Wes Tender

I agree with you. It is very easy to have the benefit of 13 years of hindsight, but I don't recall much in the way of his threats to resign at the time if the Blair government pressed on with joining the Euro. The article clearly endorses your point that Brown would have been for joining the Euro at some future time when the circumstances were right. I read it that "unanimously" included Brown.

Cameron was so in favour of the EU, that he had threatened to campaign to leave it if we didn't get the concessions or reforms that he wanted. Most informed commentators would agree that he did not get those reforms, but only some watered down sops, which will not be honoured if we vote to stay, so Cameron is rather damaged goods in most peoples' eyes when it comes to the Stay Campaign. In the same way that you you argue that the prominent supporters of the Euro were old "has beens", and that the Euro matter is long settled, it is fair to say that Cameron and Osborne were too junior to have been influential at that time. Therefore it is bit pointless using them in a argument which suggests that in the same way that many prominent politicians and industry leaders were wrong about the consequences of us not joining the Euro, that many of the same people could be wrong once more about our membership of this federalised EU. You think that the connection between the decision to not join the Euro has little relevance to this referendum, but maybe that is because it puts casts serious doubts on those who are the main protagonists of the current fear campaign and you have more faith in their opinions than others. It's your choice to believe that if you want, as it is for those who think otherwise. On another aspect of Orange's post to which you responded, what are your views on his point that had we agreed to join the Eurozone, there would have to have been a referendum to grant the electorate their say on it? And how about the successive treaties like Maastricht, Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon? With the resultant loss of sovereignty and the inexorable shift away from just a trading agreement and towards a Federal United States of Europe, do you not think that there should have been a referendum long before we got to this stage whereby the referendum has been forced on the Government by the overwhelming Euro-sceptic vote in the last European Elections? I would be interested to hear your views on that. Maastricht was 24 years ago, a long time ago, so probably in your eyes, of dubious relevance to the issues of the referendum now. Indeed, do you think that we ought to be having this referendum at all?

I didn't I hadn't It didn't Always happy to help you gain a clearer understanding of where your comprehension of the English language is lacking.

Typical Fry. Take a small issue on personalities and then require huge lists of other people who I may have had a respect for historically. Your usual fudge, and totally proving the point that others recognise but you choose to ignore, that this referendum is not about personalities, not about party politics, but about the single issue of whether we should remain a part of the EU, or leave it. The character assassinations appear to be the MO of the Stay brigade mostly and the simple truth that somebody has already lost the debate if they have to resort to calling their opponents silly names, can also be extended to it being lost if they have to resort to infantile character assassinations. And please do not try and decide what my thoughts would be in some imaginary situation that your feeble mind conjures up. It might make you feel good to live in your own little dream-world of fabricated scenarios, but frankly it makes you look a little self-obsessed if you think that it makes you look clever; it doesn't.

No I'm not. I've always had respect for those politicians from whichever party they represent whose opinions come across as sensible and well argued. My admiration of Frank Field in particular goes back 20 years or more. Your rather poor reasoning suggests rather stupidly that if one is a Conservative, one must therefore disagree with every policy position of the opposition parties and even that every member of those parties has identical opinions on every policy issue.

I'm glad that you consider the line of argument as being nice, as that is what it is all about. There has been too much dismissal of the personalities on the Brexit side, rather than any attempt to argue against what they say. On here, it is the in brigade who are far more likely to display the petty insults, calling the out supporters swivel-eyed loonies and such like. Whereas the likes of Kate Hoey, Frank Field and indeed Anne Widdicombe never reached the top of the greasy pole, that doesn't mean that they weren't often more sensible, more intelligent, or more rational than many who did. Regardless of whether you consider the likes of them to be political pygmies, there are very many who have respect for their opinions because they have always talked a lot of sense on many of the issues that strike a chord with the electorate.

Not a very charitable response, Timmy. But you disagree with what she says, do you? Yes, of course you do. She would have been fine when she hadn't made up her mind, but now she is a fruitloop like anybody else who wants to leave your beloved EU.

