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.

Well said Tanks -):

Hays Hays Hays Lord Ashcroft Poll.

Labour retake lead after Tories held lead for just 1 week only in 2 years...........


Ashcroft National Poll: Con 29%, Lab 30%, Lib Dem 9%, UKIP 16%, Green 7%

By Peter Oborne
2:12PM GMT 17 Nov 2014
The contradictions between Ukip's Left and the Right threaten to tear the party apart

I suppose it was inevitable that, as Ukip gathered support, the party would start to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.

An enormous split has now opened up over the economy. Indeed it is more correct to call it an abyss. It is far deeper and more divisive than anything currently going on inside the Conservative Party, or even in Ed Miliband's Labour Party.

On the one side is Ukip's libertarian Right, which wants Britain to resemble the United States as much as possible, with low taxes and minimal standards of social provision.

Its supporters say they look to Margaret Thatcher for their inspiration. But the truth is that Maggie Thatcher in office very rarely touched any of these advanced libertarian ideas, such as the flat tax.

This group cannot count for a great deal of support from ordinary members. It is, however, well represented among the small number of donors who dominate the party finances and can always rely on the ear of Nigel Farage.


Ukip also has a Left wing, and it is becoming clear that the party’s economics spokesman Patrick O’Flynn is its leader.

At Ukip’s party conference six weeks ago, Mr O’Flynn made a speech that appalled the libertarian Right of the party. Ever since then, its supporters have been intriguing against him and seeking to bring about his downfall.

There are two key elements of Mr O’Flynn’s speech. On the one hand, Mr O’Flynn advocated sharply raising income tax thresholds, so that middle earners did not come into the top rate of tax. This idea was promptly copied by David Cameron in his speech in Manchester the following week. Mr O’Flynn’s second idea was a tax on luxury goods, the so-called “Wag tax”. However, Ukip’s Right wing got hold of Nigel Farage immediately after Mr O’Flynn’s speech and forced the Ukip leader to distance himself from his economic spokesman.

The party's Right is now planning to strike again against Mr O’Flynn, as Andre Walker this morning reveals in a well-informed piece on Breitbart. According to Mr Walker, the senior members of Ukip are now making a concerted effort to get Mr O’Flynn removed.

One source is quoted as saying that Mr O’Flynn needs “does need to shut up with all talk of aggressive tax avoidance and bashing big business ... It's a real mistake to have a pinko in such an important position …” According to Breitbart, a letter will soon be circulated calling for him to go.

I should declare an interest. Mr O’Flynn was my colleague for many years on the Daily Express. He is a man who’s integrity and intellect I greatly admire. With his first-class degree in economics from King’s College Cambridge, he has always struck me as far more intelligent, and also far more connected with the views of ordinary voters, than George Osborne, the Chancellor.

I strongly believe that if the Ukip donors succeed in getting rid of Patrick O’Flynn it will mark the moment when the party returns to becoming a fringe movement of no significance. Mr O’Flynn’s emergence as a senior figure within the party has coincided with an exponential growth of party support amongst working-class voters, especially in the Midlands and the North. Indeed, as Matthew Goodwin pointed out in his article in the Telegraph today, Ukip support is by no means dependent on a small number of former Thatcherites.

Mr Farage claims to represent a different kind of politics to the mainstream political parties. There is some truth in this, but he is every bit as dependent on big powerful donors as is either David Cameron or Ed Miliband. He is in danger of allowing this dependence to damage the integrity of his party, with just six months to go before the general election.

The Telegraph

The by-election in Rochester and Strood this Thursday will give UKIP their second MP in as many months, hence Camerons pre-emptive pivot to the economy. The electorate is tired of politicians trying to ‘out UKIP, UKIP’. Cameron knows that the voters trust him a lot more on the economy than Messrs Clegg, Farage and Miliband. Nobody is listening to Cameron on Europe anymore, especially not the Europeans, no matter how right he may be. Hench why at the G20 he's chosen to talk about the 'red lights' of the economy the only subject he really has left..

I think hes frightened just how far unemployment will drop if we go into a recession plus hes using his political cap, having said that I think we may have a few months left yet of the bull.

Shortie.

Cameron and cohort Obsolete have only just found out that the world's economy effects the UK's economy. Perhaps, after what they have been on, the only colour that they can see is the red signs of the debt they are creating.

Debt, debt who mentioned debt.........



Weve never had it so good.

Well I think its nice for our to PM to finally be able to appear on TV and not look a complete twat, showing up the country! Finally he's learnt to leave Europe alone and UKIP, no ones really listening anyway, least of all the Europeans.... Cameron needs to understand that he should be siding with his own country if he wants support... A good first base might be if he appeared on Jackanory to see if he can hold any audiences attention!

LOL.

Worth a read if you haven't already..

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11224868/Lies-damn-lies-and-David-Camerons-EU-policy.html

I think the barricades should go up again at all our ports.

Fortress England is what we need.

Captain Winston Cameron will defend the beaches once again against the bloody swine.

We don't need Europe because the Americans are coming and they will bail us out, especially the crap Captain Marvel spouts.

