When the government shutdown ends, are the furloughed employees back-paid for that period, or are they genuinely effectively working for free during the shutdown?
They are furloughed - so they are not working.
Americans tend not to get paid holiday.
So that's what meant by the Land of the Free, eh. Wonderful country. No holiday pay, no sickness insurance unless you pay for it, gerrymandered elections, racial inequality.
The US is a country which is fine if you are rich, investment bankers, corporate lawyers and surgeons and CEOs etc earn even more there than here and can easily afford private schools and private health insurance, nannies and be able to take expensive holidays.
However if you are a middle earner or poor or out of work the US provides no holiday pay, no paid maternity or paternity leave, no unemployment benefits without having made enough insurance payments and then time limited and no state healthcare unless for the very poor or retired. If you are in those groups Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Western Europe provide more support and more of a safety net than the US
The USA is closer to Latin America than Europe in many respects. This would become much more apparent if the dollar loses its role as the indispensable currency.
I’m sure the Chinese are working on it.
As if only by accident than design is Trump
The Americas, except for Canada, seem to have a murder rate ~5x that of Europe, Oceania and Asia and 2-3x higher than Africa
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
Oh, excellent. I find "cultural prestige" really scares the enemy during warfare.
To be fair it probably helps lessen the pain after you have been defeated. Compare Hitler's plans for Britain and France with his treatment of eastern Europe.
When the government shutdown ends, are the furloughed employees back-paid for that period, or are they genuinely effectively working for free during the shutdown?
They are furloughed - so they are not working.
Americans tend not to get paid holiday.
So that's what meant by the Land of the Free, eh. Wonderful country. No holiday pay, no sickness insurance unless you pay for it, gerrymandered elections, racial inequality.
The US is a country which is fine if you are rich, investment bankers, corporate lawyers and surgeons and CEOs etc earn even more there than here and can easily afford private schools and private health insurance, nannies and be able to take expensive holidays.
However if you are a middle earner or poor or out of work the US provides no holiday pay, no maternity or paternity leave, no unemployment benefits without having made enough insurance payments and then time limited and no state healthcare unless for the very poor or retired. If you are in those groups Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Western Europe provide more support and more of a safety net than the US
The American political right/south has convinced the poor white southern voter to consistently vote against their own economic self interest with an aggressive brand of identity politics where it is far more important to deny good things to African Americans than to have good things themselves.
When the government shutdown ends, are the furloughed employees back-paid for that period, or are they genuinely effectively working for free during the shutdown?
They are furloughed - so they are not working.
Americans tend not to get paid holiday.
So that's what meant by the Land of the Free, eh. Wonderful country. No holiday pay, no sickness insurance unless you pay for it, gerrymandered elections, racial inequality.
The US is a country which is fine if you are rich, investment bankers, corporate lawyers and surgeons and CEOs etc earn even more there than here and can easily afford private schools and private health insurance, nannies and be able to take expensive holidays.
However if you are a middle earner or poor or out of work the US provides no holiday pay, no maternity or paternity leave, no unemployment benefits without having made enough insurance payments and then time limited and no state healthcare unless for the very poor or retired. If you are in those groups Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Western Europe provide more support and more of a safety net than the US
The American political right/south has convinced the poor white southern voter to consistently vote against their own economic self interest with an aggressive brand of identity politics where it is far more important to deny good things to African Americans than to have good things themselves.
I've seen it stated somewhere there is a negative correlation between welfare spending in a state and *Black people in a state.
*Think that is how I heard it but unsure if BAME or including mixed race people with some Black heritage.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
They had the biggest percentage increase in seat numbers of any of the parties...
(I thought Corbyn would be a serious voter turn off, and the libdems would end up on 12 to 14%, and get 12 to 14 seats. The latter half of my forecast was OK. The former, dreadful.)
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
[Sorry, quick terminology check. If the odds are 3/1 on something happening and I think the odds should be 1/1, do I describe the 3/1 as "too high" or "too low"?]
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
I think the central idea behind a lot of theories around at the moment is that the 2017 election for whatever reason can be discounted so theories which appear to contradict with it (if only partially) are still good theories.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
They had the biggest percentage increase in seat numbers of any of the parties...
(I thought Corbyn would be a serious voter turn off, and the libdems would end up on 12 to 14%, and get 12 to 14 seats. The latter half of my forecast was OK. The former, dreadful.)
I read some of the past comments after I joined (a bit after the election) and there are far worse posts than the one Justin mentioned. We have all predicted things wrongly before.
May will simply wait for the Grieve amendment to kick in.
Then once MPs comfortably reject EUref2 and Norway plus, probably by bigger margins than they reject the Deal, the Deal becomes the default alternative to No Deal
Not true. Labour policy is officially to support EURef2 as a last resort.
Why should 100 Labour Remainers break a three line whip to save a Tory PMs hated deal when they can hold out for a referendum? Labour+SNP+LD etc backing EURef2 has more support than May's Deal.
You clearly have not bothereMay's Deal
This is where you're badly mistaken. I did read the words you wrote, just (as usual) disagreed with you.
So what if the Commons rejects EUref2? Its also [by then] rejected May's Deal. If May doesn't have to give up on her Deal just because it has been rejected then why should Remainers who want an EUref2 give up on that just because its been rejected?
If we add up the numbers there are more MPs nominally or outright in favour of EUref2 than there are in favour of May's Deal.
All Labour MPs are offf2.
No it is not clear there are more MPs in favour of EUref2 than May's Deal, only 122 MPs voted not to trigger Article 50 and invoke Brexit, about 215 are likely to back the Deal.
No all Labour MPs are not behind a policy ooid No Deal
It is official Labour Party Policy to have EUref2 if they can't get their own deal or an election.
Hoey, Skinner and Mann may rebel but then so too would Grieve, Woolaston and others on the Tory benches would too. That leaves approximately 300 MPs lined up officially behind EUref2, no reason for them to back a crap deal.
