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.

Here come big trouble for the complacent three ... you know who they are!



Douglas Carswell truly grasps the root of our malaise

Ukip's first MP now has a broader opportunity to use his Ukip Westminster perch to highlight — and keep highlighting — just what a state we’re in.



By Liam Halligan

4:48PM BST 11 Oct 2014




In the small hours of Friday morning, when most of my fellow economics scribes were in Washington at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, I was eating cheese on toast on my sofa. With Labour having just held on in the Heywood and Middleton by-election, there was I, like the rest of the UK’s political obsessives, staring at the television bug-eyed, awaiting Clacton’s verdict.


I’m not a Ukip supporter and Douglas Carswell isn’t a personal friend. Yet, as I wrote three days after he defected from the Tories, I really wanted the member for Clacton to hold his Commons seat. That because, over many years of talking to MPs and ministers of all parties, he’s one of the few politicians I’ve encountered who has truly grasped the realities of the Western world’s current economic predicament.


Carswell is not only prepared to think through our unpalatable challenges — on-going large deficits, vast public and private debts, weak productivity and potentially disastrous demography. He’ll also openly discuss tough proposals, speaking truth to power and saying what needs to be said.


Almost anyone with Carswell’s considerable ability and media skills, having entered the Commons as a Tory, would have kept their nose clean, climbed the greasy pole and made an early bid for the Cabinet. The trappings of power were there for the taking, maybe even one of the great offices of state.


Carswell, though, is among just a handful of credible politicians who’s refused to let his ambition outweigh his intellect. Sticking to his principles, he hasn’t shied away from the pressing problems mainstream politicians don’t want to face.


That’s why, to my mind, his staying in Parliament was far more important than which party he represents.

Now he’s won, though, having polled a massive 60pc of the vote, the returning Clacton MP’s party affiliation is deeply significant. As Ukip’s first elected member, Carswell can table Ukip parliamentary motions and lay Ukip amendments to legislation. He can question the Prime Minister on television and hold ministers to account. Above all, he can play a leading role in determining his new party’s economic platform ahead of the May 2015 general election and beyond.



Full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/11156084/Douglas-Carswell-truly-grasps-the-root-of-our-malaise.html

Cameron and Miliband should have learnt from Clegg’s tuition fee vow: don’t make promises you can’t keep. They’ve both committed that fatal error over the last few weeks, promising to save primary healthcare with thousands more GPs.
But they didn’t fool anyone: they have no idea how they’re going to achieve their aims, and with GP shortages already threatening to close 600 practices, their negligence will be bad for our health.
Jeremy Hunt underlined that negligence in a speech to the Royal College of General Practitioners last week: he announced that he would commission an independent review of how many additional GPs are required across the country.
You would have thought that’s the kind of thing he should have done before he made sweeping policy announcements, but no: lofty promises come first, and the detail of how it will work comes much later. His party’s promise to deliver 5,000 more GPs was based on guesswork: they have no idea how many more doctors we need, where the bulk of the shortages are, or how the government can encourage more medical students into the sector.
To make it worse, Tory plans to extend GP opening hours and keep practices open on weekends won’t help the recruitment crisis. Nearly 40 per cent of GP training places were unfilled in some areas of the UK this year, and applications for postgraduate GP speciality training have dropped 15 per cent.
It used to be that the regular hours and comfortable lifestyle that came with being a GP had doctors fighting over places. But now GPs have more commissioning responsibility, and have seen their workloads gradually increase. Doctors that were once so eager to enter practices are wavering on the threshold.
Telling them they may have to work longer hours, giving up their Sunday evenings to be stuck in the surgery, turn them away for good. Practices are already at “breaking point” according to the GP representative body the BMA, and without a boost in GP numbers – which won’t materialise – they may be stretched beyond repair.
Health news: in pictures
 
Ed Miliband’s plan to deliver 8,000 more GPs is equally ludicrous. Just 2,564 doctors took GP training jobs this year, 200 less than last year: the BMA branded the figures the “worst ever”.
However, Labour has turned it around before; the number of GPs rose by more than 8,000 between 1996 and 2010.  But we’re facing a harsher climb than ever: in 600 British practices, more than 90 per cent of the GPs are 60 or older, according to the RCGP.
The average retirement age is 59. Mr Miliband doesn’t have 14 years to fix our health service – it’s already “creaking”, as he said in his conference speech, and if the next government doesn’t take urgent action it will collapse. He can’t deliver, and if we let him get away with it until he’s in number 10, the problems are only going to get worse.
Even if he and Cameron can find a few thousand GPs down the back of a Whitehall sofa, it’s not clear that throwing bodies at the problem is the way to go. More GPs means more appointments and more hospital referrals, and inevitably more crowded wards. The announcements – designed to show that politicians really care about our health service – are an insult to us all.
Instead of the reasoned, balanced plan the NHS needed, we got politicians puffing up their chests, seeing who could pluck the highest number out of the air. And while the inflated figures made good headlines, they shouldn’t satisfy anyone who cares about our health service.

