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.

I think it was Barbara Castle...maybe...have to go and do some work....I'll catch up later...

She was fred's pin-up.
2517

Put a dartboard over the picture...

Just think, Edwina Curry and Katie Hopkins in a threesome, sheer bliss.

Katie has a bit of a beak on her.

Hays I wasnt serious......jesus.

I know tastes are a bit different up there north of Henson.

RF.

Your party leader and sidekick have never had a real job in their lives and were parachuted into the leadership of the torrid party by the Old Boys' Network and doesn't it show.

The only work they seem to have had is PR work and they don't even seem good at that.

======


2517,

Barbara Castle made me shiver.

Frightening, although she wasn't a member of the torid party she would have fitted in nicely with blue rinse brigade.

But wasn't she Haze's nanny, or am I getting him mixed up with Manuel.

Barbara Castle was old Labour and was made a scrapgoat for the failer of the Union reform [ In Place of Strife ] .

Fred's pin up girl was the Socialist Workers Party's Vannesa Redgrave.

Now that the Thames is overflowing we may just see some of these City muppets jumping to attention. It's getting a bit close to home boys!

.

Quango Britain is flooded by policy failure


By Douglas Carswell
Politics Last updated: February 10th, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/douglascarswellmp/100258653/quango-britain-is-flooded-by-policy-failure/


Replacing Lord Smith with a Tory will solve nothing

In fairness to Lord Smith of the Environment Agency, he can't control the weather. Any more than Lord Turner of the Financial Service Authority was able to control the credit cycle. Or Lord Rooker of the Food Standards Agency was able to control the food chain.

From flooded levels to tanked banks, public policy failure comes not because quangos control things, but because we presume that they can.

No central government quangocrats – no matter how worldly or wise – could gather enough information in any one place to know where to dredge to withstand every winter gale. Nor could they know precisely when to raise bank reserve ratios to withstand a financial one. Thus we eventually get overwhelmed.

For a generation or more, under successive governments, public policy has been handed to central quangos.

Sea defences, once left to district authorities and land owners, became a county responsibility. Then it became the responsibility of two or three Whitehall bodies. And finally in 1996 the preserve of just one, the Environment Agency. Has more land been reclaimed or abandoned to the sea since that process of centralised policymaking began?

It’s been a similar story for everything from financial service to food regulation.

"But at least these quangos are independent", I hear you say. "Instead of playing politics, the experts can just get on with it”.

Letting the experts get on with it never works out quite how we imagine.

With only experts running things, there’s no one around to ask those dumb, non-expert questions that need asking like: “why aren’t we dredging, like we used to?” Or “what happens if Northern Rock, which borrows short term to lend long term, couldn’t borrow for a while?”

Worse, leaving things to “experts” means that faddish ideas that excite such people become the basis on which wider public policy interests are decided. The public rarely has much say.

If you work for the Environment Agency, you might well believe in elevating the natural over and above the interests of the human. But does that mean that the rest of us really want “managed retreat”? After centuries of reclaiming land from the sea, are we to now prioritise salt marsh over farm land?

If you work at the Financial Service Authority you might well believe, like so many “expert” economists, that low interest rates are a cause of economic success. What happens if low rates are a consequence of economic success instead? What about the interests of savers?

If you run the Food Standards Agency, it is much easier to insist that every last sandwich shop in the land has a five star rating on its front door. Checking that those cottage pies aren’t really cheval pies seems a bit tedious.

Some have suggested that Lord Smith should resign. Replacing leftie Labour placement with Tory placemen will not solve the problem. Passing responsibility back to local government, and making government agencies properly accountable to Parliament, just might.

Britons 'too ignorant' for EU referendum: Top official says debate on Europe is so distorted that people could not make an 'informed decision'

Viviane Reding, vice-president of European Commission, made comments

Speaking in London, she said British people must know 'the facts' on EU

She boasted about how 70 per cent of UK's laws are now made in Brussels
Her comments were attacked by critics for 'dangerous' assumptions


By Jason Groves

PUBLISHED: 01:25, 11 February 2014 | UPDATED: 01:25, 11 February 2014


Britons are too ignorant about Europe to vote in a referendum on the subject, a top Brussels official claimed last night.


Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission, said the British debate about Europe was so ‘distorted’ that people could not make an ‘informed decision’ about whether or not to stay in the EU.


Mrs Reding - who boasted that 70 per cent of the UK’s laws are now made in Brussels - also rubbished David Cameron’s bid to curb immigration from Europe, saying it was incompatible with membership of the EU.


Europe Minister David Lidington criticised her comments, saying that pro-EU points of view received a wide airing in the UK, including on the BBC.


He added: ‘It is very dangerous to start making assumptions about what makes someone qualified to cast a vote.’

Pawel Sidlicki, of the think tank Open Europe, said: ‘Mrs Reding epitomises the EU elites’ approach to dealing with the public -superficially embracing debate with citizens while dismissing any substantive criticism.



Full story here:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2556397/Britons-ignorant-EU-referendum-Top-official-says-debate-Europe-distorted-people-not-make-informed-decision.html#ixzz2syldG56h

Britons 'too ignorant' for EU referendum
sadly rather too close to the truth for comfort i'm afraid, but one could say exactly the same about them at a general elkection

Yes, that's right!


We're all thick...I mean, just look at the government we elected.

I thought it was the Cameroon firstly.

I cannot see the point of a EU referendum ....to me it's too late to change anything major....perhaps it would bring a better deal for the UK in terms of financing and immigration/border controls...but that's it....but asking the average Brit (including myself) about a referendum....answer : it's a pain in the arse !...also...what's this blinkin' Scottish independence nonsense....allegiance to the Queen and keep the pound but separate country.....doesn't sound right : it'll end in a shambles !...

Hadrians Wall is too low.
2517

Britains most hated??????

wasn't workfare a Noo Lab concept?