Corbyn has not officially committed to EUref2 regardless of circumstance, plenty of Labour MPs from Leave seats like Flint and Snell have also refused to back EUref2 or any Norway style deal which leaves free movement in place and they can be added to Hoey, Skinner and Mann so it is optimistic to suggest EUref2 would get up to 300 MPs or anywhere close to it especially once you add the vast majority of Tory MPs, both Deal backers and the ERG and the DUP voting against EUref2 too
Yes he has. He has signed up to official Labour policy he is just insisting we are not there yet. So unless or until that changes there is zero reason for Labour Remainers to back the deal for as long as Corbyn is claiming he will eventually back a second referendum if it comes to it.
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
They had the biggest percentage increase in seat numbers of any of the parties...
(I thought Corbyn would be a serious voter turn off, and the libdems would end up on 12 to 14%, and get 12 to 14 seats. The latter half of my forecast was OK. The former, dreadful.)
I recall we had different views as to the likely result in Cambridge.
When the government shutdown ends, are the furloughed employees back-paid for that period, or are they genuinely effectively working for free during the shutdown?
They are furloughed - so they are not working.
Americans tend not to get paid holiday.
So that's what meant by the Land of the Free, eh. Wonderful country. No holiday pay, no sickness insurance unless you pay for it, gerrymandered elections, racial inequality.
The US is a country which is fine if you are rich, investment bankers, corporate lawyers and surgeons and CEOs etc earn even more there than here and can easily afford private schools and private health insurance, nannies and be able to take expensive holidays.
However if you are a middle earner or poor or out of work the US provides no holiday pay, no maternity or paternity leave, no unemployment benefits without having made enough insurance payments and then time limited and no state healthcare unless for the very poor or retired. If you are in those groups Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Western Europe provide more support and more of a safety net than the US
Most countries are fine if you are rich and awful if you are poor. Same applies here, Brazil, India China, Japan etc
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Brexit is Britain's Ratners moment, where we shred our reputation for competence, diplomatic skill and trustworthiness.
Any food shortages etc will be temporary, even if high profile, re-establishing international credibility would take a generation.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
I think the Hudson Institute is closer to the truth, but I would put Russia in 6th. They are consistently overestimated in importance, when their economy is smaller than Italy’s and the only control or influence they exercise is over the small, poor countries on their frontiers. They aren’t even big enough to keep an independent military-industrial complex; look at the near collapse of their new fighter jet programme, and arms exports have now been overtaken by agriculture in percentage terms.
Russia is much more like a cold, miserable incarnation of Brazil than a peer to the USA or China.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
Shame you can’t produce any evidence - if it exists. Shame you didn’t during the referendum - if it exists.
Wildly O/T as it's a quiet day: what would you call a certificate that you need to put on your windscreen to show your vehicle is eligible to enter somewhere? A carnet? I'm doing a 26,000-word translation of Danish environmental rules, and have been scratching my head all day for a word that implies being affixed to the windscreen, like our old DVLA disks used to be (they require them for diesel vehicles entering congested areas, as evidence that you have an efficient particulate filter).
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
We have had practically no 'clout' as you call it within the EU for the last couple of decades at least. What we did have was based upon us bargaining away things like rebates - not a sustainable position to be in. And being in the EU massively reduced our diplomatic clout in those areas where the EU now spoke for us. Whether we regain any of the diplomatic power we had which was neutered or removed by membership of the EU is something we will have to see. But the idea that membership of the EU did anything other than massively reduce our standing in the world is just laughable.
Wildly O/T as it's a quiet day: what would you call a certificate that you need to put on your windscreen to show your vehicle is eligible to enter somewhere? A carnet? I'm doing a 26,000-word translation of Danish environmental rules, and have been scratching my head all day for a word that implies being affixed to the windscreen, like our old DVLA disks used to be (they require them for diesel vehicles entering congested areas, as evidence that you have an efficient particulate filter).
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Brexit is Britain's Ratners moment, where we shred our reputation for competence, diplomatic skill and trustworthiness.
Why trustworthiness? So long as we are not breaching whatever agreements are reached there are no trust issues as I can see it. Some might well be suggesting such things but that does not mean we will, and there is nothing inherently untrustworthy about choosing to withdraw from the EU.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Brexit is Britain's Ratners moment, where we shred our reputation for competence, diplomatic skill and trustworthiness.
Any food shortages etc will be temporary, even if high profile, re-establishing international credibility would take a generation.
You are more than 40 years behind the times. Joining the EEC in the first place was our Ratners moment.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
I think ‘complete retard’ is overstating your argument. We still had some influence in the aftermath of the launch of the Euro (eg expansion to the East), but it had gone by 2010. We played an entirely negative role under Cameron: ‘vetoing’ the fiscal pact and working with Germany to cut the relatively small budget. Germany, the ECB, the Commission and France took the lead for the Eurozone crisis, which has defined the evolution of the EU for the rest of this decade.
It is not possible to be a leading member of the EU and be outside the Eurozone. This is something the Remain campaign never had the honesty to admit. You can make an argument that being within the system with little influence is still worth it, but it’s a harder argument to make.
Wildly O/T as it's a quiet day: what would you call a certificate that you need to put on your windscreen to show your vehicle is eligible to enter somewhere? A carnet? I'm doing a 26,000-word translation of Danish environmental rules, and have been scratching my head all day for a word that implies being affixed to the windscreen, like our old DVLA disks used to be (they require them for diesel vehicles entering congested areas, as evidence that you have an efficient particulate filter).
Could you not just use the word 'displayed'. It is commonly understood in English to mean pretty much what you say when it comes to tax discs or parking tickets.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
Shame you can’t produce any evidence - if it exists. Shame you didn’t during the referendum - if it exists.
Speaking of evidence, have you found a source for your claim that Grieve has announced his retirement yet?
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Brexit is Britain's Ratners moment, where we shred our reputation for competence, diplomatic skill and trustworthiness.
Why trustworthiness? So long as we are not breaching whatever agreements are reached there are no trust issues as I can see it. Some might well be suggesting such things but that does not mean we will, and there is nothing inherently untrustworthy about choosing to withdraw from the EU.
