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A prominent Telegraph reader writes:- Whilst I agree with you 100% here Arthur aren't you a latecomer to this democracy thing? http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/12/newsid_2843000/2843003.stm

Not at all what we voted for, and approaching a complete sellout. In fact she has compounded earlier mistakes and allowed room for even more subterfuge. Why on earth should British taxpayers shore up the anti-democratic EU for several more years? Further proof - if any were needed - that our country is run for the benefit of London-based international bankers and not British citizens.

The climbdown is becoming less subtle now, but carefully geared not to jeopardise those research budgets and "scientist's" international jollies: Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests Remember that $100Bn a year of other people's money that Global Gordon thought wasn't enough to throw at the problem? And remember the more recent self-congratulatory, back-slapping charade that was the 2015 Paris Climate Change Accord? In plain language what the above means is that the "challenging targets" are likely to be met without anyone doing/spending anything. Can someone please dream up another pending global catastrophe so that the junketing of the grandstanding ruling elites can continue - the AGW one is now being carefully and steadily buried in the pages of history. Simply keep the retreat a bit ahead of the calendar, and we scientists and politicos will all be comfortably retired long before any serious historical review emerges.

...your "State of the Union" (now where have we heard that one before?) speech has gone down amazingly well in the UK. It confirms everything the Leave campaign said about where the EU was surely headed. I've now lost count of the number of if-only-we-had-known newspaper articles, and forum posts from people who voted Remain. You've provided them with a admirable rationalisation for their change of mind. There never was a "Remain" status quo to vote for, as it was always your way or no way! I suspect ever-increasing numbers of our continental cousins will be telling you "no way!" from now on. The reactions to TM's speech in Florence on 22nd September are going to be... er.. interesting!

A fairly predictable list of traditional non-Blairite, non-Marxist socialists who feel they are there to serve the needs of their constituents and their country. Quite unlike our own self-serving idiot who will go along with international capitalist liberals or screaming marxist loonies, according to the direction of the wind - in fact anything but the place and people foolishly funding his lifestyle. Wake up Wansbeck - you are living in the 21st Century now. Lavery is cruel joke, and Wansbeck voters are the butt of that joke.

Used to be very competitive with the UK here but prices are moving up sharply. The point is that after ten whole years of discussion with the networks and much crowing the EU has achieved precisely nothing, or at least nothing positive. They've now made it impossible to obtain a SIM without a heavy monthly commitment, most of which you'll never use. I suspect the rate of investment in 4G has been scaled back too. Yes, we do have 4G services in town here now, but it's often only token 4G, and when I go out on bike rides there are areas where even GSM drops out. This isn't some third world backwater, as I believe there WERE more mobiles per head here than anywhere else in the world.

Yes, another of the flagship promises to the gullible has bitten the dust. What they were told would happen is now happening with a vengeance. Now that the honeymoon period is over mobile charges are shooting up to compensate for the loss of revenue, so the only people to now benefit are a highly select number of highly mobile people, and you can guess what social group they are over represented in. Personally I've seen my monthly PAYG charges bumped on both my continental SIMs. But it's worse: you used to be able to buy a SIM card without a costly monthly contract, but when I walked into a phone shop recently expecting to be able to buy one for occasional calls on a new smartwatch, I was practically told to take a walk. that's despite having all the necessary documents, ID cards, and tax certificates that continental bureaucracy require. I eventually acquired one by reading loads of foreign smallprint on a double up scheme. This involved several trips to two shops, and an over the counter confrontation which involved calls to the network for permission - in fact the card was practically thrown at me. It's still not enabled though! You can't believe a word of EU propaganda, and in particular you can't believe a word of what is appearing in the EU compliant continental press. People have been led to believe that the UK is in total crisis, and Brits are deeply regretting their mistake. This really is Orwellian in its implications.

As someone who lived directly across the street from it as a child (in the 1950's), and so could have seen it every day, I severely doubt that it was ever used for this purpose. That doesn't mean there wasn't an intention for it to be so purposed at some point in history though. The siren on the old police station was frequently tested and was easy to hear from the Market Place, so why place another so close? And where is the actual motor supposed to go? The electric motor and side vanes on the old police station one were always plainly visible. Here there is a shuttered core which looks to be an integral part of the construction. I would have expected a clear platform to bolt the electric motor to. This is sounding to me like a recently invented "urban myth".

