Posts by CrazyOldCatMan

Re: make up your minds

Because we are willing to negotiate and the EU wouldnt have any of it

The whole art of negotiation is to prepare a starting point that the other side can at least see some value in and the 'negotiate' to a position where you both get the majority of what you want.

It's not saying "this is what I want and if you don't let me have it I'm going to scream and scream until I make myself sick" attitude that our Brexiteers appear to have.

Re: make up your minds

Actually no. May offered the money if they negotiated

You don't seem to understand the phrase "contractually obliged". We signed deals and contracts in the past that lay down what we will pay. We have to stick to those contracts because, if we don't, no-one will trust us enough to want to trade with us.

And, if you think our reputation is sound, try talking to the New Zealand or Australian farmers that got shafted by the UK some while back.

Re: make up your minds

I think she has an impossible job

That's because she's stuck between the "nevaar Europe" and "lets stick with what we have" wings of her party and whatever she does is going to result in a dagger in the back.

Re: make up your minds

blustering chaotic clown

Is that the clean, confused version of Insane Clown Posse?

Re: make up your minds

Today we have Jeremy Hunt saying

Something, something, something. To be followed several hours later by saying the exact opposite and denying that he said the former.

A consumate politician[1]. And that's not a term of approval..

[1] How can you tell a politician is lying? They are awake..

Re: As previously

I do get pissed off with this neo-this, neo-that stuff.

Except for neo-prog of course.

Re: "Where is the evidence to suggest that would happen?"

You know Ireland joined the EFTA at the same time as the UK

Shush - don't distract the poor dear with actualy facts. They'll get all mixed up with the "350m a week" in it's head..

Re: "Where is the evidence to suggest that would happen?"

LOT less enthusiasm for looking the other way while they raise money and buy guns in the U.S

It wasn't so much a case of "looking the other way" as "enthusiastically supporting". And I don't imagine that conditions have changed that much.

Re: I was pro-remain, but this really is "Project Fear" at work.

I have no doubt that there will be a lot of painful adjustments

I think one of the things that really annoys me is that the people dismissing the effects of the 'painful adjustments'[1] (most of them politicians) are, to a greater or lesser extent, insulated from the effects of Brexit.

So what if food costs 20% more or energy prices rise? The vast wealth they are making from their investment vehicles or non-exec directorships means they are utterly insulated.

It's going to be a rude awakening for the people that voted Brexit on the basis that it will improve things. Especially for those already struggling to cope and I think their is going to be a lot of anger. Sadly, those who got us into this position are also adept at deflecting blame so the parlous situation will always be "someone elses fault" (most likely the big, bad EU for not giving in to every demand we make, even the utterly laughable ones).

To misquote a phrase "war is a democracy since the enemy also gets a vote".

[1] Nice eupanism for "it's going to hurt and a lot of people are going to be a lot worse off".

Re: The comment has been taken out of context

came across a lot of prominent BrExiteers and their investment vehicles investing like crazy into office real estate there

And let's not forget prominent Tory ex-politians now living in France..

Re: eh?

We can also switch to wood burning stoves

Except for two little annoying facts - a) we don't have enough wood to do that unless you start cutting down the remaining forests and b) that would cause a horrendous pollution problem (especially in conurbations).

Other than that a perfect plan! I suppose we could always import wood from the EU..

Re: Vogon

current incarnation of the Conservative party survives is another matter; personally, my money is on it imploding

I could quite easily see a substantial fraction of the Remain Conservative party defecting to the Lib Dems (or creating a new centre-right party that the Lib Dems then merge with) which would then attract some of the more moderate Labour Remainers.

Re: @John Brown ... Vogon

the UK , taking orders from people who live in another country

We've just replaced a (relatively) sane overlord (Europe) with an insane orange cheeto one..

Re: @AC ... eh?

You will get oil because you can pay for it. You also have Oil production off your coasts.

Yes - you can pay for it. But it's going to cost a whole lot more. Which means fuel prices will go up - and the elderly and vulnerable who currently have a struggle to heat their houses come winter will be worse off.

As to oil production off the coast - once Scotland leaves the UK they won't be off *our* coast..

Re: @Wellyboot eh?

but when you can't cover the checks you write

You mean, like the UK did in the 1950s? I believe that's exactly what they did - going cap in hand to the IMF on the basis that the Yanks had pulled the rug from under them and the UK couldn't afford to pay?

