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.

UKIP will do well in the EU elections as it is a proportional system. If we had a proportional system then UKIP would get maybe 15% of the MPs. But we have first past the post so they will get zero. You only have to look at the experience of the Libs to see the problem. They got large percentages of the vote over the years, but never make a breakthrough in terms of numbers of MPs.

Well you can still debate without voting. Nothing wrong with that.

I dont vote in my local council elections because theirs no point in it.

I live on the very edge of a boundary where most people are muslims. The brothers all vote for their brother the liberal, BUT previously to this he was a conservative and defected and they all voted again for him.

So whats the point in me going out to vote tory when i know its just a waste of time, might aswel bray my head against a brick wall.

DB,

For what?

========

Hays.

When many realise that they are atheists, it gives them the freedom to consider their own morality and allows them freedom to attempt to choose they own morality and lifestyle.

Some it excuses them to go one way and while others may chose a different one. Many modify their stances, goals a modify modus operandi in response to experiences throughout their life.

Without absolute points of reference, i.e. the position of an atheist, it seems difficult to consider which individual’s choices may be right, or wrong.

“Bible's stories and the use of controlling people it was and is put to.”

I don’t know many, but some possibly trying to give people a possibly different understanding of a problem, which allows the formation of a different model of understanding and allow for different behaviours or reactions..
(Modelling)

Giving people chances to look at situations, or problems in a different ways is not controlling, it can be liberating by giving them alternate ways of considering problems.

It is also challenging, and allowing for reconsideration of previous stances.

Also, in general the majority of religions seem to me tend to prefer or advocate a harmonious life for all, rather than what is good for one, or a small group.

Unfortunately, too often it is an individual or small group of individuals who abuse the religion for their own advantages by using it to control others. (Is your form of toryism a belief system, or a religion? Or are your beliefs based on crude Darwinism?)


Reminds me of the epitaph on an atheist’s grave.

Here lies an atheist
All dressed up,
And no place to go

Cynic,

I doubt that I will vote in any election.

But nothing is certain, other than death!

8-)

Ahhhhhhhhhh but Hays you are forgetting about possible defections from Tory to UKIP and a lot of voters will stay loyal to the person not the party and a snowball could develop.

Dont think it cant happen because their have been certain rumblings already and we are quite a way off the euro elections.

We had defections from Labour to the SDP. Where are they now as a party? They are buried in the Libs. UKIP is in even a worse position than the SDP. The SDP had cabinet level defeated and household names with track records and good experience of government. It is very difficult to change the mould of UK politics especially as UKIP is a one policy party with no experience.

Here lies an atheist
All dressed up,
And no place to go

So there is no Hell then ? unless you are forced to read Fred's long winded replys over and over again.

Here lies an atheist
All dressed up,
And not expecting anywhere to go!"

Wonder what you would look any better embalmed.

Would that change expectations?

Is that how ancient Egyptians assumed immortality?

=-----=

To-morrow, I am meeting two friends, one of whom I haven't seen for 57 years was a rampant young conservative, agnostic and turned into a solicitor.

It will be interesting to see how his views have changed.

The other who I used to play chess with was a "god fearing" Christian and got a 1st in and PhD in Mathematics at Oxford. (The latter in 2 years.) Also, still continuing research after 50 odd years in applied Maths etc..

When we last met about 12 months ago I was surprised by him saying he still played the organ in Chapel and was a Christian going to the chapel regularly, but seems sane in all other aspects.


Religion is an acceptance of a belief.

fred - so much for your so-called convictions ..... load of baloney

Explain yourself before you next glass of moonshine.

no need to .... your blather + inaction speak volumes .... "oh it's my democratic right ..... blah, blah, blah", yet you are prepared to do nothing at all, not even to get off your arse to vote, and just snipe and gripe incessantly ..... pah!

Not changing the subject, well worth a watch :-))

Fred, did you answer the question - if there was a referendum on Europe would you bother to get off your backside and vote? If you cannot be bothered to vote then you lose the right to complain - simples.

LOL. Good one DC.

Look Fred, within the board limits can say what he wants here.

Just because a few of you dont like what he represents and says doesnt make him a bad person. In fact theirs a fair balance between pro and anti, just as their is with Cynic(and I appreciate both) so lets carry on debating without the silly personal side swipes.

I thought Capitalism was all about being free to be able to speak 'YOUR SAY', your mind, so come on lads change the record Im personally fed up of hearing this Camoron government have cut down on red tape but in real life especially on my benefits advise watch have found rules and regulations have increased at least 2 fold and thats after the wally I D Smith as wasted £445 million pounds which will be written off.

Its a disgrace.

GF,

Thanks for your support.

If some read my postings, (jottings) they may see that often I am simply challenging held views and presenting a opposing balance.

Mind I am having difficulties with Cynic and Hays. Think sometimes they need remedial therapy.


=======


Db4/

It is very unlikely that I vote, unless one of the candidates offered me a drink.

I suppose in one way some of the tories voters are being by Cameron's bribes nearer the date.

But, he is like a barrow boy, here to-day and gone to-morrow.

What would I be voting for, if I did.
=======


Dreams.

Saw the film some years ago.

I liked Walter Matthau humour.

I imagine Cynic to look a little like him.

Hays, God knows what he looks like.


8-)

If you want some entertainment then go to the public gallery at the regular London Assembly Mayor's question time meetings. You can witness Labour being picky on every minute thing and getting absolutely no where. Boris sails through the meetings with no one managing to land a punch on him. I took my kids there a couple of years ago.

