Creative Midfielder

I'd completely disagree with your conclusion there - I don't see anything aggressive about the French separation of state and religion, it is just very simple, sensible, clear cut and well established in their constitution and laws. IMO it is infinitely preferable to the bizarre setup we have in this country of an established church (to which only a small minority of citizens belong) headed by a hereditary monarch who also happens our head of state and which, along with other religions, gets involved in our public life in entirely unjustifiable and undesirable ways - the education system being a prime example.

Well she's right about others sitting on their @rses but then of course she is guilty of exactly the same. She's been in post almost a year and she thinks that she's been doing a f**king good job??????? Some of these Tories are beyond delusional.......😂😂😂

Economically they unquestionably had their time in the sun (or possibly that should be 'have had') but hard to make a case that they've ever been great in any other context.

I'm surprised he hasn't had a quiet word with Michael Gove - he's happily ripping up planning regulations at the minute at the behest of Tory Party donors, surely he could sort this one out no problem!!

True enough, but even if we had been in that happy position Truss's budget would still have been profoundly stupid and utterly inappropriate for the national interest - it was an ego trip for a truly inept politician who had already been promoted way beyond her abilities even as a Cabinet Minister, and the Tory Party members who voted to make her PM should hang their heads in shame for their own gullibility and stupidity.

I'd argue that 'very narrow' is over-egging it a bit but yes, governments with large debts are certainly constrained by what the markets will accept and in some circumstances that can make life more difficult for governments even when they are genuinely trying to act in their national interest. However, that scarely applies to Truss who despite being completely economically illiterate yet so arrogant that she deliberately avoided seeking advice/impact statements from 'experts' and tried to implement a budget that was absurdly stupid and quite clearly not in the national interest. In fact it wasn't even in the interests of the Tory party but a Johnsonian piece of self promotion in the utterly deluded belief that it would be popular with rather more than the (was it 70,000?) equally deluded members of the Tory Party who elected her, unfathomly believing that she would make a good PM 😂

I don't believe that is true at all - democracy was largely irrelevent to Liz Truss becoming Prime Minister in the first place. The UK is, and has been for some time, much more an elective dictatorship than any sort of democracy. Also consider that it wasn't just the markets that believed that what Truss did was unbelieveably stupid, the majority of MPs and an even larger majority of voters also thought so too, which in a properly functioning democracy would seen the end of her anyway but fortunately in the absence of that the markets did the job for us. It was one of the very few occasions when the markets and our finance industry generally achieved the right thing for the country even though it was, of course, as always motivated purely by their own self-interest. No matter what system of government applies no leader should expect to be able to be that stupid and survive, but our system is perhaps rather unusual in allowing someone as thick as Truss to be become Prime Minister in the first place but then when you look at 'our' recent choices...........

Your first sentence is clearly not true. Unfortunately your second is more accurate although even there we don't entirely lack visionary politicians but those we have only command very limited support amongst the voting public most of whom are entirely hoodwinked/hypnotised by our dysfunctional two-party political system. Perhaps our real problem is a lack of visionary voters.

No real surprise there, our corrupt Tory government will spend whatever they think it takes to keep Andy Street as mayor there, as he's one of the few electoral assets they still have.

Clearly, as Herman says, those issues aren't putting people off - I don't recall anyone suggesting we could get the rebate back, that is utter pie in the sky and everybody knows it. TBF we were lucky to get it in the first place and unbelievably stupid to throw it away but throw it away we did and it is never coming back. But Schengen is a complete non-issue, there is no way that Schengen would be a pre-requisite for UK entry. Just as Ireland and the island territories of several EU states are outside Schengen so the UK would be. As for the Euro who knows how citizens of the UK will view that in the years to come but several things are clear: Despite the theoretical requirement, there are a number of EU members who do not use the Euro, plus a few non-EU countries that do and quite a number of other European countries with their own national currency but where the Euro is also in widespread use. So hardly a black and white picture there either. You also assume that a majority in the UK would object to us adopting the Euro but that is far from a given nowadays - after 13 years of Tory economic illiteracy and incompetence, followed by the absolute economic madness of Truss and more recently the BoE completely asleep at the wheel while inflation went through the roof, I'm not sure that the many people in the UK see the pound sterling (and/or the BoE and/or the Treasury) as giving them any benefit, far from it in fact they are seen as responsible for many of our current problems. This is an area where we've always had control and our track record is very poor indeed. The ultra wealthy, hedge fund managers et al would scream blue murder at the loss of the pound but for most of us it would at the worse neutral and more likely to be positive.

