@thevfmaddict
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This is me being super lazy. But I know some own will know this off their top of their heads. I’ve just bought a new domain, what is the best and ceapest way to set up an email addy for it and for it to be managed via Gmail. At this point, I don’t care about a website. I just want a decent email addy.
I am uncertain what you mean by ‘decent’ in your last sentence. Are you seeking an address that is memorable -or- one that adds prestige -or- for some other reason. I found a way a while back that folks often have problems recalling even the simplest of domain names. If you are not merely after acquiring perceived prestige may I make a suggestion that I have given to many.
Pretty much everyone has no problem remembering ‘gmail’. The comments so far surely evidence such. My recommendation is therefore a gmail address but tweaking the preface for example in the following fashion “FredBloggsdirect@gmail.com”. I assure you that if you set up a gmail account in this fashion no-one who knows your name will ever forget your email address. Its a case of – Wanna email me? No problem. Simply email <me>direct@gmail.com I’ve never found a better way of making recall so damned easy.
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I note your comments, Ed, re May not having a backbone. Perhaps she merely has an exoskeleton like insects. There is something about her walk that’s very insect like. Moreover exoskeletons being external hard-shells would explain why she is so thick skinned.
I’m afraid, Bob, I have no sympathy for TM. I’m not convinced this is any longer even about what she thinks is best for the UK. It is surely more personal concern for what legacy she will have. I’m not sure she is clever enough to realise that the longer she follows her tunnel vision the worse that legacy will be. I dislike Cameron and Blair intensely but both were wise enough to know when to quit.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Bob, I’ve covered the Motor Industry before. But not JLR so here’s the truth. Their new £1Bn fasility in Slovakia was opened (note opened!) on 25 October 2018. Cheapo land, cheap labour costs, Brexit or no Brexit. With lead times the decision would have been taken pre-the Brexit Ref and when no-one expected us to leave.
Bob, if BMW, yes BMW, don’t think No Deal JIT problems will last more than a few weeks are there really the problems Project Fear say there are? Read for yourself.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Colder and cloudy today, but yesterday was like Tuesday, a bit warmer in fact at 18ºC. We had to visit the Mablethorpe library, so had another 6-mile bash, fed and watered at another restaurant. Healthy option was salad, unhealthy was Lincolnshire sausages, bacon, eggs and toast with ½ gallon of tea. Guess which I had? We ate before the walk, had to walk it all off! There was a stupid elderly woman, part of a party of 4, who tried to bring her dog inside, despite the notices banning dogs. At her insistent “The dog goes where I go!” the manageress said “OK then you go outside, there are tables out there.” She sat outside with the dog, eating her meal, feeding the dog bread and chips. I had enough of seeing a dog being fed incompatible food, so I went out and informed her that she was giving her dog indigestible, unsuitable food. This was not well received, I was roundly abused, so calmly informed her that she was my Stupid Person for the day and I hoped not to meet another. People are so quick to take offence …
Well done, Bob. I’d have done the same. And if she got shirty made it clear I was taking a picture adding that I needed it to show other’s what a truly stupid, inconsiderate dog owner looks like.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Portillo got it right last night. The second that the EU saw the whites of the eyes of a genuinely possible No Deal they have blinked.
Project Fear also took a right hook from reality in the last couple of days. Toyota have declared that they will be building Suzuki’s new hybrid car next year here in the UK. When will people wake up to the fact that the Project Fear declarations about car manufacturing are simple not true. Don’t be bamboozled by Project Fears propaganda.
Actually it might be considered a two punch combination to Project Fear because the BBC’s bias is now fully exposed. They went big on 5 March with warnings that Toyota may leave. But now that is shown to be untrue the BBC seeks to conceal Toyota’s reversal from general view by mentioning it only on its local new page for Derby. Disgusting bias. Such is obviously not just local news, is it?