Independent

Who watched "The Gatekeepers" , debate to follow now

I watched it and now watching the debate. Nothing in the film surprised me. If anything it was too tame, much worse has happened and is happening.

The guy talking now - Ari Shavit writes for the fairly left wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz which I read online every day. He wrote a book called My Promised Land, which I am reading. It was recommended to me by cynic.

The clown has found his role!

He's on the Andrew Marr show shortly MaxK!

Caught the tail end of that db.

Good ol chuckling Boris, everyones pal.


Asked about the housing situation, he replied that they are building everywhere.

Asked about the cost of living in London...more chuckles, but no answers.


He wasnt being pressed, even by Trevor.

I have been to the London Assembly and watched Boris doing Mayor's question time. He is an amazing force. Labour constantly subject him to a barage of questions about various policies. They never lay a finger on him.

He comes in with a huge folder with all the answers. The questions are mainly written submissions and as the audience, we got a copy of them. He is well prepared and manages to answer each question whilst seeming to toy with the Labour group with dry comments and jokes. He makes the rest of the assembly look very second rate.

The interesting thing is that the public persona of a sort of buffoon was not evident. He was more business like and had a detailed grasp of the topics involved even when questioning strayed away from the written questions. Several times he responded in quite an uncharacteristically aggressive manner that unsettled the questioners considerably. One questioner looked visibly shaken after a bout of tongue lashing from Boris.

I'd expect nothing less from Balliol alumni, Haystack!

:o)

Record poll surge gives Ukip 25%: Survey would hand Farage astonishing 128 MPs... and puts Ed Miliband on new low

David Cameron remains the most trusted political leader in the poll
But Nigel Farage is on track to win 128 seats at the General Election
The Tories could lose more than 100 seats allowing in Ed Miliband
Polls suggest the public want Cameron and Farage to run the country


By Simon Walters for The Mail on Sunday

Published: 22:40, 11 October 2014 | Updated: 01:24, 12 October 2014


Nationwide support for Nigel Farage’s Ukip has soared to an all-time high 25 per cent – enough for the party to take Parliament by storm with well over 100 MPs and a possible Labour Election victory.

That is the shock result of a Survation poll for The Mail on Sunday, carried out after Ukip rocked the Tories and Labour in two by-elections last week.

If the poll result was repeated in next year’s General Election, it would see the Tories lose 100 seats, the certain resignation of David Cameron – and the possibility of Ed Miliband in No10.






More wet dreams here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2789512/record-poll-surge-gives-ukip-25-survey-hand-farage-astonishing-128-mps-puts-ed-miliband-new-low.html

Other polls still putting UKIP on 16%. Don't forget that the SDP party showed 50% support months before the election. Thatcher then got a large majority and SDP disappeared by merging with the Libs. UKIP's bubble heading for major burst.

Even 10% across the board is going to cause chaos.

All those mp's sitting in marginals will be getting squeaky bum syndrome.

Notice how active Hays is at the moment. Hyper active and why. hes shit=ng himself over the Tories,

Not long now Hays before the next defection.........................and election.

BRING IT ON.

PS, doodlebug is it right what ive seen on advfn.............your stigologist..........actualy had me thinking that then, thought NO CHANCE.........the lads too empty up top.

Haystack I remember when the SNP party won the first few seats from the Conservatives and then Labour that neither of the major parties took the SNP threat seriously enough and look what happened in Scotland - the Conservative vote demolished and Labour are going to lose even more seats at the next GE. Cameron may seriously regret referring to UKIP as a party of "fruitcakes and loonies". Whether or not people who vote for UKIP at local elections decide to vote for UKIP at the GE remains to be seen.

Interesting on the Marr show this morning that Marr said there was a strong rumour that the next defection to UKIP was going to be a Labour MP.

Doodlebug back on. ie, de-filtered

Entertainment value is brilliant since he trashed the Chart Thread.

Well along with Carson.

I came across this comment on religion made by Paul Dirac, Nobel Prize winner He predicted the existence of anti matter and was the first to describe quantum mechanics in 1926.

I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented.

If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.

As I have already said gf - I didn't post on the chart thread.