No I don't agree. The base figure the Remonians cling on to is actually a year or so long rise caused by the market's belief that Cameron was going to win. We were/are still in fact in a recovery phase from Global Gordon's seriously bad mistiming of the normal economic cycle. He convinced himself that the good times were bad times, and that he'd ended "stop go economics" when in fact things were still in the warm shadow of previous market reforms, and about to turn down again. Real economists were telling him that he was wrong for several years, but a lecturer at a second rate polly clung on to the religious belief that he knew better. His excuse was that he was the victim of an unforeseeable "Global" economic turn down, when in fact he was the trigger through failure to regulate our very own economic numbskulls at Northern Rock (please search back on my postings at that time). There is no POSITIVE correlation between the value of our currency and our future prospects like you wish to imply, but there is almost certainly a negative one. Having an overvalued currency is fatal. The huge boost in UK stock market values and surge in inward investment IS indicative though, as is the record low unemployment levels. Wages will be forced up after a decade of complete stagnation caused by our far too close relationship with the moribund Eurozone - that's EXACTLY what the Leavers intended! Now please answer my question as to "why you think the EU is an economically viable construct?"

Curious that the Remainers predicted the economy would tank at even the hint of a OUT majority? Cable predicted a stock market crash of -30% whereas it's now +30%. So where do you want the place goal posts on this major economic setback? You can have your pick, but "somewhere over there" isn't going to get written into the rules. Someday sometime is also the problem with socialist politicos and their sunny uplands; they attempt to string generation after generation along whilst ensuring that everything is working well for their class IN THE NOW. The USSR's apparatchiks ran out of excuses after 70 years, but in the Internet age the EUSSR simply hasn't got that long. Anyway, I'm very curious to know exactly why you think the EU is an economically viable construct? I'm delighted that the the exchange rate is working well for you. If you look at the history it came straight off a high and is now pretty much exactly where it was in 2009/10. I know a few British ex-pats who are having to alter their lifestyles, and we are conscious that our own money goes nothing like as far, but there are several neat compensations. What has reduced the general impact for Brits is that "weak hands" left during the last downer and the long-termers are preconditioned to wild exchange rate swings. If you bought eurozone property in the early 2000's at going on for €1.60 : £1 - as most did here - your property is notionally worth far more in Sterling terms, and you can console yourself that you probably couldn't consider it now. That's until you come to sell it and discover that there is mostly a huge difference between estate agent and real world prices, and that it's very much a buyer's market.

I gave Wim Duisenberg (former Eurobank supremo) twenty years, and he still hasn't delivered on his "the UK economy will tank in months if it doesn't join my Euro" strictures. Wasn't just him of course - the whole EUphile establishment were at it at the time. You'd almost have thought they had a vested interest in talking our economy down, but "our European partners" would never ever do a thing like that! I hope the EU-SSR has a few more years, but from where I sit it's looking increasingly unlikely. If we can get past becoming a Caliphate (no bets on that one) the UK is now good for another 1000 years, and some of the best ones lie ahead of us.

There must be a point at which this sort of "public service" is dreamed up simply for the purpose of creating public sector employment, and a building a bigger empire (hence budget). I can't help thinking that we passed this point a good while ago! Chimney fires used to be a highly regular occurrence, and a certain way of getting your chimney cleaned. They were sometimes unpleasant, but part of life in the area. Preventing them required only a modicum of common sense, and so there was social pressure not to advertise you were a t** and/or too tight to pay a sweep! Apparently such an event now requires the costly attendance of an average of two fire crews, and you become a victim of a failure in social policy!

Even more UK chickens hatching:

I'm now beginning to appreciate that you Remainers were right about several things Merk. Take for instance those three million unemployed: we'll.. I've found them! They're right here in Southern Europe, bravely propping up the value of the New Deutchmark. And, Frau Merkel's desperate refugees are still coming in ever increasing numbers - the bitter civil war in Nigeria is particularly relevant at this moment. We really must let a few million more in to help in the NHS - as per the free-movement directive from the fatherland! Chickens? As you've probably noticed, so many were hatching that I gave up counting them months ago! Tip: try exporting British chickens to the EU, and discover just what this "single market" thing amounts to in reality.

