As May allegedly wasn't invited to the EU's end of term dinner (part funded by you and I), why is the UK still paying its contributions? If they are treating us as if we have already left, shouldn't our government have the guts to reciprocate by withdrawing funding until negotiations have been completed?

Because its not just about a ing dinner.

On free movement, I hope you're all happy with the possibility of schlepping to London to apply for a visa to go and support your team in Perpignan, or hit the clubs of Ibiza, or the beautiful beaches of Greece, or the Canary Islands.

1.4m British people (approx.) live and work in the EU at the moment and if we kick out the EU citizens here, imagining there won't be some reciprocal kicking out is daft. Still, all those expats from Spain can pick veg and work in hotels eh?

That's fine , except NOBODY , I mean NOBODY , has suggested any EU nationals already in the UK will be repatriated , so WHY are YOU suggesting they will ?

As regards the cheap labour market for farmers , so I assume you are happy to see essentially slave labour from other countries working over here ? , how very noble , how very ' European '

Look at the situation in Lithuania ATM , virtually all their Tax paying workers are/have left , leaving the place full of the very young and the very old , joining the EU is killing their country

So stop using the project fear to try to make a point

But they are 'ex-pats,' which sounds all nice and fluffy; whereas when people come here, they are 'immigrants,' which has all sorts of nasty, job-taking, school-filling, GP-misusing, benefit-claiming connotations attached to it.

But, they are all well informed, well educated people Bren, definitely not racist or xenophobic, they are just fed up with immigration


Seriously, the rhetoric used by Farage and Trump in their respective campaigns would not be tolerated in "normal" life, yet it seems that in the modern world, it's absolutely fine to target certain groups of people.
The real worry at the moment is that "typical" Labour supporters, who would never dream of voting Conservative, are more than happy to support Farage and his anti immigration stance.
In typical Daily Mail style, he has marginalised thousands of decent hard working people and sewn the seed that everyone from outside the UK is a benefit scrounger or murderer, it's ugly politics, with little thought on how the country and it's inhabitants will move froward, once we actually exit the EU.

The audience on QT last night from Wakefield seemed well aware of what Brexit would mean , and the majority were happy to see it through

Just maybe their lives do come in to contact with the negative side of immigration , whereas maybe others don't

When they talk about free movement, they mean about moving to live and work! We did not have visa requirements pre-EU (save for going behind the Iron Curtain) and it is very unlikely we will in future.

It is great. The result just goes to show we must have had 17m ill-informed people voting (I am being polite...) many of whom fell for a pack of lies.

You only have to read comments around the web to find out just how plain ignorant many people are about what the EU does, what it has done to the good in the UK, how it does it and what its relationship with the UK actually is.

People are lazy. They want their opinions handed to them on a plate. When someone says the EU isn't democratic do they bother to inform themselves of how it makes laws? Do they ****.

What many people don't realise is they are being manipulated. The people doing the manipulating are really not interested in the UK or the people in Wakefield, Wigan or any other depressed area.

Really ?

And the number of people in that audience who seemed to think we could suddenly change tomorrow and that there would be no problem.
How companies would buy or sell anything from within the EU never got a mention or the "hit" that we will take when article 50 is finally invoked.
Also you may have noticed that following David Davis' comments (a Brexit guy) about paying to pay to stay within the single market, the Pound suddenly jumped in value against the Euro.
Most people say that they want to be out of the single market completely and put an end to free movement and whilst there is little doubt that mot want net immigration to fall substantially, there seems little understanding on how the free market works and what the choices are outside it, something that the leave campaign dint't bother telling people about.

Which is ironic, given that just 5% of the total population of Wakefield were not born in the UK; and that includes non EU individuals as well as those from within the EU. So the strong likelihood is that the negative side of immigration some of those embarrassing representatives of Wakefield are most familiar with, is that which The Sun, The Daily Mail and Nigel Farage told them about, rather than experiences from actual real life.

With the Libdems taking Richmond from the Tories, a previously very safe seat and Labour losing its deposit


is there likely to be a change of tactics for Mrs May ?

