Sergei Gotsmanov

Pigs never roamed in fields and paddocks. The pigs you show are not roaming they are 'outdoor pigs' that are widespread because you get a higher price for them because they have a higher welfare grade. Like chickens, pigs have always been farm yard animals. You are right that sheep farming would disappear without support and it is sheep farming that has most to lose from us leaving Europe not least because France is our biggest export market for lamb

Still think it is a very difficult figure to reach when some farmers don't receive any subsidy.

You don't keep sheep indoors unless they are lambing and apart from a very few 'super dairies' most dairy and beef cattle are outside when there is grass. Pigs and poultry have never roamed. Anyway I agree with your sentiments about preserving the countryside but I am not sure the public will be happy to pay for practices that date back to James Herriot. Our farming industry is actually very well developed because subsidies or no subsidies it has had to be to compete.

What will become of the milk powder mountain then? You do actually need to differentiate between different types of farming - how do you get to 55%?

I agree with your sentiments although there is also a balance to be struck between providing cheap food and preserving the countryside's aesthetics. I am afraid you cannot escape the fact that the French farming vote is as high as 15% or so I once read and that has meant that no French PM can ever support significant change to the CAP. That is not dishonest that is a fact.

I agree with you I don't want to see the end of the Single Farm Payment for that reason but don't tell me that farmers don't need to thank the French farmers for shaping the CAP.

Really? so how much was the EU budget in 1986 and how much was the EU budget in 2016? Would that give your numbers more context? It is well recognised how much UK farmers owe French farmers for resisting radical reform of CAP. It will be a major issue when we leave, particularly if we do a deal with the US because some have indicated that we will sell out our farmers for a trade deal.

I think you will find that the French have always fiercely resisted any meaningful reform of farm subsidies. A French politician cannot get elected by doing so because of the strength of the farming vote over there. Their inheritance laws mean that a lot of French have a stake on the land.

I never saw it on the main news. Just buried in the website.

Here we go...Sciatica attack apparently! https://euobserver.com/tickers/142375

Not one mention of it on the BBC headlines - funny that. The President of the European Commission can barely stand up after crucial NATO talks and the BBC reports it but does not publicise it. Would a plastered Boris or Nigel Farage have made their headline news page?

Apologies I did not see it hidden away in those pages.

I am sure he will get punished at the ballot box for that. I see the BBC are all over this story.

Don't normally agree with you! but that is what we really missed. Nobody took the ball to them.

If you knew how the real world works then you would have predicted the referendum result and accurately assessed the impact on the economy of a leave vote. Now we know that the roof has not fallen in I think the line is that the 'economy would have been growing faster'. The trouble is that your exposure to people who voted out is limited to this forum. You are out of touch with the real world. Where of course you are very naive is that EU unity would hold in the event of a Milbrook's 'Trump' style tough negotiating. Do you think when 100,000 French farmers were blocking Paris with their tractors because they had lost a £4bn market, potentially forever, you could just tell them its OK because we are going to screw their financial services. That is hardly going to help them. What about Spanish tourist chiefs - its OK the Brits are all holidaying at home for the next couple of years but you know what, their houses in London are worth 30% less. What about the Danish fisherman - sorry lads you will have to stay in Port now but just to make you feel better, Nissan have made 3000 Mackems redundant and they are hurting too. They would be banging on the Commission's door demanding they sort it out. So yes while it might be a high risk strategy there could be some mileage in it in my opinion.

That certainly would have been the Trump approach and would have plunged Europe into a proper crisis. Amongst all the screaming I expect that many in Europe would have pointed the finger not just at Britain but also at members of the Commission and the whole issue of genuine reform of Europe could have been realistically put on the table. It is likely that we could have been part of that process and could have ended up staying in a reformed Europe which most of us would have approved of. I think you may well have been right and we would have seen how pragmatic Europe could have been if we had opted to press the nuclear button. We may be one market out of 28 but economically it is the equivalent of up to 19 members leaving and that could have been quite an earth quake which would not have been solved by sending Juncker and Selmayr to dinner at Downing Street. Instead we have this softly softly approach put together by an alliance of career politicians, remainer civil servants and big business which has thrown up a fudge that will take an age for us to understand and when we do we will discover we have been shafted once again. That is of course if the now emboldened EU doesn't tell us to go back to the drawing board.

Agree that it will get rid of the absolute howlers which can only be a good thing. It will also generate more goals and that can only be a good thing - I think for every penalty given two are not given. The big issue is will it break a game down and take too much time. Personally I think it adds to the excitement.

I am sure that the black box has already clocked this but I think that VAR is going to dramatically change our game. Referees always tolerated a little bit of pushing and shoving in the box but now they cannot. We will get more goals from set pieces and corners. I think this will mean that players like Gallagher with plenty of height will have more of a value. How else do people think VAR will change the game?

This is what the Saints Forum should be about, not slagging off players and staff but insight like this. It seems feasible.

I always thought that with Alan Mcloughlin we had to pay Swindon a big lump after he had played 30 games. He got to 27 games and they did not risk reaching 30. He ended up being very good down the road. What could have been

Didn't he start against Chelsea and have an instant impact? I remember him scoring a freekick against Wimbledon that helped relegate them.

Jason Dodd, Jeff Kenna, Franny - all players that were given time by the fans. Bridgey was a star from the start

I thought he played well when I saw him. He is only going to get better. Why do young players get written off so quickly by so many.

I am not sure suggesting that the EU is a better democratic model to pursue the interests of the British people is going to end well. The House of commons is elected and every five years at the most we get to vote the prime minister out. The House of Lords is a check and has been doing their job recently. The Queen is just a figurehead who if she wielded even a little of her power would be on her way. She brings a few million tourists in and raises our profile abroad.

It is a lazy argument to just say that people who voted out must have been stupid because a poll suggested that more people who voted in had been to University. More older people voted out and because the older that you are the less likely you are to have a degree does not mean that they are any less equipped to understand the arguments. You could argue that the older you are then the more likely you are to read the news and the more life experience you have.