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.

As its poll lead holds, Labour is divided – between those who fear defeat and those who fear victory

The party could inherit a state that, in parts, is on the brink of collapse.



When Ed Miliband declared before his meeting with Barack Obama at the White House, “I am going because I want to be prime minister of Britain in less than ten months,” he spoke with the conviction of a man who fully believes that he will be. The Labour leader’s self-confidence bewilders those in his party who predict that they will lose in May 2015, but it cannot be dismissed as delusional.

For the fourth summer in a row, the opposition has entered the parliamentary recess ahead in the polls and in the marginal seats that will determine the general election result. There is ill-disguised outrage among Conservatives and parts of the media that Miliband has made it this far. Those who regard him as unfit even to be leader of the opposition find it too painful to contemplate him in Downing Street.

Others, absorbing the data, are adjusting to the prospect of a Labour victory. When I told one Conservative MP that Miliband believes the press onslaught against him is motivated by the fear that he will win, not the belief that he will lose, he replied: “That’s exactly right.” The public admission by the Energy Secretary, Ed Davey, that he is planning for negotiations with Labour in a hung parliament offered an insight into the calculations that many Liberal Democrats are making in private. Others are preparing to flee Westminster. There is no mystery as to why Dan Byles, the Conservative MP for North Warwickshire (with a majority of just 54), has become the eighth Tory elected in 2010 to announce that he will not defend his seat.

After 16 months of economic recovery, with GDP surpassing its pre-crisis peak, some Tories expected to have eroded Labour’s advantage by now. But their ratings, like the public’s wages, are flatlining. After briefly drawing level with inflation earlier this year, average earnings are now rising at the slowest rate since comparable records began in 2001. It is partly for this reason that, while trailing on economic management, Labour continues to lead as the party that would most improve living standards. David Axelrod, the Obama strategist hired by Labour, has noted with hope that this is the trend seen during the US president’s defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012.

Yet the moroseness among Labour’s ranks reflects the awareness that the party’s lead has more to do with antipathy for the Conservatives and the Lib Dems than sympathy for the opposition. “The most depressing thing is when people say, ‘We’re just voting for you to stop the Tories,’ ” an MP told me.

Others are finding alternative receptacles for their discontent. Michael Ashcroft’s most recent marginals poll found that Ukip is now in first place in Thurrock (Labour’s number-two target seat) and Thanet South (where Nigel Farage will likely soon announce his candidacy). The Greens are polling at their highest level since 1989. If the election produces a second successive hung parliament for the first time since 1910, it is this fracturing of the anti-government vote that will explain why.

The shared hope of Labour and Tory strategists is that voters will view the election as a binary choice between their two parties. But this summer, both will find themselves on the same side as they unite against Scottish independence. The possibility that the country could vote to secede from the UK on 18 September, after 307 years of union, makes the outcome of the general election appear almost trivial by comparison. But after a significant wobble early this year, Better Together campaigners are increasingly confident of victory, if less certain of achieving the double-digit win they believe is necessary to avoid a “neverendum”.

Most Conservatives are sincere unionists but some privately reflect that another opportunity to tilt the electoral landscape in their favour will have been missed. After the earlier defeat of the proposed boundary changes, Labour will now retain its 41 MPs north of the border (a figure certain to increase next year), while the Tories keep an electorally worthless one.

Provided that Scotland votes against secession, attention will shift to the least predictable election since 1992. Unusually, all three of the main party leaders will be able to tell his autumn conference, with a straight face, to “prepare for government”. But all fear what victory would bring.

For the Tories, it would mean an in/out referendum on the EU that could split the party as no issue has since the repeal of the Corn Laws. For Labour, it could mean inheriting a state that, in parts, is on the brink of collapse: a bankrupt NHS, an imploding housing market (forcing a precipitous rise in interest rates) and a prison system at full capacity, combined with the requirement to accelerate the deepest public-service cuts since the war, or raise taxes by an equivalent amount. “Sometimes I worry more about winning than losing,” one Labour frontbencher tells me.

