Wes Tender

Even more wriggling. Bless.

You continue to draw your own conclusions if you wish as to what I would be content with as the price of our Brexit, but I am quite confident that we will end up in a few years reflecting that the decision was justified because our future prosperity and the subsequent decline of the EU will make us grateful that we left. You and the remain lot keep rabbiting on and on about trade, whereas that is not all it is about. Of course it is important, but we will do just fine and enjoy the other benefits even more.

Look, please read what I said, that I am content to wait and see what transpires regarding the post-Brexit arrangements with the EU once we have activated Article 50. I am not going to be drawn into speculation about which direction we will take. If you lot are happy to produce your own personal fantasies of which route we will take and what the consequences would be based on comparisons made with very diverse Countries to us, then fill your boots. Several times I have pointed out that there are numerous countries who trade with the EU without them having to accept the free movement of peoples, but somehow this doesn't register with you lot. Regarding your reference to the German Car manufacturers and the Swiss, you are wriggling like mad to get out of being ridiculed for it by now claiming that you were not serious about it.

Four posts full of waffle from the resident remain camp's chief cheer-leaders who have totally missed the point and use it as a springboard for launching their little attacks in different directions. All four of you, reread the bit in Moonraker's post that I highlighted and try and concentrate on that part only. That is the part that I responded to, the really weak argument made by Moonraker about the Swiss not having much clout compared to us when it comes to gaining leverage on the strongest member state of the EU, Germany, via their biggest industrialists. As for all of the rest of the waffle, I am quite content to wait and see what transpires over the next few months, rather than clutching at straws like you lot do every day. For Verbal D's benefit, I have a current Conservative membership card. Is your Labour membership still current, or did you tear it up in disgust when they lurched leftwards by appointing Jeremy despite your assurances that it would never happen.

What a pathetic argument. Switzerland registered around 323,000 new cars last year, of which around 145,000 were German made, aided by a strong franc against the euro. http://www.best-selling-cars.com/switzerland/2015-full-year-switzerland-best-selling-car-brands/ In the UK on the other hand, half of the U.K.'s 2.6 million annual new-car sales are built by German-owned companies and Germany exports about 810,000 passenger cars a year to Britain. I think that it is fair to argue that when it comes to negotiating terms with the EU, we have rather more clout than Switzerland does.

You really are such a bore, Verbal diarrhoea. I suppose that you are still a bit sore since being shown up as spectacularly wrong about Corbyn's chances of being elected leader of the Labour Party a year ago. Show me where I thought that "Take back control" was a ballot-paper question. You can't. You are just making things up as usual. "Take back control" might have been just a slogan, but it must have been a really effective one, or you wouldn't be b*tching about it. As a Conservative, I'm not much concerned with how things are progressing in the the mere two months since we voted to leave the EU. How is your party faring?

Cordial greetings to you, Shorlick.

As stated, you are as likely to dismiss pro-Brexit arguments as I am to dismiss pro-Remain ones. However, I did read all the arguments either way and drew my own conclusions which have also been coloured by the historical way that the EU has evolved from the Common Market. Move on past the pre-referendum debate. Please. I am happy for you that you have your little anecdote from your French associate. I also have business customers who are very happy that we have voted to leave the EU and they eagerly anticipate a brighter future freed from the constraints that it placed on the businesses. Your assertion that EU bureaucrats such as the Commissioners are the same as ours in the corridors of Whitehall has caused me some mirth. As I said, the vast majority of the electorate were angry at the power that the unelected and unaccountable likes of Junker wielded, but the number of faceless Civil Servants employed to action our Brexit won't register with most of them. I have stated several times what my reasons for voting to leave were, and our post Brexit trade with the EU was just one of them. However, if it is unacceptable for us to remain a member of the single market because as a condition we would have to accept free movement of people, then there is little reason why we couldn't continue trading with it from outside like most other countries. Like me, I'm content to believe that most of the Brexit voters weighed up the other factors that they considered to be beneficial following our leaving and balanced them against the potential parameters of our trading situation post Brexit. Most I suspect were content that those other factors weighed heavily enough in their minds to justify the possible decline in trade, but even that could be mitigated by two arguments. One was that it was not in the interests of the most influential large manufacturers of the major player countries in the EU to make it expensive or difficult to buy their products. The other was that in any event there was a massive potential to increase our trade with the emerging most successful developing economies in the World to supplement or replace the recent decline in our trade with the EU. I'm pretty sure that I've expressed those views before, but maybe they didn't register with you. I don't recall your vision for our future had we voted to remain in the EU. Are you one of those who thought that it would just be a continuation of the status quo? Despite the ratcheted advance of ever deeper integration into a Federal Europe, were you happy to get in even deeper, or did you think enough was enough? Were you happy to go on expanding the number of member states and the resultant increase of immigration that would entail? Were you hopeful that despite being only one member among 28, that we would be able to have enough influence to bring about reforms? Actually, what you wished for had we remained in is a bit pointless now.

