ml1dch

He was - but he then stood again for UKIP.

I wonder which is better for our side - tangentially linking stuff like this as the fault of Brexit to make more people think it's bad (much like Johnson et al have done the other way for the last thirty years), or be scrupulously accurate and not descend to their level. As the EU is bringing in basically the same thing in July. So it is annoying, but it's only bringing forward something that would have happened anyway.

Project Rear coming true.

To be fair, I think it's pretty safe to take those figures in good faith. Wikipedia isn't a source to quote in your PhD, but the information isn't going to be all that wrong. The thing that exploded in the last decade isn't the feeling itself, but the strength of feeling. I'm not a huge fan of Yorkshire pudding. I'll eat it if someone has put it on my plate, but I'll never make them myself unless I know someone else particular wants them. But on the question of "Yorkshire puddings, yes or no?", I'd lean on the side of no. However if the papers suddenly were filled with stories about how they are made of dog-shit, that they were going to poison my children and that we had to join a side for a twenty-year culture war on the subject then I might find myself feeling more batterphobic than I was before.

Minor point of order - one person. That absolute moron Douglas Carswell was elected as a UKIP candidate in a 2014 by-election that he triggered, and then held the seat in 2015.

That's not really a paradox unless the change they are shouting about is an undefined, amorphous concept. While that is clearly the case for some, I'd like to think that plenty of people (you included) have a direction they are looking at. If the political change that I'm looking for (it isn't) is "the UK at the centre of a federal Europe" then pushing back against this particular form of change is probably a good idea. A less extreme example, as per Blandy's excellent post above, the larger issue is at a Westminster level. The "political change" we are currently seeing is concentrating more power and less accountability in Westminster. Why would someone who would prefer executive control to be curtailed rather than enhanced not push back on the current situation?

Presumably because they just fall under the general heading of "retail"? So as soon as you say they should close, you're opening yourself up for divvying up every type of shop and causing yourself even more hypothetical rabbit-holes.

Secondary schools are already closed until either 11th or 18th January. With the dates being year-group specific, not school specific.

This can tangentially be linked back to the Brexit debate on standards and regulations and access to markets. Also generalising here, but broadly speaking the "risk" is broadly put on the shoulders of the manufacturer in the US. So if you want to sell a new drug / car part / American Football helmet / indoor firework etc, there isn't much in the way of regulation to stop you, but the legal ramifications if something goes wrong fall squarely on your shoulders. So you don't sell anything unless you as the manufacturer are 100% sure you're not going to get sued over it. In the UK you can more or less hand over the risk* to the regulator- they won't let you sell it until they've said it's ok, so once they have built that layer of security you're possibly not going to be so worried about your own testing. *see earlier about big generalisations

So in the space of 20 minutes you've decided that the problem is both their protectionist, inward looking, tariff-applying racket and also their Hayekian, let-the-market decide, free-world, free-trade, killing local markets. Jesus, pick a lane.

I expect that if it were the scum in Downing St in charge of it then it would have. As it is, I can't imagine Sadiq Khan's office (who are) really thought it was something to celebrate.

From the perspective of "would the EU accept this", of course it wasn't. But I don't think anyone questioned whether they would accept that position. Why on earth wouldn't they? There are certain minor aspects which people said were unrealistic - the one that springs to mind is "having a say on future EU trade deals when outside" is the one that springs to mind. Nothing compared to the bullshit streaming from the other side, but still there. But also, you've pivoting a bit in the post above (my italics) - EFTA + a customs union, which we're talking about never was Labour's policy, was it?

As Blandy said, I don't think the policy was derided as being "unicorns" or unattainable. It was derided as being politically unsellable and pointless. Why keep everything exactly the same, only with our representation removed? How do argue for that policy? Even the Tories can lie their way through a load of guff about freedom and immigrants on the route they've chosen. The point that was being made by many at the time was that if Labour wanted to use their political capital arguing that the future should be exactly the same but without representation, they should just be arguing that they would be better of arguing to keep things as they were.

The only logical reason for him to take it to a Holiday Inn for an evening is surely to have sex with it.

She's probably not reading this, you don't have to keep up the pretence on here.

Secondary kids with exams this year back on 11th January, those with no exams back on 18th. Primary back next week as normal I believe.

It does feel pretty dispiriting watching both main parties desperately fighting for the attention of a few million noisy, racist dickbags at the expense of everyone else.

72 next month.

Of course, I don't there's a chance of any Tory government abiding by it. They've spent the last 25 showing that they couldn't care less about it. They're probably still ruing the fact that they don't get to deploy the army onto the streets of Armagh anymore. Hence my tongue-in-cheek "right?".

Why not? By all accounts, his "Victorians" book which is the only real evidence one way or the other, got an absolute kicking across the board for being badly researched, badly sourced and badly written.

(paraphrasing rather quoting directly) It basically says that a poll is held on Irish reunification whenever the SoS for Northern Ireland believes that such a poll would result in a vote to reunify. And you'd think that census that you mention could easily be considered as such.

And presumably under the agreed terms of the Belfast Agreement, Brandon Lewis (assuming he's still in post) will immediately use that "minority now identifying as British" information to set the wheels in motion for a referendum on reunification. Right?

Oh, is that the same "woe is me" eel farmer appearing in a UKIP campaign video with Mike Hookem whining about the EU stopping him from exporting live eels to China? Why, yes it is.

Shortly afterwards he said that "there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade". Which couldn't be more of an outright lie if he'd said that as part of the deal they'd agreed to rename Le Berlaymont as "Boris's Brexit Sex Cauldron". My gut feeling is that he doesn't actually know what those words mean and he's in for a bit of a shock in a couple of weeks.

Borrowed from real life (although they probably borrowed it from somewhere online): *clears throat* Brexit through the fish strop.