paddyfool

We've yet to see a workable plan for it though. The Chequers plan is a bad joke, the ERG plan is worse, and as the old saying goes, failure to plan is like planning to fail. Why should we go ahead with it without even having a plan?

The country as a whole are apparently split 50:50 on the question of whether there should be a second ref or not: https://whatukthinks.org/eu/questions/do-you-think-there-should-be-a-second-referendum-to-accept-or-reject-the-terms-of-britains-exit-from-the-eu-once-they-have-been-agreed/ Millenials obviously make up much less than half the adult population, and are not going to be unanimous, so it can't just be down to them. Meanwhile, which way people would vote if there was a second ref would be very much in doubt, as the polls remain very near 50:50 on this question as well, albeit with a narrow and very slowly growing lead for Remain (see the top four links here: https://whatukthinks.org/eu/opinion-polls/uk-poll-results/). There's not much shifting among people who voted either way last time; mainly the shift is in people who didn't vote saying that this time, they'd go to the polls and vote Remain, and demographic shift, with new young voters mainly wanting to Remain. It would be interesting to see how this turns out...

I'm going to repeat my prediction that the next death in this poll will be less than 6 months away :-P

Eh, we're bothered about it because it's obviously detrimental to us and not in our country's best interests (or our neighbours' best interests either, tbh). Meanwhile, does anyone else feel it's a bit much of May to demand respect from the EU when she doesn't comnand much of it from her own party or country?

Rather than steal anyone else's pick, I'll go for Mustafa ben Halim, now the 13th oldest on the list. Unlucky for some...

I'm still expecting Leah Bracknell at least to add to my random points total some time this year. We shall see...

This man could live another decade (and I kind of hope he does). One to drop next year, perhaps?

Worth noting that the more famous Chris Cornell of Soundgarden died last year... https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/may/18/chris-cornell-obituary

Hatie Kopkins is gonna go on hating, whether solvent or insolvent. Maybe she'll find a job stateside to pay the bills... the Trump administration is always hiring, and she'd fit right in.

Someone seems to have removed all the punctuation keys from your keyboard...

The Phillipines were hit primarily in an agricultural area, so only 250k of their population were directly affected. The death toll stands at 49 and climbing so far. Mangkhut luckily didn't directly hit Hong Kong or Macau, although it was still close enough to blow out windows, blow down trees and stop flights; it's now hit the South China coastline a tad further West, and is currently forecast to blow itself out over northern Vietnam and Western China. EDIT: Casualties in China have been very limited, courtesy partly of evacuating 3 million or so people from the typhoon's path.

Hardly a no show, just more about flooding than wind damage. Casualty total just 13 deaths so far; obviously going to rise, but not to too crazy a total. However, it may well make the list of top ten most financially damaging hurricanes, although I doubt it will make the top 5 (incidental note: 3 out of the 5 most financially damaging hurricanes happened last year with Harvey, Maria, and Irma). Meanwhile, the one to watch remains Mangkhut. Luckily, Hong Kong seems to have avoided the worst of it.

Trump's ego can't handle the truth, and Maria likely did kill that many people, looking at the hospital records and increased deaths, albeit many indirectly. Hurricane Florence, meanwhile, is causing a lot of flooding, with the storm surge plus record rainfall. We'll probably see a lot more such events with climate change warming the oceans. What else did you want us to say?

I don't think you could impose any upper age limit fairly. Frailty strikes different people down at different ages. I've had to stop taking my Mum to vote as her Alzheimers progressed beyond any understanding of what's going on. (Incidentally, looking after her has been one of the few things keeping me in this country, after the Brexit vote), and she's not even 80 yet. Other people still have their marbles past the age of 100. The only thing I wanted to be different about the EU ref voting ages was to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote, as they did in the Scottish Indy Ref. It's their future that was being decided, after all.

Ruth Davidson has been pretty emphatic that she wants to stay in the Scottish system rather than work in Westminster, however. Given the calibre of colleagues she'd have in the HoC, especially within her own party and their DUP allies, who can blame her?

