coldel

Its all swings and roundabouts with NASA - they fund SpaceX with huge contracts anyway so they are all kind of in it together. It would be good in my lifetime to see a bit more space exploration, seeing things for the first time.

The mind absolutely boggles that we are looking at images from so far away, was chuffed it all worked out this morning, clearly so were the mission controllers with that handshake https://news.sky.com/story/nasas-insight-spacecraft-successfully-lands-on-mars-11564652

Well Trump has had a couple of stabs at it and is getting there... ...my understanding is the issue was more to do with non tariff barriers - the EU is particularly strict on things around goods in terms of health and safety etc. whereas the US is much looser (chlorinated chicken anyone ) so to operate a free trade model with the EU we still need to be tied to those (the common rulebook) which makes it much more difficult to be working in in a free trade agreement importing goods from other countries which contradict those. But yes I agree Doc, leaving 20XX in the contract is something TM should not have agreed to - of course we need insurance if trade negotiations should break down but I think putting a proper deadline in achieves two things; firstly it focuses the parties to a schedule and milestones, secondly its an incentive for both parties to resolve challenges instead of kicking it into the long grass which is exactly whats happened here - as soon as the transition period got mentioned everything has suddenly become very vague.

Yep sounds pretty objective, although as referenced the throwaway reference in the last paragraph certainly isn't.

Quite a lot of experts out there at the moment having a say, have to disentangle the bias research though - I saw at the bottom of this article a reference to the economy losing £100b by 2030 which could be right but I did read this report the other day before noticing it had been commissioned by a pro-remain group so its unlikely to have come to a positive conclusion.

I think it has been obvious to anyone with an ounce of commercial sense that this was always going to be the outcome. Basically those people have been labelled 'remoaners' what they were are people that have more sense of the potential outcomes than those blindly waving union jacks every time Boris appeared on TV. We are the smaller economic nation negotiating with a huge economic bloc (which is the point of its existence, it negotiates deals). The main problem is that you have politicians like JRM and Boris quite dangerously throwing ridiculous notions of being able to do what we want with no repercussion and 'telling the EU to go whistle' demanding more from the EU whilst out than what we had whilst in - just to further their political careers. For all the vitriol pointed at TM at the moment, we should be reserving it for people like Boris who just picks sides depending on what way the wind is blowing that year and JRM who just wants to undermine any government regardless unless there is a overtly right wing politician who is his best mate at the wheel.

I am flabbergasted at how Nissan can release a car with a serious design flaw and then just shrug their shoulders at it. The fact that people have to pull fuses to prevent two thousand pounds worth of repairs, the mind boggles.

I cannot agree with JRM at all mate, he is one of the most self centered politicians I have ever seen. The fact he wanted to push this to a No Deal from the off just to place his similarly minded MP friends in the right positions at the expense of this country says volumes of what his agenda is. The fact when asked who he would replace TM with he suggested David Davies shows how utterly devoid his inclination is to the welfare of this country, DD is a complete car crash, someone who failed miserably at his single remit - never quite got my head around how someone could be so awful at their job that has put this country's welfare in peril, and be put forward for a promotion But yes agree with the rest, this exit has now become more about political standing now than anyone doing the right thing because of the last two years Tory mismanagement of the exit negotiations.

Ah kick it into the long grass, symptomatic of how problems have been dealt with all the way through this. Well, its over to parliament now, although it is looking decidedly shaky with the DUP Labour and SNP all voting against it, by definition that means it wont make it but depends on the day what sort of repercussions are on the table for doing so. Good though to see that parasite JRM become pretty much a non-event over the last week.

The one I was working on is one of the 'big 4' where we did micro location marketing i.e. if you were stood next to the soft drinks aisle we could push say a deal to them live for a soft drinks brand that paid us to do it - error margin was less than 4 feet - the project won the retail week tech and comms award in 2016. It was fun in the trials watching floor plans of retail stores and all these dots on them that told me who the person was and their movements around the store etc. Of course all opted into by the customers before anyone goes off on a 'they are spying on us' rant Anyway, back off course with our waywards efforts at brexiting!

On a completely random note, location data is cool, I ran a ratail project with a company called Pointr, worth a look at them. Sorry, back on course, brexit!

Not that we could ever predict what an EU army would do or how it would operate but the US led Iraq war was not supported by the EU with France and Germany both very vocal against the US and UK doing it. So would have an EU army unreliant on the US have done it, who knows. And yes we would have an economy doing stuff if we never joined the EU, again impossible to predict what it would have been but we did grow as an economy throughout our EU membership, we were not in a terrible place. What we need to try and speculate about is the reality i.e. what will our relationship look like in future as what has happened, has happened. So sure, lets retain complete rights to our waters (and ignore for now any tit-for-tat where the EU ban us from their waters that we currently fish) in exchange for damaging tariffs against our financial services industry - tens of billions of pounds leaves the economy, fisherman still have the right to fish here but have their income taxes raised or public services like policing and health reduced to cover the shortfall of loss of income into the economy. Fishing is an emotive issue, as it relates directly to the passionate views around sovereignty in that by banning EU fishermen completely we have 'made it' in terms of being an independent island - the EU know its a political hot potato and will use it to their advantage, but thats a fault of the British general public to make it such a big issue. All that said, fishing and manufacturing are very much local issues that need fixing and have been wilfully ignored by successive governments be it labour or tory, none of them addressed the shift in the backbone of the economy switching to tech, pharma, IT, services and left communities with no gainful employment. That is complete governmental failure to listen to the people.

