Wes Tender

Panic begins to set in to the EU, who are warning us in increasingly shrill terms that if we want a FTA with them, the time available for us to wave the white flag and ignominiously surrender on our red lines is fast running out. As we have repeatedly insisted that we will not alter our position on those same red lines that have existed in the talks for several months, either the EU will have to relent, or we are out on WTO terms. Some in the EU say that it is already too late for them to ratify the deal even now and it looks as if they have badly misjudged our determination to stand firm, overplayed their own hand and are the architects of their own downfall. Apart from their own internal problems with Hungary and Poland vetoing their budget, they can no longer claim that the EU is the biggest trading bloc in the World, as that is now the RCEP. And as fisheries and the control of our own coastal waters is one of the major flies in the ointment preventing a FTA with the EU, it is interesting that during the past couple of months we have agreed arrangement over fisheries with Norway, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and now Iceland.

Are those your incontinence pants, Timmy? Do you get a good supply in to see you through this lockdown?

Did Boris' girlfriend sack Cummings? I look forward to you posting the evidence instead of gormless tittle tattle.

I missed it too. Maybe Verbal has a bad case of Verbal Diarrhea. I must have also missed his comments accusing the EU of a bomb analogy when Barnier/Verhofstadt or whoever else used that phrase to describe the shortening timescale

Why all these posts about Cummings on the Brexit thread? There's a perfectly good Boris Johnson thread which would be more appropriate. Unless of course there is some idiotic, misguided assumption that his departure will somehow affect the WA negotiations. It seems as if some believe the claptrap conclusions put out by the remoaner media that we will be desperate to cave in to the EU's demands and drop our red lines to gain a FTA with them. If the EU are also stupid enough to believe that to be the case, then they are in for a rude awakening when we hold firm as the clock ticks away towards WTO.

CNN have no more idea of events within No 10 than the BBC have about internal White House events. The simplest route to a breakthrough leading to a deal would be via concessions from London? 🤣Those CNN clowns seem to think that we should just roll over and allow the EU to have whatever they want in order to keep us as a vassal colony of theirs If those idiots wouldn't accept the USA making concessions against their national interest in trade deal talks, then why on earth would they expect us to do so? Would the USA accept a trade deal that allowed another nation to prevent them giving state subsidies to their industries if they sought to do so? Would they allow others to have any sort of control over their territorial waters? Would they accept the jurisdiction of a foreign court over their legal system? No, I wouldn't think so, so why would we?

You just don't get this history thing, do you? Elvis died 44 years ago, and was raised in the South of the US, so a little understanding of historical context ought to be a mitigating factor to be taken into account by any sensible person.

A far less biased and more balanced debate than anything that anybody employed by the BBC would come up with. And I expect that it is what most normal, sensible people would think too.

The BBC, not exactly the best ones to provide an explanation of what is wrong with the terminology used by Greg Clarke, as demonstrated by their stupid warning about the content. And you're becoming quite adept at patronising posters whose opinions don't agree with yours, aren't you?

Virtually every story that is reported by the BBC will be bound to upset somebody, somewhere. Why don't they just have one big disclaimer before every news broadcast and get it over with? As somebody who is often upset myself at what the BBC broadcasts, I would watch the news from an alternative mainstream broadcaster, but they are all just as bad as each other with their pathetic pandering to the leftie woke brigade. As a result, their former audiences are deserting them in their droves and finding their source of news elsewhere.

Who gets to dictate to everybody speaking the English language throughout the World what the "correct" terminology should be? Who gave them that right?

Did the namby-pamby "people of colour" thing even exist in the language of the time in South Africa? It would have been a bit difficult otherwise to use language not in common usage at the time, wouldn't it? I certainly don't recall its usage at the time.

Drat! An 88th minute Harry Kane goal, so they go above us

Well, the big-eared crisp salesman is the MOTD presenter and it was his team that produced that result, so this will probably continue for another couple of years.

