Wes Tender

Timmy, I lived through those times and indeed the decade before, so I don't need to be patronised by you about the history of the period or entertained by your little anecdote about your mates in car production. I owned British cars during that time, so I did know how bad they were and how poor management and Red Robbo and his ilk played their parts in ruining our car industry. Regarding the Healey era, I don't need BBC links to remind me of it. When I was asked by business clients what the price increase was since their order a year ago and I told them 25%, they just shrugged their shoulders and reordered. Thanks to Healey and Labour, it was a good time to have a large mortgage, but not to be a pensioner living on their savings. But it was really desperately idiotic of you to try and imply that by leaving the EU we risk going back to those times, so I can understand why you still attempt to deflect attention from it by your insults.

Ah! You never disappoint. Get shown up and then resort to insults to deflect the attention away from yourself. Call somebody ignorant to imply that you are intelligent, a favourite tactic of the Remainians. Who is the ignorant one, making a bonkers assertion like this:-

Quel surprise! We never saw that coming, did we? No siree, no precedent at all of Ford planning to move production elsewhere having received cheap money loans from the EIB or to take advantage of a much cheaper labour force in the poorer countries of the World. Let's blame Brexit, shall we?

Only you could make the giant leap from discussing bureaucratic measures that hamper SME businesses today and equate it to the sort of dire scenario epitomising the industrial malaise that blighted us in the 1960s and 70s. It obviously had nothing to do with the post war debt which hampered government investment, inefficient bloated nationalised industries, the decline in heavy manufacturing industry due to lower labour costs in the developing World, restrictive trade union practices and wildcat strikes, etc. Had we had all that red tape back then, imagine how much further ahead we would have been now. A bit ironic though that it is actually several current member states of the EU's Eurozone who are in that sort of mess now, isn't it?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-welcomes-business-led-plan-to-cut-eu-red-tape Lots of things on the list featured here seem pretty pointless, at least for certain businesses below a certain size. I wonder how many of these proposals had been acted on since 2013 to reform EU bureaucracy hampering SME businesses? It would not surprise me if nothing had been implemented. Once we are out, we would be free to implement those cuts in bureaucracy ourselves.

Touche

Your point is exactly right. Our successive Governments might have agreed to the morphing of what was once only the Common Market into what subsequently became the EU, but the electorate were denied any say at all in the successive Treaties which brought about that change. Finally because of the pressure exerted by UKIP and the increasing Euro-scepticism within the Conservative Party, we were afforded a referendum. It was against the background that the whole European project had changed so substantially over the years of our membership of it, that led most to conclude that there would be no status quo. Anybody with any sense, realised that a vote to remain in would be taken by the Eurocrats as a green light to continue their relentless march towards a United States of Europe. For all those who in their naivety believe that we should have remained inside and attempted to bring about reform from within, that either suggests that we as a nation were content with the way that the project was going, or it illustrates how ineffective we were at reigning it back. The larger the organisation became, the more our influence to change it declined. I would suggest that the greatest impetus towards change and reform of the EU has actually been produced by our leaving of it. We have set a precedent and they will worry that unless the issues that prompted us to leave are addressed, then others might follow us out.

Presumably by self-interest, you do mean the self-interest of the United Kingdom, rather than the self-interest of the individuals who voted for Brexit? What was in it for the self-interest of the individuals who wished to get us out of the EU particularly? They were told by our Chancellor that they would be £4300 annually per family worse off if they dared to vote us out, so not much pandering to their self interests there. And do you really believe that post-Brexit we will not embrace co-operation and collaboration with the EU and indeed with the much wider international sphere, the whole of the World? We will continue trading with the regressive, multi-layered, disjointed, sclerotic and over-bureaucratic EU, will we not?

That was the single reason, was it? As you say, the response was very simple.

