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.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/23/rupert-murdoch-wendi-deng-tony-blair_n_4330756.html

Michael Gove has hit out at Ed Miliband for his "coquettish reticence" in dealing with the scandals that have hit the Labour Party.

The Education Secretary suggested that it was hypocritical of the Labour Party not to expect to have to answer important questions about Paul Flowers, whilst launching personal attacks against David Cameron.

Gove insisted there was no Conservative plan to fight a "dirty campaign".

He said: "I absolutely think that we need to have lots of questions: that's why the Chancellor of the Exchequer took the advice of independent people to set up an inquiry, which will ask searching questions about what went on right up to the moment that we discovered everything we discovered about Paul Flowers.

"The difficulty, I think, that Labour has is they were the people responsible for appointing/allowing Paul Flowers to be appointed on their watch."

Mr Gove said that when it came to answering questions over the Unite union official at the centre of the Grangemouth oil refinery dispute and the Falkirk vote-rigging inquiry, Labour "tend to clam up".

He added: "One thing that I think is slightly sort of off is that Ed Miliband has been a great advocate of transparency, judge-led inquiries, all the rest of it, but whenever anyone asks questions about the Labour Party, then he has a sort of coquettish reticence."

Asked if he would give his word that there were no plans to run a "dirty campaign", Mr Gove replied: "Absolutely."

Citing Damian McBride, Gordon Brown's disgraced former spin doctor, he said that while there had been "some disagreeable aspects of politics" in the past, the Tories were intent on running a "clean" election battle. However, he said Labour also needed to play fairly.

He told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: "I think Ed Miliband wants to fight a clean election campaign. I certainly do. I know that David Cameron does.

"I think that the election campaign should be conducted on the basis of policy versus policy. My worry is that actually, so far, quite a lot of the critique of the Government from Labour has been very personal."

Members of Government had been "attacked for their background not for their beliefs," he said. "I think that's wrong."

"We are pushing forward social mobility, that's what matters more, I think, than where a politician went to school."

"The difficulty, I think, that Labour has is they were the people responsible for appointing/allowing Paul Flowers to be appointed on their watch."


I suppose they could have shot him at the time. I question "appointing"

He has been in his post under the con party for close on 3 years and seeming was been pushed or encouraged to do more "stupidity" by Osborne,

========

So much for openness.

Cameron didn't appear to some to give all the information to the Leveson enquiry to all his meetings and with the Murdoch clan.


As far as Cameron's attempt to smear Miliband, I suggest you look at a replay for PM questions and evaluate his body language and voice tones.

It was a prepared attempt to smear. It is the techniques preciously used by the tories and the tory press over numerous elections in attempts to denigrate the individual and distract attentions from their own failures of policies.

Theresa thought the con party was the Nasty Party, many think the present con party is becoming the Dirty Nasty Party.

==========

It seems a little like Manuel's more inept approach with many of his postings.


=========

The problem is not "Eton" or any other "school, university or background", but having a non representative clique, drawn from one background forming a governmental cabal, which is more interested in furtherance of themselves and ideology. rather than those they are supposed to represent.

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

just checked in in Dubai ........ one of the very nice rooms overlooking the Gulf

shall just tootle down to the bar for a nice cold beer

What is the food like there?

Has Manuel got another job as a food taster?

Yippee.

jumeirah strip is preposterously expensive and the food is good but not in the same league as top London restaurants - but then they do have to bring everything in from far away ..... nevertheless, anyone who thinks they're in for a cheap holiday staying in Dubai (almost inevitably they'll stay on the "strip") will be swiftly disillusioned .... hence, many stoke up on breakfast (very good), miss lunch and then have (crap) table d'hote at their hotel

however, if you venture down to karama (little india) you can eat fantastically, always assuming you like indian food, and at a fraction of the price.

there's also some good and cheap local middle eastern places about opposite the gold souk on the other side of the creek

This isn't one your many (some say to many) laughingly described Business trips is it Alf?

