Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Dont like the look of this.............

Shutdown is nothing: Debt ceiling debacle could be real ugly
Published: Tuesday, 1 Oct 2013 | 3:15 PM ETBy: John W. Schoen | CNBC.com Economics Reporter.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101078103

Boris made a marvellous speech to-day, and didn't the party love him.

Just heard that there is going to be a quick bye election to get Boris is ready to stand to get back into the HP.

Once there, a group of dissidents who want him to replace Cameron before the General Election.

Rumour is that some disenchanted tories hope that this will attract the tory deserters to UKIP back to the con party.

;-)

Theirs been quite a bit of that on twitter today Fred.

I suppose Labour would then need the Lib Dems like I suggested monday and in the longer term we have a 2 party Nation.

Labour/LibDem's working together , that should be fun

It would be even more fun if they got in....Carey Street type fun.

Actually, it may be sensible.

? 20 years ago? there were many , who thought when the SDNP broke off from the Labour party that they may have develop a moderate socialist party in alliance with the Libs of that time.

I think that was the stimulus for the moderates within the Labour party leading to the castration of many of their more far left factions

In one way it seems some of the Libs have moved to right leaving a large rump behind, while the majority of Labour has moved towards the centre.

It would seem a reasonable move.

But I don't think they could buy having Clegg, or the Red Squirrel in a cabinet.

But wouldn't be surprised if Danny Alexander defects to the party of Cons.

Feel a little sorry for Clegg, but he sold out on University fees and that is unlikely to be forgotten.

SDP not SDNP

Hays,

Thank you!

You are correct!

You can go to bed now.

I am doing penance for losing to a 78 year old earlier on at chess, after being 2 pawns ahead at the end game.

Labour is currently lurching to the left

Gay marriage and HS2 hit local Tories

Conservative associations are running out of money and shedding members, with the blame being put on unpopular policies such as same-sex marriage and the HS2 rail line.


An analysis of dozens of local Conservative associations’ annual reports shows that membership is declining rapidly Photo: GETTY IMAGES


By Peter Dominiczak, Political Correspondent
10:21PM BST 01 Oct 2013

An analysis of dozens of local associations’ annual reports shows that membership is declining rapidly amid warnings that Tory voters are defecting to the UK Independence Party. The report of one group in Buckinghamshire simply states: “There is no money.”

Tory membership has almost halved to 134,000 since David Cameron became leader in 2005.

The Prime Minister’s relationship with activists has come under mounting strain in recent months. The Daily Telegraph disclosed in May that a member of his inner circle had described Conservative association members as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”.

While all three main parties’ membership has fallen in recent years, Ukip’s has risen dramatically, from 15,535 in 2010 to 30,780 today. The annual report for the Chesham and Amersham Conservative Association, written by Andrew Garnett, its chairman since 2011, said: “There is no money. The money has run out.

“This is the situation [the association] finds itself in as we enter 2013. Put very simply the level of membership subscriptions has fallen by in excess of 300 over my time as chairman. The money raised from social events has fallen off a cliff.”


More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10348476/Gay-marriage-and-HS2-hit-local-Tories.html

Morning morning morning everyone. -issing it down here in lovely Yorkshire.

Labour and the LibDems also losing members.

Seems UKIP is the only one gaining membership.

From my mate on twitter..........

Dave Camoron ‏@EtonOldBoys 12m
Great news for the unemployed,they have just been guaranteed a 35 hour week at the Job Centre.

Vote ukip vote ukip

Nice one gf (30337) nicked it for the other place :-)

hays hays hays........... bad news sir, just out this morning..........

electionista ‏@electionista 1h
UK - YouGov poll: CON 31%, LAB 41%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 12%

Probably the silly new policy on the unemployed from the Tories responsible for this.

Another one for you MaxK..........

Iain Duncan Smith MP ‏@IDS_MP 1m
Like the Prime Minister I also have a breadmaker. His name is Eric and I pay him minimum wage. Vote Tory!

Is it a real one gf? (wouldn't surprise me)

nah, they are just spoofs. LOL. Although you could imagine it to be so LOL.

goldfinger

"Probably the silly new policy on the unemployed from the Tories responsible for this."

Well, at least I agree with you on this one.

I agree with it in principle but there has to be a better way of selling it.

"You WILL DO THIS/THAT/THE OTHER..." never enthused anyone. In fact, as we can see from the polls, it has just the opposite effect.

