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.

OUT OF TOUCH TORIES..........they know they have to do well in the NORTH if they are to get an overal majority at the GE. At the moment NO CHANCE. Anyone dissolusionised up here with Camoron from the tories are voting for UKIP.

Its as TANKER says, Northerners dont trust Camoron and the Bullingdon Boys.

Northerners? They are foreigners aren't they?

Say goodnight Dick.

Goodnight Dick head

LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL austerity!!!!!!!!!!!!what austerity?????????

Éoin Clarke ‏@DrEoinCl Jul 23
At 9.30am ONS confirmed

George Osborne has grown deficit by £2,500,000,000 this year
Has grown National Debt by £500,000,000,000 since 2010

Éoin Clarke ‏@DrEoinCl 10h
In May 2010

Economy growth was 25% faster
Wages grew 9 times faster
National Debt was £500bn less
There were 1m fewer Zero Hour Contracts

Éoin Clarke ‏@DrEoinCl Jul 24
Tories magicked 1/2 million jobs by pretending Workfare = Work & FE Teachers = Private Sector

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_278358.pdf …
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2012-10-23e.124129.h …

Éoin Clarke ‏@DrEoinCl 8h
GDP per head (that's you and I) has *not* recovered to its 2008 level, nor is it likely to for many years.

Éoin Clarke ‏@DrEoinCl 6h


Since May 2010

Nat Debt ↑ £500bn
Wage Growth ↓ 800%
Zero Hours ↑ 1m
Homelessness ↑ 34%
House Building ↓ 90yr lows
GDP Growth ↓ 20% slower

The TORIES LIES blasted wide open.

44326 = 2008-2013 ...... you probably haven't realised that we are now over half way through 2014

You can only publish what is to hand.

The Tories dont have any up to date statistics.

If they had they would have published them if they were to thier advantage.

Anyway you old git where have you been for the lasr 2 days ...playing golf?

no on both counts sticky .... you chose to cherry pick what suited your "cause"

can't remember what i did on thursday, but certainly not golf as that was wednesday afternoon ..... today was the gym followed by having to go up to london

overall, i generally flit straight through this thread as i get oh so bored with the incessant polemics and soapboxing

Thats strange as we get more hits from you over a two week period than anybody else.!!!!!!!

Perhaphs its you, you know getting it wrong with the Tax Tribunal having to defend yourself all the time.

Never mind keep telling the porkies, you know you love to be verbaly thrashed.

Poor doors: the segregation of London's inner-city flat dwellers

Poorer residents in capital's developments forced to use different entrances and facilities


Hilary Osborne


theguardian.com, Friday 25 July 2014 19.46 BST



Left, the luxury lobby of One Commercial Street, marketed to wealthy City workers. Right, the side-alley entrance reserved for affordable housing tenants. Photographs: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jul/25/poor-doors-segregation-london-flats


Multimillion pound housing developments in London are segregating less well-off tenants from wealthy homebuyers by forcing them to use separate entrances.

A Guardian investigation has discovered a growing trend in the capital's upmarket apartment blocks – which are required to include affordable homes in order to win planning permission – for the poorer residents to be forced to use alternative access, a phenomenon being dubbed "poor doors". Even bicycle storage spaces, rubbish disposal facilities and postal deliveries are being separated.

The Green party accused developers of showing "contempt for ordinary people" by enforcing such two-tier policies.


This week New York's mayor, Bill De Blasio, said he planned to take action to prevent new developments being built with separate entrances and facilities for low-income residents. His pledge followed a furore over a luxury block on the city's swanky Upper West Side which will have what US newspapers have dubbed a "poor door" for the social housing units on the site. But while the approval for segregated entrances in just one building in New York generated headlines, they are fast becoming standard practice in London.

"When Ken Livingstone left office he was keen that all developments should have their social housing 'pepperpotted' – mixed in with all the other more upmarket accommodation," said Ed Mead, a director at estate agent Douglas & Gordon which sells upmarket properties in central London. "This didn't go down well with developers with the result that most developments now have a separate entrance and a different look."

Tracey Kellett, a buying agent who trawls the capital looking for homes for wealthy clients, said a number of developments have separate entrances "so the two social strata don't have to meet". In one: "The affordable [housing] has vile coloured plastic panels on the outside rather than blingy glass."

At one building bordering the City financial district, the Guardian discovered wealthy owners accessed their homes via a hotel-style lobby area, while social housing tenants enter through a side door in an adjacent alley alongside trade entrances.

In marketing information for another development currently under construction, would-be residents have been promised that the affordable homes will have a separate entrance, no access to car or cycle parking and that post and bins will also be divided.

As the London housing market has boomed the expectations of some of the capital's wealthiest homebuyers have grown and many properties now have communal areas akin to those in some of the world's best hotels.

