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.

Load of old rubbish re cycled again. Farage has said over and over again the money UKP get's from the EU is to fund his get out of the EU campaign.

hi fred - can't remember if i've read "4th protocol" or not, though quite possibly ..... for a nice jewish boy i have wide catholic taste in reading as well as food and wine, so having just finished pg wodehouse "golf anthology", i'm wading through "lancaster and york" by alison weir ..... i confess i don't even try to keep track of the various medieval family interconnections but it makes good and interesting reading nevertheless

I use to try to read French books and some of them had the characters in listed in order of appearance.

The same would be more useful to me now.

With the devious mind you have it may trigger old memories.
=========

Names have always been a problem for me, and I am told I called my father mummy. (Not true. But I did call him a few other things.)

PS.

Have a bacon sandwich for breakfast.

You deserve some reward!

Sounds like you have retired from business cynic , were do you find the time from ?

most certainly haven't retired, but nearly all our biz is overseas so on a different time zone
i can easily walk to the office and the local food shops are all quite close to hand - butcher/fishmonger about 2 miles away .... thus no great problem to buy pretty much on a daily basis and to cook 4/5/6 times a week
i always read for a bit before i go to sleep

easy-peasy :-)

I am sick of this government’s gob-smacking meanness
Non-scroungers are funding the DWP to the tune of £10bn in unclaimed benefits – but woe betide those who try to claim benefits when they need to


Michele Hanson
The Guardian, 5/11/2014



Here are some people I bet you haven’t heard much about – the benefit NON-scroungers. Those millions of people who don’t claim the money to which they are entitled. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) owes them around £10bn in unclaimed benefits. Yes, 10 billion pounds. It dwarfs benefit fraud, which was around £2bn in 2011-12. DWP are the real cheats. They’re winning hands down. And no wonder.

Have you tried to claim any benefits lately? My friend X has. He’s had bladder cancer, and now has no bladder. That’s not much fun: painful, uncomfortable, humiliating, debilitating, and with leaks, floods and expensive large nappies. He is on a state pension and antidepressants. Then he managed to get attendance allowance. A triumph. But not for long. DWP didn’t want to make his life too much of a breeze: they took away his pension credit.

So Mr X and I went along to the local council office, where some very kind, sympathetic women are trying to sort out his mountain of gobbledygook and contradictory DWP documents, the mad maze of what he is and isn’t supposed to claim for, the difficult mess his life has become, and whether they can get him a grant for a new mattress and tumble dryer, which he badly needs but can’t afford.

God forbid that the poor and sick should have the tiniest smidgen of comfort or pleasure. And to make damn sure they don’t, I hear that our government may have secret plans to cut ESA (employment and support allowance/sickness benefit) by around £30, so that it’s about level with jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), to make sure no one is tempted to malinger in luxury on ESA, when they could be better starving and struggling on JSA.

Just a measly £30. That’s a mediocre bottle of wine for our leaders. Or a lifeline for someone like Mr X. I am so sick of this government’s gob-smacking meanness. Surely that’s not what we want this country to be like? Heartless, unfair, cruel and full of greed and misery, smoke and mirrors. Our government may fancy that, but we don’t. Do we?

@michelerhanson

I hear that Cameron is sweating in Helsinki.

He needs the press to divert attention from his failures.

Check the responses to his hand shakes.

Some even wipe their hands afterwards.

Mind Haze and DB4 will say he is playing a blinder.

I think he needs a guide dog.

=====

Somebody has just told me they have seen a draft copy of a letter asking Cameron to stand down before Xmas.

Mentions of Haque to postpone his retirement from politics.

Interesting!

By Steven Swinford, James Kirkup and Matthew Holehouse
The Telegraph

10:24PM GMT 06 Nov 2014

Ed Miliband has made a public call for Labour MPs to back him, adding fuel to the crisis surrounding his leadership.


At least four backbenchers have called on Mr Miliband to step down amid growing fears that he is leading his party to a general election defeat.


The Labour leader used an unplanned television interview to try to dismiss talk of a plot against him.


It is understood that Mr Miliband decided to confront the leadership issue publicly because he feared allies of Gordon Brown were organising a concerted attempt to remove him. But the high-risk strategy appeared to backfire as MPs said Mr Miliband had only deepened the sense of crisis around his leadership.


“Going on television to talk about it was mad. It makes it look even worse than it is,” one frontbencher said. “I started off thinking this was the usual grumbling, but now it looks more serious than that.”

Another MP said the impromptu interview on BBC News was a sign of a “bunker mentality” among Mr Miliband’s team. “He thinks we’re all out to get him.”

One party official said Mr Miliband was starting to show signs of personal strain over his party’s poor poll ratings. “He’s been lashing out, blaming people, which is out of character.”

