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.

Feel sorry for Geldof.......bad luck running in the family...

Maria Miller: Another Rotten Apple in Cameron’s Cabinet of Crooks
Scriptonite Daily / 18 hours ago



As Maria Miller is rightly hounded out of office and hopefully into the courts for her egregious abuse of privilege, many are pointing out that she is but one rotten cog in a thoroughly rotten machine. So if we want real change – the prosecution of Maria Miller is where we start, not where we stop.

A Hideous Double Standard


Maria Miller is Culture Secretary and Equalities Minister for the UK government. Between 2005 and 2009 she claimed £46,000 in fraudulent expenses on the mortgage on a family home that she later sold for £1.2m – and used her position to bully a commissioner in efforts to keep the whole thing quiet. Her punishment? Giving back £5,000 and a 32 second apology in the House of Commons.

Despite abusing the expenses system for four long years, only ending her scam when the MP Expenses Scandal broke in 2009, and her evasion of the ombudsman reviewing her expenses ever since – she has been backed by Prime Minister David Cameron and cabinet colleagues. Cameron says of her:

“Maria Miller is in her job and she is doing a good job as culture secretary.

“Also, she went through this process and the committee found that she had made a mistake in her mortgage claims. She paid back money. She made an apology and that’s the right thing to do.”

Were it not for the relentless pressure of the news media and public campaigns – that would have been the end of the matter for Maria Miller. She cheated, she tried to cover it up, and she kept her job and her profits. For Maria Miller, crime paid.

In contrast, when 22 year old Sacha Hall helped herself to several bags of waste food left out by Tesco after its refrigerators failed – she was immediately arrested, charged with handling stolen goods, and taken to court and given a 12 month conditional discharge. Tesco even admitted there was no value to the food as it was heading to the landfill.

There is truly one rule for them, and one for everyone else.



But Miller is unlikely to be held to account by her cabinet colleagues when we have one of the most corrupt cabinets in UK history.

The Prime Minister

Prime Minister David Cameron is a lineal descendant of King William IV, great grandson of a 1st Baronet, grandson of a 2nd baronet, son of a stockbroker and an aristocrat. He was gifted with an Eton and Oxford education, and one might argue his career in politics, through sheer privilege of birth. He enjoys the benefits of a family fortune made in tax havens.

The Chancellor

Chancellor George Osborne is heir apparent to the Osborne baronetcy, educated at St Paul’s School and Magdalen College Oxford and recipient of a £4m trust fund.

On becoming Chancellor in 2010, he quickly ‘flipped’ his first and second homes to claim over £100k of taxpayer money for interest payments on a mortgage for his £455k Cheshire pad. He later sold the home for over £1m having made improvements partly funded by taxes. He also claimed taxpayer money to cover payments on a horse paddock for the property.

When Osborne undersold the Royal Mail for less than half its value, meaning investors could buy the stock at knock down prices and sell it on almost immediately at a profit, one of the chief beneficiaries was his Best Man Peter Davies – who made £18m in a few short days.

The Work and Pensions Secretary

Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith lives rent free in a £2m country estate owned by his aristocratic father in law. Whilst claiming he could live happily on the £53 a week some unemployed job seekers receive, he has claimed £39 on expenses for his breakfast.

In the Betsy Gate scandal of 2001, it was revealed that the tax payer was paying £15,000 a year for Duncan-Smith’s wife to become his ‘diary secretary’. There is ample evidence that Betsy didn’t perform any such role worthy of the salary, which was hardly likely to register in the bank accounts of the daughter of the moneyed 5th Baron Cottesloe of Swanbourne and Harwick.

Duncan Smith currently costs the tax payer a whopping £134, 565 in salary and expenses.

The Health Secretary

Jeremy Hunt, busy dismantling and flogging off the NHS, is also up to his eyes in corruption. Despite calls for his resignation after colluding with the Murdochs to give them a monopoly TV and Press in the UK in 2012, Cameron chose instead to promote him to Secretary of State for Health. And who has Hunt appointed as the new Chief of NHS England? Simon Stevens – former Chief of US private healthcare giant United Health and the man who started the NHS down the road of ‘competition’ under New Labour.