Service charges to maintain these are high, and a separate entrance means housing associations and their tenants do not face these extra costs. However, as in New York, there are concerns that it is leading to increasingly divided communities.

Green party London assembly member Darren Johnson said: "This trend shows contempt for ordinary people, and is about developers selling luxury flats to rich investors who don't want to mix with local people."

He added: "The mayor and councils have been turning a blind eye to this for too long, they should simply refuse applications that have separate facilities or that refuse any affordable housing on this basis."

A spokesman for de Blasio's office in New York said this week : "We fundamentally disagree with (separate doors), and we are in the process of changing it to reflect our values and priorities. We want to make sure future affordable housing projects treat all families equitably."


Developers said separate doors let housing associations keep costs down as they avoided premium service charges paid by private residents.

Peter Allen, sales and marketing director for Londonewcastle which is behind the Queens Park Place development in north London said housing associations were sometimes unable to pay for all of the facilities covered by service charges. "The simplest way from a design perspective is to have things separate."

Side-entrance shame

The brochure for the upmarket apartments of One Commercial Street, on the edge of the City, boasts of a "bespoke entrance lobby ... With the ambience of a stylish hotel reception area, it creates a stylish yet secure transition space between your home and the City streets".

In common with many of London's new concrete and glass residential blocks there's a concierge, on hand 24/7 to service the every need of residents paying a minimum of £500,000 – which only buys a studio flat – to live in this booming part of the city.

But the lobby is out of bounds to some of those who live in the building. What the brochure doesn't mention is a second door, with a considerably less glamorous lobby, tucked away in an alley to the side of the building, alongside the trade entrance for Pret a Manger. This is the entrance for One Commercial Street's affordable housing tenants.

In a bid to ease the housing crisis, developers are obliged to provide a set proportion of affordable homes when they draw up a new project, but they are often able to negotiate this figure down with local planners. Some provide the cheaper homes in separate blocks, but in a single structure development the affordable homes are often on separate floors – with separate entrances, lifts, car parks and even rubbish bins, so that upmarket apartment buyers have no contact with those occupying the social housing in their buildings.

In some cases, developers have even used the fact they need to provide separate doors and lifts to argue against putting affordable homes on the same site as their premium apartments. Planning documents for the 56 Curzon Street development in Soho show that the developers told the local council "that on-site provision of affordable housing would result in significant design inefficiencies due to the need for separate entrances and building cores".

Some are coy about the subject. Native Land, which is currently building Cheyne Terrace just off Kings Road in Chelsea, complete with a swimming pool and gym, refused to comment when asked if its 13 affordable housing units would be accessed via a separate door. However, the website of John Robertson Architects, which has designed the building, makes it clear this is the case.

In north-west London the developers behind Queen's Park Place are more upfront about how its 28 affordable and 116 market-rate homes will co-exist – its marketing website says the external appearance will be uniform across all properties – or "tenure blind". But inside the building the two types of resident will be treated very differently: "Affordable tenants will not have use of the main private residential entrance, private courtyard gardens or basement car and cycle parking. Services including postal delivery and refuse storage are also divided."

This does not just happen where there are large numbers of affordable homes on a site. In Chiswick, The Corner Haus development which is to be completed this summer, has just two affordable units, but these are also expected to have a separate entrance.

Of course, the separate doors to these developments mean that the housing associations who run the affordable properties and their tenants do not face the service charges attached with the luxurious surroundings that wealthy buyers have now come to expect and accept. However, the stark difference between the entrances, and, in some cases their positioning, rankles with some of those who live there.

Through the main door of One Commercial Street the lights shine brightly in the hotel-style lobby. There is luxury marble tiling and plush sofas, and a sign on the door alerts residents to the fact that the concierge is available. Round the back, the entrance to the affordable homes is a cream corridor, decorated only with grey mail boxes and a poster warning tenants that they are on CCTV and will be prosecuted if they cause any damage.

Brooke Terrelonga lives here with her nine-month-old son – they moved into a social rented flat four months ago and she was surprised to find that she wasn't allowed to use the front entrance. Her mother, who doesn't want to be named, said she felt unhappy about her daughter returning home at night to the poorly-lit alleyway. She motioned towards two lights on the wall, either side of the door, which were the only lightling in sight. She said: "It's like the cream is at the front and they've sent the rubbish to the back."

Another tenant, Judy Brown, had also expected to be able to get to her flat through the main entrance. "I call it the posh door. I feel a little bit insulted. It's segregation." Brown said that the lifts kept breaking down and she often had to take the stairs to her ninth-floor flat. "When both the lifts weren't working they did say that if you were pregnant, had a health problem or a baby in a buggy you could use the main entrance," she said. Otherwise, the tenants said, they were "locked out" of the main lobby.

