Wes Tender

Did I claim that it told the full story? No, I didn't. They have obviously reported what they have been told by their sources, bearing in mind that if anything that they have published was libelous, it could result in them being sued, of course. I await your bebunking of any part of it. No doubt we will hear Sir Disaster's side of the story in due course, but on the face of it, he isn't going to emerge from it smelling of roses. In the meantime, you might like to have a read of an article titled "The behaviours of the civil service" from Conservative Home, which gives a good assessment to the current situation between the Government and the Civil Service and provides some background to the situation regarding this seemingly incompetent Mandarin.

Also in the Daily Mail, Sir Disaster, the Civil Service Mandarin involved in the spat with Priti Patel. It appears that getting shot of the likes of him from the Civil Service is long overdue. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8061047/How-Sir-Philip-Rutnams-byword-bungled-advice.html

We need about 20 shots on goal to score 2, so we were never going to get anything from hardly troubling their keeper with more than a couple of shots.

Vestergaard on for Obafemi??? Perhaps Vestergaard is on as a striker LOL

We're going to win 3-4

We are absolute sh*t today

We're missing Redmond and a proper right back, as well as Ings. West Ham, particularly Antonio, are bullying us.

Bloody Mc Carthy. Useless

I have read them. It is comparatively short and concise compared with the EU's output in these areas that are prone to extend to the hundreds of pages of verbiage. The UK have ruled out equivalence on trade rules, so over to the EU to see whether they rule it out on financial services. In both areas it is in the mutual interests of both parties to come to a deal, but I suspect that WTO will be a lot more damaging to the EU on trade than it would be for our service industry. I note that you have not answered my question regarding where it is that you believe that a FTA like Canada, Japan or S.Korea compromises the EU's single market.

Yes, I can see that you haven't grasped the basics. The UK has stated clearly that if there is to be a FTA, it wants one similar to those already agreed with Canada, Japan and S.Korea. I presume that those deals didn't compromise the EU's single market rules, so why would a similar deal with us? If the EU wish to cut off their nose to spite their face by persisting to claim stupidly that a similar deal cannot be granted to us because of our geographical proximity, then more fool them. And just to be correct, it will not be the EU going for the wandering off to WTO, it will be us.

I sense a growing degree of panic in Brussels and the EU over our stance on what our terms will be for a FTA. In particular, where the EU were insisting that it would be extremely difficult to get a FTA over the line by the end of December, they are now being forced to accept that they will have to have a significant amount of it underway by the end of June, or we will simply walk away from the talks and prepare for WTO. The EU believed that the end of June was one of their aces to play, the deadline for us if we wished to ask for the Transition Agreement period to be extended. We have turned the tables on them and made it our deadline, already having made it clear that under no circumstances will we extend the Transition Agreement period beyond 31st December anyway. The EU have in the past delayed decisions on matters like these until the 11th hour as a negotiating tactic, a form of brinkmanship, expecting the other party to blink first and agree to their demands. Clearly we have outmaneuvered them, and by making it clear that we are willing to make preparations to go to WTO terms commencing from the end of June if they have not shown themselves serious about accepting our terms, the ball is firmly in their court.

Was I? I was saying that if a deal hadn't been agreed by the 31st December we would be out without one, but of course that is not the same as "vehememtly denying that negotiations would need to complete by June" is it? I'm sure that you'll be happy to post the quote. I did manage to find this though:- It seems to me that Boris I are on the same page, but clear also that I was already saying this previously.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-parliaments-51658091 It's all very encouraging stuff so far in the Government's agenda for the trade talks with the EU. I particularly like the idea that we just walk away from them if sufficient progress hasn't been made towards our stated aims by June https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51657273 I like the idea of this as well:- We really are beginning to look quite good at this negotiations lark, now that we have somebody competent handling it. That was never the case with the terminally useless May and Robbins.

Tom Newton Dunn on tw*tter. @tnewtondunn Good news if true. But the EU holds all the cards, doesn't it?

You're usually quite bright, so I don't know why you're attempting to show the opposite today. It wasn't me who linked that report, it was you. I was happy to quote the example of the remoaner Treasury's £4300 forecast as evidence of them deliberately distorting statistics as part of project fear. Where did I try to connect it with any particular scenario, such as Canada, Norway, WTO? That's right; I didn't. I'll say it once again, just in case it doesn't penetrate once more. It was an example of the Treasury deliberately publishing distorted statistics as part of project fear before the referendum.

I think that it is you who is confused, Timmy, or maybe you just misread what I had written. I never provided any link to the Treasury report, but I thank you for providing evidence showing that my figures were correct. It says that every family would be worse off financially to the tune of £4300 if we voted to leave the EU. I didn't go into specifics as to what the figures would be under different outcomes, as at that time before the referendum it was unclear about what the outcome would be. Your link was published 2 months before the referendum took place and you were espousing the Norway option, so I am not about to accept being called confused by you, Timmy. As I said, it was widely accepted that the Treasury figures were project fear writ large to show the remoaner worst case scenario.

