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 see nothing wrong with faith schools, but I don't want any public money support. You want religious education, then pay the full cost and no subsidy, support and no charitable status.

which bit don't you read let alone understand of 42130?

I am not sure if I like public and other private schools being charities or not, but I definitely don't want it to apply to religion which I regard as harmful. It is about the intention. The intention of one is to provide excellent education. The other is to further the purposes and indoctrination of a religion. And I see no reason not to be able to put ck and choose who gets charitable status. The charity commission could have new rules that say no religious charities at all, including churches etc.

hays - in your own way, you are every bit as "fundamentalist" and intolerant as the religions you so decry and deplore ..... what you fail to grasp is that most religions set out little more than philosophies for life, propounding sensible and basic guidelines on how we should lead our lives ..... what's so wrong about that?

that most attach those guidelines to a higher being is almost irrelevant

i accept that the above is a very simplistic statement, but it's good enough

Sepp Blatter hits out at 'racist' British media and plot to destroy Fifa

Governing body's president claims press is working to an agenda as he declares plan to run for fifth term




Power broker: Sepp Blatter looks unbeatable in the next vote for the presidency Photo: AFP



By Ben Rumsby, Rio de Janeiro

7:26PM BST 09 Jun 2014



Sepp Blatter unleashed an astonishing tirade against the “racist” British media and what he branded a plot to “destroy” Fifa last night as he confirmed his intention to stand for a controversial fifth term as president.


Blatter lashed out against the critics of football’s world governing body in two defiant speeches, finally breaking his silence over the corruption crisis to engulf the organisation he leads ahead of the World Cup in Brazil.


Fifa has been under mounting pressure over the emergence of new evidence linked to its decision to award the 2022 tournament to Qatar, with sponsors lining up to express their concerns.


But Blatter dismissed the investigations spearheaded by The Telegraph and Sunday Times in an address to the African Football Confederation’s annual congress, in which he railed against the “storm against Fifa relating to the Qatar World Cup”.


He added: “Sadly, there’s a great deal of discrimination and racism, and this hurts me.”


More racist bollox here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/world-cup/10887846/Sepp-Blatter-hits-out-at-racist-British-media-and-plot-to-destroy-Fifa.html

that sepp blatter is an absolute disgrace and in his own way probably an even nastier piece of work than bernie ecclestone

Which is the next con party leader?

why would you care?

I want to congratulate the cons on their choice!

Sorry, "What Choice"!

Better rejuvenate Bill Cash!

(Good name for the present tory party leader. Cash in hand!)

hard to believe, but sometimes you are even sillier than usual

cynic
I have no problem with people following and celebrating their religions. I just don't want to contribute money to it all in any way. I see religion as a force for various bad things. We are heading towards a secular society where religion will have no official part and the sooner the better.

Why Jean-Claude Juncker won't become President of the Commission


By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: June 9th, 2014



Jobs for the boys – and girls


http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100275511/heres-my-prediction-helle-thorning-schmidt-as-commission-president-jean-claude-juncker-as-council-president-andrew-mitchell-as-uk-commissioner/



You want my guess? Jean-Claude Juncker won’t become President of the European Commission. Too many prime ministers and chancellors just don’t like him.

Some of these premiers resent him on a personal level: where the last Luxembourger, Jacques Santer, was mellow almost to the point of sleepiness, Juncker can be abrupt and abrasive. Others wish he would be a bit more subtle in his federalism. It’s not that his views are unusual in Brussels – all the putative candidates support a United States of Europe – but, coming from the Grand Duchy, Juncker hasn’t had to learn to hide them in the way that most Euro-pols have. Several national leaders, including our own, fear that he would ignite their smouldering electorates. Even some of his declared supporters are privately unhappy at what they see as a coup by the European Parliament, which has awarded itself the right to nominate the Commission President without any legal basis in the treaties, and without any support from the electorates.

Nor, I suspect, does Juncker particularly want the job. When he became the EPP’s “leading candidate”, everyone expected the Socialists to win the largest number of MEPs, which would have put Martin Schulz in line for the Commission post. Juncker’s plan was to use the campaign to set himself up for the job he really wanted, succeeding Herman Van Rompuy as President of the European Council. As most Luxembourgers will tell you, it’s a position that would suit him better. He fell from office in the Grand Duchy precisely because he is not good at managing bureaucracies. Rompuy’s post offers equivalent perks but with rather less administrative work.

MEPs, however, are still pretty solidly for the Left-leaning Christian Democrat – again, not because they particularly like him, but because they want to establish the principle that the EU holds federal polls as a single electorate. The trouble with this point of view is that it has almost no support from voters. Only 8.8 per cent of Europeans could name any of the European political parties that are now laying claim to their ballots; and only 10.1 per cent per cent liked the idea of electing the Commission President.