Do try and concentrate; it really is quite simple. I voted to leave the EU. A majority of the electorate who voted in the referendum voted to leave the EU. From that perspective, which is the one of most importance to those who voted to leave, they can be satisfied that that will happen. May has stated that Brexit means Brexit, there will be no second referendum, there will be no subterfuge whereby we stay in via the back door. We will not accept free movement of peoples as a condition of future trade with the EU. These are the essential points of the situation which satisfy those who voted to leave. We will leave the EU. End of. What you and others are arguing about are the repercussions that will ensue in the various areas that will be affected by our leaving. As those will be subject to negotiations between the UK and the EU (and the rest of the World), it is obvious to pretty well everybody that there was uncertainty during the referendum campaign as to the outcome of those negotiations, so it is perfectly reasonable to counsel patience as events unfold, rather than jump to stupid conclusions about what might happen before it does, as you are doing. Different people voted either way for different reasons that they prioritised in order of importance to them. I reiterate my charge that it is arrogant for you to dismiss those personal reasons that motivated their decisions as divisive or unnecessary.

Look, you might label it a divisive and unnecessary process, but a majority of the electorate who voted in the referendum to leave the EU, would with good reason accuse you of expressing the typical arrogance of the Remain camp by attempting to belittle their decision in this way. What will we have achieved at the end of the Brexit process? You will just have to be patient and wait and see. You're quite a bit like those posters on the football side of the forum who are forecasting doom and gloom following the results of just three matches in the new season. Had you bothered to look past the headline that May doesn't want a points based system, her criticism is based on her fears that anybody who tots up the appropriate points total could come here with or without a job being available for them. She wants greater control than that. She emphasises that Brexit will allow us to control immigration numbers from the EU, that there is no question of us signing an agreement with the EU that allows for immigration to be imposed on us by them. Also, she has castigated the Indian PM for not assisting adequately the repatriation of illegal Indian immigrants. Sorry, but personally I don't see much to be that concerned about yet.

Brexit just meant simply a British exit from the EU. I don't recall there being anything on any ballot papers defining the minutiae of the details of what the subsequent proposals would be regarding trade, immigration, sovereignty etc., any more than there was anything concrete proposed regarding our future relationship with the EU had we voted to Remain.

Nice bit of editing in an attempt to wriggle off the hook. Good thing that I quoted your original post, eh?

Considering how bright you believe yourself to be, you seem to be having some difficulty in distinguishing between the part of my post that commented on the events of the Cabinet meeting at Chequers, (reported in the Guardian and other media sources), and the remark I made about the EU gravy train bureaucrats having to tighten their belts when we leave and take our annual membership contribution back. I'll give you a clue; the personal tongue in cheek comment was the bit that began " I suspect."

I read about it in the Guardian actually, the purveyor of news to your own peculiar sub-species, homo-sapiens sinistro snidus. I deliberately rattled your cage and expected the typical knee-jerk reaction from you, and you didn't disappoint. You were one of those who most stridently insisted that there really was no alternative for us but remain inside the single market and continue paying through the nose and accept free movement of peoples for the privilege, so it can't be pleasant to be facing the possibility that you might well be proven wrong, and that we will not after all have to end up with a Norway or Switzerland type deal.

Also good news from the Cabinet meeting at Chequers, that we will not be accepting any tailor made Norway or Switzerland style off the shelf arrangement with the EU which would tie us into the free movement of people and the continuance of some financial contribution into their coffers. This now allows the EU plenty of time before the triggering of article 50 in the New Year to concentrate their minds towards consideration of how much they value their trade with us and what measures they will take to maintain it, and how they will go about replacing the sizeable membership fee that they will no longer be receiving from us. I suspect that the Euro pen-pushers will be reduced to fish and chip dinners and a beer, instead of their customary Lobster Thermidor washed down with a bottle of Krug.

I'm with you. It's been a pretty decent window for us, and Fonte and Rodriguez stay with us, despite the media frenzy insisting that they would not.

