Mackle

  I am going to assume that @hellfire99 is English? There is a state of thinking that some English people have (and it's definitely an English thing because the Scottish and the Welsh don't seem to have it) whereby on some level people seem view themselves as serfs or peasants, and feel that it is their role to defer to people of a certain class as their betters.   An example of this, are people who (at least during / after the referendum) say things such as "I don't need people in Brussels to tell me how long I can work for, it should all be down to my boss!" .   Or to borrow an example from the Brexit thread; during his time as an LBC radio host, Jacob Rees-Mogg in one sentence said that British people who had exercised the right of Freedom of Movement were given a right that should not be available to all so therefore losing rights post-Brexit was merely righting a wrong, but goes on to end that sentence by saying that associates of his who bought Cypriot and Maltese passports were "men of exceptional quality who deserve recognition - and not one caller to his show after that felt the need to call out such elitism.

  Youngster? 

  I kind of knew which song was going to start     

  I think you are probably right.   By the way, it's hard to see your TT name without hearing a particular Beatles track in my head 

  During the referendum campaign, he was Nigel "We can be like Norway!" Farage. Then when the negotiations started he became Nigel "No deal is better than a bad deal" Farage and managed to successfully retcon his Norway comments out of history as far as his supporting base are concerned.   A bit like with Donald Trump, it seems that instead of people feeling hoodwinked or mislead, it makes them even more passionately support and defend the person who has been caught out.    As much as I dislike him, at least John Redwood was clear that he didn't want Norway or Switzerland or anything else that had strong EU-ties, during the parliamentary debate in 2015 about the referendum

  I would imagine that what he means is that Britain is still in the single market and the customs union, still has regulatory alignment right now, and freedom of movement still applies until the end of the year.

  The UK response has been confusing, whereas I'm led to believe that the Australian and New Zealand Governments are asking for all citizens currently out of the country to return regardless of whether they are overseas residents or just out on a short-term basis.   So last week the FCO guidance seemed to be for British citizens to go back ASAP but it was unclear if they meant holidaymakers/travelers only. Listening to LBC last night, the presenter said the FCO advice includes British not resident in the UK, but then a few minutes later a caller in to the show was a British guy living in the US who had was told by the FCO earlier in the day that there was no need to come back to the UK, and the British consulate in Berlin have just tweeted that their advice to British in Germany is to only return to the UK if it's essential - so Dominic Raab, and the FCO and consulate/embassy, are giving mixed messages

  Thank you for sharing this - I seldom agree with Peter Hitchens, but I always find his writing interesting

  I've been cycling through Enkheimwald on my way to grocery shop, and am always amazed by how many large groups of people I see, and they are taking up pretty much the whole width of the path  

 

  Balticus, there are plenty of people for whom it did have the potential to be a real crisis, and for some it still does. Under a no deal, there would have been low-income Britons living in Europe who would have lost their health insurance due to the loss of S1 for example.    Now, you may be one of those fortunate people in an ivory tower that can channel their inner Marie Antoinette and say "let them pay for their own!", whilst lacking the empathy to realise that for people with no money, the loss of S1 is indeed a crisis.     The other potential crisis still, is the one of Britons who are in a situation where they need to return to the UK to look after ill family members, but who will not be able to bring their EEA partner over. Splitting up families could also be considered a crisis.

  Stanley Johnson is a massive Europhile and was one of the UK's first MEPs. 

    I'd love to have that option, but a core function of my job involves working on hardware, and apparently it's termed as "critical infrastructure" so we will be issued with some kind of form from the organisation that can be shown to police if they tell us to go home when we are on the way to work

  What an utter, utter, scumbag Dominic Cummings is.   But it's inline with what some "younger" Tories have been saying until recently. A friend of mine who is a rabid Tory has been saying for the last month that the economy had to come first 

  At least social distancing means that Abbey Road won't suffer from traffic jams due to so many idiots trying to recreate the album cover!