MAU,

Greg Clarke is another good reason to never vote Tory again.

How various EU countries have fared under the EU

In the 46 years Denmark has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #20 to #36.

In the 24 years Finland has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #32 to #42.

In the 6 years Croatia has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #67 to #75.

In the 12 years Romania has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #38 to #46.

In the 33 years Portugal has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #36 to #47.

In the 15 years Hungary has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #49 to #55.

In the 15 years Latvia has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #88 to #96.

In the 15 years Lithuania has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #74 to #82.

In the 15 years Estonia has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #93 to #98.

In the 38 years Greece has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #30 to #50.

In the 12 years Bulgaria has been a member of the bloc it’s economy has fallen in the world rankings from #70 to #74.

Where is the economic argument for membership?

When is it going to start existing?

https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/why-hasnt-brexit-happened-yet/

Via

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/08/crb-why-hasnt-brexit-happened.php

Rogers and other British experts were strangely unimpressed by the powerful practical levers their own side disposed of. Britain was the largest importer of cars from Germany. It had a trade deficit with most countries on the continent, which meant that any breakdown in talks would idle more European factories than British ones. It was, with France, one of only two serious military powers in Western Europe. It had an intelligence-gathering relationship with the United States that continental Europe was desperate to preserve the benefits of. It contained 40% of Europe’s data servers. It was due to recover its own rich fishing banks—schools of mackerel north of Scotland, beds of prawns southwest of Cornwall—where E.U. vessels took 59% of the haul. And it was the financial capital of the world. The E.U. would have no choice but to do business with an independent Britain

SG, we should probably thank our luck for relatively simple and straightforward questions. Here's something to conjure with. What would the question have been if the global-warming issue was ever put to the electorate?

Probably something like "Do you want to save the planet and all fluffy animals? Yes or No?

And yet more people voted for parties supporting a People's Vote or Remain

Pro-Leave parties: 47.33%

Remain or second referendum (Labour, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Greens, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru and Alliance) : 52.67%

Not much of a mandate, seems to me. And yet FPTP delivers a landslide to a party and a policy with a minority of the votes cast. If you divide seats by votes then it took 864,743 votes to get a single Green MP elected, whereas 38,300 votes was enough to elect a Tory.

Something not quite right there.

https://twitter.com/electoralreform/status/1205405895875801090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1205405895875801090&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theneweuropean.co.uk%2Ftop-stories%2Fmore-than-52-of-the-general-election-vote-went-to-pro-remain-parties-1-6424196

2016 UK Votes Leave (52/48)
2019 UK Votes Remain/Second Referendum (52/48)

'Landslide!'.

Dec 16, 2019 at 12:54 Phil Clarke.

Climate Science is even more unwelcome in the UK than the EU, and there is no financial advantage or benefit available to anyone apart from those taking all the money.

Belief in Father Christmas is more reliable than Cook's fraudulent 97% consensus

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2019-triumph-dr-bob-edwards/

A mathematics Dr uses Phil's argument and demonstrates that experts aren't that smart.

The real world is adjusted by rules other than pure maths. They also make erroneous assumptions which means that even their maths is suspect. As this wasn't a referendum, you can't prove that all Labour voters wanted the Labour version of Brexit/Remain. You certainly can't add them all to the Remain side. You can't even assume that all Tory voters wanted the Tory Brexit. But you can say that the voters knew what they were voting for. By our electoral system, we got the Tories and their Brexit plans. The only pure Remain party did very badly.

Politics isn't a mathematical expression. I didn't want to vote out of the EU but it is changing in a way I know is bad and the Referendum was the only opportunity to leave we'd ever get. Tantruming MPs aside, Brexit so far has gone far better than I ever hoped for.

Jan 3, 2020 at 10:11 AM TinyCO2

The EU was never going to listen to the people forced to pay for it. Politics relies on people making binary decisions. The Conservatives have theirs, the Liberals have lost theirs, and Labour are caught in an infernal Venn diagram:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram
"A Venn diagram (also called primary diagram, set diagram or logic diagram) is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. These diagrams depict elements as points in the plane, and sets as regions inside closed curves"

The Labour youth vote is the most whacky (or do I mean wokey). They fear Brexit because of the financial impacts and yet vote for a party with ruinous policies. All those degrees and can't use basic logic.

Labour's Venn has a load of non intersecting rings surrounded by one big Labour ring.

Jan 3, 2020 at 11:05 AM TinyCO2

Have I Got News For You has generated much amusement out of BoJo, whether as a contestant, Guest Chair, or subject for jokes. He won the Conservative Party over, and has now won the Country too.

Of the current contestants for the Labour Party, none can match Abbot for laughter, but I don't think she ever appeared intentionally on HIGNFY.

The BBC could really help the Labour Party find someone that will help entertain the British Public by allowing them to present themselves on HIGNFY, and be the subject of Hislop and Merton (fairly) cross examination.

Otherwise, the Labour Party is stuck with playing with Venn Diagrams, whilst Momentum try to back everyone into a single corner.

The winner SHOULD be the one that announces the best plans for the post BREXIT (and Corbyn) era.