I do like Arab food, except the brains/eyeballs stuff.

Hays,

Are you living in hope that they may transplant themselves to you.

That maybe lead to your improvement.

=======

Walk away from the UK and you walk away from the pound, Salmond warned

Alex Salmond has been warned that “if Scotland walks away from the United Kingdom, it walks away from the pound”, as the SNP’s currency plans dominate the build-up to Tuesday's publication of the independence white paper.



Alex Salmond has been warned that the UK Government is unlikely to support a sterling zone proposal Photo: PA







Auslan Cramb

By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent

5:44PM GMT 24 Nov 2013



Piling further pressure on the First Minister to produce a “Plan B”, Alistair Carmichael said a currency union would not work for a separate Scotland, and would not work for the rest of the UK.


The proposal also came under attack from a leading economist, and from figures inside the Yes Scotland camp, with one calling the sterling zone proposal “ridiculous”.


Mr Carmichael, the Scottish Secretary, said Mr Salmond had been warned repeatedly that the UK Government was unlikely to support the sterling zone proposal.


He was speaking after the Scottish Government announced that Scotland could become an independent country on March 24, 2016, in the event of Yes vote next year.


The date, which is included in the 670-page white paper, is the anniversary of both the Union of the Crowns in 1603, and of the signing of the Acts of Union in 1707





More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10471293/Walk-away-from-the-UK-and-you-walk-away-from-the-pound-Salmond-warned.html

Perhaps, they can use Bitcoins.

Taking Europe by storm 244 million views since Sept. As mad a song as this thread.

Ylvis - The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)

http://youtu.be/jofNR_WkoCE

Just returned from seeing Gravity in 3D. Not very 3D and a crap story.

This will be very good . Remember the date DEC 9th

Lets watch the liar get out of this one.

The number is finally up for 'cruel and incompetent' Iain Duncan Smith - alias 'Iain's Dodgy Stats'
20 Nov 2013

The Work and Pensions Secretary is finally being called to account for using inaccurate and misleading statistics to justify his policies

Since being appointed as Work and Pensions Secretary in 2010, Iain Duncan Smith has had so many problems with statistics it’s earned him the nickname ‘Iain’s Dodgy Stats’.

From November 2010, when he was caught out using figures from the website findaproperty.com instead of his own DWP statisticians, to his claim in May 2013 that the benefit cap had driven 8,000 people back to work, he has been censured by bodies including the Office for National Statistics.

This summer, two disabled women – Jayne Linney, 51, a grandmother from Leicester, and Debbie Sayers, 49, a mum from Cornwall – decided enough was enough.

“We felt dodgy stats were being used to take away people’s benefits,” Jayne says, helped into the Commons by Tony, her disabled partner and full-time carer.

“The way ministers tell the story affects how people see our lives. It is one thing to live with the physical challenges of a disability - it is quite another to hear misinformation every day from our own government.”

The women, who both suffer from fibromyalgia and other health problems, had only ever met through Facebook – but they decided to launch a Change.org petition together calling for IDS to be held to account over use of statistics. Within weeks, it had 105,069 signatures.

Yesterday, the petition was placed by Jayne’s MP Liz Kendall, according to tradition, into the green bag behind the speakers’ chair.

Hansard records that “The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Work and Pensions Select Committee to question Mr Duncan Smith at their earliest convenience to hold him to account on his use of statistics and further requests that the House requires Mr Duncan Smith to retract any incorrect statistics...”

Meanwhile, the Select Committee has agreed to “examine the way DWP releases benefit statistics to the media”.

“It feels wonderful to be at the House of Commons,” Jayne says. “And it’s wonderful to finally meet Debbie after all these months. It’s been a painful journey for both of us to get here – but we are determined that Iain Duncan-Smith should have to answer to MPs.”

On Monday, after delivering the petition to Liz Kendall and Kate Green MP, the shadow disabilities minister, I went with the campaigners to the debating chamber – to watch Duncan-Smith answer questions put by his Labour opponent Rachel Reeves.