This seems akin to the Treasury forecasts which concentrated on all the downsides of the worst case scenario of Brexit, whilst ignoring any upside. The Telegraph has apologised for their error, but I don't think that the remoaner Treasury has admitted yet that they deliberately stilted the statistics to show Brexit in the worst possible light. What was it? Each household to be £4300 a year worse off? As an economist, you've never been wrong before, have you Gavyn? Where were you on the ERM?

What are you taking as the first JRM quote? Basically I agreed with all JRM had to say and my opinion of the interviewer was that he was a bit of an idiot. He asked whether JRM was prepared to resign if things went wrong over Brexit, when of course JRM was nothing but a back bench MP at the time. Perhaps the idiot journo meant that he should consider resigning from the Chairmanship of the European Research Group, where everybody was largely of the same opinion, so that perhaps they should all resign at once. Of course there is always a chance that things will be worse some time down the road, but I very much doubt it.

So you are back to that video from JRM, who said that the overwhelming opportunity of Brexit will be felt over the next 50 years and all the half-wits took it to mean that it would take 50 years for the benefits of leaving the EU to be felt. Which group are you in? You worded it correctly, but did you take the half-wit's meaning of it?

If you think that I am going to write you an essay on the benefits and disadvantages of FTA agreements then you can go and get lost. I'm sure that you know exactly what they are, although of course you will interpret them from a remoaner stance, so that some things might be disadvantages to remoaners which are in the other column from a Brexit perspective. But as I say, I can't be arsed to indulge you any further when you are like a dog with a bone. As I continue to say, wait until Thursday to see what our negotiating stance will be.

Indeed, how far we've come from the Norway option to Canada or WTO, eh? Please do read a bit more carefully taking everything in context. My position has always been that we would likely suffer a short economic reversal whilst adjustments were made, but that once past those, we would thrive. I'm sure that you will be happy to show me where I have said anything different, without that caveat. Going back historically of course, much the same was said about how we would suffer if we didn't join the ERM at the time. History will judge the expediency of our actions, but the time to assess how we have fared through this process will be about five years down the road.

As I freely admit, May was totally and utterly useless, the worst PM we have ever had by some distance. But we have to be eternally grateful to her for bringing about the situation through her massive incompetence whereby she was ejected as leader by the party and replaced by Boris, who managed to get the WA over the line and then fool the girl Swinson into agreeing to the GE which changed the political landscape for the next five years, probably even ten years. So I view May with some affection.

The apposite phrase was used by somebody else recently, "it takes two to tango". I'll also jump in and say "you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink". I'm sure that there are many others which illustrate the situation. I'm sure that you're bright enough to recognise the EU's dilemma, torn as they are between being sensible about arriving at a free trade agreement that is in the mutual interests of both parties and the EU's desire to keep us as closely tied to them against our will to prevent us thriving outside the EU, encouraging others to follow us out. To use another pertinent phrase, they are between a rock and a hard place. None of this has anything remotely to do with Brexit, does it? Surely I have stated my position often enough that some of it must have penetrated. For me it is far more about sovereignty than economics. I can't be more happy that finally after all these years we out of the EU and I'm totally laid back about whether we get a basic FTA or whether it is WTO. After a short period of enduring a few economic bumps along the way until we begin to see the fruits of expanding our trade with the rest of the world, we will thrive outside of the EU, whereas they will continue to decline as a force in world trade. As an arch remoaner, I understand why you should be so keen to only see the negative side of our position, but as I suggested earlier, a person of your eminence economically must also have seen forecasts about the EU's economic forecasts in the event of a basic FTA or indeed us leaving on WTO terms. I expect that it makes for really dire reading, doesn't it? Now all you have to acknowledge, is that those economic repercussions are leverage for the EU to be more sensible in the negotiations, although their track record since Boris arrived has not been great.

The treasury costing of Labour's manifesto promises? What are you going on about? I'm talking about the apparent decision by Sedwell that we shouldn't proceed with our own Satellite system, now that the EU cut us out of Galileo in a fit of pique because we voted to leave the EU. It seems he decided himself that it wasn't economically sound and that we should go for an inferior cheapie alternative. Boris was livid that Sedwell had taken this decision upon himself and he only fund out about it subsequently.

I'm sure that you're bright enough to realise that the award of the contract to the French printers was due to the EU procurement rules which we were obliged to follow at that time. Had we been more devious about it, as the French often are, we could have used some cock and bull excuse that farming out the passports to an external country was potentially a security risk, but unfortunately the vicar's daughter didn't have the gumption to take such a course. But now we are free from the procurement rules, we can give these contacts to British firms if we deem it expedient.