Nordic Saint

May hopes to hold fourth vote on Brexit deal She's planning to doggedly work her way through the ordinal numbers and break the world record for the number of votes on the same question whilst steadfastly ignoring all voices other than the one in her head. May's hero is Geoffrey Boycott and if he were Prime Minister it's probably exactly how he would behave too.

But, she still thinks if she has enough of them, one day she will win one. If she gets 1 out of 50, that will do her.

She's probably still thinking if she could just have a few more votes on her deal, eventually she'll win one of them and if not for Bercow's ruling, that's probably what she would have done.

The basic salary of an MP is £77,379 but they make considerably more in expenses than people do in most other jobs, including their accommodation costs and unlimited travel expenses. They also receive a London area monthly living allowancee of £3,940, an office budget of £27,660 per year. They are also allowed up top £164,460 per year to employ their own assistants and many of them pay this to their wives. They also receive extra accommodation allowances for dependents. When you take all of their allowances into consideration, which mean they hardly need to touch their basic salaries, they are on more than £150,000 per year. Then, they can receive considerably more for more senior posts. Ministers, foir example are on a basic salary of £141,505 per annum. I can't believe there are people on here who think we should pay themn even more.

We have the 2nd largest legislature in the world, after China, with 650 members in the House of Commons plus 793 in the House of Lords plus all of their secretaries, advisors and hangers-on. That's nearly 3 times as many members as the USA has in Congress and the Senate. There was a proposal to reduce the number of MPs but it was soon buried as it would have been like turkeys voting for Christmas. Per capita, we already have the most expensive government to maintain in the whole world. In most countries the government exists to serve the people; in the UK, the people pay to support a ridiculously large, expensive government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legislatures_by_number_of_members

And May is only doing it because she wants 'her place in the history books'. May and "my deal" remind me of Gollom and "my precious".

You might also like A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr. But, I'm currently reading something a bit different to that: A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution by Orlando Figes. I never fully realized just how anarchic it was. All of the gory details are here.

I'm going to see them in Hyde Park, supporting The National and Florence + the Machine. I'm currently listening to Kacey Musgrave's Golden Hour. She is my favourite singer-songwriter atm - a modern equivalent of Joni Mitchell - and I've been to see her live a couple of times.

When Long has the ball, it usually ends up with the opposition as at the end of his runs, he loses control of it and either lets it run out of play or it goes to one of their players.

This just reflects that most European countries have predominantly white populations, whereas the UK, because of it's colonial past, has an ethnically more diverse population. I wonder if our European neighbours fear hordes of muslims and Afro-Caribbean people descending on them from the UK?

At this stage it's mostly just online threats and hate mail but some of the attempts to intimidate opponents are reminiscent of the 1934 German referendum and its aftermath. British politics seems to be heading in a very ugly direction. Perhaps we've grown too complacent after nearly 75 years of peace in Northwestern Europe.

At least that one was in the starting lineup for Norway; our one only came on as a sub and, of course, didn't score either. Whether Ross Wilson would have known which one was which is debatable. Generally speaking, a player who isn't considered good enough to be a regular starter for Norway isn't good enough for the Premier League, although, having seen him play, we all knew that anyway. But, apparently, young Ross didn't.

But Britain won control of the country during the Napoleonic Wars and the remaining Dutch settlers lost the Boer War a very long time ago so South Africa was very much part of the British Empire. The only people who speak Afrikaans are descendants of white settlers and it's possible some of them may have moved to the Netherlands in recent years but you wouldn't notice them as an ethnic minority on the streets. As I said, I was amazed how few black people you see in the Netherlands. I expected that it would have become much more ethnically diverse because of the EU but it really hasn't.

That would mean the people taking back control from Downing Street and that's never going to happen, as they wouldn't allow it to. If we leave the EU, there will be even fewer checks on their power. A handful of individuals, namely the PM and his/her cabinet, will be able to do whatever they like with the country and that is going to mean looking after themselves.

Although it doesn't seem to get mentioned much nowadays, immigration, especially of non-white ethnic groups, was the key issue behind the Brexit vote. Having just returned from the Netherlands, I was amazed how much the ethnic makeup of that country is determined by its colonial history rather than its EU membership. The population is very largely, white Dutch and the main minority groups you see are Indonesian and Surinamese. Black people are a rarity as the Netherlands never had African colonies. In the school groups I saw, there were far fewer black faces than you'd have seen in England before we joined the EU. Most were all white Dutch. It made me realize how much this applies to the UK too. We have a large muslim population because the British Empire included what is now Pakistan and a large black population because of our colonial history in the Caribbean and Africa. In reality, leaving the EU will probably have no significant effect on the ethnic makeup of this country, although we might lose some of the workers from Poland who do poorly paid jobs in farming and residential care homes. We'll probably have to attract their replacements from our former colonies.

Unfortunately, Brexit is no longer about what the British people want; it's all about Theresa May getting her place in the history books.

(Sorry, I seem to have quoted the wrong post earlier) I think you're right. Brexit will lead to the break up of the UK. An independent Scotland will return to the EU. Demands for Irish unification are going to increase too. In some ways the English nationalism which has driven Brexit is similar to the Serbian nationalism which led to the break up of Yugoslavia.

I think you're right. Brexit will lead to the break up of the UK. An independent Scotland will return to the EU. Demands for Irish unification are going to increase too. In some ways the English nationalism which has driven Brexit is similar to the Serbian nationalism which led to the break up of Yugoslavia.

Farage is trying to persuade Italy's new right-wing alliance to veto the British government's request. He reminds me more and more of Oswald Mosley, who was a friend of Mussolini.

That is the thinking behind having both Ings and Austin. If we added Carroll as well, we'd have 3/4 of the season covered. Long could run around for the remaining quarter, although we couldn't really expect any goals from him.

Good players end up either wanting to punch him in the face or just ignoring him. Hughes just doesn't have the type of personality to command respect from a team: so different to Hasenhüttl, who does.

It's the clubs that bought our best players who usually profited from them the most. At the time Mane was sold, it appeared we couldn't get rid of him fast enough. The SFC showroom was like a revolving door. Mane was here for less than 2 years. We could have kept him for another year and benefitted a lot more.

Why there is so much fear of another referendum. The ever-widening gap: https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/in-highsight-do-you-think-britain-was-right-or-wrong-to-vote-to-leave-the-eu/

You seriously believe that our board and owners didn't want to sell those players to Liverpool? The only reason the van Dijk sale was delayed was because Gao wouldn't part with his money to Kat if she sold any more players before he took over. Of course, Les Reed put a PR spin on it. That's what he was good at: hoodwinking the fans.

You wouldn't really expect any with old Les doing the negotiating for us. No wonder we've got no money left. Hopefully, we'll be a bit smarter in future.