All credit to The Guardian though. Despite being a heavily Remain inclined newspaper and within its text spinning somewhat Toyota’s announcement it did not try to keep Toyota’s decision from general view.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Just seen your pics of your walk, Bob. That’s the kind of walk I love to take around 4am on a mid summer morning. Sun up, open space, waves rolling in but absolutely no-one in sight. The bliss that at times total solitude can be.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Losing a favorite keyboard is almost like losing a pet. My beloved Cherry mech which I had had since 486 processor days died about 4 years back. Must have been about 16 year old by that time. My other half hated it because its off-white colour clashed with everything else around it (Women !!!). I loved it though because it coped with my heavy handed typing when in a hurry or typing in anger. I’ve been through four or was it five budget keyboards since its departure so I think I might bite the bullet and blow a wedge on another Cherry mech.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
So sorry to hear of your loss, Lee. Over half a lifetime ago a very aged chap who drank in my local told us what he said was the Golden Rule of coping with someone’s passing. His rule was so simple that I always remembered it and he was right because it has helped me whenever such has occurred in my life. He said simply, “Remember the laughs, remember the good times and remember them often.” I hope his words help you too.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
You are probably right with the football team/manager analogy.
As regards a new Labour Leader – I can’t stand Keir Starmer, the ex-DPP, because despite his background which seems genuinely left (he’s named after Keir Hardie) I get a bit a the feeling of ‘fake’ about him. To me he seems self-serving, manipulative and very much an establishment man. I don’t think you end up DPP unless you are the latter. However, he looks the part while retaining enough of the ‘common’ taint to his voice to be Labour’s new Pied Piper across their heartlands and awaiting marginals. I might be wrong but I am pretty sure that his voice now has more of a ‘common’ taint to it that when has was DPP. I must try to find some old footage of him and compare the audio from then to now. Was high political office always his long term objective? Probably. He always took every opportunity for exposure such as undertaking pro-bono work in the famous little man v the big corporate battle that was the famous McDonald’s libel case.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
This new ComRes poll totally baffles me. I continually wonder how Labour can be ahead in the polls when May is stomping Corbyn at the PM level in the same poll. What seems highly likely though is that a change of Labour Leader could result in Labour totally trouncing the Tories at the next GE.
The polls commentary re opinions on Brexit is interesting but it is clear that there was/would have been a majority in the electorate in going WTO frrom the moment we triggered Art50.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
@JCD,
I’m sorry if I missed your point. Perhaps that I did was understandable given that you has had included and inset the following in your post:
‘Total Quality Management, TQM, is a method by which management and employees can become involved in the continuous improvement of the production of goods and services. It is a combination of quality and management tools aimed at increasing business and reducing losses due to wasteful practices.’
TQM principles applied to the governance of the country would require the constant involvement of the electorate in order to improve outcomes; not merely every five years at GE’s. In my experience it is vital to involve workforces, as far as is possible, at all stages and often. Carry a workforce with you and without exception outcomes improve significantly. I very much like the Swiss approach. It would only fail here if, as has too often has been the case in the past, the UK electorate simply couldn’t be bothered to take an interest in politics.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
@Dave,
Sorry, Dave, but where I come from if someone makes a general observation that doesn’t really follow folks often during normal chit chat challenge it. Such is surely normal in friendly debate. You made a statement that federal systems seem to work implying such systems are superior. I simply explained that federal systems vary and that both federal and non-federal systems can work well or atrociously. You had listed a number of countries to suggest that federalisation works. I can’t see that it was unreasonable to detail a few that don’t. No particular type of system of governance is intrinsically superior to any other. Its is surely more about how one sets them up.
@Ed,
I can’t see that my words which you quoted are a ‘distort’ except when one quotes them as you did entirely out of context. In the context of the total post in which those words resided they were entirely rational and were not a ‘distort’Perhaps we can all agree that Switzerland and Canada are federal states that work well. Yet both are run in a fashion the very reverse of how Junker and Tusk et al desire to take the EU. Switzerland comes close to running on referendums while Junker has voiced a desire to ban them in all in EU states. Canada de-centralises allowing each province to have its own fisheries and agricultural polices, the EU already centralises both. The point I was trying to make was simply that whether a country is based of federalisation or not seems to have little bearing on how it runs and whether it runs well or badly.
