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://order-order.com/2014/11/05/new-statesman-turns-on-ed/

The New Statesman was the only publication to endorse Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership in 2010. Today the magazine turns its back on Ed, arguing “that since then Miliband has failed to find an authentic voice to connect with the electorate”. Jason Cowley writes in this week’s editorial:

“Miliband is very much an old-style Hampstead socialist. He doesn’t really understand the lower middle class or material aspiration. He doesn’t understand Essex Man or Woman. Politics for him must seem at times like an extended PPE seminar: elevated talk about political economy and the good society…

Miliband does not have a compelling personal story to tell the electorate, as Thatcher did about her remarkable journey from the grocer’s shop in Grantham and the values that sustained her along the way or Alan Johnson does about his rise from an impoverished childhood in west London. I went to Oxford to study PPE, worked for Gordon Brown, became a cabinet minister and then leader of the party does not quite do it. None of this would matter were Miliband in manner and approach not so much the product of this narrow background…

Miliband is losing the support of the left (to the SNP, to the Greens) without having formed a broader coalition of a kind that defined the early Blair-Brown years. Most damaging, I think, is that he seldom seems optimistic about the country he wishes to lead. Miliband speaks too often of struggle and failure, of people as victims – and it’s true that life is difficult for many. But a nation also wants to feel good about itself and to know in which direction it is moving.”

Usually reliable as a loyal mouthpiece for Labour’s rapid rebuttals, today’s Staggers cover story from George Eaton has some source quotes of a less helpful kind:

“Morale has never been lower,” one shadow cabinet minister told me [ . . . ] No MP I have spoken to has argued that the Labour leader’s parlous ratings aren’t a problem or dismissed them as a “Westminster bubble issue”. “We’re all very, very concerned. The reality is that whilst we don’t have a presidential system, people are thinking increasingly about who they want to be the prime minister,” one shadow minister said. He went on to describe a “sobering moment” in which a voter told him: “You’ve been a fantastic MP, but I’m not going to vote for you. Because Ed’s not prime ministerial…

One senior MP suggested that Miliband should abandon Westminster, save for Prime Minister’s Questions, and go on a rolling tour of marginal constituencies. “The 200 to 400 voters in key seats who say on the doorstep that he’s the problem, he could win them round by talking to them.” But he doubted whether Miliband had the will to do so. “His confidence has gone. It’s like a light’s gone out,” he lamented.

The danger is that Ebola mutates into something else......mankind must be on its guard as to nature's ruthlessness essence as to radificalized species (that includes ourselves)....

by TOM PETERKIN







Published on the
05 November
2014
22:19











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A pithy tweet was posted yesterday by the Stirling University Scottish Socialist Party. “Scottish Labour is still the party of the left,” it said. “Lamont left, Sarwar left, Darling left. Nothing left.”


It was a biting comment on the state of a Scottish Labour Party which this week was reeling from yet more dispiriting opinion poll findings.

An Ipsos MORI poll which had predicted an apocalyptic outcome for Scottish Labour at Westminster went on to reveal that 57 per cent of Scots said they would vote for the SNP in Holyrood’s constituency seats. With Labour polling just 23 per cent, these are troubled times for the party that once regarded political control of Scotland as an inevitability.

All is not lost for Labour, however. If this leadership contest can reinvigorate Labour, a recovery may take hold. While the main focus will be on the main contest between Jim Murphy, Sarah Boyack and Neil Findlay, it is worth keeping an eye on the race for the deputy leadership.

Pressure was put on Anas Sarwar to quit the deputy leadership – the gentle arm-twisting was to ease Murphy’s bid for the top job. As Sarwar and Murphy are both MPs, it would have sent the wrong message to have both the leader and deputy leader of Scottish Labour looking after the party from Westminster.

Mr Carson

You are the crappiest 'Copy and Paster' on MoneyAM. :-(

Do us all a favour - use the posting 'Edit' facility - or maybe even the 'Delete' key on your keyboard - and Delete/get rid of some of those unsightly blank spaces in your posts.