The mighty dangerous Super Typhoon Mangkhut (Mangosteen) is due to arrive in northern Vietnam in 3 days time: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/14/typhoon-mangkhut-brings-blinding-rain-to-northern-philippines Probably not a good time to be old and frail... EDIT: forecasts now show a more northerly course, so this should miss Hanoi.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we end up with Jeremy Hunt...

So the word is that someone has found an Ark in an old archive which should sort out this hurricane. Made of gold, not seen since ww2, Trump to officially unveil it at the white house. Word is it'll knock your face off! https://goo.gl/images/Tk2z4q

None of us were possessed of a crystal ball, and blame-throwing is generally unbelpful. I can't imagine anyone was voting for the specific mess we've landed ourselves into. And I was also disappointed by the debate. Still am, on the whole, meaning no ill of any specific debater. Looking back, though, how did you envision it turning out? What would you have liked to have seen done differently, post-referendum, with the benefit of hindsight?

Austerity in Greece was imposed by the Eurozone, which the UK was never in. Austerity in the UK was imposed by the British gvt. And harsh treatment of the Catalans was imposed by the Spanish gvt. And the EU really isn't being vindictive about the UK leaving. We've been offered effectively the same deals as a range of other non-EU states, with Norway's and Canada's deals being on the table as a general basis, for instance, although the Canadian deal would be complicated by the previous good friday commitment to an open border in Ireland. We'd be deluding ourselves if we thought we'd be getting anything better; the EU's own rules, set up to protect its member nations, don't allow it. So with the chequers fudge of a deal looking increasingly unworkable from both sides, what's it to be? No deal, a Canada-style deal, EEA membership or remaining in?

I would love it if some biblical literalist farmer actually tried to recreate the idea of putting all his livestock on an arc. Bit cruel to the animals, though...

The big question for many on this forum, meanwhile: will these events affect the life expectancy of any celebrities? ;-)

Timeline of these hurricane / near hurricane events: - Barijat is hitting China now - Olivia is just about reaching Hawaii now. - Isaac is due to reach the Leeward Isles in about 36 hours. - Mangkhat (a Cat 5) is due to reach the Phillipines in about 48 hours. - Florence (a Cat 4) is due to reach the US coastline in a little over 48 hours. It'll take a while after the storms hit before we know the full extent of damage done. I expect there will be lots of disaster porn on the news channels this weekend in any event.

@Lord Nelson, The catalan issue is entirely the fault of the Spanish gvt. Nothing to do with the EU, who have no power to intervene in this issue; if they did, it would contravene some of the many safeguards in place for national sovereignty within the EU. And the problem with us leaving isn't really to do with the EU itself, but instead because our gvt still haven't presented a workable plan for leaving, and time is ticking closer. Why we went into the referendum, never mind triggered article 50, without making a detailed, thoroughly worked out and triple-checked plan for leaving first should be the question. But no, our gvt decided to race in and bodge things, for fear of seeming weak and hesitant. Look how strong they look now ;-) Also, I'd be careful of that "nobody" claim. I've heard many different people explain many different reasons that they had for voting Leave, from the fear that sovereignty was threatened, to wanting fewer immigrants, to wanting to harm the UK. And the EU has been blamed for a ton of issues that it wasn't responsible for; where the issue in question is one that some EU countries have but others really don't, it's worth asking how much the issue is really the fault of the local gvt. Minor case in point: it's much easier to get an exemption to the 48 hour week rules in some EU countries than others. Quite possibly our own gvt should have been more flexible in how they put this rule in place. A bigger claim can be made for how the EU gets the blame for globslisation and privatisation, when our own country has gone much further in this regard than most EU countries. The long and the short of it is that the decisions which have fundamentally damaged the UK were made in Westminster.

The classic problem with Brexit's appeal to many there - it's about an emotional appeal to go to war with a "malevolent, spiteful" foreign bogeyman. Nevermind that the problems blamed on the EU are generally homegrown in origin (austerity, anyone?), this paranoid fantasy dominates the narrative from the hard brexiteers.