Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

REFERENDUM NEWS
an excellent article below from today's guardian ......


The European Union has missed an important opportunity for reforms that could have benefited all its member states and their citizens.

As a result, the prime minister has returned with a threadbare deal that has highlighted our powerlessness to effect institutional change. If this is the very best that can be grudgingly conceded when EU leaders express concern at the prospect of a British exit, what hope is there of any meaningful reform in the future?

Come the referendum in June, the deal will be a distant memory and unlikely to influence decision-making so much as gut reaction and weighing the balance of individual and national interest. I expect that those campaigning for us to remain in the EU will win the day if they can persuade people that doing so is the only way to guarantee security and prosperity. They will not win because people have any love for the institution itself.

Referendums have a tendency to deliver the status quo. The point needs to be made, however, that neither choice delivers the status quo because, like it or not, within a decade our relationship with the EU will look radically different, whatever the outcome. Last week’s deal has underlined the reality that our Eurozone partners are continuing their separate journey towards full political and monetary union. We will inevitably be bound by and disadvantaged by the decisions they make in their own interest.

The time has come for us to frame a new independent relationship as good neighbours rather than remain a discontented junior partner picking up the bills but with no power to influence the rules of the club.

The costs go far beyond our considerable net financial contribution, annually variable but between £8.5bn and £10.5bn over the past three years. The Common Fisheries Policy has been disastrous both for fish stocks and for our once thriving industry. Nearly a quarter of our quota is now landed overseas by a single Dutch trawler and policy has been mishandled for decades with no accountability to parliament. There is a tendency to think of EU regulations and the European Court of Justice as benign, but interference with decisions like minimum unit pricing in Scotland show the power of big business interests to win out over important public health protections.

The concern about the level of migration is genuine and could have been addressed but the EU has failed to take the opportunity for measured and sensible reforms to benefits. The emergency brake is cosmetic, merely adding rafts of bureaucratic complexity with no meaningful impact on migration.

For all the dire warnings from Project Fear, I simply do not believe that co-operation on issues as important as trade, security, defence and science would collapse in the event of a vote to leave. No possible good would come for either the EU or Britain in an acrimonious separation.

We would set out on a new path as the world’s fifth largest economy, confident, outward looking, keen to maintain close co-operation with our European allies and open for business. We would regain control over our own laws and borders and be free to negotiate our own trade deals with emerging markets.

There would undoubtedly be turbulence in the short term but we should balance that against the long-term risks of remaining bound to an institution that we will never learn to love.

I am always struck by the scale of our disengagement from the EU. When I ask at public meetings, few people can name a single one of the MEPs; fewer still have ever contacted one. It is hard to see why they would bother, given the democratic deficit at the heart of the institution.

In June, we face tying ourselves in for the long term to be increasingly governed by a body that few understand or trust and whose powerful commissioners we cannot vote from office. For anyone concerned about issues such as TTIP or the “tampon tax”, the reality is that these are the domain of the unelected and unaccountable in Brussels and the list will only get longer.

In the run-up to the referendum, the most compelling request I hear is for more information and the opportunity to debate the issues without the shouting or sneering. People want clear, unbiased information from trusted independent sources.

Commentators should also set out their own voting intention so that their messages can be judged accordingly. We should not shy away from any aspect of this debate but the public do not want a campaign that is dominated either by immigration or by Project Fear.

My vote will count for no more than anyone else’s but, for what it’s worth, I am optimistic for our future, I believe the balance of our national interest now lies outside the EU and I will be voting to leave.

Sarah Wollaston is Conservative MP for Totnes

You must mean the Observer as the Guardian does not come out on a Sunday?

It is the same web site.

Link?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/21/threadbare-deal-on-europe-refrendum

As you can see, it says Guardian and Sunday!

Observer is just Guardian on Sunday. Same journalists.

no stan, i mean the guardian as appears on my phone every morning including today!
as such, i don't get a link though haze has kindly provided same

Boris turns Dave down, he is for exit.

Ah the online stuff, sorry I meant the hard copy thanks chaps.

Why is the problem for me, Dave must have offered him a big one?

Because Johnson wants to be PM Max.. gaud help us if that ever happens.

Boris's calculation is that if he supports the in side then he alienates most of his party. They will then reject him in a vote for leader when the parliamentary party votes to reduce the candidates to just two. I doubt that he believes in leaving. He has made a safe political choice.

Boris's view in tomorrow's Telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12167643/Boris-Johnson-there-is-only-one-way-to-get-the-change-we-want-vote-to-leave-the-EU.html

Can you copy and paste it Haystack?

It's behind a paywall.

Get in there Boris !!

Got it, it's a long one..


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/eureferendum/12167643/Boris-Johnson-there-is-only-one-way-to-get-the-change-we-want-vote-to-leave-the-EU.html

Prairie hat alert!

At least he's done the right thing .

That remains to be seen, so you agree with me that he is a prairy hat?

"The demographics of the European Union show a highly populated, culturally diverse union of 28 member states. As of 1 January 2015, the population of the EU is about 508.2 million people.[1]"


What strikes me is that the majority of the 28 members seem to be relatively content in the "strengths" of the EU, while a smaller number of malcontents wish to leave and destroy the EU.

It would seem more reasonable to remain a member and negotiate changes of its organisation, but when is at odds with the majority it may be sensible to reevaluate once stance.