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.

Thanks G/F.

I am dodging Europe, but I am telling Russia what to do and sending the Ukraine some poppies.

Pity about Rochester and having to pay up to the EU and discrediting HP and my own party.

And just for starters

StockMarketWire.com

FTSE indices turned lower on retailers, banks and utility stocks after Bank of England warned UK inflation could fall below 1% in the next six months, and would not hit the target of 2% for three years. It also cut its forecast for UK economic growth to 2.9% in 2015.

And maybe stagnation.

But we will be OK.

Tim Stanley may be writing in the Telegraph, but he is a long term member of the Labour party since he was 15. He even stood as a Labour candidate in 2005. So you might expect an anti Cameron stance.

Yes Rochester is next Thursday.

Haystack, the interesting thing in Scotland is that Labour are losing the battle for minds to the SNP in areas like Glasgow and Dundee. Edinburgh and Aberdeen have always traditionally been Conservative strongholds, but the voters there moved their loyalty to SNP rather than Labour some time ago and the same thing is now happening elsewhere. Labour will be almost totally wiped out in Scotland in the GE. Poll predictions are that they will be lucky to get 4 seats and that is a loss of 37 seats - as you know.

BUT it will be a Labour/SNP coalition which is even better than a labour majority as the SNP are far more left wing than new labour.

Jolly good show they will put on I say.

Far better than the present coalition, will adopt the Mansion Tax and for once and all get rid of the scrounging rich in this country.

SIMPLE.

You will also know that year on year the "Con" party are digging there own grave.

WOW what a profitable day, I thought christmas had come early.

Labour could suffer because of Scotland not because they could not form a coalition, but because they might not be asked to. If they lose a large number of Scottish seats it could take them below the number of Conservative seats. The convention is that the party with the most seats is then given the opportunity to attempt to form a government. That might well be a coalition but the Conservatives will get the first chance. Labour will have to wait in line.

Oh indeed indeed Stan.

This last few days, phew.

He he he ho ho ho Hays your a stormer you really are.

Keep on dreaming bud.

However, the way the polling trend is going, the Conservatives could well have a clear majority by next year.

How long will it be before people start to try and get rid of Ed Balls? He is no better than Miliband.

Agreed Haystack, but hopefully we will not have another coalition after the GE and the Conservatives will indeed win a comfortable majority, as Hilary has predicted will happen!

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/nov/12/ed-miliband-is-the-most-unpopular-leader-among-labour-supporters-ever

Ed Miliband is most unpopular leader among his own party's supporters ever

The latest Ipsos Mori poll has the Labour party on 29% - its lowest level since 2010. Dissatisfaction with Ed Miliband among Labour supporters is at the highest level of dissatisfaction ever recorded for any leader among their own supporters

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11225334/Can-Ed-Miliband-recover-from-his-worst-week-in-politics.html

From today.

It gets worse for Labour

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/blow-for-ed-miliband-as-poll-reveals-just-13-per-cent-think-he-could-be-pm-9855880.html

Just 13 per cent of poeple think Ed Miliband could be Prime Minister, poll shows



Ed Miliband suffered a crushing new blow today as a poll revealed just 13 per cent of the public think he is ready to be prime minister.

Even among Labour supporters, a clear majority of 58 per cent say they are “dissatisfied” with his performance as leader. Among the general public, three times as many say they are dissatisfied with him as are satisfied, and his approval ratings have crashed below Nick Clegg’s.

The dismal findings, from pollsters Ipsos MORI for the Evening Standard, threaten to overshadow a major fightback speech that Mr Miliband is due to stage in London tomorrow.

One Labour MP said: “If the numbers carry on like this he will have to go by Christmas, irrespective of whether there is someone waiting in the wings to take over. We cannot go into a General Election knowing we are going to lose.”

Labour is down four points since October to just 29 per cent, while the Conservatives are up two points to 32. It is the biggest Tory lead since October 2010, although the puny vote shares of both main parties will give little cheer to Prime Minister David Cameron.

Alarmingly for Labour, there has been a sharp drop in the proportion of people who think the party and its leader are fit to run the country.

A Labour source responded to the poll by blaming the public attacks on Mr Miliband for the party’s drop in support. "The public don't like divided parties. We aren't too surprised the coverage of last few days is pushing down our vote,” he said.

“No-one should be in any doubt this is going to be a very close election."

In June this year, 22 per cent thought Mr Miliband was ready to be prime minister and 65 per cent thought he was not. Now, however, the figures are to 13 per cent and 73 per cent.

Some 23 per cent of people think Labour is ready to form the next government but 61 per cent disagree. That is also worse than in June, when the figures were 35 to 52. Just 21 per cent say they are satisfied with the way Mr Miliband is doing his job, compared to 26 per cent who are satisfied with Liberal Democrat leader Mr Clegg.

Among Labour supporters, only 35 per cent are satisfied with Mr Miliband, down from 42 per cent. The “dissatisfied” figure has gone up from 46 to 58.

