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.

Fred has gone very quiet . :-))

i think fred has reached the same conclusion as most of us had ...... both main party leaders and their close henchmen are a disaster

Agree, Perhaps we should become Fred's then and not vote . lol

The Ed Miliband media and tory dirty tricks are running fright and trying to divert attention from their own split and disastrous lying by Cameron and Osborne over Europe.

Rochester will be exposed them for what they are. A split fragmented nasty party detested by many of their old former party supporters and voters.

I like Johnson and think him very capable and sensible, but as I says himself, it is a step to far for him and he doesn't have the necessary fluency in economics necessary as a background for the job of PM.

He was very capable and shrewd, but unfortunately in the rat race of politics accepts his limitations.

Unlike Osborne and Cameron who overvalue their abilities, Johnson has his feet on the ground and is fully aware of the mess and fragmented country the present mob of tory incompetents are leaving.

Ed, I guess will go back to a more collegial form of government, without the strutting and posturing detached arrogance of the Etonian stunted group of school boys which camp followers like Haze and fellows lick up to.

Edit.

I think the patch of blue could represent his own party and voters who are fleeing to other parties.

Is it true when Cameron wants to go from No 10 to see Osborne at No 11, he goes down through the sewers (natural haunt) to see him.

Strange how the real problem and success of the Cameron isn't be shown.

I thought the etonian academic elite were going to solve all the UK's problems.






-------------


Mind when Cameron gets the UK kicked out of the EU all our problems will be solved.

I wonder if Farage will start building a wall around the south coast?

The runners and riders to take over from millibandus

I bet dave cant believe his luck

In case you missed it:

The success of Cameron and negotiation ability,

This is the face of Xmas past:

Yesterday's man!




A pity that Cameron and Osborne aren't poppies.

They belong to the past.

Come on Fred, which turkey do you fancy to take over from Ed?

Conservatives and Labour tied

Latest YouGov / Sunday Times results 7th Nov -

Con 33%, Lab 33%, LD 7%, UKIP 16%;

All Ed needs now, is to turn up at the Cenotaph today in a donkey jacket like Michael Foot.

Miliband is nobody's "turkey, but I see him cooking Cameron's goose in May 2014.

Still a long way away.

Enough time for more gaffs, blustering and u-bends from the "dear leader" and exposure of they false policies and promises.

The chickens are coming home and they know it.


=====

We are still in the middle game and I would back Miliband's and the shadow cabinet's present strategy.

The media and papers are more interest in their own financial bottom lines, pushing what the are manufacturing, or then pushing it as far they can.

What they are doing at the moment suits them, but when the wind changes and ill-tempered Cameron exposes himself as a true leader of a nasty party, and unelectable some of the print may change. (Not the gutters of the Mail and Telegraph.)

At least, Miliband is not hand in hand with the same elements of the gutter press with whom Cameron and Farage seem to enjoy swimming with.

I think Miliband will be the next PM. of a coaltion slightly left of centre coalition government.

But a problem labour has, is if it broadcasts new policies the con party will adopt them and claim them for their own, as they haven't any got any other than austerity and screw down the poorest in society.

Apologies forgot they are grabbing and trying to run any which comes out of Farage's orifices.

The present con party leadership and followers seem to many to have the morality of alley cats.

========

Wait until the cracks in the Welfare System and NHS are expose this winter, especially if there is a cold winter or flu or similar epidemics.

That will be a front page spread.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/08/embattled-ed-miliband-labour-plotters-circle-coup

Ed Miliband: Plotters circle in the shadows as embattled leader strikes back

The description given by one of Ed Miliband’s aides of last week’s events – in which a series of newspapers took turns to report on Bonfire night plots and conspiracies against the Labour leader – was as unappealing as it was graphic. “It was just a load of journalists shuffling around eating up each other’s vomit.”

The Times suggested that the shadow health secretary, Andy Burnham, was conspiring with the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, over the future. The Daily Mail wrote of a Bonfire night plot to oust Miliband being hatched at a meeting of Labour MPs in the north-west, but suggested that Burnham and Cooper were deadly rivals. “It can’t be both, surely? They can’t be in cahoots, slicing up the future, while plotting to beat each other. It’s nonsense,” said a source close to Burnham.

Ed Miliband to come out fighting for Britain's EU membership as leadership crisis escalates



by Guy Bentley

new November 9, 2014, 9:43am




Ed Miliband
(Source: Getty)




Ed Miliband will launch a vigorous defence of Britain's EU membership warning Conservative plans for a referendum could put the UK's economy at risk.

In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to be delivered on Monday Miliband will say:


I make you this promise: if I am prime minister I will never risk your businesses, British jobs, or British prosperity by playing political games with our membership of the European Union.


