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.

This an interesting response to the US looking at people's emails

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/world/europe/merkel-backs-plan-to-keep-european-data-in-europe.html?_r=0&referrer=

Merkel Backs Plan to Keep European Data in Europe

ERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has embraced proposals to create European data networks that would keep emails and other communications on the European side of the Atlantic, farther from prying American eyes, and said she would raise the matter this week with President François Hollande of France.

It is encouraging to see examples of misplaced belief in religion

http://news.sky.com/story/1212846/snake-handling-tv-pastor-dies-from-snakebite

Snake-Handling TV Pastor Dies From Snakebite

A snake-handling pastor who appeared on a National Geographic television reality show has died after being bitten by a snake.

Jamie Coots was bitten on the hand by a rattlesnake during a weekend church service in Kentucky.

After the bite, he dropped the snakes, but then picked them back up and continued on.

Rev Coots went home before emergency workers got to the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name Church in Middlesboro.

The emergency workers then went to his house, but he refused medical treatment on grounds that he believed in faith healing, and declined to be taken to hospital.

When the emergency workers returned about an hour later, he was dead from a venomous bite, Middlesboro police said.

Rev Coots, a 42-year-old Pentecostal preacher, had recently been featured on the National Geographic show Snake Salvation.

His son, Cody, told local station WBIR-TV that the pastor had been bitten eight times before, but never had such a severe reaction and expected Saturday's bite to be like the others.

"We're going to go home, he's going to lay on the couch, he's going to hurt, he's going to pray for a while and he's going to get better," Cody Coots said.

is this not a graphic example of religion always coming back to bite you?

very good

Interesting that Merkel talks with Holland but ignores lapdog Cameron.

Wonder why. Is it a foretaste of the future?

========

Do I have to be a party member to get a Flood grant if I live in the Thames Valley or any other part of the UK?

you would no qualify as and for a sponge

Well, I suppose you would know, or at least answer!

8-(

". ."
,,

Universal Credit Claimants Excluded From Official Unemployment Figures
AllBenefitsPoliticsDWPFeatured NewsUnemploymentWelfare ReformFeb 16, 20140 33
ONS: “The DWP have not been able to supply ONS with this information in a way that has allowed its inclusion within the Claimant Count."

Fresh questions about the accuracy of official unemployment figures emerged tonight, after the government admitted Universal Credit claimants were being excluded from the headline figures.

The revelation is the latest in a series of problems faced by Iain Duncan Smith’s (IDS) flagship welfare reform, which sees a number of different benefits rolled into one single monthly payment.

A Spokesperson for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) told the Daily Mirror:

“The DWP have not been able to supply ONS with this information in a way that has allowed its inclusion within the Claimant Count, resulting in the exclusion of UC claims from this measure.”

Responding to the news, Labours Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Rachel Reeves MP said:

“This is another error by incompetent ministers in their botched roll-out of Universal Credit.

“If David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith can’t ensure Universal Credit claimants are included on official unemployment figures, how can we have any confidence in their ability to deliver this flagship project?”

“It’s time for ministers to get a grip of the spiralling waste and delays which are costing taxpayers millions.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said:

“We have been fully transparent in publishing the number of people claiming Universal Credit.

“To ensure consistency the Department released these figures alongside the employment statistics. Universal credit is both an in and out of work benefit so some claimants may be working.

“The truth is that independent statistics show that unemployment is falling significantly and 1.3million more people are in work than in 2010.”

Iain Duncan Smith’s cabinet colleague Francis Maude has described the staggered roll-out of Universal Credit as “lamentable”, after it emerged that Universal Credit has been beset with IT problems, costing the public over £40 million to put right.

Despite this, the Work and Pensions Secretary has continued to stand by earlier comments he made to parliament, that Universal Credit would be delivered “on-time and within budget”. However, some believe that the final cost is more likely to be closer to £12.bn and not the £2.2 bn cited by the government.

Universal Credit is being introduced steadily and is expected to be fully completed by 2017, if there are no further problems or delays.

Unemployed people claiming the new Universal Credit are not the only benefit recipients not to be included in official unemployment figures. Those claiming sickness benefits, early retires, some students of working age and jobseeker’s on the government’s controversial Work Programme, are also not included in the ONS statistics, among a few others.

