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.

There is a good chance that people will vote differently at the GE. In particular there is evidence that the UKIP vote will fall away. The Lib vote will almost certainly hold up better than expected as they don't need a high percentage spread evenly across the country to get their MPs. I have watched elections closely since 1964 and I have seen various groups and parties spring up and come to nothing. The public tend to revert to kind at a GE. Far less people are pissed of with politicians than you think. Most people are not politically active and have no idea what is going on. The fuss about the EAW debate has no relevance to Joe public. He doesn't understand it and doesn't care anyway. Only activists, Westminster workers and the chattering classes take much notice.

Not this time, not with the shower that's on offer.

I have seen much worse politicians than we have now. The coalition partners are both operating in ways they don't like. The Libs would like to be more Liberal and the Conservatives would like to be more Conservative. The Conservatives would be much better with a clear majority. However, they would do things that Labour voters would like even less than what has been happening over the last four years.

The public elect on personalities and charisma. They always have. The public, by and large are stupid. They have little understanding of policies and never read manifestos.

"They have little understanding of policies and never read manifestos."

You are talking about "Con" party politicians there obviously.

If anything, it would mainly apply to Labour voters.

The Guardian published the IQs of voters some time ago

Green - 108.3

Liberal Democrat - 108.2

Conservative - 103.7

Labour – 103

Plaid Cymru - 102.5

Scottish National - 102.2

UK Independence - 101.1

British National - 98.4

Did not vote/None of the above - 99.7"

Camoron asking Labour to help him out at Rochester clearly feels hes going to get the boot from the Con Party leadership.

Hes in a far worse position than Ed Milliband as ever been.

Haze.

After reading many of you posts I am surprise that you have the IQ to write, but constant cramming and a patient tutor must have help you overcome some of your problems. Even somebody with a similar IQ as you, perhaps about 65-70, may be able to find a therapist which will help you with your problems.

Although, as you certainly have features which may be of interest them.

======

Somebody C+P the above and put it on a card for him in big letters.

Did anyone do a IQ thingy for guardian readers?

LOL This is good for laugh!


By Holly Watt, Whitehall Editor

10:00PM GMT 12 Nov 2014

Follow





Ed Miliband will insist he wants to act as a "wealth creator" and is not planning a "big spending" spree if he becomes Prime Minister.


The embattled Labour leader, who has faced calls to step down, will say he is resilient and ready for the fight.


However, last night he admitted that the leadership crisis had worried the public, saying it was “fair to say” his party “haven’t had the best couple of weeks”.


In his speech, will acknowledge that his party made mistakes on immigration when in Government but will claim that pandering to the UK Independence Party would be a return to a more “unjust past”.


In a major change of emphasis, he will now say he is determined to rein in public spending and reduce the deficit if he wins the election.

The major speech - which is seen in Westminster as crucial in relaunching his flagging electoral chances - is likely to be attacked for being scant on detail.

The Labour leader will attempt to calm business leaders’ concerns by admitting that the financial crash left the country with a deficit that “has to be paid down”. However, having failed to set out any spending plans and blocked other cuts, he is likely to come under pressure to disclose detailed spending pledges after his speech.

The speech comes as a new poll showed the Conservatives pulling ahead for the first time since autumn 2010.

The survey by IpsosMORI showed that Mr Miliband is the most unpopular party leader running to be Prime Minister in 40 years.

The Conservatives have now pulled three points ahead of Labour, while the Labour leader's personal approval rating is lower than Michael Foot’s six months out from his disastrous 1983 election.

In an interview with BBC News, Mr Miliband admitted that “it is fair to say that we haven’t had the best couple of weeks.

“Disunited parties are parties that the public worry about and I understand that, that’s why we are going to go forward as a united party,” he added.

The Conservatives immediately attacked the Labour leader’s most recent relaunch, saying that this would be the tenth time that Mr Miliband had “relaunched” himself in four years.

In his speech, Mr Miliband will say that he will battle “for everyday people, and not just a privileged few”, as he seeks to turn around his party after a terrible week.

