@bluesqueakpip  @nick I think your readings of the Doctor/Master relationship are thoughtful ones, especially the conceit that Missy truly wants to be the Doctor’s friend but doesn’t know how to do that.

@whisht The TARDIS does know the two of them well, doesn’t she?  And I think that’s key.

A while back in the “Oxygen” thread, I was wo…[Read more]

@mudlark — glad to hear you’re OK after your episode

@nick and @bluesqueakpip — I think Corbyn’s been doing very well at widening his appeal over the last few months. There’s no sign that he won’t be able to continue doing this I reckon. His immediate challenge is the tricky job of forming a shadow cabinet that looks like a Government in…[Read more]

@Nick

Yes-  I used to know that before I forgot it  🙁    Thanks Nick

So maybe here we go again?

I read in Tardiswiki and interesting little factoid about the 10th Doctor and the 3rd.   Apparently

the 3rd was drawn into the same time period as the 10th as he was going thru his regeneration.

In a book called “The Christmas Inversi…[Read more]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>@soundworld – ‘warrior’ wasn’t it? But mine too.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>@pedant @nick – the tardis said she ‘always takes you where you need to go’.</p>
<p style=”text-align: left;”>Why did the Tardis need to take Nardole away? When he is clearly not as good as his former boss at driving it? So he had to…[Read more]

@nick. I have probably told this story before so apologies for that. I was working in Surrey at the time of the miners strike. There was no television and no papers found their way into the staff quarters and if they did they would have been Murdoch rags so i wasn’t really up on the news at the time. One night we had a group of fat cigar smoking…[Read more]

@Nick

Very interesting take on Brexit.   Do you know about the EU/USA banana wars?

That went on a very long time but it was interesting cause in the end the multinationals

won a ruling against the EU for basically trade obstruction/protectionism..  My take

away about the whole Brexit kerfuffle is that trade would still continue to kee…[Read more]

Well, I’m a little late to the party, having only now managed to watch all these three episodes, and to read the threads on each (over two nights).

Everybody has come up with such great, insightful (and bonkers) ideas that I don’t have much to add, although it just occurred to me that the Munks (© @thane15) have done the world a great service -…[Read more]

@nick

Prepare to be amazed.  WTO isn’t a nice comfy fallback agreement, it’s a nightmare. Are you sure you want Trump (or, more likely, his successor) to have us by the short and curlies? Not that it matters. The single market was designed to eliminate non-tarrif barriers. Thatcher (quite rightly) grasped that UK business was getting…[Read more]

@nick

It will take much more than a year to complete “the paperwork” (research how long it takes to tie up a single trade deal – take the EU-Canada deal as a marker). And we will lose 150+ of them when we leave. If you aren’t already then follow @DavidAllenGreen and @sirpauljenkins on Twitter (and in the FT).

We have no trained negotiators (most…[Read more]

@nick

no deal exit

If that happens, then bear in mind that the UK only has 4 or 5 days supply of food.

@mudlark

have the option of a postal vote

I was putting myself in the hubristic head of May.

@Nick

Who could replace May?  If the choices on offer following Cameron’s resignation are anything to go by, it’s a very shallow pool from which to choose. I haven’t made a study of the Tory party, but while I suppose that it is always possible there is a light somewhere under a bushel in the lower ranks and back benches, I rather doubt it.  BoJ…[Read more]

@Nick

May has no chance of lasting until 2020. Her entire schtick is “if you ignore it, it will go away”.

It won’t, especially now she has tied herself to terrorists and neutered the only effective weapon they had against Corbyn. Her weakness is emphasised by the fact that her reshuffle left all of the big jobs in place including Hammond, who…[Read more]

@Nick

I’m relatively familiar with British politics because  I lived there for a few years albeit

26 years ago.  I get most of the basics of the system.

DUP is something akin to evangelicals here to my mind or at least something

ultra conservative.  Not good in the 21st century.

But who in the Tory party can replace May?  Yes –  I’d be…[Read more]

@Nick

I texted my bff over there in the East Midlands both last night and this morning.

She cant stand May.   She’s always complaining about her and I complain back about

‘orange cheeto’.  She was hugely pissed off when May called the election.  Her reason was

that she felt May just opened up an opportunity for the  ‘revenge of the remaine…[Read more]

@pedant Excellent!
@nick Thanks for your interesting view.  I agree re PR and some sort of federal structure, I don’t see it as being likely to happen, other than through chaos.  I agree re losing Alec and Angus, we need these different voices to be heard.  I bumped into Alec (Salmond) on a street corner in Glasgow a few years back (when he was th…[Read more]

@thane15 @nick @whisht

Yes, he lost his seat. (Hurrah). I agree with whisht, the Conservative campaign was relentlessly empty, and I do hope this results in a softer more collaborative approach, but then we now have the DUP propping up the Cons in government, which is not encouraging to my mind.  I agree with @nick that the general lack of in…[Read more]

Hi @Nick – just to say that I agreed with your earlier post (while I was writing my overly long one!).
Also enjoying the Guardian article of the US journalist who visited Yorkshire (I’m from the South, but have relations in Rotherham and an uncle who was a miner, and remember the miners’ strike though I’m a bit younger than you).

But I need to…[Read more]

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