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.

Update - Labour lead at 3
by YouGov in Politics
Wed January 15, 2014 6 a.m. GMT

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 14th January - Con 34%, Lab 37%, LD 9%, UKIP 13%;

i don't dispute the basis from where you come, but these so-called petitions that you keep throwing about, really are pretty silly and meaningless .... more to the point, that is exactly the way they come across

i won't get into any political discussion with you here - too many zealots (prejudiced loonies!) from either side - though i would happily do so over a pint, or better still, a decent bottle of wine

Interesting reading;

"I suppose, in a way, you could accuse me of wanting to have it both ways. I agree with former Doncaster miner Jimmy Kelly, who says it's "so hypocritical it's unreal" that Arthur Scargill should have attempted to buy his (Barbican!) council flat using Mrs Thatcher's Right-to-buy scheme, as the BBC has uncovered. But it also bugs me that such people are permitted to live in council houses at all.

Scargill's rent was at least paid by the NUM (the union had to take him to court, in order to evict him), while Frank Dobson and Bob Crow's housing is subsidised by us. The NUM can look after itself, one might say, except than in ever accepting Scargill as its leader, it plainly couldn't. With Scargill and his/their/our Barbican flat, the NUM made its bed and left its leader to lie in it.

Hugo Young, the great writer of the Left, wrote a book about Thatcher called "One of Us", referring to the late Prime Minister's habit of defining people as being with her or against her. Scargill was definitely one of them; more than "one" of them, in fact: he was the domestic anti-Thatcher. One's politics in the 1980s were defined in relation to the degree of attraction/repulsion you felt towards those opposing poles.

For most of us this wasn't a matter of being deposited somewhere in the middle: Scargill wanted to bring down the government and his violent, illegal dispute – which was never graced by such bourgeois irrelevancies as a members' ballot – almost succeeded. Thatcher won, and saved more than just her government in the process: Scargill had defeated Heath, remember. Though derided for her words by the bien pensant, I can't disagree with her description of the man as "the enemy within".

It feels odd to write about politics in such manichean terms these days. Guys in their mid-40s feel different to youths in their late teens, I guess, less certain about everything, but it's not just that. In the 1980s: do you support free trade? Do you think communism should be defeated? Do you support the retention of an independent nuclear deterrent in order to further that aim? Do you believe that tenants of local authorities should have the right to own their own homes? (And: do you believe a union should hold a ballot before calling a strike?)

Answer "yes" to one, and with high probability you'd answer "yes" to all, and that made you (made me) a Conservative, on the side of Thatcher. In comparison with Scargill, the tantrums of today's ludicrous McCluskey can be seen for what they are: a nuisance to the Labour leader, who cannot claim to seek to govern for anyone other than Unite, but not a threat to the democratic habits of the nation.

Scargill isn't a threat anymore either, but he's still providing a useful function. Put it under the heading Pour encourager les autres. Imagine him sat in that Barbican flat, filling in the Right To Buy application form – how many broken pencils he must have gone through – and remember the last words of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It cuts both ways, comrade. Even Scargill could learn to love private property, so much that he wanted a stake in it. Even Scargill eventually became a Thatcherite."

By Graeme Archer

The petitions are started by left wing activists (mainly the SWP), who can find less and less to attack the government over. It is similar to the pointless matches organised by the SWP. The petitions are best ignored.

Absolute rubbish Hays, your starting to talk out of your arse again.

Wonder how youd feel if it was your lad (god forbid) who was disabled and he was being treated like dirt by this organisation and he had to continualy fill in large forms whilst in physical agony and then attend assessments where its decided before you go you are going to fail and then all the upset and stress of going to a tribunal.

Do you really think these people are crooks?????????

Your watching too much of that silly biased Benefits Street.

GET A LIFE.

What is the solution? You cannot just give benefits to people who ask for them. You cannot just let people keep the benefits without reassessing them periodically.

Don't forget that it was Labour that appointed ATOS to their work.

As usual you are spouting nonsense. You cannot argue from the specific to the general. There will be cases where the process is a problem for them. That cannot be avoided. The process is just the same as when a disabled person gets their first assessment and benefits. Would you prefer a system where people just asked for a benefit and we gave it to them? There are people who get disability benefits when their problem has gone away and people who pretend to have a disability. It is necessary to assess everyone to tell the fakers from the genuine.

sticky - you and i should discuss/debate amicably at a more sociable venue :-)

I haven't watched benefits street, but I did see that one of the program's makers is a Labour activist.

.

''Would you prefer a system where people just asked for a benefit and we gave it to them''?
I think that's called expenses.
2517

HAYS.....your out of touch just like the Tory Cabinet.

You cant send genuinely sick people to work.

These assessments arent about getting people into work.........they are about nothing but getting savings and are carried out by butchers.

Excelent points made Fred and George.

Sometimes the policies are right, but often there is an absolute glee by some who are "privileged", shown by their seemingly absolute delight when implementation of the policy deprives others, who are less fortunate than themselves, of a reasonable level of "Welfare", or "Social" benefits. This delighted group appear to wish to see claimants jump through more and more complicated hoops to obtain that, which they are legally and "morally" entitled to.

Often, hoping and contented that the claimants do not have the resources, or faculties to fend appropriately for themselves.

This group of superior beings, who gain their obvious satisfaction from such described actions, would have similar characteristics as children, who would laugh and cheer themselves on, while tearing wings of flies.

There seems to be a wish by many reactionaries to return to the crudities and social and living standards and care as in the early 1900s and 1930s. Everybody in their proper place as define by those who have and grasps what they have to their chests.

Of course those condition are not suitable for themselves, just THE OTHERS.

========

Judge John Bevan QC said: "Because some of the defendants do not speak good enough English, despite having lived here a long time, three interpreters have worked full time during this case, at a cost of over £30,000."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-25679982

aldwickk - and the British taxpayers will now be funding their jail terms.

there is an absolute glee by some who are "privileged", shown by their seemingly absolute delight when implementation of the policy deprives others

specifics please especially re their motivation and other bits .... racing certainty that you are embroidering to suit your views

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

another racing certainty ....
fossy won't respond, but will merely expect the gullible to accept his left-of-socialist viewpoint

I have seen absolutely no evidence of any glee by privileged people at the prospect of depriving others. That goes for public figures or in private. The few privileged people that I know are quite concerned at the plight of those less fortunate. It all sounds like communist propaganda and certainly far left of socialist?

oh but fossy must have done for else he wouldn't write it, would he (much!)

The fall of inflation to the BoE's target of 2% means that the pressure is off regarding a rise in interest rates. One of the main reasons for lifting interest rates is to squash inflation.

true, but at the moment labour have to do very little (bugger all) leaving DC to make a bit of mess of many things

the fall in living standards and the hardship (i avoided the word penury) in its wake is a very real concern to an awfully large section of the population ..... while it's true that employment and vacancies are slowly moving up, the effect to be felt in " more cash in the pocket" for the average joe, lags quite a way behind