It's intentional. We've been calling it the bored for a loooooong time.

x 2

and oh look another brexit debate woohoo!

Yeah I know. I was looking at the Brexit Negotiations thread from October and almost exactly the same stuff was said.

Got to admit, whatever your views on the current political landscape - it's been fascinating.

When I was doing A-level politics, I'd much rather have studied Brexit or the most recent US elections!

Very good point and it's also positive to see / read / hear so many people taking interest in the topics too.

Oh, absolutely. The policy geek in me loves every minute of it. It's so rare to have a situation where the country/people/government are renegotiating the social contract and their relationship with the rest of the world as well as the concept of what the state should be in the 21st century. No wonder why it's such a passionate issue for it is a revolution of sorts. Thankfully one that doesn't involve guns and armoured tanks.

Barrel 12 will be in trouble, for sure.

Anyway, I had a very nice evening with a bored member last night who gave me on of the best pro-Brexit arguments I've ever heard, from an angle I hadn't really thought about. It certainly made me think. Didn't change my mind, but made me think.

Don't listen to TheShed when he's had a beer.

I'd had a few as well, to be fair.

So what was this non-magical argument for Brexit that impressed you so?

To start (get my excuses in), I'd had a few glasses of red wine by then so probably don't remember it that well. In a nutshell it was about the chance it could bring to reset the British economy into a manufacturing-based, competitive economy and stopping the welfare culture trap that has been around since the 1980s, i.e. training up a new efficient, British workforce. It would take time, of course. It was a fresh angle on it which made me think, like I said, not just the usual "you lost, get over it, leave at any cost, spitfires over the Channel, jam and spam and let them eat cake!" nonsense.

I've always maintained there are some good progressive/left-wing reasons for leaving the EU. Problem for me is that some of the people in charge (Bojo and JRM) of it aren't doing it for those reasons. Quite the opposite. They want to make the UK even more neo-liberal and sell everything that hasn't been privatised off to Donald Trump, if they get their way. And they're fighting against other Tories who want a softer Brexit, and we're still not really clear what the plan is. I wonder what the hell Corbyn et al are up to. Is he playing a long game and counting on picking up the pieces when the Tories mess it up?

As for Bojo's speech yesterday. Same old, same old. Roll out the biggest charlatan of all to try and unite people, talking about betrayal. Yeah, right.

No such thing as a 'hard' or 'soft' Brexit...

Someone needs to tell May, Hammond, Boris, Davies and all the rest then. From here, 600 days after the referendum, it looks like they can't decide what they want.

Nearly half of benefit spending is on the elderly and pensions so unless leaving the EU allows us to implement some kind of strategy based on Logan's Run I'm not sure where this would be a benefit.

Good point. Some people don't see pensions as benefits, but there's no getting away from it being a large chunk of money...and it's only getting bigger. Not advocating Logan's Run, mind...(great film).

https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/y...17bc1n#ukgs302

Pensions, Health and Welfare add up to 52%. Don't see EU spending on there, but I've seen other charts where it's a very small sliver.