James Moody, managing director of Redrow London, which built One Commercial Street said in a statement that his firm was committed to providing homes "at all financial levels" and that 34% of the total accommodation in the building was affordable.

"As One Commercial Street is located on the edge of the City, we have built a product that appeals to this market of young professionals and families who want to live close to their place of work and enjoy the benefits of a full concierge service and hotel style lobby, which they pay a premium for through their service charge.

"Affordable accommodation is managed separately by Network Housing who have full control of the services and facilities provided to its tenants and have a set cap for service charges.

"In addition, we have taken every step necessary to ensure that our development meets the needs of all of its residents and we go through a lengthy consultation process with housing associations to establish both a design that meets their requirements whilst making it as affordable as possible for their residents."

Whos nabbed all the bread???????????????????????????????????????????

Welfare News Service @WNSNews ·

‘Big Society’ in tatters as charity watchdog launches investigation into claims of Government funding misuse http://ino.to/1kfM2rl

Exclusive: Cameron’s Big Society in tatters as charity watchdog launches investigation into claims of Government funding misuse26/july/2014

The organisation was given at least £2.5 million of National Lottery funding and public-sector grants despite having no record of charitable activity
OLIVER WRIGHT Author Biography POLITICAL EDITOR Saturday 26 July 2014

David Cameron’s flagship Big Society Network is being investigated by the Charity Commission over allegations that it misused government funding and made inappropriate payments to its directors – including a Tory donor.


clinlife.co.uk/High_Cholesterol
The organisation, which was launched by the Prime Minister in 2010, was given at least £2.5 million of National Lottery funding and public-sector grants despite having no record of charitable activity.

The Independent has learnt that it has now been wound up, having used much of the money on projects that came nowhere near delivering on their promised objectives.

Two senior figures on government grant awarding bodies have also made allegations that they were pressured into handing over money to the Big Society Network despite severe reservations about the viability of the projects they were being asked to support.

Liam Black, a former trustee of Nesta, which was then a public body sponsored by the Department for Business, said Nesta had been “forced” to give grants that totalled £480,000 to the Big Society Network in 2010 without a competitive pitch. He described it as a “scandalous waste of money”.

Another senior figure involved in the decision to award £299,800 from the Cabinet Office to the organisation said the funding request had initially been turned down.

“When we did the analysis we turned them down because the bid did not stack up,” they said. “But we were told to go back and change the criteria to make it work.”

Tonight Labour said it was writing to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, asking him to investigate whether political pressure had been applied to give an organisation with close ties to ministers “special treatment”.

The Independent understands that the Charity Commission is also looking into allegations that some of the “restricted funds” given by the Cabinet Office for a childhood obesity project were transferred to pay down the deficit of a linked company.

It is also investigating payments made by the charity “for consultancy services” to two directors of the charity and its chair, Martyn Rose.

Mr Rose, who helped set up the Big Society Network, also contributed more than £54,000 to the 2010 Conservative election campaign.

Tonight he said he had no memory of the payment but added that it was possible “one of my companies did work on its behalf”.

He said he had personally put £200,000 into the Big Society Network which he had not got back. “With hindsight, of course, if we had all known that the projects were not going to work we would have been idiots to do them,” he said.

“[The truth] is that in the early stages of social investment some will work and some won’t.”

Giles Gibbons, a trustee of the charity and a former business partner of Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s “blue skies thinker”, added that he did not believe any of the payments made by the charity had been in any way inappropriate.

A marked difference was found between what Big Society Network projects claimed they would achieve and what they did (Getty Images) A marked difference was found between what Big Society Network projects claimed they would achieve and what they did (Getty Images)
An examination of the Big Society Network projects, funded by the Government and the lottery, reveal a marked discrepancy between what they claimed they would achieve and what they did.

They included:

A project called “Your Square Mile” whose purpose was to encourage and enable local people to improve their community. It was awarded £830,000 by the Big Lottery Fund – despite officials assessing the application as “weak” in three out of the six criteria. In February 2012 the project had attracted just 64 signed-up groups compared with the one million predicted in the funding application.
A project called Get In – to tackle childhood obesity through sport. In April 2012 it was awarded a grant of £299,800 from the Cabinet Office despite officials concluding it was unlikely to meet its stated objectives. They were told to change their selection criteria and approve the grant. The project was never even launched.
Britain’s Personal Best, which aimed to build on the Olympic Games by encouraging people to excel in athletic, educational or creative challenges. Given £997,960 in April 2013 by the Big Lottery Fund, it claimed it would sign up 120,000 people to take on challenges in their community – but was wound up within months after failing to meet all the milestones the Big Lottery Fund had set.
A long-running investigation by Civil Society News into Big Society Network funding has also discovered that the organisation was given statutory grants totalling £480,000 in 2010 by Nesta – which was then an arms-length body of the Department of Business – without a competitive pitch being held.

