SpectrumFX

Free speech involves tolerating other people saying things that you don't agree with. Sometimes that's uncomfortable. The alternatives are worse.

I already linked it, several times. I just did it again in my last post, so you can find out there without too much bother. Of course they won't. The Tories will keep trying to privatise it, and then Corbyn will get in at the next election and throw money at it until we have to call in the IMF.

Your Metro article is from Apr 2017. The "latest figures" it quotes are old estimates. It also incorrectly assumes that the net payment was quoted rather than the gross. The article I quoted in my original post is from Oct 17, and references the actual figures rather than estimates. The gross payment to the EU for 2016 was £363 million a week. Here it is again. https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/the-350m-line-on-the-brexit-bus-was-wrong-the-real-figure-is-higher/ The most regular attack-line used against leading Brexiteers is that they misled the public over how much money could be used to fund the NHS if Britain left the EU. Throughout the referendum campaign, Vote Leave said that we send £350 million a week to Brussels – a gross figure, applied before a rebate etc. But no one knew the real 2016 figure because the data is compiled in arrears. Only today do we have the data, published by the Office for National Statistics. Its figuresshow… Payment to Brussels, net of rebate and money returned to the UK: £9.4 billion a year, or £181 million a week. Payment to Brussels, net of rebate: £13.9 billion a year, or £267 million a week. Gross payment to Brussels: £18.9 billion a year, or £363 million a week.

O. N. S. I know you don't like it, but they're the numbers. The "look over there" straw man stuff may make you feel better, but it's not an actual argument, and it doest change the facts. ?

ONS figures mate. The bus figure WAS wrong. But it turns out that It was too low. ?

Yeah, but it turns out that the figure on the bus was actually too low, as I pointed out a couple of hundred pages back. ? ,

Turns out the much discussed £350 million figure on the bus was wrong. The figures are in, and It's actually £363 million! https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/10/the-350m-line-on-the-brexit-bus-was-wrong-the-real-figure-is-higher/

News just in: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2018/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/-1/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats The EU is home to the top two Universities in the world, and has 6 Universities in the world's top 30! What a bastion of excellence in research and teaching! The trouble is that they're all in the UK

If it'll mean that we stop ******ing about with the clocks then the sooner they go the better

If you think about it, this is one thing that is actually definitely Brexit's fault! Nobody would be posting on this thread at all if it wasn't for Brexit!

So are you saying that governments are keeping the gold price artificially low? That makes it a buy doesn't it? Why is platinum cheaper, or are they manipulating that too?

I took everybody off ignore in a moment of reflection. I'm serious about the book BTW. It's very good for teaching you about engaging with people in a constructive way that uses an understanding of what they may want from an interaction to get better results for you from that interaction. Warping for example knows an awful lot about gold because he's put a lot of time into analysing it. Engage with him in the right way and he'll gladly tell you all about it. (Everybody loves to talk about their interests, to pretty much anybody who seems genuinely interested). Engage with him in a manner that implies he's a chancer speculating in a bubble and you'll get his heckles up and he'll clam up on you. I'm particularky interested in why platinum is cheaper than gold right now, but talk of other metals seems to be against this topics remit, so i wont pursue that angle too far. But it does sort of suggest that if gold is in a bubble, then so is platinum, and then you look wider and it starts to look like everything is in a bubble. Now a bubble is only a bubble relative to everything else. So maybe there's something wrong with the ruler (the money supply) that were using to try to gague if there's a bubble or not? Anyway. I'm all out of gold and into silver and platinum for now

I've a book recommendation for you https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People-Dale-Carnegie/0091906814 The TLDR summary is that if you stop being a twit you get a better reaction from people, and will actually find that things go better for you in life.

The original point to which i responded was that 40 new agencies would be required to replace equivalent EU functions. I asked for a list of the equivalents to these agencies before we entered the EU and one was not provided. On that basis in happy that any agency that didn't exist prior to our entry to the EU is redundant. We will not see 40 new agencies. It was hyperbolic nonsense, and the agencies don't exist for me to list! The EU accounts are materially incorrect. Anybody who told you that that didn't matter has sold you a line. If you don't want to believe that, then fine. You're wrong.

The point about the EU accounts is a matter of public record. Easily verifiable with a quick Google. I encourage all those reading this thread to research this matter. I can't believe how readily it is brushed under the carpet every year when the accounts are qualified once again. That this indicates a lack of financial control is inherent in the qualification, because they can't get an auditor to agree that their accounts represent a true and fair view of their expenditure. That an evidenced lack of financial control is worse than externally verified evidence of financial control is i hope self evident. I'm actually an accountant rather then a politician or journalist, maybe you should play the ball not the man and pony up a proper response to my original post. I won't hold my breath!

What agencies did we have in place before we entered the EU to preeced the 40 or so that you think we now need? I suspect we may not need them at all. In any case the EU accounts have been qualified for decades, so i don't trust any of their numbers. Economies of scale only occur with a proper framework of financial control. 28 countries with 28 agencies demonstrating sufficient financial control to have 28 sets of signed off audited accounts is a much better, much more efficient option, than one huge agency with inadequate financial control.

You are Captain Euro and i claim my £5 http://www.captaineuro.eu

Are you trying to imply that there's something undesirable about North Africans, and/or Muslims? I'm sure the people of Gibraltar would welcome the increased diversity with open arms.

If your "poster that question STEM's" line above is in response to my point about the worldwide top few % of STEM never being near USW, then you missed my point. Aircraft maintenance is a fine and necessary thing, and if the REF return for the academics teaching that course does indeed put them in the worldwide top few % of STEM academics then i will of course unreservedly withdraw my remark, and go and sit in the naughty step for 45 minutes. I bet it doesn't though does it?

Can you remind me what university each of those geniuses in your list attended, and the academic qualifications they gained through their university studies?

You are of course correct. If you give the Germans everything they want without a fight, then of course they will have no need to take it from you by force.

But the dogma is that that's not the case

Wasn't giving farmers money mainly a bit of a smokescreen for giving landholders money? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37493956 The UK's top beneficiaries include estates owned partly or wholly by the Queen (£557,706.52); Lord Iveagh (£915,709.97); the Duke of Westminster (£427,433.96), the Duke of Northumberland (£475,030.70 ) the Mormons (£785,058.94) - and many wealthy business people.

I don't think anybody in the worldwide top few % of a STEM field has ever gone near USW.

At the moment we're still offering to lend EU students the fees, and i cant imagine that not being honoured for the full course. If i was a potential EU student I'd think now was the best time ever to scam us out of the fees, given that a post Brexit UK is likely to have more trouble extracting the loan repayments from a student who returns home after the course than would of been the case if we'd stayed in the EU.