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.

.

and you'ld be squawking around or wailing like a banshee if the gov't takes no action - or at the very least, attempts to do something - about both the wind turbine blight and immigration

amazing how quiet the "banshee brigade" seem to be about the EXCELLENT u-turn re ciggie packaging, though assuredly it shouldn't have been necessary in the first place

It is not a complete U turn or even one at all. The view in July was that further views would be sought. Of course that was grasped by Labour as a sign of some corruption as Lynton Crosby was an advisor to the tobacco companies. We'll they were wrong as the government has taken more views and now sees a fairly good case.

What is happening now is that enabling legislation is being proposed that will give the government powers to bring in plain packaging. This is to be a further study which I gather will report back in March. It is to look at the Australian experience of the same thing. The problem in Australia is that there are ongoing legal challenges by the companies. The government wants to see what happens there to avoid such legal wrangling here.

I must admit that the plain packets U turn is not such a wonderful thing done by the government although the government will probably get some good press over it.

The reality is that an amendment to the Children and Families Bill currently in the Lords was tabled to add plain packaging. The government view was that they would probably get defeated on the amendment so added their own amendment. This allows the government to insist on plain packaging but does not require them to. A further investigation has been added. This has enabled the government to kick the issue into touch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/11/27/boris-johnson-wants-to-bring-back-thatchers-eighties_n_4351787.html?ir=UK+Politics&ref=topbar


I noticed that the video was heavely edited.

GOOD

Economic equality will never be possible because some people are too stupid to get ahead, Boris Johnson said on Wednesday night.

“Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130,” he said.

Addressing the Centre for Policy Studies in London, Mr Johnson suggested that economic inequality was useful because it encouraged people to work harder.

Died age 67 , Lewis Colins who played Brodie. I remember going to the hairdressers with a photo and getting my hair done like his.

I had hair like the other one but not on purpose !

By Hays is back tracking today.

The more kowledgeable on here said their was a bubble building up in housing market but Hays and cyners denied this.

Now they have been proved wrong.

I didn't deny the possibility of a housing bubble. Don't forget the help to buy is in place still. The BoE has only stopped the deal where especially cheap money was provided to lenders. That money is being switched to business lending.

One of the consequences to today's mortgages is that mortgage rates may rise and house prices should drop.

Rubbish, youve time and time again denied a bubble was building up.

Get your facts right hays.

Hays your a good lad really,we dont want you going the way of Camoron and lieing through your teeth.

I don't,t think a bubble is actually building up yet. There are a few crazy people out there though. I was talking to an estate agent near me on Tuesday. There was a house for sale around here for close to £1m and an open day had to be arranged because 20 people wanted to view it. After the viewing they had 6 offers. Two people rang up and could not make the open day. They both offered to buy the house unseen.

Clegg vs Boris: Of course we should discriminate by intelligence


By Martha Gill Politics Last updated: November 28th, 2013





Boris Johnson has made some comments about intelligence that got a lot of people riled this morning. He said:

Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests, it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16 per cent of our species have an IQ below 85, while about 2 per cent have an IQ above 130. The harder you shake the pack, the easier it will be for some cornflakes to get to the top.


Clegg, firmly riled, (along with the Daily Mirror and large swathes of Twitter) told LBC:


I don’t agree with Boris Johnson on this and I have to say to you much as he is a funny and engaging guy, I have to say these comments reveal a fairly unpleasant, careless elitism that somehow suggests that we should give up on a whole swath of our fellow citizens.

I think the danger is if you start taking such a deterministic view of people and start saying they’ve got a number attached to them, in this case an IQ number, somehow they’re not really going to rise to the top of the cornflake packet, that is complete anathema to everything I’ve always stood for in politics, which is, yes of course, you shouldn’t aspire – and as an old-fashioned Liberal I don’t aspire to a perfectly homogenous society where everyone has the same kind of outcomes but you’ve got to try and do more to instill greater opportunity in society.


more huffin and puffin here:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/marthagill/100248201/clegg-vs-boris-of-course-we-should-discriminate-by-intelligence/

And Boris is right.

Yes, but you are not supposed to say it.

Johnson is a typical Tory hey fellow well met oink.

Boris is just saying that it is not realistic to make people equal. Some people are just stupid. You can give equal opportunity but that is about all you can do.