The battle of Brexit!

[snapper]

Correct and therefore can leave most people dead in the water on this subject

On the Tudors maybe.

Spoken like a true Socialist! So you don't think that one of the greatest things Thatcher did for the working class helped raise the standard of living in the UK???. Starkey is Working class and comes from a working class family that made sure their son got an education and that in short is why you despise him. I find your comments absurd and point no blame at Gordon Browns policies at undermining UK Private pensions. Investors had to put money into property because of his Tax policies..Which created the Property boom in the 2000's There was nothing wrong with what Thatcher did. Its what came after in the Bliar Gov that caused the current housing crisis, that and immigration policy (Straight out of a joke book) When you have 2 immigrants coming into the UK while only one UK resident leaves, coupled with the fact that housing prices are sky rocketing due to a false boom created by GOV policy. Well it doesn't take Einstein to work it out.. Hence why the current generation are struggling to buy and so rent instead. Not what Thatcher did, what BROWN ( 'No more Boom and Bust') did!!!! Should I now go on and explain why this property boom caused the banking collapse in the UK as well or do you think that was Thatchers fault as well??

I am certainly not a socialist. My family and I own shares and commodities as well as parts or whole businesses. I own a solely a fruit farm outside Poltava and a yacht (which I charter when not able to use her), co-own a bakery/patisserie in Kyiv and part of a coffee shop in Lwow and my Husband and I jointly own and are involved in restoring a castle outside Lwow with local authority grants for some of the work that will be opened to the public once the restoration is done. We plan to host medieval style banquets and jousting as well offer conference space and host weddings. My Husband owns and runs his own farm. It's not that I am a 'business type'; business is not really my interest. I just like real croissants and real french bread, picked up a farm at a Government auction for next to nothing and like history and castles. It is not my day job which is far more mundane organisational issues in the UAF largely. I get some extra income, fresh organic fruit and fresh baguette when in Kyiv and have helped some displaced Tatars and former residents of Donbass so all is good. I am not an out and out 'business person' or 'money orientated' myself - I am basically a historian by nature - but I own stuff that keeps me comfortable and happy: I love sailing and as soon as I can get away go visiting ancient sites on my yacht. So much for me.

Well first of all I was no fan of Gordon Brown and voted for Cameron in 2010. I am not sure what Brown did to undermine pensions but I assume you refer to the 2008 crash - which started in the US 'sub prime' mortgage market. How this effected the UK 'social housing' market you do not even hint at so I cannot really understand why you mention it. I was myself deeply against Brown's bailing out the banks at the time. I am not sure if RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) is still yet fully out of public ownership 11yrs later. It was immoral to nationalise the bank losses - due to their own stupidity - while allowing them to keep privatising their profits and this I thought a was a mistake that would have further consequences. I also strongly disagreed with this making money out of nowhere - what they quaintly called "Quantitative Easing" policy (which the ECB is still doing). The Central Bankers literally got on their computers and 'created' trillions of US$ GBP£ and euros with which they then bought bank and mortgages etc on the markets. It was great to trade in the US in particular - every month the Fed would come out and say "Yea we are going to magic a whole new bunch of money" and sure as hell the US$ would drop and Gold would rise; it was a dead cert and I made quite alot of money trading it for my family and myself. Personally I believe in 'hard money' on a more Hayekian level and letting the markets operate freely more than Keynesian interventionism. If it needs building in a relatively prosperous economy the private sector will build it. In Ukraine at present that is not always possible as the private sector is some 60% in the hands of criminal oligarchs, the courts corrupt, and the middle class largely deprived of a political voice so the Government for now bears the burden of responsibility both to squish the oligarchs and disburse their holdings and for improvements in roads, hospitals and military supply and equipment etc... On the roads they have not entirely failed.