Others fear an electoral outcome that creates a new crisis of legitimacy for Westminster: the Tories winning the most votes but Labour the most seats; the Lib Dems having fewer voters than Ukip but four times as many MPs; a parliament so hung that neither Labour nor the Tories can form a majority government, even with Lib Dem support. Some MPs are preparing for the possibility of a second general election that perhaps only the Conservatives would have the financial resources to fight adequately.

When not battling each other, all of the parties face a collective struggle to maintain relevance in an age of voter alienation. To most people, Westminster is the place where ignorant armies clash at night. Both Labour and the Tories, the two great tribes that once commanded 97 per cent of the vote between them, will be lucky to scrape home with much more than a third each. In this war of the weak, even the winner could end up feeling like a loser.

For Labour, it could mean inheriting a state that, in parts, is on the brink of collapse: a bankrupt NHS, an imploding housing market (forcing a precipitous rise in interest rates) and a prison system at full capacity, combined with the requirement to accelerate the deepest public-service cuts since the war, or raise taxes by an equivalent amount. “Sometimes I worry more about winning than losing,” one Labour frontbencher tells me.

“If UKIP wins no seats of its own in 2015, it could still play a role in shaping the next government” with Labour the likely beneficiary.

Whither the UKIP vote? The 2014 local elections and implications for 2015

http://commonslibraryblog.com/2014/07/25/whither-the-ukip-vote-the-2014-local-elections-and-implications-for-2015/

There are beneficiaries of increased interest rates, this group have been squeezed for 5 or 6 years, and with income on the up the resulting feel good factor could further boost the ecomomy.
2517

she is a liar and evil will not be voting for my life long party of liars they have destroyed the conservative party . a party of liars and crooks evil bastards these days not honest at all . their are better people in prison

have spoken to two lads who went to school with the bitch

Who Miliband ?

Fester.

Miliband looks and acts like a poofy bitch to me ,mind you so does Dave , just a load of power hungry annoying people really .

George believe me far more younger familys are going to feel the pain of an interest rate rise (or more) than the pensioners and high net worth individuals who will benefit.

FACT is the biggest users of FOOD BANKS are employed middle class people.........80% in total, they are on the very brink of going under. Admitedly its their own fault for wanting everything new and modern, but its still a fact.

Jimmy ........cameron looks a right little mothers boy below. I watched it on the news and it made me feel sick.......

Ohhhhhhhhhhh sit down, shut that door everhard.....

Betfair says 1/7 that Scotland will say 'No' to independence.

Is it a good bet?

''Admitedly its their own fault for wanting everything new and modern'' gf you forgot to add 'rightaway'-------and there lies the crux of the matter gf.
2517

Lol GF .

Mind you ?

I was thinking of ringing my manager at Coutts and asking for a menu.

Remember when 'Scripophilist' (Peter Webb) used to run our lottery syndicate?

I found the following article. It's bit out of date, but interesting nevertheless:

From: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/12/06/channel_man_turns_over_quarter_billion_on_betfair/
Robert Blincoe 6th December 2010 12:23

How I went from punting PCs to betting a quarter billion on Betfair
But failed to convince Warren Buffett...

Interview

Former channel man Peter Webb has become one of Betfair's leading customers and bets a quarter of a billion pounds annually on horseracing alone. He also sloshes a good amount on the X Factor market.

The ex Compaq and Medion man finally left the UK's computer distribution channel in 2003 to make a full time go of trading on the betting exchange. He says: “I doubt there's many people earning more than me on Betfair – it's substantial by any terms.”

Webb trades the exchange the way a City trader plays the financial markets. He puts around £20,000 into individual horse races (where even a snowy weekday race at Wolverhampton can attract more than £500,000 on the exchange). As there can be four race meetings in a day and seven races at each of them, it is easy to see how his turnover gets so high.

Here' how it works. Webb will back Dobbin to win (say at 5.0, which is the same as 4 to 1). If, then, the odds to back Dobbin not to win (this is called laying) fall below the back price (say 4.0, or 3 to 1) and Webb makes this bet then he has made a profit no matter what happens in the race.

