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.

back in its box (as warranted)!

Is that because of the Jewish vote and their money ?

no it is because they are a great country

it's certainly to do with the vote, but it really is a totally lily-livered approach to a most important international political issue (and others in the past)

Another Calais politician has launched a scathing attack on Britain for its policy on immigration which he claims attracts hundreds of illegal immigrants to the French Channel coast as they attempt to sneak into Britain.


Deputy mayor Philippe Mignonet, the man tasked with solving the problem in Calais, called UK policy on migrants 'grotesque and hypocritical'.

'Britain says we don't want immigrants but does nothing to prevent black economy employment yet two million people work on the black in Britain,' he said.





Read more:

so what do the froggies do about re-exporting them whence they came? ..... not a lot

It's not about the Jewish vote more like Zionist pressure, thought that you would have known that Jeremy after the Thread we have on the subject.?

it's an interesting question as to when a jew who is interested in israel and its welfare and continuation, becomes a zionist - which is too often a pejorative term from a goy who supports hezbollah and the like :-)

just for the record, i am proud of my jewish ancestry, though i am embarrassingly ignorant of jewish history and custom, and even my grandparents' family history - records of which have long been destroyed in poland by one bunch of thugs or another

for all that, i absolutely will not support jewish charities, nor those for african countries, though for totally different reasons

Manuel,

It would be more important to know whether your ancestry is proud of you. But it is good to know you had grand parents.

Have to change my opinion of you.

8-)

Chatting with friends over the weekend with 230 years of history between us, I was reminded of many of the misdemeanours I committed 50-60 year ago. I am glad my near ancestors didn't know of them, at the time.

heaven forbid that you should change your opinion of me, lest perchance it should be for the better

Former Wren to ex-minister: You Sir are a disgrace

Former Royal navy engineer Fiona Laing embarrasses Sir Nick Harvey after Remembrance Day service


By Agencies

4:38PM GMT 11 Nov 2013


A Royal British Legion worker approached a former Armed Forces minister following a Remembrance Day service and 'reimbursed' him for £7.20 in expenses he claimed after attending a previous ceremony.


Fiona Laing, 45, marched up to Sir Nick Harvey, 52, in front of other dignitaries, officials and members of the public, and gave him an envelope containing the money.





More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/10441802/Former-Wren-to-ex-minister-You-Sir-are-a-disgrace.html

Brilliant! Yet another "Con" Party embarrising exposure moment today... Dorries on the fiddle this time. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24902813

i wonder what she would have written to bambi had she been serving in iraq

I personally would suggest to Blair that all his earnings for the last ten years should be donated to and Iraq Fund for helping the Iraqis and British service individuals killed or maimed by his decisions.

I think the mistakes being made over expenses are due to stupidity or crookedness and corrupting society.

These individuals are not fit representatives of the public to govern.

They should be expelled from parliament and have pensions removed.

---------------

Personally, I would be happy for Blair to be charged and prosecuted and put before a court of law.

==============

But, I bet this would be part of the outcry.

help! help!! help!!!
fred and i almost agree on something :-)

Just the 'almost' spoils things. :-))

don't be greedy :-)

Do not think that day will EVER come, lol.

It is much worse than Sir John Major says. A new superclass is being created in London

By Iain Martin Politics Last updated: November 11th, 2013

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/iainmartin1/100245274/it-is-much-worse-than-sir-john-major-says-a-new-superclass-is-being-created-in-london/





What has got into Sir John Major? The former Prime Minister used to be an outrider for David Cameron. He was someone the current Tory leader turned to when he wanted discreet advice, or when he needed a reliable ally to float an idea or defend the Coalition.

Suddenly, Major has gone off message. Last month, he called for a energy windfall tax. At the time it seemed to me and others that because of his previous form this must have been arranged with Number 10, in preparation for Cameron countering Ed Miliband's popular but bonkers offer of a price freeze. Apparently not. Number 10 professed itself baffled and it seems that Sir John was simply saying what he thought.

