls to call centres. But I am lucky because I have the internet, the time and the wherewithall to switch. My father-in-law (85) and my mother (80), have no internet (nor the confidence) to switch, so get lumbered with subsidising us. As does my brother and his wife because they are just too busy trying to survive to find the time to switch.
I fail to see how privatisation and the energy 'market' has done anything for improving the wealth or wellbeing of the nation... Switching is inefficient and harms productivity, profits are being filched off to foreign companies (and governments), and the market favours some over others. All-in-all a terrible idea!
Rant over, thanks for listening
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
Corbyn's a much better speaker imo - more empathy
Though you certainly are european, even if you do not consider yourselves as such
My wife and daughter have had recent DNA tests re their origins and they show that the family are entirely British with some small links to Scandinavia.
And crash helmets?
It is only this afternoon after all
I share your concern Big_G. I fear a completely sodden damp squib.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
I am sure Corbyn can read a teleprompter , the same as May can.Both are not natural orators.However you are blinkered whatever he does.
The expertise of expert doers is in creating excellent practical outcomes in brain surgery, plumbing, business or other practical domains.
University gives you the former expertise. Apprenticeships give you the latter. We need more of the latter.
If we want to sell on a commercial basis we will need to comply with standards, just like we do with the US.
But that's not "taxation without representation" - the key point is that a company that doesn't export in the EU won't have to adopt the standards if they don't want to, unlike now. For example, I could see a niche whereby someone produces washing machines that wash and dishwashers that clean.
We'd know what he stands on Brexit; he would communicate well.
I'm not sure we will have any further clue today, aside from some concrete measures if they are announced, where May stands on the whole thing.
I hope I am wrong but if you were looking for an inspirational came changing speech, May is the plast person you would turn to. Winston, she is not!
That is why I have my reservations but we will soon see.
It really should not be about remain and leave fighting their corners now, we do need to coalesce around a position that most voters can accept and a two year transition is a good start.
It does seem to be the majority view that we have to get on with this as evidenced by some on here but it seemed the question time audience last night were of the same opinion.
Just as a side issue how does anyone think Corbyn could do a speech of this importance
Corbyn's a much better speaker imo - more empathy
Ranting at a meeting of his supporters is one thing - standing on the World stage is a very different proposition and anyway, he hasn't a clue what he wants on Europe
My wife and daughter have had recent DNA tests re their origins and they show that the family are entirely British with some small links to Scandinavia.
Er... and which continent are both Britain and Scandanavia in?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
And sticky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe
You can try as much as you like Ben but my family would reject the idea we are European.
We are British
Just asking...
What was the definition of 'entirely British' DNA?