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.

alders - Clueless Prick fits nicely :0)

You sound worried Fred. Cons fast closing the gap with Labour. lol

YouGov -

Labour faces a near wipe out next May, unless it can revive its fortunes. If we apply the Scotland-wide shifts to each constituency, the SNP would jump from six seats to 47 while Labour would slump from 41 to just ten.

Update - Labour lead at 1

by YouGov in Politics

Sun November 2, 2014 6 a.m. GMT

Latest YouGov / Sunday Times results 31st Oct - Con 31%, Lab 32%, LD 7%, UKIP 18%;

WHAT else has to happen ­before Labour accepts that its minimalist position on more powers for Scotland is unsustainable? If it was not already clear to Ed Miliband and Ed Balls that their sniffy attitude to more devolution to Holyrood was costing Labour dear, the devastating message in a series of opinion polls over the past few days must surely have illuminated them.

Scottish Labour has lost the historic advantage it has always enjoyed over the SNP when it comes to Westminster elections. It has disappeared. In fact, support for the Scottish National Party in voting intentions for Westminster is, according to one poll, more than twice support for Scottish Labour. If this was replicated in the General Election in May next year, the number of Scottish Labour MPs would be reduced to just four. Not only that, two-thirds of Scots want a re-run of the independence referendum within ten years. And if the referendum was to be re-run tomorrow, 52 per cent of Scots would vote Yes – including 43 per cent of Labour voters.

This is an extraordinary set of results. It shows that to prevent the break-up the United Kingdom, securing a No vote in the independence referendum was only the first stage in a two-part process. The second stage is to deliver incontrovertibly on the promise of a powerhouse parliament at Holyrood, with substantial economic levers the hands of MSPs. The No vote on its own was clearly not enough. It was a job half-done. A much stronger Holyrood is necessary to honour the deal that was struck with the Scottish electorate in the run-up to 18 September.

This newspaper has consistently backed more power for Holyrood, not out of fear for the ­future of the UK, but out of a desire to see a Scottish Parliament that is responsible, effective, accountable, and equal to the ambitions of the people. It would be heartening if principle was the compass for Labour’s deliberations. But if principle is absent, self-preservation will have to do. If Labour has first to stare into the headlights of an electoral juggernaut that threatens to squish its hopes of power on the highway of Scottish opinion, then so be it. Naked fear can be a useful motivating force. The question is whether Miliband and Balls fully recognise the peril they face. To get into Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street next May, they need to secure the election of dozens of Scottish Labour MPs who face an existential threat from a rampant SNP. To head off this threat, Miliband and Balls need to reassure hundreds of thousands of Scots who are turning their backs on Labour, perhaps for good. How to achieve this? It’s not rocket science, guys. Give Scottish voters what they want, and stop telling them you know better than they do what is best for them.

To ignore the clear message from the Scottish electorate would be a mistake of historic proportions. It would be to underestimate a political mood – not just in Scotland but across the UK – that is febrile, fluid and unforgiving. It would be to underestimate the scale of ambition in the Scottish electorate for self-government, and a lack of concern among many Labour ­voters about whether that self-government is achieved within or outwith the UK. It would be a failure to recognise a shifting of the political sands. It would show Labour was not nimble enough, not deft enough, not fleet enough. It would show Labour was not equal to the moment. The Smith Commission has only a few weeks of deliberation before it has to come to its conclusions. There is still time for the Labour leadership to see sense. The unequivocal backing of Scottish Labour leadership contenders for a step change in powers would be useful, but ultimately this is a decision for Miliband and Balls. By the time this month is out we will know whether Labour has decided to save itself, or whether it has chosen a grisly end entirely of its own making.

Intolerable strain on Scottish NHS

Concerns about the National Health Service were at the heart of the independence referendum campaign and look certain to be at the heart of the General Election in May next year.

The SNP’s argument is that Scotland’s NHS must be protected from the English way of ­approaching healthcare, which involves the ­private sector much more than is the case north of the Border.

The impression the Scottish Government likes to present is of a Scottish NHS where everything in the garden is rosy. And yet it is becoming increasingly clear that this is not, in fact, the case.

Take today’s study of patients’ experiences of being treated – or not treated, as the case may be – by their GPs. This makes grim reading, and is hard to reconcile with the picture of the NHS being offered by Nationalist ministers.

Spending on GP services has fallen by 2 per cent in real terms, and the results are plain to see in length of time Scottish patients are having to wait to see a doctor. One in four are unable to see their GP within a week of seeking an appointment. There was also a rise of more than 8 per cent in the number of patients who felt their doctor did not have enough time to deal with them during their appointment, once it finally arrived.

The state of GP services is worrying in itself. It is even more worrying when you consider one of the Scottish Government’s central strategies is a shift away from hospital care, to care in the community. Some of this care will be done by health visitors, but much of it will fall to already-stretched GPs. A system under intolerable strain is about to be put under even greater pressure, not by external forces but by a policy pursued by another branch of the very same National Health Service, under the same SNP minister.