Nor should it - an important element in the referendum campaign was that the outcome was well understood if the vote went Remain, i.e. the status quo, but if the vote was for Leave then the outcome was completely unknown in many ways and hugely dependent upon the nature of the Withdrawal agreement to follow (of which Brexiteers were promised many and widely varying versions). At the start of the campaign this 'unknown' element was generally seen as a disadvantage but in practice it turned out to be a considerable advantage as it allowed the liars and scroundrels campaigning for leave to make ludicrous claims and promises which their idiot supporters happily lapped up no matter how ridiculous or implausible the promises. But next time, when we eventually get to vote on re-joining the campaign will have to be fought about two known and well-understood scenarios and it is clear in which direction the public mood is moving and as we already know, the UK demographics are such that the current trend is going to continue to grow stronger and stronger.

That seems rather unlikely to me - a far simpler explanation and I would suggest more accurate is a better educated and certainly far less deferential population - both good things IMO.

Fair point but in practice its quite difficult to 'develop a taste' for something which pretty expensive and you don't (think you) like anyway. As I'm sure you're aware there are plenty of things that the French enjoy eating that most Brits wouldn't even consider as food, and some of our less popular local fish species certainly seem to fall into that category. If local fish was cheap and plentiful then market forces might do the job but there appears to be absolutely no prospect that will ever be the case.

I largely agree with that and perhaps because it is so unusual for me that you didn't actually notice, but if you re-read my post you will see that I didn't blame the government or hold them responsible, in fact I didn't mention the government at all. This country's emisions are our collective responsibility and as far as China is concerned it seems as though we have taken a collective decision that we would rather buy very cheap and cheerful 'stuff' rather than pay a little more for probably rather better quality stuff made locally by our fellow citizens - but clearly we are responsible (in the true sense of the word) for the emissions created by the 'stuff' we consume. I realise that it would be quite difficult to determine accurately the responsibility for emisions on this basis and probably extremely contentious whereas the current very imperfect system suits many Western governments, including our own, extremely well. But as Duke said originally, in this instance China is not the villain that useful idiots such as Jools and other far more malign actors would have us believe.

Don't think that YF, or any one else for that matter, would deny that left-wing populism could be a 'thing' but the fact remains that at the current time the European populist/nationalistic governments are all right wing (so far as I can recall, maybe there is an exception that I can't bring to mind) and it is entirely possible that the US may be returning to exactly the same in the foreseeable future.

Exactly so, and to return to the Chinese level of emisions which Jools/Hooks claims to be so concerned about - they are not genuinely the responsibility of just the Chinese. The only reason our figures 'appear' to be so low is that we, along with many other countries, have pretty much given up manufacturing anything and have sub-contracted/offloaded the manufacture of all our stuff, and the associated emissions, to China. On top of that, there is a massive chunk of emissions incurred by transporting the stuff once made back to the UK, which should by rights be included in our emissions total but in fact are totally ignored and don't feature at all in our published figures. So his entire post is, as usual, complete rubbish.

Yep, sadly I think that unless we succeed in somehow stopping dark money having any impact on our politics then as a country we are pretty much doomed, and in reality the chance of us ever achieving that is pretty close to the square root of b*gger all. 😧

Always entertaining to witness Foxy aspiring to reach the intellectual high ground 😀

That is a bit of a low blow 😂, although I'm not suggesting that it is in any way unjustified 😀

Agree with the vast majority of that but 'we do still enjoy a lifestyle far better than the majority in Europe' - really?? I'm sure that someone could rustle up a few of the poorer, and most probably Eastern European countries where that would be true but if we compare ourselves with our usual benchmarks France and Germany, perhaps even Spain and Italy I don't think that statement stacks up, and if we compare ourselves with the Netherlands, the Danes and the rest of the Scandanavians then we are way adrift and falling ever further behind.

