Easy to confuse a well orchestrated campaign by animal rights activists producing mass letter writing to MPs and PPCs as public opinion. The majority of the public have things such as badger culls and fox hunting, as well as so called 'man-made climate change', very low on the list of their interests - and I mean interests as opposed to priorities.

The environmental 'climate change' issue (including Gove's electric vehicles) is purely a political issue and has nothing to do with science - something that both the IPCC and numerous UN luminaries have freely admitted and stated in recent years.

Ken Clarke couldn't care less about that.

One thought which crossed my mind was, if the Commons rejects the deal shortly before or in March 2019 then presumably we will simply leave without any deal ? I have no problem with that.

Something which irritated me earlier was listening to an LBC presenter trying to argue that parliament voting to give itself the power to agree the exit deal - even if that was intended to sabotage Brexit - was exactly what Brexiteers voted for - the sovereignty of parliament. The point that nobody I heard make was that if the intent is to sabotage Brexit and effectively keep us in the EU then this is not the re-establishment of sovereignty to parliament it is a fundamental breach of the democracy that was given to the public and used in the EU referendum.

More and more I am convinced that too many of our MPs and all of the 'leading lights' in the EU are positively anti-democratic and that we need to rethink and rework the way that democracy works in the UK - perhaps more along the Swiss lines with regular referenda to prevent politicians running their own chosen (and frequently anti-democratic and anti- public wishes) agenda.

Hate the way the site refreshes and if you are mid comment or mid response it gets lost.

I wonder if civil servants have told him of this framework - or perhaps it is something they have simply 'overlooked'?? Perhaps as 'good europeans'.

A key priority and expectation was the return of our absolute sovereignty - something which those who voted to remain have no concern about and seem to want to remain ruled undemocratically. I would argue based on observation and fact that the EU acts in a deliberately anti-democratic fashion.

It is sad to see how easily and seemingly how comfortably so many are ready to see democracy eroded and slowly replaced as the EU has and continues to do.

Looking at this from the outside I have a rather different perspective to that which seems to be being expressed.

If the EU had any intention of doing a Free Trade Deal then the Irish border arrangements are immaterial - Ireland is outside the Schengen area. Raising and insisting the the Irish border arrangements must be agreed as a prerequisite to starting Trade talks is a deliberate diversion aimed at creating political division within the UK.

Until we know what if any trade deal there will be there is nothing to discuss on Irish border arrangements - nobody knows what would be needed.

Agreeing a £50 billion payment, as seems to be the case, In Advance of Trade talks is a hostage to fortune that will come back and bite. It is a stretching tactic, to condition the UK to accepting that amount and then once Trade talks start there will sooner or later be a 'requirement' for an Additional £xx billion as part of any trade deal.

As it stands at the moment I would simply turn round to the EU and say, this is clearly going nowhere we can't discuss let alone agree issues such as Ireland until we know what if any trade deal we are agreeing. I would say we cannot agree to any payment as there is no legal basis for it and no benefit to the UK and as you don't wish to discuss trade we will have to proceed to Brexit without agreement on that.

The EU has said they want to agree to repay our loans to the ECB over a 50 year period; sorry no can do as without a Free Trade deal we need that money back when we leave; we are prepared to agree a 10 year period for repayment provided that you honour all EU pension obligations to UK citizens.

We have already made clear the generous basis we will allow for EU citizens currently in the UK and we should ay that we expect you, as civilised nations, to extend no less to British citizens currently living in the EU.

The final part to make clear is that if between now and March 2019 the EU want to come back and discuss Free Trade as opposed to WTO then the door is open.

Wind will only occasionally power Britain ... it is too unreliable and hence why there has been a massive programme of signing up, installing and commissioning Diesel powered generators to keep the lights on as coal fired generation is scrapped and the wind isn't blowing or is blowing too fast !

Poland and the Czech republic are having to install switches to prevent the German power surges, as the Germans dump excess electricity, from disrupting their electricity grids.

Whilst Macron was grandstanding and condemning the USA for pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement France was keeping its lights on and industry running with elecricity from 4 UK coal fired power stations. French nuclear was incapable of meeting its own demand because of breakdowns and safety improvements.

The Paris Climate Conference was heralded and publicised as a breakthrough agreement which would limit 'Global Warming' to 2 deg C - it was widely touted that this meant an end to incresing CO2 emissions. But the public hype is very different to what actually was agreed !

What Paris actually agreed was that CO2 emissions would Increase by 46%++ between now and 2030 - that included China Doubling and India Trebling their respective emissions !! It was agreed that every nation could set its own future emissions targets through INDCs (Independent Nationally Determined Contributions), and these can be modified at will and so are not even legally binding.

That makes something of a mockery of the manufactured and ill-informed criticism of Trump taking the US out of Paris and praise for China taking a lead in 'reducing' emissions (not) - and not least because the USA has reduced its CO2 emissions % far more than other nation through the use of natural gas. China alone is building some 600 new coal fired power stations alone out of some 1600 currently planned around the world and plans a massive rise in its CO2 emissions as its INDC shows. 80% of both China and India's electricity is generated by burning Coal.

Renewables are a disaster - making electricity unaffordable and forcing people to choose to heat or eat. Biggest probelm of all is that the Global Warming / Climate Change scam - which was a deliberate invention by Maurice Strong of UNEP and IPCC - is beginning to unravel as the world does not react to CO2 asthe 'models' and fake science predict.

Strong's statements explaining why he set up the IPCC and what it was to achieve
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that .. the threat of global warming.. would fit the bill…. the real enemy, then, is humanity itself….we believe humanity requires a common motivation, namely a common adversary in order to realize world government. It does not matter if this common enemy is a real one or…. one invented for the purpose.” (Maurice Strong - speech to Club of Rome - and "invented" referred specifically to 'Global Warming')

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?” . and those encapsulate what lies behind and is the reason for 'Global Warming / Climate Change' .

Ottmar Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015. "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole ...... We redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy ........... the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated. "

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution " That must be taken in the context of Strong's statements quoted above and the intent to de-industrialise which means a return to lifestyles of the 15th and 16th centuries.

As Michael Howard would know, but misrepresents, Margaret Thatcher enthusiastically embraced the concept of 'Global Warming' , but did so as a Political Weapon - following the miners' strike she saw she could use 'Global Warming' as a way to end the domination of coal in the electricity market, switch to nuclear and prevent any future prospect of miners holding the country to ransom. She much later realised the disaster that this 'fake science' was causing and going to cause but by then she was in the last months of her political life. Her autobiography explains this.