Some commentators believe that if we were to include all these groups of unofficially unemployed people in the official statistics, the ‘true’ state of ‘worklessness’ in the UK would be closer to 1 in 5 of the working age population, perhaps even higher.

A total shambles and another government fiddle...........

Unemployed people claiming the new Universal Credit are not the only benefit recipients not to be included in official unemployment figures. Those claiming sickness benefits, early retires, some students of working age and jobseeker’s on the government’s controversial Work Programme, are also not included in the ONS statistics, among a few others.

What Maggie started Dave is finishing.

But get this MONEY IS NO OBJECT and SPENDING IS MY PRIORITY.......Camoron says.

health tourists
beloved had to spend pretty much the whole of yesterday in St Mary's Paddington A&E
not remotely provable, but by her reckoning, foreigners were in a significant majority and, by her reckoning, an awful lot of them were non uk residents - i.e. health tourists

“The truth is that independent statistics show that unemployment is falling significantly and 1.3million more people are in work than in 2010.”



If this statement is correct, why is the social security budget rising year on year?

Manuel,

Did you ancestors arrive on the shores for the benefit of their health?

I think all those of non-celtic origin should off back to their countries of origin.

Of course all with Celtic ancestry can stay.

=========#

Max,

The unemployment figures are a distortion.

======

GDP. is also very questionable marker of the economy. Unless you want a measure of pocket to pocket!

max - because, and quite legitimately so, there will be an awful lot of people in part-time employment who are still entitled to receive benefits - eg those who opt to work <16 hours a week

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

fred - my ancestors came to these shores when the labour party was barely formed, the bolsheviks etc totally unheard of, and decades before nhs or other state benefits were on offer

So Cyners the state is effectively subsidising employers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Channel 5 planning its own version of Benefits Street
17 Feb 2014 07:15
TV channel planning a documentary called Living On The Social

Still a good reason for you to leave now!

They must have been the root of all our problems.

What was the date?




8-)

Reader's Digest sold for £1
Mike Luckwell buys struggling title from Jon Moulton's private equity company, Better Capital, with plan to target over-50s

Mark Sweney
theguardian.com, Monday 17 February 2014 14.20 GMT

Reader’s Digest, which had a circulation of 23 million an issue in the 1960s, has been sold to Mike Luckwell for £1. Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Reader's Digest has been sold for just £1 to Mike Luckwell, whose previous major investments have included Bob the Builder creator HIT Entertainment and WPP.

Jon Moulton's private equity company, Better Capital, has offloaded Reader's Digest UK – the waiting room staple that was once the biggest selling magazine in the world – after investing tens of millions of pounds into trying to rejuvenate the struggling business.

Luckwell, the venture capitalist whose personal fortune is estimated at more than £135m, has acquired the title with the aim of targeting the "frisky over-50s" group that holiday and insurance company Saga has built a successful business on.

"Saga cleverly focused on holidays and the financial sector for the over-50s, but now has a finger in many pies," Luckwell said. "Today it has annual sales running into hundreds of millions – that merits a bit of competition."

Luckwell said the acquisition will provide access to a database of more than 1.5 million names, of which only 9% have recently purchased a Reader's Digest product.

"There is significant potential to further develop and utilise those large databases," he said.

Better Capital took the business out of administration in a £13m management buy-out in April 2010, and has since ploughed a further £23m into the company.

The investment failed to fuel a turnaround at the title, which no longer has its sales officially audited in the UK.

Luckwell has made his fortune through a range of deals and investments, starting with his launch of the Moving Picture Company post-production business in 1970.

In the 1980s, MPC merged into Carlton Communications, with Luckwell becoming the latter's largest shareholder and eventually selling out for £25m.

In the late 1980s, he was the biggest shareholder in Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP. In the 1990s, investments included HIT Entertainment, home to Bob the Builder and Barney, from which he made £33m when it was sold to Apax in 2005.

Reader's Digest was founded in 1922 by DeWitt and Lila Bell Wallace. By the early 1960s it had a global circulation of 23 million an issue with 40 international editions.

The title remained the biggest selling consumer magazine in the US until as recently as 2008.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

sticky - 36750 - strange logic; indeed none at all
it is those on benefit who may well choose not to work >16 hours a week, as that is the point at which their benefits get hit
for sure there will some employers who do not require more than 16 hours a week from a given employee, but even then, i fail to see how that means that employers are being subsidised
finally, and of course, a few hours of honest work are a damn sight better than none