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.

4 March 2014 Last updated at 00:17
Cameron aide arrested in 'child abuse imagery' inquiry

Patrick Rock resigned as deputy head of the policy unit last month
One of David Cameron's aides has been arrested on suspicion of an offence "relating to child abuse imagery", Downing Street has said.

Patrick Rock, 62, resigned as the deputy head of the policy unit on 12 February.

Number 10 said it had been made aware of a potential offence and referred the matter to the National Crime Agency, which arrested Mr Rock at his home a few hours later on 13 February.

The NCA has not confirmed the arrest.

A Downing Street spokesman said that following Mr Rock's arrest, it "arranged for officers to come into Number 10 [to] have access to all IT systems and offices they considered relevant".

The prime minister was immediately informed and kept updated throughout, he said.

'Party's upper echelons'
He added: "This is an ongoing investigation so it would not be appropriate to comment further, but the prime minister believes that child abuse imagery is abhorrent and that anyone involved with it should be properly dealt with under the law."

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said Mr Rock had been a fixture in the upper echelons of the Conservative Party for three decades, initially working for Margaret Thatcher, and was brought back into Downing Street by David Cameron in 2011.

As deputy head of the policy unit, he was one of a number of officials who had been working on policies to rid the internet of child abuse, our correspondent said.

Mr Rock was involved in preparations for a summit last year, working with the NCA, at which leading companies agreed to make it as difficult as possible to find images of abuse on their search engines.

Another bottom for Manuel and Dreams!

Cyners panorama only confirmed what I have been saying all along and what you selectively chose to ignore and not read.

Guido Fawkes turning on the Tories, thats very unlike him..............

MARCH 4TH, 2014

Why are We Only Hearing About Rock Arrest Now?

Patrick Rock is one of the most powerful people you have never heard of, serving as the PM’s fixer in Downing Street. Rock and Dave go way back, they worked together as special advisers in the Home Office under the progressive days of Michael Howard. The story goes that on the day John Smith died they went drinking in the Two Chairmen, where they “both agreed that Blair coming meant that we [Conservatives] would be f**ked.” He was almost a Tory MP too, fighting and losing in Portsmouth South in 1984… to Mike Hancock. Rock had been working under the radar at Downing Street since 2011, where his crowning achievement was accidentally leaking private documents to a photographer. Among his responsibilities were drafting the government’s proposals on internet porn filters. ‘Research’ of which seems his most obvious get out of jail card – the Pete Townshend defence…

It seems Downing Street were first made aware of the situation and called the cops on Rock themselves, three weeks ago. Unusually it has taken weeks for the arrest of one of the Prime Minister’s closest advisers to become public. In news management terms we have had in the intervening period Harriet Harman’s well known historic NCCL / Paedophile Information Exchange links dredged up in the Mail. This was after Rock was nicked but before it was made public… by James Chapman, in the Mail.

Euhh...shouldn't the Ukraine be a little more important than the sicko stuff ?....

ah you are being quite selective too :-)
i'll contribute a bit more later, but only succinctly as is my wont

a little starter
edwina was positively neanderthal, though the point she made about people using credit like it isn't real money (i know people like that too!) had some or even considerable validity

the woman who wanted to keep her existing house and smoke and run a car at least didn't just whinge ..... she got herself a second job to enable her to meet her debts and live with the things she wanted and to feed herself without the help of the local foodbank

the younger chap who also got himself out of trouble by eventually getting a job in a local bar .... but he shouldn't have been put in dire straights anyway, if i remeber correctly

the benefits system that screws up too often (i'm afraid it is inevitable sometimes), wrongly depriving people of their benefit .... although rectified eventually, it imposes impossible financial strain in the interim

the overall problem has been growing for an awful lot longer than just the last 2/3years so no, you can't just conveniently lay all the blame on the present crew

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

more to follow in due course :-)

On a lighter note for RF.

