Crumbs from the Table

Mosely Street Independent Chapel was a place of worship in Manchester which stood diagonally opposite Pimlico library on Mosely Street on the present site of the Sainsbury's supermarket.  (It should not be confused with Mosely Street Unitarian church which closed in 1835, having stood on the future site of the Manchester and Salford Bank which is now occupied by the "Betfred" betting shop.) Mosely Street Independent Chapel was a breakaway in 1788 from Cannon Street Congregational Church which had only started in 1762 (with Caleb Warhurst as minister).   Ministers of Mosely Street Independent Chapel Joseph Smith  Samuel Bradley  Dr Robert Halley The building stood from 1788, was enlarged in 1817, and then vacated in 1848 when the church moved to Cavendish Road. Here is a picture of the building: Manchester City Council holds the historic records of this church . In 1847/8, a new chapel was completed on Cavendish Road near the University of Manchester with seating...

This is not a post about Brexit. But I am going to use the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK as an analogy.  To refresh your memory, in 2016 a referendum was held in the UK on whether or not to stay in the European Union. This had been a longstanding issue for debate ever since the UK first joined in 1971. In the event, to the surprise of most pundits, the vote was 52% to leave the EU. This led to the immediate resignation of the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and later to the resignation of his successor, Theresa May, in 2019. For months and years, the British parliament, the House of Commons was "blocked" - unable either to implement the referendum or to vote to hold a second referendum (effectively, to reject the result of the first). Finally, under Boris Johnson, a deal was reached and the UK left the EU in 2020. This was followed by years of wrangling over issues such as goods crossing the land border between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland (...