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.

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 ......

Wheres goldfinger?

Im here bud. Thanks for your e-mail. Havent seen you for a while. Nothing changes ehh.

Dont worry.

I see Hays as been busy whilst ive been on holiday.

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%

Seems to have been a lot of right wing garbage posted here over the last 10days or so.

Another Cameron bungle – on spending cuts 1/11/2014

David Cameron can’t get anything right, can he?

The Guardian has announced that he has been trying to mislead the public on the proportion of his planned austerity-led spending cuts that he has already enacted, in order to make it seem that the worst is over.

The newspaper put it a little more diplomatically than that, saying he “got his sums wrong” (and this is the party that most people trust to look after the economy? People are strange) – but we know that Cameron is perfectly aware of where his cuts programme stands and what it is doing, don’t we?

The report has it that Cameron reckons he’ll have imposed four-fifths of the cuts on us by the general election – but the Institute for Fiscal Studies, having examined the figures, said he has not imposed even half of what he has planned.

Cameron said he’ll have made £100 billion worth of “savings” – the IFS says this is hugely inaccurate, and it is more likely that just £23 billion has been cut.

More interestingly, Cameron said the next Parliament (if the Tories are elected) will see a further £25 billion of “savings”. In fact, according to the IFS, he means a further £28 billion of cuts.

Let’s pause for a moment to get our terminology right. Cameron wants us to think he is making “savings” because that implies that services are unaffected – but we know that this is not true. The more accurate description is “cuts”, because he is reducing the services provided using taxpayers’ money wherever he can. Look at your local council and the cuts it is making; those are being dictated by David Cameron. Look at the restrictions that have been imposed on taxpayer-funded social security benefits – both in terms of eligibility and the amount being provided; they are also being dictated by Cameron. He is cutting – not saving.

Now consider the drastic effects of the cuts that have been imposed so far – the way social housing tenants have been terrorised with the Bedroom Tax; the persecution of the physically and mentally ill with the humiliating work capability assessment; the humbling of the English health service that has fallen from its highest satisfaction ratings ever to closed Accident & Emergency departments, inaccessible GPs and faceless Clinical Commissioning Groups who refuse to fund basic medicines for patients.

Tens of thousands of people are dead now, who would have been alive if David Cameron had never become prime minister.

And he wants to increase the agony by more than double.

Oh, but look – here’s why it’s all right: He has cut income tax by £10.5 billion! So we’re all better-off, then. Right?

Wrong. The national debt has nearly doubled since Cameron came to office and the deficit is rising, due to the Tories’ incompetent mishandling of the economy.

Most people are £1,600 worse-off per year. It is only the very rich who are better-off. Their incomes have doubled since Cameron came to office. Does anybody remember him saying he would spread the burden of austerity equally? Another lie.

If you take the average income as £26,000, then £1,600 is around 6.1 per cent of it. That’s what we have lost, every year, on average. The richest one per cent of the population has enjoyed an income increase of 50 per cent.

To my way of thinking, that means these people owe the UK 56.1 per cent of their incomes over the past five years, to bring them into line with the rest of us.

Is Cameron going to make them pay? The proposition seems doubtful. Is he going to make up the shortfall from his own fortune, then?

As British citizens, we are owed that money. It won’t bring back the dead, but it might help stop any more money-driven fatalities.

And we need it now.

Welcome back goldfinger , I've stood in for you on the cons side. :-))