Nor am I saying what Thatcher did was in itself wrong when she allowed Council tennants to buy their own homes - though they were sold cheap and not at market prices. The problem was that after the 'Council Houses' were sold off cheap the money was not used to build more 'social housing'. Though I am not a socialist I am a Christian and a pragmatist and there will always be a working poor who need some sort of subsidised housing if they are to remain productive and not homeless. It is in everyone interest to keep these people as decently as we can so they can continue working in factories or doing whatever they do. Hopefully some will start their own businesses and pay more tax in time. I agreed with the Cameron/Osbourne (who is now going for the IMF post) policies of raising the income level at which the working poor start to pay tax. I disagreed with 'Help to Buy' (where if you had £5000 the Government would loan you another £10,000 to put down a deposit on a house type deal) and 'buy to let' type schemes which in my view just keep the UK property market artificially high and unaffordable for people on minimum wage living in rented accomodation. They should have invested in new subsisdised social housing - simple.

None of this is about the migration of European and Asian workers to the UK though. On that matter there were actually more migrants from outside the EU than from EU member countries itself. The UK had not invested in new 'social housing' since the 1950's and 60's and Thatcher sold alot that off cheap and did not replace it. So sure rents went up as did house prices. But these migrants also payed tax in the UK and did jobs that otherwise wouldn't be done. Last time I went to a Hospital in England I needed a couple of stitches in my finger (chopping firewood injury) and the Doctor was a Malaysian Christian Evangalist! I had a very interesting conversation with him and got his email and we are still in touch today. I do not have a problem with him become British, even if I am not any longer, as doubtless he has sewed up many more people since me. Last time I visited England I went into a shop wearing a Ukrainian badge on my jacket and the Lady greeted me 'Slava Ukraini!' but she was Polish as was I. I do not have a problem with that. Are the US and Canada - all the American nations inherantly 'wrong' because they are composed of migrants? Are not the original English themselves also migrants? Hengist and Horsa landed at Reculver as I recall the story...Other modern migrants go temporarily to pick fruit, potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, hops and what not and then just go home back to Romania and Bulgaria again. Most of these farms have temporary camp sites or housing for them so they live on site and do not effect the housing market while in England anyway. I knew people who used to go grape picking in France in summer after Uni in the same way.

Gordon Brown never sold huge amounts of social housing but did not make much either and to blame him for the crash is just wrong though I did not agree with his response by bailing out the banks. Nothing is as simple as you would like to paint it. The 2008 crash temporarily lower the housing market and what pensions have to do with it I do not know. So as far as I can see you are talking rubbish. Another problem in the UK has been planning permission to build new housing which is an extremely long and complicated process and can be costly if you hire lawyers. Still has nothing to do with Gordon Brown though who I find myself almost defending though I never voted for him. Just because you are wrong about Brown's mistakes does not make me a 'socialist' - just a bit more knowledgeable about the UK when I lived there than you.

As for 2 arriving and 1 leaving that has never occured in UK but I would rather have their problem of an increasing population that the one we have here where demographic decline is serious issue.

[astralis]

never thought i'd see the day when someone calls snapper a socialist, LOL.

[Double Edge]

The BBC are more dangerous than left wing ...they're liberal, privileged and highly conceited hypocrites...

This will make for an interesting quote : )

[Double Edge]

The UK never joined the euro.

They tried for a month and then pulled out.

[Freyr]

On the Tudors maybe.

Why only the Tudors? Do you seriously think his knowledge is limited thus? ...You clearly don't know him. He is an English constitutional historian which hardly limits him to the Tudor period.

I am certainly not a socialist.

Well you either don't understand what happened in the UK in the 80's when the working class were finally allowed to buy what they had been renting for decades or you just Blamed Thatcher without understanding what had fallen before!

My family and I own shares and commodities as well as parts or whole businesses. I own a solely a fruit farm outside Poltava and a yacht (which I charter when not able to use her), co-own a bakery/patisserie in Kyiv and part of a coffee shop in Lwow and my Husband and I jointly own and are involved in restoring a castle outside Lwow with local authority grants for some of the work that will be opened to the public once the restoration is done. We plan to host medieval style banquets and jousting as well offer conference space and host weddings. My Husband owns and runs his own farm. It's not that I am a 'business type'; business is not really my interest. I just like real croissants and real french bread, picked up a farm at a Government auction for next to nothing and like history and castles. It is not my day job which is far more mundane organisational issues in the UAF largely. I get some extra income, fresh organic fruit and fresh baguette when in Kyiv and have helped some displaced Tatars and former residents of Donbass so all is good. I am not an out and out 'business person' or 'money orientated' myself - I am basically a historian by nature - but I own stuff that keeps me comfortable and happy: I love sailing and as soon as I can get away go visiting ancient sites on my yacht. So much for me.

