Creative Midfielder

I must say that although we've always known there were one set of rules for our political masters and the establishment generally and quite a different set for the rest of us, I am still finding it quite extraordinary how open and explicit they are now being that the rule of law simply doesn't apply at all where the establishment is concerned.

Very good news if true - have thought for a long time that this is the only way we can be sure of removing our current corrupt and incompetent government.

Well Croatia has quite successfully avoided both so I wouldn't be so sure about that, especially Schengen which as I already pointed out is highly unlikely to be forced onto any island states and so is a complete non-issue as far as the UK is concerned.

They may be pillars and in theory part of the entry requirements for new members (though they have never been compulsory for existing members) but I think you'll find that whilst the politicians may not have been so blatent as to 'nod and smile' that is exactly what has happened on multiple occasions in the past. Leaving aside that the UK was never part of either whilst an EU member, of the remaining 27 countries only 19 use the Euro - Denmark has a legal guarantee that it will never have to join the Euro (Sweden as well maybe, not 100% sure on that) and of course a number of the Eastern countries that joined post-Lisbon were allowed to do so on the basis of a very vague commitent to eventually join the Euro at some completely unspecified point in the future and I don't think the EU is naive enough to think that countries such as Poland have got any real intention of ever adopting the euro. The picture on Schengen is similar although it would be fair to say that the take-up by EU countries of Schengen is better than the Euro, but it still wouldn't be required for the UK. Whilst it works well for the mainland countries, it has always been recognised that islands are a different case. So Ireland and Cyprus are not part of it, neither was the UK in the past nor would need to be in the future.

Schengen and the Euro are red herrings, those are purely theoretical rather than actual requirements which wouldn't be enforced by the EU or accepted by the UK. The real battle would be around the other two issues on your list although I don't see the third issue as EU demanding more concessions but rather getting the UK public to understand and accept that the multiple concessions and opt-outs, viz on the budget, will no longer be available. In leaving the EU we gave up a fantasically good deal, probably better than any other EU member but when we rejoin it will be on much less favourable terms, i.e. standard terms with us paying our full share of the budget and much less influence within the institutions of the EU.

Exactly, simple as....

I'm baffled as to why this pointless argument is still going on - what you say is true but what is equally true is that the actual number of points required to avoid relegation last yeat was 39 (plus a superior goal difference). Surely the actual minimum is more relevant than a hypothetical minimum which never actually existed?

Goals aside.........😂 Probably should be looking for a new keeper as well - apart from a few goal stopping saves per game that Krul really contributes very little............

😂😂 She should have stuck with trying to negotiate deals with Hong Kong for pork scratchings - that was much more her level although I think she was still somewhat out of her depth when it came to specifying whether she wanted them ready salted or not.

Deaths per million obviously is a more reasonable measure than purely raw numbers but even if we adopt that measure it paints the UK response in an extremely poor light. The fact that some smaller and mainly Eastern European countries who are much less wealthy and have less well developed public services than the UK did worse on that measure than the UK is very little consolation. The key point is surely that if you compare the UK with the European countries that we would normally expect to be our appropriate comparators, whether it is the bigger European countries, the wealthier European countries, or the western and/or northern European countries - on all of those comparisons we are the worst. Or to put it another way - an even better measure of how well a country has performed, better than grand total of deaths or deaths per million of population is the outcomes achieved vs the potential capacity a country had to combat the virus and that I think highlights just how poor the UK performance really was - we are one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we supposedly have one of the best health systems in the world and we have a huge, world re-known and highly successful scientific community and yet we achieved a worst outcome relative to similar countries and also many less well placed countries. All this, of course, is before we even mention excess deaths, so there are plenty of competing measures but whichever you plump for the conclusion remains that the UK performed very poorly and nowhere near as well as we had a right to expect - beside that whether we were the worst or almost the worst doesn't seem to be very important or relevant.

Yes he can, not because it was 'under his watch' but because Johnson was directly and personally responsible for the dithering, incompetent, and chaotic response to Covid in the UK which resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. As KLG has already pointed out, he is also doing his utmost to block a desperately needed public enquiry into the UK Covid response because he knows that it will clearly spell out just how badly he s*****d up.

Probably is the case that Macron's comments had some effect but IMO much less so than Johnson's gleeful boosterish but very foolish remarks about short circuiting the approval process for which the motivation was clear - desperation for a few days of good newspaper headlines after after a year of utter incompetence & u-turns. Also bear in mind that whatever impact Macron's comments did or didn't have, France have vaccinated a significantly higher proportion of their population than the UK so with his own citizens at least there doesn't seem to have been much impact. Either way it seems pretty obvious that neither Johnson's early comments or Macron's were what really did for the AZ vaccine - that was the direct result of the UK concealing & indeed lying about the number (though tiny) of cases of serious side effects, viz deaths, associated with AZ. So when it became clear in other countries all over Europe that deaths and serious illness associated with AZ were occuring at a significantly higher rate (10 times I think from memory) than the UK had been reporting eventually leading to an extremely humiliating admission that the UK figures were 10x what had been previously admitted. As is so often the case the truth wouldn't have been a problem (other than perhaps to Johnson's nationalist and triumphal championing of AZ as a huge British success), the AZ numbers of side effects were still very small but the lying about them completely shattered the confidence in most Western countries and it was game over for AZ in most of Europe other than the UK after that.

