Whitey Grandad

I have a spare if you're interested. What part of the world are you in?

More match day visitors will raise more revenue but only if this is through off-field spending. Many years ago when we were considering our new stadium options I had several discussions with EBC about the business planning. Man Utd could have sold out their ground several times over but made a conscious decision to have a high turnover of occasional visitors because they would visit the club shop and buy all the Ryan Giggs bedspreads and other branded junk whereas the regulars might only buy one a year. As an example they sold more Schmeichel replica shirts than any other club sold in total. Newcastle extended their brand through the the city with shops and mannequins of Les Ferdinand and others at the airport. It's all one big marketing ploy and the revenue doesn't just come through bums on seats. Expanding our stadium would be a pure business choice and I doubt that the motive would be to reduce prices. It's entirely up to the owners.

Oi! I used to live next to the River Lea. It was all that kept us apart from Essex.

It was not universal. It is now down to the individual to register and cannot be done by a hall of residence so I don't know which institution you are referring to. If you are a student then registration can be achieved but I do wonder whether the turn out amongst the older generation would have been as high if everybody had to go out of their way every time they wanted to vote. Whatever you may think it cannot be good for democratic engagement if so many are disenfranchised, even if they would vote Labour. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/31/electoral-register-loses-estimated-800000-people-since-changes-to-system http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/conservative-changes-to-voter-registration-leave-800000-off-election-rolls-a6845796.html "As you will know, IER prevents universities from block registering all their students in halls of residence, but measures should be taken to ensure that it is as easy as possible for individual students to register.”

They had to be registered first and there were a number of reasons why many couldn't. 3.5 million under 35s were not registered for various reasons. One was the timing of the vote where students when formerly would have been registered by their educational institutions were no longer allowed to do so. It's easy for a retired pensioner who's been on the electoral register for generations and who has had all day to get to their polling station to complain about youngsters who have jobs and lives to lead and who could be all over the place but whatever the reasons it cannot be good for democracy if people have hurdles to jump before they can vote. This from before the vote: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/21/young-voters-might-hold-key-to-brexit-but-will-they-use-it.html

Well put, Verbal, and apologies to everybody for quoting the lot. A thought had occurred to me that maybe the grandees arranged for May to maintain a somewhat unenthusiastic stance during the campaign so that she would be well placed to act as a long-stop in case the vote went the wrong way. Or maybe I'm just overthinking things.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all, you are deliberately attributing meanings that aren't there. I presume that when you say 'you' you are referring to Remainers in general and not me in particular? I'm struggling to understand the meaning behind your last sentence, there's no logic in it. What exactly does 'suck it up' mean?

And mine. That's another season that you'll have to put up with me

And being outside the EU would have prevented it? (Or are you saying that it's alright for Brexiteers to quote falsehoods?)

It was a LOAN. Get your facts right. Yet more Brexit lies.

And more from Sathnam Sanghera in The Times this morning: 'Andrea Leadsom exaggerating her achievements is just part of City life' I laughed when Michael Deacon, of The Daily Telegraph, tweeted that he had “a soft spot for Andrea Leadsom” because he had been “deeply moved by her speech about winning the Wimbledon Ladies’ Singles in 1975”. My colleague Matt Chorley tweeted that “Leadsom will be unfazed by today’s onslaught . . . She faced far worse at the Battle of El Alamein”, while others elsewhere claimed that Mrs Leadsom had fielded for the England cricket team and had played the saxophone solo on Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street. But, if I’m honest, I don’t think the energy minister deserves all the opprobrium coming her way. Why? Because biographical self-aggrandisement is just part of City life.

And our democracy is not based on referendums. Parliament is sovereign.

'Man up'? What the hell do you mean by that? If you don't think this whole affair is an unholy mess then perhaps you should 'grow up'. Or 'wise up'. Or 'wake up and smell the coffee'. Or 'get real'. You get my drift.

It could never be as bad as the unholy mess that we have now and will have for a lot more than five years.

They should choose the best man for the job, whoever she is.

Just a guess? Surely you should be more certain than that before taking such an irresponsible gamble.

If it's Leadsom then we really will be deep in the doggy-dos.

But expect to be reminded at every opportunity and on every occasion that we would be better off inside the EU. Do not underestimate the anger, real anger that is out there.

If he was wrong about that what else was he wrong about? I am certainly not wrong about this being unfinished business.

What do those countries have to do with Britain?

You do have it wrong. Nobody won or lost, everybody lost. Real democracy would give a result that almost everybody could live with even if they didn't like the result of the vote, because they knew there would be another opportunity to have a say some time within the next few years. This vote was unique in that those who voted to leave were voting for a negative. Normally in a public vote you would be asked what you want and not what you don't want. Now we know that a (modest) majority said that they didn't want the EU but nobody has said what they do want and I suspect that those who voted to leave did so for a wide variety of reasons, too much immigration, vague notions of sovereignty, don't like being poor and so on. This total lack of any idea as to what kind of future we might have outside the EU is eveidenced by the headlong desertions of those who led the campaign to Leave. Where do you get the idea that the UK will 'will go it's own way and thrive'? I'm willing to bet that you won't be doing any of the immense work and investment that this would need without any guarantee of success.

Those seagulls are impeccable judges of character.

Even if the cost of leaving is so prohibitively high that it will take decades to recover, if we ever do?

I said nothing of the sort, don't try and twist my words. Where did I say that they shouldn't have a say in anything? We should all be grateful for the disproportionate contribution to the costs of society that is made by the 'high earners'.