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This is precisely why I think it will be rethought Keano, as the obvious problems emerge in practise. Priti has a track record of poor understanding of most of the things she expresses views on, so I take her comments with a pinch of salt. She also has poor judgement and it is only a matter of time before she messes up, as she did when she unofficially met Isreali officials.

Just back on the unemployed taking up those low skilled jobs that immigrants will no longer fill. Priti seems to forget that those in receipt of UC (and not sick or disabled) are already required to apply for those jobs if they live near to them. But where are the hoards of unemployed living around farms to go and pick lettuces for min wage? The full employment claim is also a red herring as a person only has to be doing one hour of work a week to be classed as employed by government figures. Zero hours contracts and a million plus full time workers in need of top up benefits to meet basic living costs is the real story behind those figures. The figure for long term unemployed has consistently sat at around 240k ish. Using the term 'economically inactive' may indeed signal a move to force those beyond the category of 'able bodied' unemployed into jobs, although quite how they intend to manage this is going to be another matter. Employers don't want unsuitable people foisted onto them either.

The Greeks want their Marbles back as part of any deal apparently. Quite fitting as we seem to have lost ours ;)

And many more elderly/ or mobility challenged people do not have the means to own a car. Free parking is not a right. I totally understand there are issues around genuinely disabled people failing to get BB's, and that seems to be the real issue here. I think more people would have sympathy with something being done to address that, than keeping parking free for everyone.

Councils are strapped for cash after years of central funding cuts. Adult social care is a more pressing issue than parking in parks surrounded by free on street parking and good transport links. It is a question of priorities and has nothing to do with pitching communities against each other ffs.

She clearly was very distressed and vulnerable. Every suicide is a tragedy and the immediate question is always one of whether anything could have been done to help her. Her friends and family especially will wrestle with that for a long time. I suspect that she had been battling with depression for some time, and that the decision to pursue with the assault charge was the final tipping point. It will be a complex mix of things that took her to this very tragic place though. Very sad. She had everything to live for in reality.

Most parks don't have car parking within them. It is not the council's fault if the government have made PIP and disability assessments harder to pass. The fact still remains that BB holders can park for free. I don't think charging everyone else is unreasonable, and no, I don't say that because I hate cars either.

Having a car is a luxury. It is not a divine right to park it anywhere you choose. Genuinely disabled people will have blue badges and be exempt. Given the cost of insurance, MOT, petrol and all the other associated costs of owning a car, parking charges are par for the course.

Geez, Savid Javid resigns after being told he had to get rid of all of his advisors if he wanted to keep his job!

Is Boris planning to stuff his cabinet with those that would support a no deal scenario if it comes to that?

The AG has gone too. It is who those sacked are replaced with that will signal the direction. A new cabinet full of yes people would be my guess.

War may have been the perfect scenario for a pandemic to spread in the past because it was the one time in which there was mass migration of people. That is not the case to day where millions of people travel across continents every day. We also have other things in play now, like better understanding of pandemic spread, better medical technology to fight infection and better protocols for contagion. Ebola is a case in point. Very deadly and quickly spread but defeated in the end by education, process and medical knowledge. More than that, we now have an army of experts constantly scanning the globe for the first signs of any new virus. None of this existed when Spanish Flu took hold.

The real issue with any new virus is mutation. What previous pandemics have taught us is that it is often not the first wave that does the worst damage, but the second wave after the virus learns how to do what it lives to do, better.

The cost of treating obesity related medical conditions far outweighs any concerns we should have for the food industry. In an ideal world, education would be enough to make us all eat responsibly. But we have a food industry that stuffs our supermarkets and high streets with processed food that leaves us hungry (helping us to overeat) and turns us all into sugar and processed fat addicts. And that is before we get onto the methods used to provide cheap meat. It completely baffles me, that when we know so much about nutrition and the body, that we continue to do nothing about so much bad food.

Plus we already do trade with the whole world. So this is not about freedom to trade, but how the terms of trade are arrived at - i.e. who owns the trade agreement. We currently enjoy the benefits of a huge trade deficit (for them) with the US. That will be the first thing to be cancelled out by the US in any trade negotiations. For me, the issue is how to get some leave voters to stop trotting out the same factually incorrect statements parrot fashion, fed to them by the likes of Mogg and Farage. The 'we can now trade with the whole world' being a case in point, when we already do that.

Financial services are such a huge part of the economy that the government would be foolish to jeopardize that in any way. But this is why I think the EU will force their way on fishing, in return for that continued EU passport for the City. At the end of the day, money talks and the power of the City on government policy can not be underestimated.

I suspect the power balance in NI is about to change, depending on what coalition manages to form itself. So no, by the time any bridge is built, we will already be wherever we are heading.

There will be many more examples of remain and trade experts being right. But if leavers were not interested in details before, why would they be now?

And escaping the hard border customs checks now being announced. Hard Brexit anyone? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/10/checks-on-eu-bound-goods-inevitable-gove-tells-business-leaders?CMP=share_btn_tw

He clearly has never sailed across the Irish Sea in winter. But the logic is interesting. Still figuring out the border issue I think. Also, the results in the NI elections might have a bearing on something too.

Reports today that No.10 are looking into the logistics of building an actual physical bridge between Scotland and NI. What is it with Johnson and bridges?

Police are the go to when someone is endangering others. Who else does anyone expect to apprehend and detain this man? Expecting paramedics to deal with someone who may already have committed assault on numerous occasions and of various kinds, is unreasonable. They have no power of arrest.

To be fair, until those negotiations start in earnest, we don't know what direction they will take. No.10 want to keeps talks confidential, I suspect they will be anything but though.

Yes that is true, hence the phrase Canada plus plus, the plus being services. We won't get everything negotiated by the end of the year. Pretty much everyone who understands trade deals knows that. So we probably will end up with a loose framework where some things are agreed, while negotiations continue. The question is, does that mean an extension of the transition, because until everything is agreed, we technically are in transition. Or do we take a hit to the sectors still to be negotiated while the talks continue. I think the answer to that will be decided by how much gets agreed by the end of the year.

I suspected that business will flatline for a little while, until EU trade negotiations are completed. My hunch is that in order to protect the cities business, we will have to concede on things like fishing. We should also be fighting hard for car manufacturing and pharmaceuticals (our two biggest export sectors to the EU).