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.

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.

As an animal lover I can't bring myself to make any reasonable comment about this article.

"Marius the giraffe killed at Copenhagen zoo despite worldwide protests

Young giraffe unsuitable for breeding was shot, dissected in public and then fed to lions despite offers of a new home
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Lars Eriksen in Copenhagen and Maev Kennedy


The Guardian, Sunday 9 February 2014 18.23 GMT










Darius the giraffe is dissected at Darius the giraffe dissected at Copenhagen zoo. WARNING: some viewers may find these images disturbing Link to video: Marius the giraffe dissected at Copenhagen zoo
In the chilly dawn of Sunday morning a healthy young giraffe in a Danish zoo was given its favourite meal of rye bread by a keeper – and then shot in the head by a vet.

The death of Marius, an 18-month-old giraffe considered useless for breeding because his genes were too common, was followed by his dissection in front of a large crowd, including fascinated-looking children, prompting outrage and protests around the world.

Copenhagen zoo carried out the killing despite a small group of protesters at the gates and an international petition which garnered more than 27,000 signatures, as well as offers from several zoos to rehouse the creature. Yorkshire Wildlife Park, near Doncaster, which offered to take Marius, said it was saddened to learn of his fate.

The zoo's decision to conduct the public dissection, and the disclosure that the animal was shot rather than being killed by lethal injection so that it could be fed to the carnivores, fanned the protests and provoked some calls for the zoo to be boycotted or closed. The controversy was fed further by startling images and video of the process, including a picture of a large chunk of meat with an unmistakably spotty hide being fed to the lions.

Bengt Holst, the zoo's scientific director, said he had never considered cancelling the killing, despite the protests. "We have been very steadfast because we know we've made this decision on a factual and proper basis. We can't all of a sudden change to something we know is worse because of some emotional events happening around us.

"It's important that we try to explain why we do it and then hope people understand it. If we are serious about our breeding activities, including participation in breeding programmes, then we have to follow what we know is right. And this is right."

The dissection took almost three hours because of the numbers of spectators, and the zookeepers giving detailed explanations of the process.

Holst said they had previously had public dissections of zebras, snakes and goats, but the giraffe was a first.

"People are fascinated by it, both adults and children, and they would like to hear stories they normally don't have access to. I think that's good. It helps increase the knowledge about animals but also the knowledge about life and death."

When a storm of protest broke over the news that the giraffe was to be killed – the small gene pool among European zoos meant there was a risk of inbreeding if it was allowed to reproduce – the zoo posted a detailed justification on its website. It explained that as part of an international programme, only unrelated animals were allowed to breed: "When breeding success increases, it is sometimes necessary to euthanise."

The zoo also said that giving Marius contraceptives would have had unwanted side-effects and represented poor animal welfare, and that there was no programme for releasing giraffes into the wild.

The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, which monitors international standards and of which Copenhagen is a member, said it fully supported the decision of the zoo. It added that zoo animals were very rarely killed for conservation management, but almost always because of ill health.

"Our aim is to safeguard for future generations a genetically diverse, healthy population of animals against their extinction," it said in a statement. "Copenhagen is highly involved in these programmes and took a transparent decision that the young animal in question could not contribute to the future of its species further, and given the restraints of space and resources to hold an unlimited number of animals within our network and programme, should therefore be humanely euthanised."

However, Stine Jensen, from Denmark's Organisation against the Suffering of Animals, disagreed: "It shows that a zoo is not the ethical institution that it wants to portray itself as being, because here you have a waste product – that being Marius."

An online petition had argued: "Marius deserves to live and there must be somewhere for him to go. The zoo has raised him so it is their responsibility to find him a home, no matter how long it takes." It attracted 27,170 signatures before it was closed when news broke that the giraffe was dead.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park (YWP) was among several zoos that offered to rehouse Marius – a private individual apparently also offered to buy him for €50,000 (£41,000) – but received no response. In a statement, the park said without knowing the full details it would be inappropriate to comment further.

Copenhagen zoo's silence was more surprising because Yorkshire's head of hoofed animals is Danish, and the YWP has already taken a young male giraffe from the Danish zoo.

"YWP has a state-of-the-art giraffe house built in 2012 with a bachelor herd of four male giraffes and the capacity to take an extra male, subject to the agreement of the European stud book keeper. One of the YWP giraffes is Palle, who came from Copenhagen zoo in September 2012, when he was the same age as Marius," the statement said.

Holst said that though Yorkshire participated in the giraffe breeding programme, Marius was not the right genetic match, and if they had space it should be reserved for a genetically more valuable giraffe.

London Zoo was unable to offer a home for Marius because it has a non-breeding group of hybrid giraffes."