I'm very happy for your apparent wealth, But thats non of my business! plus I seriously wonder why any of that negates you from being of a left of centre persuasion. For all I know you could be hiding in a closet.

Well first of all I was no fan of Gordon Brown and voted for Cameron in 2010

.Oh ..the same Cameron that just blamed Boris Johnson for Brexit?

I am not sure what Brown did to undermine pensions but I assume you refer to the 2008 crash

No, I am referring to his taxation of private pensions shortly after coming to power in 97...Which caused a money shift into Property, which then created a house price boom. Which then created a chasm between wages and the ability to get a mortgage ..resulting in mortgages leaping from 3 times earnings upto 7 times earnings

which started in the US 'sub prime' mortgage market. How this effected the UK 'social housing' market you do not even hint at so I cannot really understand why you mention it.

Because you're not fully aware of the situation in the UK in 97 -07 at which point Northern Rock started to show signs of hemorrhage?

I was myself deeply against Brown's bailing out the banks at the time.

Yeh sure he could have paid everybody's mortgage off instead, But hey the Populace have to be kept in debt otherwise the capitalist system will collapse!

I am not sure if RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) is still yet fully out of public ownership later. It was immoral to nationalise the bank losses - due to their own stupidity - while allowing them to keep privatising their profits and this I thought a was a mistake that would have further consequences. I also strongly disagreed with this making money out of nowhere - what they quaintly called "Quantitative Easing" policy (which the ECB is still doing). The Central Bankers literally got on their computers and 'created' trillions of US$ GBP£ and euros with which they then bought bank and mortgages etc on the markets. It was great to trade in the US in particular - every month the Fed would come out and say "Yea we are going to magic a whole new bunch of money" and sure as hell the US$ would drop and Gold would rise; it was a dead cert and I made quite alot of money trading it for my family and myself. Personally I believe in 'hard money' on a more Hayekian level and letting the markets operate freely more than Keynesian interventionism.

Are you really telling me that you haven't yet realised what the global financial system is based upon?..Its one word

If it needs building in a relatively prosperous economy the private sector will build it. In Ukraine at present that is not always possible as the private sector is some 60% in the hands of criminal oligarchs, the courts corrupt, and the middle class largely deprived of a political voice so the Government for now bears the burden of responsibility both to squish the oligarchs and disburse their holdings and for improvements in roads, hospitals and military supply and equipment etc... On the roads they have not entirely failed.

UKraine is totally corrupt as is Russia and many others

Nor am I saying what Thatcher did was in itself wrong when she allowed Council tennants to buy their own homes - though they were sold cheap and not at market prices.

Correct and rightly so, she actually did something for people that would die fighting for their country not hide out in some Tax Haven

The problem was that after the 'Council Houses' were sold off cheap the money was not used to build more 'social housing'. Though I am not a socialist I am a Christian and a pragmatist and there will always be a working poor who need some sort of subsidised housing if they are to remain productive and not homeless. It is in everyone interest to keep these people as decently as we can so they can continue working in factories or doing whatever they do. Hopefully some will start their own businesses and pay more tax in time. I agreed with the Cameron/Osbourne (who is now going for the IMF post) policies of raising the income level at which the working poor start to pay tax. I disagreed with 'Help to Buy' (where if you had £5000 the Government would loan you another £10,000 to put down a deposit on a house type deal) and 'buy to let' type schemes which in my view just keep the UK property market artificially high and unaffordable for people on minimum wage living in rented accomodation. They should have invested in new subsisdised social housing - simple.

This is called tinkering after the horse has already bolted

None of this is about the migration of European and Asian workers to the UK though. On that matter there were actually more migrants from outside the EU than from EU member countries itself.

Alot of EU workers came to the UK because the UK required their skill sets or labour. This became even more so after 2008 because their tax contribution was helping the UK recover. But its a bit hard to build social housing when you are cutting back on everything else (Austerity)THink about that and you can stop blaming Thatcher

The UK had not invested in new 'social housing' since the 1950's and 60's and Thatcher sold alot that off cheap and did not replace it. So sure rents went up as did house prices.