Mr Miliband will pledge his determination to fight the “zero-zero economy”, where “those at the top get away with zero tax”, while others struggle on “zero hours contracts”.

““You need resilience in this job. You need fight. But above all, you need belief in what you are doing,” he will say.

Mr Miliband will also attack the “deeply unequal, deeply unfair, deeply unjust country” created by the Coalition government, saying that people were asking why they were not feeling the benefits of the recovery.

“Big spending won’t solve the problems of an economy that doesn’t work for working people and we won’t have the money to do it,” he will say

He will insist that Labour can be “wealth creators, not just the wealth distributors.”

A raft of senior Labour figures – shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt, shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna, shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper– are expected to publicly support Mr Miliband’s battle over the next few days, after confusion over the Labour message.

The shadow Chancellor Ed Balls went on BBC to shrug off concerns about the poll.

"The only poll that matters is the general election," he said. “These polls have been bouncing about day to day, week to week, month to month.”

However, the Labour MP Tom Watson took to Twitter to call his party’s poll ratings “dire”, as the Conservative Party Chairman Grant Shapps said that voters would view Mr Miliband’s attempts to rebrand himself with the same enthusiasm as the Labour frontbench.

“Ed Miliband’s tenth relaunch does not cover up his failure to learn the lessons from Labour’s mistakes,” said Mr Shapps. “He has opposed everything we’ve done to turn our country around.”

Mr Miliband will also use the speech to attack the Ukip and Mr Farage, insisting that he will discuss immigration “on the basis of Labour values, not UKIP values.”

“We will be talking more about immigration as a party and we should,” he will say. “What we will never do is try to out-Ukip, Ukip.”

His comments came as Mr Farage said that his party could form a party with Labour if it would guarantee a referendum on Europe.

Asked by the New Statesman if he would go into coalition with Labour Mr Farage said he would “do a deal with the Devil if he got me what I wanted”.

cnbc just a top fund manager was asled was ed correct in what he said about the economy and is answer was 100% correct on the whole the middle to low paid have been very badly treated while the rich have been well looked after by Osborne

I would like to know who is whom, why and what for!

Tory lead didnt last long, was all the negative stuff about Milliband over last weekend. Whats more they have what they want 35% of the poll.....

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 12th November - Con 32%, Lab 35%, LD 7%, UKIP 15%; APP -25

UKIP STILL polling highly, bring on Rochester, lets see Davy thrashed.

As for the benefits scam, nothing has changed.



Don’t be duped by this Brussels 'crackdown’ on benefit tourists:

An EU court ruling stopping a migrant claiming welfare has been hailed as a breakthrough. If only that were true... writes DAVID GREEN

By David Green For The Daily Mail

Published: 01:15, 13 November 2014 | Updated: 08:42, 13 November 2014



A decision by the European Court has been hailed as a landmark moment which will curb the number of benefit tourists coming to Britain.

The judges appear to have ruled that jobless EU migrants cannot move around the Continent living off state handouts, and have no right to arrive in another country if they are unable to support themselves.

The specific ruling banned a 25-year-old Romanian woman in Germany, who had never had a job, from claiming welfare benefits in the country. And it was immediately seized on by both sides in the highly charged debate on EU migrants.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2832420/Don-t-duped-Brussels-crackdown-benefit-tourists-EU-court-ruling-stopping-migrant-claiming-welfare-hailed-breakthrough-true-writes-DAVID-GREEN.html

DAVID BUIK as just posted this on Twitter.........

YESTERDAY WAS THE SADDEST DAY OF MY PROFESSIONAL LIFE

TODAY’S FAYRE – Thursday, 13th November 2014



“Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea,

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark;

For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.”



Alfred, Lord Tennyson – poet – 1809-1892



After 52 years and two months’ gainful employment in the City of London, yesterday, without any qualification or ambiguity, was the saddest day of my professional life. I hang my head in shame! Any thought of a quick return of respect and trust towards the financial sector has been blown out of the water by a small collection of mindless, greedy, selfish and arrogant congenital idiots.