More: http://www.cityam.com/1415526027/ed-miliband-come-out-fighting-britains-eu-membership-leadership-crisis-escalates

Ed is desperate to find something to distract from his troubles

He at least has the courage of his convictions and not using membership a football to satisfy the Euroseptics of his own party and the political whims of Farage and oddities.

===

If don't like the rules of EU or the game, persuade others by ongoing discussion to modify them, not behave like stunted teenagers on drugs and storming off.

The rules are not written in stone and open to sensible modifications.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-funding-crisis-jewish-donors-drop-toxic-ed-miliband-9849299.html

Labour funding crisis: Jewish donors drop 'toxic' Ed Miliband

The Labour party is facing desertion by Jewish donors and supporters because of Ed Mili-band's "toxic" anti-Israeli stance over Gaza and Palestine. In a fresh headache for the Labour leader, it is understood that Mr Miliband has been warned that Jewish backers are deserting the party in droves over what community leaders perceive to be a new, aggressive pro-Palestine policy at the expense of Israeli interests.

One prominent Jewish financial backer, a lifelong Labour supporter, said he no longer wanted to "see Mr Miliband in Downing Street or Douglas Alexander as Foreign Secretary".

A senior Labour MP warned that Mr Miliband now had a "huge if not insurmountable challenge" to maintain support from parts of the Jewish community that had both backed and helped fund Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's election campaigns.

At the same time, a former cabinet minister privately admitted that Labour's fundraising efforts were in disarray. The former minister said the party would struggle to raise anywhere near the £19m a party is entitled to spend under electoral law in the run-up to next May's poll. "We will have to pass the begging bowl round to the unions," they said. "That would send a bad signal. In return, they [the unions] would demand to call the shots on policy."

Donations from the Jewish community have been worth hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to the Labour Party. Several previous donors told The Independent on Sunday that they and others are now very unlikely to support the party. They spoke on condition of anonymity.

"There aren't that many donors to the Labour Party these days, and certainly not the same number of Jewish donors. There is a lot of worry," said one. "I have been a Labour supporter all my life and I would like to see a Labour government, but, on the other hand, I'm not entirely sure I want to see Ed Miliband in Downing Street or Douglas Alexander in the Foreign Office."

A Labour source insisted that Ed Miliband had taken a "principled stance" on both Gaza and Palestine and had always been clear that Israel had a right to defend itself. They added that it showed that Mr Miliband was prepared to take decisions he believed to be right and would never allow political donations to influence party policy.

But Jewish supporters say that the previous Labour policy on Israel was principled – and that it is Mr Miliband's changes which are affecting Jewish support.

Another previous donor said they had been asked by the party to arrange a fundraising dinner for Jewish Labour supporters but had found no takers. "Miliband won't get that [money], I can tell you that now," he said. "I was going to do a couple of dinners and invite prominent members of the community, who are quite wealthy, to raise funds. They just wouldn't touch it. It was too toxic for them to even consider. There is a lot of reluctance to support Miliband financially, unfortunately."

Last week, the actress Maureen Lipman (below) announced that she was ending five decades of support for the Labour Party over its new foreign policy.

Several other Jewish supporters, who have given substantial sums to Labour, are understood to be reconsidering their relationship. "When I supported them, this hadn't happened," said one. "I'm deeply concerned. I'm not at all sure what I'll do."

Another said: "I speak to people. I know what's going on in the party. And they are finding it tough going. Look at their reports on what's raised and look at what they're getting from the unions. They are finding it very difficult raising money."

Prominent Jewish supporters say problems started in the summer with Mr Miliband's aggressive condemnation of Israel's ground incursion into Gaza last August, which he described as "wrong and unjustifiable". He accused David Cameron of being wrong not to have condemned the land operation and claimed that Israel was "losing friends in the international community day by day". This was followed by a decision to whip a vote calling on the Government to unilaterally recognise Palestine – against long-standing British and Labour policy that recognition should only be part of a negotiated two-state settlement. That decision was opposed by a number of senior Labour MPs – including at least two shadow cabinet ministers – who warned it would haemorrhage Jewish support.

One said yesterday: "There were no phone calls, no meetings, no discussions, nothing. Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander simply decided to abandon the even-handed, bi-partisan approach we followed for 13 years in government. Electorally, that will be significant in a few seats but, much more importantly, it sends a signal that Miliband is prepared to play politics with an issue where he should be even-handed and fair."

A number of Jewish former Labour supporters also compared Mr Miliband's stance on Gaza unfavourably with David Cameron's, which, they suggested, had been calibrated to ensure that prominent Tory Jewish supporters stayed on board.

...."We will have to pass the begging bowl round to the unions," they said. "That would send a bad signal. In return, they [the unions] would demand to call the shots on policy."...