We already completely derailed exit negotiations trying to wriggle out of the backstop we agreed to.
Wildly O/T as it's a quiet day: what would you call a certificate that you need to put on your windscreen to show your vehicle is eligible to enter somewhere? A carnet? I'm doing a 26,000-word translation of Danish environmental rules, and have been scratching my head all day for a word that implies being affixed to the windscreen, like our old DVLA disks used to be (they require them for diesel vehicles entering congested areas, as evidence that you have an efficient particulate filter).
Wildly O/T as it's a quiet day: what would you call a certificate that you need to put on your windscreen to show your vehicle is eligible to enter somewhere? A carnet? I'm doing a 26,000-word translation of Danish environmental rules, and have been scratching my head all day for a word that implies being affixed to the windscreen, like our old DVLA disks used to be (they require them for diesel vehicles entering congested areas, as evidence that you have an efficient particulate filter).
I think the deadlock will last as long as the polls don't show one side to be suffering major political damage. When it does, they'll cave.
As a Sanders sympathiser (who regards Warren with suspicion - a progressive who's a proud capitalist and didn't support Sanders against Clinton?), I'm not convinced that the sex allegations about Sanders' staff will damage him. How can you be "shamefully ignorant" of something? Only if you have an obligation to know and a feasible way of finding out, e.g. an engine driver checking that the engine isn't overheating. If your employees are committing sexual misconduct and nobody tells you, how are you supposed to know?
There are other reasons to be doubtful about Sanders - age, electability - but if the question is who is the most left-wing it's no contest...
The attitude of the Bernie Bros was not exactly a secret. You might like to think it analogous to Corbyn’s anti-semetism problem.
And the Democratic party is not the Labour party, let alone the Socialist party.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
You're kidding yourself. Because of our willingness to play by the rules and abide ECJ rulings we had zero power. The nations who have the power in the EU are those who fuck the rules off and do what they want anyway.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
You're kidding yourself. Because of our willingness to play by the rules and abide ECJ rulings we had zero power. The nations who have the power in the EU are those who fuck the rules off and do what they want anyway.
...which does beg the question as to why we didn't do that.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
We have had practically no 'clout' as you call it within the EU for the last couple of decades at least. What we did have was based upon us bargaining away things like rebates - not a sustainable position to be in. And being in the EU massively reduced our diplomatic clout in those areas where the EU now spoke for us. Whether we regain any of the diplomatic power we had which was neutered or removed by membership of the EU is something we will have to see. But the idea that membership of the EU did anything other than massively reduce our standing in the world is just laughable.
I just don’t recognise this blinkered view of Britain’s role in the EU. Our influence extended well beyond the rebate. From the single market, to Eastern enlargement, to work on the forthcoming digital services market etc.
But I sense this is where core Remainers and Brexiters part ways, because - it seems to me - Brexiters simply feel in their hearts that Britain was diminished by negotiation rather than enhanced. They don’t want to be part of any club they can’t dominate, and they are forever furious about made-up slights they read about in the Telegraph or Mail.
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Except no animals are killed when you eat eggs and dairy as opposed to meat and you reduce the amount of protein you have even further and need to find alternatives to help protect your bones.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
You're kidding yourself. Because of our willingness to play by the rules and abide ECJ rulings we had zero power. The nations who have the power in the EU are those who fuck the rules off and do what they want anyway.
@rcs1000. @IanB2 explained it to me thus: if the odds are 3/1 on something happening and I think the odds should be 1/1, I describe the 3/1 as "too long".
I think the deadlock will last as long as the polls don't show one side to be suffering major political damage. When it does, they'll cave.
As a Sanders sympathiser (who regards Warren with suspicion - a progressive who's a proud capitalist and didn't support Sanders against Clinton?), I'm not convinced that the sex allegations about Sanders' staff will damage him. How can you be "shamefully ignorant" of something? Only if you have an obligation to know and a feasible way of finding out, e.g. an engine driver checking that the engine isn't overheating. If your employees are committing sexual misconduct and nobody tells you, how are you supposed to know?
There are other reasons to be doubtful about Sanders - age, electability - but if the question is who is the most left-wing it's no contest...
The attitude of the Bernie Bros was not exactly a secret. You might like to think it analogous to Corbyn’s anti-semetism problem.
And the Democratic party is not the Labour party, let alone the Socialist party.
43% of Democratic voters voted for Sanders over Clinton in 2016
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
You're kidding yourself. Because of our willingness to play by the rules and abide ECJ rulings we had zero power. The nations who have the power in the EU are those who fuck the rules off and do what they want anyway.
Wouldn't it be nice if could do that now? Revoke Article 50, ignore every directive we don't like, and veto other nations' priorities if they give us stick? Sounds better than jumping out of the tent blindfolded down a rocky slope.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
We have had practically no 'clout' as you call it within the EU for the last couple of decades at least. What we did have was based upon us bargaining away things like rebates - not a sustainable position to be in. And being in the EU massively reduced our diplomatic clout in those areas where the EU now spoke for us. Whether we regain any of the diplomatic power we had which was neutered or removed by membership of the EU is something we will have to see. But the idea that membership of the EU did anything other than massively reduce our standing in the world is just laughable.
I just don’t recognise this blinkered view of Britain’s role in the EU. Our influence extended well beyond the rebate. From the single market, to Eastern enlargement, to work on the forthcoming digital services market etc.
But I sense this is where core Remainers and Brexiters part ways, because - it seems to me - Brexiters simply feel in their hearts that Britain was diminished by negotiation rather than enhanced. They don’t want to be part of any club they can’t dominate, and they are forever furious about made-up slights they read about in the Telegraph or Mail.
Britain opposed measures proposed to the Council of Ministers on 72 occasions and was never successful. Going with the flow is not influence.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
I think the Hudson Institute is closer to the truth, but I would put Russia in 6th. They are consistently overestimated in importance, when their economy is smaller than Italy’s and the only control or influence they exercise is over the small, poor countries on their frontiers. They aren’t even big enough to keep an independent military-industrial complex; look at the near collapse of their new fighter jet programme, and arms exports have now been overtaken by agriculture in percentage terms.