More news we won't hear reported on the Brussels Broadcasting Corporation (or their chums at EU-funded propaganda machine C4):- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/09/03/poorest-will-gain-brexit-says-labour-report/ Meanwhile Blair - having failed at every other machiavellian ploy - is doing everything he can to ensure a "Soft Brexit" - a term created to pretend that democratic process is being followed whilst ensuring that nothing actually changes. The French euro-elies got away with this by creating Merkron (no, not a typo!), and the French people have woken up the fact that they've been had in record time.

Yes, you guessed it! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/0/englands-obesity-hotspots-does-area-compare/

None of your above candidates will be the next PM. Ukip voters have already decided this too. It will - of course - be the one who protests the most clearly and convincingly that (s)he holds no such ambition; has undying loyalty to the incumbent, and firmly believes they should continue forever. So, you want a musical clue? Well.. this could be just about anything, because the clue is actually the format. P.S. It is of course (according to The Guardian) "the joke candidate" - though not the one the substitute-for-thought Leftie Labelers like to dub The Buffoon Candidate.

Easy one (and you like a good tune don't you?): there'll be bluebirds over The white cliffs of Dover Tomorrow Just you wait and see there'll be love and laughter And peace ever after Tomorrow When the [UK] is free The shepherd will tend his sheep The valley will bloom again And Jimmy will go to sleep In his own little room again there'll be bluebirds over The white cliffs of Dover Tomorrow Just you wait and see So relax.. Albion is saved, and once again in our great history THIS generation wasn't the one who threw everything away! And, lest you think I'm trivialising things by injecting a bit of humour: let me say that once again it was the ordinary "Tommies" who unselfishly won the day for their country, whilst the feckless elites would have sold it down the river for perceived personal advantage. The so -called "negotiations" don't really matter because - like all ponzi schemes - the EU will collapse under the weight of the same unenlightened self-interest that caused many naive people in this country to support it. Twenty seven countries that are all on the take; don't even have a common method of communication, and have been extensively lied to by professional liars who are themselves on the take, do not a nation make. Nations are created by selfless common people and WE still have enough of those (yes, even in Scotland!).

You have my David-Cameron-style cast-icon promise on that one Eggy! But remember: you can't cherry pick icons*; you can't have your icon cake and eat it, and nothing is iconised until everything is iconised (apart from all the stuff Herr-commandant Barnyard demands is iconised first, of course). *This does not preclude icons of cherries.

Sym, if you feel like a PC rant go for it! I won't be binning my selection of Carry On films any time soon though. I briefly thought you were talking about CL's pantomime/music hall bit (more 1870 than 1970?), until clarity settled. Only slightly deviating... It was a real scream listening to Question Time this week when the usual bunch of lefties that are held to be representative of (Highgate & Hampstead?) public opinion turned it into a competition as to who was most offended. "I find you being offended by what I just said offends me and I have a right not to be offended..." - well they didn't precisely say that, but that was what the snowflakes were pushing at. Laugh? I almost fell over my floor mop! Much of alleged offence and counter offense was during discussion of the Google story about the coder person being fired for telling the truth about gender differences - a comedy of PC circle squaring in itself. In fact I find myself warming toward this Google ex-employee (oops - who's not non-British, gay or female, I hope! )

Don't panic Mr Mainwaring! No actual data has been lost. Andy is off on a jaunt at the moment so we'll look at the problem after the weekend. There's quite a lot of other work to be done to optimise things further as we are using a "straight out of the box" configuration at the moment. Page load times will be further reduced after this work, and there's a major new feature lined up - but you all read the recent newsletter, so know that already.

I don't think even Foxy has a lens that long. It's likely in the skip at the back of the Internet Exchange by now, and will be recycled into baked bean cans by Christmas. In fact sooner or later we are all has beans! This is the price of progress.