That guy steering the boat looks like the fella from Sick!. Is it being built in peru?

The people are perfectly capable of deciding what is in their own best interests.

Rather than having to rely on my own fears, prejudices and ignorance, I would prefer a sufficently disterested expert (or experts) to do that for me!

Goodbye Mog

Blimey.

Just been to vote. Normally at EU and local elections I get the impression that’s it just me, Mrs somewhatslightlydazed and some very bored polling station staff. (if you go in the evening you can see just how few names are crossed off their lists)

This morning at 7.05 the place was (relatively) heaving. More like a GE turnout.

Unfortunately we live in a part of the world where the tory always gets in. So I imagine that this time most of these concerned voters were going for the Brexit party :-(

If you don’t like democracy, don’t have a democracy

Thing is, there are all sorts of different flavours of democracy. Bit like Brexit. And milkshakes.

Or the removal of bureaucracy that will mean spending billions of pounds on replicating existing EU systems once we can no longer use them?

There is a whole new department been set up in Reading, dealing with unfair trade practices, previously done by the EU.

They were supposed to be in place and ready to go in March, so I imagine they are sat around twiddling their thumbs at the moment.

I remember that drugs article people are linking to being discussed on here a few years ago.

The guy reckons HGH was the best one to take long term. I particularly like the bit about old scars healing up and not needing glasses.

But then somebody on here (Njee20?) pointed out taking HGH long term will massively increase your chances of developing all sorts of cancer. That put me off a bit (plus its bloody expensive).

May to set out details of her “new deal” at 4pm.

I imagine the new deal will be the same as the old deal.

Think I saw it in an Army recruitment add a few years ago. But that wouldn’t be surprising.

I am not going to politely stand by while the **** take away the few real freedoms and choices available to me.

So what are you going to do?

Houses tend to be rust-coloured brick

Sets off your climbing roses, clematis or Wisteria quite nicely

but he didnt though he said that anyone who saw racism in his tweet had a ‘disseased mind’ which really pissed off those who have suffered from racism

Fair enough – if he said that he’s a complete idiot, (should have gone for the sincere apology approach)

What is all this pish about how no-one could think or notice that a joke about a mixed race person involving comparisons to a chimp might be a bit racist?

I think that once its pointed out, its obvious it can be seen as racist. But unless you are a racist yourself, or have suffered from racism, its not immediately obvious.

So the guy has (apparently inadvertently) caused offence and apologised. What more does STW want?

History is what one age finds worthy of note in another. Each age writes it own history.

He and his followers really were the Taliban of the time. Whereas Charles I and his archbishop (William Laud) were flawed, they were nothing like the religious totalitarians that the Puritans were.

This interesting example of over-simplification.

It’s trying to explain the past in terms of the present (totalitarian, Taliban), which never works well. Its also trying to impose a simple logical framework on a chaotic situations. (There were never just two sides in the Civil Wars). And if you reversed it, it could be equally true.

Cromwell in Ireland is another interesting one. His reputation is based on one siege where he over stepped the bounds of 17th century warfare. He WAS a bastard to the Irish in the 1650s but possibly no more so than the Earl of Strafford in the 1630s. So why is he remembered as the evil one, not the Earl of Strafford?

But that’s enough about 17th century religious wars.

But what is it converted to football pitches? or Olympic sized swimming pools?

I see Tony Robinson has resigned from the labour party over all this.

Shame

At least he would have had a cunning plan

She’s intimidatingly intelligent

If that’s the case, it a shame she’s wasted on that bloody awful Digging for Britain program.

It’s not that I don’t want to pay import duty or vat, its just that I’d rather do it this side of the pond and not through ebay

You’re buying from a shop in the states?

It MIGHT be to do with this:

http://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-online-marketplace-seller-checks

If e-bay left it to you and the seller to sort out, there may be some doubt as to whether the seller should be registered for VAT and e-bay may be held liable for it. But if they can demonstrate that you paid Vat and duty correctly on import, there’s no problem for them.

I’m giving serious consideration to backing up my bell with an air horn.

I did that. Made no difference at all. My horn had two settings

Are you saying you would ride up behind a group of walkers and give a blast with an air horn?

Would you do that to a horse rider?

A colleague is on a Brexit planning team. Every time I see him I ask “have we left yet?”

Oh how he laughs!

I suggest tennis in its place.

Tennis on ice might be fun to watch.

In the same way that the default for you is that you can’t travel abroad once your passport hits its expiry date… only happens if you decide not to renew it.

If only it were that simple. Renewing a passport is a well established procedure. To make the analogy accurate, I would have to be trying to create a passport office and invent procedures that would work for millions of people, all with a couple of weeks. All the while a bunch of people are insting the old passports work just fine so why bother renewing, while another bunch of pepople would be insisting that we didn’t really need passports any way.

The most likely outcome is the passport doesn’t get renewed.

I’m more offended by the assumption a helmet is going to save your life*

*Yes, I know it MIGHT do, in certain circumstances.

I’m assuming no deal is pretty much dead.

I thought it was still the default come 12th April?

Not got the day off, but we are meeting up for a “Brexit breakfast”. No handy Weatherspoons nearby, so it will be a greasy spoon run by Poles. Croissants and all that foreign muck will be off the menu though.

Thing is, you can’t service that debt forever so you need a pretty good plan for what to do when your income runs out.