Steve Hilton was instrumental in getting Government backing for the Big Society Steve Hilton was instrumental in getting Government backing for the Big Society (PA)
About £150,000 was to part-finance the core costs of running the organisation in its early stages and £330,000 was to support four projects – called Nexters, Spring, Your Local Budget and It’s Our Community.

Nesta is now an independent charity but said: “While the vast majority of Nesta’s grants are made following open calls for proposals, we do have the ability to provide grants to projects that fit with our vision and advance our objects outside of open calls for proposals. That is what happened with the grants to the Big Society Network.”

Labour is now demanding an inquiry into links between the Big Society Network and senior Conservatives. Several members of the network’s staff had worked with and for ministers including Michael Gove and Theresa May, and two had stood as Tory candidates.

Giles Gibbons had been a partner in the same firm as Steve Hilton and co-wrote a book with him.

He said tonight: “Am I disappointed that the network didn’t have a more positive impact? The answer is 100 per cent yes. Do I think we could have done more about that? Yes I think we could have.

"There was powerful core at the heart of what we were trying to do but was our delivery was not good enough. Is there anything untoward in the way in which we have worked? I genuinely don’t think there is.”

Several members of the network’s staff had worked with and for ministers including Michael Gove Several members of the network’s staff had worked with and for ministers including Michael Gove (Getty Images)
But Lisa Nandy, the shadow minister for civil society said: “It’s bad enough that millions of pounds of public money were squandered, but the connections between these organisations and the Conservative party are deeply concerning.”

A spokeswoman for the Charity Commission said: “Our case into the Society Network Foundation remains open and ongoing. We have received a response to questions we had relating to connected-party transactions and the use of a grant.

“However this does not fully address our concerns and we are in the process of engaging further with the trustees. We are also awaiting copies of documents that explain the grounds on which a grant was given.”

The big chumocracy: Key players

Steve Hilton

A former advertising executive who became David Cameron’s ‘blue skies thinker’. He championed the idea of the Big Society, and was instrumental in getting Government backing for it when the Tories came to power.

Martyn Rose

A businessman who gave £60,000 to the Tories in the run-up to the last election and became chairman of the Big Society Network. Has worked with both Theresa May and Michael Gove

Giles Gibbons

Co-wrote a book with Steve Hilton called Good Business. He became a trustee of the Society Network Foundation – the charitable arm of the Big Society Network. It is now being investigated by the Charity Commission.

Steve Moore

Worked for the Tories in the late 1980s and became chief executive of the Big Society Network. Was ultimately responsible for delivering the projects that failed. Had close links with Mr Hilton and the Nick Hurd, the minister responsible for the Big Society.

Thier should be a Police Enquiry. Which Tories have this public money sitting in thier bank Accounts. ?????????????????????????????????????????????????

BLOODY THIEVES.

Nice puff piece about your girlfriend gf....mind, she's only a temporary minister unless they find her a safe seat, she's out on her arse at the next election.



Esther McVey: 'Benefits? I have always said, there but for the grace of God go I’

Esther McVey is not your usual Conservative employment minister – she even has sympathy for welfare claimants






By James Kirkup

7:40AM BST 26 Jul 2014


Since this is an interview with Esther McVey, let’s do the important things first. I can confirm that the Minister of State for Employment in the Department of Work and Pensions is wearing a dress. And shoes. She also has hair.


And now that’s out of the way, let’s get on to the tedious frippery about 30 million jobs, the Conservative Party’s attitude to welfare claimants, and the ideal level of immigration for the UK labour market.


Miss McVey, 46, was one of the stars of David Cameron’s ministerial reshuffle last week, where she was granted the right to attend Cabinet meetings, while keeping the same job she’s had since last year.


It wasn’t her career trajectory that turned heads, though. An awful lot of comment concerned her appearance, much as it did for the other women promoted in the reshuffle, who were dubbed the “catwalk Cabinet” when they marched into Downing Street last week.


Unsurprisingly for a former television presenter, McVey has done her best to keep smiling, trying to turn the attention into a positive: prominent images of “powerful women” are a good thing, she says, because they provide girls with role models. But scratch a little at that cheery veneer and you find irritation beneath. “Every woman who is there at the Cabinet table has a successful career behind them and in front of them,” she says with a faint frown. “There was a trivialisation of that.”



Esther McFester and goofy dave



More tripe here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/10991122/Esther-McVey-Benefits-I-have-always-said-there-but-for-thegrace-of-Godgo-I.html



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