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.

U.S. Said to Rebuff Iraqi Request to Strike Militants

The New York Times \ By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT

As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.

But Iraq’s appeals for a military response have so far been rebuffed by the White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.

The swift capture of Mosul by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has underscored how the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have converged into one widening regional insurgency with fighters coursing back and forth through the porous border between the two countries. But it has also called attention to the limits the White House has imposed on the use of American power in an increasingly violent and volatile region.

A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, Bernadette Meehan, declined to comment on Mr. Maliki’s requests. “We are not going to get into details of our diplomatic discussions,” she said in a statement. “The current focus of our discussions with the government of Iraq and our policy considerations is to build the capacity of the Iraqis to successfully confront” the Islamic extremists.

The Obama administration has carried out drone strikes against militants in Yemen and Pakistan, where it fears terrorists have been hatching plans to attack the United States. But despite the fact that Sunni militants have been making steady advances and may be carving out new havens from which they could carry out attacks against the West, administration spokesmen have insisted that the United States is not actively considering using warplanes or armed drones to strike them.

Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq’s foreign minister, last year floated the idea that armed American-operated Predator or Reaper drones might be used to respond to the expanding militant network in Iraq. American officials dismissed that suggestion at the time, saying that the request had not come from Mr. Maliki.

By March, however, American experts who visited Baghdad were being told that Iraq’s top leaders were hoping that American air power could be used to strike the militants’ staging and training areas inside Iraq, and help Iraq’s beleaguered forces stop them from crossing into Iraq from Syria.

“Iraqi officials at the highest level said they had requested manned and unmanned U.S. airstrikes this year against ISIS camps in the Jazira desert,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former C.I.A. analyst and National Security Council official, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and who visited Baghdad in early March. ISIS is the acronym for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as the militant group is known.

hey sticks - you should have done as you were told and shorted dow :-)

Big Dave outmanouvered....again




Blow to Cameron as centrist MEPs back Juncker for European commission job

PM's European policy in disarray as coalition plan dents efforts to stop Juncker and German Eurosceptics join Tories' MEP bloc


Ian Traynor in Brussels and Nicholas Watt


theguardian.com, Thursday 12 June 2014 17.17 BST






David Cameron's hopes of striking a deal with the German chancellor to stop Jean-Claude Juncker securing one of Europe's top jobs suffered a significant blow on Thursday when the centre-right and centre-left in the European parliament announced that they wanted a five-year grand coalition behind Juncker as the new head of the EU executive.

In a further setback, the Conservatives were outvoted in Brussels when their parliamentary grouping agreed to include Germany's new Eurosceptic movement, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), against Cameron's objections and in what Angela Merkel may regard as a hostile act.

The decision to make the AfD's seven MEPs bedfellows of the Tories in the Strasbourg parliament suggested that Cameron has lost control of his own creation, the grouping of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) he set up when he took the Tories out of the mainstream centre-right European People's party bloc in 2009.



more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/12/cameron-european-policy-disarray-centrist-meps-back-juncker-commission-job-eurosceptics

Fred.

Whats this about expenses?

MEPs don't decide. The heads of state of each member state decide. Another non story from the lefties' favourite comic.

hmm .. if juncker gets in, that will certainly be a blow to DC .... puzzled that eurosceptics should suddenly want to hold hands with juncker and his cronies

Nigel Farage could face fine over undeclared donations

The Ukip leader failed to declare more than £200,000 worth of donations and faces further questions about his use of European Parliament expenses




"When questions were raised about his expenses earlier this year, Mr Farage previously said he would be happy to have his office accounts audited by an independent accountant “if it would settle the argument”.

Mr Farage, along with every European MEP, receives a monthly allowance of £3,580 to cover his expenses in the UK but he does not have to provide any receipts to account for how that money is spent.

A Ukip spokesman said: “Every year since 2001, Mr Farage has declared in his European Parliament Register of Interests the use of a rent-free office from J Longhurst Ltd. The premises has been used as his MEP office so the European Parliamentary register was the logical place for it to be declared. "

“Mr Farage was surprised to learn that the Electoral Commission thought it should be informed as well as this did not accord with the professional advice he had received at the time.”



Full-ish story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10895939/Nigel-Farage-could-face-fine-over-undeclared-donations.html

He we go again

US President Barack Obama says his government is looking at "all options" to help fight Islamist militants in Iraq, including military action.

Ian Hislop on the panel of QT tonight

DRONES.