Quite simply, this does not add up. In England, in the system disparaged by SNP ministers, the government has recently promised universal access to GP services at the weekends by 2020. In Scotland, this is a pipe-dream.

Dr John Gillies, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, says: “When the crisis in general practice clearly shows patient safety to be under threat, it is incumbent upon the Scottish Government to act.”

It is hard to disagree.

Salmond has just been on the Andrew Neill show and said in no uncertain terms that the SNP would not form a coalition with the Conservatives. When asked if a coalition with Labour might be possible he hedged the answer.

DC.

If you refer to Scotland I am just a little puzzled and sceptical and think part of the said swing is disillusionment and media led.

But if the confidence trickster's party feel happy, the once again I don't think that the SNP will often go into a coalition with them.

(I think I will see pigs flying before that will happen.)

Also, can see the splitting of the tories in two, The Looney Far Right Haunch and the more moderate central left party.

Will be interesting to see them squabbling over the "kitty", or if they have a funds left after Reckless and the G/E.

(What are the accountant fees and can we review the accounts?)

The former trying to join up with UKIP.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2817563/BBC-wastes-10million-licence-fee-payers-money-redundancy-payouts-hundreds-time-staff-REHIRE-them.html

May be of interest Fred -

What YouGov's new Scotland poll says about the rise of the SNP, the disappearance of 'red Nats', and the potential for a new 'normal' in Scottish politics


http://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/10/31/labours-scottish-nightmare/

oooh :-)

http://news.sky.com/story/1365302/milibands-approval-ratings-hit-all-time-low

Ed Miliband’s approval ratings are at their lowest ever level, according to a YouGov poll.

The Labour leader is now less popular than Nick Clegg, with a net approval of minus 55.

D

With all the media cover and PR promoters Wavy Dave has, especially with his strutting across the International Stage you would expect Haze's icon or his Dear Leader (I suppose that means bloody expensive.) to have a graph pointing upwards.

=======
PS,

I didn't think the Hazeone wore lipstick!

But who knows what goes on at Party Central Office.

This seems unnoticed.

Even the Times are even ridiculing their leadership!

There are rebels in the Club.




Interesting little piece.

Carrot grates on Osborne at Tory awayday

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/Politics/article1478490.ece

They should give it to Cameron and Farage.

At least they will know which pockets it is going to end up in!

Miliband’s blunder – to think Scotland was all sewn up

In the battles ahead of the craziest general election for generations, the collapse of Scottish Labour matters a lot



Demonstrators protest outside a Labour gala dinner, which Ed Miliband attended Photo: Getty Images





By Iain Martin

6:00PM GMT 01 Nov 2014





Professor Brian Cox has made explaining the inexplicable his life’s work. In recent episodes of his television series – Human Universe – the physicist has tramped from Ethiopia to Peru, via Morocco and Ohio, in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. He has asked whether we are alone in the galaxy, and speculated on whether there might be other life forms out there.


Perhaps for his next project, Professor Cox could go to Scotland and answer an even more perplexing question: is there any intelligent life whatsoever left in the Scottish Labour Party?


Last week, one opinion poll suggested that despite Labour's being the largest part of the coalition of parties that defeated the Nationalists in September’s referendum, in the aftermath it is being sucked into a black hole. A resurgent Scottish National Party was on 52 per cent of the vote ahead of next year’s Westminster elections, with Labour at a mere 23 per cent and the Tories on a distant 10 per cent. If those numbers were to be replicated in May, Labour would be reduced from 41 seats to four north of the border, while the Nationalists would have 54 MPs.


Ordinarily, this might not matter too much. For many years now, the Scots have seemed to live in a state of self-absorption and almost perpetual electoral upheaval. But in the context of the United Kingdom’s craziest general election for several generations, the collapse of Scottish Labour matters a lot, particularly to Ed Miliband in London.


Even before the results of last week’s nightmarish poll landed on Mr Miliband’s desk, the Labour leader needed every seat he can get in 2015, what with his UK-wide lead over the Conservatives having all but disappeared. His “35 per cent strategy”, which rested on scraping over the line thanks to an electoral system that favours Labour, was only going to work with him holding 40 or so seats in Scotland. The loss of even half that number could cost the Labour leader the general election.


More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11202664/Milibands-blunder-to-think-Scotland-was-all-sewn-up.html

fred - i know full well d-in-law does not earn anything near £70k, but even i would find it more than little intrusive to ask exactly what she does earn .... my guess is perhaps £45k at the most, but would not be surprised if it was £40k or even a tad less - and yes, she is fully qualified

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

alistair darling
i shan't write anything inflammatory, but i wonder if it should be worrying to the labour party that one of their stalwarts and incumbent of a scottish seat has suddenly announced that he is standing down ... it assuredly can't be because of age, but as a natural-born survivor ......