Mr Miliband made his address after at least four backbenchers called for his resignation.

Two of the MPs who want Mr Miliband to stand down were named in Westminster as Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, and Ian Austin, the Labour MP for Dudley South. Both were unavailable for comment.

Several MPs have directly approached David Watts, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), to say that they believe it is time for Mr Miliband to go.

They could now be joined by more than a dozen other MPs with slim majorities who fear that Mr Miliband’s leadership could cost them their seats in May.

The MPs are furious at their leader’s “lacklustre” performance at the party’s conference and a poll at the weekend that suggested he is now less popular than Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader.

One of the MPs told The Telegraph: “The mood in the party is black. We are down to 29 per cent in the polls and that could go down further.

“He is less popular than Nick Clegg and he will cost us votes at the general election.

“We are hearing it on the doorstep. People are saying, 'You are doing an all-right job but we don’t like your leader’.”

In his address, Mr Miliband chose to tackle the rumours head on. He said: “This is nonsense, I don’t accept that this matter arises. I believe that what the party wants to focus on is the country. There are huge issues that our country faces. We are determined to be a one-term opposition.”

A YouGov poll for LBC radio last night found that nearly half of voters believe the Labour Party would be more likely to win the general election without Mr Miliband as leader.

Lord Soley, a former chairman of the PLP, admitted that Mr Miliband’s predicament was “serious”.

He said: “It would be silly to say that every Labour MP is relaxed about the present situation.

“You know that that’s not true and it’s no good me saying they are relaxed.

“And at the moment they’re just in their constituencies fighting in their constituencies and I think that’s what they need to do.

“But I do think at centre we can do it differently… It’s not rocket science, actually.

“It’s been done before and we can do it again.”

One member of the shadow cabinet said: “We’re in a bizarre, possibly unique, situation. The PLP have now lost confidence in the Labour Party leader. But they feel there’s nothing they can do about it.”

Amid increasing tensions within the party, Mr Watts denied that he had been involved in an argument with Mr Miliband about the challenges to his leadership.

Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor, said that Labour was “whistling in the wind” if it thinks that it can win round voters to “the real Ed”.

He told Daily Politics on BBC One “They have almost got no choice because they have either got to say, 'He’s not going to work and his ratings are going to stay where they are’, or they have got to say, 'If more people got to know the real Ed, then somehow we’d all be turned around’. But I think they may be whistling in the wind.”

The growing leadership challenge facing Mr Miliband came after he was forced to overhaul his election team just six months before the general election. He turned to Lucy Powell, his former chief of staff, to take charge of the campaign operation. However, the appointment was criticised by Labour MPs, who said she had little experience of campaigning, having only been elected at a by-election in 2012. Mrs Powell failed in her previous attempt to get elected in 2010 despite challenging a Liberal Democrat in a marginal seat.

Andrew Harrup, the general secretary of the Fabian Society think tank which is affiliated with Labour, said he believed that Mr Miliband was a “hindrance” to the party’s success.

Meanwhile, as Mr Miliband faced a political crisis, his brother, David, whom he narrowly beat to become Labour leader, was rubbing shoulders with celebrities including Sting, at a charitable event. The older Miliband brother, the International Rescue Committee president, was hosting the Annual Freedom Award Benefit Event.

The older Miliband brother, the International Rescue Committee president, was hosting the Annual Freedom Award Benefit Event.



perhaps we are not missing anything after all.....

From the peoples daily...

Yes all over Twitter Fred..........

Somebody has just told me they have seen a draft copy of a letter asking Cameron to stand down before Xmas.

Mentions of Haque to postpone his retirement from politics.

Interesting!

QT was a non event this evening with very little sensible said

You mean the Tory was a non entity, who the heck is he anyway?????????????????????

Kevin Maguire ‏@Kevin_Maguire 5m5 minutes ago

Cameron's leadership crisis bigger than Miliband's when 2 Con MPs defected, Rochester will be a bloodbath & he's losing 0-27 in Europe 1/3

WOWcampaign ‏@WOWpetition 2m2 minutes ago

Osborne lie on welfare to the whole of Britain is to make sure they can make more draconian cuts to sick, disabled,working poor and children

Haystack, QT

Agree , Labour MP towing the party line , it wasn't our fault we left the country bankrupt it was the other lot [ Labour's 1year of tory boom and Labour's 13 years of bust ]. And add in a bit of childish UKIP bashing.

IDS should be a candidate for his own Work Programme 7/11/2014

for sure the tories will be fighting hard for EM to stay in place

what a dreadful bunch of political leaders and frontbenchers of all denominations we are currently stuck with, and for the foreseeable future

Typical of the tory party propaganda unit.