I'm sure Boris will make a worthy successor to "call me dave" after the next election.

For sure, he cant be any worse.

Iain Duncan Smith is no longer fit-for-work


.By Ian Dunt | Talking Politics – 18 hours ago...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/iain-duncan-smith-no-longer-fit-160838915.html#cy5Zh60





What are Iain Duncan Smith's redeeming qualities?




Today's public accounts committee report shines a spotlight on a department which is out of control. Bad news is ignored. Vast sums of money are authorised by personal assistants for work which has not always been specified. Up to £425 million has been wasted and may need to be written-off, including £140 million on IT equipment which is no longer suitable for the project. The left hand does not know, or even seem to care, what the right hand is doing.

Duncan Smith has undertaken the most ambitious restructuring of the welfare system in a generation and it is blowing up in his face. The report was one of the most damning to be published this year. Duncan Smith's response, according to the Times, was to demand MPs on the committee pin the blame on his permanent secretary, Robert Devereux.

It's all a day in the life for the work and pensions secretary, whose relationship with the truth is as tenuous as George Best's relationship with sobriety.

He claimed the benefits cap had forced 8,000 people into work. This earned a slap on the wrist from the Office for National Statistics, which said it was not possible to find any causal link between the cap and those finding work. His response was very revealing.

"I have a belief I am right," he told Radio 4.


"You cannot absolutely prove those two things are connected – you cannot disprove what I said. I believe this to be right. I believe we are already seeing people going back to work who were not going back to work until this group were capped."

It's worth reading that quote twice. It is the product of a mind which is fundamentally unconcerned by reality, a loop playing constantly to itself.

It's just the tip of the iceberg. He said that every week half a million new jobs come through at the Jobcentre. This was false. He said Britain had the highest rate of jobless households in Europe. This was false. He said 70% of the four million jobs created when Labour was in office were taken by people from overseas. This was false. He claimed Shelter defined homelessness as two children sharing a room. This was false.


The list goes on and on.


It's all part of a pattern that goes back to the start of his career, when Michael Crick found several inaccuracies in his CV. He said he had attended the University of Perugia, when it was in fact the Università per Stranieri – an institution which did not grant degrees. He said he attended Dunchurch College of Management, when in fact it was weekend courses at GEC Marconi's staff college.

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled Duncan Smith's back-to-work programme, which forced claimants to work for high street chains like Poundland for free, was illegal following a government appeal. It had failed to give recipients enough information about sanctions faced by people being told they had to work without a wage.

His response was to say that he was "very pleased that the supreme court unanimously upheld" his programme. "Ultimately, this judgment confirms that it is right that we expect people to take getting into work seriously," he added. Surely the British public are entitled to something less misleading than that? Is it too much to ask for even a hint of contrition for having broken the law, rather than rank evasion and a steadfast refusal to accept fault?


He went out of his way to smear the reputation of Cait Reilly, a 24-year-old who brought the case. Reilly had been volunteering at a Birmingham museum, hoping it would one day turn into a paid position. She was not overly keen on dropping that voluntary role to work for free in Poundland. Duncan Smith went on television and suggested she was part of "a group of people out there who think they are too good for this kind of stuff". For a secretary of state to treat a young person in this way is unspeakable.

Cynicism and Machiavellianism are common traits in politics. Many of the greatest politicians, from Churchill downwards, have been quite capable of making a case by focusing relentlessly on the attributes which most flatter them. But the smears against young people trying to make their way, the casual misuse of the facts, the glib indifference to the proper functioning of a system which affects the lives of the least privileged, is of a different magnitude altogether.


He's not even smart enough to pull it off. Matthew D'Ancona's history of the coalition sees George Osborne comment that "you see Iain giving presentations and realise he's just not clever enough". Last month John Major warned that the work and pensions secretary's welfare reform programme was "enormously complicated".


He went on: "Unless he is very lucky, which he may not be, or a genius, which the last time I looked was unproven, he may get some of it wrong."



Duncan Smith's reply was belligerent, inelegant and supremely thin-skinned. "Well, as I say, I never really get too fussed about what people think about their own intellects," he said. It is, you may have noticed, a sentence which means nothing. Or, at best, is so lacking in meaning as to not be worth saying. "I'm always happy to be in awe of someone whose own intellect delivered us the cones hotline, I must say." The reference to Major's silliest policy was childlike and out of place. Barely anyone even remembers the cone hotline. But seeing as he wishes to reflect on the past, perhaps his audience should do so too.


Think back. When did Iain Duncan Smith ever achieve anything? Even Osborne, who plunged this country back into recession, can at least point to that time he called Gordon Brown's bluff on an election. Duncan Smith has been at the frontline of British politics for years and he has nothing to show for it.


He was the most incapable leader of the Conservative party in recent memory. He was inadequate in PMQs and his conference flourish that "the quiet man is turning up the volume" is still the butt of jokes a decade later. His comment to the mutineers in his own party was just as weird, but a little darker: "My message is simple and stark, unite or die". They chose to do neither.


Expelled from the leadership, he seduced the easily seduced by using the words 'social justice' while promoting an aggressive Victorian-era programme which had more to do with a glorified notion of the Protestant work ethic than practical solutions to poverty and welfare-dependency. And now he smears his opponents, whether they be MPs, young women trying to find work or the massed ranks of the unemployed recast as feckless scroungers.


We might worry less about his own personal failings if they were not being replicated with such uncanny precision at his department. But the refusal to hear bad news, the siege mentality, the waste of funds, the arrogance and bullying with which welfare reform is being pursued are all indistinguishable from the character of the man presiding over it.