Wes Tender

Yes Shami, it does make you a hypocrite. I'm amazed that she doesn't seem to know the definition of the word, but she is a shining example of one. She's in good company in the Labour Party when it comes to educating their children in the Private sector and then lecturing the populace about how unfair selective education is.

They've not only been holding us back, they've been holding themselves back too. https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-has-shrunk-percentage-world-economy/

I think that you've skewed those stats to suit your agenda

Shorluck, me old mucker, I'm sure that you will be happy to furnish me with the source of these statistics and on what basis of comparison they were made. What exactly were they comparing? Are we talking comparisons of all sources of income which constitute GDP, just the manufacturing base, or including the service industry sector? Regarding wage level comparisons, again what are we comparing in terms of occupations and are we talking gross salary or net? Pardon my scepticism, but the source of the statistics that Tim posted is very much in bed with the Remain camp and the EU and it is often the case that statistical information can easily be skewed to suit a particular position. Also, it is a well known fact that 75.3% of statistics are just made up.

http://visual.ons.gov.uk/uk-perspectives-2016-the-uk-in-an-european-context/ These statistics from the ONS suggest that in terms of GDP per capita, adjusted to remove differences in price levels in each country, we were ahead of France, Italy and Spain. Granted that the figures cover a longer period span and are up to 2014, but then any differences since then are short term and could easily go the other way short term too. If it is indeed the case that we are no richer than the EU-15 relatively than we were 15 years ago, the same can be said for the EU, which has gone backwards considerably in percentage terms of its position as a trading bloc in comparison with the rest of the World. These are good reasons for us to leave the EU which is fairly stagnant and to reap the rewards of casting our trade net far wider afield. So the UK's performance is skewed by London and the South East. So what? In most other countries the same applies. In Italy, there is a massive North/South divide. In France and Spain, most of their wealth and industry is concentrated around their capital cities or with their coastal ports. Despite the poorer regions falling behind because traditional heavy industry has died in those areas and it takes time to find replacement employment opportunities, employment levels ought to be considered a yardstick of a countries success and prosperity, which your article does not think worthy of mention. When I referred to not everything in the gardens of Spain, Italy and Greece being fine, then their youth unemployment rates are horrendous.

The pound is dropping and as you say, someday it will be the turn of the penny to drop also. We've obviously neglected them, because it is received wisdom that if you look after them, the pounds will look after themselves.

It wasn't that long ago that petrol was £1.40 a gallon, if that's you main worry. These years of uncertainty and instability you speak of; presumably that doesn't apply to several of the EU member states currently? Everything is rosy in Greece's, Spain's, Italy's and others' EU gardens?

The Labour Party under Corbyn is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

When Ford took British Governmental money to stay in Southampton months before they pulled their Transit operation out of the UK, didn't the Government demand that the money be returned? Weren't there legally binding conditions attached to the funding? It seems odd that they could get away with it. Regarding the Fishing industry, I did actually find that link to the Greenpeace article this morning when I did a little further research into the big players in the UK fishing industry and found it fascinating. The way that they operate is scandalous, especially leasing out some of their quota to the smaller players and hoarding stocks to inflate the price. As the fishing industry has had a considerably raised profile because of the Referendum debate, it ought to be subjected to closer review and hopefully the industry should be reformed to limit the power of the big players in order to help the smaller operators to survive. Many coastal communities rely on fishing as their main source of income, often not having much in the way of alternatives to fall back on. Is it too revolutionary a concept to require that all fish caught as part of British quotas should have to be landed at a British Port?

Of course they are a Dutch company, I could tell that just from the name. Here's some more about them. http://britishseafishing.co.uk/cornelis-vrolijk/ Perhaps when you've read it, you'll justify how it is fair that a Dutch company has so much of our fisheries quota and are then allowed to land that catch in Holland, presumably to then sell a lot of it back to us. In the meantime, this little Englander feels a great deal of sympathy for the fishing communities all around our coastline that have been devastated by the EU's CFP. Perhaps you ought to visit these communities and explain to them that they really ought to live in the real world and accept that we now live in a globalised World and that they shouldn't therefore be resentful of having their livelihoods taken away by fishermen from other countries, as that is xenophobic. No doubt our forum fisheries expert will soon explain how that website is talking bunkum and that it is all lies, or justifiable in some way.