The Business Secretary

Vince Cable, sold to the nation as the lovable granddad that would put compassion back into the government’s economic strategy is nothing of the sort. Cable is being hauled before MPs for questioning after dramatically undervaluing the Royal Mail at privatisation – resulting in a £750m loss to the taxpayer, thanks to a deal he cooked up with the Banks keen to profit from it. Mark my words, when this parliament is through – Vince will be consulting for one of those Banks.

The Home Secretary

Theresa May’s husband is a director/shareholder in G4S. May has faced several conflict of interest allegations during her tenure. One of the worst was the case of G4S winning a £200m contract to run Lincolnshire police operations. G4S had recruited law firm White and Cade to support their bid. In a stunning coincidence, May invited Tom Winsor, a lawyer from the same firm, to conduct ‘an independent review of police reform’ in the run up to the bid – giving the lawyer access to privy information and contacts.

This list isn’t even exhaustive. Gove, Shapps and other cabinet members are on the fiddle too. But space requires I move on.

They’re All in it Together

They Won’t Stop Until We Stop Them



We have a political system which helps those who help themselves to public money. Corporations and Cabinet members are in cahoots to asset strip the state – the schools, the hospitals, the libraries, the community centres, the playgrounds, the parks, the housing, even the roads and bridges. They want to commercialise the whole lot – all those things that we built and paid for as a nation, they want to sell and profit from as a tiny elite. We build it, we pay for it, they sell it to their mates at knock down prices and rent it back to us at exorbitant rates.

In light of the scale of corruption around us, some argue holding Maria Miller to account is a waste of time,. The opposite is true. It is precisely because parliament is so crooked that we need to be utterly relentless in chasing down every last crooked one of them – and as their numbers deplete, we have a better chance of changing the whole shoddy system itself.

Don’t get angry, get involved!

Sign the 38 Degrees petition for Maria Miller to face criminal charges.

Please sign the petition, Maria Miller To Face Crimminal Charges...........

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/maria-miller-to-face-criminal-proceedings

Update - Labour lead at 3
by YouGov in Politics
Tue April 8, 2014 6 a.m. BST

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 7th April - Con 33%, Lab 36%, LD 10%, UKIP 14%

It's about the money, stupid... RICHARD LITTLEJOHN on the Maria Miller scandal

By Richard Littlejohn

PUBLISHED: 01:54, 8 April 2014 | UPDATED: 01:59, 8 April 2014





Put aside the politics. Forget the fact that Maria Miller is the minister responsible for imposing the Leveson controls on the Press, yet treats Parliament’s own independent expenses regulator with undisguised contempt.


What does her continuing presence in Cabinet tell us about the Prime Minister’s judgment? Frankly, other than within the hermetically sealed Westminster bubble, who cares?


Does it really matter, to anyone outside Fleet Street, whether her special adviser tried to put the frighteners on the Daily Telegraph?


Not that these aspects are unimportant. They are as pertinent as they are disgraceful, even if they don’t excite the wider public.


The Miller affair is further evidence that our so-called democracy is rotten to the core, a game played by a professional political class which appears to have learned nothing from the expenses scandal.

At heart, though, this isn’t about process, precedent or perception. It’s about the money, stupid.


If you’re reading this sitting in a pub in Miller’s Basingstoke constituency, with a damp labrador and a cold bottle of Guinness, I doubt you’re that bothered about the political ramifications.


What you will almost certainly be wondering is: what did she do with all that money and how has she managed to get away with it?


I keep returning to the point I made here last Tuesday, before the official report into Miller’s exes was published. She bought her house in Wimbledon for £234,000. Over the years, the mortgage on the property was increased to £575,000.



The overriding questions are: What did she do with all that money and how has she managed to get away with it?



As I wrote last week, most of us have taken on an extra loan against the value of our house, for a new kitchen or a holiday. But how many people do you know who have borrowed more than twice the original price?


A quarter of a million pounds is an awful lot to spend on home improvements, even for an upwardly-mobile Tory MP with an exaggerated sense of entitlement.


According to Which? magazine, the average price of a new kitchen is £8,000. Updating a bathroom can cost between £2,000 and £6,000, depending on your choice of fittings.


Maybe Miller went for the full Smallbone and a hotel spa-style wet room. If she was spending her own money, fair enough. But when she became an MP, she put the bill in to the taxpayer.


After she was elected, she immediately took out an extra £150,000 on her mortgage and claimed the entire interest on her parliamentary expenses by pretending that the Wimbledon house was her ‘second’ home.


