Brexit now = CETA +/-?

[The VFM Addict]

Yes, while still serving, employees of the ONS could/would probably be barred from standing for office.   That’s why he resigned so he could stand.     But suggesting that he would be barred from revealing his CV after resigning is preposterous.    It’s like saying Kier Starmer should have kept it under wraps that he was previously the DPP.    Besides what should folks do, try to exercise their right to be forgotten on Linkedin,  etc., and ask every publication that has ever mentioned their name while in post to erase those records.    Of course someone standing for office has a right to, indeed an obligation to, make their CV available.     You’re flogging a totally dead horse on this one, Ed, and making yourself look rather silly.

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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 Williams]

What I can say about the ONS is that it must be a great career choice:

http://tinyurl.com/y49lm7b7

They have their own FOI page:

http://tinyurl.com/yy53o5nk

Out of 55 Reviews by ‘indeed’, just 4 negative, many very positive.

http://tinyurl.com/y3hdz2uu

“Just sayin’ “, as my wife says when she wants the last word. Not that there is any chance of a Last Word on this interminable Thread.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Dave Rice]

I’ve been in Rhyl doing Steve’s cctv the last 2 days and it’s been a brexit free zone. Lovely.

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

You mean a Euro free zone. Must be lovely.

[The VFM Addict]

I can well understand why you didn’t want to talk Brexit in Rhyl, Dave.     Rhyl voted heavily in favour of Leave so you were, given your own views, ‘behind enemy 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.

[The Duke]

The majority I speak to are in remaiers. With a few leavers mixed in. There isn’t much love for brexit anymore form either side.

Everyone seems warn down by the subject. Most now hold the opinion of ‘just do whatever and get it done.’

I was loosing interest in it, so the pub has become a welcome distraction from it.

[keith with the teef]

Just gotta say with what Vince cable has promised and what that stupid Scottish women is up to is that politics have fallen to an all time low and its not funny.

V bad idiots.

[Dave Rice]

VFM, you really have some strange ideas. Do you think I research each constituency I go into and decide if it’s a Leave area I slink around the streets in fear, or if it’s Remain I drape an EU flag around my shoulders?

It was a Brexit free couple of days because we were too busy getting the CCTV and WiFi in quickly (dodging the weather) and the flat I was staying in (above the pub ? ) has no TV. The topic of conversation in the pub is the runners and riders at Sandown and that’s what’s on the TV to be replaced by football or music. I never heard anyone mention the B word at all, apart from last night and that was all about Blue Moon on the jukebox.

I think you spend too long in the Brexit bubble convincing yourself that whatever the “currently in the media” Leave faction is up to is wonderful and will do the trick and rubbishing anything else. Just don’t get too disappointed when the Farage thing produces the same results all the rest have; Leave infighting, no Brexit, more alienation of Remain and the country even more pissed off.

[The VFM Addict]

Don’t be a silly billy.  No-one forces you to talk Brexit no matter where you are.   Whether you do or not is always your own choice.  So anywhere can be Brexit free if you want it to be.   As for TV surely you know there are hundreds of channels where Brexit isn’t even mentioned.      The thing about ‘behind enemy lines’ was meant as a joke hence the chuckle after it.   Don’t take yourself so seriously all the time, Dave.

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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 Williams]

VFM, I think you must have made a list of all voters in the Referendum, and their choices. Because you always appear to have the ‘facts’ ready to hand, whenever someone here mentions any specific place. What you fail to perceive is that the vast majority of voters, from either side of the vote, are sick to the back teeth and just want it over.

Take my adopted county Lincolnshire (highest Leave vote in UK) and my birth county Nottinghamshire (affluent Rushcliffe was the only area to vote Remain: Ken Clarke’s ward). Talk to locals now, as I do here and in my trips back to Notts, and what you get is a mix of people fed up with the whole thing and several dedicated Leavers who wish they had voted Remain, now they know more about the issues. I’m not going to say that the vote would change one way or another, because without the crystal ball that you appear to have, I simply don’t know. But I do have an inkling, although I only have details of two counties and cba to tabulate the rest.

This crusade you seem to be engaged upon, is at best unhealthy and at worst a fixation. Chill out guy, as my grandbrats might say: whatever the happs, we will all be here tomorrow.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The VFM Addict]

Not sure that I have all of the facts re any area but I do have a habit of researching things before making pronouncements.   That comes from years of talking with Prof’s and other senior academics day in day out as part of my job.   You’ll get chewed up very rapidly if you haven’t checked your facts before opening one’s gob.   I’ve seen noobs in the same role as I had getting totally shredded and kicked out the door in close on a minute.    Usually did them good too as they learned by it.

Do you recall pre-the referendum when the polls had Remain well ahead?   What appears to have occurred was ‘Shy Leavers’ too fearful of stating where they stood for fear of being called racist, etc.   But in the privacy of the voting booth no need to be shy.    I am convinced that currently there are a lot of folks too ‘shy’ to talk Brexit believing others are bored with it; and indeed many are.    So folks go with the flow to ‘fit in’.    Such has never been my trait.   I’m famous for lacking tact.    But then folks who know me know that I don’t reach decisions lightly but when I’ve reached one I’ll stand my ground until I see conclusive evidence that it errs.

So, Bob, I guess my position is that there are are many folks just going with the flow while in public who may hold a different opinion in private.   Much the same as pre-the-ref.    I guess the EU MEP elections will give us all a better fix on where the truth/reality actually resides.