But even while we were in Parliament, IDS dropped another dodgy statistic. This time, he claimed that child poverty rose under Labour - in fact it dropped by 800,000.

But the Institute for Fiscal Studies now estimates it will rise by 600,000 thanks to IDS’ welfare reforms.

“What really got to us in the beginning was a claim by Esther McVey, then the disabilities minister, that people getting Disability Living Allowance rarely had face-to-face medicals,” says Debbie.

“We knew this wasn’t true. When we looked into it, it turned out only nine per cent of DLA funding was spent on this basis.”

McVey had also made other claims, that Jayne and Debbie could prove were mistaken. They began with an open letter asking her to desist from “persistent use of dubious facts”.

So in April 2013, they launched their petition to bring IDS and the whole department to account, including McVey. The following month, IDS made his claim about the 8,000 people supposedly driven to get a job by the Benefit Cap.

It was true that 8,000 people had gone back to work, but his own department had made it clear they could prove no link with the Cap. The Trade Union Congress made an official complaint.

In July 2013, Andrew Dilnot CBE, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority said IDS had “broken the code of practice for official statistics”, and Jonathan Portes of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said the DWP boss had gone “beyond spin”.

IDS started to take another tack, that conveniently required no statistics at all. “I have a belief I am right,” he told the Today Programme on Radio 4.

Even with a petition of over 100,000 signatures, the two women have had to fight hard to bring IDS to account. The Select Committee has said it will grill IDS when he appears before them with his department’s annual report – originally due in April.

The appointment been repeatedly cancelled – but will now happen in December, a stunning eight months late.

In the time that the women have been fighting, Debbie’s husband Jon has been through a battle with bone cancer. Now, their family faces even
more disability. Jon has had a total knee replacement with prosthetic bone connecting his leg and foot.

“This petition is so important because it is holding Iain Duncan Smith and Esther McVey to account for their repeated misrepresentations of disabled people’s lives,” says Liz Kendall, shadow care minister.

“They are not just cruel but incompetent – and use them to justify policies like the Bedroom Tax.”

Now, thanks to a disabled mother and grandmother, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will have to face an MPs’ select committee on December 9th – calling an end to Iain’s Dodgy Stats and Esther’s McVague Truths.

You can follow the women’s campaign on their blogs - jaynelinney.wordpress.com and ramblingsofafibrofoggedmind.wordpress.com

And support them and others by signing wowpetition.com

Please support by signing the petition..................

http://wowpetition.com/

takes just a minute of your time.

yes Stan it is indeed; i usually come to uae 3 times a year as the region is one of our key spots, particularly Saudi

come here at this time of year, and it is indeed very pleasant, but try it in june/august and it is not so much fun especially if Ramadan also coincides

while i'm here, i hope to have a meeting with an existing and a new client about the potential of now working in iran - and getting paid!
we've worked there in the past, and at that time, (insisted that we) got paid via that company's London subsidiary ...... this time, it will be via Dubai or India i guess

Well, that sounds all right, Any vacancies for an experienced and pr-eminent Football Coach out there -):

Channel 4, tonight 8pm

£5 billion a year spent by the NHS on fat people.

My guess is that so called poor working/ non working class are more fat then middle/upper class.

Help to Buy is nothing but an election ploy

Britain will solve its housing crisis only if it builds more homes and lets in fewer people



The government launched the second phase of Help to Buy scheme in October Photo: Bloomberg


Jeff Randall

By Jeff Randall

8:10PM GMT 24 Nov 2013

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/10471564/Help-to-Buy-is-nothing-but-an-election-ploy.html



When the best business story of the week involves a Methodist preacher, a holier-than-thou bank and Labour Party funding, laced with allegations of narcotics abuse, rent boys and dubious expenses claims, it is, I accept, no easy task diverting readers’ attention to less exotic matters. This, however, is my goal today. For, while the Rev Paul Flowers has been busy incinerating the Co-operative movement’s reputation, Britain’s property market has caught fire and the blaze is running out of control.