Timmy, you never disappoint in your responses. As usual, your MO is to sneer at the source of the article rather than to argue the toss over what it says. So you are dismissive of a letter by an individual, but Verbal thinks that his one is worthy of consideration. Will you dismiss it because it is the opinion of an individual? Likewise of course, your posts are just that too, your opinion. With you, it isn't what is said that is important, it is who says it. Therefore John Redwood's opinions can be dismissed with a shrug, all of them. You don't debate them, just rubbish them out of hand. There were several articles discussing the adverse affect on our Steel Industry because the EU Investment Bank had made cheap interest loans to the Chinese Steel industry and indeed many others itemising cases where the European Investment Bank had made loans to companies in other countries, both inside and outside the EU, the outcome being that British companies closed or suffered badly from the consequences. The Ford Transit manufacturing in Southampton was of course something affecting jobs in Southampton directly and the York newspaper article was merely a random example of another City where several local industries or companies were closed because of the EU. It doesn't take much digging to find dozens of other anecdotal examples like those. But of course you must accept yourself that some industries and companies have been adversely affected by EU policy, otherwise that would mean that you are blinkered and lacking objectivity. I realise that the EU Common Fisheries Policy is an area where you have some expertise because of your job, whatever that was. However, that does not mean that your opinions (for that is what they surely are) cannot be challenged. There are two sides to every argument, I presume the pertinent ones on the anti side being these:- http://www.debatingeurope.eu/focus/arguments-for-and-against-the-common-fisheries-policy/#.V_YaUezdDiw Of course, I don't know enough about the ins and outs of it to be sure of my facts, but just looking at the points you make, I see no logical reason whatsoever why the catch from outside the 12 mile limit should not have been better than that from the inshore waters. It seems sensible to assume that despite the increased number of fishing boats which will be in the waters further offshore, the quantity of fish would be greatly increased in open waters, wouldn't it? The proportion of EU catch landed by Britain's fleet has been increasing for the past 15 years? No doubt you can back that up, but how do the figures stack up over a period of forty years or so, when the CFP was begun? And why is it that just three companies have control of 61% of the England and Wales fishing quota, nearly a quarter of which belongs to that most British sounding of companies, Cornelis Vroljk?

I see that you're still digging, to no avail. You come up with some wonderful bits of nonsense, like the sentence above. Heath didn't take us into "Europe", he took us into the Common Market. Over time after the initial Wilson referendum, it changed treaty by treaty from the entity we joined into something entirely different, the EU, without once seeking the further consent of the electorate. This is the simple reason that there was a growing resentment of the EU and against the political classes in the UK.

Happy to fill these gaps in your knowledge, Timmy. https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/04/10/eu-subsidises-the-chinese-steel-which-is-decimating-british-industry/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/21/the-eu-has-destroyed-some-of-our-most-prosperous-industries---an/ http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2016/06/16/how-joining-the-eu-led-to-a-big-decline-in-uk-industry/ http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/readersletters/14541886.York_s_manufacturing_has_been_decimated_in_the_European_Union__letter_/ Of course, there are many more, including the one right on our doorstep, Ford moving its Transit production to Turkey with the aid of a European Investment Bank low interest loan for instance

I see that you had missed the snide arrogance from your original post, so had to edit it to include it. When it comes to being clueless, we will have to see whether we arrange the Norway or Switzerland option for continued trade with the EU that you insisted we had no alternative to. It begins to look very unlikely that we will go down that route, so egg could yet be all over your smug face if we don't. You conclude that a trade deal with China should not be sought because they export far more to us than we do to them. You mean in the same way the EU export far more to us than we do to them? The EU has also decimated many of our industries, but you probably hadn't noticed. Are these also the reasons why the EU has not arranged deals with those economic power houses, because one member state or another vetoed the deal for fear of the impact on their industries? I very much doubt that we will have zero trading partners on day one. We will have put in place several trade deals before we finally leave the EU and these will become effective from day one.

Thanks for posting up that map with the list of countries currently with trade agreements with the EU, those with pending agreements and those with which it is intending opening agreements with. It illustrates really clearly what a failure the EU has been when after so many years it hasn't concluded deals with the biggest movers and shakers in World trade. Go and masturbate over its arrangement with St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Haiti, etc. These are the real power houses of the developing industrial World. Why hasn't it arranged trade deals with the USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Japan, India yet? At the snail's pace that the EU proceeds when negotiating these trade deals and the difficulty it has in getting 27 member states to agree to them, I can see how it will be eminently possible for us to achieve deals with several of those countries ahead of the EU. David Davis prioritises the order as being US, China, Canada and Hong Kong, followed by Australia, India, and South Korea. Sneer all you like, but let's wait and see whether we are more successful at getting some of those deals over the line more quickly than the EU. Anybody with any intelligence would not take the position that if it takes the EU 8 years to get close to signing a deal as it has with Canada, that it would therefore take a single independent country longer, especially when we have historical and cultural ties to some of those countries.

Er... the Bilateral Trade deals are there to do away with tariffs, you know. Who has hijacked our country? We still have a Conservative Government don't we? You come across as being rather hysterical, so I'm afraid that nobody is going to take you very seriously until you calm down and discuss it a bit more rationally.

