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.

OK, they're all dopes, and they dish out anti aircraft missiles to all and sundry, complete with training and all the back up needed for proper missiles to work.


But what do they gain?

They destabilise Ukraine by shooting down their military aircraft. The passenger plane was probably a mistake.

Yep thats what I said earlier.

Probably some nutters who got hold of the missiles and knew how to fire them but not how to detect what they were fireing at and thought it was a military plane.

The thing I find disturbing about the Malaysian plane being shot down is why were civilian planes even flying over that region in the first place? If it's already known that they shoot military planes down in the area, then who on earth allowed the plane to take that route???

gold who gets this £300 bonus because I only get the £10

GOVE WAS MOVED BECAUSE THE GOVERNMENT WANT TO DOWN PLAY THE BIRMINGHAM SCHOOL ROW AND APPESE THE MUSLIMS .

TANKER if you dont get a winter fuel allowance...... then your not a pensioner ie, 65.

And if you receive the xmas bonus of £10 you must be getting some qualifying benefit.??????????????

Gold price surge just after plane crash

The plane's black boxes are now in Moscow.

WHAT!!!!!!!!!! no chance of getting the truth now then.

There is a story that the rocket launcher has been taken across the border into Russia and is being destroyed.

I think that may add to Putin's problems, as if they have been taken from the Ukraine without Ukraine's authority it would be seen as another breach of International law.

Now, who could possibly find fault with this proposal?




MPs to get veto over unpopular human rights laws if Tories win election

David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is preparing to announce plans to replace the controversial Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights.



By Christopher Hope, Senior Political Correspondent

10:00PM BST 17 Jul 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10974247/MPs-to-get-veto-over-unpopular-human-rights-laws-if-Tories-win-election.html



MPs could be given a veto over unpopular decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights, under plans being drawn up by the Conservatives.


David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is preparing to announce plans to replace the controversial Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights.


It would give MPs and peers the ability to ensure that unpopular rulings of the European Court in Strasbourg do not apply to the UK.


The change would be enacted in two stages if the Conservatives win May’s general election outright.


Within months of the party forming a Government legislation would be brought forward to replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights.


The Daily Telegraph disclosed in January that the principles of the European Convention will be written into the new Bill of Rights.

A passage in the 1998 Human Rights Act which requires minsters to have regard to the European Court will be dropped.

The Supreme Court will be the final arbiter of complex human rights cases, not the European Court in Strasbourg.

However crucially this would also mean that Parliament – which is the supreme body in the UK – would also get a say over which rulings to accept.

The second stage of its implementation would see the Government negotiate with the Council of Europe and the European Court about how the new relationship will work.

MPs are already dragging their heels over implementing a decision by the European Court to give the vote to prisoners.

The extent of the plans is understood to be the reason some left-leaning Tory ministers were reshuffled by Mr Cameron this week.

Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, is understood to believe that giving the power to Parliament was “revolutionary”.

MPs believe that Mr Grieve was sacked by Mr Cameron this week because of concern in Number 10 that he would have blocked the human rights reforms.

Sources close to Mr Grieve made clear that he had not been consulted on the plans nor had he been privy to the proposals, which are likely to be published in the Autumn.

Ken Clarke, the former Justice secretary, also opposed any plans to water down Britain’s links to the European Court of Human Rights. A Number 10 source said no decisions had been taken on the human rights reforms.

Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, condemned the plans.

He told LBC radio that it would mean Britain was lining up “with Vladimir Putin and other tyrants around the world.” He added that – in the wake of the reshuffle – “basically what’s happened is I think the headbangers have now won”.

If Cameron gets in, the UK will be a banana republic.

We participate in International Human rights negotiations at the end of WW2, Cameron and his bunch of school boys are infantile.

The relief in the more Cameron and cohorts twist and turn up to the next election the less likely that they will get into power.

More likely to be decimated.

