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.

It does seem incredible all these TV types being prosecuted for perverse actions rightly or wrongly...how come these goings-on (if you can call it) have been hushed up for years and now all this misbehaviour springs to light now.....Jimmy Savile was a national hero at one time...I thought so myself !...he raised millions of pounds for hospitals in the age when a million was a huge amount of money....very sad to find out how bad he was !....I reckon the nation should have better things to think about than being obsessed with the ghastly antics by a few !..

Flood victims abandoned by the insurance lifeboat

Premiums rose 500pc for Beverley Morris after the last floods. Now she will miss out on the 2015 safety net scheme



By Dan Hyde

8:12AM GMT 08 Feb 2014



Beverley and Steve Morris are one of thousands of families on tenterhooks as the Government wrangles over details of an insurance scheme designed to protect houses at risk of flooding. Their property is a leasehold block of apartments – and it is unclear whether the plans will offer them, buy-to-let investors and larger houses an insurance lifeline.


Mr and Mrs Morris were victims of severe flooding in September 2012 when the River Swale burst its banks and engulfed the surrounding North Yorkshire plains.


The fire brigade arrived by boat to rescue all the residents in their converted 19th century mill in Topcliffe, where the couple have lived for a decade.


Like the households evacuated this week from the ravaged south-west coastline, the Morrises were forced into temporary accommodation while workmen repaired the water damage.


Mrs Morris, 56, said the flash floods came as a shock: despite living on the banks of the Swale, they had been unaffected by the stronger storms of summer 2007, when 48,000 homes in Britain suffered £3.2bn worth of flood destruction.


As the months passed, the families, pensioners and couples from the old Topcliffe mill were gradually able to return home and put the upheaval behind them.

However, they hadn’t bargained for a final blow. In February 2013, they were handed a near-500pc increase to their buildings insurance premiums, which were due for renewal. The floods had pushed the annual bill across the 12 properties in the converted mill from £4,916 to a staggering £23,750 – or nearly £2,000 each.



more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/insurance/buildingsandcontent/10623864/Flood-victims-abandoned-by-the-insurance-lifeboat.html

Insurance is based on risk. Higher risk, higher premiums. It is why 18 year old kids are charged huge car insurance premiums. I am surprised that the homeowners can even get a quote in a flood area.

Once again, I need the waiter's help.

I am thinking of building a house in the middle of a river and expect the river to be divided to circumvent it.

I think that the country can afford the type of planning needed.

But I don't want any bloody wind farms, fracking drilling plant or Nuclear Energy station near me.

Also, I think the Thames barrier can be dismantled and reassembled 20 miles up the estuary for me.

Also, I think Chris Smith is completely wrong trying to protect a small town, or conurbation at the expense of a farming community who land has been flooding on and off for century.

Market forces should play hear, if the profit margins are correct the farmers should charge the going rate for produce and irrigate their own land, or let me build a house on it!

PS>

I don't care about insurance. I haven't got any! Don't need it!

Failed at the NHS? Try again at HS2:

Newly appointed director at rail project has history of 'wasting public money'





Mark Leftly Author Biography


Sunday 09 February 2014


One of the most heavily criticised men behind the NHS's IT fiasco has been made a director at High Speed Two, the similarly under fire £50bn railway linking London with the north.


Opponents of HS2, who claim the project is a waste of money and will ruin the countryside, reacted with fury this weekend to an appointment they claimed was a "whitewash" and "hysterical". Patrick O'Connell's appointment comes at a time when HS2 is preparing a public relations charm offensive to spell out the benefits of the project, which will cut journey times between the capital and Birmingham to 49 minutes.

HS2 staff were told late last week that Mr O'Connell will soon join them as their programme and strategy boss, but the only part of his resumé that was referred to was his role as chairman at the Oxford Institute for Megaprojects. Up until the end of last year, Mr O'Connell was a senior figure at Serco, the government contractor that has been forced to go through what it calls "corporate renewal", after failing on a range of taxpayer-funded projects.




More: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/failed-at-the-nhs-try-again-at-hs2-newly-appointed-director-at-rail-project-has-history-of-wasting-public-money-9117106.html

The lunatics are running the asylum.

DB 4.

Agreed.

But I think it is a little unjust to say all the Con party MPs are lunatics.

I think there are a few of them far further down the scale than that.


8-)

As opposed the Labour lunatics waiting to run the asylum.

I saw the Wolf of Wall Street last night. What a fantastic film. So well made. About the excesses of the stock market in the 80s/90s. Three hours flew by. It brought back a few memories of the period.

Haze,

How did you escape?

underage sex trials and similar
there has been a fair old hoo-ha about the likes of bill roache and rolf harris being put on trial for alleged sexual offenses that took place about 40 years ago

the argument runs that (a) the moral code at the time was even more relaxed, (b) girls often deliberately flaunted themselves with intent and (c) too much time has now passed
bill roache has now been found not guilty, and one begins to wonder whether the trials of rolf harris and jimmy tarbuck and others will indeed take place

even if the cases are dropped and/or the accused are found not guilty, the huge stress and publicity that has surrounded them over the last year or more, must be devastating

all of this does indeed make one wonder as to whether these trials have any validity at all, though of course the alleged or supposed victims will claim the most appalling long term damage to their psyches, lives, relationship with their dogs etc etc

so enough of that BUT
what about the trials brought against the likes of peter wright who, at 83, has just been jailed for paedophile offenses committed in the 1960s?

is there really such a vast difference?

I think some of the trials do seem pointless, such as DLT. However the charges against Roache were rape, which need to be pursued despite the time limit. The problem comes down to 'he said, she said'. There is usually no real evidence. If some of these cases had been about non famous people, the police would have dropped them due to the lack of a realistic chance of conviction. Some of the charges against DLT are that he groped some women nearly 50 years ago. Who is to say what the truth is. Different women react differently. I had a woman working for me as a director. At board meeting she said that she had a complaint about sexual harassment. Her complaint was that she wasn't getting any. We decided not to minute her comments.

UMMH.

Trebles all round for the insurance co's.



Eric Pickles: 'We should have dredged'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26107514


Communities Secretary Eric Pickles says the government "made a mistake" and should have dredged the flood-hit Somerset Levels.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr Show, he apologised "unreservedly" to those affected by the flooding.

But he refused to "nudge" Lord Smith of Finsbury out of his position as head of the Environment Agency.

I wonder what Smiffy has got on them?

I thought a Chairman listened to his committee and rarely had to use his vote.

Suggest that one examines the membership of the various regional committees and also the reasons for the policies and actions.

What has always amazed me is how many unqualified members of the public have such a grasp of "problems" of which they have little actual knowledge.


But as many have said we have one of the Greenest Prime Ministers and Cabinets in recent history.

.

I thought a Chairman listened to his committee and rarely had to use their vote.

Suggest that one examines the membership of the various regional committees and also the reasons for the policies and actions.

What has always amazed me is how many unqualified members of the public have such a grasp of "problems" of which they have little actual knowledge.


But as many have said we have one of the Greenest Prime Ministers and Cabinets in recent history.
--------------

It is no wonder many of the Scots want to escape from the grasps of the disconnected London elitists and the of the little Englanders of the S.E.

I'm not a little Englander Fred, more a Great Britain person.


And I'm not even ingrish by birth.