Russia is much more like a cold, miserable incarnation of Brazil than a peer to the USA or China.
It was Russia who effectively won the war in Syria, not the USA and China rarely strays beyond its frontiers in military terms
I think Sunil's "permit" is probably closest - I hesitated as it doesn't have the windscreen sticker connotation, but carnet is probably too specialised, sticker too informal, licence too general, and it needs to be a thing (not least because they're abolishing it in favour of ANPR recognition) so "displayed" doesn't quite work. It is precisely something that gives permission to enter an area, so permit feels right.
Incidentally, if you breach the regulation you're fined £1500! Makes the London congestion charge look tame. And the authorities have the right of entry into your premises at any time without a court order and can confiscate all your vehicles for inspection if they think you have a vehicle without a filter and might attempt to conceal it. Not as cuddly as you might think the Danes would be.
I have just delved into the Archives and come across this insightful comment for 18th April 2017 - a couple of hours following Theresa May's election announcement - 'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
That was when most Remainers thought Corbyn would stop Brexit
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit
I think ‘complete retard’ is overstating your argument. We still had some influence in the aftermath of the launch of the Euro (eg expansion to the East), but it had gone by 2010. We played an entirely negative role under Cameron: ‘vetoing’ the fiscal pact and working with Germany to cut the relatively small budget. Germany, the ECB, the Commission and France took the lead for the Eurozone crisis, which has defined the evolution of the EU for the rest of this decade.
It is not possible to be a leading member of the EU and be outside the Eurozone. This is something the Remain campaign never had the honesty to admit. You can make an argument that being within the system with little influence is still worth it, but it’s a harder argument to make.
I don’t agree with this, although thankyou for at making a coherent argument, unlike various others.
Britain *was* a leading member of the EU, but you’re right we largely - under Cameron - expressed it in a negative sense. When our best/only policy becomes about reducing the EU budget, you see the impoverished transactionialism of our approach. Cameron was never interested in active EU engagement. In fact, Cameron wasn’t really interested in foreign affairs at all.
I would argue that - given institutional issues with the Euro - the EU benefits a lot from having a non-Euro member of Britain’s size. It was up to us to define and decide how to exercise that position.
Instead, we are walking away and consigned ourself to relative insignificance.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Snip
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Dream on , we are shat on by any Tom Dick or harry dictatorship. Billions wasted on fat cat diplomats filling their boots around the world, all as part of the charade that UK is powerful rather than reality that we are a laughing stock.
...which does beg the question as to why we didn't do that.
It's in our nature to play by the rules. We are a nation that prides itself on the rule of law. Other European nations see laws and court rulings as obstacles.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
When the government shutdown ends, are the furloughed employees back-paid for that period, or are they genuinely effectively working for free during the shutdown?
They are furloughed - so they are not working.
Americans tend not to get paid holiday.
So that's what meant by the Land of the Free, eh. Wonderful country. No holiday pay, no sickness insurance unless you pay for it, gerrymandered elections, racial inequality.
The US is a country which is fine if you are rich, investment bankers, corporate lawyers and surgeons and CEOs etc earn even more there than here and can easily afford private schools and private health insurance, nannies and be able to take expensive holidays.
However if you are a middle earner or poor or out of work the US provides no holiday pay, no maternity or paternity leave, no unemployment benefits without having made enough insurance payments and then time limited and no state healthcare unless for the very poor or retired. If you are in those groups Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Western Europe provide more support and more of a safety net than the US
The American political right/south has convinced the poor white southern voter to consistently vote against their own economic self interest with an aggressive brand of identity politics where it is far more important to deny good things to African Americans than to have good things themselves.
Indeed, the South was happy to vote for the Democrats and FDR and LBJ's social welfare programmes until the Civil Rights Act
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Except no animals are killed when you eat eggs and dairy as opposed to meat and you reduce the amount of protein you have even further and need to find alternatives to help protect your bones.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
Animals absolutely are killed in the production of eggs and milk. The fact that you're more removed from it as a result of not eating their flesh is really pretty irrelevant.
And, er, okay? I'm happy with you making whatever dietry choice you want, but I'm not sure justifying it by saying you hold yourself to the moral standards of other species is a winner
I think Sunil's "permit" is probably closest - I hesitated as it doesn't have the windscreen sticker connotation, but carnet is probably too specialised, sticker too informal, licence too general, and it needs to be a thing (not least because they're abolishing it in favour of ANPR recognition) so "displayed" doesn't quite work. It is precisely something that gives permission to enter an area, so permit feels right.
Incidentally, if you breach the regulation you're fined £1500! Makes the London congestion charge look tame. And the authorities have the right of entry into your premises at any time without a court order and can confiscate all your vehicles for inspection if they think you have a vehicle without a filter and might attempt to conceal it. Not as cuddly as you might think the Danes would be.
My choice would have been “car disc”. Hungarians use “vignette”, which seems charming to English ears.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit
I think ‘complete retard’ is overstating your argument. We still had some influence in the aftermath of the launch of the Euro (eg expansion to the East), but it had gone by 2010. We played an entirely negative role under Cameron: ‘vetoing’ the fiscal pact and working with Germany to cut the relatively small budget. Germany, the ECB, the Commission and France took the lead for the Eurozone crisis, which has defined the evolution of the EU for the rest of this decade.
It is not possible to be a leading member of the EU and be outside the Eurozone. This is something the Remain campaign never had the honesty to admit. You can make an argument that being within the system with little influence is still worth it, but it’s a harder argument to make.
I don’t agree with this, although thankyou for at making a coherent argument, unlike various others.
Britain *was* a leading member of the EU, but you’re right we largely - under Cameron - expressed it in a negative sense. When our best/only policy becomes about reducing the EU budget, you see the impoverished transactionialism of our approach. Cameron was never interested in active EU engagement. In fact, Cameron wasn’t really interested in foreign affairs at all.
