Back to the booing. Just heard an Aussie commentator complain about “yobbish behaviour” at the English grounds 😂😂😂

Might be a gentleman’s game but there aren’t many sports where intimidation can turn into ‘violence’ within the laws.

Rugby
Aussie rules
Ice hockey
Ice hockey
Ice hockey
Ice hockey
Ice hockey

Agree. We’ve had our fun with Smith, he deserved respect there. That’s almost the same spot that the ball that killed Phil Hughes hit. Not really something to be cheering.

79-3 at the moment and not showing much sign of improvement

Smith and Head, again. About the only way out of this looks to be to hit Smith in the Head. He is annoyingly very good, and probably the difference between two mediocre batting lineups

Despite his test beginnings, Bairstow’s recent limited overs successes seem to have clouded his judgment

Calypso collapso, again

Ali being as useful as ever 😒

Stand by my earliet comments sbout yestetday; as for any of warner, bancroft or smith being banned for life – get a grip man.

Banned for life? No. Made to feel uncomfortable and reminded of their actions, I have no problem with this whatsoever, and particularly in Warner’s case. When they start acting like gentlemen they can be treated like them.

That said, chatting with an Aussie colleague today, he reckoned we’d have seen the back of Bancroft on performance alone but for the feeling of guilt for their treatment. Nobody plays the victim quite like an Aussie who’s been caught out

Not out BECAUSE it hit the stumps!

Put it in cycling terms they’re as bad as Armstrong

To be fair, I’m not entirely sure he was that upset about being caught

They were punished for what they did and that’s the end if it.

Nah. For a team so good at dishing it out, they can have it back at them. Warner the bogan knuckledragger in particular. I do have some sympathy for Smith, but at the game time, it’s his captaincy that fostered the atmosphere in the first place

Staying in is not something Roy does

Athers was, for a while, talking about his hard hands as a virtue. He’s supposed to be an opener for pity’s sake, not some lower order pinch hitter

Just spotted what the supporters in the Hollies stand are waving: sandpaper 😂

He wasn’t a happy chappy

Even better, it was missing 😂😂😂

Couldn’t happen to a nicer chap

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

I’m prepared to sacrifice Edgbaston, and Birmingham in general really

What do you expect? The cheat didn’t walk…

The trick used to be a diesel estate. But then diesel estates got quick.

Rone – do you have a point to make?

Rone:

Which 5000 people have been surveyed now?

You have noticed polls do change daily and don’t ways reflect actual voting.

Also Rone:

I’m not debating how good a poll might be I’m debating the fact that someone specifically said something that is not true because we haven’t voted again yet.

You are flattering the average voter. They don’t tend to look as far as the actual policies.

So by extension, their policy on brexit should matter little

How ‘was’ it not a majority by the definition of the vote’s outcome?

I’m not defining it by the vote’s outcome. There are about 65m people in the UK, only 17.2m voted leave. That’s not a majority. But, if you define it by the vote’s outcome alone, as I explained above if you re-ran that vote today and nobody had changed their mind, enough brexit voting oldies will have been replaced by remain voting 18 and 19 year olds to change the outcome.

Would you have been saying that if it had been the other way around?

Farage was

And irrespective, Parliament has enacted the result (badly).

On the one hand, in agreement with you it has I guess. Which means it’s not at all undemocratic to ask the question again (the counterpoint to the “we must enact it before we can ask again” trope). On the other hand, all parliament has done is largely abdicate its responsibility to serve in the best interests of the UK’s population for the last three years.

Which 5000 people have been surveyed now?

You have noticed polls do change daily and don’t ways reflect actual voting.

Most reputable polls will give a statistical margin of error. Interpreting trends as opposed to point-in-time results leads to a pretty sound conclusion that sentiment has turned against brexit. Interpreting these data, particularly over the past 6 months since we got to the pointy end show a preference for remain.

So do us a favour and stop passing stuff like this off as fact.

#irony

But the crux of the argument is that not enough brexit voters in marginal seats for either the tories or labour have changed their minds enough to enable either to win an election on a position of ignoring the referendum result.

