and I can’t don’t want to see an upside to leaving.

Is probably closer to the reason behind a lot of the remainistas comments here.[/quote]
No Solo that won’t do. Other than trade, movement of people and sovereignty, there’s been little or no discussion of the reasons why we would want to leave. Now I’ve considered trade, movement of people and sovereignty. What else am I not considering? A list will do – if there’s anything substantive we can discuss it later.

Our trading future is with India, China, South America and North America whose markets will dwarf the EU’s. The emerging economies alone are home to 80% of the worlds population

Ok I can buy that, or at least buy that as one of a range of possible scenarios. Where’s the big disadvantage of trading with those countries from within the EU?

I maybe wouldn’t vote to join the EU now if we weren’t in it, but it would be disruptive to leave and I can’t see an upside to leaving.

You have plenty of catching up to do then

I’m not the one who’s behind.

Are you for real?

I certainly don’t subscribe to your world view – what little of it I can understand.

@Growie

Its Gowrie BTW

the Leave argument is that our trade and business will be improved as we’ll be able to better align with growing global markets like Asia as opposed to stagnating / about to explode Economies and new members desperate to join who comrpise poor or very challenged economies, eg Eastern Europe / Turkey.

So you’d like to tie our future to the expansionist Chinese dictatorship, the at times shaky democracies of the far east and India’s inward looking protectionism, would you? That’s out of the frying pan and into the fire.

What I don’t understand from you Brexiters – if the economy is going to be the same, and trade isn’t going to be disrupted and movement of UK folks to the continent will be largely unaffected in practical terms – why the H**l do you want out?

Less than 0.5% of UK GDP as our net contribution. CBI reckons benefits from membership might be in the order of 4-5% of GDP (£62-£78bn).

Very few folk have the same view on both unions – I think THM Is the only pro person on both unions but there may be others.

Well I too am pro both. Who on earth are you talking to to get that idea?

Or you could look at it another way, small independent slaughterhouses would be more costly to inspect, way more open to abuse, possibility of food contamination, more chance of polluting the environment etc etc.

Absolutely correct. Having had a lot of personal experience of small local abattoirs over the years, although there were some good ones, most were poorly run sh**holes. You wouldn’t want to eat meat from them, they’re well gone. EU hygiene rules played a large part in greatly improving meat hygiene in the UK.

Can you not just ask him to stop posting things that are quite clearly factually incorrect?

You have done, ad nauseam. Has it had the desired effect?
As I see it your response to virtually every Jamba post is to have a go at him. It is tiresome.

Common agricultural policy takes up 40% of EU budget. Agriculture makes up less than 2% of EU GDP.

But the total EU budget is about 1% of the total EU GDP. So the amount spent on agriculture is about 0.4% of total GDP. And a large proportion of that is spent in a way that’s designed to look after the countryside, rather than subsidising production. Now whether that’s too much or not is a different story, but its not as dramatic as the figures you quote might suggest.

@Growie, it was the first one that came to mind. How about an EU army and one that can be deployed to police the borders of member countries without their right of veto – note this was discussed as the EU wanted to be able to OPEN the borders to migrants of countries who had sought to slow/divert migrants. Armed forces of another country on your land with no right to prevent it ?

But of course, it didn’t happen, and won’t happen because for it to happen would require all countires to agree to it. As I said, they’ve talked about it but nothing has happened that represents “ever closer political union”

How about the €300bn gift to Greece which now acts as a rope around Europes neck, Greece will default, the EU will be forced to put even more money in against the wishes of many countries as they’ve been outvoted ? € 2bn Slovakian taxpayers money, a relatively poor country, has been sent to Greece against the wishes of their government.

I’d think its more a milestone around Greece’s neck than the EU’s. Although it may have been a bad way out of a bad situation in no way does this represent “ever closer political union”.

As for every increasing political union – there’s not been much sign of that for these last 10 years has there?

Really ? I thought you must be being facious but I fear not. If Cameron ahd actually asked for some real changes then I could have supported him but the list of demands was an absolute joke.
As an aside over the past few years there has been consistent pressure from the EU to get the UK (non euro member of course) to harmonise VAT with them, this means no discounts for electricity and gas and VAT on food.[/quote]
So an ignored request to harmonise a tax code is the best example you can find of “ever increasing political union” these last 10 years.
You haven’t changed my mind.

Exactly. Whatever deal Cameron got was always going to be decried as vastly insufficient by those that want to leave, and always bulled up as a great achievement and just what Britain needs by Cameron.
As for every increasing political union – there’s not been much sign of that for these last 10 years has there? Especially for those countries outside the Euro. Still some talk about it, but no real action – or have I missed something?