So Leicester spent the most of all the clubs last season then?

Can't it? I only surmise that if it is accepted that there is any sort of correlation between how a player behaves in his private life and personal relationships with those around him, and how he would conduct himself as a player or as an integral part of a team, then their celebrity status generally makes it easy to collect this sort of information. Even when the player is relatively unknown at a national level, they are often still worthy of featuring at a more local media level if they are guilty of bad behaviour. If some of our players, even as lowly as academy level got into drunken brawls, stole from handbags, even were prosecuted for speeding, then the Echo would cover it. It would not have been difficult to conclude via the media that Osvaldo's character was not conducive to him being a reliable, stable, trustworthy, loyal and affable member of our team. I agree with you that the manager can circumvent this negative data if he can demonstrate that he has previously been able to control the player's temperament, but Poch ran out of luck with Osvaldo.

It was a ridiculous thing for solentstars to say, that there were no winners, only losers, and typical of his usual grammatically indecipherable bluster. Our own tourism industry has received quite a boost from the weaker pound, so there are some winners to begin with, but even in places like Spain and the Balearics where the British are major customers, significantly reduced numbers of British tourists would soon work through to result in downward adjustments to the prices of accommodation, restaurants, attractions and excursions.

An excellent post. Sums up very nicely how I feel too.

*yawn* So your arguments are partly on articles from the LSE one and half years ago, when there was an impetus to scare us out of leaving by citing doom and gloom scenarios. The article is full of could be, might be, worst case/best case what ifs, and in any event some of the factors considered in the article had already changed in 2015/16. I could equally produce articles for the positive benefits and you would dismiss them in the same way because of their sources. We have had this debate before and during the referendum, so we move on to the ongoing situation now that we have voted to leave. Although it has still only been just under two months since the referendum, there have been very encouraging reactions from numerous countries around the World expressing their desire to enter trade deals with us now that we are not part of the EU and can negotiate unhampered by them, and you still have zero evidence of what trade deals we will subsequently forge with the EU. And then it seems that we have a lovely contradiction from the two Times articles you quoted. I don't have access to the full articles, but from what I can gather, on the one hand there is not the infrastructure of expertise in the new Government Departments and on the other hand, they are employing too many bureaucrats to deal with it. Which one to believe? One article suggests that the electorate will be furious that we replace one load of bureaucrats with another, the author appearing incapable of differentiating between the two types of bureaucrat and that it was the unaccountable power that was wielded by the EU lot which was resented. They really don't have much of a clue when it comes to reading voters' minds when it comes down to issues like this, which will hardly register with most of them at all.

You really have no idea who my celebrity heroes are, neither do you have any grounds for assuming that they would remain my heroes if they indulged in any dodgy activities like tax avoidance. And there is no reason either why I would wish them to involve themselves as political pawns for whatever party.

The bit you highlighted clearly states that we have dismantled our economic and trade position with the World and now you are backtracking to make it only the EU. You're quite right, we will not continue as a member of the single market if that means we have to accept the free movement of peoples as a condition. However, that does not mean that we cannot trade with the single market as most of the rest of the World do, without them having to accept the free movement of peoples. In the same way that you make the point that the EU are our biggest customers, likewise we are the biggest customers of the major players there too, so there is mutual interest in doing a deal that suits both parties. Of course, there are several paths that we can go down and it is rather disingenuous of you to claim that the politicians supporting Brexit, or indeed those supporting Remain, have no inkling of the alternative options available to us. There was plenty of material out there during the Referendum debate discussing the various alternatives, yet you somehow believe that those who need to decide our future strategy either don't realise what they are, or can't decide what will be best for us. If you truly think that, then I question your judgement. I am confident that when Article 50 is actioned, there will a clear path decided on our objectives and the right people in place to negotiate them.

