Fullerene

I am sure that with that extra £350 million a week that the NHS will have this Covid thing sorted out quicker than anywhere else.

I wonder if the year 2020 will now be known as the year deux nothing deux nothing

I think Corbyn was always fearful of any accusation of betrayal. There were plenty of people around him who love words like treachery, traitor, sell out and so on. If you ever thought the EU was a bad idea then you should still think so now. In fact you should never change your mind on anything. Dogmatism at its worst. That meant he was either very muddled or felt compromised when the EU referendum took place in 2016. Maybe he had hoped Remain would win without him having to express his opinion too strongly to anyone. In 2019 it got too much. If Labour thought a second referendum was absolutely necessary then why had they not campaign better in 2016? It seemed yet another example of dither, delay and indecision. Not ideal for someone who wanted to be Prime Minister.

Istanbul is easily the largest city in Europe, Turkey has a population similar to Germany. I think these would be big factors in any decision to let Turkey join the EU.

Fair enough. EU membership has been an issue amongst one or more of the political parties since time began. I also suspect that if you asked the general public, they would have an opinion too - even if only loosely. However, it is only since 2015 that it really reach fever pitch, with a large number of people being absolutely adamant about the issue one way or the other.

So obviously an election winning issue.

It is not the dumbest. It is the ignorant and I do not mean that as an insult. The media have little sway on those issues where I have a strong opinion but enormous sway on issues where I have no opinion at all. That is the same for everyone. That is why political parties do campaigning - to sway you on something you haven't really thought about. For example I remember a time when nobody had much of an opinion about the EU. Now it is different. With millions saying "we have to get out".

I am not that bothered if some seats had been UKIP instead of Tory. Not much difference IMO. It is like being asked to name my favourite tropical disease.

FPTP has led to worse. Regarding extremism, you can set a threshold. Also Farage has no MPs yet enormous influence because support for UKIP can seriously undermine the possibility of Tories winning seats in the volatile arena that is FPTP.

Of the 43 countries in Europe, 40 use some form of PR. The UK, France and Belarus are the exception.

Sounds scary. A teeny weeny shot in the arm would be preferred. I hate needles.

Good news. Your wife has not got Covid. However I think you should come up with another test.

Sean Connery tried to make that point once and nobody knew what he was on about.

Maybe. Whether they are allowed back is a different matter.

The Ebola virus is named after a river in the Congo where it was first detected. Lyme's disease is named after a place in Connecticut for the same reason. It does not belong to that place. They can't claim royalties or charge commission or anything like that. HTH.

Every book I have ever read about communist countries has a recurring theme - suspicion and paranoia. Whatever utopia they are trying to achieve is constantly sabotaged by dark forces working against them. Not just capitalist countries but enemies within. Trust nobody. When people in the Labour Party talk the same way, it makes them sound like communists too. I am well aware that MSM hates the Labour Party. They are not hiding in the darkness, they are out in the open and it is a disgrace how much influence they have. Similarly there were opponents in the same party as Corbyn because FPTP forces them to be. So yes, there were people who opposed Corbyn but that was known from the start. It does not mean everyone was against him. The Labour Manifesto of 2017 seemed reasonable enough. If a different leader had offered up the exact same thing, it might have done better. The main objection to Corbyn was not that the party was too left wing. It was the clumsiness, dithering and amateurism that caused the problem. Too many people thought Corbyn was too incompetent to be leader. In fairness, Johnson is equally incompetent but he is a snake oil merchant and simply better at fooling people.

They are both right. Compared to 50,000 lorries, 900 lorries is still just over 170.

If I built a castle surrounded by a giant moat I would want to make damn sure the drawbridge was on my side.

There are still too many people in the Labour Party who think that FPTP is a good idea. They think it provides an opportunity for a radical 1945 style party to win a landslide victory and change the UK completely. 75 years on, it has not succeeded much on that score. Even the landslides in 1997 and 2001 were not the sort of Labour Party in power that they had in mind.

Ha ha. I get that one acutely.

I remember it well. It showed how Sheffield became a shithole after it had been nuked. Full Monty made it look just as grim but without any nukes.

^^^ Reported for Northern Hemispherism.

Where is that famous headline - "Disaster at sea - Iceberg refused to move".

Yes. The electoral system gives the impression that the Tories are more popular in the UK than they really are. Almost every election since the 70s would have been a coalition of some sort. It is unlikely Brexit would have happened (since only the Tories were really pushing it). A period of consensus politics would be preferable to a Tory government terrified of its own extremist wing.

I have a brilliant scheme to defeat those interfering foreigners. I will take two sandwiches. One will be ham. The other will be cheese. That will fox them.