The exchange keeps track of his net position so he's free to re-bet his capital immediately. If Dobbin's lay price goes up, he's stuffed. Webb makes lots of trade in this manner, on several horses, before a race starts. The odds movements don't tend to be as extreme as this example.

When there's racing in the UK, Australia and the US he'll be up at 2am working the Australian market. The UK business is usually between 2pm and 5pm, and then the US comes online at 9pm until 1pm.

Webb starts trading 10 minutes before a race starts and closes all his bets 10 seconds before the off. “Most of the money arrives five minutes before it starts,” he says. When the race starts, he no longer has any financial interest in its result, he's off to trading the next race.

“When I looked at Betfair all I could see was opportunity,” he says. “I dabbled around on several markets, and with several strategies. Horse racing stood out because of the amount of money that went through it, so I started to work really hard at understanding it.”

Webb's approach has nothing to do with knowing form or horse bloodlines. “My lack of knowledge has really helped. I'm looking at the price of a horse and estimate where the price will go. My role in the market is as an arbiter of value and whatever I do I do before the race starts – I don't believe I'm better at predicting the form than anyone else.”

This sort of thinking might be familiar to anyone who's made money not from taking a view on the absolute merits of a given technology or piece or kit - but rather on how prices are likely to move over time.

Webb will also bet major football matches, where he can put £50,000 to £70,000 through the market, and where the price changes aren't as rapid. There are also 100 dog races a day which he can trade. “Football, horse-racing and tennis are the big three markets. I've also been providing a lot of the liquidity for X Factor - people would be horrified about how much of that market was me.

These opportunities pop out of the woodwork at all times. I think the exchange is beautiful – I look at it and it speaks to me,” he says.

Webb opened an account with Betfair seven days after it first went live in 2000. He heard about it while knocking around the First Tuesday meetings of the original and glorious dotcom boom.

He deposited £1,000 and his first-ever bet (position) was placed with £5. He says he's never had to put more money in, and currently has £250,000 in his account. He doesn't need more because unlike the financial markets, Betfair settles trades immediately. A relatively small sum placed in a market can be leveraged very quickly, by closing its position then rebetting it.

Webb's last proper job was launching the Medion PC brand into the UK and managing accounts selling it such as DSG and Aldi. He builds his own PCs (and uses six monitors to trade), and upgrades them every six months. However, he says Medion is good value and he'd buy them now. “Sometimes you work for companies and think 'I wouldn't touch that',” he recalls.

He started in the distribution business straight from school working for Portsmouth distributor Softly Softly. He worked at Compaq, account managing its retail division, and had an office round the corner from legendary UK boss Joe 'Meat Packer' McNally. “I have worked with most if not all the top manufacturers of consumer technology products and their respective channel partners,” he says. “Dixons, Tesco, Wallmart, Aldi, Toys R Us, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Microsoft.” He's also worked with Tech Data and Netcom Internet.

Webb won't say how much profit he makes on his Betfair trading, but stresses that each trade is only netting tenths of a per cent profit, and the line between making money and losing it is very fine. But he himself suggests £40,000 a month wouldn't be unreasonable for some top Betfair traders. Another reason to be cagey around money is that gambling profits aren't taxable in the UK – but profits from trading activity can be.

Webb is also behind a Betfair trading product called BetAngel and says he doesn't want anyone thinking that using this is route to getting rich quick. “You have to work at it,” he says.

BetAngel acts as a Bloomberg-type information screen for the betting exchange with a touch of the eBay sniping technology, says Webb. “It's a trading tool and allows you to place orders quickly. We borrowed ideas and technology from financial markets, and it allows 'fill kill', stop losses, and charting.”

Webb funds its development through subscriptions. He also runs courses in Betfair trading, which engenders the classic get-rich-quick suspicion of "Why tell anyone else, if you're making so much money?", he says.