If the anti-Juncksters are able to win over their fellow heads of government, deadlock looms between the European Council and the European Parliament. The easiest way to break that deadlock would be persuade Mr Juncker to withdraw his candidacy by offering him the job he wanted all along, namely the Council Presidency.

Who, then, would become President of the European Commission? In practical terms, it couldn’t be yet another EPP politician: Barroso and Van Rompuy were both EPP nominees as, obviously, is Juncker. Ça suffit. But the Socialist front-runner, Martin Schulz, is even more of a federalist loud-mouth than Juncker, and is in any case detested by Angela Merkel.

My guess is that the search will soon be on for a Blairite, moderate on issues other than European integration, ideally female. Step forward Helle Thorning-Schmidt, prime minister of Denmark, Kinnock daughter-in-law and lifelong Euro-insider. Like Nick Clegg, Helle graduated from the College of Europe in Bruges before going on to become a Euro-apparatchik, then an MEP and then, in very short order, leader of her national party. I don’t see her as any kind of improvement on Juncker – better, as I blogged the other day, a blunt and bombastic federalist than a subtle and sophist one – but David Cameron probably will.

So, if you want my prediction, it’ll be Thorning-Schmidt for the Commission Presidency and Juncker for the Council. And the British Commission nominee? Alright, if you twist my arm, Andrew Mitchell.

For once Im in agreement with Hays re- religion and schools.

Cynic, religion should be kept out of schools theirs plenty of places to practice it without it being part of the schools envoirement.

Tend to think youve spouted a load of clap trap this morning.

Look this current problem is all of Goves doing hes wanting to try and run schools like a chain of supermarkets from his own little office as a dictator, but it cant be done.

The LA needs to be part of the process.

Hays Hays Hays, falling back further, thank Gove and May for that..........

UK - YouGov/Sun poll:

LAB 37%
CON 31%
UKIP 15%
LDEM 7%
GRN 5%

Iain Duncan Smith blames rise of food banks on ‘evangelism’ – pot, kettle, black?

Crocodile tears: Everybody thought Iain Duncan Smith had a change of heart at Easterhouse and intended to help people. Instead, under his direction, the Department for Work and Pensions has caused the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

The Department for Work and Pensions reckons that the rise of food banks has more to do with Christian evangelism than with helping people who can’t afford food because of Conservative government policies.

According to Political Scrapbook, DWP director Neil Couling said: “For the Trussell Trust, food banks started as an evangelical device to get religious groups in touch with their local communities.”

How interesting.

Has Mr Couling forgotten Iain Duncan Smith’s ‘Road to Damascus’ moment on the housing estates of Easterhouse and Gallowgates in Glasgow in 2002?

Struck by the run-down housing, visible signs of drug abuse and general lack of hope, Roman Catholic Duncan Smith set out – with evangelical zeal – to do something about it.

He now sits in a government that kicks people out of their run-down houses and turns the lack of hope into abject despair by cutting off the benefits they need to survive (his government has pushed wages even further below the amount necessary for people to be able to live without government assistance than ever before).

As New Statesman columnist Laurie Penny puts it, Duncan Smith pretends to be “on a quasireligious, reforming crusade”, approaching his work with “particular fervour and self-righteous indignation”.

So, really, who do you think is misusing the plight of the very poor as an “evangelical device” for his own “quasireligious” ends?

Couling’s attitude defies belief. He refers to a report from Oxfam – one of Britain’s most highly-respected anti-poverty charities – together with Church Action on Poverty and the Trussell Trust, as “unverified figures from disparate sources”.

Okay, then. How about the DWP supplying us with all the figures it collects, and we’ll do the working-out?

We can start with the deaths of people receiving incapacity benefits.

42151 .... perhaps you misread what i am writing .....
1) i have no objection to schools that are orientated towards a specific religion, so long as the teaching there is not subversive

2) i thoroughly agree that such schools, being outside the "norm", should not receive state funding

3) given (2), then i see no reason why those schools should not be selective in their intake

4) some of these schools provide a very good all-round education, so such schools should not be singled out for general opprobrium purely on the basis of the religious base they impose

5) if a school or any other institution is deemed to be a charity, then it follows that it has complied with the rigorous rules that apply and it would certainly be totally wrong to withdraw that status purely because you don't like their religious bent

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

Religion should play no part in the education system.

It leaves the system OPEN TO THE ABUSES we have seen over the last few days.

And this is just the tip of the ice berg.

We used to have 'Sunday Schools' where certain religions educated their flock in their beliefs. We could have evening schools now that we have a more diversified population.

It should be the same now.

Religion in every form should be taken out of schools.

I fully endorse Hays here on his comment............. plain common sense.

Haystack - 10 Jun 2014 11:33 - 42149 of 42155

cynic
I have no problem with people following and celebrating their religions. I just don't want to contribute money to it all in any way. I see religion as a force for various bad things. We are heading towards a secular society where religion will have no official part and the sooner the better.