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.

Has Osborne halved the EU’s £1.7bn bill? 7/11/2014


George Osborne: It seems he can save money when he wants to.

The UK will only have to pay half of the £1.7bn budget surcharge demanded by the European Union, according to George Osborne.

The EU itself has yet to make an announcement at the time of writing.

Osborne’s words came after a four-hour meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels, in which he said it had also been agreed that the UK would pay the money in two interest-free instalments, totalling £850 million, before September 2015.

It seems the Treasury wants to claim it has cut the 2.1bn Euro top-up charge in half by ensuring the UK’s rebate applies to the payment.

But even the BBC’s Tory-supporting Political Editor, ‘Tricky’ Nick Robinson, said the deal would be scrutinised.

he he he ha ha ha.........caught out yet again Giddeon.

You have to laugh when you look back and wonder how they chose their leaders such as Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and now Ed Miliband. All it wants now is for Ed to call someone a bigot. He has 6 months to make a few more gaffs.

Reality is what you make it.

Cartoons often get to the heart of the matter!

Not sure which are the most interesting dreams, nightmares, or cartoons?

But sometimes wonder if the old boys and sniffing in the club again!

8-)

MPs call Duncan Smith’s Work programme a ‘scandal’ (#ids #welfare #bedroomtax #uk #politics)
NOVEMBER 6, 2014 BY ORDER OF TRUTH

The way private companies have been running the Work Programme under contractual conditions imposed by Iain Duncan Smith and his Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has been called a ‘scandal’ by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

Despite ‘promises’ to focus in hard-to-help claimants, less than half of the financial resources companies originally pledged to help claimants with disabilities and mental health problems have been spent.

The companies have been concentrating on finding jobs for people considered easier to help in to employment, and have ‘parked’ people with more complex needs who have been placed in the ‘work related activity group’ of the Work Programme by the DWP.

Margaret Hodge, the PAC’s chairman, said: “Evidence shows differential payments have not stopped contractors from focusing on easier-to-help individuals and parking harder-to-help claimants, often those with a range of disabilities including mental health challenges.

“Data from Work Programme providers shows that they are, on average, spending less than half what they originally promised on these harder to help groups.

“It is a scandal that some of those in greatest need of support are not getting the help they need to get them back to work and are instead being parked by providers because their case is deemed just too hard.

“The Department must do more to encourage providers to work with harder-to-help groups.

Mrs Hodge also warned that the DWP’s sanctions regime could cause “significant financial hardship” to individuals.

“Feedback from some constituents suggests the number of sanctions has been increasing, and some providers have been recommending sanctions more than others,” she said.

Many of the work programme providers are subsidiaries of large, government ‘preferred partners’ such as Serco.

The £5 BILLION scheme has been criticised and been described as ‘worse than doing nothing’.

In half the areas where the scheme is being run, people would have been more likely to get a job if they hadn’t taken part in the programme.

Other figures showed that just one in 20 people on sickness benefit who were on the programme found work. The target was one in six.

The government has been accused of “spin” after claiming that there had been a “profound” improvement since the scheme was launched in July 2011.

The facts are that the Work Programme has cost the taxpayer far more than if the scheme had not been implemented, primarily because of the lucrative contracts given to private companies, and the government has used the programme to manipulate unemployment figures.

The number of people who have found employment is no higher than would be expected without the scheme, and there have been no savings in welfare payments. In fact, costs have sky-rocketed directly because of the incompetence of Iain Duncan Smith and his ‘reforms’.

Class War 2014: The Rich Kids of Snapchat
Posted by David Hencke 5/11/2014



If ever David Cameron’s claim that we are all in it together needed to be proved false, look at a site on Facebook called the Rich Kids of Snapchat.

Set up by a 17 year old British public schoolboy and liked by 244,000 people this site celebrates the life style of the super rich public schoolboys – the new generation expecting to run Britain in a decade or so.

Far from having any concern for the rest of us, this ” fun ” site worships money, fast cars, Gucci, luxury yachts and private jets,champagne and has an unhealthy interest in guns.

It is virtually the calling card of the new ” Bullingdon Club ” and the kids know they are the new ” boss class ” – the future generation of Tory Cabinet ministers, entrepreneurs and flashy businessmen and bankers. And some will have the vote in next year’s election,

Among the fun pictures are kids using £50 notes as toilet paper, £20 notes for tablecloths, handling guns to protect their estates from the ” peasants”, and commuting from home to public school by private helicopters or showing they have a £10m private bank account at Coutts.

Not surprisingly this has produced a reaction across the net with people calling for the site to be taken down, and a spate of hostile comments – sometimes producing ripostes like warning people to shut up as they will be their boss in future life.

More seriously as the Inforrm blog reveals these antics have posed problems for the more mature seriously rich parents who wish to hide their opulent life styles from the rest of us and pretend “we are all in it together”.

As the Inforrm blog says : ” The consequences could be very serious for those wealthy teens, and their families, where potentially inflammatory images appear which include identifying information such as faces, car registrations and locations.

One 19 year old, who frequently posted about his lavish lifestyle and who was featured on Tumblr site “Rich Kids on Instagram”, has already run into trouble, having had several luxury cars from his father’s rental business subsequently set alight by vandals, causing over £500,000 worth of damage to his father’s business.

Another featured ‘rich kid’ was Alexa Dell, daughter of Dell Inc. CEO Michael Dell, who posted an image of her brother tucking into a feast onboard a private jet, bound for Fiji. She also used her Twitter account to regularly post details of her location, complete with GPS location tagging- somewhat undermining the annual US$2.7 million her father reportedly spends on family security. Upon discovering this, Alexa’s account was removed and her image has been taken down.”

The blog rightly points out that in an era of unemployment and poverty where ceo’s have made people redundant this can be inflammatory.

It rightly adds:” a teen bragging about the lavish lifestyle of his or her CEO parent who has recently made redundancies or been the recipient of a sizeable bonus can easily catch the eye of a journalist on the hunt for a story – as can any images posted by a naive child who has a parent in the public eye. “

But to me the whole site seems symptomatic of a yawning divide opening up in the UK and the last thing I would want to see is it taken down. Such antics provide the perfect foil to attack the wealthy Lynton Crosby and the image he wants the Tories to present to the electorate of the ruling class in the next election. Spoilt brats revealing themselves for what they really are!

Meanwhile in true entrepreneurial fashion the site is up for sale by its 17 year old owner. He has been offered $150,000 by an American but might let it go for a mere $40,000 to a Brit with spare cash from his pocket money.

The man running the Tory Party and its scandals.

cynic have never said you are not clever and you saw the con has well
it just shows how low this gov will go along with the eu scum

Perhaps Haze should refer to the contributions leading tory lights Arthur Neville Chamberlain Earl of Halifax made to the nation.

But GF. it is sensible to look at the Posh Boys and who will climb out the pile the quickest.

Haze will be trampled over.

------

But where is Boris?

What is he up to?

And with whom is he doing it with?

Watch your back Dave!

BacK to the surcharge heres the real truth.......

wanda williams ‏@wandawilliams 24 minutes ago Coimbra

@MidWalesMike hes conned us to believe we will only pay half in fACT WE WILL LOSE NEXT YEARS REBATE SO TOTAL STILL 1.7 BILLION NO Q& A ALLOWED

Ohhhhh dear this is going to really back fire on the Tories now.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS TANKER????????????????????????????????

Do you think it time to set up in the UK, a Court for the Trial of Political Crimes.

So that members of the government can be tried, subsequent to losing power, can be tried for the crimes they committed when in office.

---------

Can I be the executioner?


8-)

no gf I will open the trap door you can put the rope on

I think I would like to be at Farage's PM, just to see the size of hie liver in relationship to his brain.

George Osborne accused of lying to Parliament on his 'hard line' against corporate tax avoiders 7/12/2014

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/george-osborne-accused-of-lying-to-parliament-on-his-hard-line-against-corporate-tax-avoiders-9692327.html

George Osborne is facing calls to apologise in Parliament after the official statistics body ruled he used “inappropriate” figures to trumpet the Government’s success in cracking down on tax avoidance in the last Budget.

The Chancellor told MPs in March that HM Revenue and Customs was “collecting twice as much [tax] as before” through new measures to target super-rich individuals and multinational companies, who employ expensive accountants and lawyers to shelter their vast wealth in overseas tax havens.

However, inquiries by The Independent and Private Eye established that Mr Osborne was not referring to physical money already banked by the State, and was only outlining a target of tax collected for this Parliament – one that was based on a completely different measurement from the previous five-year election cycle.

The case was referred to Sir Andrew Dilnot, head of the UK Statistics Authority, who has now concluded that direct comparisons between the figures was “inappropriate”.

However, he laid the blame at the door of HMRC, which he said had admitted its “briefing to Ministers was based on its assessment at the time, and that some of the public announcements made about performance improvements were therefore incorrect”.

Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls told The Independent: “Now that it has been officially confirmed that the Chancellor used incorrect figures in his Budget speech, he should apologise and correct the record. While the amount of uncollected tax actually rose last year, the Chancellor was using smoke and mirrors to hide his own failure.”

Will Moy, director of independent factchecking organisation Full Fact – which made the initial referral to Sir Andrew Dilnot – said: “This intervention shows how badly we need independent official statistics on tax avoidance.”

The row centres on an accounting change by HMRC in 2010, the year Mr Osborne became Chancellor. Since the amendment, the national tax agency has significantly boosted its balance sheet by adding in “revenue protected” figures - a prediction of extra future tax paid by those who get caught and, HMRC assumes, will mend their ways.