Is English is your second language? If so, I apologise for finding it hard to follow you and acknowledge that you probably speak better English than I speak your mother tongue, (whatever that is).

You have heard of bilateral trade deals, haven't you? I also would have thought that you knew we were not able to enter into those whilst we were in the EU. But maybe I credited you with more knowledge than you possess.

Irony goes right over your head, doesn't it? Once again, the arrogance of the Remainians is breathtaking. They claim to be the only ones who care for the future prosperity of their children and grandchildren. It doesn't penetrate their consciousness that those who voted to Leave the EU could possibly be acting in the best interests of future generations because they see us prospering more from trade with the whole World rather than with the sclerotic declining EU. And how is the younger generation more global when they prefer to trade with just the far more parochial EU, rather than casting their nets outwards to the whole world?

I advised you three hours ago to stop digging, but I see on my return that you've apparently been trying to dig your way to New Zealand, as you can't afford the air fare because of the weaker £. No wonder you feel so aggrieved and would have preferred our continued membership of the EU in order that your holiday would be more affordable. A pity that you didn't have the foresight to change your holiday spending money into US Dollars pre-referendum, but I suspect that you never thought that it possible that your lot would lose against the thicko, racist, little-Englanders. Most of the City fat cats have had to eat large slices of humble pie, as it has come to pass that most of them when they prophesied that we would face financial meltdown immediately following a vote to Leave the EU didn't know what they were talking about. But let's not worry about the City fat cats; I'm sure that the more pragmatic ones will have reaped the rewards of the upturn in shares post-Brexit. They'll have even more money with which to fund the Tory Party, but I wonder what they will make of May's pledge for the Party to represent more closely the working man in the street, to occupy the centre ground of British Politics? I doubt whether she is seen as being one of their own.

The absolute shame of you having to quote an old article from the Daily Mail! I'd stop digging if I were you.

You're looking more ridiculous and desperate by the minute. Now you'll have us believe that just because Maggie Thatcher's former main script writer expressed an opinion on what her position would have been in a campaign only began long after she died, (before events like the mass uncontrolled immigration and the rise of UKIP), that he would know which side she would have supported. Did her script writer consult her via a Ouija board? When you try to assert that the percentage of the electorate who believed the Leave campaign's battle bus slogan could have been sufficient to have tipped the vote in Leave's favour, how many percentage points would you reckon were gained by the Remain campaign propaganda whereby the Prime Minister spent £9 million of taxpayers money on a leaflet drop to every voter, expressing the opinion that they ought to vote to remain in the EU?

You asked aintforever to name one lie in the Remain campaign and said he would not be able to. Now that the biggest Remain lie of all is laid at Osborne's door, you rather feebly attempt to dissemble yourself away from being shown up, by fudging the issue. I think that you suffer from delusion if you think that you speak for most people in believing that in reality he was really a closet Leaver. I see you are also backtracking over the race hate issue too. It wasn't the Leave campaign that aligned itself to right wing hate groups, it was those groups that aligned themselves with the Leave campaign, much as a shambolic Labour Party has attracted the extreme left hate groups. I'm sure also that it satisfies you to label UKIP amongst them, so that you can accuse a substantial proportion of the electorate of being racist. Ironic of you to talk of clowns when it is opinions like the ones you've just expressed that are so risible. The majority of those who voted are quite content with the outcome and the way that events are unfolding and I expect that nothing gets up their noses more than Remainians like you arrogantly accusing them of not being serious about their stance, or that they must be racist or a bit thick. It is attitudes like this that pushed their campaign over the line to victory.

It's just raking over old coals, but since you ask, I'd put up former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne's"every family will be worse off by £4300 per annum" right up there. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36073201 Now, I realise that you won't like to acknowledge that the Remain wasn't as lily white as you would have liked, but which was the worse lie? The Leave campaign saying that the NHS would benefit from Brexit, or Remain saying that every family would suffer financially? And who were these right-wing hate groups you speak of? Anyway, the Referendum debate is old hat now, so move on, please.

It's all relative. What they mean, is that by losing star players with the regularity that we have, they anticipated a drop in our league position of several paces, a fall into the bottom half of the table. That might still happen of course, with injuries or suspension to key players, but on the face of it although it is early days, we are confounding some who thought that after a slow start, this might be the season where the strategy fell apart. Once again, it is arguable that Pelle, Mane and Wanyama are not being missed because Romeu and Hojbjerg deputise well in midfield, Austin, Long and maybe Rodriguez could produce the goals that Pelle did and Boufal could prove to be a match for Mane. Who knows what Redmond adds and where, but he certainly adds additional options. This team is right there at the moment where they were under Koeman last year with the same results and points, not quite as potent in attack, but compensated for by being meaner in defence.