With Russia behaving like a mongrel and the M.E. erupting and Sunni uniting the more necessary it is to have a united Europe.

An Excelent Lunch Time read.......

Think the political parties are not partisan enough for you? Watch the food banks debate and think again

July 17, 2014 Comments: 5

You know how we all know the media lies and excludes anything important, and that it’s under authoritarian Tory control, right? That Iain Duncan Smith “monitors” the BBC for “left wing bias”, that the Guardian’s occasional forays into truth are stifled by jackbooted officials marching in and smashing hard drives. So do you really imagine that such a government spokes-media will do any justice to reporting about the positive intentions and actions of its opposition? Not one bit.

Yet I see people commenting with bitter politico-gossip gusto with the cherry-picked, distorted media spun sound-bites, as if the media is somehow suddenly credible when it talks about the opposition, and when we actually read what was said and proposed at the un-spun source, it bears no resemblance at all to the media tales of the unexpected.

If we trouble ourselves to investigate these things, the rubbish being published and broadcast via the mainstream media doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. We accept that the “news” about the government is positive spin, lies, distortions and propaganda, it’s a curious thing that some people also think that the media may suddenly yield tangible evidence of some deep and absolute truth about the Labour Party.

And when the media resort to personal smears – like they did last year about Ralph Miliband – you just KNOW they are very worried about being defeated by the Labour Party.

This is a crucial time when we need to make sure we know the difference between truth and propaganda, fact from fiction. It’s up to you to discern – so please do. We are each responsible for what happens next. It cannot be 5 more years of the same brutal neo-feudalist tyrants.

The right are engaged in an all out propaganda war, and we need to be prepared for it.

Firstly the Tories know that Ed Miliband has edited their script, abandoning the free-market fundamentalist consensus established by Thatcherism in favour of social democracy.

Secondly, the right-wing media barons who set the terms of debate – they establish the agenda, and tell you not what to think, exactly, but what to think about: they establish what is deemed politically palatable in Britain – have never forgiven Ed Miliband for his endorsement of Leveson, which they believe is an unacceptable threat to their established power.

Thirdly, they know and fear Labour under Ed Miliband may very well actually win the 2015 election.

So there are a LOT of false claims about labour around at the moment.

This is some clarification about the welfare cap. There has certainly been a lot of confusion over this particular issue. There’s a difference between a budget cap – as is the case here, and benefit cap – which isnt the same thing and not what this was about. Rachel Reeves knew that Iain Duncan Smith would overspend and not stay within the budget cap, because of his failures like Universal Credit. This is entirely about HOW THAT BUDGET IS SPENT and Reeves does not want private contractors profiting on failures that penalise the poor. She says:

“A Labour government would take a completely different approach, focusing on the things that drive increased social security spending – such as low pay, long-term unemployment and the inadequate supply of housing.

Labour would tackle low pay by strengthening the minimum wage and encouraging more employers to pay a living wage. We would get 200,000 homes a year built by 2020 to help bring down the cost of rents and tackle the housing crisis. And we would tackle the £330 million cost of long-term youth unemployment with a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee. Ministers are having to spend more because of the cost of their failing policies, waste and the cost-of-living crisis which has left working people an average of £1,600 a year worse off.

The levels of overspending and waste under this government are staggering. £1 billion has been spent on the government’s flagship Work Programme, but people who use the scheme are more likely to return to the Jobcentre than gain a job. An astonishing £2.4 billion of taxpayers money has been overpaid in benefits by the government due to ‘official error’ since 2010.

Long-term youth unemployment has doubled since 2010, costing £330 million a year. The housing benefit bill has risen since 2010, and figures in the Budget pointed to a further increase of £100 million in 2014-15, and £300 million in 2015-16. Universal Credit is now costing a staggering £161,000 per claimant according to figures released last week.

So, despite tough talking from ministers, the Budget well and truly confirmed their failure to control welfare costs.

A Labour government would take a completely different approach, focusing on the things that drive increased social security spending – such as low pay, long-term unemployment and the inadequate supply of housing”.

