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.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2782970/Calls-Miliband-step-MPs-fear-election-catastrophe-Burnham-touted-emergency-replacement-poll-Tories-ahead.html

EXEC the last thing the Tories want to see is support for UKIP strengthening.

Pollsters have said that if UKIP get 9% of the vote at the GE it will let labour into power.

4 hours ago

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11144652/Labours-biggest-individual-donor-openly-attacks-Ed-Milibands-mansion-tax-pledge.html

LOL Hays Tory press again.

Lib/Dems in favour of mansion tax aswel. As are the public.

From today

Labour grandees turn on Miliband over mansion tax

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4229092.ece

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11144884/Ed-Balls-turns-on-Ed-Miliband-for-forgetting-deficit.html

Mansion Tax is a daft tax in that it cannot be paid on an annual basis by people who are asset rich and cash poor. Albeit, that it might force such people into having to sell the property. Some of these property types would just stay empty, MHO, and in some cases this would create fresh problems as these bigger houses fall into ruin and decay becasue owners can't afford the taxes on them.

Property values are currently coming down. Mansion Tax doesn't seem to take that adequately into account.

Perhaps a form of Capital Gains Tax for own homes might fare better as it would be more common-sensical. The cash to pay it would be funded at exactly the best and right time to pay it from the profit on the sale.

The Mansion Tax will go down well with the voters outside London, who see the Tories more and more like London based self interested mobsters.

Even though the tory press are trying to fracture the Labour party a leadership, it is doubtful that they will be successful and probably backfire on the tories, who are far more fragmented in their policies and direction.

The Redwoods, the Cashs, the Clarkes, Carlesses the god knows what Camerons the Cruellas and of course their icon IDSs. are just on the surface.

Also, Aschroft and his ilk, swim below the surface.

The tory party is more represented nowadays by the Brookes (what did he think was possible from tory researchers) and see Cameron becoming more and more as an incompetent liar.

downside of that is that there would be a complete disincentive to sell, thus depressing the housing market from all angles

What do you call a mansion these days in londonistan?

Possibly, (in the case of asset rich and cash poor) the Mansion tax could be attached to the property and paid at time of sale, or transfer of ownership!

But isn't it strange that the same degree of "sympathy", expressed to the above group, is not express for those effected by those in the "Bedroom Tax", which accounts for 30% of evictions in a small town!

NHS ‘at breaking point’ despite promises of increased spending
Healthcare faces £30bn deficit by 2020 and patients suffering, warns coalition of doctors, nurses and medical charities

The Guardian, Monday 6 October 2014



Political promises of extra cash for the NHS are insufficient to address a funding crisis that is putting at risk the founding principles of the health service, an influential coalition of doctors, nurses and medical charities has warned.

The Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats have all made protecting health funding a priority in their party conference pitches to voters as the issue takes centre stage ahead of May’s general election.

But, in an open letter to the leaders of all three parties published by the Independent, leading organisations said “the longest, and most damaging budget squeeze” in NHS history had left it at “breaking point”, with patients increasingly feeling the effects.

Health spending has been protected from the austerity cuts imposed across most of the rest of Whitehall but had not risen sufficiently to prevent the hospitals and surgeries “buckling under the twin crises of rising demand and flatlining budgets”, they wrote.

The letter was signed by the heads of the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of GPs and four other royal colleges, the Alzheimer’s Society, the Anthony Nolan Trust, the MS Society, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, the Teenage Cancer Trust, the Family Doctor Association and the Faculty of Public Health.

They cautioned: “Savings have been made, and despite the best efforts of nurses, doctors and other staff, patients have not been insulated from these cuts. Too many staff feel undervalued and demoralised when all they want is to be able to care for patients.

“A shortage of GPs means that patients are struggling to get an appointment to see their doctor. Pressures on maternity services mean that many women are not getting the high quality care they deserve.”

Accident and emergency unit targets were being missed – in some cases for an entire year – patients faced “unacceptable” waits for cancer diagnoses, and patients requiring emergency mental health support were being moved to hospitals hundreds of miles away from home.

Social care shortfalls meant dementia sufferers “have been cut adrift, reliant on unpaid and unsupported carers to live from day to day” and problems were being stored up for the future by a failure to invest properly in children and young people’s physical and mental health, they suggested.

“The NHS and our social care services are at breaking point and things cannot go on like this. An NHS deficit of £30bn is predicted by 2020 – a funding black hole that must be filled.

“While we welcome the fact that the NHS has risen to the top of the political agenda, and some new spending commitments have been made, we need a comprehensive, fully costed, long-term spending plan if an NHS true to its founding principles of universal healthcare, provided according to need not ability to pay, is secured for future generations.

“It must also take into account the need for vital social care. This will also require a guarantee that the NHS will be protected from another top-down reorganisation which is not in the best interests of patients, and distracts from the severe, long-term funding pressures facing the health service.

“The NHS, social services, health and care professionals and above all, the British people, deserve no less.”

Makes you want to Immigrate somewhere don't it.

The NHS does, but I think the Mansion tax is fair and Ill be paying it.

leaving aside as to how the value will actually be determined, if this suggested tax is implemented, it is patently unfair if levied in the same manner as stamp duty

The mansion tax is an idea which those North of London have been saying should have been implemented years ago.

I agree.

Why The Tories Want To Ban Zero Hour Contracts … And It’s Got Nothing To Do With Workplace Rights
Posted on October 3, 2014 by johnny void



Cameron’s conference pledge to scrap exclusive zero hour contracts – which prevent employees from working for anyone else – is not some sign that he actually gives a shit about the poorest and most exploited workers.

The real reason for the ban is to make those workers poorer and even more exploited when Universal Credit is finally introduced (stop laughing) and the DWP start inflicting benefit sanctions on people working part time.

For a long time now, DWP ministers have been panicking about how Universal Credit and increased benefit conditionality can possibly work alongside zero-hours contracts. Should Universal Credit ever actually be introduced then part time workers will face the same kind of Jobcentre harassment currently reserved for unemployed or sick and disabled people. People working part time could even face being sent on workfare in the hours they aren’t at work, whilst they will be required to take on additional jobs at the drop of a hat or their Housing Benefit could be sanctioned leaving them homeless.

These nasty new rules will place anyone working part time on an exclusive zero hour contract in an impossible situation. If they don’t take up an additional job when the Jobcentre tells them to they will lose their in-work benefits. If they do, they will get sacked from their other job. This is why the Tories want to scrap these kinds of zero hour contracts. So the DWP can start sanctioning part time worker’s benefits.

The truth is that the Tories love zero hour contracts so much that the Minister for Welfare Reform Lord Fraud has suggested people should have more than one. All they want is a little bit of re-jigging so that Iain Duncan Smith’s latest crazy scheme can go ahead as planned. The end result will mean more insecurity for the lowest paid workers, with the DWP already boasting to bosses that Universal Credit will make it easier to sack staff. And those who fail to meet endless petty Jobcentre conditions will find themselves sanctioned and unable to pay the rent.

Of course simply saying they are going to ban exclusive zero hour contracts is only half the battle, and it is one the Tories are likely to lose. Even the suggestion reveals breath-taking ignorance of how business works. Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Fraud may dream of low paid workers scurrying from one job to the next desperate to avoid the attention of sanction happy Jobcentre busy-bodies. But if they really think that Tesco will let their part time staff go work at ASDA in their spare time then they are living in a fuc---- dream world

I wonder what pearls of wisdom I am missing from gf.

You'd need a secretary to keep up.Haystack.