Hays you made out you came from the east end.

Remember Cynic.

Don't keep droning on .. lol

IDS on QT tonight.

why would he want to remember me?
even my children wouldn't!

think you may have called the interest rate rise correctly young sticky :-))

Carney tells UK to prepare for rate rises
Mark Carney warned households, companies and financial markets to prepare for an interest rate rise, saying the first increase “could happen sooner than markets currently expect”

Told Ya. Wont rub it in.

An end to cheap mortgages? Osborne gives Bank of England new powers to limit loans based on wages or property values

Chancellor uses Mansion House speech to announce new crackdown
Loans to be limited relative to incomes or property values

12 June 2014 Last updated at 21:48 Share this pageEmailPrint

Bank of England hints at possible rate rise this year



The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has signalled that interest rates may rise this year.

In a keynote speech, Mr Carney said that a rate rise "could happen sooner than markets currently expect".

The consensus among economists was that rates would rise in the first half of next year, or even earlier.

BBC economics editor Robert Peston said that although the comments point to an increase this year, any rise "will be small and gradual".

Mr Carney was speaking in London on Thursday evening, at the annual Mansion House dinner attended by City and business grandees.


Mr Carney may be positioning himself at the vanguard of a hawkish consensus to raise rates early”


He acknowledged there was "already great speculation" about when the Bank would decide to raise interest rates from their record low of 0.5%, adding that the decision was "becoming more balanced".

Mr Carney emphasised that there was "no pre-set course" on when to raise rates. There was more spare capacity in the economy that would need to be used up first, he said.

And he also reiterated that the timing of the first rise was less important than the speed at which subsequent increases were made.

"We expect that eventual increases in Bank rate will be gradual and limited," he said.

Speaking at the Mansion House just before Mr Carney, Chancellor George Osborne confirmed plans to give the Bank new powers to prevent the housing market from overheating.

That is why his speeches are occasionally enlivened with obscure references to ice hockey, moose or, as in Thursday's speech, a rather strained metaphor linking central banking to canoeing.

But it was a much less colourful line in the speech that grabbed the headlines.

The first rate hike "could happen sooner than markets currently expect", he said.

Let me translate from Canadian. Everyone has been betting interest rates won't rise this year. They are wrong.

Until Thursday the consensus was that rates would stay at 0.5% for until at least the beginning of next year and possibly longer.

But the economy is now growing far more strongly than predicted, and that means the Bank is thinking about when to raise rates and calm things down.

These will include capping the size of mortgage loans compared to income or the value of the house.

The new powers would be given to the Bank's Financial Policy Committee by the end of this Parliament, Mr Osborne said.

He said: "We saw from the last crisis the dangerous temptations for politicians to leave the punch bowl where it is and keep the party going on for too long.

"I want to make sure that the Bank of England has all the weapons it needs to guard against risks in the housing market.

"I want to protect those who own homes, protect those who aspire to own a home, and protect the millions who suffer when boom turns to bust."

Too much risk
Mr Osborne also announced reforms to planning laws designed to increase the supply of housing. These should provide permission for up to 200,000 new homes, the government says.

The chancellor said the housing market did not pose an immediate threat to financial stability, but that if left unchecked, it may do so in the future.

He said the risks come from homeowners borrowing too much to pay for their houses. This is a problem not just for the borrowers, but for the banks that lend them the money, he said.

There are concerns that when interest rates rise from their current record lows, many homeowners could struggle with their mortgage repayments.

Earlier on Thursday, Business Secretary Vince Cable said he was "appalled" that some banks had been lending five times a mortgage applicant's income, suggesting a "stable level" was up to 3.5 times.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics found prices rising at an annual rate of 17% in London, compared with 8% in the UK as a whole. This has led to fears that an unsustainable bubble is developing in the housing market.

However, last week the Nationwide Building Society said it had seen signs that house price rises were starting to cool, while the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said momentum in the housing market was beginning to slow.

HAYS your sweating.

Carney said using targeted macroprudential tools to cool housing may mean policy makers can avoid trying to steer the market with interest rates. He said there is scope for more spare capacity to be used up before U.K. policy is tightened.

“Monetary policy is the last line of defense against financial instability,” he said. “Raising interest rates today would be the wrong response.”

Carney addressed recent benchmark-rigging scandals, saying measures are needed to ensure “fairness” in markets, and welcomed Osborne’s planned review of conduct.