Another former political heavyweight joins the Brexit campaign. http://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/ann-widdecombe/652956/Why-I-back-Brexit-Ann-Widdecombe As she says, if the EU were not prepared to negotiate reforms on the threat of us calling a referendum, they are hardly going to accede any concessions if we vote to stay in and would see a stay decision as an acceptance of more interference in our affairs and a vote for further integration towards a United States of Europe. Therefore for those of us who do not wish to go any further down that road, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to decide the future on behalf of the next generations

Cleopatra is reputed to have had nice jugs. I'm sure that Anthony must have appreciated them.

Is it reverse, like the Italian ones? :lol:

The remain brigade on here have sneered at some of the personalities who have come out in support of Brexit and my day has been considerably brightened when I heard that Jeremy Clarkson has come out in support of our remaining in the EU. I loved reading all the comments from the lefties who hate Clarkson with a vengeance. He wants a United States of Europe with one army and one currency. He can't quite commit himself to wanting one car model though. It could be that his position is a front to disguise his worry that BMWs, Mercs, Alfa Romeos etc would have import trade tariffs placed on them if we left, but surely he realises that that would never happen given the political influence wielded by the big corporations who have us as one of their largest export markets. Also he needs to accept that this single currency will be the Euro and not the Pound and that if there was a single army, they would probably be buying German, French or Italian military vehicles instead of our British ones. And how would he feel about an Italian Commander-in-chief of the forces?

On MOTD 2 tonight Joey Barton contrasted the two footed tackle by Gabriel which should have been punished with a red card with the red card handed out to Mane. He said that Atkinson the referee who saw the Gabriel tackle had been right on the spot, whereas Mason had guessed the Mane decision because his positioning had not given him a clear view

Apart from goals, a player like Long brings much more to the table. He is the sort of player whose spirit and determination, never say die attitude, work-rate and character add a lot to a team. He and the likes of Davis and Fonte are lynch-pins to the way we play and how the team spirit is built upon the likes of them. They each lead by example and when any of them are absent through injury, suspension or substitution, somebody else needs to step up to the plate, or we lack a little something. When Long played against us previously, we loved to hate him for being such a nuisance to us, whilst secretly admiring and respecting the way that he did things. Although he was not a natural goalscorer, he has recently done very well for us and whereas his £12 million fee seemed large at the time he signed, it now looks like a very astute bit of business. With the benefit of hindsight, Reed got this one spot on, choosing the right player who suited the way we play at the right price.

Well, nobody should believe you, the way that you go about constructing half-truths. "all but admitting" = admitting in your world. Furthermore, the denial came not from the Queen, but from a spokesman for the Royal Family, which declared that the Queen was politically neutral as she had always been. The spokesman was speaking on the condition of anonymity under palace rules, so that seems also to be the position of the source of the story too. But just to equal things up, here is a story in the press claiming three years ago that the Queen was a Europhile also based on comments made by her with a subsequently statement from the Palace that she was politically neutral. One can see how these misunderstandings come about, can't one? http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/586842/Buckingham-Palace-denies-Queen-intervened-EU-referendum-Berlin-speech And just to correct another misapprehension of yours, not all of those who support Brexit are UKIPers. The majority of Conservative Branch chairmen support Brexit, as well as many at Ministerial level past and present and also a substantial number of their equivalent Labour opposite numbers. The support among the electorate is similarly right across party lines, so it is a bit futile attempting to portray those supporting Brexit as UKIPers. Are you finally going to admit that you have already made up your mind that you're in the Remain camp? Nothing you have ever posted in this debate suggests that there has ever been any substance to your claim to not having decided which way to vote.

You have previous as a wind-up merchant so I'll base my opinion on that. Likewise the MOTD pundits and Koeman are entitled to be wrong too, but what do they know compared to you and your 60" screen?

1/10

As both decisions individually, let alone taken together might well have changed the result, then Mason's performance amounted to negligence or incompetence. He deserves to be demoted from top flight football. It isn't as if he hasn't got previous for poor decision-making.

