coldel

Aye fair point, both sides are being so childish its stupid, but that's the exact point I was making, be the bigger man and don't rise to it - that's the sign of a real leader. My other point really is that the EU has an army of trade negotiators and more money to throw at this than we do - we need a few friends in the EU to make this work in our favour. Burning bridges at this stage is not professional and will not lead to our optimum outcome, in my modest opinion.

Older members are also more likely to be grumpy old men

The worst thing we can have is Farage walking in there and crowing like he has been doing this morning, there is such thing as winning with dignity and this will only turn individuals against us in any trade discussion. We had to be the bigger man in this but Farage sees this as his own personal vendetta - as did most of the Leave campaign, they almost don't seem at all engaged with the actual process of exiting the EU now and their behaviour is not conducive to making our position stronger.

Yes meant the scottish referendum But its not 4% of the voting population voting to Leave over Remain, its 1.9% because if they had voted the other way it would then be 50/50 - if 1.9% of the people voting Leave had voted stay it would have been 50/50 so they were the ones that swung it. Its effectively the football 6 pointer. What this is measuring is effectively the 'swing' in voting, you take the rise in one group and the decline in the other and divide by two to measure swing voting. So the Remain camp would only have needed 1.9% of the voting to have changed their mind to have got us to a 50/50 result.

You cant have a government on a tiny % though, hence the coalition we had last time. Which is why the small difference is very important. The turnout was pretty poor in my opinion, given the amount that turned out for Scotland. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion on it but 15m never bothered to vote?

Go on then...

Yep Flex! For gross fraudulence!

The 350z-uk,com Likability League Table: mouthwash 47% linus27 42% gmballistic 39% gappysmeg 38% bobbyz 35% i4n 34% juggalo 31% paddy78 29% brillomaster 28% wmr1980 26% coldel 22% jetset 20% rabbitstew 11% BBK 10% ian 4%

Is there some 'Leave campaign' type cheating going on here, over claiming numbers

Haydn, so yes typo 1.9% So if 1.9% had not voted Leave we would have been at 50/50 - so 1.9% of the total voting sample of the population were the defining percentage. To my point, thats hardly 'the will of the people' when the different is so small.

Somewhat ironically, importing skills into the UK

YES! No longer in the wooden spoon position!

EU will enter into free trade with the UK, can't imagine they wont, but we will pay for it. We will be subject to all the EU regulation everyone else is plus freedom of movement of labour. All the things which the majority of Leave voters voted, what they believed, against.

As to Petes point, a referendum on the deal on the table, to get to that point we have to enact article 50, if we vote No to the deal in 2 years time, can we then put everything back in place? Worth following the Times CEO Summit that is on right now, lots of influential people talking about exit. Sobering stat from minister trade and investment: Number of trade negotiators EU=550 US=500 UK=12

To build the terms, we have to enact Article 50, can we retract it?

Absolutely, all the 'sour grapes' levelled at Remain people by Leavers you can be damn sure boot on other foot would have been just as bad. Referendums are not constitutionally binding, but its bad form to ignore them. The issue for me as said above is that it was so marginal, that you are not really going with the will of the people in either way.

Thing is every time I respond on this thread my liking % goes even further down...

I'm feeling very unloved all of a sudden

I can see this backfiring spectacularly!

Which, as we all know, completely defeats the point of the first referendum and would set a dangerous and destructive precedent! There are plenty of humorous petitions doing the rounds at present - my personal favourite is the one asking to replay the Battle of Hastings! - but, if another referendum happened due to this current pressure, then virtually any voted result could be contested in the future, just because a certain faction in society weren't happy with the original outcome. Good or bad, I hope last Thursday's vote is the only vote on this subject. I agree we shouldn't vote again, but, if we do vote like this again on another subject we shouldn't be making a constitutional decision based on a swing of 1.8% when 30% of the populous didn't vote at all. I keep hearing that the people voted to leave, but its so marginal if you ran it again on Thursday this week it could in all likelihood show a Remain win. You have to be sure, that is to actually get a reasonable margin with enough people voting - those rules should have been in place before the referendum. To state that you are changing the country constitutionally based on a 1.8% swing is farcial, you wouldn't see that sort of behaviour in any reasonable business, yet we seem happy to accept it when the stakes are so high for a country.

Just some fun, have a nose at your My Profile page under your username top left corner, I have 8660 posts and over on the right in the green box it shows 1911 likes. So I am liked 1911/8660=22% of the time. Who is the most likable person on here then, post it up

Its the investment that's going to be the problem, large companies are already putting multi million, or even billion pound projects on hold. Projects that would have created jobs and driven growth. As much as I keep hearing the likes of Boris saying short term pain for long term gain, I don't know what this long term gain is. If we end up with a trade deal which means we have to abide by EU regs and freedom of movement, what exactly have we achieved apart from ruining 7 years of austerity and putting us into another 2+ years of recession? Yes we now can negotiate deals with other countries direct like Japan, but how much of 'their stuff' do we actually need? Putting services aside, and focusing on physical products, what is it we would want from them? And how can it be a better deal given that the cost of getting those products half way around the world is always going to be excessive compared to a country sitting next door to us.

So, waking up to another of those morning afters to another England football team failure. But this time its different, in that its the worst of the failures I have ever seen in my life. The FA bottled picking a good manager 4 years ago and picked a yes man, someone who would shuffle about the corridors of football HQ and generally cause no offence. Not challenge anyone at the organisation, not upset any club managers with his selections and not pick players that are fit for the job. A case for the Defence? None. The second Iceland goal epitomised the fundamental flaws with the England defence in that they all need to be told what to do. No doubt Cahill can tackle, Rose can run, but unless someone tells them to they stand there as four individuals not talking to each other. Is it any surprise Cahills best games come for Chelsea next to Terry? In midfield we should rename it a minefield as to be honest it looked like they had all gone off and all that was left was a splattered mess. Danny Drinkwater had the season of his life, his team won the league whilst Spurs and Arsenal dropped by the wayside. But we take Wilshire with no fitness, no form and no game time. What sort of message does that send out to English players in the league who are not playing for the established big name teams? Even if you win the league you do not get near the national side. Vardy was our best striker yet was constantly getting splinters in his backside whilst we watch a woefully out of form Kane and Sturridge wafting about out of position. I guess if Man City but Drinkwater for £49m he will be a shoe-in for the national team then... Up front was, well can we even explain it? Rotating a number of strikers across a top 3 none of whom could play in 2 of those 3 striking positions. How has it come to this? Roy Hodgson appointed to no acclaim, played dull football in his first tournament, but we gave him some breathing space. Next tournament was a disaster yet the FA continue with 'project fail' despite every other expert and fan in the country screaming that change was needed and Roy was not fit for purpose. Third tournament and more of the same, struggled against the worst team in the tournament, a last minute toe poke to beat Wales, then more dross against Slovakia leading Roy to say 'a team will be due a beating soon' - oh how right he was. And lets not forget Roy has done alright out of this, £3.5m per year means £14m later and we had a manager that could not: 1. Pick the right formation for the players available 2. Had no idea what players to pick in his formation 3. Stuck with players that were completely unfit for purpose 4. Had no idea what his best team was after 4 years at the helm 5. Carried on with a Corbyn-esque blinkedness as to how his team were performing My fear is we get another yes man like Gareth Southgate and the whole process starts over again and I have to waste more hours of my life hoping against hope that England will at some point perform to the level the quality of players we turn out should.

I know, they are predicting the recession to kick in early next year when the lack of investment starts to impact the economy.

Should have done 2 years ago and saved us all this misery. Can someone also now replace the morons at the FA that kept him on...