I disagree. There is a hardcore on both sides, yes. But for the vast majority of people, brexit is three year old news that they’d rather just went away so the country can move on. Fundamentally, the UK will be better off on just about any metric aside from wealth generation for the top 0.1% by choosing to remain, so as a consequence, any party that campaigns a GE on a platform of a second referendum and more agreeable domestic policies will likely win over one that vows to commit to the first referendum result come what may but has less well-received domestic policies, whichever side of the left/right divide they fall. The qualifier to that argument i guess is that if Brexit is enacted, a government’s ability to do much beyond being told what to do by just about any other state we wish to trade with is probably pretty limited.

Let me reiterate a point I’ve made repeatedly. Any serious political party wanting to govern the UK must respect the referendum result. Deny it all you want but the simple reality is that any party that refuses to do this will not be elected to government.

You can reiterate it until you’re blue in the face, but it’s an argument that’s fundamentally flawed.

The referendum was non-binding and advisory, and whilst a small majority of those voting in the referendum voted to leave, 17m is not a majority of the British public by any metric. It happened nearly three years ago, and simply assuming nobody has changed their mind in the presence of a wealth of new information, the shifting demographic of voters (i.e. death of those >70 who voted overwhelmingly to leave vs teenagers who would have voted overwhelmingly to remain becoming eligible to vote) would mean that if it was re-run today the result would be reversed.

If you bring into consideration the fact that people have also changed their mind, the majority erring towards remain, and a re-run of the referendum would most likely see the result reversed, possibly by a large margin. Die-hard brexiteers know this, which is why they are so opposed to the idea.

So, in the absence of a second referendum, we have the imperfect metrics of the local and then European elections with which to judge brexit sentiment. Neither will provide a conclusive result, as in many cases just as with the first referendum itself, they will be treated as an opportunity to protest against the establishment.

Where to from here? **** knows. We can carry on down the route of huge political, economic and social self-harm and try to get the least-worst brexit that will be any metric see the UK seriously diminished. Or, we can head down a route that will cause significant short-term political and social harm, possibly via a second referendum, and try to explain why brexit simply is not worth it. The trouble with the latter is that even if Westminster politicians were up-front in explaining why they had lied for the past 40 years in blaming the EU for domestic problems, the people who need to listen to that information the most are those who are least likely to do so. The trouble with the former is that once we leave and the EU bogeyman can’t be blamed any more, the problems will still remain, and will be compounded by the significant self-harm that brexit will bring.

Back to your final point, which is also fundamentally flawed:
1) At the local elections, a vote for the largest party for that ward that isn’t the the Tories stands the best chance of keeping the Tories out. This probably won’t be Labour in quite a lot of cases.
2) At the Euro elections it’s proportional representation, so a vote for any party that isn’t the Tories reduces their vote.
3) Neither of those elections have any bearing on their power in Westminster

I would say that the big story is, in a time when politics is front and center in everyday life, that the turnout was virtually halved from the last election.

I’d say the opposite. By-election turnouts are usually lower than at GE, in this case it wasn’t particularly marginal anyway, and frankly given the turmoil it might only be a month or so before an another GE anyway, then what’s the frigging point?

Which made it easier to vote lib-dem since you were a winner all ways.

Only if you were one of the alleged small number of centrists

Look, I’m not sure I disagree with the premise of your original point, I’m just not sure I see the evidence to agree with it either

I think dissonance raises some interesting points. I’ve still not worked out whether I agree or disagree.

On the one hand, you look at how small the centrist Lib Dems are/were and perhaps that’s evidence of how small the centre actually is. On the other, their highest vote share in history came when you had Tories with a red-ish tie under Cameron and Labour with a blue-ish tie and effectively all three were centrist.

Like I said, it’s an interesting point. But I’m not sure past voting preferences provide enough data to answer it

With 23% supporting no deal. Funny definition of “majority”

That’s not too dissimilar to the percentage of the population who voted for brexit in the first place

And a50 should not have been triggered until a solution for the border had been found.