Strange though it may seem, these events have a common theme: inappropriate adult material. In the case of Flowers, it was racy images left on his computer at Bradford council. For the rest of us, the offending content, known to some as “property porn”, can be ogled on the government’s Help to Buy (HTB) website. The HTB scheme is designed, it seems, almost entirely to please those with a prurient interest in house-price bubbles: builders, estate agents and local solicitors. It is nothing more than populist, short-term electioneering posing as a cure for Britain’s chronic, long-term housing headache.


If affordability is the problem, a policy that makes houses even more expensive cannot be the solution — but that is what’s happening. Buyers are able to tap state-funded assistance up to a value of £600,000. This is emergency aid for the huddled masses of Kensington and Chelsea. When property prices are rising and real wages (inflation-adjusted) are falling, as they are, only the suspension of disbelief will bridge an ever-widening gap. HTB may well help to buy votes, but it will end in tears.


The housing challenge facing government is not complicated: too many people, too few homes. When you have more buyers than sellers, guess what? The price goes up and up until the elastic snaps. The trouble is, few ministers will address part one of the problem – population growth – because it necessitates being honest about immigration and the impact it is having not just on numbers in the country today but on tomorrow’s birth rates.


Nothing terrifies Westminster MPs more than the suggestion of being “racist”. This is craven, head-in the-sand politics. Only last week, the European Union issued a report showing that the United Kingdom has the EU’s fastest-growing population. According to Eurostat, official numbers living in the UK (not including illegals) grew by 392,000 in 2012, 38 per cent of which was accounted for by net migration. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) puts the figures slightly higher at 420,000 and 39 per cent respectively. For context, Nottingham’s population is about 300,000.


Part two of the problem is the rate at which we are constructing homes. A government-backed report in 2004 concluded that Britain needed 250,000 new houses a year to meet growing demand. Even before the credit crunch, completions fell way short of that and, despite a recent surge in new buyers with cash to burn, only 28,500 private houses were started in the three months to September. In other words, the situation is deteriorating, as the number of people who want homes in the UK far outstrips supply.

The upshot is that the average house now costs £173,678 (Nationwide figures), yet the average weekly wage, including bonuses, is £474, or £24,648 a year (ONS). Even allowing for the fact that newcomers to the housing market tend to join the ladder at the cheaper end, the ratio of first-time buyer house prices to average incomes is still 4.6:1.

HTB is encouraging people to overstretch their finances at the bottom of the interest-rate cycle – the very worst time to do so. With money priced at a 320-year low, the only way is up. When that happens, monthly outgoings will rise, house prices will fall and those on the edge of solvency will go bankrupt. After the credit crunch, household debt in Britain fell from 170 per cent of annual income to 140 per cent. That trend is now reversing, as government “initiatives” lure punters into a debt trap. The Bank of England’s financial stability report points out that 20 per cent of home loans have been made to households that are left with less than £50 a week after housing costs and essential spending. Even a 1 per cent rate rise could create a new cohort of distressed borrowers.

The Bank, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the ONS have all been behind the curve in assessing the rapid recovery in the British economy.

Job creation has been much stronger than official figures suggest. The Bank’s 7 per cent unemployment “target”, the point at which it expects to start increasing rates, could be here sooner than Mark Carney, the Governor, envisages. When that happens, those who have gambled on the housing market remaining a one-way bet on cheap money and rising property prices will be stuck in a difficult place: under water but with no liquid assets.

HTB is fiscal chicanery that prompts irrational behaviour by making the unaffordable appear within reach. In the short run, it rewards the Treasury with a bonanza of stamp duty payments. But how much of those receipts will be lost when the taxpayer is called upon to bail out delinquent mortgages?

Tackling Britain’s housing problem requires two bold moves: much tighter restrictions on the number of people arriving in the UK and an ambitious building programme to provide decent accommodation for existing citizens.

Handing out funny money to bid up prices is simply weasel economics