I leave it to other peeps to draw their own conclusions as to whether my arguments in the full context within which they were written were valid and reasonable or somehow distorts and extreme.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
@ Ed and Dave,
Yes, I am fully aware of the Electoral College system in the USA. That’s the point. Being federal didn’t stop that crazy Presidential system arising, did it.
I am just as aware of the USA’s Electoral College as I am of the EU’s system of degressive proportionality used to allocate MEP seats in the EU. That system means that some states get one MEP per 75,000 voters and the UK got one MEP seat per 750,000 voters. Literally under the EU system Europeans are by design not equal (i.e. not equally represented). Some have ten times or more the say that others do. Degressive proportionality goes against the basic democratic principle that all votes should count equally and goes against it even more so than does the USA’s Electoral College.
My point was that no two federal systems are the same. The USA; Switzerland and the old USSR are/were all federal systems but are/were as different as chalk and cheese. One simply cannot say, as if it is a given, that federal systems work. Venezuela is federal, so do I make my point?
Whether a country’s political system works or how contented its population is has nothing to do with whether or not it is a federation – either way. The top four countries when it comes to how contented their populations are are not federal. Switzerland which is comes fifth and the USA is not even in the top ten.
@JCD
Switzerland comes closest to your ideal. The almost constant involvement of the electorate, often by referendums, is the norm. But I was always sure that the UK public were not that interested in politics for it to work here. Who knows now though? Politics has these last three years become increasingly topical. It feels like the ’70s all over again albeit with entirely different ideological battle lines.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
All I was saying, Dave, is that federalisation is such an imprecise term that it means nothing.
There is after all no reason whatsoever that the term cannot be used to describe the United Kingdom given our four nations and devolution. Would you hold the UK as proof that federalisation works?
I truly wasn’t trying to tell you what you think rather that what you said had little objective validity. Indeed your words explicitly held that USA federalisation works and quite frankly I am not sure it does. It elected Trump !!! Inequality on a staggering scale, racism and violence thrive there. Commit a crime in one state and you face perhaps the death penalty. Commit it ten feet away across the State line and you don’t. That’s madness. Do you truly not see what I mean?
What the EU is attempting has never been seen before anywhere in the world let alone ever seen to work. Loosely grouping it into the federalisation category means nothing because that category is far too loosely defined such as to be close to meaningless.
You are right though in that I do not believe the EU can now change. It was, was it not, founded on deceit. Sell a political project to the electorates on the falsehood that it was just about trade and then inch from there. I’m sorry, Dave, but there is something in me that is certain that such leopards do not change their spots. An institution founded on deceit of its very nature develops an ethos of deceit and usually quite quickly becomes utterly incapable of changing. Politicians are politicians the world over. What makes you think the average politician across the EU is any better than he/she is in the UK. Go check Macron’s ratings they are far worse than May’s or go look at the Yellow Jacket riots and fires on French streets. Would you prefer that here? The EU is no utopia and before you jump in I am not suggesting that you ever said it was. I am merely saying just look at what one of the strongest advocates of a federal Europe has caused to happen on the streets of France. Go look at the politicians that control the EU like Tusk and Drunker. Every one of them kicked out of state office in their homelands by their own native electorates. What next? May as EU President when we kick her out if you see what I mean.
If you expect the EU to change I am certain you will be disappointed. It is now more powerful than the sum total of its constituent states. It will bully and cajole its member states to comply with its will no differently from the manner in which May is forcing through her deal which the vast majority of the UK electorate disagree with and patently do not want. I believe that after the problems with Brexit we in the UK could force through changes in the way Westminster works. But I do not believe we or even all member states working in unison could now force the EU to change. Each individual state would be bullied independently by the over arching EU such that a solid front for change would never be allowed by the EU to develop. The only thing that might bring change is for a significant number of states to leave the EU such that the EU bureaucrats suddenly concluded that they have no option but to change or they’ll all be out of a job. Until then it will quite obviously will be more of the same with more and more liberties taken. That is human nature. Power corrupts.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
I don’t think that’s a secret. It was mentioned here way back when. A Federal Europe makes a lot of sense to me. We would certainly have much more local government and accountability than we do now under Westminster. It works for the USA, Canada, Brazil, India, Australia, Mexico, Germany, Switzerland, Austria etc.