Ukip is down two points to 14 per cent in the poll. Only 30 per cent think Nigel Farage is ready to serve as a government minister in a coalition, with 54 per cent disagreeing.

Bobby Duffy, head of public affairs at Ipsos MORI, said: “The interviewing for this poll was conducted at the height of the very public discussion of a possible challenge to Ed Miliband’s leadership of the party – and it looks like it’s had a significant effect on public opinion.

"The Labour leadership will clearly hope that this marks a low point - they’ve lost the lead to the Conservatives in overall voting intention, but they’re still within touching distance, despite all the negative coverage.”

Unemployment rate could be twice as high as figures claim 12/11/2014

The Office for National Statistics has put out new figures on the number of people in work – and it’s more than last month. Hooray!

But, as ever, the devil’s in the detail and – as usual – the small print is annoyingly devoid of the detail we need. Boo!

We are told that figures for September showed employment continued to rise (by 112,000 since the April-June period) and unemployment continued to fall (by 115,000 people). There appear to be 3,000 people for whom these figures don’t account. Interesting…

(Perhaps they’re now on Universal Credit – as those figures aren’t counted in these figures, meaning the current way of calculating these statistics is misleading from the start.)

Pay rates – excluding bonuses – was 1.3 per cent higher than at this time last year. This was being trumpeted as a huge success, as pay has risen about the Consumer Price Index (CPI) calculation of inflation, which stood at 1.2 per cent in September. What a shame the more accurate (which is why the government doesn’t use it) Retail Price Index (RPI) calculation of inflation stood at 2.3 per cent, well above in increase in pay rates.

Let’s all take a moment to remind ourselves of where those wages are going, too. Tom Pride, over at Pride’s Purge, has a little graphic for it, which is stolen and reproduced below:



So all those bankers, directors and MPs are taking all the cash, leaving the rest of us with – what? This article suggests that, when you take out all the variations – like bonuses, wages for people who do real jobs (unlike bankers, directors and MPs) increased by just 0.6 per cent in the past year. That’s from the Bank of England.

If employment has increased – and there’s no reason to say it hasn’t – we can also conclude that the reason employers are more willing to take people on is that they can pay peanuts for them and rely on the government to top them up with in-work benefits. It seems likely that the work was always there but employers weren’t going to take anybody on if it meant increasing the wages bill and reducing the amount of profit available to them. Now that zero-hours contracts are available, along with part-time schemes that deny people pensions and holiday pay, it’s a different matter.

Of course the trade unions are in no position to stand up for workers’ rights – they have been stripped of any influence over the past 35 years of neoliberal, free-market rule.

The number of people who were self-employed increased by a staggering 186,000, to reach 3.25 million, while people working as self-employed part-time increased by 93,000 to reach 1.27 million. That’s 4.52 million – almost one-sixth of the total number of people in work. If you think that’s great, you haven’t been paying attention. Remember this article, warning that the increase was due to older people staying in work? And what about the catastrophic collapse in self-employed earnings we discovered at the same time?

How many of these are people who have been persuaded to claim tax credits as self-employed people, rather than jump through the increasingly-difficult hoops set out for them if they claimed Jobseekers’ Allowance – and do they know they’ll have to pay all the money back when their deception is discovered?

The number of people in part-time employment has also increased, by 28,000 to reach 6.82 million. Are we to take it that this means under-employment has increased again?

Public sector employment has fallen again. If you want to know why the government keeps messing you around, there’s your answer. There aren’t enough people to do the job. This month’s statistics show 11,000 fewer public sector employees than in March, and 282,000 fewer than this time last year.

Unemployment is said to have dropped – but remember, this is not counting people who have been sanctioned. A recent study by Professor David Stuckler of Oxford University suggests as many as half a million people could have been sanctioned off-benefit in order to massage the figures, meaning that the total listed – 931,700 – is probably wrong. Remember also that Universal Credit claimants aren’t counted, nor are those on government work schemes – another 123,000 people.

This means the actual unemployment rate is likely to be double the number provided by the official statistics.

And what about people on ESA/DLA/PIP?

It’s said that the numbers don’t lie.

What a shame that can’t be said about the people manipulating them.

Labour lead at 1

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 12th November - Con 33%, Lab 34%, LD 7%, UKIP 15%;

Labour just !5 short of the 35% they need for an overall majority........easy peazy.

DB4 and lapdog,

The Leadership of the SNP is left of central in politics.

The majority of their voters will be socialists with a nationalist leaning who are completely disillusioned by Cameron false promises, constant opportunistic lying and poncing disregard of a government's moral responsibility ot the reasonable decencies and necessities of a modern society.

The chances of Cameron being PM after the next election get less everyday.

And many would consider he will go down on "paper" as a failure and "destroyer" of the Conservative party..

I think the opposition parties should get cardboard cutouts of Cameron with a placard reading "Think, before you vote, what this Man promised you and his friends 5 years ago and what he has given you".

They could be placed outside the polling booths.
"