Blah Blah

uncleglen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What amazes me is the fact that there were no > proper contingency plans laid down by the EU in > the event that a country that is a net donor to > the EU votes to leave. As the days go by the > arrogance and ignorance of the EU shines through > more and more and just goes to show that a Leave > vote is in the best interests of the UK- even > though the people of the UK benefiting from being > in the 'club' don't like it. And just where have they shown arrogance on that? That they request payment for the spending commitments that we already agreed to contribute to? A fee that our government is refusing to negotiate on (and if that is not an arrogant position I don't know what is). Why else do you think David Daivies is making unscheduled trips this week to continue negotiations? Because failure to get onto trade before Christmas is a extremely serious scenario for the UK (not the EU). You illlustrate perfectly the arrogance of leave supporters who think we are something special, that the EU should change it's rules just for us. And if you get your hard brexit, when the sh+t hits the fan and you see for yourself that the establishment does not change, that ordinary people get screwed even harder, who will you blame then?

There were interesing interviews on the Andrew Marr show this morning. Nobody thinks no deal will be acceptable and increasing signs it won't be accepted by parliament either. That presents a real chance of the government being brought down if May can not get the hard brexit vipers off her back. It is quite possibly the worst civil war the Tories have ever faced. How can a party in that kind of chaos, possibly negotiate with the EU on this? Surely a cross party consensus based approach to negotiations is the right way forward now. Chris Grayling tried to insist that there were plans in place for a hard border because Dover has an unused airfield nearby that can be used as a lorry overspill port. Yeah, good luck with that Chris. That is the level of nonsense now coming out of the party.

JoeLeg Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > A survey just done by the Institute Of Hospitality showed that 93% of restaurants are having trouble recruiting, and the attitude of young UK candidates gives them no optimism for the future. I've been told privately that the NHS is facing similar issues. How should we deal with this? What's your plan? I voted Remain, I lost, you won. So it's up to you to fix this. Seriously, how do we deal with the skills shortage? And before you respond that we should all pay more, please remember that the NHS is paid by our taxes, and staffing hospitality are paid by how much the customer is willing to part with. Are you willing for taxes and prices to rise? Personally I'm ok with it, are you? You all seem to say that low wages are the only reason UK workers don't want low skilled jobs. > > Talk about having your head in the sand... It is even worse in agriculture and food production with some sectors scaling down by a third because they can't fill the positions now that EU workers are not coming to do those grimy, back breaking, low paid jobs. And this at a time when the head of Sainsburrys just warned that food prices will increase by at least 15% if we have no access to the single market. We already import a quarter of our food from the EU and it is worth remembering that those European farmers depend on our trade to in turn employ their cheap migrant workers. Leaving with no agreement on trade is going to be bad. Closing our borders to workers is already hurting.

I think it is increasingly clear that no deal is not an option. It now becomes a case of what kind of deal she can get through the house and how much the EU stand their ground and force her into what essentially will be a Norway type deal. It's no good her using blackmail with Parliament either. I think the sooner she stops the pretence the better. Then she can get on with making the case for the kind of deal we are most likely to end up with. Bojo and Mogg might jump up and down about it, but if either were PM they would not get what they want either. The only question is who the kamikazi element of leave are going to blame for it.

300 ammendments! Crikey - that might taken longer than the EU negotiatons themselves to get though :D

Thanks for that article Loz. It seems to make perfect sense. The longer all of this nonsense goes on though, the more likely it is that we won't be leaving the Single Market or Customs Union. But as one journalist interviewing Iain Duncan Smith pointed out, that with every twist and turn of this game government are playing, the pound keeps falling and the economy tanks just a little more.

Loz is spot on. Leave promised all sorts of things that are now being exposed for the folly many said they were at the time. I really do not know how the likes of Gove and Bojo can show their faces. There was a very telling moment of the venom at the heart of the warring sides of the Tory party a few days ago when Rees Mog asked May a question on a couple of aspects of the negotiations and reliance on the ECJ in parliament. You could see the simmering hatred of her reply in his face and demeanor. Until the Tories can find some consensus, we have no chance of any deal. As for putting money aside for no deal, money for what exactly? To compensate business and those that lose their jobs? To offset inflation? To bribe offshore investors to use the UK as a tax haven? I thought we had no money - that's what the Tories have been telling us for 7 years now.

They will be out in 2-3 years and no doubt terrorising the public again. Laughing and joking during a sentencing hearing shows how little regard they have for what they have done.

I Hammer, your friend is always going to have responsiblility for the kids he has brought into the world. That sometimes means financial input.

That is a really interesting perspective Ali. Two thirds of Tory voters though, voted leave (Labour have the opposite problem). How to you think Ruth Davidson would sit with that core Tory support out of interest? Would it be a determining issue for those voters for example.

The fear with Trump is that he is about to pull the USA out of the deal with Iran, you know, the one that got Iran to stop trying to make a nuclear bomb in return for the lifting of sanctions (seems Trump cares more about the competition in oil production that Iran poses over keeping that region stable with a huge civil war raging next door). The mind boggles. This is a good article on the Catalonia thing. http://theduran.com/the-catalan-referendum-is-a-classic-bait-and-switch-operation-by-barcelona/ Spain may not be managing this ongoing issue well, but there is a reason why consitutions exist and have criteria on when elections can be held, and by who.