Selling off the council houses did not cause the House price boom in the early 2000's. But Gordon's Tax policies did!

But these migrants also payed tax in the UK and did jobs that otherwise wouldn't be done. Last time I went to a Hospital in England I needed a couple of stitches in my finger (chopping firewood injury) and the Doctor was a Malaysian Christian Evangalist! I had a very interesting conversation with him and got his email and we are still in touch today. I do not have a problem with him become British, even if I am not any longer, as doubtless he has sewed up many more people since me. Last time I visited England I went into a shop wearing a Ukrainian badge on my jacket and the Lady greeted me 'Slava Ukraini!' but she was Polish as was I. I do not have a problem with that. Are the US and Canada - all the American nations inherantly 'wrong' because they are composed of migrants? Are not the original English themselves also migrants? Hengist and Horsa landed at Reculver as I recall the story...Other modern migrants go temporarily to pick fruit, potatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, hops and what not and then just go home back to Romania and Bulgaria again. Most of these farms have temporary camp sites or housing for them so they live on site and do not effect the housing market while in England anyway. I knew people who used to go grape picking in France in summer after Uni in the same way.

hmmm zzzzzz!

Gordon Brown never sold huge amounts of social housing but did not make much either and to blame him for the crash is just wrong though I did not agree with his response by bailing out the banks.

I would blame him for selling the Gold at rock bottom prices..But no he didn't sell social housing but he dd sell everything else!

Nothing is as simple as you would like to paint it. The 2008 crash temporarily lower the housing market and what pensions have to do with it I do not know. So as far as I can see you are talking rubbish. Another problem in the UK has been planning permission to build new housing which is an extremely long and complicated process and can be costly if you hire lawyers. Still has nothing to do with Gordon Brown though who I find myself almost defending though I never voted for him. Just because you are wrong about Brown's mistakes does not make me a 'socialist' - just a bit more knowledgeable about the UK when I lived there than you.

As for 2 arriving and 1 leaving that has never occured in UK but I would rather have their problem of an increasing population that the one we have here where demographic decline is serious issue.

Your summary was pathetic, uninformed, disconnected and worthless. Knowing when to stop typing is always a good characteristic!

[Freyr]

Anne Widecombe backing the Fisherman but using the Slave analogy to explain the oppression of the EU was pushing it just a bit...But she was quite correct to highlight the stitch up at the Top of the Commission which is deplorable, undemocratic and absurd!

[snapper]

They tried for a month and then pulled out.

Note quite correct. The UK was in the UK shadowed the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in the 1980s when Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor and joined it in 1990 only to crash out in 1992. Joined at to a high a GBP to DDM level basically given the current inflation in the UK. The free floating value of GBP after leaving did provide an economic stimulus afterwards. I was never a fan of the euro and never will be. I think it is repressive both politically, as we saw with Hellas and the illegal Cypriot Bank Robbery and in economic terms. It is insane for Portugal to have the same interest rate as Estonia just because it suits Germany. It stifles growth that a local interest interest rate and free floating currency would otherwise stimulate.

[snapper]

Why only the Tudors? Do you seriously think his knowledge is limited thus? ...You clearly don't know him!

Two things on that Starkey blurb you posted. First he said that if these migrant workers had all come in and occupied all the cheaper end of the housing market that would be a 'matter of fact'. Well fair enough... but then he quotes no statistics that proves it was 'matter of fact'. He just assumes that having said if this had happened it would have been a matter of fact - which is a bit circular anyway - is enough to prove that it did in fact happen. But he not prove the 'matter of fact' merely stated a circular argument; if it rained yesterday evening it rained yesterday. That does not mean it DID actually rain yesterday.

Second suppose a person is specialist brain surgeon or rocket scientist or something else. Does that make their opinions about modern political affairs somehow more meaningful? Archimedes was certainly a clever fellow but he wasn't entrusted with political affairs in Syracuse. Aristotle was tutor to Alexander but not a statesman himself. Turing was a mathematician, brainy as you like but probably not the best person to handle war policy. Newton I think briefly managed the royal mint but just because person is a specialist in one field - even if they are exceptional in that field - that does not make them automatically correct in another field. Yet you seem to think Starkey, who is barely extra ordinary even in Tudor history - should be an exception.