Another area of confusion is the austerity myth. To clarify, Milband is and always has been AGAINST austerity. He has NEVER supported it.

The “allthesame” lie came straight from Lynton Crosby at Tory HQ. It’s purpose is to divide the left. The BBC’s Tory correspondent Nick Robinson admitted live on air, that Cameron’s best chance of winning the next election is if people believe politicians are “all the same”. That is very clearly not the case. One major ploy has been to use propaganda based on an exclusively class-based identity politics, aimed at the “working class”. This has involved carefully seeded discontent to factionalise, and to undermine support of the Labour Party.

Such propaganda purposefully excludes other social groups and also sets them against each other, such as the working class unemployed attacking migrants – it’s really is divisive, anti-democratic, and quite deliberately flies in the face of Labour’s equality and diversity principles.

That’s the problem with identity politics: it tends to enhance a further sense of social segregation and fragmentation and it isn’t remotely inclusive. Of course it also enhances the myth of “out of touch”/ “allthesame” politicians very well. (See also “when the oppressed are oppressive too“.)

It’s a clever strategy, because it attacks Labour’s fundamental equality and inclusion principles – the very reason why the Labour movement happened in the first place – and it places restriction on who ought to be “included”.

Think of that divisive strategy 1) in terms of equality. 2) in terms of appealing to the electorate 3) in terms of policy. Note how it imposes limits and is very reductive.

The Tories set this strategy up in the media, and UKIP have extended it further, the minority rival parties, including the Anarchists, the far left, N (“narxists”), NOTA, the Green Party, the SNP, TUSC and groups like Left Unity have also utilised the same rhetoric tools. Yet we KNOW right wing parties have no interest in the working class. Nor is it in the working class’ interest to divide up their vote amongst parties unlikely to gain mainstream electorate approval and votes.

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The Labour campaign has focused on inequality, Miliband knows that Britain is not divided by race and culture, it’s divided by massive wealth inequalities fuelled by the Tory-led Coalition’s “austerity” policies. Blaming the unemployed, the sick and disabled and immigrants for the failings of the government has fuelled misperceptions that drive support for the far right. Miliband’s campaign is positive campaigning, promoting policies that benefit the majority of citizensm with some, such as the bedroom tax repeal, being aimed at the most vulnerable minority. Quite properly so.

Lynton Crosby, who has declared that his role is to destroy the Labour Party, rather than promote the Conservatives, based on any notion of merit, is all about such a targeted “divide and rule” strategy. This is a right-wing tactic of cultivating and manipulating apostasy amongst support for the opposition.

Such negative campaigning is a very evident ploy in the media, too, with articles about Labour screaming headlines that don’t match content, and the Sun and Telegraph blatantly lying about Labour’s policy intentions regularly. Propaganda isn’t obvious, and that’s how it works. We really do need to be mindful of this.



This is a propaganda war, and the Tories think that chucking an avalanche of crap at the opposition is enough. It isn’t. Where are their positive, supportive, life-enhancing policies for the citizens of the UK? The Tories have NOTHING but increasing poverty and pain to offer most of us, and no amount of smearing Labour and telling lies will hide that fact. And they will do all they can to make sure Labour don’t get space in the media to tell you about their own positive social democracy program, based on tackling the inequality and poverty that Tories always create.

Cameron needs to learn that politics isn’t soap opera or about just providing handouts of OUR money to the very parasitic wealthy Tory donors: it has real consequences for real people. As a society we cannot tolerate another 5 years of the terrible and real consequences of this government. The only viable alternative is to vote Labour on May 7, 2015.

More lefty lunacy!

blah blah blah blah blah snook blah blah blah.

Fred.


Why do you support a law that bends over backwards to favour the wrongdoer, whilst disregarding the victim's "human rights"?

gf
Yes! The lefties do talk

"blah blah blah blah blah snook blah blah blah."