I'm pleased that we are appealing the Mane red. It was a ridiculous decision, as was the failure to award the Tadic penalty. The more that the FA get to witness the incompetence of the likes of Mason, the better it will be for everybody. After Mane went off, we did well to hold on against twelve.

The remain camp have been resorting to lots of puerile name-calling of late and those who support Brexit are swivel-eyed loonies, half-witted, etc. All we need now is a categoric assurance from Verbal that we needn't worry our little UKIPy heads, that there is no way that we will vote to leave, and I will begin to feel that there could be a good chance that we just might.

Really? If there was contact, it was a penalty. If there wasn't, it was a dive and should have been yellow-carded

Is Mason the worst referee in the PL? Even worse than Friend? We really should have won 5-1. Long should have passed to Tadic who was unmarked. Tadic should have scored himself instead of trying to be too clever when he could have pulled the trigger. Tadic should definitely have had a penalty if there had been a competent referee. Mason should have given either a penalty or yellow to Tadic for diving, but making a decision like that would have extended his brain cells beyond their capabilities. What becomes of Mane now? Presumably dangerous play, allegedly, but also having had another red earlier this season. How do we get the most reds when we are not a dirty team?

I don't recall anybody making the claim that the referendum was not about jobs but about sovereignty and would be delighted to see you quote the passage, so that we can see whether you were making it up, or whether it is simply a case that your comprehension is poor. There naturally has been some debate as to what the electorate will feel is important to them, and if somebody is unlikely to have their own job affected by Brexit like the majority of people, I suspect that immigration is high up on their list of issues that might determine their vote, together with sovereignty and the loss of the supremacy of our legal system. Immigration is the issue that the remain lobby insist is inextricably attached to the UK continuing to trade with the European single market if we left, despite other nations outside Europe managing to trade with Europe without having to endure mass movements of people as the price. The idiocy of the remain lobby comes when they insist that this must follow with us if we left, because Norway and Switzerland had to agree to it. When it comes to personalities and your assessment of them as cretins, you will just have to open your eyes and your mind to the deep unpopularity of Cameron and Osborne among a sizeable section of the electorate, who consider them to be liars, shallow and lacking conviction and they have a deep loathing of them. As a Conservative voter usually, I accept that there is a section of the electorate who would vote the opposite way to them purely out of hatred of them. Also, it must be said that the leader of the Labour Party who supports the remain camp, is presumably somebody who you hold in very low esteem, otherwise why would you have insisted that there is no way that he could ever be elected as leader of Labour? As I said earlier, something as important as this shouldn't be based on personalities, but issues, as that is a very shallow position to take, isn't it? I won't even bother to look at that link you posted, because regardless of whether there were three or thirty economists expounding their theories, there will others taking the opposite view. In any event, their crystal balls cannot with any certainty predict the outcome of any horse-trading regarding our future trade with the EU, or indeed what we could arrange with the rest of the World. In short, evidential meat is something that they do not bring to the debate. You yourself label it an evaluation. i.e an educated guess. Excuse me also in believing cynically that there are no totally independent opinions. Everybody comments from some position of bias, including yourself, despite your earlier protestations that you are sat on the fence. Anybody can see from your opinions, your disdain towards those who don't agree with you and the source of the champions of the arguments you choose to believe that you were probably never open to persuasion towards leaving the EU.

You've entirely missed the point. What is nonsense is companies like Ford threatening to pull out of the UK if we leave the EU, when they are perfectly happy to do it while we remain in. It is really so much hypocritical bluster. And of course, what convinced Ford to do it, is lower unit labour costs in Turkey and a very low interest loan from the EU bank.

Really? Are you sure you weren't mistaking him for Martina? Mane was abysmal and didn't seem interested at all, didn't tackle much, didn't show much movement to offer options for passing, didn't run much with the ball at his feet. But apart from that, he was more lively than in recent matches, where he had also been pretty useless. It really is difficult to imagine where his next goal is going to come from. The fastest hat-trick in Premier League history seems a distant memory and hard to believe that he was capable of that and seems so off colour now.

:lol: