threegee

Don't give up hope; there was a report earlier today that the whispers in the corridors of the BBC are that they might not have been accurately echoing the feelings of real people "in the provinces." Doubtless there'll be a working party tasked with investigating this startling revelation very soon. What better use of our licence fee could there possibly be?

The odds would depend on exactly what you mean by Brexit. The way the EU and politicos generally work is by fudge. It's highly likely that we'll be presented with a situation that the establishment parties claim is a Brexit, but Ukip supporters disown as not in the spirit of the referendum result. Maybe that's what everyone secretly wants, because then the show can go on and on?

I think a slightly better question is what would HMQ do in those circumstances? She's only been dropping hints so far, but she's supposed to be the ultimate guardian of democracy. She has removed elected governments in other countries - so there's a precedent.

I think the point of the referendum was that we join the world again.

My argument was that Dougan is highly influenced by EU money, and also the civil service position - his other paymasters. Your argument is that he's a disinterested academic, which he most certainty is not! You position generally is that all Journalists "need to sell newspapers", and so practically anything they say is not to be believed, whereas academics in no way suffer from funding bias. Due to recent events all you NOW need to do is to browse the university websites to see how such a partisan view is highly blinkered. Academics have now gone into overdrive as to how they are going to replace EU funding to maintain their empires. They have ever lost sight of the fact that the teat they feed on is ALL originally UK food processed through an inefficient Brussels system in a way that maximises their dependence on surrogate mother EU. I'm tempted to say that if a reborn UK won't readily come up with funds for their research, perhaps they should consider the possibility of getting a real job! But I won't, because I'm not enough of a philistine as to claim that all academic research doesn't perform a useful social purpose - just a fair bit of it! In any event I think UK politicos are a bit better placed to decide on such matters than a remote peripatetic bureaucracy that often needs a cohort of translators just to understand each other. If even a bit of what Dougan claimed is true then he's now in hog heaven, because his specific "services" will be in demand by government for a good while hence. Then, maybe - as you indicated - he can simply move to the EU, and so relieve the UK taxpayer of his support burden - hoorah, and the best of luck to him! As I say, time will now illustrate exactly how seriously his lecture needed to be taken, so there's no need to speculate.

Sorry not enough hours in the day to answer all your syntactic nitpicking. I stand by the basics of everything I've said. You're up to your usual tricks of ignoring the principal point (and essentially about 90% of my post) - my answers to Dougan's questions were namely: a) As a law professor he should know the answer to his own question: the answer is the Vienna Convention says that precisely nothing must happen to either. b ) Again, the answer is nothing. There are several fundamental errors in your train of thought regarding the working Brits in the EU figures. It starts by transposing my statement that "the vast majority are retired" into the supposition that I'm talking only about pensioners. Then you transpose that to meaning state pensions, then make the further unjustified logical leap into assuming that the pensions sent directly overseas by DWP equals the total number. My "retirees" would in fact include anyone who is not holding down a state recognised job, and so include people who may simply be bumming a living from family and friends in a nice climate - of which I'm personally aware of an odd few. The principal of GIGO now has a good hold here, so for you to go on and compute people legitimately employed in EU jobs by differencing becomes risible. No, you have not proved my statement wrong, and it's well on the periphery of what I said, and barely relevant to the principal answer even if this were to be the case. Sad that you acknowledge that he has grossly inflated the figure, and that in fact my off the top of head recollection UN figure is still slightly too high, but give me no credit at all for that, whilst trying to make excuses for a highly-paid professional and "government adviser" who should be in full possession of the facts, and also provide some faint provenance for his overblown statistics. When I said "The future though is" it was an expression of personal opinion, and an educated guess. I am allowed to have an opinion, without that right being attacked. No, I did not mean millions, the "responsible for disbursing" boast was clearly quoted as billions. If "£579 millions of direct funding" isn't "much of its funding" then the reader can decide for themselves if I over-egged the statement. I've no interest in university funding as such, and the statemented that you quote “If you don’t boldly present a project as EU funded (even though they only stump up 50% most of the time)” is regarding general EU funding, and true! Now that we are exiting the EU we have the perfect opportunity to assess just how much of what Dougan was saying was pure UK government/EU propaganda. He didn't expect that!

That's what happens Tony - simple economics! Some dastardly union guy presses for far too much and the work goes to a Chinese sweatshop, for evermore! Hey, even I know that Wansbeck Council is no more - and they say that I've been away too long! I will pass on the job offer as it might mean I'd have to join a union, or is it double standards? Cameron wouldn't know what a working person was; he's never held down a real job in his entire life. Nor will he ever!

Easy: It was a straightforward question, and not any sort of declaration. You misunderstood. You said: but if you give enough money without working why would you work? The work ethic means you work because there is a moral imperative to work, and the money is secondary or completely irrelevant. I see quite a few people here working on the land that don't have to. Some of them are totally geriatric, yet they come quite long distance to their family patch and put in hours in the sun. Some of the produce is simply gifted to friends and distant family. Why do they do it? They have a built-in need to do it, they've always done it, and it keeps them healthier. Without this they don't feel themselves a worthwhile member of society. Of course I agree with you about benefits etc.

But the glove factory went bust didn't it? It provided much needed employment at the time, so are you saying it should have paid more and gone bust sooner, or paid less and have kept going longer? Or... is there an alternative view? You don't believe in the work ethic then? The other way of looking at the stay at homes is that they free up work for someone who needs it more.

Be advised that I was under no illusions that I'd used the Swedish form of the word, and was relying on the intelligence of the reader. If you didn't get so hung up on the presentation all the time you'd have a far better chance at deriving meaning. Though, admittedly, Tony often taxes my own ability to derive true meaning beyond limit. OK, there's a 't' in there too, and you reverse the order of the first and last words - but my version is far more appropriate.

Money isn't - and has never been - my main ambition in life. For the last 10 years I've worked for nothing on things I truly believe in, and things which interest me. I can do this because I have very modest tastes (never took a holiday for practically all my working life), and now live in a place where the things I actually need generally cost less. You? I'm not sure what you are actually getting at. Are you saying that the wages there were derisory?

When did you meet up with Tony's Hate-No-Hope friends? Likely not when they were physically intimidating some poor pensioners who didn't agree with them.

It has to be through natural wastage I'm afraid. All we can do is to stop any more coming, though we could pay them to go. As Merkel has proved, paying other countries to solve your own illegal economic migrant problem can be very expensive. Though I reckon we could send the bill to A. Blair Esq. as he's mostly responsible and seems to have pretty deep pockets. When Enoch Powell suggested paying a few migrants to go way back there were howls of outrage from the left, but they aren't howling at Merkel and the EU for some strange reason. Rounding up illegals is quite another matter, but then here do you send them that will have them?

Translation error: he actually meant kraft till en marxist clique

If they (Poles) are in the country legally and behaving themselves they have established rights under international law and can't be told to go anywhere. Freedom from the EU is about getting our country back from Brussels control - so's we can say who comes in the future. It's about giving everyone in the world a fair chance of doing jobs we need to be done, but keeping out the criminals, terrorists, and dregs of other countries who want to leech on our welfare state. Boris is a lot brighter (and more patriotic) than anyone in your international Marxist outfits. I won't vote for him, but the people who do vote for him do so for good reasons, and scoffing them when you have absolutely no answers yourself is in itself risible.

No, most of their products don't come from the EU. The sort of stuff I buy from them here comes from the Far East and a lot of that is factored through Milomex in the UK. Leaving the EU could actually make the UK a sweet place for Lidl to do business in. Let's say for example that the the Brussels Bureaucrats issue a directive that all batteries must be bright red because it makes them easier to sort from the rubbish. But Lidl's buyer in the Far East finds a batch of otherwise excellent batteries that are green. The buyer knows he can't sell them in the EU but he can sell them in the UK because the UK government doesn't try to manage every detail of its citizens lives. Buyer says OK make me some red batteries at your list price, but I will take that lot of green ones off your hands at half price as part of the same shipment. UK customers get a much better deal on batteries than continental Lidl customers, and continental buyers pay the bulk of the shipping container charges - the UK rapidly becomes THE place for Lidl to sell all sorts of things at bargain prices leveraging its huge buying power, but with its normal sane quality controls. BTW why should people who voted Leave be discriminated against simply because they don't conform to your rigid mindset? I really can't believe that was a serious remark though; please tell me you were joking?

I've seen this a couple of times: the facebook generation only talk to the facebook generation, so huge group-think sets in and they completely discount the fact that anyone might have opposing views. When they come up against the first person that doesn't agree, that person is immediately labelled as an extremist. Then, reality starts to dawn and they become indignant and outraged. I suppose it's just normal student protest updated: for every problem there's one simple solution: a protest march condemning those who just will not see! Perhaps we should be thankful for on-line petitions - they keep the streets tidier.

RACIST!!

Big one this: Nando's (Portuguese) Chicken Restaurants will not close down as earlier claimed.

Always difficult to understand how this was going to occur, but maybe there was a cunning plan to issue free microlight aircraft to illegals and provide them with a crash (oops!) flying course? And, of course, as the whole point was to get to the UK wouldn't they just disappear into the towns if they did get across The Channel?

Which Labour Party are you talking about? The Tony Blair International Capitalist one, or the Jeremy Corbyn International Marxist one? Unfortunately you can't mix and match policies as they will be at each other's throats for the next decade or more, and we need to move on from 20th century politics. Neither are anywhere near the British Labour Party that many of us often respectfully disagreed with, but conceded had some good policies at times. And, when the crunch came we all united around our country, and not around keeping wealthy career politicians (home and abroad) in the lifestyle they had become accustomed to. There's a lot to be said for only allowing people who've actually held down a real job for a couple of decades to be MPs. No more chummy double acts of the Blair/Brown Cameron/Osborne type for a start!

I think the single word answer is probably farming. The UK is full of people the EU buys with our own money; that's how the cancer of (super)state dependence spreads..

Nothing like as big a majority as in other parts of the NE. Won't be too many years before most of those 82K realise that they have a lot to thank the other 97K for! Older and wiser heads prevailing is seldom a bad thing.

You'll just have to hope for a Brexit every day then! I'm overjoyed that my cost of living has gone up sharply for now (but it won't get any worse than it got under global Gordon). Anyway, the inevitable demise of the overvalued Euros I have to find has been hastened a lot. Remember that the people who are betting against Sterling this morning are the people who've just lost a packet with their huge bookie bets on Remain, and are also the same people who failed to foresee the debt crisis when it was staring them fully in the face. With a competent PM - one that's not essentially anti-British - and a chancellor that's not a vindictive school-yard bully boy, Sterling will inevitably climb again. Put your country first, and it will do what it has always done and look after you!