I would argue that - given institutional issues with the Euro - the EU benefits a lot from having a non-Euro member of Britain’s size. It was up to us to define and decide how to exercise that position.
Instead, we are walking away and consigned ourself to relative insignificance.
Lol, we had a PM who took your view and we ended up losing a third of the rebate and for nothing by empty promises in return. Cameron at least saw the EU for what it is, not what you EUphiles want it to be.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
Alternatively it would force England to choose between the EU and isolation.
To me there is a question before how much clout we have in the world, it is how much clout the EU has in world. Not a member of the UN. I watched Junks and Tusk visit Ergodan and get told to send the boss. Merkel turned up and very quickly capitulated by paying billions of euros. The EU visited North African nations to strop the migrants and got nowhere. Putin deals with Merkel. After the G7 where Trump said he would not be in the Paris Climate change agreement der Spiegel reported that the EU made an effort to get the other members to sign up to a press release saying Trump was wrong, Trudeau said no, Abe said how many carrier battle groups do you have in the pacific and May said no.
If the sum of the parts is meant to be stronger than the individual nations then I struggle to see this working in practice. Some of this is because the press has in the recent past beefed up Merkels role as calling all the shots, but it has had a detrimental effect.
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Except no animals are killed when you eat eggs and dairy as opposed to meat and you reduce the amount of protein you have even further and need to find alternatives to help protect your bones.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
Animals absolutely are killed in the production of eggs and milk. The fact that you're more removed from it as a result of not eating their flesh is really pretty irrelevant.
And, er, okay? I'm happy with you making whatever dietry choice you want, but I'm not sure justifying it by saying you hold yourself to the moral standards of other species is a winner
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
We have had practically no 'clout' as you call it within the EU for the last couple of decades at least. What we did have was based upon us bargaining away things like rebates - not a sustainable position to be in. And being in the EU massively reduced our diplomatic clout in those le.
I just don’t recognise this blinkered view of Britain’s role in the EU. Our influence extended well beyond the rebate. From the single market, to Eastern enlargement, to work on the forthcoming digital services market etc.
But I sense this is where core Remainers and Brexiters part ways, because - it seems to me - Brexiters simply feel in their hearts that Britain was diminished by negotiation rather than enhanced. They don’t want to be part of any club they can’t dominate, and they are forever furious about made-up slights they read about in the Telegraph or Mail.
Britain opposed measures proposed to the Council of Ministers on 72 occasions and was never successful. Going with the flow is not influence.
This has been debunked, along with bendy bananas, unaudited accounts, and thousands of other lies made up to make Tory neuralgics feel justified in their hatred of the EU because it isn’t coloured pink on the map.
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Perish the thought, it will be a long time before normal people move to being vegeburgers hopefully.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
I just don’t recognise this blinkered view of Britain’s role in the EU. Our influence extended well beyond the rebate. From the single market, to Eastern enlargement, to work on the forthcoming digital services market etc.
But I sense this is where core Remainers and Brexiters part ways, because - it seems to me - Brexiters simply feel in their hearts that Britain was diminished by negotiation rather than enhanced. They don’t want to be part of any club they can’t dominate, and they are forever furious about made-up slights they read about in the Telegraph or Mail.
Mr Gardenwalker - you strike me as a rare beast amongst Remainers on here: you’re not a declinist whilst most others are. Kudos.
I’m still baffled by the fact that my most fiercely NeverBrexiteer people I know in business, local politics and socially are all middle aged, middle class males. Everyone else has moved on.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
That report links to another by the Hudson Institure which places us 5th, after the US, Russia, China and Germany. We still beat France, who are 6th.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
Any clout we carried with the EU as a member was a long time ago - probably Major securing his opt outs over Maastricht was the last time. Blair didn’t get any joy when he gave up most of the rebate in supposed exchange for CAP reform and Cameron was rebuffed three times - when he tried to renegotiate terms prior to the referendum and earlier; when he tried to reduce the Brussels budget and when he tried to stop financial services bonus capping.
Of course we never had complete fiat. Such is life in a pan-national institution. But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
The Henry Jackson Society survey is nonsense. They have applied what they claim are objective metrics, but these are biaised towards flattery of the UK and deprecation of China in particular. eg
- Internet freedom. China has highly restricted internet. Liechtenstein completely free. Most people think China is more influential than Liechtenstein. On this measure HJS disagree.
- Websites in the national language. The UK piggybacking the US here, I think.
- Number of diplomatic missions. The UK and China are represented essentially everywhere. The UK by a man and a dog. China by armies of officials and official delegations on soft power missions.
Almost every meric can be challenged. Also the survey completely ignores the EU, which is highly influential in certain domains.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
total bollox, that is any easy choice any day of the week.
Personally thinking about military, economic, diplomatic, and cultural clout, I’d say the U.K. still performs quite high. I’d have us 3rd overall, after the US and China.
You don't think the diplomatic clout has taken a severe...er...clouting from its abject failure during Br****?
Oh yes. Brexit lessens our economic and diplomatic power considerably. In my (admittedly non-scientific measure), I think it pushes us down two or three rings.
Economically you might be right but only in the short term. Diplomatically; I think that depends entirely on whether you believe our diplomatic aims are always aligned with those of the EU. Something I think is very dubious as a claim.
Pre-Brexit we carried considerable clout *within* the EU. Post-Brexit, not so much.
We have had practically no 'clout' as you call it within the EU for the last couple of decades at least. What we did have was based upon us bargaining away things like rebates - not a sustainable position to be in. And being in the EU massively reduced our diplomatic clout in those le.
I just don’t recognise this blinkered view of Britain’s role in the EU. Our influence extended well beyond the rebate. From the single market, to Eastern enlargement, to work on the forthcoming digital services market etc.
But I sense this is where core Remainers and Brexiters part ways, because - it seems to me - Brexiters simply feel in their hearts that Britain was diminished by negotiation rather than enhanced. They don’t want to be part of any club they can’t dominate, and they are forever furious about made-up slights they read about in the Telegraph or Mail.
Britain opposed measures proposed to the Council of Ministers on 72 occasions and was never successful. Going with the flow is not influence.