TBH I think he's a lost cause; he is clearly intelligent in a basic sense and well-informed but the problem appears to me to be that he has a huge ego which can't accept any dissent from his opinions, which are regularly presented to us as facts, plus a complete lack of emotional intelligence which makes it impossible to get into a reasonable discussion with him on any topic unless your opinion is very closely co-incident with his. As you say, no matter how you try to make a point he can't seem to accept that anyone else can have a valid opinion which differs from his own and if you, perish the thought, actually suggest he has got something wrong (however you phrase it) then it seems to tip him over the brink. 😂 When that happens he can't put together a coherent or reasonable response; he either dodges the point, irritating but preferable to his other strategies which are straightforward abuse, or a strawman argument based a total and deliberate misinterpretation of what has been said to him which for me is the approach that is most offensive and makes responding completely pointless. Shame, because if he actually wanted to discuss stuff he would be interesting but it seems that he only wants to pass on his own unfettered wisdom to us and receive nothing back but applause.

😂 Ok, I'll try and put this simply, both so you can understand it and in the hope that it makes it harder for you to totally distort what I say into something bearing no resemblance to what I actually said, which seems to be your standard approach when responding to anyone who dares to point out, however gently, that you've said something rather foolish. A couple of minor points first; 'hard Brexit' hasn't been redefined, leaving on WTO rules was 'no deal Brexit' and 'hard Brexit' always was leaving with a very basic agreement - irrelevant to the discussion really but just thought I'd mention it anyway. The more substantive point is that I didn't deny that the predictions were that Brexit would prove very damaging to the UK. What I denied was that we predicted that the UK would become 'a post-apocalyptic wasteland and an international pariah akin to North Korea by now' - your words, because those sort of predictions simply weren't made, anywhere as far as I'm aware and most definitely not by any of the well-known remainders on here. That was just a ridiculous piece of hyperbole and lies from you. So before you start throwing accusations of lying at other people I suggest that you wind your absurd brass neck in and desist from spouting the sort of distortions and lies that some of our most gold plated leavers would be proud of. You really are a monumental time waster, of other peoples' time anyway, although I assume you derive some perverse satisfaction from the time you spend on entirely pointless interactions (because they are certainly not discussions or even arguments in any meaningful sense) with people you don't know or have any interest in. Sadly though, I have to inform you that you've already soaked up my entire budget (& more 😀) for social media timewasters for the month of August, so its over and out from me.......for a good few weeks at least.

No, it wasn't - that is just another tiresome Leaver myth, or lie to be more precise. When Herman said us, I tend to assume that he actually meant us and I'm pretty sure that the Remainers' predictions on here have been pretty accurate though as Herman says maybe not quite as bad as the reality turned out to be - for example none of us expected or predicted any benefits from Brexit but I think we assumed that the Government would at least try to conjure up something. But in practice they have so far failed to even fully implement the agreement and certainly haven't attempted to deliver any 'benefits' and still show no signs at all of having any ideas as to what they might be. Also we didn't predict that devolved Goverment in NI would be suspended for years - another abject Brexit/Tory failure, so I reckon Herman is spot on the money.

Even more bizzarre - you were talking about it being impossible because of single issue campaigners exerting pressure which is utterly irrelevant and so far as I recall the only single issue campaigners around at the time of North Sea gas coming onstream were campaigning for nuclear disarmament - not an issue which had any impact on Thatcher's stupid and very short-sighted decision to blow our North Sea bonanza on tax cuts, that was pure illiterate economic ideology. The fact remains that it was entirely possible for the UK to have followed Norway's approach and the reason we didn't is almost entire down the generally low calibre of governments which our antiquated model and undemocratic electoral system produces. I guess you could argue that the fact that we have so many one issue pressure groups nowadays are also a sympton of our generally poor quality governance but they are most definitely not the cause. If that is what you are trying to argue then you have got cause and effect totally the wrong way round.

What a bizzare and completely erroneous proposition - as far as I can see the one and only reason that the UK couldn't and of course didn't follow Norway's approach (even though it was advocated by many people here as well) is because of our dysfunctional electoral system, our two party system where both are far more interested in short term political objectives aand have little interest in the long term interests of the county (well, none at all in the case of the Tories) and the frankly very low expectations most voters have of politicians of all colours. It rather feels as though most voters in this country have completely given up - most seem to think our governments and governing systems are sh*t (which they clearly are so no surprise there) but still don't think or at least really believe that genuine changes and improvements can be made. Unfortunately, our recent (and not so recent) history rather suggests that they are correct in that assumption!