How many jobs do you know which give you an instant six-figure, interest-free loan, on top of your salary?


Miller obviously saw the money as some kind of signing-on fee. Why did she need that £150,000? Out in the real world, that’s a shed-load of money, more than most people can dream about. What did she spend it on?


More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2599367/Maria-Miller-Its-money-stupid-RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-Culture-Secretarys-scandal.html

There is a new Populus online poll out today which shows Labour’s lead over the Conservatives down to 3%:

Conservative 34% (up 1%)
Labour 37% (no change)
Lib Dem 9% (down 1%)
UKIP 14% (up 1%)

That should give the Labour party an overall 40+ seat majority..

8-)

Yep 40 plus seats will do me Fred.

No phone calls or taxis for those ill.

40s just fine.

In Max s piece above from Richard Littlejohn he states.........

"Does it really matter, to anyone outside Fleet Street, whether her special adviser tried to put the frighteners on the Daily Telegraph? etc etc....


Not that these aspects are unimportant. They are as pertinent as they are disgraceful, even if they don’t excite the wider public.".....ends


well sorry littlejohn they are important to the public and in the recent polls 80% say they are important as this is the number calling for Millers head. Its not just about money figures but obverall respect. Little wonder those bothering to turn up to vote gets less and less.

Call me Dave is a fool to keep her in position.

goldie

I have been looking at some of those video's on investing on the Moneyweek site , fellow named Ed Browser explaining spread bet's , haven't seen many of them yet most you can see on you tube.

Seeing Nick Clegg and the Blair babes and all the rest of the Blair clones is like watching sign languish and i find myself just watching their hands , Cleggy also trys to make himself one of the people by allways remembering names of members of the audiance like on QT, last week " Were's Sally i can't see you , there you are"

I agree with littlejohn.

It shows Cameron and crew for what they are and the public who had little respect for them have even less now.

But it is because it percolates "down" through society into "if they can get away with it, so can and should I".

It stinks.

The death throws of a government not fit to rule a Banana Republic.

Why don't they retire to the Cayman Isles with their puppeteers?

======


But it would be interesting to see Faupage's books, before he gets his feet on the UK gravy train!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWI7mjmnNk

I must have missed this.

Alders said.....

"Moneyweek site , fellow named Ed Browser"....ends

yep hes good that bloke also good with the charts aswel on tramlines. Plenty of examples on Utube.

WOW what a bad day on the market and yesterday I thought Id had a good one and got away scot free, sadly not today, worst day for me in about 7 years.

Cant take your eye of the market.

goldie

Some days its best not to trade [ no new postions ]. Maybe a bit of juggling around the end of tax year. Got a business in the Philippines and the tax year ends on 15th April, new tax forms with the option of delaring 40% of profit or just submit itemised profits, also you have to pay a sales tax of 3 % every month on total sales

I wish I had taken my eyes off the market.

Not the best of days, but flogged some in profit and extended stop losses.

Today the IMF said that the UK will be the fastest growing of all the G7 countries. Their estimate is 2.9% for this year.

at least thank goodness i took the profit in my C+M Index holding yesterday when it was there ..... it subsequently disappeared rapidly and indeed much worse; in fact, bought back in late this afternoon so keeping buttocks clenched

interesting alders........Philippines business,what is it a Cat House.........wink.... kidding.

Sales tax 3% every month on total sales........wonder how that racks up against our tax system. Bet it works out far cheaper.

Yep not been buying new stocks been hedging and getting rid of a few top heavy winners, that said I was caught out at the open and didnt close fast enough.

When I place charts on the chart thread they are just ideas thrown up by my system. If I buy them I put a note on the thread that I have done so as quickly as possible sometimes before i have bought.

Was a deadly start to the market with it opening slightly up.

Think I was conned by analysts on CNBC last night saying everything was oversold and a bounce would be on today.

Turned out right now, how long can it last though with the talk of Ruskys maybe going into the ukraine again.

Hays the reason we are the fastest growing company in the G7 is because we have lagged behind the others for the last 3 years.

Anyway the market and the economy never go step and step together, the market is a leading indicator usualy 9 months in front of the economy.

At this point its pricing in bad news, but hoping its only temporary.

Earnings season starts in US tonight, should give some direction as to where markets are going.