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.

Well I hope your taking photo's as it's happening, that's the best evidence.Now get filling that form out .

I still have a baseball bat, so I am alright.

Couldn't we save some money in this period of austerity by cutting back on the police and security protection of Cameron and his cohorts.

It is good to Wavy Dave is personally taking charge of the "hostage problem" and supervising its resolution.

I bet the family now feels safer.

why would you care?
after all you refuse to vote
though this is your democratic right as you never cease to tell us, you also have a democratic obligation to vote if you do not wish to abdicate all rights to influence or similar - i.e. no vote = put up with whatever gov't and policies you get

Israel's gas reserves are largely offshore from Gaza. There has been an ongoing battle for some years for control of Gaza's resources.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jul/09/israel-war-gaza-palestine-natural-gas-energy-crisis

and your point is, as i'm sure you have one?

Manuel,

I see you have dragged your battered old soap box out again.

I do not have any obligation to vote and am happy to continue exercising that right, especially as it seems to irritate you so much.

You may prefer to dictate to me what my actions should be, but thankfully at the moment the UK is not a dictatorship ruled by an elitist self righteous cabal, who govern under a veneer of democracy.

Maybe the point is that Israel is flogging Gaza's own oil to Gaza.

Villainous!

The point is that Israel is doing deals to supply gas that doesn't belong to them. It is the same as stealing the land. They have just found new ways of stealing.

fred - you can indeed choose not to vote, but unquestionably you thereby forego your rights to influence


gaza's oil and gas?
who says?

Scotland says. So it must be right.

This is from 2010 by Noam Chomsky

These Israeli naval attacks began shortly after the discovery by the BG (British Gas) Group of what appear to be quite sizeable natural gas fields in Gaza’s territorial waters. Industry journals report that Israel is already appropriating these Gazan resources for its own use, part of its commitment to shift its economy to natural gas. The standard industry source reports:

“Israel’s finance ministry has given the Israel Electric Corp. (IEC) approval to purchase larger quantities of natural gas from BG than originally agreed upon, according to Israeli government sources [which] said the state-owned utility would be able to negotiate for as much as 1.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Marine field located off the Mediterranean coast of the Palestinian controlled Gaza Strip.

“Last year the Israeli government approved the purchase of 800 million cubic meters of gas from the field by the IEC…. Recently the Israeli government changed its policy and decided the state-owned utility could buy the entire quantity of gas from the Gaza Marine field. Previously the government had said the IEC could buy half the total amount and the remainder would be bought by private power producers.”

The pillage of what could become a major source of income for Gaza is surely known to U.S. authorities. It is only reasonable to suppose that the intention to appropriate these limited resources, either by Israel alone or together with the collaborationist Palestinian Authority, is the motive for preventing Gazan fishing boats from entering Gaza’s territorial waters…

is gaza an internationally recognised independent state?
i think not

So it is fine to restrict their fisherman to a tiny area so theybIsrael can take the offshore gasd.

Actually Gaza is an internationally recognised state as it is Palestine.

If they had simply nicked the gas, why are they buying it?

In US legal parlance, the term "Country" is used for any political entity known as a nation.[1] The US granted a request from the Palestinian National Authority for recognition of the West Bank and Gaza as a Country in view of developments including the Israeli-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements. In a letter dated 13 January 1997, the Department of State advised the other agencies of the Executive branch that it considered the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to be one area for political, economic, legal and other purposes.

Additionally, on 17 December 2012, UN Chief of Protocol Yeocheol Yoon decided that "the designation of "State of Palestine" shall be used by the Secretariat in all official United Nations documents",[13] recognising the "State of Palestine" as the official name of the Palestinian nation

As of 27 September 2013, 134 (69.4%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations have recognised the State of Palestine.

You can see at the start of this, that the area of Palestine includes Gaza

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Palestine

MaxK
Israel have stolen the gas and are selling to Jordan as well as using it themselves. They are also planning to steal the offshore oil as well. There looks like being oil under the West Bank. Of course, they will steal that as well.

It looks like Israel are buying the gas as they have given the exploration rights to BG (British Gas)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/war-and-natural-gas-the-israeli-invasion-and-gaza-s-offshore-gas-fields/11680

there is much about israel's present policy's that i deplore and worse, but this gas deal assuredly isn't one of them

Manuel,

Non-sequential argument as usual in your three of you previous postings.

You must try harder!

So it is fine to give away Palestine's natural resources to British Gas and not compensate them. This means that in the very unlikely event of a two state solution Palestine will have lost much of their resources. Israel already steals water from the West Bank and rations the Palestinians while the illegal settlements have fountains. The oil and gas are just the latest saga of pillaging the rights and possessions of Palestinians.

No interest rate rise today. Many economists forecasting no rate rise this year.

ECB has cut their rate today.