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.

Thanks for verifying the TV license freebie Hays. I stand corrected.

Interesting to see Farage and Benn in the top 20!!!!!!!!!! in the UK.

Very interesting , Putin number 3 in the World ?

It tell's you a lot of the mind set of countrys of the World.

Bush 4
Bill Clinton 8

No Winston Churchill on the list , or Thatcher . Well what would you expect if Lady Gaga was 9th in Germany just behind the Queen

Haystack - I don't personally agree with people who live abroad getting Winter Fuel Allowance as in the main they are not living in in a cold climate and I would suggest that the majority of people in the UK (genuine people) spend it on keeping warm. As for the TV licence - if one was to reach the age of 75 years young then they deserve a free licence for putting up with the crap which has been on the TV for years and which they have paid for practically most of their lives. Getting off my soap box now, good night all.

i question whether someone with a good standard of living, even if of pensionable age, should get these tax-free fringe benefits, which patently they do not need ..... if they're taxable, then fine, as i think much pension income also is

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/12/iraq-war-crimes-uk-blair_n_4583610.html?ncid=webmail1

After 12 years, £390bn, and countless dead, we leave poverty, fraud – and the Taliban in Afghanistan


World View: The country is in such a bad way as western troops depart that leaders can only spin, almost to the point of lying


Patrick Cockburn

Sunday 12 January 2014



A few years ago in Kabul, I was listening to a spokesman for an Afghan government organisation who was giving me a long, upbeat and not very convincing account of the achievements of the institution for which he worked. To relieve the tedium, and without much expectation of getting an interesting reply, I asked him – with a guarantee of non-attribution – what benefits the Afghan government had brought to its people. Without hesitation the spokesman replied that these benefits were likely to be very limited "so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords".



It was at about this time that I decided that the main problem in Afghanistan was not the strength of the Taliban but the weakness of the government. It does not matter how many Nato troops are in the country because they are there in support of a government detested by much of the population. Everywhere I went in the capital there were signs of this, even among prosperous people who might be expected to be natural supporters of the status quo. I interviewed an estate agent who should not have had much to complain about since, in the 10 years after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Kabul was the world's fastest growing city. He pointed to some workmen outside his office window saying they earned between $5 and $6 a day in a city where to rent a decent house for their families would cost $1,000 a month. He said: "It is impossible for this situation to continue without a revolution."

The year 2014 has long been billed as a decisive year for Afghanistan because most of the remaining foreign troops, 38,000 US and 5,200 British, will pull out before the end of it. Predictions of an exact date for a historic turning point usually turn out to be mistaken, but in this case conventional wisdom may well be correct. Already there are signs of drastic political change, such as the Afghan government's announcement last week of its intention to release 72 hard-core Taliban prisoners, provoking furious protests from Washington. Probably President Hamid Karzai's motive is to conciliate local leaders who want their relatives out of jail and whose support Karzai needs in the presidential election in April, in which he cannot run, having served two terms, although he wants to determine his successor.


More: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/after-12-years-390bn-and-countless-dead-we-leave-poverty-fraud--and-the-taliban-in-afghanistan-9053627.html

Two of the comments I looked at one that site would suggest that Labour government were supporting good Con party ideology.

Cameron must be proud.
==========

Comments quoted:

"That's £390 billion that has been transferred from taxpayers pockets to the owners of arms manufacturing companies. Or £390 billion that could been spent improving people's lives rather than destroying them."

-=-=-=-


"The entire population of Afghanistan, could be driving around in Mercedes, living in the best houses, and working in good well paid jobs, with the best healthcare and education in the world, but rather than spending the money on fixing the worlds problems, our governments waste it on never ending war, and supporting brutal and oppressive regimes."

and where did you dig up that load of tripe ..... surely not even you can believe such preposterous and foundationless nonsense?

This will suit Manuel's cause:

fossy - let's try for a very simple answer from you, if your superior intellect can be bothered with such things .....
do YOU actually believe the premise propounded by the c+p article you posted above?

if you do, there is a more difficult supplementary ....
why?

What do you dispute about the article?

i consider it totally foundationless claptrap, not least because it ignores human nature and further, presupposes that the taliban would have been happy to leave well alone (patently they were not) and to allow the population to live peacefully with each other .... a very simplistic and brief way of putting it

i'll therefore ask you the same questions that i asked fossy .... though racing certainty that Mr Supercilious will decline to answer as per his previous record

Well, i'll have a go at the figs.

The $390 billion mentioned would work out at about $11600 per head of pop (31m)

@ the wages quoted, it would be a nice little earner for the punters, and I suspect, made for a more settled and peaceable population. But perhaps not.


I don't know c, but in my book we should never have gone in there. It's been tried and tested several times, with defeat for the police action troops.

Manuel.

Give this a miss. Too long and the words are difficult you to understand for you with your ageing grey cells.


As the torrid party is moved by its barmey right wingers and UKIPPERS to the far right of "decent" politics, I wonder if there will be an alliance between Lib/Dem and labour.

Could be winning alliance.


"Labour is blowing kisses at the Lib Dem".

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/12/labour-lib-dems-being-nice-to-each-other

Didn't No Labour and the Dim/Libs get into bed before?


The results were not encouraging if I remember rightly.

typical fossy ..... totally unwilling to answer a question of any kind
as i've said before, you're nowt but a pompous and supercilious charlatan who just likes to play very silly games, but doesn't much care for it when the ball gets batted back

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

max - i almost certainly agree that we shouldn't have got into afghanistan shambles in the first place, those i accept that there were many reasons for so doing

$11,600 per capita wouldn't have gone far would it, ewven if it had reached the intended recipients, of which of course there would have been no chance

i don't like the arms trade, even the legit side of it, but at least it provides an awful lot of employment - as of course does the tobacco industry, which probably contributes even more deaths than the arms trade