Something which lead to the realisation that the UK needed closer links to Europe. After all, even Maggie wanted to join the EU - she just wanted it on *her* terms. Which she got. Which we've thrown away since any attempt to rejoin post-Brexit assuredly won't have the same terms.

Welcome back to the 1950s - where our fiscal and trade policy will be dependent on an increasingly isolationist US.

Re: eh?

including I suspect the leading Brexiteers in the Conservative party

Oh I dunno - there must be a reason why Reece-Mogg's finance company has shifted a lot of their money to European stocks..

Can you spell "hypocrite"? I can..

Re: eh?

once drivers are stuck in a queue they (and their vehicles) aren't available for transport in the other direction

And, almost as important, quite a bit of what we export is quite perishable. Which won't be improved by sitting in a lorry queue for two days at 30C..

Re: eh?

I find it interesting that the massively self-important 'defenders of the will of the people'

You forgot the essential codicil 'as interpreted by us'.

Especially as every shade of Brixiteer seems to have a different interpretation of what it means.

Re: And his pay ?

It is not totally unlikely that a possible consequence of this act of his could be the break-up of the UK

I'd go as far as to say that it's a very likely outcome. Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain.

Wales might stay in a rUK but I doubt whether NI would - once the current DUP realise that there's nothing more in the trough for them and they'll discover (amazingly) how green the grass is on the EUther side of the border..

So that'll be the "United Kingdom of England and the Occupied Territory of Wales" then. Alfred the Great would be proud.

Re: @Gareth Corfield

On the topic of brexit I am sure he is now 'Dave's not here, man.'

"I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that".

Re: JFGI...

Well, that's all they need to know, isn't it...

Well - they also need how to make a huge personal wedge afterwards. Those non-exec directorships don't come along for normal people y'know!

Re: Whatever he's being paid

Once we exit, deal or no-deal, it will stabilize

And all the stuff that we buy from the EU will now attract a 30% tariff. So power (we buy a lot from France), corn, wheat, milk, cheese, coal... (etc etc) will all go up by 30%

So yes, it'll stabilise - at a 30% increase in costs. And since trade deals usually take 10-20 *years* to negotiate (unless you accept blatantly unfair terms and idiocies like corporate investor courts) it's not a situation that's going to improve quickly.

Also, costs will go up because shipping lamb from NZ or beef from Canada costs a whole lot more than buying those from The Netherlands or France.

Re: BFH

UKIP does however have 24 of our 73 MEP's one of whom is Nigel Farrage

Which is a classic case of hypocracy. They are perfectly happy to take their pay an pension from the EU, despite all their rhetoric about the evils thereof.

And Farage, when questioned about it basically said "why should I suffer?"

Which sums him up.

Re: BFH

leave France when I retire, and I'd like to return to a prosperous and successful UK

Well, good luck with that. All the attempts made in the last 2 years to alienate our largest trading partners will kibosh that.

We had a successful trading partnership in the EEC

Because we were a member..

Re: BFH

If we don't like the direction set by the UK governemnt we can change it

Unless you live in a safe seat and wish for $OTHER_PARTY to win. In which case, your vote is effectively useless.

Re: BFH

Then they could re-run Suez and get it right.

Except the Orange Cheeto-in-chief would probably still block it - except this time it would be nothing to do with international stability but just because he saw a programme about it on Fox News and they didn't like the idea.

Re: BFH

want a return to the 70's, not the real 70's with 3 day weeks and the UK begging from the IMF

..and ransom powercuts, cars that were of somewhat variable quality depending on which day they were made and obvious paedophiles running major BBC programmes..

Oh - and the decade that taste forgot - up until about 1977 anyway.

Those of who were kids in that era really, really don't want to relive it - except maybe the summer of 1976 which appears to have made a comeback this year.

Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

Yes, lets. Its no more stupid than anything else to do with Brexit.

And think of all the money that can be made by moving to another currency! All the stuff that costs 10p can mysteriously now cost 1s instead! But it would please all the really old codgers who were used to Lsd as kids.

Mind you, actually making the coins would probably get outsourced to the French and Dutch 'for financial reasons'..

Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

So you Brits were running your economy off of LSD for years?

[Swivel-eyed gammon mode]

AND THE EMPIRE! So don't you forget it boy that we owned ONE THIRD of the world!

[/SEGM]

Re: Just to mudddy the waters a trifle ...