Sell house, pay off mortage, buy smaller new house with proceeds.

Fine if you live in posh house and are willing and able to move to something cheaper. Not so fine if you live in a shit hole and ran your debt up on fast cars, flash bikes and foreign holidays.

(I know this thread is about posh houses but I think NJee20 was talking about ANY debt)

If you (meaning ‘one’, not Kryton) wants a big house, and is happy to take on that debt, who cares?

I’d rather have debt and nice things.

Thing is, you can’t service that debt forever so you need a pretty good plan for what to do when your income runs out.

But that’s not underwear. Maybe they thought it was?

To me, that does look like underwear. Perhaps its just the photo though.

Big baggy trousers and a bra? It does look like she’s just forgotten to put her top on.

I tried Nanny Sate and hated it – just made me more desperate for a real beer.

I quiet like Heineken 0 – Probably because Heineken tastes like crap anyway, so it doesn’t disappoint.

Could be a developing gluten intolerance. This happened to a friend and they have to be very careful with what they drink. Some brewers do gluten free beers which seem to work (Brew dog do a nice one, and even our local (very) micro brewery does one). Some normal beers are OK (Otter Amber being one) but most lead to unfortunate consequences.

You could try a specific gluten free beer and see what effect it has.

I’ve no idea if largers differ though.

It is, but as posted before roughly an average of 1 min per truck going to Dover from Calais requires 8 lanes of checking* to avoid much delay (24/7) add that to the UK side too. They will want to do more checks on imports.

I’m not sure we should assume that the level of physical checks by Customs and Border Force at Dover will rise. The sort of things you need to catch at the ports are prohibited goods (eg firearms, drugs), smuggled booze and fags and illegal immigrants. Whether we are in or out of the EU, I can’t see these risks changing much.

But as I said, what the French decide to do is a different matter.

A look at Dover doesn’t show much room to stack up trucks coming off ferries

This is a good point. I was told by a logistics chap that pre single market (1992) it would take 20 minutes to make a Customs declaration at Dover. That’s to park your truck, get out of the cab, present your documents at Customs, go back to your cab and drive off. And since 1992 all the truck parks have been built on.

But that is if you require a full manual Customs declaration at the point of entry. With everthing still up in the air, who knows what is going to be required.

I like the names of their drone ships, blatantly stolen from Ian M banks:

“Just Read the Instructions” operates in the Pacific for launches from Vandenberg;
“Of Course I Still Love You” operates in the Atlantic for launches from Cape Canaveral.
“A Shortfall of Gravitas” is under construction.

” As of 11 January 2019, 26 Falcon 9 flights have attempted to land on a drone ship, with 20 of them succeeding. “

You’re all still confusing customs declarations, which MUST be made for all cross border shipments, with physical checks on goods, which are down to the DISCRETION of the relevant authorities and are based on risk assessment and intelligence.

Its up to the French what sort of physical checks they do on their side of the border just as it will be up to the UK to decide what sort of physical checks to do on this side.

I’d be interested to see if any leave voters think this is panning out the way they imagined it would.

The few leavers I know well enough to talk to can’t understand who we don’t “just leave”. The closest they get to trying to analyse the shit they voted for is along the lines of “the nasty Europeans are trying to make us suffer”.

Surely no border checks with EU means no border checks with the rest of the world?

There is a difference between a border check and a customs declaration. Currently most (not all) EU goods don’t’ require a customs declaration but I think (and I may be wrong) that they are subject to the same sort of border checks as non-EU goods. This is because the biggest risk to UK duty revenues are through intra-EU smuggling of booze and fags.

So that article in the Sun isn’t that daft. If the UK waves through EU goods with minimum customs declarations at the border and the EU does the same with goods coming from the UK, it will minimise any disruption.

I have a feeling that in the short term at least this might happen, as there is no practical alternative.

But if we leave at the end of march with no deal, won’t a hard border be there by default?

Thing is, will it be a real hard border or a paper hard border?

On our side of the border there is no infra-structure, and not enough Customs or Border Force staff to enforce it.

I can’t imageine that on April 1st there will suddenly be thousands of uniforms , (complete with Cyril Blakey moustaches and clip boards), physically stopping lorries until they have completed a full paper customs declaration and goods examination.

I have a feeling that in the event of a no deal, there won’t be a real hard border on our side, for the short term at least. I doubt there will be one on the EU side either, for the same reasons.

Practical considerations will beat all the politicking.

There’s always the Huntley and Palmer biscuit tin room at Reading Museum.

They just look in your DNA for chunks that are strongly correlated with certain geographical areas

Yes, and those geographical areas are very general and don’t really link to our ideas of historical nations or races.

Somebody up above said they were told they had “Viking” DNA. Well Scandinavia was populated by the same DNA groups that populated Jutland, Saxony and Denmark. And those groups also populated England before the Vikings came. And the because people move around a lot it got all mixed up anyway. So most people with UK ancestry (even from Wales or Cornwall) have at least of some of this DNA, but its not because your ancestors wore horned helmets and came over here in longships waving battle axes.

UK to wave EU goods through unchecked in no deal brexit..

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-deal-ports-eu-goods-customs-checks-calais-dover-hmrc-theresa-may-a8762591.html

And that’s more or less what happens to 90% of ROW goods movements.

The Independent in shoddy journalism shocker.