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.

That was quite funny reflect Scots perception of London elite.

MaxK
Appointed by the parliament after a vote. Bear in mind that Italy and Greece have different election systems to us. Italy's was invented by the Allied Countries after the war to stop dictatorships as was Germany's. Italy has a sort of proportional representation system that produces coalitions almost every time apart from Burlusconi's government. Italy's coalitions collapse on a regular basis. in fact it happened just recently. Italy has had an average of one government per year since WWII. Two lasted 11 days only. It is quite common for their parliament to elect new leaders without a full general election.

cynic
I ment to tell you something that you might find interesting. I was out the other day with some friends, a few of which own businesses. We were talking about zero hours contracts. Two of them used these employment contracts and both for the same reason. The next day I rang a couple more friends and asked them about it. One more did for the same reason again. It ended up as three out of eight.

The reason was that employment legislation makes it difficult to sack people even when they are not much good at the job. Once you have employed someone for a while they go to employment tribunals if you sack them. If you employ people on zero hours contracts then you can just not have any hours for them to work anymore. The people that told me this said they knew lots of businesses doing the same.

edit
One of them said that some companies use it to avoid the maternity leave entitlements.

I just did a bit of research and Wikipedia's entry for zero hours has this

"According to the CIPD research about 38% of those employed under zero-hours contracts considered themselves to be employed full-time, working 30 hours or more a week."

That matches my friends' experience. Their zero hours staff work full time hours every week.

Thanks guys...a lot more interesting now this thread.....

Why China is right on the future of Ukraine

The Chinese are urging patience, calling for talks after the referendum






Liam Halligan
By Liam Halligan

4:22PM GMT 15 Mar 2014



This Crimean crisis is, perhaps, reaching its apogee. As a referendum is held on the Black Sea peninsula, a territory 25pc bigger than Wales and home to 2m people, the stand-off between Russia and the West continues, dominating the global news cycle.


Talk of a new Cold War is deeply alarmist. Politicians on both sides are posturing in front of each other and their respective electorates. Be in no doubt, though, relations between Russia and the US are now at their lowest ebb since the Soviet Union collapsed more than 22 years ago.


While the possibility of East-West military confrontation remains remote, the war of words is casting a pall over global financial markets. Investors worry that argy-bargy between Moscow and Washington, and a Ukrainian sovereign default, could spark another Lehman-style “systemic moment”.


Crimean voters are today almost certain to back closer ties with Moscow. Two-thirds of them are ethnically Russian and there is widespread anger at last month’s mob-ousting of Ukraine’s elected president.


While Viktor Yanukovich had become unpopular, his 2010 election was “fair” and “competitive” according to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. And he wasn’t up for re-election until 2015.



More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/10700292/Why-China-is-right-on-the-future-of-Ukraine.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9194674.ece/ALTERNATES/w620/p38cartoon.jpg

That's a old Photo i posted ages ago , with Fred and Stan pictured on the right

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/15/ukip-to-top-european-elections_n_4972008.html

Business Secretary Vince Cable has said he does not understand why people need to earn £1m per year.

"I've asked one or two of the more sympathetic bankers to explain it to me," the Liberal Democrat said in an interview with the Observer newspaper.

He said their response was "because others get it so I should, too".

"That is a ludicrous mindset. What on earth do these people think they are doing?" said Mr Cable, who recently criticised bonuses paid out by RBS.


Very good choice for a Business Secretary with those views , I don't think

Update - Labour lead at 7
by YouGov in Politics
Sun March 16, 2014 6 a.m. GMT


Latest YouGov / Sunday Times results 14th March -

Con 33%,

Lab 40%,

LD 8%, UKIP 12%;

APP -25


-----------

U-turn Dave is certainly winning the case!





For Labour!!!

This week's PB YouGov Weekly Average with changes on last week and latest poll (Mar 16)




http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2014/03/16/the-tories-close-the-gap-by-1-4-percent-in-this-weeks-pb-yougov-weekly-average/

What would the union jack look like if the Scottish bit were removed?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25205017

The result of a poll

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/shortcuts/2014/mar/02/scottish-independence-new-british-flag-poll

"Hays Milliband is in difficulty" errr......what does that say of dave then???.

electionista ‏@electionista
UK - ComRes #EP2014 poll:

UKIP 30%
LAB 28%
CON 21%
LDEM 8%
GRN 6%

The serious Polks show UKIP coming third in the EU elections.

Here are previous polls on EU

Your one looks like an outlier anomaly.

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/european-elections

The polls show that the main parties are going to get a bloody nose.

A few ideas spring to mind about the Malaysian aircraft is that it could be that the plane has landed in a remote location and is going to be used for an attack on a high-rise building somewhere or an atomic powerstation somewhere after being refuelled....possible...or is this a massive cover-up story because of a collision between a secret aircraft /shuttle of some sort ?.....or perhaps there was a cockpit fight between the pilots/passengers and the kidnappers resulting in a crash !?.....all possibles......did anybody on the aircraft try to use a mobile phone or did the kidnappers confiscate them ?....what a mystery !....

R F

!?.....all possibles......

There are possibles that are impossible, and impossibles that are possible but we don't know what is possible or impossible .......