Pre-decimal pennies were denoted by "d" (for denarii). The middle item, shillings, was postfixed s (solidi)

Shillings came via Germanic (skilling) which may didn't come from solidus. The shorthand Lsd, confusingly, does contain the 's' that comes from solidus but I suspect that's retro-engineered as part of the British attempt to be seen as the 'Nova Roma' from 1700 onwards.

More info: https://www.etymonline.com/word/shilling

I once heard someone refer to an exclamation mark as pling

Also known as a 'shriek' or 'bang' symbol.

Re: "...hashland would sound silly."

And hashworld would go bust...

I really, really wouldn't want to eat a corned beef meal meade there. Or eat the browns.

Sold it for over £8k ten years later

I was recently looking at prices of some of the older rare whisky bottles. It was a tad annoying to see that some of the ones I've had over the years would be worth a fortune if I hadn't drunk them!

You literally can't detect levels this small except when measuring by hundreds of gallons

At this point I'm debating whether to sign up for radioactivity testing of French red wine. Especially if it means being sent hundreds to bottles for free.

If I survived[1] I'd certify that they were free of radioactivity..

[1] Except from liver failure

Re: A dry red with notes of cherry and a pleasing strontium aftertaste...

Or a Sunbeam Alpine that had sprung a leak...

I think they all left the factory pre-sprung. All the ones I ever saw[1] seemed to leave a puddle behind them..

[1] Two - one of my friends Dad had two. Both returned to the dealer after breaking down multiple times. I think that, in the end, he bought a Datsun.

Re: " researchers at the University of Bordeaux Centre d'Études Nucléaires de Bordeaux-Gradignan"

our wine is still world-class, and it's going to stay that way.

And, even more amusingly, at a blind tasting of sparkling white wines recently, a French judge scored an English wine more highly than Champagne.

Said English wine went on to claim the top prize.

Rumours that he had to flee into exile are, I'm sure, exaggerated.

Re: Radioactivity, wild boars

magic potion in that indomitable Gaulish village? (besides tea leaves, canonically established

No no no - tea was for fobbing of those Eenglish with fake magic potion on the basis that they wouldn't know othewise.

Slightly ironic given what later happened to Napoleon[1]..

[1] Yes yes, I know that he was beaten by a coalition at Waterloo (British, some Germans and various Prussians). But the Peninsula War was mostly British with bit-parts by the Portugese and Spanish.

Re: Grapes do not absorb much

glow in the dark wild piggies who love shrooms...

But that's enough about last night's drugfest..

Re: Pick two from the trinity

One wonders if the old Ford Cortina would come in handy here

"Cure worse than disease" springs to mind. I had a Mk3 Cortina for a while in my yoof. I think it's probably the worst car I've ever driven - and I've driven my wife's Morris Minor..

Unlike yours, mine had a suspension that vaguely approximated the stiffness of blancmange. Forget cornering at anything vaguely approaching speed since turning the wheel with any degree of rapidity left the bodywork wallowing around in a sort-of-average-direction.

It's the only car that I've ever skidded unintentionally.

Re: Pick two from the trinity

Anyone, anyone who cuts a cable by being a blithering, incompetent idiot should be sued to oblivion

To be fair to the digger driver - a lot of the conduits (especially out in the countryside) are not particularly well mapped. It's entirely possible that whatever GIS system they were using didn't have the conduit marked on it.

Unlike the conduits that carry our fibre here at work - so there was no excuse for the building contractor nearby when they dropped a load of spoil onto the fibre conduit access hatch and crushed the cables. And then wouldn't move the spoil to enable BT to fix the fibre.

So say that relations got a tad frosty is a bit of an understatement. Words like "lawyers" and "compensation" were uttered, even though the building contractor is also our landlord..

Re: How can knowing which platform a train leaves from be a security problem?

Luckily I'm not so inclined which means that the GCHQ bod reading this can calm down

You say that, but it's probably safer to lock you up anyway. Just in case.

Habeus Corpus? What's that then?

Re: Why???

Air France has their staff compute load sheets manually once a month

The fact that Air Chance does it isn't necessarily a recommendation..

(Many years ago I worked at Galileo - which had just been set up as a direct competitor for Amadeus - one of the founding airlines of Galieo was BA. We got trained in TFP programming by BA at Houdslow where they were really quite proud of the Weight 'n Balance system called 'Babs'..)

Re: Why???

quality control are no longer an issue once something is outsourced

Or, as we used to have to try to get through to Finance management: "just because you outsource risk doesn't mean it goes away - you just cease to be able to manage it"..