This has been debunked, along with bendy bananas, unaudited accounts, and thousands of other lies made up to make Tory neuralgics feel justified in their hatred of the EU because it isn’t coloured pink on the map.
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Except no animals are killed when you eat eggs and dairy as opposed to meat and you reduce the amount of protein you have even further and need to find alternatives to help protect your bones.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
Animals absolutely are killed in the production of eggs and milk. The fact that you're more removed from it as a result of not eating their flesh is really pretty irrelevant.
And, er, okay? I'm happy with you making whatever dietry choice you want, but I'm not sure justifying it by saying you hold yourself to the moral standards of other species is a winner
Which animals are killed in milk production?
Yours reads like an anti-abortion rant.
Plus the halfwit is ok with killing fish? Cuckoo nutjob
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
total bollox, that is any easy choice any day of the week.
Well indeed according to the SNP government's figures Scottish trade with rUK is worth 4x that of trade with rEU.
This has been debunked, along with bendy bananas, unaudited accounts, and thousands of other lies made up to make Tory neuralgics feel justified in their hatred of the EU because it isn’t coloured pink on the map.
I suspect the real damage of us leaving (regardless of our means and its eventual outcome) will be felt in the none euro EU countries that will probably have no choice in the end but to join the euro...
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Except no animals are killed when you eat eggs and dairy as opposed to meat and you reduce the amount of protein you have even further and need to find alternatives to help protect your bones.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
Animals absolutely are killed in the production of eggs and milk. The fact that you're more removed from it as a result of not eating their flesh is really pretty irrelevant.
And, er, okay? I'm happy with you making whatever dietry choice you want, but I'm not sure justifying it by saying you hold yourself to the moral standards of other species is a winner
Which animals are killed in milk production?
Yours reads like an anti-abortion rant.
What do you think happens to all the male calves who can't be used for milk production? Why do you think we have veal?
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
total bollox, that is any easy choice any day of the week.
Well indeed according to the SNP government's figures Scottish trade with rUK is worth 4x that of trade with rEU.
I think Sunil's "permit" is probably closest - I hesitated as it doesn't have the windscreen sticker connotation, but carnet is probably too specialised, sticker too informal, licence too general, and it needs to be a thing (not least because they're abolishing it in favour of ANPR recognition) so "displayed" doesn't quite work. It is precisely something that gives permission to enter an area, so permit feels right.
Incidentally, if you breach the regulation you're fined £1500! Makes the London congestion charge look tame. And the authorities have the right of entry into your premises at any time without a court order and can confiscate all your vehicles for inspection if they think you have a vehicle without a filter and might attempt to conceal it. Not as cuddly as you might think the Danes would be.
My choice would have been “car disc”. Hungarians use “vignette”, which seems charming to English ears.
Vignette seems to be a standard term for these things in Europe. They have them in Switzerland as well.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
total bollox, that is any easy choice any day of the week.
Well indeed according to the SNP government's figures Scottish trade with rUK is worth 4x that of trade with rEU.
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Except no animals are killed when you eat eggs and dairy as opposed to meat and you reduce the amount of protein you have even further and need to find alternatives to help protect your bones.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
Animals absolutely are killed in the production of eggs and milk. The fact that you're more removed from it as a result of not eating their flesh is really pretty irrelevant.
And, er, okay? I'm happy with you making whatever dietry choice you want, but I'm not sure justifying it by saying you hold yourself to the moral standards of other species is a winner
Which animals are killed in milk production?
Yours reads like an anti-abortion rant.
What do you think happens to all the male calves who can't be used for milk production? Why do you think we have veal?
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
...which does beg the question as to why we didn't do that.
It's in our nature to play by the rules. We are a nation that prides itself on the rule of law. Other European nations see laws and court rulings as obstacles.
Ken Clarke on the radio this morning said that as a nation we pay our bills, implying that the £39bn would be stumped up regardless. Meanwhile others (e.g. David Davis) claim a £39bn bonus from no-deal brexit.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
snip
total bollox, that is any easy choice any day of the week.
Well indeed according to the SNP government's figures Scottish trade with rUK is worth 4x that of trade with rEU.
Last time Yes only got 45% when they were insisting that free trade with the rest of the UK would continue uninterrupted.
If the Scottish Government proposes leaving a no-deal UK in order to join the EU and put up no-deal barriers with the UK then that's more challenging.
Everything is challenging, continuing to have debt piled on us by London parliament that seems mentally deranged looks far more challenging than going our own way and being part of EU.
...which does beg the question as to why we didn't do that.
It's in our nature to play by the rules. We are a nation that prides itself on the rule of law. Other European nations see laws and court rulings as obstacles.
Ken Clarke on the radio this morning said that as a nation we pay our bills, implying that the £39bn would be stumped up regardless. Meanwhile others (e.g. David Davis) claim a £39bn bonus from no-deal brexit.
Lol, the EU phile wanting to give money to the EU for nothing. If it's no deal we take on the pension liabilities and nothing else and we force a divestment of our share in the EU investment bank.
Last time Yes only got 45% when they were insisting that free trade with the rest of the UK would continue uninterrupted.
If the Scottish Government proposes leaving a no-deal UK in order to join the EU and put up no-deal barriers with the UK then that's more challenging.
Everything is challenging, continuing to have debt piled on us by London parliament that seems mentally deranged looks far more challenging than going our own way and being part of EU.
What a shame the Holyrood Parliament isn't running a surplus. Would make it much easier to cut and run if you were.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
No, No Deal makes Scottish independence far more likely as all the polling shows, the only polls showing Yes getting over 50% in any indyref2 come in the event of No Deal.
No Deal not only makes Scottish independence more likely it also increases the chance we either return to the EU or to Single Market and Customs Union BINO
No thanks. Why are you posting it? In more positive news, the Telegraph has employed William Sitwell (sacked by Waitrose because he outraged vegans with a joke) as restaurant critic, and my old buddy Peter Lilley has found 30 reasons to be cheerful about no deal.
Sitwell's 'joke' was pretty crass though - I think he had to go.