Wtf Seabag LOL

I would agree with you on Davidson Ali, except that she is a fierce ramainer and I can not see the wider Tory Party backing her. And David Davis is no guarantee for the interim either. He has to win several rounds of the Tory's leader selection process, with members only voting in the final round.

Excellent post Ali and all points that have repeatedly been made on this forum too, with no real informed or evidence backed response from anyone who voted to leave. The worst thing about all of this are people like Farage and Boris - people who do know how everything works and have willingly chosen to drive us down this path and still, it seems, have learned nothing. Are still intent on driving us in a hand cart to economic hell.

Yes I agree Burbage, nothing of any real content there, just the same empty promises since she became PM on helping the many while doing absolutely nothing to do so. Having said that, there have been some indications that they are getting the message that austerity has gone too far and that they are losing the young over issues like housing. The relaxing of some pay caps. The announcment that UC claimants will be able to get advance payments immidiately after being deaf to the issues since it was introduced. I suspect they realised that without that concession (essentially the reintroduction of the crisis loans they abolished) that roll out of UC would have sent food bank use through the roof (beyond the ability of exisiting food banks to cope). And they have also announced that those with lifelong disabilities and conditions that won't improve will no longer have to go through Work Capability Assessments. There are expected to be moves to let councils build homes again (in some rationed form) - something the Tories have bitterly opposed for three decades. And they have found another ?10bn for help to buy from that magic money tree. All of this is too little too late. The people hit hardest by Tory policies are not going to forget what things like Welfare reform have put them through. May's problem is that she is at the mercy some not very nice right wing Tory troublemakers, and those trouble makers will destroy the Tory Party - not least because they refuse to change with public mood.

Ha ha Alan. Love it. I think you are right Red devil. The return of Aaron Banks signals the unhappiness at negotiations from Farage and the first steps towards doing something about it. I really do think this whole brexit think is going to end up in some kind of political civil war, within the two main parties as much as between all parties. And it will go on for a decade at least. I do not understand the hard brexiteers. They seem intent in causing as much chaos as possible, in the short term at least. Fears of 70's style socialism are the least of the country's worries right now.

She should grow a spine and fire him. She is doomed anyway, she may as well go down fighting for it.

Oh dear uncle.....could you be any more of a Tory apologist if you tried? May lost the majority for two reasons. A manifesto that attacked the Tory core vote (the so called dementia tax) and a reliance on brexit as an issue over the economy (the usual stomping ground of the Tories over Labour). Whether you like it or not, two thirds of under 35's support Corbyn and see Labour as the party that speaks for them. The tories only have themselves to blame for this. They are an aging party that witihn 20 years will have lost their core vote unless they change direction and start looking at policy that offers affordable aspiration to the young. At the core of this (and it is the same for the Blairites of Labour) is the end of the neo classical capitalist era. It has run its course just like the post war era before it. Why else do you think we are seeing the re-emergence of populism and extremes?

You could be right about stooges although I have no idea how those audiences are picked. Henry Bolton is picking the wrong fight if he has chosen to start with the LGBT community. I give him 6 months.

Nigello Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sleep is a good illness preventer (to an extent, > of course - I am not saying "kip cures all > ailments"). Longer and darker nights make it > easier! I am not convinced by the use of vitamins > and zinc etc, though. Supplements are harder for the body to digest than from more natural sources like food, sunlight etc etc and research has mixed views on their effectiveness. Some supplements, like fish oil, have better results than others, like iron, which seems to be very difficult to absorb from supplements. As always, a varied diet of non processed foods is the best route to good health. And getting the right amount of sleep (it varies for individuals but 7 hours is the standard need)is also a good route not just to good health but also good mental well being. Cities are always the bedrock of infectious illness, for obvious reasons. Vitamin C is one of the known vitamins to speed recovery from colds, combined with ginger. Garlic on a regular basis is a great boost to the immune system. But on a cellular level, the nature of a virus is that it has to infiltrate the body before the immune system kicks in to fight it. All that diet does is to ensure that the immune system is as strong as it can be and is ready for the fight. Eating and sleeping well won't stop anyone getting ill, but it will determine how quickly and well someone recovers. And that in turn slows the rate at which other people get infected. It's worth remembering that whilst we vaccinate against influenza for very good reasons, a good number of elderly people every year go on do develop fatal pnuemonia from common colds and chest infections they caught from interaction with other people. That cold that you shake off after a few days, can be lethal to an elderly person. We all have a responsibility in that sense to make sure we do what we can to minimise the spread of even a common cold.

LOL Seabag :D

rendelharris Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- Count > your blessings, you had to pay a vast proportion > of your income in mortgage payments, to buy your > house now someone on an averageish income would > need about three times their income every month to > afford it The latest data now shows that average house prices are EIGHT times the average salary. Back in the early 80's, mortgages were I think restricted to 2.5 times salary. DF has nothing whatsoever to complain about.

I agree with Seabag. Someone sitting in a home they bought decades ago is not in a poor position. And you should also consider yourself lucky to have savings too DF. Todays young people can neither save nor buy because of the cost of rents and then starting cost of property. We bought our home in 2001 and consider ourselves lucky, but as someone says above, we needed two salaries to do it. We have two children and have no idea how they are ever going to buy a home, and fully expect we will have to use our savings to help them. They again will be of the lucky few. The downturn in prices is the first in a very long time and is being attributed to a lack of overseas investors. Maybe that is one good impact from the Brexit vote. The housing market in London has been artificially inflated for decades and can't go on like that.