The Lib Dems promised to frustrate the passage of the Bill through the Commons and failed - they couldn't even get all their MPs to vote against any of the Bill's Readings! Only 8 out of 192 new clauses and amendments were selected for debate and all were rejected during the Commons' Committee stage - unusually, this was a 'whole House Committee' sitting with a chairman rather than a Speaker - and the Bill completed its passage with a thumping majority of 372. That should send a clear signal to the House of Lords which has been threatened with abolition if it attempts to frustrate the will of the people. The elitist malcontents including the ilLiberal anti-Democrats sitting in that place would be wise to heed the warning.
Democracy is the best of a bad bunch, it is not king, it only works properly when effectively challenged from either side otherwise someone dominates and does so out of proportion. The reason you see so much argument after the referendum is that unlike the first past the post system that can appear to deliver a majority (just like the US electoral college) a referendum can deliver something that is a lot more 'arguable' because it is proportional. Funnily enough proportionality is something that all the traditional parties hate, would you be so keen to support your tiny percentage win argument in all of politics because with true proportional representation you would be the victims a lot of the time or more to the point you would have to learn to compromise all the time.
I have all of them on my tablet, I have watched them so many times, I only have them by courtesy of one of our kind members who has taken a leave of absence like I did, they are wonderful
I kept meaning to find an appropriate spot for exactly this quote, this was the 80s and so apt for so many arguments now, I wonder if the humour percolated down into the angst that pervades everything now
A good news stories, courtesy of Bloomberg, #DespiteBrexit: Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, is on a trip to the UK and met Theresa May. He told her that Apple is to invest in a new UK headquarters in London which will employ some 1,600 members of staff. "We’re a big believer in the UK" said Cook. There will be bumps in the road along the way, but the UK’s going to be fine".
All good news at the moment but I cannot help feeling that Andrew or one of the other boys will post a thread #Because of Brexit if the economy takes a dive
Thought I'd step right into this room with my BetterOffIN T-shirt freshly ironed Lots of good comments but the main one is that we are currently in the EU still and nothing economic is due to Brexit. Anything bad is only the fear of Brexit and anything good is probably despite Brexit. Nothing because of Brexit though as we haven't left, not even said we're leaving properly in fact still pretty planless. Now I can see ways that Brexit could be survivable and am very annoyed that the EU is too blind to see how they would be good for all the countries but I am most peeved about toadying up to unpleasant world leaders such as Trump and Eradogan (?). This is not my Britain. It comes to something when you hope we side with the Xi's China rather than Trump's America. I'd say rant over but I have lots still.
These are not new jobs btw, they are being moved to the new site which was bought and development started before the referendum was announced if I remember correctly. Software is a massive strength of the UK as its predominantly in the English Language. Its certainly something that the government should focus investment on post Brexit, especially in other cities rather than say HS2. Create a silicon valley , and you will see a lot of Chinese investment also.
Well you've come to the right place if you want a good old moan about us leaving the EU, you are not alone
We had a Silicon Glenn, very little of it is left now, because it was mostly focused on hardware and manufacturing, for about 30 years it provided good employment in Scotland but almost all the PCB manufacturing companies in the UK shut down so we almost lost the entire industry, there are still some but the big players are long gone, the software side is still represented particularly in Dundee but good software companies are spread fairly uniformly throughout the UK. The problem is we will likely never have an indigenous software company on the scale of Microsoft or Google as the niche is now occupied and any successful smaller UK businesses end up getting bought out before they get a chance to grow. And it does not help that when we do come up with a world class company like ARM, it gets bought up by the Japanese.
We have, or had, Silicon Fen, ie http://www.cambridgesciencepark.co.uk/ but the important company, ARM, was sold to Japan within days of Maybe taking over https://www.ft.com/content/235b1af4-4c7f-11e6-8172-e39ecd3b86fc
The European Commission admitted yesterday that the British economy is faring better than expected and increased its outlook for Britain's GDP growth for 2017 to 1.5 per cent, up from the one per cent prediction it gave in November #DespiteBrexit.
I watched our friend Nigel giving that speech the other day, I always like to hear his speeches, his feet are always firm on the ground as opposed to a lot of other MEPs who care just to ignore what has happened in the UK and US at their peril. Having said that I do not believe we will see any major upsets in the forthcoming European elections but I could possibly be wrong. I believe the major upsets of 2017 will come in the Brexit negotiations, watch this space
That assumes Theresa May is permitted to trigger Article 50 by the end of March which is looking increasingly unlikely. Arch-Remainers in the House of Lords will almost certainly send the 'Brexit Bill' back to the Commons with a number - believed to be 5 or 6 - 'Amendments' designed to tie the government's hands for the negotiations. Quite how a two clause, 150 word Bill with a single aim can be amended is a question in its own right. Nevertheless each of the proposed Amendments will have to be debated and voted upon before the Bill is sent back to the Lords where further Amendments could be added. This would be a deliberate ploy by the Lords - led by the over 100 Liberal Peers - to delay the Bill for as long as possible. Government ministers, a number of Peers and the Lords Speaker have all warned that such "ping-ponging" of a Bill that was passed by a massive majority in the Commons would cause a constitutional crisis of such severity that it could lead to the disbanding of the Upper House - which many left-leaners there would support! The alternative would be a snap General Election and in the unlikely event the Blairites, Lib Dems, Greens and the SNP were to form an electoral pact, the Tories could be displaced and Brexit permanently cancelled: to hell with the 52%. One of these Amendments is said to guarantee the rights of all non-British EU residents to remain in the UK post-Brexit, disregarding the fact that the EU Parliament has just produced a report suggesting that EU members deport all 1.3 million British residents as part of a "punishment package" favoured by Merkel, Hollande, Tusk and Juncker. So British left-wing politicians and their supporters are more concerned about EU citizens' rights than those of Brits - including myself and @CampelloChris. With their citizens' rights to remain in the UK preserved, there is no reason whatsoever for them to reciprocate - and they probably won't (at least, that's the message I'm getting here in Malta). I am resigned to the knowledge that my personal situation will become the source of much amusement to Remain supporters here.
You see that is the difference, while you seem to take pleasure at the comeuppance of the forces of liberalism, as dealt out by a Trump victory or Duterte's bloodbath or the impending possibility of a hard Brexit, I would take no pleasure in the disruption that would be caused to British ex-patriots in Europe by a hard Brexit and I doubt any of the other people here who supported remain would either.
You appear to be suggesting that any threat to British ex-pats' continued life elsewhere in Europe is predicated on what type of Brexit there will be - and by the way, there is only one "kind" of Brexit and that is the one the British government is pursuing which you would call "hard". As Juncker and everyone else in the EU hierarchy is concerned, there can be no "cherry-picking" and no "pick-and-mix" for Britain, the EU itself wants a complete, clean and total separation with Britain and Brits punished for daring to vote "Leave". Part of that punishment will be the deportation of British ex-pats even if this involves splitting-up families. Mrs May's offer to guarantee ex-pat EU nationals' right to live and work in the UK is now set to be one-sided.
