Chris Grey’s blog is particularly good - and alarming - this week.
It centres on the gathering consensus among ‘brexit ultras’ that the Withdrawal Agreement should simply be ditched. Astonishing - not because it advocates breaking the law - that is consistent with their history - but because they were whole-heartedly supporting it just 6 months ago.
But I don’t find Grey’s explanation for this in terms of some kind of perverse brexiter psychological victimhood very convincing. There is a much more obvious political explanation: they truly believe that Britain - or rather England - is above the law and other countries, should simply impose its interests on them as it did in its Empire heyday, that political values like honesty should be subservient to the will to power; ie. - it’s simply old-fashioned extreme right-wing politics.
The government is, at present, working with a brain-stem level reflex that EU=Bad. The level of desperation to find something positive must be massively high to actually start pushing the UK “single market” as a thing.
The cost to the nation of all the red tape, bureaucracy and tariffs is going to equal to or exceed the cost of EU membership, the cost of Brexit overall has now equalled the cost of our membership for the last 47 years and what are we going to get in return?
Increased prices in the shops, more expensive foreign holidays, less access to the EU, fewer EU nationals coming to work here (to the detriment of all of us), the UK being an international laughing stock and piriah, our only option but to become a defacto 51st state (assuming the other 50 will actually let us) and the likes of Priti vacant Patel preening herself that we have got immigration down.
If Brexit is such a good deal. why does the UK Govt have to spend so much money telling everyone it’s so? IIRC somewhere else, it has been said that they have spent in excess of what they would have paid to the EU to remain 
and if Doris thinks he’s going to convince Scotland, he’s got another think coming…
I find the adverts sickening, as I do about everything connected with BoJo and his pack of liars.
It is indeed, but every ideology of power is derived, I think, by an underlying psychological dynamic : usually an unacknowledged but intensely experienced feeling that distorts judgement, even in the face of reasonable evidence or argument that contradicts it.
An intense feeling of being deprived of choice, of associated oppression and nameless fear, can often be traced to traumatic childhood experiences of separation etc.
Such is the prevalence of such psychodynamic phenomena that the credibility of the link is seldom seriously questioned, even by the most sceptical of medical and psychological authorities. The relationship of childhood rejection experience to the search for expiatory punishment for imagined wrongs on the child’s part is clearly seen in men who crave it, and are fixated in their lust for it.
That would explain why the (so called) leaders of men so often come from among those who are sent away from home at an early age for education.
I also suspect that the pursuit of wealth is motivated by feelings of insecurity.
An opinion worthy of the God-child of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein, Herr Doktor Mike 
I’m wary of psychological explanations of political beliefs. I think I recently mentioned in another thread that the conceptualisation of political ‘left’ and ‘right’ originated in the fact that commoners sat on the left of the États généraux at the start of the French Revolution, the privileged on the right - ie. it was an objective difference, and although naturally enough people on the left tended to be opposed to unreasonable social privilege and exploitation, while those on the right defended it, there was not - and I would argue is not - any great psychological mystery to this.
I’m equally sceptical about the boarding school trauma theory of leadership I’m afraid. Isn’t simple, objective privilege again a much more powerful explanatory framework? - ie. the apparent causal link between boarding school and high office is the typical association of two phenomenon mistakenly assumed to be causal - when in fact both are the effects of another underlying cause. Easily testable: in countries with little or no boarding school provision, who fills high office? France would be an interesting case, since in rural areas at least it’s more common for more vocationally inclined lycéens to board, while the high-fliers stay at home.
As I understand it, France is more of a meritocracy. High office goes to the academic high flyers.
The British system is more to do with having been to the right educational establishments and therefore having the right contacts. Doesn’t seem to matter if you are a complete idiot and cheated on the exams.
Open University graduates have to work twice as hard for their degrees, but are still often overlooked as not being the “right type.”
It’s the little things that make life easy that I’ll miss.
Needed new electronic starters for the lights in the cellar - cheapo Diall units that have never been reliable.
Cost in France ~ 30€ plus delivery
Cost at home £12 plus £16 delivery to France.
Needed 2 so bit of a no brainer price-wise. Ordered Sunday evening - just dropped into the letter box half an hour ago.
The particular company that I used will happily send to non-EU destinations so I doubt that they will stop sending into the EU after Brexit - it will be more of the same for them
But I bet it becomes much more expensive & slower.
It’s of concern to me too. I buy most of our DIY and household tems via www.amazon.de and the prices there are closer to UK prices and delivery is cheap enough to make it worthwhile, for the time being anyway.
I often order from Amazon.de and quite happily compare all the EU market places (UK, DE, FR,ES, IT, NL) for the same product / ASIN not forgetting delivery charges if applicable to get the best deal.
It is often the same seller ( not always Amazon) on the same listing whichever country you order it from.
Seems everyone likes a bargain.
Even some farmers, complaining that nobody wants to pay for their locally produced milk, are not ashamed to be seen driving a Mercedes!
Mercedes are good for a million km according to taxi drivers, so they are an economy, really. Like buying expensive cat food because as any fule kno you end up throwing half the cheap stuff away so it doesn’t really work out cheaper.
But if French car workers lose their jobs it is hypocritical to blame them for buying cheap imported milk.