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.

Bad innit db?

No party has ever changed leader this close to a GE and quite sensibly so. If the Tories lose then he may well leave. If they win, he will not leave quite a time and nor should he. A Tory win is not that unlikely. Labour is showing signs of imploding. Miliband is seriously stuck between left and right. He probably needs to move to the right to get a better chance of winning, but the bulk of his party is pulling him left. That includes himself.

It's not good Max, but one of the most depressing things is that we get such a low percentage of people who go and vote. At least the vote in the referendum showed that people actually cared about the result.

DB4,

Doesn't say much for the tory party.

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Mind the majority of present politicians are less than appealing.

There are some who I think highly motivated and intelligent but lack the necessary charisma or physical appeal sufficient to enhance their parties chances of being elected.

It seems crazy that "media" appeal is often a factor in choice of leadership.

=========

But Theresa May and Blondy Boris would be good representatives for the tories.


I am not sure which of them makes me shiver the most.

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Boris may come across as a clown, but Labour should take the threat of his leading the Tory Party deadly seriously.

Britain to take the crown as the fastest growing economy of developed nations



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2781561/Britain-crown-fastest-growing-economy-developed-nations.html

typically stupid fred comment

so does EM say a lot about the labour party?
probably

Manuel,

Have you had a bad day.

Get back in the kitchen!

it's been a really good day and have made what is looking to be a really good minestrone-type soup with pulses (yup, i have one myself!) .... it's been simmering for 4 hours so should be about ready, though prb better still tomorrow

Lol soup, reminds me of this. :-))

http://youtu.be/Z6aYLOf8CUQ

You have some good points.

(Not many.)

Strangely enough, I had soup for supper.

Leek, potato and mushroom and croutons

Very nice.

Pulses with ham (bacon) + vegetables and paprika as a Stew or Soup. (Slow cooker.)

In winter, while driving long distance, I often ran the slow cooker of an inverter on the Van's engine. (Very good.)

If you ever make tomato soup try putting a small glass of vermouth in it, after you have gently saute the onions etc..

I didn't have vermouth and use pastis instead and also used a fair amount of fresh sage thyme and parsley.

Even my wife congratulated me.

Ah, your a boozer Fred.

Helping with the flavour....a likely story :-)

http://order-order.com/2014/10/06/boring-snoring-libdem-conference-picture-special/?utm_source=Guy+Fawkes%27+Blog+List&utm_campaign=58e0f440f6-happy+hour&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_547885726c-58e0f440f6-229951757

Lord Ashcroft’s poll echoes YouGov’s post conference polls in showing a small Tory lead –

CON 32%, LAB 30%, LDEM 7%, UKIP 17%, GRN 7%

The Jules Bianchi crash.

WARNING! THIS CRASH IS UTTERLY TRAUMATIC!

The Frenchman who drives for the British-based Marussia F1 team suffered severe brain injuries in the smash amid treacherous weather conditions in Suzuka.

Latest reports suggest he has undergone brain surgery and is now breathing unassisted but the sport remains rocked, with many criticising officials for letting the race go ahead.

Yikes I hope the poor lad makes a full recovery.

After the race, Hamilton said that the conditions weren't that bad and he had driven in much worse.

Iain Duncan Smith has emerged from under his rock to announce means-testing for disability benefits

Iain Duncan Smith was practically invisible during the Conservative Party conference. He made a speech – apparently. Can anybody remember what it was about? It seems to have been obscured by overarching interest in what people like Theresa May, George Osborne and even David Cameron had to say.

Well, he’s back now, talking such flagrant and unremitting nonsense about his job that it is hard not to remove the asterisks from the following description of his words: B*llsh*t.

So in Saturday’s Telegraph he was b*llsh*tting about his mission to kill as many people with long-term illness or disabilities as he can, and to kick social housing tenants onto the streets: “I don’t think about this as a job… I have a vocation.”

Oh is that right? Let’s see what RTU has to say when the public kick him out of office next May, when he’ll be told in no uncertain terms – as he was when he was in the Army – that his Services are No Longer Required (and never were).

The Torygraph article seems an attempt to rehabilitate the image of this evil dunce by claiming his founding of the (let’s give it its proper name) Centre for Social Injustice brought into being “one of the most influential centre-right thinktanks in British history”. Does it deserve this gushing praise? Not at all; its only influence is as a cheerleader for RTU’s policies of hate.

“Mr Duncan Smith’s animating passion is to help the workless poor to help themselves by moving off benefits and into employment,” gushes the article by some apparatchik called Tim Ross (who?). “It is easy to see how much value he places on meaningful work, especially after a recession.

“’People at the bottom end have felt it worst,’ he says. ‘I just want to get on and improve their quality of life. This is my mission so I’m going to continue on it.’”

Let’s look at how he plans to do that. According to The Independent, it involves taxing disability benefits for the first time, in order to make it even harder for people living with permanent and progressive conditions to “get on and improve their quality of life”.

The new Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is already much harder-to-get than the benefit it replaces, Disability Living Allowance (DLA). Smith reckoned this was fair when he introduced it but now he has decided it would be more fair to reduce the amount of cash available still further.

He’s saying that those on higher incomes should be taxed in order to subsidise higher benefits for the poorest – but the same article states that the move is intended to raise £7 billion, not for people with disabilities, but for the Tory-led government.

It quotes a government source, talking to the Sunday Times: ““It cannot be right that those on the lowest incomes get the same disability benefits as those who are millionaires.” Do we know many millionaires who have claimed DLA or PIP – other than David Cameron?

Ending the universality of disability benefits would involve means-testing. This is complex and costly and results in people who need the benefit not claiming it because the process is too complex or intrusive. Iain Duncan Smith – that odious worm – is aware of this. Why else would he be proposing it? You can expect the new system also to have a version of his ‘mandatory reconsideration’ procedure, currently ruining Employment and Support Allowance, to make sure possible claimants get the message and clear off.

For further evidence against means-testing, read this Vox Political article. It should make you angry.

And keep scanning the newspapers for more stories about poor people who have died as a result of our now-punitive benefit system.

Hays another driver say it should have been stopped 5 laps before the end. Asian chap forgotten his name.