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.

I would suppose the quote below could be applied to "Marlborough" and a few others:

"Etonians,’ said Fraser, ‘are the ultimate pragmatists, totally free of any ideology. Other than the means of getting and gaining power, no conspicuous motives inspire them. It’s not clear that Etonian politicians really believe in much except themselves.’

marlborough was actually founded for the sons of clergy and has never been well-endowed (lots of good jokes on offer there!)
in its day, it was rated very highly academically, but i don't think that is so now though i think it still manages to show quite well in "the tables"
fwiw, it was one of the first public schools to become co-ed

Nigel Farage is just the beginning of Ed Miliband's problems


By Dan Hodges Politics Last updated: September 25th, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100287754/nigel-farage-is-just-the-beginning-of-ed-milibands-problems/



Tomorrow belongs to me?




This morning Ed Miliband has finally given the green light for air strikes – on the UK Independence party.

As the people’s army gathers for its annual conference in Doncaster – a bold incursion into Ed Miliband’s own South Yorkshire heartland – Labour has launched a pre-emptive attack on the tweed insurgents. “Ukip claim to be on the side of working people, but the truth is they’re more Tory than the Tories”, shadow minister Michael Dugher claimed in a typically conciliatory press release. “Ukip is a party of Tory people and Tory money. Now they want to go even further than the Tories by giving another tax cut to millionaires.”

Nigel Farage has got Labour rattled. Though to be honest, at the moment everything’s got Labour rattled. The party was supposed to have emerged from its annual conference poised to sweep to power. Instead it finds itself in the midst of an existential crisis. “What kind of party are we?” asks the headline on the front of the normally ultra-loyalist Labour List website. A party having a nervous breakdown, is the answer.

A year ago Labour’s leaders believed that the party's vaunted 35 per cent strategy would see it safely across the finishing line in 2015. Now they fear Labour’s flanks are crumbling.

The resilience of the Tory vote – as evidenced in the European and local elections – alarmed Labour strategists. But they felt they had electoral insurance in the form of Ukip, (who they saw primarily as a problem for David Cameron to deal with), and Lib Dem switchers. They don’t feel that any longer.

First there is Scotland. It’s difficult to overstate the psychological – never mind political – impact the referendum campaign has had on Ed Miliband and his party. When he arrived in Scotland a week before polling day he genuinely thought he would be welcomed as some form of saviour. The man who would send the despised Cameron clan packing, and enable the Scottish people to safely remain part of the union. The truth cut his legs from under him.

“We’re finished in Scotland,”, one senior Labour adviser told me this week, “The SNP are going to hammer us in the general election.” The Scottish people may not have voted for independence. But they’ve declared a form of unofficial UDI, with serious implications for Labour. If Nicola Sturgeon can maintain Alex Salmond’s momentum, then from Labour’s perspective the West Lothian question will become moot.

Now there is Ukip. Everywhere they look, Labour MPs are starting to see Nigel Farage’s ghost. “We’re in real danger from them in the south” one Labour campaigner told me last month. “You don’t think they’re a threat to us in the north?” a Labour MP told me a fortnight later, “You’re living in a dreamland. All we get on the doorstep is Ukip.”

This week a sinister apparition has even been spotted in the Labour heartland seat of Heywood, site of the by-election to elect the successor to the highly respected Jim Dobbin. “Labour faces Ukip threat in Heywood” reported the Financial Times, in a headline that was echoed by several Labour insiders.

One MP described this dual threat from the SNP and Ukip to me as a “pincer movement”. But the problem for Labour is that the threat is actually coming from the same direction – Labour’s working class base.

It’s not 1997 new Labour switchers that are flirting with the purple peril, but hardcore Labour traditionalists. And it’s a flirtation that is currently terrifying Ed Miliband and his advisers.

That’s because it wasn’t supposed to be happening like this. Miliband, not Nigel Farage, was meant to be the insurgent. It was the Labour leader, not Alex Salmond, who was supposed to be seizing the mantle of change. The threat from Ukip and the SNP doesn’t just represent a shift in the political mood, but a repudiation of the Labour leader’s entire political strategy.

It also presents Ed Miliband with that thing he hates most, a series of difficult decisions. To insulate his core English base from Ukip would require him to shift-right. Tough lines on immigration, welfare and law and order would have to be deployed. But those are not the sort of messages that would necessarily appeal to voters north of the border. And they’re certainly not messages that would appeal to the Lib Dem refugees who have been attracted to Labour’s ranks by Miliband’s new political metropolitan liberalism.

Personally, I think the Ukip threat is being overstated. Labour voters will face the same choice at the ballot box as Tory voters – Prime Minister Miliband or Prime Minister Cameron. Prime Minister Farage is not an option.

The collapse of Labour in Scotland is more serious. Not least because there are no easy solutions. There are only so many times Gordon Brown can be sent out to act as Ed Miliband’s rather unconvincing body-double.

But in any case, Ukip and the SNP represent the symptoms, not the disease. The fact Labour is scrambling to react to the risks posed by these two minor parties simply underlines their failure to effectively take their fight to the real enemy, the Conservative party. Labour’s 35 per cent strategy was a flawed one from the moment it was conceived, the political equivalent of attempting to parachute onto a tiny island situated in the middle of a shark infested sea. There was no room for error. And as we saw in Manchester, the errors are now coming thick and fast.