Welcome. It's to your credit that you don't choose a glory club. If you've become interested in us now, have a few sessions on You Tube and delve into some of the exciting players and performances we have produced over the years.

Just think what we'll be capable of when we're back to full strength!

I wonder whether he on a bet with his mates that he would be able to drop their names into it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSxicNgbut0

What a solid performance, and fulsome praise from the commentators about the exciting, entertaining way that we play. Che Adams continues to grow as a scoring force and was ably abetted by Walcott. The midfield continues to be marshaled well by Romeu and Ward-Prowse protecting the defence, who as a result weren't overly troubled and whenever threatened, stood firm. McCarthy was mostly a spectator, but late on produced a world class save to keep the clean sheet. We ought to have been weakened by being without Ings and Bertrand, but it didn't seem that way. OK, Ings might well have pounced on one or more of the chances that we created, and Bertrand would have produced more forward threat up the left than Stephens did, but it didn't matter, as we were comfortable throughout most of the match. Let's hope that the international break doesn't halt our momentum, or produce any injuries, and that instead it benefits us by giving us time for injuries to heal and for team cohesion to improve still further. This is a good team we have, and with great spirit and fitness levels. Hasenhuttl has done a good job of late and the results are a credit to him and the players, who are doing us proud.

We've played really well this half, but we might come to regret not finishing a couple of really good chances. We have been good at keeping possession and the only time that Newcastle looked as if they might be dangerous was when Saint-Maximin could have broken forward with pace, and Romeu took one for the team. The most annoying thing is the number of times when Stpehens got the ball on the left a fair way up the pitch and had good opportunities to have made a forward pass to one of our players, and every time his immediate thought was to pass the ball backwards. And I worry that all this sideways passing at the back will come to bite us if we make one slip.

Steve Bruce has already mentioned the Leicester defeat in his pre-match summary

Any streams for this one?

Very poetic, but what exactly have I lost and why would I be lonely among the 52%? I'm a heartbeat away from what I have yearned for for the past decades. 😄

I expect that LD had his tongue firmly in his cheek. Starmer wouldn't be so stupid in their manifesto as to offer a referendum on rejoining the EU, or even more incredibly making it policy to rejoin without one. He did his best right through the last parliament to obfuscate over his position on Brexit, so it would be very naive to believe that all of a sudden he and the Labour Party will commit themselves to a surefire vote loser in the next election. In any event, of course it isn't going to be a scenario whereby we are welcomed back with open arms by the EU. We would have to accept joining the Eurozone, Schengen, rejoining the CAP and the CFP, and paying through the nose towards the running costs of the gravy train. By the time of the next election, we will have begun to see the fruits of our independence, whereas the EU will be falling apart at the seams, with growing campaigns from other members to follow us out of the door.

I'm pleased to hear that despite rumours that the UK may have caved in on fishing in order to get the talks on trade with the EU underway, news surfaces today that Barnier has reported to the EU that no real progress has been made during the past couple of weeks of intensive talks. The sticking points remain fisheries, the so-called level playing field and ECJ jurisdiction over our laws. The irony is really delicious when Barnier accused the UK of intransigence over these matters, and says that we are deliberately running down the clock in the hope that the EU will cave in to our demands. We are being accused of employing the very tactics that the EU negotiators are renowned for. When we walked away from the talks a couple of weeks ago, accusing the EU of not taking the negotiations seriously, and that they were refusing to discuss legal text to back them, they very soon came running back to the negotiating table, worried sick about the no deal consequences. Surely it must have been made clear to them many times during the past few months that these three areas where we refuse to budge are red lines that we will not allow to be negotiated away and that we will not accept a FTA that is worse than those granted by them to Canada, S.Korea and Japan. It seems pointless to continue unless they are prepared to concede that we are not going to fold our position to their demands in these areas, so perhaps it is long overdue to just tell them that under these circumstances we consider that trading with them under WTO terms is now our preferred option. There is rising panic around the countries in the EU who have the most to lose if we go WTO, and in the meantime we are achieving some real success in signing trade deals with several other countries