Webb says he just enjoys meeting people and talking about his business. “I'm a social person and trading is a lonely business. When I first started doing courses, they came off the back of the software. I didn't think trading would last very long – I thought I had three or four years in it – so software and training was a bit of an insurance policy.”

Gambling and the gaming business is afforded quite a low status by many people (Reg readers among them), and at the heart of Webb talking up his business is that he wants his performance to be recognised.

“Having worked so hard and so long on this, I just want some legitimacy added to it,” he says. “Spread betting is considered normal and what we do here is exactly the same. Rather than the price of oil to go from here to there, we're looking on the price of Yojimbo [a horse racing on the day of the interview] to go from here to there."

In 2006, Webb did some financial shows with Betfair. The betting exchange's name wasn't proving a draw and Webb says he only got any attention when he started putting up financial-style market charts and explaining how he would trade the position. “The next slide would say the 14.10pm at Wolverhampton,” he says.

“I consistently get people saying what I do is not possible. I've been doing it for 10 years and still get that.”

Webb is also a financial investor and a big fan and shareholder of billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway business (a single share of which is currently priced at $120,000). The backbone of Buffett's business is insurance. At one shareholder get-together, Webb asked Buffett how he reconciled his anti-gambling views with his risk-related business.

“When I look at the insurance industry I see an industry based on probabilities and people not knowing those true probabilities. Money is being made for the house in the same way I see it being made in the gambling industry,” said Webb.

“Gambling involves creating risk that doesn't need to be created,” replied Buffett. “If you want to go out and gamble on a where little ball is going to fall on a wheel that's revolving, that's a created risk. You can watch a football game without betting on it, but you can't live in a house on the Florida coast without having a risk that your entire investment can disappear. But I hope that you're right and that the house wins in both cases.”

Webb does have his battles with the Betfair house and thinks he should be treated better by them than he is. He doesn't have an account manager, which he thinks strange, and the business has introduced premium charges for customers placing or editing more than 1,000 bets an hour, or making large numbers of data requests within the same second. Which is exactly what he does.

“Betfair's argument is that people like me, who make money consistently, should help fund acquisition of new customers,” says Webb. “But I'll put through millions a week, all at my own risk.”

The newly floated business has changed a lot since he first joined. “It's much more like a traditional bookmakers now. The Utopian dream has faded,” he says wistfully. A bit like the channel perhaps?®

Google pays just £20m on £3.3bn UK revenue: Fresh outrage over internet giant's tiny bill to the Government

California-based search provider routes UK sales through low-tax Ireland

The tax rate there is just 12.5 per cent, compared with 21 per cent in Britain

Google then slashes the bill even more by siphoning money to Bermuda


By Rob Davies

Published: 23:22, 24 July 2014 | Updated: 02:56, 25 July 2014


Google is facing fresh outrage over its meagre contribution to the UK taxman, after revealing it paid just £20million in corporation tax last year.

The California-based internet giant has faced stinging criticism for using a complex corporate structure that allows it to route UK sales through Ireland to slash its tax bill.

And the scheme appears to have again paid off.


Last night it revealed in accounts filed to Companies House that it paid £20.4million in taxes last year – despite admitting earlier this year that it pulls in £3.3billion of revenues in Britain, largely from advertising.

But in accounts filed last night Google UK said it made a profit of £70.8million before tax on sales of £642million


These numbers are artificially low because Google officially registers much of its British sales in Ireland, where the headline rate of corporation tax is 12.5 per cent compared with 21 per cent in the UK.

And the internet behemoth is then able to slash its bill even further by siphoning cash out of Ireland by paying royalties to another firm based in the tax haven of Bermuda.


More highway robbery here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2704927/Google-pays-just-20m-3-3bn-UK-revenue-Fresh-outrage-internet-giant-s-tiny-bill-Government.html

Try making the same charges against Ford, General Motors, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nissan, Nestle, BMW, Audi, Carlsberg and every foreign company that does business in UK. Those companies have been doing it for longer than any of us have been alive.