Incredibly, UKIP's share of the vote shrank dramatically and the result, albeit in a one off by-election has caused shockwaves to ripple through the political parties.

They may have fallen for lies but were not as gullible as those who fell for the doom-mongering lies of Osborne and his cronies on the Remain side.

It does look increasingly likely that The UK wants to retain access to the EU single market and whilst this would have to be accepted by all parties (the UK and the EU27), this would indeed give us an excellent opportunity going forward.
I've no idea what theis does to the "Brexit means Brexit" rhetoric that we've heard for the last few months.
However, it would hopefully prevent the economy dropping off the proverbial cliff edge, when May finally triggers article 50.

You still think the EU will exist in it's current form by 2018/19?...lots of water to go under the bridge over the next 12/18 months with elections coming up in lots of the bigger nations that will have a huge effect on the EU.That's without throwing the Trump factor in the mixer.

Brexit will be remembered more for what it did to rock the status quo and showing what can be done, rather than what actually happens when all is said and done regards the end deal..if there if there ever is one now.

Wanting to ( obviously ) , and getting it are 2 very different things , and Similarily I doubt the main EU exporters to the UK want to lose their sales to us

So I can see a fixed charge being agreed for us to retain access

IF we can retain access to the single market, we could end up "having our cake and eating it", it will be interesting how the EU"& feel about it.
If the UK is successful in achieving this, I think there could be a rush of other nations wanting the same deal, which could see the end of the EU as we know it or, at the very least a substantial change in how it operates.

The EUs economy is about to drop off a cliff edge. If people united behind tough Brexit negotiations we could have our cake and eat it - they would pay us to remain part of single maker with no free movement!

All these scribbled notes, speeches, etc are simply disinformation so the EU doesn't know what the UK government is aiming for, to cover backsides if negotiations do not go as well as hoped and to take the sting out of the Remainers' panic. Working a treat at present. If Italy now goes for a referendum on leaving the Eurozone at around the time we trigger Art. 50 they'll give us anything we ask for and offer substantial reform to appease Italy. If the Euro fails there is one economy that really suffers - Germanies. They will not allow that to happen and if it looks likely they reintroduce the DM and leave France, et al to rot.

Why

Especially not those people running round threatening people in the immediate aftermath of the vote saying "we won, you'll be going home", and pushing the government to make the announcement that there was actually no change to the status of EU people already here?

How do you tell the difference between someone who is already here and is coming back after popping to his home country for the weekend and a new EU person coming here for the first time?


Not happy, no, but if resident workers won't do it, who will? We all like cheap veg and the current situation is better than letting it rot unpicked in the fields. If consumers were prepared to pay a decent price farmers might not need "slave" labour and we wouldn't need foreign workers to pick veg.



You're right. I should make some old rubbish up and write it on a bus as "Project Truth"

By ' Nobody ' , I meant politically , not your average big mouthed moron who was already liable to racially abuse

You issue a visa

Yes we'll have to pay more for our food

Read up on Lithuania if you like

Not necessarily the customer's fault. The supermarkets are mostly to blame in all this. When they happily sell eggs and milk as loss leaders it's a pretty sorry state of affairs. Milk pricing in particular has become a race to the bottom and it's purely to entice customers in to spend more on their way through the store to the milk. A couple of years ago Morrisons were selling a pint for as little as 24p. When you know about the work and processes involved in making that pint you have to wonder why the farmers even bother! Fair play to Morrisons, they now offer an increased cost milk where they guarantee that the farmer gets a fair deal. Although by doing this they're pretty much admitting that if you buy the cheap stuff they're not!

My in laws are three generations of dairy farmers so I've seen first hand just how much damage the supermarket's irresponsible pricing can do. Just by knocking 2p off a pint of milk can cost a farmer his living wage over the course of a year. Imagine being told you're going to work for a year and that work would be worthless because your product was being used as a loss leader to get the customer to spend their money on something else.

Capitalism and GREED at work, It's what people keep voting for and then whinge when it dosn't seem to suit.

UK out of the EU by 2018

is this your dream, a statement, fact, provocation..... Do you have any more pearlers?