Please!

You are just bashing 'anything' down in an 'anyhow fashion'!

No sense of humour Exec that's your trouble :0)

Ok point taken. Nice looking trade by the way on STJ

What a wanker...


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2822894/David-Cameron-says-wants-Britain-s-Asian-PM-lifetime-warns-lack-diversity-holding-country-back.html

Do I hear echoes of John Reid,

Tory and UKIP ideas of cut backs!

Why shouldn't we have an Asian PM?

The polls now are showing leads of -1, 0, 1 and 2 day after day. These figures are within the margins of error. This means that Labour and Conservatives are neck and neck. UKIP is stuck at the zero MPs won and the Libs should do better than expected by the polls.

The trend has been towards the Conservatives for months now. Hopefully that will continue. It won't need much of an increase to give them the highest number of MPs.

Nothing to do with an Asian pm, more to do with shameless vote cadging.


Not that it will do him any good.

from today's guardian .......

Luxembourg tax files: how tiny state rubber-stamped tax avoidance on an industrial scale
Leaked documents show that one of the EU’s smallest states helped multinationals save millions in tax, to the detriment of its neighbours and allies

lots more of course

HMRC vs Ingenious
the investment firm is due to challenge the demand in a tax tribunal starting on November 3. ....... He said Ingenious had pressed for its case to be heard as soon as possible in the face of attempts to delay by HMRC

That's what MPs do. They try and appeal to identifiable subgroups of the population and curry favour with them. I would be annoyed if he wasn't doing that. Miliband does the same thing as do the others. It is the same with any public issues. MPs are always looking for issues to take a stand on especially if they can support the popular view.

I am always surprised that MPs vote against capital punishment when there is a clear majority of people in favour of it.

All legal tho c.


http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/05/-sp-luxembourg-tax-files-tax-avoidance-industrial-scale

Amazon used Luxembourg to avoid charging vat. It is all legal. If countries want to change the rules then I am sure they will.

It charged vat at the going rate, but paid it over at the Lux rate.

All legal supposedly.

Ingenious
well Max, let's see what the court finds
there were any number on here who were shouting the odds about what a bunch of crooks the Ingenious investors were blah blah blah blah ......

personally, i hope HMRC gets given a very bloody nose once again, for as i mentioned yesterday, they (VAT) has owed me £30k for well over a year but refuses even to acknowledge corres from my accountant let alone live by its own rules in the first place

back to the eu and the EHIC a few facts go to any hotel on hol and get the desk or your rep to phone the first question they ask have you got cash or insurance doc

fact I go to spain 9 times ayear Majorca 5 times Portugal 3 times
france many weekends the only country that honour the ehic is malta

I go to Poland twice a year for my daughters company no free anything you pay or get no doctor

MPs: Failure of IDS’s Work Programme is a scandal







Public Accounts Committee issues damning verdict




Nigel Morris Author Biography
Deputy Political Editor


Thursday 06 November 2014


The companies running the Government’s flagship scheme to cut joblessness have backtracked on promises to focus on hard-to-help claimants, a MPs’ report published today says.

The Public Accounts Committee denounced the failure to target more help on the most difficult cases as a “scandal”.

Firms operating the Work Programme are spending less than half the amount they had originally pledged on claimants with disabilities such as mental health problems. Such groups are being “parked” as the firms focus on finding jobs for people considered easier to help into employment, the PAC said.


In a damning verdict on the programme, which was launched three years ago, the MPs accused Iain Duncan Smith’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of failing to give incentives to providers to support harder-to-help claimants to find a job.

Almost 90 per cent of claimants of Employment and Support Allowance, which is paid to the sick and disabled, who are on the Work Programme have not been found jobs.



the rest of the shambles report is here:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-failure-of-idss-work-programme-is-a-scandal-9842188.html