Again as other have hinted, simply linking your point of view to someone like John Redwood who has always been a Euro-sceptic, and part of the ERG is simply not a credible source of info. He is going to cherry pick data and present it around a pre-defined argument - you are simply falling in behind that with what is called confirmation bias. You quoted some industries there, the car industry for instance, which is at an all time historical high - the only decline in the last 18 months has been due mainly to fears around Brexit and the impact on looking legislation on diesel. A simple screen grab of last 7 years output data for new cars from UK industry via SMMT Its also interesting that you use the word backbone of the UK industry to be manufacturing and fishing, fishing accounts for around 0.5% of the countries overall production (GDP), 20 years ago it was 1.5% so yes technically it has declined, but it was never the backbone of UK output, miles from it in fact. What you ARE referring to is the impact of local employment challenges when industries close down, the impact of cheap product from China was always going to impact aluminium/steel production. The introduction of cheap flights was always going to impact seaside towns which are now ghost towns. So on and so forth. This I agree is a failure of the government to ensure other employment opportunities arose, it did focus on financial services and the south east. But it is not something you can simply point the finger at Europe for being the sole protagonist, its quite frankly false.

The power of the forum, good work all round!

No expert by any stretchbut I think US imports are subject to VAT + 10% duty currently, if that's right then you save 5% or so as you would still have to pay VAT plus the 4.3% I am pretty sure VAT will remain in place! Probably need to check in with the traders on here that import all sorts of stuff (Torqen/Tarmac etc) from the US as sure they would be looking at their business models over the next 6 months or so!

Of which none are about the packaging...!

The last election was about putting in place whoever the populate trusted the most to get Brexit done. Be interesting to see where the votes go this time...

Well if Labour do vote against it, as Corbyn has said, might come down to the fringes, rebel Tories and the DUP coming through on their confidence and supply agreement. I think May is relying on the fear of No Deal to force it through.

To be fair she is doing a decent job of fending off the hostility in the house. Boris slates her for putting in the backstop, she responds that he was on the committee that originally agreed to do it in the first place Raab says that Brexit should be about taking back control not giving more up, she replied saying its the first chance she has had to formally thank him for his work as Brexit Secretary Unfortunately we have a weak leader, weak opposition, we have deluded Leavers and no leverage vs a much bigger entity. Was this outcome going to be any different...

Ha yeah probably right! Leavers had a prime chance to do something though, it was when David Davies was meant to be creating this agreement, a remit which he royally ballsed up. He made no progress, poorly prepared, and had no negotiation strategy. That's the problem of having extremists like him and JRM trying to manage this, you actually needed a softer leaver in there. Or maybe that was Mays plan all along, put in ardent leavers who are incapable of doing the job, boot them out, then put in a remain agenda

Well that's all going to go down well! As suspected, lots of joint operations, negotiations on economic rights etc. The idea of this complete split from the EU is looking more and more unlikely, too much to lose and too little to gain. Awaits JRM to go on TV and tell us about those letters and Boris to tell her to go whistle...

To be honest I cannot believe I am even debating the point of a lid in a product test

My point being, instead of actually making a marginal call on the actual product performance - which is what is the point of the video and the whole reason of the video maker being in it, if he cannot make that decision leave it to people that can. Why even trust other conclusions he has come to? Yes you can only test whats in front of you, if a car develops a fault i.e. it stops working it will count against it, of course it will. If the car in the test turned up on a trailer where the trailer had scratches down the side and a light missing would you score the car down? Of course not. The lid not working has no impact on the performance of the product which is what the test is about. I am not sure why this isn't obvious? If we were testing the packaging of the products, it would have lost, but we are not, hence its not relevant at all.

The comparison with a spray bottle is fundamentally wrong, in that the lid does not impact the performance of the shampoo (which is what is on trial here) whereas a spray device the lid is important and impacts performance. May as well have scored each product on what colour the pack is, how nice the fonts are, how trendy the name sounds. So if he did another review and the Car Chem lid broke straight away, would something else win and thus be recommended, despite it being the same product? The broken lid is very likely to be a one off and not symptomatic of the product. It is farcical to use that to decide a products performance. If the products are 'very close' in terms of performance it means there is a difference, they are not the same. If he is a good reviewer he needs to be able to differentiate that and make a call on it, if not, then whats the point in reviewing in the first place.

Wow yes much better, well thats sorted then, bye bye google maps! Cheers