OneGuyFromBarlick

Thanks for the advice. THE WOOL SHOP AFTER THE FAIR you will want a period of peace and quietness WHY NOT START KNITTING in readiness for winter? WE HAVE A GOOD SUPPLY OF KNITTING WOOLS in the finest qualities it is possible to buy WE ALSO KEEP A GOOD SELECTION OF HOSIERY to suit both sexes, and all...

Probably not the right place for this post, but I’m not sure where’s best – I suppose the shops below are ‘forgotten corners’. Whilst in Barlick this weekend, my mother gave me a ‘Souvenir Programme and Recipe Book’ that we’d had for some time. It is from a Country Fair, held in 1950 (the month is i...

I am keeping my eye on the forecast....

Richard Broughton

Not so much where I’ve been, but where I’m going. Coming to Barlick for a long weekend, staying with my mother. This Friday through to Monday. My wife has finals exams at university next week and I am ‘geeting out from under her feet’. Longest I’ve spent in Barlick for over 20 years I’d say. Chance ...

Endeavour. Splendid. I wonder what the significance of the tarot cards at the end will be? I'm racking my brain, but I don't recall anything from 'Morse' that might be relevant. Silent Witness very good too. The whole of the Prime Suspect series are downloadable on Sky. We are working our way throug...

Agreed. Said it before. Hard and soft brexit are a nonsense. We will leave the EU and the single market. Membership of the EU means the obligations of membership via participation in its institutions and agreement to paying one’s share of the budget, and membership of the single market and the oblig...

No one really knows how long it’ll take to negotiate a future trade deal - could be two but might very well be ten (I’d be hedging to the upper-end of that range). The reason for this is that what the UK has just done is absolutely unprecedented. No country has ever voluntarily decided to cut itself...

‘’I'd start canvassing other countries now for setting up a new, alternative, slimmed down EU’’ I’m not sure you’d get many takers, for a number of reasons. In my admittedly limited experience, I detect no desire for an ‘alternative EU’. Sure, many if not most folk know the EU has faults but in the ...

Guy Verhofstadt is Flemish Belgian and a former Belgium PM. He is now an MEP and is leader of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in the European Parliament (EP). The EP coalesces around groups of similar outlook and this is the main centre-left group. He was the AL...

The actor Peter Vaughan. Died aged 93. He will always be ‘Genial’ Harry Grout, the snout baron in Porridge to me. But actually, the obits are noting he was only in 3 episodes! You must be special to make that sort of mark. Wrote his own epitaph: “Luck, good wine and beer. I just had a damn good time...

I finally got round to watching the latest series of Peaky Blinders and the London-based Jewish gangster Alfie Solomons (played in great style by Tom Hardy) I'm sure noted that had ‘…dragged myself up here to stand by the oggin…’ Oggin – naval slang for the sea, specifically that bit you can see rat...

Well quite Plaques. There are plenty of other EU countries that have a red, white and blue flag too. As well as the Paraguayan flag and interestingly, as we know the Pound these past 12 months has performed only marginally better than the Paraguayan Guarani. Perhaps this explains the reference to a ...

Timely! M Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, has given his first press conference on Brexit this morning. Pretty clear and as predicted. For the EU the priorities are: EU unity Future deal for the UK will not be better than membership The four freedoms (goods, services, capital and labour) are indi...

Quite right Tizer. Actually, just on this free movement thing the Home Secretary Mrs Rudd was speaking to I think the Brexit Committee the other day and she was saying to Mr Benn the Chair that when we leave then all EU nationals in the UK (over 3 million is the estimate) might very well have to car...

Brexit will only deliver one of two things. Either a hard Brexit, where we are subject to WTO rules once Art50 has run its course and until we can agree a trade deal with the EU. Or us spending a lot of money and accepting free movement and the bulk of the EU’s standards and regulations etc. for an ...

Report of the latest European politician emphasising the reality to the UK. This time, Herr Dr Schauble the German Finance Minister who with impressive consistency repeats simply what he said prior to the vote. Report here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/17/german-minister-takes-hard-...

A few random observations. The less said about the Drumpf the better, though it was amusing to see Farage and is new best billionaire mate gurning for cameras in a golden lift, their ‘men of the people’ credentials laid bare for all to see… Interesting trade visit to India last week. Seems the India...

If you look at the photo of Gina Miller in The Sun it’s the exact same one as the photo of her in The Times, save for one thing. The Sun has darkened her complexion. Go on, have a look. What a disgusting country we are. I can’t wait to get out. Still, in more civilised countries like Germany it woul...

‘’I am incensed by the attitude of FIFA towards the wearing of the Remembrance Poppies’’ This is a tricky one and not at all as straightforward as our media report, or if you think about it. FIFA takes what might seem a perverse blanket approach to this so to avoid opening a Pandora’s Box. For examp...

Exactly. We don’t have the time or the inclination to read through that stuff, and shouldn’t be expected to. We all have other things to do, day jobs, interests and the like. So that’s why we have a representative democracy. We elect and reward quite well folk to read and think about all this on our...

Sorry for the length of this, but here goes….. ‘’The question is if the EU were dealing directly with the US and Canada does anyone in the UK know what's inside these agreements?’’ If they don’t it’s their own fault. Just as you can go on the UK Parliament webpages and find and track the development...

Recall too that prior to the vote among many Brexiters CETA was the devil’s work. (Actually, it was the very similar US-EU deal-in-development TTIP that was most usually referenced, but then we can’t expect Brexiters to hold two deals in their heads. And a US-bogeyman is always preferable to a Canad...

Pete Burns. Or to give him his full name, Peter Jozzeppi Burns. A surprisingly exotic heritage; his mother was Evelina Maria Bettina Quittner von Hudec, born in Hiedelberg Germany and who fled to Vienna to escape increasing anti-Jewish sentiment where she met his father, a Liverpudlian soldier, at a...

‘’……he'll just leave it to the administrators to run everything while he makes speeches, travels and generally wallows in the attention’’. I’m not so sure about that and given the administrative arrangements in the US that might not be a cause for reassurance anyway. I heard James Rubin talking on T...

Tiz – the short answer is that people who say we can stay in the single market or have access to it on terms as good as we have, are either delusional or they are lying through their teeth. Your understanding and what Wiki says is exactly right and so there can be no question of their delusion or of...