Ed Miliband has ordered air strikes on Nigel Farage’s insurgents. But air strikes alone are never enough.

Just heard about a Frenchman in Soho asking for the sex parties and being told he had to join the Conservative party for those.

Where do I sign ?...
Anyway....I think that the Homebase bosses must be retired RAF people !...
Have you been to a store and asked for something ?...it goes a bit like this :
Customer : good morning...do you sell paintbrushes and where are they ?
Sales person (equipped with a mouthpiece..perhaps headphones)...and linked to various satellites across the globe....: just a minute sir.....come in roger delta bravo....do we have.. what did you say sir ?
Customer : yes ..paintbrushes..
Sales person...:..paintbrushes....(better in a geordie or scouse accent)...I know we were told about these things...never used one myself (small chuckle)...I shall have to check with headoffice and sales...(crackle...zip..in headphones)...come in Mexico...molto bene.. inglese burro...zip crackle..come in yankee doodle !....do you have sighting and confirmation of paintbrushes in store ?...
Floor sales help (also equipped with gadgetery and various satellite links)...yes sighting confirmed and we have pinpointed location...over...
Sales person...to floor sales help...thank you.. yankee doodle foxtrot bravo...and then to customer : a team of experts location pinpointers is on the way and will guide you safely to paintbrush location...
Customer : (about to expire)...thanks...aghhhh...
finally....at paintbrush location in store (just in the first aisle)...and discover that the brush you want is out of stock but they will have some more in stock in a weeks time....but they can sell you a luxury ensuite bathroom or some exstock garden furniture !
Sales person : (still shouting into mouthpiece ) did you find everything you came for saarr ?.....
Customer ; ggnnngggggrrrr.....

Did anybody see this film last night.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/jakezamansky/2011/10/25/margin-call-is-for-real/

8-)

Just the place where Cameron should find a job when he is made redundant.

Manuel,

My tennis partner for over 10 years sent his children to Marlborough.

His kids are two of the nicest kids and young adults I have known.

I think they owe much to their parents.

=======

Parents don't always ----- you up!

Yes. I did see the film. It was pretty good, really.

The comments made by the 'big boss' (played by Jeremy Irons) towards the end of the movie did make you think quite a bit, particularly when he reeled off the (big) list of all of the historical crashes and explained the one that he was creating was just yet another one.

"This is how money and the markets work. The numbers are different but the percentages are exactly the same. These things have to just keep on happening."

It also made me think that we must be due yet another market crash fairly soon.

My wife is bearing up but with great difficulty.....



This is the room where George Clooney spent his last night as a bachelor.

One has to query if Mr and Mrs Farage are truly sincere......

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage/11126430/Nigel-Farages-wife-bars-Press-from-EU-junkets-meeting.html

eg.

She was giving a talk telling UKIP supporters how to save a few quid on an EU holiday.

The European Union spends £25 million on the subsidies for tours arranged through Euro-MPs' offices.

Under the scheme, holiday makers are handed a subsidy of up to £200 in cash if they include a short visit to the European Parliamentary in their itinerary. That money can then be used to pay for hotel rooms, meals and transport.

Asked about the scheme, she said: "Every MEP is allowed to take visitors' groups over from their constituency or region, or councillors, or business groups they are supporting, or supporting them. It's an EU scheme."

She added: "It's a nice thing to do."

A colleague added: "We are not doing anything clandestine."

One five-day package advertised on a stand at Ukip conference, organised by a private tour operator, included a visit to the castles of Koblenz, a tour of Strasbourg Cathedral and a boat trip along the Rhine. The visit to the Parliament in Strasbourg lasts two and a half hours. After the EU subsidy, the holiday costs £389 a head.
Another seven-day Ukip tour takes in Verona, Lake Garda, an excursion to Venice and a tour of Vicenza, known as the City of Gold, before driving on to Strasbourg for a short visit to the Parliament.

Other taxpayer-subsidised tours incorporate visits to the tapestry at Bayeux and Monet's garden in Giverny before visiting the European Parliament in Brussels.

http://news.sky.com/story/1343701/farages-trip-to-ukip-defector-seat-cut-short

UKIP defector Mark Reckless has been forced to cut short a visit to his constituency by his new party leader Nigel Farage after the pair received a hostile reception.

A planned walkabout in Rochester, Kent, was cancelled after Mr Reckless was confronted with tough questions from members of the media and the public, said Sky's Darren McCaffrey.

The former Conservative was also met by ex-party colleagues as he visited a pub in his Rochester and Strood constituency with Mr Farage.

I stumbled across that film half way though it.....the acting is superb with a simple storyline about a bank in trouble.....did not see all of it...but the acting performance was first class....must see again from the start...

What is it with these blinkin' MP's ?....more scandals and god knows what....I cannnot believe the number from all parties that have to resign.....must be something about them.....having an affair or getting drunk at a party is one thing or putting liquid soap on yacht gangways in StTropez harbour in front of the cafes with people falling in....euuhh sorry not putting soap on gangways I mean...euhh anyhow........but sending naked pictures of yourself !.....some of them are just sick and it's a sorry state of affairs to say this....

"I cannnot believe the number from all parties that have to resign.."

I think there a lot more from all parties who should have resigned!

Then there is something fundamentally wrong with British politics....

Yes!

It is a fake democracy!

One for you Fred


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29404152