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.

TANKER yes you mean when Dennis Skinner put to him his question about ATOS in PMQs. Disgracefull considering he had a disabled son who died.

Dennis Skinner (aka The Beast of Bolsover) is always ready to exploit any story for political gain.

It's a vigorous, voracious press that keeps our country honest

Regulating the media would undermine its ferocious ability to highlight wrongdoing, writes Boris Johnson



I hope the press will tell the Privy Council to stick it in the privy Photo: Alamy


Boris Johnson

By Boris Johnson

8:07PM BST 13 Oct 2013



Good for Fraser Nelson. It strikes me that he is 100 per cent right. The editor of The Spectator has announced that his ancient and illustrious publication will have nothing whatever to do with any new system of press regulation. He will neither bow nor truckle to any kind of control. He will not “sign up”. He will politely tell the new bossyboots institution to mind its own beeswax, and he will continue to publish without fear or favour.


I think the whole of the media should do the same. Stuff all this malarkey about the Privy Council and a Royal Charter. Who are the Privy Council, for goodness’ sake? They are just a bunch of politicians, a glorified version of the government of the day. We are on the verge of eroding the freedom of the press. We are undermining the work of everyone from John Milton to John Wilkes – men who fought for the right to say and publish things of which politicians disapproved.


Why are we embarking on this monstrous folly? Because of a string of essentially political embarrassments that led to the Leveson Inquiry – and at the beginning of it all was the expenses scandal, and the sense among MPs that they had been brutally treated by the press.


More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10376382/Its-a-vigorous-voracious-press-that-keeps-our-country-honest.html

HAYSTACK ANSWER PLEASE.........

Haystack - 16 Oct 2013 13:55 - 31150 of 31160

gf
The public are in the majority of even tighter rules and caps on benefits. Due to previous Labour governments, we now have a benefit culture..................ends

That may be the case for these scroungers with 10 kids etc who have no desire to enter work again, but believe me more and more Tory MPs are starting to question I D Smiths policy on the genuine sick and disabled.

ARE YOU IN FAVOUR OF THOSE WHO HAVE NOT WORKED OR SAVED VIA A PRIVATE PENSION GETTING BENEFITS whilst those who have saved and have a small pension being disqualified from benefits and just get NI credits???????? truth please.

The problem with the ones who have not saved is that they may never have been in a position to save. Benefits are there to help the most in need.

Warren Buffett said Wednesday the threat to not raise the nation's debt limit "after you've already spent the money" is a "political weapon of mass destruction" comparable to poison gas and shouldn't be used by either party.


"I know it's been used in the past, but we used the atomic bomb back in 1945 but we decided we weren't going to do something like that again," he said hours before the government's midnight deadline to raise the debt limit or possibly default.

Buffett called on both sides to pledge not to use the debt limit as a weapon. "There are plenty of weapons that can be used," like filibusters, he said.

In a live interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman said he doesn't expect the U.S. will do anything to damage its 237-year reputation of paying its bills on time, but if it does it would be a "pure act of idiocy" and "asinine."

"Credit worthiness is like virginity, it can be preserved but not restored very easily, so it is crazy to play around with it," he said.

Buffett said Berkshire owns short-term Treasury securities but he isn't worried about getting paid.

He also said the ongoing crisis in Washington over spending and the debt limit is no reason to avoid buying securities, pointing out that Berkshire subsidiary Marmon Group just paid $1.1 billion for a British drinks dispensing business. "We did not buy it with a condition that we could call off the deal" if there was no vote to raise the debt limit, he said.

He added that in his long career, he has never put off a deal by a few weeks to see what might happen in Washington.

When it was pointed out to him that he may be "unique" because he is a long-term investor, he replied that "most people are."


"If you take the people I meet in Omaha, you take the people who own farms, you take the people who own apartment houses, most people are long-term investors, thank heavens," he said.

Buffett rejected the idea that investors should be worried about a bull market "bubble" for stocks. He said, "We could at some point, but no, stocks are not selling at bubble levels. What do you diversify in? You want to diversify into cash? I think it's a terrible investment compared to equities. You want to diversify into long-term bonds? I think it's a terrible investment compared to equities."

Buffett also said Berkshire's spending rate on acquisitions this year is as "high as ever."

He told Becky Quick he had been working on a big acquisition, a $12 billion "elephant," but the deal didn't come together.