Well you either don't understand what happened in the UK in the 80's when the working class were finally allowed to buy what they had been renting for decades or you just Blamed Thatcher without understanding what had fallen before!

Let me make this real simple for you... Before Thatcher sold off the the Council Houses below market prices just about anyone of the 'working poor' could get an average quality family home for affordable rent and continue working, bringing up their kids and life went on as normal. These houses went back to post WW1 when they were built to house returning soldiers. In effect having this vast social housing stock acted to keep private sector rents down because why pay a fortune when after two years on a waiting list you could get a cheap rent Council House. Thatcher sold alot of them off cheap which flushed the Local Authorities with cash and gave the tenants that bought them a capital asset. I am not saying this was wrong in itself but nobody really invested in new social housing stock in the public sector. This was left to what became 'housing associations' which acted a bit like charities. It was great for the people who could afford to buy their houses cheap - they got a capital asset cheap - but those who could not afford to buy got further left behind and the Government more or less said they were not it's problem; the private sector should do some magic and produce a solution for them.

.Oh ..the same Cameron that just blamed Boris Johnson for Brexit?

Not read that anywhere.

No, I am referring to his taxation of private pensions shortly after coming to power in 97...Which caused a money shift into Property, which then created a house price boom. Which then created a chasm between wages and the ability to get a mortgage ..resulting in mortgages leaping from 3 times earnings upto 7 times earnings

Well that is just bollocks. The property boom was transatlantic and based largely on a mishandling of interest rate policy by the Fed following the .com bust of 2000. They lowered rates from 6.5% to under 2% so made it worth borrowing to buy property. This in turn lead to the rise of people selling mortgages to people who probably did not the means to pay them - the so called 'sub prime mortgage' market. Then they put alot of these mortgages together and traded them as asset bundles between the banks, collateral for hard cash or other assets. This started to wrong when rates rose to above 5% in 2006 and it became obvious that alot of these mortgages were worthless as the purchasers could not actually pay then at the higher rates and in 2007 - 2008 the banks left with these packages of mortgages that they could trade or use as collateral realised they have gaping holes in the value of their assets where they had thought these packets of mortgages had a value. So cash flow problems grew until inevitably Lehmans went bust in September 2008. This started a domino effect as banks could no longer borrow from each other and each was scrambling for cash. It affected the British banks and the Icelandic banks - where alot of the British local authorities had stashed their money as they had been told it wasn't their business to build new social housing. Iceland of course could not hope to cover the losses of their banks as the debts were many times greater the value of the Icelandic economy so had to let them go to the wall. Brown and to a large extent the US thought it was an 'existential threat' to economic solvency. If all the banks go broke everyone loses money - whether you've got $50 or $5m in the bank it's gone - and the economy just grinds to a halt, people return to barter etc... So they set about bailing out the banks to keep them and (in their eyes) the economy going. Central Banks interest rates went down 0.25% etc making them negative in real terms in some cases. Then they started this 'quantitative easing' magic money making farce to provide further suplus value and cash in the markets mostly to bring liquidity to the banks.

US Fed Rates; https://www.macrotrends.net/2015/fed...storical-chart (just click 20yrs)

BoE Rates;

BoE rates pretty much mirror US Fed rates though at a higher level during the 2002-2005 period.

Because you're not fully aware of the situation in the UK in 97 -07 at which point Northern Rock started to show signs of hemorrhage?

Northen Rock I think started as a Building Society but like alot of Building Society demutualised persumably in the 1990s when there was a trend of doing that. It allowed the new banks to borrow alot more which they did to fund mortgages in the early 2000s. When the liquidity crisis caused by the US sub prime reduntant value hit in 2007 they couldn't borrow to pay their loans so got 'nationalised' by Brown for the reasons I have explained. I think someone later bought them from the Government though doubtless for less than the value of the debts the Government absorbed.

Yeh sure he could have paid everybody's mortgage off instead, But hey the Populace have to be kept in debt otherwise the capitalist system will collapse!

As I have explained I the worry was more about the economic liquidity itself. DOR or astralis who agreed with this more than I could probably explain better why they think it was a good idea.