My God, what a load of wet fannies we have on here! OK, expectations were that we should have beaten both Watford and Sunderland at home, but we are a team with a couple of player changes and injuries playing for a new manager, whose tactical style needs to be accommodated by the players, and to a certain extent the manager is also learning the style that suits the players too. On the other hand too, we have faced two teams expected to be towards the bottom of the division at the close of the season, so although our expectations of a win are higher, then also both teams will have come here attempting not to lose. Both teams parked the bus, wasted time, fell down at the slightest touch, did everything to break us out of our stride. We dominated the midfield for the first twenty minutes and then either they upped their game, or we took our foot off the pedal and the second quarter was poor and boring. It needed a goal from us to have them chase the goal and the second penalty awarded against us in three games was the worst thing that could have happened on the face of it. However, it brought about a good response and a sense of urgency and it is to be applauded that we had the desire, the resolve, to press for the equaliser and then having got it, to go for the win. Targett did very well at left back, but perhaps Bertrand would have added even more. Who knows what Mane and Pelle could have given us, but Long coming on earlier could have provided more of a threat. Ultimately the substitutions made by Puel were positive and purposeful and with better finishing, or with a less effective performance from their goalkeeper the three points would have been ours and there would have been quite a different tone on here. But surely a mention must be made of the referee, Lee Mason. Is there a worse referee in any top division in World football? I doubt it. Every time he referees us, the chants go around the stadium, "you don't know what you're doing". Today there was a loud rendering of "one nil to the referee". Why don't the club do an Everton and put a dossier of his performances involving us in front of the authorities demanding that he be barred from refereeing our matches?

So complicated that it took months for some of them, many only being able to manage it an hour or so before the deadline expired.

Calm down, dear and grow up. Citing the Jo Cox murder is indeed beyond contempt when there were attempts to connect it to the Brexit campaign. Was it a factor in helping the Remain campaign? Of course it was. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/16/jo-coxs-tragic-death-may-halt-pro-brexit-momentum-analysts-say.html I am amused that you try to defend the inability of people to register for a vote within a long timespan mostly through sheer laziness as somehow equating to denying people their democratic rights. I am sure that you would love there to be another referendum vote, as would the EU now that we have voted to leave, but it isn't going to happen, so accept it and move on.

Of course it would probably have been a bigger majority had the Government not spent £9 million of taxpayers' money posting Remain propaganda to every household, or not allowed an extra 48 hours for people to register to vote, because the poor darlings couldn't be bothered to register until an hour before the deadline and crashed the site. The unfortunate murder of Jo Cox a few days before polling day didn't help either. What could we be talking of here altogether? Another 3 or 4% on to the leave vote? And yes, I'll take the one and a quarter million majority figure rather than your "only one city", citing second largest city Birmingham, rather than comparing it to the combined populations of several other notable but smaller cities. If unemployment rose by one and a quarter million as a result of Brexit, would you call that a significant increase, or dismiss it glibly as merely the same number living in one city like Birmingham? But as others say, it is all a bit futile arguing about it now that it is a done deal.

Time that you and Whitey revisited this piece posted by Trader before the referendum, if you bothered to watch it in the first place, that is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9Ce8mx2nCQ Once you have watched it, I would welcome your comments refuting anything that you feel is factually wrong. I admire the sheer brazen front where you dismiss the clear majority for Brexit in the largest ever public vote in British history as being marginally in favour of leaving. It was a majority of over one and a quarter million. I'm sure that you would have defended it stoutly if it was the other way about. Our Prime Minister says that Brexit means Brexit, so I'm more inclined to believe her. Sorry.

Silly us, not realising that the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon were all just empty rhetoric, just a game and we should not have taken the rules literally.

I'm glad that you think that the EU will take steps to reform itself, but I think that you are deluding yourself. The evidence of its past history shows that the path that it has chosen towards becoming a Federal United States of Europe means that it will stubbornly resist the reforms that are required by the increasingly disillusioned influential section of the European electorate highlighted by this article. This became clear enough when the British Prime Minister threatened that he would campaign for the UK to leave the EU if the reforms we demanded were not met and they hardly budged at all. There are the politicians of the member states and then there are the Commissioners and it is they who instead of adopting the position that perhaps they ought to address the issues that caused us to leave, take the stance that we should be made an example of to discourage others from leaving. Their response to concerns that the EU is lurching towards becoming a super state, is to press for further progress along that route. The politicians can be voted out by the electorate, but the Commissioners cannot. Therein lies the crux of the problem

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/23/euroscepticism-middle-aged-spread-uk-eu-referendum-europe Indications pointing towards the subsequent decline of the EU.