Amitraz is the only one I can think of that has a noted side effect of signs of sedation in dogs, but its only in a limited number of flea/tick treatments.
What was the name of the product you used?

Whether you’re trading as a limited company or a sole trader/partnership will have a very significant impact on the rules/what you can get away with. Start there. But if you’re limited ie an employee, commercial vehicle is the only practical way to avoid a P11d implication inmy experience.

Rendering Ok on Chrome and windows 7 here as well.

Are you sure both the new router and the Sky modem are on the same subnet?

But you’d never drive into Leeds would you? Train all the time.

Bingley and surrounds. Only 20 mins by train from the centre of Leeds. Baildon Moor and Shipley Glen on the doorstep. Harden Moor, Ilkley Moor etc etc etc not very much further.

Publicly pointing out the futility and self defeating nature of these actions is tantamount to treason, and will get you roundly mocked in the gutter press, apparently. IT’S WHAT ISIS WANT, FFS!!!

That doesn’t, of its self, make it the wrong thing to do.

I’d stick with the special diet until the crystals are gone from his urine. Might be a few weeks, might be longer. If they’re not going then I’d get his urine cultured – checked for bacteria. It should be sterile and infections can promote crystal formation. Once the crystals are gone, if you keep his urine acidic, that’ll usually prevent the struvite from reforming. Acidic urine in dogs = meat based diet. There’s little evidence that dry foods are worse than wet for bladder stones nowadays ( there was a specific problem with cat foods in the ’70s), but you want lots of urine production, so wet feeding isn’t a bad idea.

Many of these fractures of the small bones of the toe take a long time to heal, with or without pins, plates, casts etc. I’ve not seen one that wasn’t painful during the healing process. The bones are short and the healing process often ends with some interference to the adjacent joints – so arthritis either from the time of healing or later in life. ie months or possibly years of pain or discomfort (no matter how skillful the surgeon who does the repair). Whereas removing the toe is quick, the dog won’t miss it and it’ll be pain free(ish) from about the day of the op.

Bagehot had a review of SNP record in this week’s Economist as well. Made many of the same points
A small snippet –

Ironically, the Scottish government’s underperformance rests precisely on the formula that makes it dominant. Special-interest groups are indulged, populist spending protected, services left unreformed for fear of making enemies, tabloid-friendly changes embraced and an “other” (the English, represented by Westminster) fingered for every failure or disappointment. The SNP’s soft autocracy in Scotland is the thread holding together the party’s distinctive tartan of universal handouts, leftist posturing, melodramatic flag-waving and structural conservatism. It amounts to a style of government that is more akin to Argentina’s Peronists than to the reformist Scandinavian social democrats to whom SNP politicians flatteringly compare themselves.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2015/10/rudderless-hegemony

As someone whose career was supported for around 15 years by BSE and the consequences, the answer to the OP’s question is no.

the 2018 cohort onwards will be graduating with student debts of something like 70K.

Which means that if they earn less than £60,000ish, they won’t even be covering the interest on the loan.
Sorry I don’t really follow – what do you mean by won’t be covering the interest?

This is already becoming reminiscent of the Michael Foot days – just without the donkey jacket and the intellect.

Could you have a yeast overgrowth of your gut? If you have then I’m told large carbohydrate meals feed the yeast resulting in excessive amounts of gas and consequential colic.
There is a lot of semi scientific mumbo jumbo doing the rounds about the gut and how it works. This post may be part of that.

What “enjoy driving” means will vary from person to person, surely. My last 10 years of cars have been merc, merc, jag, merc. I’ve enjoyed driving them all, but my least favorite was the jag. The merc v6 diesel engine is sublime, IMO.

We have progressed form the bottom 50% having 0.1 % of income to 1 %

You mean 10% don’t you? (well 9.5% from here)

and you want us to cheer for capitalism for raising the poor out of poverty.

Yes I do. Its been nothing else. Its far from perfect but capitialism, trade and globalisation have created that wealth, and however unequally its distributed the poorest 50% of the world’s population are overall, far, far better off than they were 70 years ago.
Have another look at Hans Rosling’s take on world poverty

Absolutely superb. We put it down 2 years ago throughout out downstairs. Not a mark on it since, very comfortable to walk on and easy to clean. So far its a lot more resistant to damage then the solid floorboards we had before.