Going back five years I saw it as my duty to stand up for the principles of the City. Though there was a combination of reckless behaviour, incompetence, greed, poor and soft regulation, non-existent credit analysis and government/political incompetence, which eventually brought the banking sector and the world’s economy to its knees. What wasn’t 100% clear then was criminal intent. The market was under a wet sale and it was hard to pin the rosette on any individual. It was too easy to single out Fred Goodwin, but he was endemic of a combination of incompetence and hubris. He and his colleagues stood to make too much money from their success to actually want to throw the ‘Baby out with the bathwater’ with criminal intent. People were not having any of my balanced presentation. There was no appetite for conversation or reason. Too many people had been poleaxed by the crisis with many walking out in to the sunset with bags of undeserved swag!



The years rolled quietly by; the recovery started. Then the damage caused by not only PPI but also LIBOR rigging manifested themselves. Stronger and better qualified regulators brought their influence to bear. PPI fines and repayments have cost £20 billion. This behaviour was over-zealous miss-selling caused by greed and individual bonus calculations. Still criminal intent was not that obvious. LIBOR, as a system, was always flawed. Fancy allowing a trade association to decide the pricing of $500 billion of loans? When so many banks are involved in these calculations, again proving criminal intent takes time. It looks as though perpetrators will eventually be brought to book and jail looms! The threat of civil actions from wronged customers looms. Peyton Place as a saga may have nothing on the FX rigging fiasco!



Last year I flagged up the fact FX rate fixing could make the other malpractices look like a vicarage tea party. The behaviour by a few has been reprehensible. It was particularly galling that this alleged criminal collusion was going on at the same time as the LIBOR investigation. The angst and contempt for the City has never been higher! – Deservedly so! Some of the evidence makes my stomach turn. Barclays has chosen to be tried on its own. It is difficult to understand their rationale. One can only assume that Barclays felt that in the past it had been discriminated against and under Jenkins’s policy – ‘transparency’ is the name of their game.



In closing all I can say is that in the case of Andrew Bailey, Martin Wheatley and Tracy McDermott, the market has every confidence. I know I speak for 99.999% of City workers – WE ARE ANGRY, DISPIRITED AND DISMAYED. Trust me the City is NOT rotten to the core! These FX fiddlers are just mindless and selfish. May they be brought to book! To the guilty – I hope the keys are thrown away for a long time. Fines have proved to be useless. They are not a deterrent.

Deluded or hallucinations?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30025957

Ed Miliband "absolutely" sees a prime minister when he looks in the mirror in the morning, he has told the BBC.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-caught-on-video-suggesting-the-nhs-should-be-run-privately-9857389.html

Nigel Farage caught on video suggesting NHS should be run privately

Ukip leader Nigel Farage has been caught on film telling party supporters that the NHS should move away from the state-funded model, and towards a US-style insurance-based system.

The footage shows the Ukip leader say he would feel more “comfortable” if the UK’s healthcare was opened up to the “marketplace”.

YAWN.

"When Rosetta was first conceived hardly anyone had mobile phones, Margaret Thatcher was in power and the Channel tunnel was eight years away from completion."

Hmmm? Well done, I suppose. Let's hope we do get some very valuable information from it.

One day, one of these things might be on target for the earth. One of them did hit the earth millions of years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. It would be nice to be able to stop something like that if it looked like happening in the future. Practice makes perfect too.

Rosetta mission cost: Close to 1.4 billion euros (£1.1 billion), including Philae's cost of 220 million euros (£173 million)

Number of countries behind the comet landing: 14

Philae distance from home: 316 million miles

Mission length so far: 10 years

Time taken for news to reach Earth: 28 minutes, 20 seconds (it will vary)

Philae weight: 100 kilograms

Comet 67P weight: 10 billion tonnes

Number of names suggested for landing site: 8,000 (the name chosen was Agilkia)

Length of lander's stay on comet: No one knows yet

Announcement retweets: 28,000 in first hour