Mackle

Looks like someone has been watching Fox News, that exact phrase has been said verbatim. 

The sunny uplands, the prat, and the wardrobe 

This makes me think of Brexiteers like Mark Francois and John Redwood 😂

  I remember something along the lines of him sitting on the floor in a wardrobe so that he could "channel in to the energy of the nation" 

Whilst they giggle and smirk about the EU CoViD vaccine rollout.    It is very clear that a lot of prominent Brexiteers certainly do have something against the Europe, regardless of claiming otherwise. 

  As this is a traditional labour seat and was also one of the red wall seats that stayed red, it's going to be a real litmus test.

  Have seen a lot of his videos. Sometimes he does seem slightly smarmy (he was smirking throughout his recent video about Brits in Spain), but I usually agree with most of what he says plus it is much nicer than the inflammatory stuff you see from Michael Heaver (who recently started to quite staggeringly call for the UK to stop paying the divorce bill, and now some Tory MPs are also taking up the baton on this) or the propaganda of Mayer Tousi.    And when the two new news channels hit UK airwaves it is going to get worse. 

@john g. I was worried for a moment that you were going to say Rick Ashley!!   Actually, he played at the Batschkapp when I lived in Frankfurt - the area was completely gridlocked, never seen anything like it in that part of town (and no, I did not go to his concert!).  But David Hasselhoff eclipsed him by playing at... I think Alte Oper, a few months later. 

  I'm wondering if any of your wives had interesting passports that you potentially could have claimed    Not saying that you are the Henry VIII of Toytown, John... 

  Not recent generations sadly   Pretty much Belfast and Dublin are the only two places I've seen on the Emerald Isle (so far - plenty of interesting things still left to check out). I felt uneasy in Belfast, but Dublin always felt like a home from home.  Even went to the Irish version of the Creamfields festival, fantastic people. 

  It's a bit late now, I've been here for seven months! There often seems to be a strained relationship between the US parent company and the Germany subsidiary, because of things such as German labour laws and having to have a betriebsrat. There are some issues where the US had to defer to the Betriebsrat, but fulfilling the original promise of my language training was not one of them. Where it gets really petty is that in transferring me out here, it's cost them so much more money than German lessons would have done.   Maybe I am doing them a disservice, and it was really felt that it was better for my mental health to be moved to an English-speaking place. I don't remotely think so, but still.     

  To be honest with you, I'm one of the seriously pissed off people.   It's not going to be easy for me to move back to Germany as a third-country national with no degree, despite my employer thinking that ICT cards are given to whoever they ask for. But also, I don't feel at home in Britain anymore, it's not the country that I thought it was, plus my hometown of London is obscenely expensive.

  Thinking about your example of Malta here, would you say that Scotland has the potential to have that agility as well? It has just over 5m people, world famous golf courses, beautiful scenery, a club in Celtic that has enormous global support, oil supplies, a financial centre and culture centre in Edinburgh, incredible whiskies, large fishing stocks - and much more that I could list, but the point is that there are multiple sectors in which Scotland has a lot to offer and benefit from, and other sectors that perhaps could be strengthened (the rejuvenation of shipyards perhaps?). 

  At what point do the general public start to see that things have gotten worse? At the moment there seems to not just be a denial that there are serious issues but a narrative that a united Brexit Britain is reaping benefits and exposing the "remainer lies".   How much doubling down can be done?

  Sadly though people in England are consuming this bile, along with the Mail and the Sun. The poll that the article was loosely about was an Ipsos Mori one.   It has become apparent the Union is not united at all - with the Brexit referendum it was lopsided towards the votes of people based in England, whilst there also people south of the border who feel that with 59 MPs Scotland is over-represented in Parliament (I've also heard people outside of London complain that London as too many MPs as well). I just wonder if the anti-EU press jobs that moonlight as vaccine rollout information, coupled with the recent proceedings against Nicola Sturgeon, will kill off a post-Scottish Election push for independence. I don't really see "The Tories know best! We have to trust them!" as being a reason to preserve the Union.