I am also a realist of a similar age to you I would imagine, so I also have the benefit of experience. However, it appears that your memory of historical events has become blurred to the extent that you credit the change in our fortunes as a nation to our membership of what became the EU, instead of recognizing that much of it was due to the political changes brought about by our own government policies, particularly those under Thatcher and subsequently under Blair/Thatcher Lite. It is debatable as to whether you are a pessimist or a realist, when you base your position as a realist on the premise that we have somehow dismantled our economic and trade position with the World, when we have now freed ourselves to arrange our own trade deals with the most successful growing trade countries of the World, rather than as just one cog among 27 other countries. Also, one has to admire your pessimism/realism when you are able to base your position without any realistic foundation for predicting what the outcome will be regarding both our future trading position with the EU and indeed the rest of the World. A pessimist would take your Corporal Fraser stance, whereas a realist would adopt a wait and see stance.

It seems that I have offended a member of her fan club. Of course she can voice her views and thus be open to criticism of them, in the same way that she is fair game for criticism for her behaviour because as a minor celebrity she is in the public limelight. LD is right, she made a complete idiot of herself on QT and proved herself totally out of her depth when it comes to the issues debated. Although I appear scathing about these minor lefty luvvy celebrities like those mentioned venting their political spleens in the media, however they probably do quite a bit of damage to the causes they support, so there is an upside to it. Their intervention in elections or the referendum were probably worth more votes to the opposition than they will have added to their side. Regarding the perving of busty Welsh songstresses, you are wide of the mark if you think that Church is my type. Katherine Jenkins is much her superior in looks, voice and class.

There are suggestions that owners from Russia, China, Thailand etc are only buying clubs to launder dirty money. The Skates have experienced this type of owner before and were bled dry as a result. At the level they now find themselves, they could be in the frame for more laundering, but more likely in the way of dirty clothes rather than dirty money. I'm thinking Chinese Laundry owners.

From the Guardian:-

Not forgetting that obnoxious outspoken little brat Charlotte Church.

Only in the same way that having the support in a campaign is aided by the likes of the Rat Geldorf, or the idiot Izzard, or the tw*ts Brand (Russell or Jo) or other right-on leftie luvvies.

If the Arse are so keen, maybe they will consider a Fonte / Oxlade-Chamberlain swap

Really? Which other teams play The Southampton Way?

I agree with the majority of the comments on the match. I don't know why Hojbjerg didn't start. The times that I had seen him play pre-season impressed me a lot and I believe that he will be the next one to be attracting the mega buck offers from the glory teams in the future. He reminds me a lot of Schneiderlin in his pomp for us. We were a cut above when he came on. Cedric was poor and how come he was OK to play following his exertions at the European Cup and Fonte wasn't? Or maybe his performance showed that he wasn't ready to play. Or perhaps having Fonte alongside makes him a better player. Targett did quite well in Bertrand's absence, but Bertrand would probably have given us some extra threat higher up the pitch. Interesting to ponder what the players who left could have given us over those that replaced them. Wanyama would probably have given us more that Romeu on yesterday's performance, but Hojbjerg would undoubtedly have given us a boost playing alongside him like Schneiderlin did. Mane could have been the sort of tricky fast player that could have torn Watford apart, and Redmond doesn't measure up as a replacement yet, although that situation could change when the team know each others' strengths and mind sets. Pelle could well have been effective as the big target man and holder up of the ball that we lacked until Austin came on. But it is too early to read too much into whether we will turn out to be as effective as we were last season. For me we still need a fast, mobile striker. As for Watford, they were similar to a cynical Stoke type of team managed by Pulis. They came here looking for a point and when they went ahead, naturally they parked the bus. They did their best to cripple our speedy players with a succession of niggly fouls. They had the time-wasting down to a fine art. When we had drawn level and looked to be developing a head of steam, they had players fall to the ground feigning injury to stop our momentum. Apart from Gomez taking an age over his goal kicks and earning a yellow for his troubles, players substituted walked more slowly from the pitch than a centenarian with a Zimmer frame strolling along Eastbourne promenade. It would be typical of Saints to be unable to break down these cynical, park the bus crap teams and then to turn over the glory teams who come to play football and expect to beat us. We live in hope.

I don't know about your experiences of speaking to UKIPers in the circles you mingle with, and neither am I interested in your anecdotes about them. I'm a Conservative as I've explained many times.