Thanks..(:)))

Cyners...."the overall problem has been growing for an awful lot longer than just the last 2/3years so no, you can't just conveniently lay all the blame on the present crew"......ends

dont think you realise what a mess IDS as got the system into with his trying to push through Universal Credit. IMO he as taken on to big a project and set far too optimistic time scale.

To put it bluntly hes made a pigs ear of it all and claimants are genuinely suffering.

The Panorama program was unbalanced, inaccurate, poorly researched and very tedious.

The use of food banks went up tenfold under the last Labour government.

The number of food banks had risen fast under Labour even before the financial crisis.

sticky - for goodness sake stop wearing your red-tinted glasses for once and take a much broader view

too much to do for the moment to add further apolitical stuff - perhaps you can try doing so in the meantime

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

hays - do likewise!

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

imo, it was actually a fairly well balanced and thoughtful programme, though it did rather lean towards the left as was to be expected

Food banks have not expanded as a reaction to demand but due to deliberate policies of the food banks. The move to a social franchise model in 2004 encouraged food banks to spread and it’s difficult to separate this natural expansion from the effects of the recession. There may have been be an underlying hidden need for some help in that area, but the fast expansion is not necessarily an indication of an increase in the need.

Hays LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

yep from 1 foodbank to 16 foodbanks labours increase was far faster than the present government..............in fact they werent really food banks but an upgrade to soup kitchens.

Hays falling for the traditional Tory trick of distorting figures.

How many is their now 600 plus with 1000 expected in 18 months time.

So weve gone from 16 under labour to a prospective target of 1,000 under the Tories.

Yes hays its all labours fault.

You keep wearing the blinkers old boy and lay off the sherry.

The best place on the Internet I've found, for keeping up to date on the situation in the Ukraine:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26428296

People fed by food banks under labour rose from 2,814 in 2005/6 to 40,898 in 2009/10.

ho ho ho ha ha ha he he he LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL

Haystack - 04 Mar 2014 10:02 - 37617 of 37618

Food banks have not expanded as a reaction to demand but due to deliberate policies of the food banks. The move to a social franchise model in 2004 encouraged food banks to spread and it’s difficult to separate this natural expansion from the effects of the recession. There may have been be an underlying hidden need for some help in that area, but the fast expansion is not necessarily an indication of an increase in the need.....ends

Hays you dick head your Coalition Govt called for an independant enquiry into foodbank expansion and held it back for weeks because of its findings.

Ill post it up. LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL ohhh I cant stop laughing.

for goodness sake you two .... you're both as bad as each other

why on earth are you both (+ fossy of course) totally incapable of viewing the concept of foodbanks and their raison d'etre and their benefit from other than an entrenched political standpoint?

Little lord Fauntleroy get you figures up to date.

http://www.trusselltrust.org/stats

download-press-release-offBiggest ever increase in UK foodbank use:
170% rise in numbers turning to foodbanks in last 12 months
Trussell Trust foodbanks have seen the biggest rise in numbers given emergency food since the charity began in 2000. Almost 350,000 people have received at least three days emergency food from Trussell Trust foodbanks during the last 12 months, nearly 100,000 more than anticipated and close to triple the number helped in 2011-12.
Rising cost of living, static incomes, changes to benefits, underemployment and unemployment have meant increasing numbers of people in the UK have hit a crisis that forces them to go hungry. This dramatic rise in foodbank usage predates April’s welfare reforms, which could see numbers increase further in 2013-14.

346,992 people received a minimum of three days emergency food from Trussell Trust foodbanks in 2012-13, compared to 128,697 in 2011-12 and up from 26,000 in 2008-09. Of those helped in 2012-13, 126,889 (36.6 percent) were children.

The Trussell Trust has seen a 76 percent increase in the number of foodbanks launched since April 2012 but has seen a 170 percent increase in numbers of people given emergency food. Well-established foodbanks that have been running for several years are showing significant rises in numbers helped during the last 12 months. Christian charity The Trussell Trust is launching three new foodbanks every week to help meet demand and has launched 345 UK foodbanks in partnership with churches and communities to date.