Dave, you know not fully of what you speak.
The EU as it is now and where it has declared plans to head, is absolutely nothing like the federal structure present in the states you mention; except perhaps Germany. The degree of divergence permitted between states in the other federations you cited is HUGE.
You will obviously be aware that such is so in the USA with states having control even over whether or not to have the death penalty. But what may shock you if you have never look closely at the federations you cite is the permitted divergence in the other federations you listed.
Australia places almost all powers under the control of the individual states/territories. For example, the state parliaments have huge plenary power to legislate with respect to education, criminal law and state police, health, transport, and local government. The Central Parliament does not have any specific power to legislate in these areas.
Canada also places the large percentage of powers within the three provincial parliaments for example each can determine its own fishing and agricultural policies(!).
Austria has a directly elected president and more federal freedoms than the EU plans even for today’s nation states.
That you cite Switzerland which has perhaps the best direct democracy in the world with referendums being the norm, amazes me it could not be further from what the EU is or intends to be.
I could go on and on. There is absolutely no federation in the world that seeks to centralise in the way that the EU already has done in so many areas and plans to in future. If any one the other federations you cited (bar perhaps Germany) ever tried to impose by hook or by crook the kind of centralisation that is the EU’s declared objective those countries beyond any doubt (certainly the USA, Australia and Canada) would descend into true civil war very rapidly indeed.
When will folks wake up to the fact that the degree of centralisation and removal of democracy that the EU seeks has never been seen or achieved before in the world. It is intended to be an autocratic Empire sold to Europeans as something else. Remember – The elected chamber of the EU (the Parliament) is in the main castrated and is only able to vote on what the unelected chamber (the Commission) requests it to. The Parliament of its own right cannot propose or repeal EU legislation.
We are we not all aware that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The EU is certainly on the cusp of such with the EU Commission becoming more powerful almost by the day. It wants central control of fiscal policy, of an army, of foreign policy and already has control of agricultural and fishing policies. This isn’t going to end well folks. Truly it isn’t.
I am reminded of the words of Carl Sagan:
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
The EU by for so long pretending to be what it was not is a charlatan of continental proportions. Only in the last few years now it has captured so many that has it been emboldened to increasingly show its full colours and objective of ‘central everything’. Attempting to lull people into a false sense of security by suggesting that the EU seeks merely a federal system as already works in the USA, Australia, Canada and Switzerland (!!!) is simply untrue. It is nothing like them. When will folks wake up to this bamboozle.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
I assume you are using the term ‘feet of clay’ in that it was used by the Civil Servant; especially given that you said he would not expand on it. I’m also not sure in what sense the CS was using it. I’d need to know more about the CS himself before I could construe his meaning with any confidence. Some people use the term to mean slow getting around to actually doing anything others use it for some other character flaw.
Of somethings I am sure and that is that Benn was not of the right nor was he an individual who longed for the return of Empire. Moreover his words re the EU being anti-democratic are spot on in that the EU’s structure is exactly what he based his arguments on. The further one moves the seat of power from the electorate the less democracy is able to exist.
I chuckle and shake my head when ‘The People’s Vote Campaign’ or other Remainers marches take place. Protest marches I believe to be a fundamental right in a democratic country but tell me how many of those marchers would be present if they had to march to Brussels or Strasbourg? MPs surely also realise that membership of the EU both gives them a shield to hide behind and/or a scapegoat to blame. Or are they simply like common ‘jobsworths’; Love to help but can do nothing about it them’s the rules. The EU increasingly shifts accountability to some distant citadel. Remember the EU plan is for a common fiscal policy, common foreign policy, etc., etc. Less real work for the Westminster mob and less accountability; ’twas the other 27 that did it, not me guv.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Oh, I forgot. How many of us here recall David Dimbleby and Tony Benn looking as young as they do here; the classic Tony Benn v Roy Jenkins EU debate during the 1975 referendum. It is frightening how right Tony Benn was even back then. Compare what he said then in 1975 to the events of the last few years since his death. I do wonder how Hilary Benn can be so very different or is it that he saw that his father’s integrity and genuine conviction were virtues that are far too heavy to carry if you want to climb to the top of the greasy pole?
