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Said it a dozen times since last year but it's beyond farcical that this was put to a public referendum. The government are voted in and paid to run the country yet the biggest economic decision for the UK in our lifetimes gets decided by the public and given how little the general public knows about the practicalities of EU membership they may as well have just saved us the trouble and flipped a coin in the Houses of Parliament. Even the well educated members of the public couldn't and can't predict the impact of leaving the EU and we're talking about a pretty small proportion of the public too sadly. Too many others had to vote based on point scoring sound bites from leading politicians on both sides of the vote because that's all the media can be bothered to offer us rather than the facts that could have given the public some idea of what they were voting for or against. I'm not saying the result would have been different either because who knows, but the whole situation is shambolic and reflective of the leadership we've suffered in this country (from both parties and the likes of Farage) since I was old enough to have any understanding of it.

I've not seen anything that suggests that. Hard Brexit was absolutely not in the public's contemplation during the referendum - the public was sold a lie that the EU would be generous to us because we supposedly were indispensable to them. This is the reality. The EU holds all the cards, and if we insist on leaving we have to do so by their terms, or be an international pariah. Its already hard enough to establish new links to the rest of the world without the EU's existing connections and bureaucracy. It would be even harder if we just left the EU without settling our obligations. Our negotiating strength was weak to begin with, and the astounding incompetence and arrogance of the Tory party has seen us weaken it even further, and this is the result. We are dealing with an entity that economically dwarfs us, has international connections we can only dream of, is far more united and clear in its aim than we are, and is even dramatically more prepared than we are. They have put a lot more thought into this than the Tories have. Brexit, as a large part of the Leave vote understood it, was never a possibility. People did not understand how bad our chances of securing a good deal were - every concern was dismissed by the leave campaign, who constantly said it would be easy and amicable. And as regards this Northern Ireland malarkey, its an absolute joke. The Tories promised no border on the Irish Sea to the maniacs at the DUP, who are now the tiny, bigoted tail wagging the whole Tory dog. They also promised no hard border in Ireland to the EU, and we're also bound to that by the Good Friday Agreement. We're now being faced with a reality that Brexit means economically dividing our own country. And if it's a possibility for Scotland to do something similar and align ourselves economically and legally with the EU within the confines of the UK, we absolutely should. We voted Remain by an even wider margin than NI.

Priceless

Mum sent me a photo of me and grandad today. Makes me very sad looking at it, as I’m now realising come my next birthday he has been gone for a full decade. Not only did I lose my only grandad but I lost my father figure that day.

I do know what you mean mate but that's not real. He is the commander and chief by name but he has a whole setup behind him where consensus must be met for any decision and more so on something as drastic and devastating as that. Nobody's about to let a business man decide the fate of millions with the repercussions that it would entail.

Send Lord Buckethead to the negotiation table. The weight of his helmet makes up for the lack of leverage.

It is funny reading all these opinions by Chelsea fans on Bakayoko. Everyone is saying how good he is but yet there is one fan saying his shooting is poor, another saying his decision making is lacking, another saying he gives the ball away in dangerous areas too often and another saying he’s sometimes weak on the ball. Anyone actually reading these assessments could only come to the conclusion that he’s absolutely shite