Are you really telling me that you haven't yet realised what the global financial system is based upon?..Its one word

I think it's a bit more complicated than that.

UKraine is totally corrupt as is Russia and many others

We are trying to change that though.

Correct and rightly so, she actually did something for people that would die fighting for their country not hide out in some Tax Haven

Are you saying Aaron Banks is not a true British patriot? I am not saying that the old 'Council House' system in the UK was ideal. I seem to think children could inherit the rent of their parents house but partly due to the 2008 crash, where I know Kent County Council lost money in the Icelandic bank collapse and partly due to the increasing difficulty in getting new building permission due to a desire to preserve the 'green belt' the private sector has not been able to keep up a suffient new build rate to keep rents low for the 'working poor' and this has again become a problem for Local Authories who are faced with increasing homelessness and the crime and drug dependence such desperation brings.

UK House Building:

This is called tinkering after the horse has already bolted

Well no not really. The local authorites were told by Thatcher that providing social housing was not a Government job; the markets operate to provide new affordable housing in future which is fine in theory. But for this to happen you need to be able borrow to build new houses and you need a planning permission process that doesn't take forever and cost a small fortune in itself. I recall representing an old friend of mine at a planning appeal in the UK; the Local Authority had three lawyers representing them and I was in my first year at Uni but this old Lady could not afford a lawyer - she was a fortune teller and quite nuts but my Mater lectured in property Law and I had read up on it all and appealed under 5 sections I think including a case for estoppel - a complicated and little know form of equity law. The whole problem was this old woman had erected a shack in her back garden to keep sick pigeons (she believed her Husband had come back as a pigeon) in a 'Conservation Area', which means you need special permission to make any changes. We won because nobody could see the shack but imagine the costs had this been a company paying it's own lawyers for some permission?

Alot of EU workers came to the UK because the UK required their skill sets or labour. This became even more so after 2008 because their tax contribution was helping the UK recover. But its a bit hard to build social housing when you are cutting back on everything else (Austerity)THink about that and you can stop blaming Thatcher

'Austerity' in the UK economic jargon did not start until 2010 with the Conservative and Libdem Government following Gordon Brown and George Osbourne as Chancellor. There was good reason for austerity at the tim. I believe the incoming Secretary to the Treasury (no2 to the Chancellor) was left a note by their outgoing counterpart to the effect of "good luck, we spent it all" which of course Brown had - largely on bailing out the banks and trying to inject liquidity in the markets. Debt to GDP was around 75% and the current account deficit - ie the amount the Government was spending compared what it was receiving was dangerously high so Osbourne set out to not spend so much and get more coming in and in doing so 'balance the books'. I highly approved of it myself and they managed to keep the AAA credit status and generate a small surplus which they used to raise the income level at which the less well payed start paying tax. All sensible stuff. They lowered Corporate tax which actually resulted in more being payed. It was in effect the last time a British Chancellor had a coherent plan and though it did not work exactly as planned it was a good goal and a coherent plan. I hope Osbourne does get the IMF job.

As I said before I did not agree with some of the other policies such as 'help to buy' but as the housing market was recovering the new building rate should have increased. Trouble is there is always a delay between cause and effect in markets, particularly when planning permission can take 2 or 3yrs to obtain so the uptick in new housing didn't start until around 2013.

Selling off the council houses did not cause the House price boom in the early 2000's. But Gordon's Tax policies did!

You can say that and even believe it as much you want but the facts contradict you. In fact new housing hit a high during Brown's Government but the fact is it fell off due to the liquidity crisis caused by the US sub prime business and in the interval supply could not match added demand. This though is not the fault of incoming migrant workers.

hmmm zzzzzz!

Not even the Celts were the original inhabitants of the UK as they speak an Indo European language. The people who built Stonehenge were wiped out or absorbed into the successive migrant waves of Celts, Romans, Anglo Saxon, Vikings, Normans, Dutch protestants, French protestants, as well as the more recent 'Widrush' Afro Caribeans, Ugandan Asians etc etc etc. Nothing will change that no matter what the Brexiteers think.

I would blame him for selling the Gold at rock bottom prices..But no he didn't sell social housing but he dd sell everything else!