Luckily he's fallen on his feet. Veganism has taken over the BBC as I write.
Yes. It took over The Grauniad some time ago of course. I suspect we will reach peak-Vegan sometime this year.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
I'm a pescatarian, but I expect vegetarianism to continue to be squeezed by veganism as a long term trend. There's really no fundamental difference between the harm caused by eggs and dairy Vs the harm caused by meat. It's become so much easier to get a healthy diet as a vegan recently, and that seems like a trend that will self-reinforce rather than run out.
Except no animals are killed when you eat eggs and dairy as opposed to meat and you reduce the amount of protein you have even further and need to find alternatives to help protect your bones.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
Animals absolutely are killed in the production of eggs and milk. The fact that you're more removed from it as a result of not eating their flesh is really pretty irrelevant.
And, er, okay? I'm happy with you making whatever dietry choice you want, but I'm not sure justifying it by saying you hold yourself to the moral standards of other species is a winner
Not directly animals are not killed by getting eggs or meat from them, no.
We have eaten meat for thousands of years, it is part of our evolutionary makeup
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
No, No Deal makes Scottish independence far more likely as all the polling shows, the only polls showing Yes getting over 50% in any indyref2 come in the event of No Deal.
No Deal not only makes Scottish independence more likely it also increases the chance we either return to the EU or to Single Market and Customs Union BINO
Polls are utterly meaningless and irrelevant, that just shows people signalling that they don't want no deal. Doesn't mean they want to add fuel to the no deal fire.
I’m not a declinist, no. I try to look dispassionately at the country I have chosen to spend my life in, and when I sat down at the beginning of the referendum campaign, vaguely eurosceptically, I mainly saw the great opportunities the EU presented us.
We were, until 2016, one of the youngest, fast growing economies in Europe and even tipped to take over from Germany by mid century.
We had used the single market to create a global capital of finance, pharma, law, and culture. I remember the Major years. Britain was so much more parochial back then.
Being out of the Euro, while limiting our influence in certain ways, is ultimately I believe to ours *and* the EU’s advantage, and I think it by no means impossible that we could have pushed toward a next phase of Europe ie more loosely federated. The EU *needs* a space into which the likes of Italy and Greece can move. Figuring this out could have been our great project after the single market and eastern enlargement.
Even immigration - which I have consistently recognised as an issue - is an area where we could have forged a new direction in time. We didn’t really try, and let’s not believe that Cameron’s whistle stop your represented the sustained might of British diplomacy.
I know Brexiters will scoff, but I have heard the scoffing since the Delors days and yet 25 years later we are much better for our EU membership, not worse.
My biggest issues with this country seem to be entirely self-made and nothing to do with the EU: the disparity between London and the regions; the lack of investment in infrastructure; the terrible waste of human talent consigned to lesser life chances by the education system etc.
PS Remainers skew female and young, so you are wrong I think about middle aged men.
How delusional can one be? I don’t think even JRM would claim such a thing.
Some of the detail in the HJS report is truly bizarre:
I think we still score quite highly in likeability and cultural influence, but I'm no idea what they mean by our splendid "national resolve". To have national resolve you have to agree that you want to do something. At present, Parliament gives the impression or not being able to resolve its way out of a paper bag. And why Canada rules the globe in respect is pretty baffling too - nice place and all that, but...
Resolving to leave the EU took a fair amount of self-confidence and national resolve. Nations with less resolve would have fallen for the 'Project Fear'.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Yet only by 52% and with barely any polls showing a majority want No Deal.
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
No deal makes Scottish independence less likely as it presents as a warning to how difficult an exit actually is and would force the Scots to choose between Britain and the EU.
No, No Deal makes Scottish independence far more likely as all the polling shows, the only polls showing Yes getting over 50% in any indyref2 come in the event of No Deal.
No Deal not only makes Scottish independence more likely it also increases the chance we either return to the EU or to Single Market and Customs Union BINO
Unlikely. Scotland already has the biggest fiscal deficit of any part of the U.K. and plenty of businesses based in Scotland like Weir Group would relocate south as they planned to do if Yes had won.
...which does beg the question as to why we didn't do that.
It's in our nature to play by the rules. We are a nation that prides itself on the rule of law. Other European nations see laws and court rulings as obstacles.
Ken Clarke on the radio this morning said that as a nation we pay our bills, implying that the £39bn would be stumped up regardless. Meanwhile others (e.g. David Davis) claim a £39bn bonus from no-deal brexit.
Lol, the EU phile wanting to give money to the EU for nothing. If it's no deal we take on the pension liabilities and nothing else and we force a divestment of our share in the EU investment bank.
Yeah but I seem to recall May herself taking that line. Of course it is euroPhil Hammond that holds the purse strings. Removing him as CotE should be a priority.
...which does beg the question as to why we didn't do that.
It's in our nature to play by the rules. We are a nation that prides itself on the rule of law. Other European nations see laws and court rulings as obstacles.
Ken Clarke on the radio this morning said that as a nation we pay our bills, implying that the £39bn would be stumped up regardless. Meanwhile others (e.g. David Davis) claim a £39bn bonus from no-deal brexit.
Lol, the EU phile wanting to give money to the EU for nothing. If it's no deal we take on the pension liabilities and nothing else and we force a divestment of our share in the EU investment bank.
Are not pension liabilities a big part of the £39 billion and are there any other bills which we should pay if we want to have any international credibility? Genuine questions.
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
They should sort out their continent-wide gun, drug and inequality problem before lecturing the rest of the world too much.
(I expect it's more reasonable cousin Vegetarianism to continue to grow in popularity however.)
*Think that is how I heard it but unsure if BAME or including mixed race people with some Black heritage.
'I predict this will be a very good election for the Lib Dems.
There will be a large pro-EU, anti-Brexit, anti-Tory protest vote out there which won't want to back Lab under Corbyn..... and the Lib Dems are perfectly placed. '
I must say after watching the documentary about the FO & Boris (even havng not very high expectations & the albino baboon at the centre of it notwithstanding), I was underwhelmed.