Moments after Bank of America announced better than expected earnings, Buffett said "the banks are in the best shape I can remember."

He also defended JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon amid the bank's many legal problems, some of which are the result of its acquisition of Washington Mutual at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. "If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket. And believe me, you've had a lot of cops" following JPMorgan, he said.

Responding to activist investor Carl Icahn's public calls for a large Apple stock buyback, Buffett said, "I think Apple's management has done a pretty good job of running the company... and my vote would be with them." He joked, "I just wish I'd bought the stock many years ago."


"I do not think companies should be run primarily to please Wall Street and largely shareholders who are going to sell. I believe in running Berkshire for the shareholders who are going to stay and not for the ones who are going to leave," he added.

Buffett said he has a "rooting interest" for the troubled retailer J.C. Penney because he worked in one of their stores when he was younger, but acknowledged it's "very, very tough" to compete against competitors who are always moving. "Coming from behind in retailing is just plain tough," he said.

Berkshire companies are still selling a "significant" amount of goods to Penney under "normal terms," he said and he's not worried about the retailer's survival.

In response to a question about the Obamacare health exchange rollout, Buffett said with a chuckle that he's glad he wasn't in charge, but argued that something is going to have to be done to control medical costs. They are the "tapeworm" of the American economy, he said.

On the economy, Buffett said he continues to see slow improvement and pointed out that "two percent a year growth with less than one percent population gains means one percent real growth per capita. In 20 years that's 20 percent. If every generation lives 20 percent better than the generation before them, that's not terrible."

Ducking question me thinks Hays.

He's a "Con" Party supporter GF, what do you expect.

LOL, same as davey gravy as Fred says.

David Cameron: #ATOS Decision Making Must Improve

October 16, 2013



by samedifference1

David Cameron has said the company that carries out “fitness-for-work” tests on disabled benefits claimants has to improve its decision-making.

But he rejected an angry call by Labour MP Dennis Skinner, at Prime Minister’s Questions, to “get rid of” Atos.

The Bolsover MP dubbed Atos a “cruel, heartless monster”, referring to a constituent with cancer who had to wait 11 months for an appeal.

The man, a “butcher and farmer in Bolsover”, had now died, he told MPs.

The veteran Labour MP, his face red with anger, told Mr Cameron: “Isn’t it time we put an end to this system, where people that are really suffering should not be allowed an appeal, having to live on £70 a week? Him and his widow.

“Two things the prime minister should do: One, with immediate effect, make an ex-gratia payment to his widow to cover the suffering and pain and lost income

“And secondly abolish this cruel, heartless monster called Atos – get rid of it.”

‘Unacceptable’

Mr Cameron promised to look into the “desperately sad case” raised by Mr Skinner, adding: “Everyone who has constituency surgeries and talks to constituents knows that we have to improve the quality of decision-making about this issue.”

But he added: “I think it is important that we carry out proper assessments of whether people are qualified for benefits or are not qualified for benefits.”

He said Labour had “started to look at work capabilities” when they were in power.

Labour has said it would keep fitness for work tests if it wins the next general election, but has suggested it would sack Atos, saying it gets too many tests wrong and delivers poor value for money.

The French IT firm is paid by the government to carry out “work capability assessments” for people applying for the sickness benefit employment and support allowance, as well as people who were previously on incapacity benefit.

It was told to improve its services by MPs in July after an “unacceptable reduction” in the quality of its written reports.

A government audit, which analysed 400 reports, followed concerns being raised over the firm’s services.

The company responded by saying it provides a “professional and compassionate” service.

Yanks are sorted apparently.

Thank God we don't live in the USA. We still have our monarchy and despite the fact that politicians of all parties behave like silly schoolboys/schoolgirls, particularly at PM's Question Time, they are still not as bad as that lot across the pond.

american politicos are an absolute disgrace to themselves, their constituents and their country

http://news.yahoo.com/french-court-upholds-scientology-fraud-conviction-155920860.html

Good ol Sally.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10383464/Sally-Bercow-photographed-swearing-at-photographers.html

Wouldnt say no though if she offered it.

Always found her quite sexy.

You might well gf, she's a fun lovin gel by all accounts.

Not sure what she see's in the vertically challenged one tho.

MK/

You don't have to fancy him, if he is not to your taste.


8-)

lol :-)