Hey Ernie

Here’s a nice little article [/url]detailing the contributions to the treasury before and after privitisation of BT and several other ex public companies. If BT were contributing “massive amounts” before privatisation they were contributing up to 3 to 4 times that amount annually post privatisation. And that’s without the funds to the treasury from the sale itself.
Two quotes from the above link –

“British Telecom emerges from NERA’s economic analysis as a major contributor to exchequer revenues. Not only has the Government received over £13 billion in sales proceeds, but the exchequer has also ‘continued to receive over £1 billion a year after privatisation in the form of tax, dividends, interest and debt repayments’. As NERA observes: ‘Whereas in the four years before privatisation BT contributed up to £625 million a year to public sector funds, since privatisation it has generally contributed between £1 billion and £2.4 billion a year in addition to privatisation proceeds’.

And

NERA suggests that this is surprising. However, there is a straightforward explanation for this trend. Since privatisation, BT has been able to attract outside capital as well as self-finance the huge sums required to invest in the latest telecom technology. In addition, the company is now far more efficient than it was under state ownership and it has been able to diversify into a number of different business activities, both here and overseas. In turn, the taxpayer has benefited from this improved efficiency and pre-tax profitability.

I think I’ll stop there.

Thanks for your insight Gowrie, however your extreme “the market knows best, governments keep out” if applied would have resulted in the UK having no railways today, as well as a few less banks.

But that’s not my position. My point was one of observation as much as philosophy – nationalisation of firms and industries in the the UK over the last 100 years have largely been expensive disasters. Who knows what the railways would look like today if they had never been taken into public ownership? And I thought the left in general hated banks. Surely a few less would be a good thing. We’ve lost plenty in the last few years anyway.

And it’s not mainstream thinking which enjoys popular support.
Which is of course ironic as you came onto this thread to claim that Jeremy Corbyn is out of touch with public opinion.

It matters little if my position is mainstream, or indeed that you see irony in the juxtaposition of ideas – the fact remains Corbyn’s views on public ownership are discredited and marginal in the current overall political spectrum.

It’s been “a very expensive exercise for the country” because of the complete failure of the private sector.

Agreed. But made a lot more expensive by the move to public ownership.

And if you continue to nationalise the loses and privatise the profit it will continue to be “a very expensive exercise for the country”.

So best not nationalise in the first place. Picking up the pieces from the fallout of collapsing banks might well have been cheaper overall than taking them into public ownership.
If Lloyds hadn’t been “persuaded” to buy Halifax, Lloyds probably wouldn’t have needed public ownership. Halifax would have failed, but at a lower cost than putting Lloyds through the public owenrship mill, perhaps.
RBS would surely have been more tricky, but if UK gov had adopted the tactics of the French and German governments (there’s no real problem, here’s some cash under the table) then we might have got out of that at a lot lower cost, even if UK gov had to take over some of the more toxic debt.
Now I can hear you parroting “that’s nationalising the loses and privatising the profits” – yes but at potentially a lot lower cost to the public purse overall.

Today there is no British mass car manufacturer which has 40% of the market, which 1 million jobs rely on, and which is a major export earner.

That’s my point surely. Its gone despite the Canute like attempts of the nationalisers.

Aye, funny how nationalisation in fine when the financial markets **** up!

Well not for me. The nationialsation of the banks had all the lamentable features of most other nationalisations of the last 100 years.
1) Pre nationalisation interference (eg Lloyds being persuaded to buy Halifax)
2) Nationalisation at great cost
3) Political dabbling post nationalisation
4) Continued public cost.
There is an argument that not taking them into public ownership would have been worse, but overall its been a very expensive exercise for the country, which is typical of public ownership.

Does it not kind of go without saying that when choosing examples, you should pick good ones?

I think its more apposite that they’re typical and not bad.

Well I’m glad you agree that it’s not a good example.

Touche

Timescale is hugely important specially in the car industry, it takes years to design and launch a new model. The Allegro of course epitomises the underinvestment and failure of the private sector.

But taking the companies into partial pubic ownership was not a good response to that failure. A better response would have been to let the companies go to the wall, and start again with something else. That’s what happened eventually anyway, only after a lot of tax payers’ money had been wasted.

And they chose to attack the European market with, wait for it, the Allegro!!!

I once had an Allergo. Please don’t think worse of me for it (but it was an absolute dog) Talking of dogs, my dog ate my budgie in my Allegro when it broke down and we were waiting for the repairman. We were moving house at the time. That was a fun trip.

It is also an example of failure of public investment. All it ever did was loose public money. In that respect its not a bad example, its a typical example.

British Leyland had been part-nationalised for 4 years by the time Thatcher came along. If you think that provides a “good example” of a nationalised company then it shows just how weak your argument is.[/quote]
I fail to see why that timescale invalidates my argument. Where did I say, specifically, it was a “good example?”