Now he has made another interesting intervention, as revealed by The Daily Telegraph this morning. This time Major was speaking at a private dinner, but former prime ministers know that, when it comes to former prime ministers, there is no such thing as a private dinner. So what is he doing?

Major is a hard man to know; even those who like him admit that. "He is reinventing himself. It is incredible to watch," said a former Major staffer, when we were discussing him and the energy kerfuffle last week. Indeed, the prime minister who was rubbished by the press and thrashed in a general election has painstakingly rebuilt his reputation to the point where he is now seen as a respected elder statesman with valid opinions.

But today it is his assault on the dominance of public school pupils that is getting all the attention. It is "shocking", Major says, that the privately educated and ultra-affluent elements of the middle class dominate public life in this country. I am shocked that he is shocked. This has been the way of things for a very long time, and actually as Paul Goodman points out on Conservative Home, on all sorts of measures the situation has improved of late. In Margaret Thatcher's first cabinet there were six Old Etonians. In David Cameron's first cabinet there was only one Old Etonian. However, George Osborne went to St Paul's and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was educated (after a fashion) at Westminster.

But Major's remarks are already being interpreted as an attack on Cameron. They certainly aren't helpful, as the Prime Minister's enemies will point out, again, that he went to Eton. The Tories have a big class problem in parts of the UK where they struggle to connect. In Scotland, for example, perceptions of Tory toffery still dog the party.

In one respect it is also a little rich of the former Tory leader to make this attack. As Prime Minister, Major's record was very mixed when it came to social mobility. He expanded enormously the number of universities. Whether or not he improved universities or made it more likely that bright children from poor backgrounds could get to the very best institutions is another matter. He was appallingly timid when it came to extending the grant-maintained schools programme that Margaret Thatcher's government had launched in an effort to liberate schools from local authority control. "Don't tempt me," he said when people suggested to him that he needed to do more. It took Labour to launch the academy programme, when Blair had his awakening about diversity and choice, after spending much of his first term in a haze of ideological confusion.

More broadly, Major has a point, although complaining about Eton is quite quaint. I think he underplays what is happening here. The situation is much worse than he makes out.

The rise of a new superclass is best observed in London. The capital is pulling away from the rest of the UK, as it becomes a city state and a potential world capital. To match this development, the superclass I mentioned is being created in large part by the best private schools in London. Professionals – from here and abroad – who are the beneficiaries of the tidal wave of hot money flowing through the City, law, accountancy, property and so on, pay extraordinary sums for schools that are now so very far ahead of the standard state school or even excellent academy in terms of resources, facilities and influence. The families that can afford these top schools have also benefited hugely from the 20-year London property boom. Their offspring are fanning out in their thousands from great schools into the best universities. When they emerge – confident, international, multilingual, with several unpaid internships on their CV – they are particularly attractive to employers in those same industries where their parents made a pile: law, banking, accountancy. Advantage is being entrenched, which is bound to be reflected in public life and politics in the coming decades.

Meanwhile, the improvements in state schools in London in the last decade have been remarkable, and the emergence of some good new free schools may help some more. But is it enough? Against the rise of the superclass, I fear it won't be. This is one of the reasons I suggested after the riots that the Government should be extending its education reforms and dropping some well-funded grammar schools, or something similar, into the poorest neighbourhoods. Generally, such ideas produce howls of outrage (usually from middle-class people whose children go to good state schools because they can afford to buy nice houses near good state schools). More recently, the Labour MP Ian Austin also suggested switching to open access, with the state funding places at the very best private schools for the brightest children from modest backgrounds. Austin observed, correctly, that this is an emergency situation that requires emergency measures.

What a thought. Imagine giving a bright kid from Tottenham, or Dudley, or Easterhouse as good an education as he or she would get at Eton. That would be completely crazy and unfair. Wouldn't it?