My bet, and I recognise fully that I’m putting myself up  up to be shot at here if I’m wrong, is that the Brexit Party will do even better than the polls are currently suggesting and that is already suggesting an astounding surge.

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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.

[The VFM Addict]

There’s a good roundup of the latest MEP polling here.

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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 P]

Supposedly there will be no ‘Conservative’ platform for the EU election, which I guess means there will be no official Conservative candidates. This means that Nigel is going to have to be really careful that his MEPs do not screw up things for future negotiations.

If instead instead Theresa throws a hissy fit and there is a General Election the recent impact of the Far Right Vox party must have a lot of Tories worried, as their ‘first past the post’ system fractured the Right and allowed in a (minority) Socialist Government. It is a clear warning what could happen in the UK.

[The VFM Addict]

Unless the Tories switch tack in a manifesto (probably under a Brexiteer Leader) to a position that recaptures the Leavers that are now flooding to the Brexit Party then they are toast not just at the Euro elections but at the next GE.   That is surely clear now.   I suspect the 1922 committee will rue turning down a rules change last week allowing May’s immediate removal.    Fortune favours the brave but the Tories seem to have few if any of such ilk.

May is erratic enough to go for a GE.   She has no personal seat to worry about unlike most backbenchers.   A GE could be her personal weapon of last resort but its a doomsday weapon for most of her Parliamentary Party.    After all May does indeed have something of ‘Dr Strangelove’ about her in her facial expressions.

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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 Rice]

It’s Remainers you want moving their allegiance. Re distributing the Leave votes amongst Leave factions achieves nothing Brexit wise. Imploding the Tory party achieves nothing Brexit wise. Changing the Tory leader to a hard line Brexiteer achieves nothing but to put up the backs of Remain and moderate Leavers who have already stymied hard line Brexit manoeuvres in Parliament.

Achieving a national consensus is what’s always been required. Fevered headlines in the Leave media move that further away. Lord Snooty and his nutters and the DUP are the icing on the cake. Who wants them pulling the strings in Westminster?

“Leave” have to realise that to achieve what they want, leaving the EU, they are going to have to soften their approach not harden it. After 3 years of trying the opposite you would think that had sunk in.

[Bob Williams]

I think TM PM’s facial expressions have a lot to do with the fact that she is so beset on all sides by snipers from her own Party, that she is forced to sup with the ‘Labour Devil’ to get anywhere. She is in a horrible position: that is not sympathy, it’s fact. Her many Tory critics and attackers would have even less of a clue, were they in her position and they know it. Always good to attack someone else’s performance, safe in the knowledge that you will not be called upon to demonstrate your own inability to match it.

I don’t think she wants a GE either: she is, and always has been a committed Conservative. No one knows better than TM that the Tories will probably be wiped out at the next GE, unless Brexit can be achieved and survived with the minimum amount of damage to jobs and the economy. Only the complete incompetence and some spectacularly dumb Labour figureheads, are keeping Tory hopes alive. Face it, with people like Dianne Abbott as Shadow Home Secretary (Are they serious? Home Sec?) it’s just a matter of time before another demonstration of incompetence, ignorance or both.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The VFM Addict]

I have to agree Dianne Abbott terrifies me.  She seems to be Chris Grayling’s soul mate;  “Anything you can screw up I can screw up better.  I can screw up anything better than you…..”    I can’t help but feel that DA must have something on JC; who knows what she may have learned during pillow talk?

Returning to T. May for over two years she tried to wander around in No-Man’s Land between the two warring sides never making totally clear which side she was really on.   Its hardly surprising that such led to both sides opening fire on her.

I do disagree though Bob about her still being a committed Tory.   She is now merely a committed PM looking at her own place in history.   She committed to achieving Brexit and frankly that is all that now remains as her goal.    The grass roots don’t want her 79% to 21%.    Most of the MPs no longer want her but are too frightened to oust her by a rules change.    She has led the party to a point where it will be crushed in the local elections; slaughtered in the EU elections and has zero chance of winning the next GE.  She can’t salvage any of that.   Its too late.   So all she now has is trying to fulfill her personal commitment to deliver Brexit.    If Satan walked into No.10 and offered her Brexit but with a price tag of the Tories being out of power for three General Election cycles I have not the slightest and I mean not the slightest doubt she’d take his deal without even blinking.

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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.

[The VFM Addict]

Today’s piece in The Spectator by Claire Fox, darling of the Left but now a Brexit Party candidate, for some reason almost brought me to tears.   I’m not sure I know why but it did.   This woman really knows how to communicate.

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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.

[The VFM Addict]

HOT NEWS – Game on !!!

The Onasanya recall petition has succeeded with a massive 19,000+ of her electorate requesting her recall.   Peterborough is a Tory-Labour marginal but also a heavily Leave voting constituency.   In the 2015 General Election the votes were Conservative 18,684; Labour 16,759; UKIP 7,485.

In the EU Referendum Leave was 60.9% with 53,216 votes and Remain 39.1% with 34,176 votes.  Turnout was 72.3%.

Needless to say Nigel Farage has immediately announced that The Brexit Party will be standing a candidate.    Not sure if Change UK will.   A total drubbing might result and be pretty much fatal for Chukka et al before they really get going as a party.   My bet is that they won’t dare fight this by-election.

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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 Rice]

Of course not, like Brexit won’t bother with Brighton or Bristol West.

Would the drubbing they would receive mean the end of the Brexit Party before they get going?

You really are having increasingly tunnel vision, time to get out more ? get out of that bubble you’re in.

[Author]

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