Here we are, and note during this period Camoron in the commons and Lord Fraud in the Upper House were aware of the report but stayed in denial. Both liars.

Government accused of suppressing the damning report that suggests its flagship welfare reforms are forcing ever more people to resort to food banks

The author of a Government-commissioned report into food banks has told the Independent that welfare reforms since she conducted the research are forcing many more people to resort to emergency food handouts.

The Government is accused of suppressing a piece of research into food poverty in Britain for more than seven months. It was finally published by the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs today morning amid suggestions that it had been “slipped out” while the floods were still in the news.

It concluded that there was “growing demand” for emergency food because of increased need. This directly contradicts the position of Work and Pensions minister Lord Freud, who claimed last summer that the expansion of charities such as The Trussell Trust had driven the demand.

The research was conducted in early 2013, before a raft of welfare reforms were introduced in April. Professor Elizabeth Dowler, a sociologist from Warwick University who led the research, said: “For many people the situation is definitely harder than when we wrote this report. What is different now is many are needing help who didn’t need it in the past and people are saying the safety net has gone.

“A lot of things have changed in the last year. We’ve had the devolution of the emergency fund system and we’ve had the so-called bedroom tax, which has put a lot of families into rent arrears. The evidence is that there are more and more sanctions being applied [to benefit claimants] and it’s hard to see how that could not have a negative effect on households struggling with food security.”

Despite being peer reviewed and apparently signed off by a steering committee in June, the report was not put into the public domain until yesterday. Its publication was delayed for more than seven months after officials from the Department for Work and Pensions and DEFRA put it under intense scrutiny.

A source close to the project said: “My sense is that the political advisers got hold of it. We had to be very careful about anything we wrote to do with benefits and social security.”

The heavy Government scrutiny was alluded to in the report itself, which said it was “steered closely” by a group with included DEFRA, DWP and the Department of Health.

The report’s authors were given less than 24 hours' notice that the research was going to be published yesterday after all this time. Academics told it was finally going online speculated amongst themselves that it was probably being “slipped out” while attention on DEFRA was focused on floods. However, a spokeswoman for DEFRA said this was “categorically not the case”.

Professor Dowling said of the delays: “Instead of taking so long to publish this report it seems to me the Government should have got it into the public domain and addressed the problem.”

In her official statement published yesterday, she said: “We are delighted our report has been published. We urge the Government to learn from it and from those living in harsh circumstances, and to find creative, fair ways to enable all in this rich country to have enough money to be able to eat healthily. This work is urgent.”

The final report was heavily caveated and avoided making its own pronouncement on the causes of the rise in food aid use, instead summarising the views of national charities and NGOs, and local-level research. Citing these groups, it said crises such as the loss of a job or problems with social security benefits would prompt people to seek emergency help with food.

Maria Eagle MP, Shadow Environment Secretary, said: “It is now clear why David Cameron has fought so hard over many months to keep this report hidden, because it rubbishes the claim that the increase in food banks is driving demand. Instead of hiding behind a myth that is insulting to all those parents who have skipped meals to ensure their children do not go hungry, it is time Ministers took this issue seriously."

Steve Turner, the assistant general secretary of Unite, said of the research: “This is a Whitehall whitewash. Ministers and advisers have spent a year poring over it to remove the unpalatable truth that the government has created a national crisis, punishing people when they need help, presiding over a dramatic rise in food bank use while George Osborne squeezes living standards in a way unseen since the Victorian era.”

The news follows a joint letter from 27 Anglican bishops published today, blaming David Cameron for creating a “national crisis” which has seen half a million people visit food banks since April last year.

A Government spokesperson said: “Charities such as food organisations have always provided a valued service to those in need in their communities, in addition to the safety net provided by governments, and we should welcome the help they provide.

“That is why this Government has given Jobcentre Plus advisers the ability to say to people who need help that they can go to a food bank. The literature review published today was commissioned as part of Defra’s general work on food in the UK to see what information was available on the issue.”