:-)

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh SERIOUS.

The FT has turned on OSBOURNE.

Osborne has now been proved wrong on austerity
By Martin Wolf 2 Oct 2013

Nobody thought a recovery would never happen – merely that it would be delayed......

The UK economy is recovering. The government is vindicated. Its critics should crawl into a hole. This, in essence, is what George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, claimed in a rousing speech delivered earlier this month. In particular, he argues, Plan A has worked. Those who have been advocating a Plan B – slower fiscal tightening – have proved to be wrong. Here, then, is my response.
Yes, the economy is recovering. But the performance since Mr Osborne took office in May 2010 has been dismal. Over three years, the economy has grown by a cumulative total of 2. 2 per cent. In June 2010 the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that the economy would expand by 8.2 per cent between 2010 and 2013. The real figure may end up being a third of that. In the second quarter of this year, gross domestic product was still 3.3 per cent below the pre-crisis peak and 18 per cent below its 1980-2007 trend – the slowest British recovery on record.

Financial crises do cause havoc. That explains some of this awful performance. But Spencer Dale and James Talbot of the Bank of England have shown that UK performance is dismal even by the standards of other crisis-hit, high-income economies. The eurozone has performed as badly as the UK. But, given the mess there and the UK’s control over all policy levers, that is hardly something to boast about.

Mr Osborne can (and does) point to a strong labour market performance. This has been a saving grace for Britain. Had the UK enjoyed normal productivity performance, unemployment might now be more than 15 per cent. Unemployment has remained low because labour productivity has now fallen back to 2005 levels. That is hardly something to boast about.

Mr Osborne responds that fiscal policy did not cause the dismal underperformance. That was due to inflation shocks and the eurozone. Since Mr Osborne was a cheerleader for the eurozone’s austerity, he cannot wash his hands of all blame. But the more important point, as Simon Wren-Lewis of Oxford university has pointed out, is that the debate is not about what caused the unforecast slowdown. What matters is whether the economy has been weaker with austerity than without it.
Little doubt exists over the answer to this question. With interest rates at the zero bound, austerity weakened the economy relative to what might otherwise have happened. The question is only how much it has done so. It is impossible to know counterfactuals. But Oscar Jordà and Alan Taylor of the University of California, Davis, concluded that in 2013 UK GDP will be about 3 per cent smaller than it would otherwise have been. Is that right? Nobody knows. But it is in the right direction.

Oh no, it is not, proponents of austerity respond. This ignores the fact that the programme delivered credibility and lower interest rates. In the febrile circumstances of 2010, when people thought, foolishly, that the UK might become Greece, that view might have made some sense. But it soon became clear it did not. In June 2010, the OBR forecast cumulative net borrowing of £322bn between 2011-12 and 2015-16. In March 2013 this was up to £564bn. In June 2010 the structural current budget was forecast to be in surplus by 2014-15. By March 2013 this had slipped two years. In June 2010 the ratio of public sector net debt to GDP was forecast to start falling in 2014-15. By March 2013 this had moved back to 2017-18. The peak level of net debt also jumped from 70.3 per cent to 85.6 per cent of GDP. Yet the impact of this slippage on long-term interest rates was zero. Only improved prospects for recovery and so of earlier rises in short-term rates raised longer-term rates.

So the chancellor had other options. As I have argued before, he could have stuck to the same plans for current spending, while temporarily lowering rather than raising value added tax. He also could have taken advantage of low borrowing rates to increase rather than reduce public investment. In fact, he is too hard on himself. He has allowed the fiscal position to slip and used the public balance sheet to support investment and the housing market. Call it Plan A minus. But he could certainly have been more deliberate and aggressive about it.

To this the chancellor would reply that none of this matters because the economy is recovering strongly anyway. Moreover, he insists, his critics thought this was impossible. But nobody thought recovery would never happen under austerity, merely that it would be damagingly delayed. The politics of this policy may not be too bad for Mr Osborne if the unnecessarily slow recovery becomes a faster bounceback in the run-in to the 2015 election. But it is hard to see an economic case for it.

One thing ought to be quite clear: the fact that the economy grows in the end does not prove that needlessly weakening the recovery was a sound idea. This has been an unnecessarily protracted slump. It is good that recovery is here, though it is far too soon to tell its quality and durability. But this does not justify what remains a large unforced error.

martin.wolf@ft.com