Brexit, Doom or Boom? I cannot claim any expertise in this subject. I voted Leave to take back control so that is where I stand on this. I would rather we have control of our destiny than not. Others will point out that we need to band together to gain strength in this world. I have some sympathy with that but as a member of the EU we are a significant contributor, not recipient, we do not necessarily benefit from their trade deals and some trade deals take an eternity to get passed by all 28 countries.

I therefore feel that as a relatively small country with a relatively large economy, a track record of high legal standards, high innovation, good global foreign policy credentials and a history of global trading, we are wasting our assets if we were to remain within the EU.

During recent decades we have lost many assets such as good trade negotiators, a civil service with national interests at heart and much else. It is time to recover these and motivate the country to strive to achieve greatness and world influence once again.

Being a realist, I recognise that there is a long difficult journey to convince our own communities to reject their strange woke ways that embrace AGW, veganism, political correctness, LBQT obsessions and all the other extreme cult doctrines that are being imposed on the majority by the minority.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/film-news/five-best-bits-jess-phillips-11433812

Jess Philips admits to big mistake on HIGNFY

"Stabbing"
"When talk turns to the anonymous Tory rebel who said he wanted to knife David Cameron, Jess refers to an incident when she said in an interview that she would stab Jeremy Corbyn in the front rather than the back if she thought it would help Labour win the next election."

GC. That puts Jess rather amongst those to be admired doesn't it? I do recall Bojo recently being praised here for his appearances on HIGNFY. He fashioned his "image" there. You noted Jess's HIGNFY appearance, significance?.

I'm not sure that HIGNFY is relevant to future MP success but it is a measure of what the BBC wants to say about them. I could be wrong but I think Diane Abbott was on and was largely mocked. The level of mockery is a measure of BBC displeasure, whether the subject is on the show or part of the news discussed. Those who get roasted have only the option of laughing along to maintain some reputation. The BBC tends to think that those it mocks will automatically fall in favour with the public but with both Boris and Corbyn, the opposite was true. However when those two got power, only one of them went up in estimation.

I think that while Brexit played a part in Labour's downfall, it won't still e an issue at the next election. If Brexit goes well, their voting public won't care much either way and if it goes badly, only the Tories will be damaged by it. Whether their hard left policies will affect them, I don't know. Without Brexit promise betrayal, I'm not sure how popular Corbyn's ideas were. I do know that Cameron's wishy, washy liberal conservatism wasn't very popular. He crawled in when after so long with Labour and Brown as PM, Cameron should have romped home.May offered middle of the road, offer Brexit and Remain a voice, and did very badly. Boris offered some strong right wing policies and... well we know what happened. I hate to burst politicians' bubbles but the public do choose based on policies.

Of course Corbyn and Boris were dogged by their own personal life choices. Boris' philandering (and lying about it) won out over Corbyn's anti British past.

AK, I do watch and enjoy HIGNFY.

The guest chair has a script, Merton and Hislop don't. There are times when it is deliberately obvious that Merton and Hislop have something prearranged with the producers and photo editors to put a panellist (or guest chair) under pressure.

All those appearing on HIGNFY have rehearsed lines and jokes they are keen to fit into any answer on the show, their real character and actual beliefs are often revealed when they go off-script.

Appearing on non-political TV programmes is regarded as good publicity for politicians, where little digs and jibes can be inserted. Appearing on HIGNFY must be considered a very high risk method of generating publicity for UK politicians.

BoJo has not been harmed by HIGNFY appearances. Perhaps this says more about the dreary uselessness of debate in Westminster over a long period of time, not just BREXIT related?

I do not glue myself to the Party Line of any Political Party. BoJo hasn't and has gone notoriously off script in the past. In fairness to Corbyn, he didn't either as a backbench MP, but he was then ruthless towards those Labour MPs and Constituencies that were not loyal to him.

If it was just about public popularity, no matter how chequered the recent past, Labour should shoehorn Ant and Dec into the first By-Election, but as someone from the centre/right, Labour might do better if they looked at how well Leadership Candidates did, in appealing to the average voter, not those stuck in a time warp of failed political dogma.

Whether they supported BREXIT or Remain should no longer be an issue. How they will support British jobs, industry, future prosperity etc should.

BoJo would love to be opposed by a Labour Leader who remained loyal to the EU, Corbyn and Momentum. They all got him where he is today.

With Labour effectively Leaderless, and without a clear sense of direction, all Leadership Candidates have an opportunity to say what they want, ignoring the scripted manifesto of Corbyn/Momentum. The two favourites are Starmer and Long-Bailey. It shouldn't be too difficult for another candidate to come up with alternative views, that might even include NOT opposing everything proposed by BoJo.

Unfortunately for Labour, they are still dependent on Big Money from big Len McCluskey, and his controlling.

Jan 4, 2020 at 11:06 AM TinyCO2
Due to my slow and interrupted typing, I hadn't seen yours when I posted above.

I certainly agree that use of HIGNFY et al did not succeed for the BBC in their ANTI-BREXIT stance, since the Referendum was announced by Cameron.

The BBC never wanted BoJo in Government, let alone as PM leading BREXIT, but they realised Corbyn's Labour could not be supported. They had too many internal Labour supporters telling them so.