Wanderer Vagabond

Given the choice between conspiracy and cock-up, having some experience of these things, it's usually cock-up every time. You seriously believe our politicians are Machiavellian enough to put together a decent conspiracy, if so you vastly overrate their competence

Would they have voted the same if they had known that England was going to drag them out of the EU?

I can't say I'm complaining. That is where the problem lies, none of those making the noise (Rees-Mogg, Johnson,etc) have any competency to be leader. All that they are waiting for is when the clusterf*ck comes to fruition they will step forward with a leadership challenge where we will hear what they would have done had they been in charge, by which time the damage will have been done. Blame it all on May and step forward as some crap 'knight in shining armour' to rectify it (as if). As I've repeatedly said I am no fan of May but they really don't have anyone else that would do anything other than divide the country further. If you want a Corbyn Government hope that Johnson tries the leadership challenge because he's been pretty damn useless at most other things he's done (Foreign Secretary, London Mayor) put him in charge of the Conservatives and look forward to a Corbyn landslide victory

Yes, in the EU referendum both Scotland and Northern Ireland had majorities to remain in the EU, this was overruled by the larger population of England.

We have PAYG with O2 and the only way I've ever topped the phone up was through a cashpoint, most of which give the option of 'phone top-up'. I've never noticed any security issue any different from any other debit card use (supermarket,ATM,shopping, etc). Interestingly I've just reduced my call rate to 3p per minute for calls and 2p per text from a previous eye-watering rate of 35p per minute calls and 15p per text. Since I had hardly been using the phone these figures were largely meaningless it was only when I went onto the O2 website that I realised just how much I was being screwed if I had made any calls, quickly rectified. I don't know which network you are with, but with O2 you actually have to use the phone (calls or texts) within a 6 month period to keep it activated, just switching it on didn't work (don't ask me how I know)

If we had any intention of remaining aligned with them there would be hardly any dispute, but our apparent intention is divergence once we are out. The fact that we are current EU members becomes irrelevant if we want divergence, we just have to negotiate a trade deal the same as China will, but with a lot less to offer. Whereas in England immigration is a big (and boring) thing, in Scotland immigration would help to repopulate areas (that the English helped to clear with the Highland Clearances), so it is not unreasonable for the SNP to be in support of immigration. It would also respect the Scottish referendum result where they voted to remain but were overruled by England.

The EU also has good economic reasons for having a free trade deal with China, its 2nd largest trading partner and dwarfing anything the UK may trade, but have been negotiating them since 2013 still without a positive result, why should the UK expect superior treatment to China? Once out of the EU we become a third country, just like China.

This is the utter fallacy that has been promoted from day one by the leavers. A 'good deal' was never on the table, never going to be on the table and irrespective of who is doing the negotiating is never likely to be on the table. The only deal that is likely to be better than one we negotiate is the one that we already had as a member, anything else is, by definition, going to be worse. Can you tell me of a single club, of any type,on the planet who will give non-members equal or better terms than is given to members? such a club does not exist and the EU has made this clear from the start. What we have got is pretty much what anyone looking at the situation dispassionately would have expected us to get. This nonsense idea that we were going to in some way dictate terms to the EU is as laughable as how we will be able to dictate terms when it comes to our turn to get screwed over by negotiating a deal with the US, it is never going to happen. So it now becomes clear that the Brexit you voted for was to trade on WTO terms and say adios to the majority of UK car manufacturing (since most of them are foreign companies anyway). At least now we now know what leavers actually wanted, a return to the 70's.

The text I quoted isn't superseded by anything, it is on page 304 of the document your link goes to.

I suspect, if my reading of the is correct, it may may the DUP somewhat unhappy though. United Kingdom's orderly withdrawal from the European Union of 8 December 2017 outlines three different scenarios for protecting North-South cooperation and avoiding a hard border, but that this Protocol is based on the third scenario of maintaining full alignment with those rules of the Union's internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement, to apply unless and until an alternative arrangement implementing another scenario is agreed, So the NI economy will remain aligned with the EU until the negotiators get their finger out.

Vote for Corbyn, his 6 tests are impossible to fulfil and he's always been a Brexiteer

And who precisely would you want in her place? Johnson?Rees-Mogg? David Davis? Leadsom?......Corbyn???? it's not exactly a field packed with (any) talent is it? I'm no fan of the Maybot but just who is there? The cause of the probable forthcoming banking crisis is the utterly inane policies put forward by the idiots in Government in Italy. I can fully understand and even go along with borrowing money to boost infrastructure, to have a policy of borrowing money so that they can pay their pensioners more is the politics of the asylum.They then make it even worse by proposing to cut taxes, I start to see why Italy has the reputation for corruption that it has, it is blatant vote buying and to hell with any consequences. And then they come out bleating ," But we have the people's mandate on this" doeasn't alter the fact that there is no way at all of it working and will merely bankrupt Italy, taking a lot of other countries down with it (including the UK given our dependency on financial services, we are bound to get caught up in it). Going back to when we abandoned manufacturing to concentrate upon services, who was behind that idea I wonder? Probably someone who deregulated banking leading to the banking crash of 2007/8 and now thinks Brexit is a brilliant idea (despite living in France himself).

Raise you one more, and stick MVI_5213.MP4

Let's celebrate another banking crash that, just like the last one, wont have any effect at all on the UK, shall we?

I have to expose my ignorance here and say that I had no idea of what a maul was, looked it up in the dictionary which just gave the scrum sort of definition. It took good old google to give the answer, I'd always thought of it as being called a woodcutters axe, so you learn something new everyday. I suppose it gives some more sense to the mention it gets in the well known Queen song,"...she keeps a maul and a shovel in a pretty cabinet....", or have I misheard that?