Fully agree on the gold.

Your summary was pathetic, uninformed, disconnected and worthless. Knowing when to stop typing is always a good characteristic!

Why so antsy my friend? I am merely trying to engage in a polite conversation about these matters which seem somehow to concern you. You have shown me not one correlation between Gordon Browns tax policy and the housing market nor the crash of 2007-8 or the lack of affordable housing stock today in the UK. I on the other hand offer a comprehensive explanation of it all from Thatcher to Cameron. Yet I am the uninformed when your only answer is Gordon Brown done it? You accuse me of being a socialist... and that I am no business person I probably run more small businesses than you - not for love of money but for interest mainly, save some pennies so I can send my Children to a private school etc... If you cannot engage politely best we agree to differ and thanks for the fish.

[Double Edge]

Now its official. Trump said May made a mess of Brexit.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ish-ambassador

He enjoyed his trip and liked the Q the most.

Trump does not like the words, inept & dysfunctional.

Stable & genius would have been a better choice.

Alan Duncan, a Foreign Office minister, told the Commons it was the government’s belief that the leak made its way to Oakeshott “from within” Whitehall, rather than being handed over by foreign agents. He said the Cabinet Office had begun its formal hunt for the mole among current senior politicians, aides and civil servants, but did not at this stage think it was right to involve the police.

He said one of the documents was saved from 2017, but three of the memos were produced just eight to 10 days ago, which appeared to point to someone who was still in post.

The cross-government inquiry has already begun examining who had access to the recent memos – which went to potentially hundreds of people – and a highly sensitive letter from 2017 that had a much narrower circulation list.

^this

Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, told MPs he had written to the Metropolitan police commissioner, Cressida Dick, to “ask that a criminal investigation also be opened into the leak”.

I remember a Toyota car that also had the name Cressida.

Darroch also gave a scathing assessment of the White House, saying: “We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.” He questioned whether the White House “will ever look competent”.

Ouch!

Ned Price, who served under Barack Obama as a special assistant to the president for national security affairs, said Trump’s tweets only reinforced Darroch’s descriptions of him in private.

“The UK ambassador didn’t write anything that wasn’t already patently obvious to an informed observer,” Price said. “He spoke of Donald Trump as someone with thin skin, as someone with a delicate ego, as someone who would be receptive to pandering, and just look at Trump’s reaction.

“He has proved the ambassador right in every respect — by proving he is ego driven, by proving he is thin-skinned, and by proving he will quite literally refuse to deal with people who don’t say nice things about him.”

[Double Edge]

I think this country needs a bit of optimism -- Boris

[snapper]

He may as well have said the country needs more unicorns. There is no basis for either on a no deal Brexit. Nor much chance he will last if he becomes PM long enough to see it through as the Tory 'wets' (those that reject a 'no deal' Brexit as it would be a disaster for the UK) would likely vote with the Labour and Libdem Parties in a vote of no confidence forcing a new election. It is pretty clear the Conservative Party would come 4th in any near future General Election with most of it's former voters voting for Farage's Brexit Party (who's funding is under investigation), the Libdems and unrepentant Menchevicks of Comrade Corbyns current Labour Party (currently in civil war over antisemitism with the Party Secretary writing openly hostile open letters to the Deputy Leader) coming in both with more votes than the Conservative Party. He would probably be the last Conservative PM.

Bluster and scruffy hair are not solutions to real problems.

[Double Edge]

The man is sticking his head out now unlike earlier. This has to be an improvement.

[surfgun]

With Boris taking the helm, hopefully Brexit will finally be sorted.

[Pedicabby]

With Boris taking the helm, hopefully Brexit will finally be sorted.

One can only hope.

[snapper]

"Energy and optimism" is what Johnson says he brings. It wouldn't matter if the whole Government were on amphetamines and forced to smile, you cannot square the circle that they want a hard border at the Channel and no border in Ulster. The contradiction will not somehow suddenly resolve itself because you buzz around with a 'belief' that it can be resolved.

His majority is 2 when combined with Ulster Unionists and likely to be lost by the end of this week as more Tory MP's defect to the Libdems who recently elected Jo Swinson as their new leader. To be honest I would have more confidence in her than Boris.