Seems to me that MPs who have been elected for a term of office do require some protection from disgruntled constituents - there may be times when it is in the national interest or even a matter conscience where an MP acts/votes in a way that upsets his constituents. But although we now recall elections, the conditions for these elections to be called are so restrictive as to render them almost entirely ineffective and certainly go nowhere near situations like Richard Bacon where he simply doesn't do the job he was elected to do and is paid to do. Whilst it certainly wouldn't be a panacea, I think there is definitely a case for widening the criteria for enabling a recall election which would at least put a bit of pressure on some of the most useless/corrupt MPs.

It would be a lot more than what they are actually doing which as Herman has already pointed out is a very small loan which has to be completely repaid over the next four years.

............they have strengths??? 😀

It is, but then that is the case with so much of Brexit. I've no doubt that the referendum result came as a surprise to most EU politicians - in fact I'd say they were amazed, as we ourselves were, at the overall level of stupidity of the British electorate and maybe a few in the EU genuinely regretted our departure. But I reckon most of them are secretly (and some not quite so secretly) pleased to see the back of us and with a deal that is self-harming as far as the UK is concerned but protects the EU's interests pretty effectively.

You still clearly haven't got a clue what a freeport is - they are nothing to do with the EU whatsoever other than the EU has some as have many countries round the world. EU freeports have absolutely nothing to due with the UK's or any other countries' contribution to the EU budget. The decision to establish a freeport in any country is a decision for that country's government and they are called 'free' ports because they are largely free from taxes and many regulations as far as the companies operating in them are concerned. So they cost the country that hosts the freeport money in lost tax revenue which is one of the reasons why the Tory government decided in 2012 to scrap all the UK ones that were in operation. They are nothing to do with Brexit and even if they were they wouldn't be a Brexit benefit because as I've already described they are not beneficial - no one other than the idiot Johnson has a clue why he would think that bringing them back is a good idea.

I wasn't calling you names I was accurately describing you and your behaviour - which once again you demonstrate by producing another stupid response which has no relevance whatsoever to the freeports you were originally so keen to discuss.

Of course I do you blithering idiot - otherwise I wouldn't have been able to give the information about them that I did - information that was quite straightforward but still is too difficult for you to understand apparently. So let me have another go. Up until 2012 and whilst we were part of the EU, there were free port areas in Liverpool, Southampton, the Port of Tilbury, the Port of Sheerness and at Prestwick Airport. In 2012 the Tory government abolished them because they were of no benefit to the UK economy and were actually harmful because of the tax evasion and smuggling that they enabled. Johnson is now claiming that being able to set up freeports is a Brexit benefit which is firstly a lie because the EU has plenty of freeports and currently there is no reason why we couldn't have kept the ones we had and created new ones, and more importantly Johnson hasn't got a clue (and neither has anyone else) what benefits his freeports will bring to the UK economy. So not only did an earlier Tory government realise they were a cr@p idea, even the EU who have always allowed them are also coming round to the fact that they are a cr@p idea and are currently consulting the 27 EU countries about getting rid. In 2022 the idiot Johnson is just about the only person anywhere who thinks they are a good idea and even he couldn't form a coherent sentence on what the benefits are. Its just another piece of Brexit nonsense which you've swallowed hook, line & sinker 😂

Nowhere near as confused as @SwindonCanary 😊

Yep, they were and indeed we had several whilst we were in the EU - up until 2012 when the Tories scrapped them because they were such a cr@p idea, and as it happens the EU are now starting to consider scrapping them for the same reason. As you say, why on earth Johnson now wants to start them up again is beyond anyone's understanding 😂

Could well be, there certainly doesn't appear much enthusiasm amongst the supposed replacements to take over right now - probably makes sense to them personally to let Johnson collect as much of the blame (for everything that is going wrong now) as possible before taking over. But the problem with that strategy though is they (well most of the contenders anyway) are still going to be very significantly tarred with the same brush as Johnson having been in the Cabinet and defended him when everybody else knew he should be long gone.

Well done - its very rare to see 'moral compass' and 'Conservative MPs used in the same sentence because, let's face it, it has only ever been a small minority of Tory MPs who actually have a moral compass and over the last few years even those have largely been driven out by Johnson & his Brexit fascisti MPs. What I do find surprising though is that the Tories are normally very hard-nosed when it comes to getting rid of PMs which are damaging their electoral chances. Of course we are some way off a GE but it seems extraordinary that they are allowing this current situation, which has already been ongoing for weeks, continue to drag on and getting worse all the time and more damning evidence emerging the longer it continues. The public made up their mind weeks ago & whilst it's entirely possible that we'll eventually get a Met Police stitch up which let's him off I suspect that will do even more damage to his & and the Tory party's electoral chances, so I'm baffled as to what outcome the majority of Tory MPs are hoping for. Still, mustn't complain - its all gravy as far as the Opposition parties are concerned 😄

Yep, completely hopeless and an absolute gift to Johnson and any other of his corrupt MPs who think they can drive a coach and horses through proper Parliamentary procedure - turns out that we have now reached banama republic status and MPs can do exactly that, pretty much whenever they feel like it.