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
That’ll just be trying to keep up with the Jones then, because most EU states are already on the march to the right as this years EU elections will no doubt confirm. I hate to say this because I doubt most around here will agree but I truly doubt that most European nations/people would ever have begun marching right again were it not for the political ambitions of the EU. I don’t think a purely trading bloc would have caused such.
I share entirely Tony Benn’s view that the EU is “the most bureaucratic and terrifying system in the world”. I find this speech in particular the most compelling and the most consistent with my own views although this one to the Oxford Students Union a year before his death is perhaps the most direct. The argument that Leavers are from the far right has always been wrong and as I have said many times in Brexit related threads I am generally somewhat left of centre.
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Good Idea about Sub-Headings, Ed, but not sure where to put them? Perhaps just a bold line to a post. So here goes.
** Political UK Consequences of May’s WA Being Ratified ***
As I typed that subheading it suddenly came into my mind that everything May touches is RAT’ified. But humour aside, I do wonder where politics, especially Tory Party politics will go over the next few years. My view is that where Major forced through Maastricht thereby putting a sticking plaster on a boil in his party and to a lesser degree one in the country at that time, May forcing her deal through at this point seeks to put a sticking plaster on a rancid, pustular, gangrenous ulcer which grew both of Major’s boil and her added infection of it; not merely in her party but now in the entire country.
It is an absolute fact that May is forcing through a deal that a significant majority of the UK electorate (both Leavers and Remainers) do not want and even more importantly one that 75% of her own party’s grassroots members do not want. I believe therefore that pressure in both the country and especially in her party to evade, escape, reject or renege on the WA, whichever term one favours, is absolutely certain to be huge. A True Brexit Party is certain to emerge, although I suspect that will take a couple of years to fully blossom, will snap increasingly, viciously at the Tory heels. Especially if as seems likely the Trade Negotiations will see us being put to the sword by the EU given that we have disarmed ourselves by paying the £39B up front; voting never to leave No Deal and arming them with threat of the backstop.
How will the Tory party react? To my mind the Tories will have no option but to swing hard right to a Brexiteer Leader. BoJo is again surging very dramatically as Tory voters’ choice and even more so as the grassroots membership’s favorite for Leader. A YouGov poll for The Times (published today) asked Conservative voters who they think would make a good Leader; 41% said Boris compared to 28% for Michael Gove, 27% for Jacob Rees-Mogg, 26% for David Davis, 25% for Sajid Javid and 24% for Jeremy Hunt. That gives BoJo a significant lead over his closest rival, Gove. And remember Gove, was the one who first suggested reneging on the WA. It is almost reaching the point where the Parliamentary Party dare not leave BoJo out of the final two candidates put to the membership. Immensely so so in that JRM has said he will not stand but will back BoJo. But then equally the Tory MPs will know that to put BoJo as one of the final two effectively makes him leader because the grassroots will pick no other if he’s in the run-off and backed by JRM.
So where, folks, do you all think the Tories will head as May exits leaving the sepsis that she has so determinedly exacerbated behind her?
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
Oh I forgot………. I can’t see that withdrawing from the WA would somehow suddenly establish that we don’t keep our word. The folks in Westminster who run the country have already shown these last two years that they don’t keep their word; especially our Prime Minister. If the UK seeks to retain any standing whatsoever in the world it must now demonstrate that it values democracy. It is preposterous for MP’s to hold they have a mandate via our FPTP electoral system and then ignore the will of the people which considered using that identical metric would have delivered a huge mandate for leave. I have not posted this picture before and its been around for a long time so you may have seen it but it remains relevant:
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During the Covid-19 Epidemic I will be wearing a mask and goggles while posting so that if I become infected I won't spread it to you.
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