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.

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.

I thought means testing was too expensive to operate?

So did I. Another Tory U turn.

6 October 2014 Last updated at 17:36

Vince Cable says Conservatives 'lying' over tax pledges
COMMENTS (2174)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29496477

David Cameron criticised for dodgy debt claim after claiming Britain had been reducing it's levels
Oct 06, 2014 18:41 By Jason Beattie

The Prime Minister said Britain had been "paying down its debts" during a Tory party conference this week, despite statistics suggesting otherwise.

Fraud: Cameron claimed Britain has been paying off its debt, despite statistics proving him wrong

David Cameron has been rapped for a second time by the statistics watchdog for making a dodgy economic claim.

The PM told the Tory party conference this week that Britain had been “paying down its debts.”

But the boss of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot, pointed out that, while the deficit has fallen since the coalition came to power in 2010, debt has risen.

And he noted he had already rebuked Mr Cameron for making the same claim in a party political broadcast in 2013.

In a letter to shadow Treasury spokesman Chris Leslie MP, Sir Andrew said debt had risen from £997.4 billion at the end of June 2010 to £1,432.3 billion at the end of August 2014.

He went on: “It is clearly important for all parties to public debate in this area to understand the relevant statistical definitions and to distinguish changes in the level of debt outstanding from changes in borrowing per period, and to reflect these in their communication of the statistical trends involved.

“Public sector net debt is a measure of how much the UK public sector owes at a given time. Public sector net borrowing is the difference between total accrued receipts and total accrued (current and capital) expenditure over a specified period.

“The measure of net borrowing is frequently used by commentators to summarise the extent of any public sector ‘deficit’.”

Mr Leslie said: “These repeated attempts to mislead people about the Government’s failure to keep their promise that the national debt would be falling are unacceptable.

“For David Cameron to have been chastised once on this was bad enough. But to be reprimanded yet again shows this goes beyond error or mistake.

“We can only conclude that there is a deliberate attempt by David Cameron’s Government to mislead the public about their true failures on the national debt.”

Max,

Listening on and off to the Lib Dems conference I have a suspicion that they will do better than their opposition parties suggest.

Also, think Vince's speech will be seen as an relatively honest account and his opinion of Cameron and the present tory party resonates with the public.

W/S

http://uk.communifin.com

Be the first to know

Vince's speech will be seen for what it was. He has never got over the fact that Osborne got the job he wanted when the coalition was formed. The bloke couldn't even get his figures right when the Royal Mail was floated!

GF,

I agree with you.


I have recently seen the Form for DLA (now called personal independence payment)

4,444 words, 7 pages font size 10 pt to complete the blank sections.

plus there's a 10 page doc to read as well.


===============


It is b. ridiculous.

The "forms" are aimed at a one of the groups in society contain the some of the most "defenceless" and needy in society.

Many of those incapable of answering the forms accurately and have little or no support.

It is designed by an incompetent uncaring administration under the direction of IDS and a government which will leave a stench behind it.