So that would be never then. Only way is to maintain regulatory and customs alignment with RoI, inc. FoM

How will parliament stop it? Given that they can’t even back an indicative vote suggesting that they should have the power to do so?

Vote of no confidence needs 320 votes to pass (with SF not taking their seats). Tories currently have 313 (312 now Bowles has gone) and the DUP 10, which makes 322. So, perhaps it’s not beyond reach with a couple of defections from people like Ken Clarke.

However, given the outcome of a passed no confidence motion would be to delay (and possibly even revoke) brexit, it’s quite likely that Hoey et al. could vote to save the government. Hoey’s seat voted by a large majority to remain. I doubt they’ll want her back, which could be impetus enough given the levels of self interest around at present.

In which Labour will have the arses handed to them on a plate. My mp is good, has been campaigning for a PV all along, but unless he stands as independent my vote will go liberal. No ****ING way will I vote for Corbyn’s Labour again, even if it means my MP’s seat falling to conservative.

Given my previous vows about never again voting for the Lib Dems, and now Corbyn’s behaviour over Brexit, at this rate about the only party I’ll be able to vote for is the Tories. But I suppose at least they’re honest in terms of being up front about how much they’re going to **** you sideways with a telegraph pole.

Indicative votes are advisory, not binding

Yes, but presumably it wouldn’t take much more of a tweak to make one meaningfulbinding? And if there’s a majority for such an amendment, presumably it would then pass?

I still have no faith that the great British (sorry, English) public would resist the temptation to use a 2nd ref as a giant dirty protest.

I think that technically us Welsh are also to blame :(

I have seen nothing that suggests parliament can force alternatives onto a government who are willfully ignoring any and every other option.

Yes, they can. Now they have control of parliamentary business, the order of things which are considered by parliament is no longer set by the government. This means that anything can be tabled with the majority of the house. In the context of the current discussion, a simple majority would be required on an, ahem, meaningful vote on the last two options after indicative votes on the various brexit avenues, and if it passed it would head to the Lords. Assuming it also passes there, it heads for royal ascent and becomes law.

The last bit has not really changed, just in normal times the government also has a majority, so law it doesn’t support never passes. However, clearly on anything brexit they do not have a majority, and thus chaos. All the “Parliament seizing control” has done is allow parliament to discuss items of its majority’s choosing – normally matters to be discussed in the house are chosen by the government (which is usually an outright majority, and thus this never came up)

To a point this debate has shows that ideology trumps common sense and intelligence

This is definitely it. He’s postgraduate qualified and works at a level you’d expect for reasonable career progression within the civil service, so he’s clearly not an idiot. Indeed, aside from the odd chunter about The Falklands (or Las Malvinas as he likes to call them) we usually agree on political topics. But when it comes to brexit he’s as abusive and unhinged as your average Daily Mail commenter.

Having said all that, he’s clearly an animal more equal than others when it comes to his communism hobby: his first home was an ex-council house (he didn’t see the irony in this), and his new 5-bedroom pad was mostly paid for by his in-laws.

Mind you, he also hates the English yet managed to marry an English wife and move there from Wales 10 years ago. So I guess “as I say, not as I do” runs quite strong 😂

Nope, definitely not furriners. Probably a level of anti-globalisation to it, but look who wins if we do crash out 🤦🏼‍♂️

So far all I’ve had back is “it’s what people voted for”

Ok, so I have a really bizarre one here: I have a friend who’s somewhere to the left of Corbyn who’s just posted a link to the leave without a deal petition. I asked him why. I know he won’t answer, so I’m asking you lot. Why would an otherwise fairly intelligent and well educated person in their mid 30s who hates the right wing more than Marx vote for something that at this stage would so clearly benefit only the insanely rich, and perhaps the insane?

I can understand his original reasoning for voting leave (to a point), but seeing how it’s all panning out I’m beyond perplexed.

Not knowing the layout of said field, could he not have segregated the cows from the path with an electric fence?

Nah, the result would have been shocking