The accounting change allowed HMRC to hand the Chancellor internal estimates for “compliance yield” of £100 billion collected over this Parliament, against just £52 billion in the five years before the last election.

This allowed Mr Osborne to tell MPs in the Budget that the Government had collected “twice as much [tax] as before through compliance”.

The news will add to concerns that the Government and HMRC are publicly claiming to clamp down on tax avoidance, while in private pursuing quite the opposite.

The Independent previously reported how Andrea Leadsom, the new City Minister, used controversial trusts to reduce her potential tax bill and took advantage of offshore banking arrangements for her buy-to-let property company.

A HMRC spokesperson said: “We’ve discovered and corrected the overstated growth in compliance revenues for the last two years and we have made this clear in our annual report published in July 2014.”

Somebody has to nip back down to PHQs again!

Dave Camoron ‏@EtonOldBoys 5m minutes ago

Despite the Tory Media BBC and Sky kicking Milliband all time, Labour have surged ahead in the Polls by 4 points, Brits had enough of Tories

HAYS HAYS HAYS ARE YOU WATCHING>>>>>>>>>>>THE TRUTH.

U.K. Fails to Win Budget Payment Cut as EU Defies Cameron
By Svenja O’Donnell and James G. Neuger Nov 7, 2014 2:24 PM GMT

Britain failed to win a cut in an extra payment demanded by the European Union, complicating Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts to fend off an anti-EU movement at home.

EU finance ministers agreed in Brussels today to stretch out Britain’s payment of a 2.1 billion-euro ($2.6 billion) bill until September 2015, while leaving the amount untouched.

The bill, part of an EU funding reallocation that forced Britain and eight other countries to pay more, has lengthened the list of grievances that prompted Cameron to propose a referendum in 2017 that could take Britain out of the bloc.

“The amount can’t be questioned,” Austrian Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling told reporters. He said an installment plan is in the works for countries that owe money to pay by an “end date” in 2015.

Britain’s room for maneuver on the one-time payment -- labeled a “technical” adjustment by the European Commission -- is limited by a blossoming anti-EU movement that threatens to make Cameron a one-term prime minister.

The EU spends about 140 billion euros annually, mostly to support infrastructure projects and agriculture. Paying in has been politically sensitive since Britain joined the EU in 1973, and the country still enjoys an annual rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

On the principle that the wealthy should pay more taxes, Britain was presented with the additional bill last month after revised gross domestic product data back to 2002 showed it was more prosperous than previously thought. Italy and Greece also got bigger bills, while Germany and France will get money back.

Deferred-Payments Plan

The sums shifting between EU governments amount to 9.5 billion euros, the biggest reallocation ever. In an average year, budget revisions total 1 billion euros. The commission today proposed a deferred-payments plan that would kick in when more than 5 billion euros is at stake.

Cameron railed at the European bureaucracy for an “appalling way to behave” when he learned of the payment demand. Speaking today while the Brussels negotiations were taking place, he predicted a “major problem” if other EU governments don’t budge on the amount and the timetable.

“We won’t pay 2 billion euros on the first of December and we don’t believe in paying anything like that amount,” Cameron said today in Helsinki after a meeting with Nordic leaders.

In Brussels, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said Britain’s payments in the second half of next year will only be about 850 million pounds ($1.3 billion). He arrived at that figure by bringing forward a rebate that Britain is scheduled to get anyway.

Better Deal

The opposition Labour Party has accused Cameron of alienating the allies Britain needs in Europe to secure a better deal. Britain “will have to work to repair relations with Germany, whose backing will be crucial,” Labour finance spokesman Ed Balls and foreign affairs spokesman Douglas Alexander wrote in the Guardian newspaper yesterday.

The U.K. Independence Party, which wants to hustle Britain out of the EU, may gain momentum in a special election in a parliamentary district southeast of London on Nov. 20. It will be represented by a defector from the Conservatives, Mark Reckless. Polls show almost half of voters back his bid to retain his seat.

Another defector, Douglas Carswell, was re-elected on a UKIP ticket last month, becoming the anti-EU party’s first lawmaker to sit in the House of Commons. The national election is next May.

To contact the reporters on this story: Svenja O’Donnell in Brussels at sodonnell@bloomberg.net; James G. Neuger in Brussels at jneuger@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Crawford at acrawford6@bloomberg.net Patrick Henry, Jones Hayden

TORY CHEATS..................................

In Brussels, U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said Britain’s payments in the second half of next year will only be about 850 million pounds ($1.3 billion). He arrived at that figure by bringing forward a rebate that Britain is scheduled to get anyway.


YOU COULDNT MAKE IT UP JUST HOW FAR THIS TORY MOB WILL GO TO LIE TO THE ELECTORATE.

gf I am no labour man but having spoken to my family about the lies from the government and reports that the con party are going to take away the pensioners
benefits for those that do not claim . pension credits making those that did not work better off than those that did

we are going to ask the party to clarify this point and if fact we will vote labour for the first time