(I thought Corbyn would be a serious voter turn off, and the libdems would end up on 12 to 14%, and get 12 to 14 seats. The latter half of my forecast was OK. The former, dreadful.)
Any food shortages etc will be temporary, even if high profile, re-establishing international credibility would take a generation.
Russia is much more like a cold, miserable incarnation of Brazil than a peer to the USA or China.
Hence the big fearties in Scotland were too afraid to vote Yes, while Albion with the resolve of lions chose to leap into the unknown despite the warnings.
Such is life in a pan-national institution.
But to say Britain wasn’t one of the most influential members is complete retard stuff.
It is not possible to be a leading member of the EU and be outside the Eurozone. This is something the Remain campaign never had the honesty to admit. You can make an argument that being within the system with little influence is still worth it, but it’s a harder argument to make.
And the Democratic party is not the Labour party, let alone the Socialist party.
But I sense this is where core Remainers and Brexiters part ways, because - it seems to me - Brexiters simply feel in their hearts that Britain was diminished by negotiation rather than enhanced. They don’t want to be part of any club they can’t dominate, and they are forever furious about made-up slights they read about in the Telegraph or Mail.
The real issue is improving conditions in abattoirs and farms, organic farming in particular is becoming more attractive.
My sister is a vegetarian but I myself have always taken the view that we as long as tigers, lions, wolves, crocodiles etc eat meat then so will I
No Deal on the other hand may be the final push Scots need to vote for independence having been promised in 2014 the best of both worlds and staying in the UK and the EU, not being dragged out of the EU with no agreement to replace it at all
Incidentally, if you breach the regulation you're fined £1500! Makes the London congestion charge look tame. And the authorities have the right of entry into your premises at any time without a court order and can confiscate all your vehicles for inspection if they think you have a vehicle without a filter and might attempt to conceal it. Not as cuddly as you might think the Danes would be.
Britain *was* a leading member of the EU, but you’re right we largely - under Cameron - expressed it in a negative sense. When our best/only policy becomes about reducing the EU budget, you see the impoverished transactionialism of our approach. Cameron was never interested in active EU engagement. In fact, Cameron wasn’t really interested in foreign affairs at all.
I would argue that - given institutional issues with the Euro - the EU benefits a lot from having a non-Euro member of Britain’s size. It was up to us to define and decide how to exercise that position.
Instead, we are walking away and consigned ourself to relative insignificance.
And, er, okay? I'm happy with you making whatever dietry choice you want, but I'm not sure justifying it by saying you hold yourself to the moral standards of other species is a winner
'Looking ahead and on the bright side.
1. Corbyn will be a footnote by the evening of June 8th when he's certain to resign.
2.. The election will be 100% about Brexit
3. The Lib Dems being the only party against Brexit are likely to have their best result for decades
4. May will be able to sack Johnson and Fox which she's very likely to do
5. And David Miliband might be persuaded to stand and save Labour from extinction.'
Not a member of the UN. I watched Junks and Tusk visit Ergodan and get told to send the boss. Merkel turned up and very quickly capitulated by paying billions of euros. The EU visited North African nations to strop the migrants and got nowhere. Putin deals with Merkel. After the G7 where Trump said he would not be in the Paris Climate change agreement der Spiegel reported that the EU made an effort to get the other members to sign up to a press release saying Trump was wrong, Trudeau said no, Abe said how many carrier battle groups do you have in the pacific and May said no.
If the sum of the parts is meant to be stronger than the individual nations then I struggle to see this working in practice. Some of this is because the press has in the recent past beefed up Merkels role as calling all the shots, but it has had a detrimental effect.
Yours reads like an anti-abortion rant.
I’m still baffled by the fact that my most fiercely NeverBrexiteer people I know in business, local politics and socially are all middle aged, middle class males. Everyone else has moved on.
- Internet freedom. China has highly restricted internet. Liechtenstein completely free. Most people think China is more influential than Liechtenstein. On this measure HJS disagree.
- Websites in the national language. The UK piggybacking the US here, I think.
- Number of diplomatic missions. The UK and China are represented essentially everywhere. The UK by a man and a dog. China by armies of officials and official delegations on soft power missions.
Almost every meric can be challenged. Also the survey completely ignores the EU, which is highly influential in certain domains.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-38743532
If the Scottish Government proposes leaving a no-deal UK in order to join the EU and put up no-deal barriers with the UK then that's more challenging.
No Deal not only makes Scottish independence more likely it also increases the chance we either return to the EU or to Single Market and Customs Union BINO
Not directly animals are not killed by getting eggs or meat from them, no.
We have eaten meat for thousands of years, it is part of our evolutionary makeup
I’m not a declinist, no. I try to look dispassionately at the country I have chosen to spend my life in, and when I sat down at the beginning of the referendum campaign, vaguely eurosceptically, I mainly saw the great opportunities the EU presented us.
We were, until 2016, one of the youngest, fast growing economies in Europe and even tipped to take over from Germany by mid century.
We had used the single market to create a global capital of finance, pharma, law, and culture. I remember the Major years. Britain was so much more parochial back then.
Being out of the Euro, while limiting our influence in certain ways, is ultimately I believe to ours *and* the EU’s advantage, and I think it by no means impossible that we could have pushed toward a next phase of Europe ie more loosely federated. The EU *needs* a space into which the likes of Italy and Greece can move. Figuring this out could have been our great project after the single market and eastern enlargement.
Even immigration - which I have consistently recognised as an issue - is an area where we could have forged a new direction in time. We didn’t really try, and let’s not believe that Cameron’s whistle stop your represented the sustained might of British diplomacy.
I know Brexiters will scoff, but I have heard the scoffing since the Delors days and yet 25 years later we are much better for our EU membership, not worse.
My biggest issues with this country seem to be entirely self-made and nothing to do with the EU: the disparity between London and the regions; the lack of investment in infrastructure; the terrible waste of human talent consigned to lesser life chances by the education system etc.
PS Remainers skew female and young, so you are wrong I think about middle aged men.