----

Mind told he is packing for the Cayman Isles and shipping suitcases out there. Tell Michael that he is coming, but don't tell Ken Dodd, or he may want to pack his case and go with him.

I suppose they could take some of the Diddy Men from No 10 with them!

That's a piece which was published five days ago Shortie!

Fred, have you been on the wine already?!

Don't need.

Drinking fermenting green tea.

=====-------=====

Tell you what I am pondering is the effect of EU QE will be on UK.

The market is said to be jumping for joy!


umumum

fred - shame on you ..... effect and affect :-)

Tories go nuclear..




A Reckless vote will make your home worth less, Tories tell Rochester voters

Conservatives fighting Rochester and Strood byelection use fear of house price fall in bid to stop Ukip candidate Mark Reckless



Rowena Mason, political correspondent


The Guardian, Monday 17 November 2014 16.45 GMT



Kelly Tolhurst, Tory candidate in Rochester and Strood, at a debate with her Ukip rival Mark Reckless and Paul Francis, a local journalist. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA



The Conservative byelection candidate in Rochester and Strood has suggested some voters are worried that having a Ukip MP as their local representative could lead to a drop in house prices.

Kelly Tolhurst, the 36-year-old businesswoman fighting for the Tories, said she had won the support of many people who were not keen on the idea of a Ukip MP representing the Medway towns.

She mentioned the concern as something that voters had raised but other Conservatives are making the argument about falling house prices more explicitly as they enter the final four days of their campaign against Mark Reckless, the Ukip candidate and former Tory MP.

One Conservative MP campaigning on the high street with colleagues said: “The danger is if you vote Ukip the value of your house may go down.”

Asked if voters had actually raised this concern with her, Tolhurst said: “I have actually heard a few people say that to me but I’m not getting into that.




More desperation here: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/17/reckless-vote-will-make-your-home-worth-less-tories-tell-rochester-voters

Talking of splits in UKIP!

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/10/hiv-migrants-douglas-carswell-ukip-nigel-farage-support

Divisions between Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell reinforced in Clacton

Wide-ranging policy and cultural differences between Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell, which are likely to dog Ukip before the general election, were highlighted as the leaders of the insurgent political force embarked on a chaotic walkabout through Clacton-on-Sea.

Ukip’s first elected MP, who characterised himself as the modern embodiment of radical Gladstonian liberalism, set himself at odds with Farage when he declined to offer a specific endorsement of his call for a ban on migrants with HIV from entering the UK.

Carswell, whose father, Wilson, was one of the first doctors to identify HIV/Aids in Uganda in the 1980s, also made it clear that he was not at ease with the declaration by Farage that he felt uncomfortable when he could not hear English being spoken on a commuter train. “I have no difficulty with Britain as Britain is today,” Carswell said after their mid-morning walkabout.

Carswell and Farage, some of whose allies describe their new MP as “tricky”, put on a show of unity when the Ukip leader swept into the centre of Clacton in his black Range Rover, accompanied by his posse of security guards, for a brief walkabout.

As they tried to make their way through a wall of television cameras and journalists, Farage hailed the election of Carswell as “remarkable” and spoke of how they would continue their joint campaigning in Rochester and Strood before the next byelection.

But the differences were quickly on display as Carswell shifted awkwardly when questions turned to Farage’s call, in an interview with Newsweek Europe, for a ban on immigrants with HIV. In his morning LBC phone-in, the Ukip leader extended the proposed ban to include anyone with a serious medical condition such as tuberculosis, though he later said that people with private medical insurance would be exempted.

Carswell said that Farage’s position had been “mischaracterised” by the Guardian, which reported the Newsweek interview overnight, but he declined to say whether he supported the specific proposal for a ban on people with HIV. Asked whether he was upset by Farage’s remarks given his father’s role in helping to discover Aids, Carswell said: “We need an Australian-type immigration system with control over our borders. I don’t recognise the Guardian’s characterisation of the debate … I agree with everything that Nigel has said and we need an Australian-type immigration system.”

All migrants to Australia have to pass a full medical test. If evidence is found that they are suffering from tuberculosis they are banned from settling in Australia until they have been treated. An automatic ban is not imposed on those who test positive for HIV, though an assessment is made about the likely impact of the costs of treating the person.

Carswell also used his walkabout to quash speculation that he might use his position as Ukip’s first elected MP to manoeuvre for its leadership. Asked if his presence at Westminster means Ukip now has two leaders, Carswell said: “I never will be the leader of Ukip. I don’t have the qualities, including the endless reservoirs of patience, that are required to do that. If I was ever to be the leader of the party it would be bad for me, bad for my family and disastrous for the party.”

But the Farage team is wary of Carswell, who has made clear he will have no truck with Ukip traditionalists hoping to hark back to 1950s Britain.

In an interview with the Guardian and a collection of other newspapers at his campaign office, Carswell instead placed himself in the tradition of the great Victorian Liberal prime minister William Gladstone rather than the Tory Benjamin Disraeli.

Standing next to a photograph of Gladstone, he said: “The radical Liberals were pretty successful … The old Tory elite kind of lost out to those radical reformers, thankfully, which is why we became a successful country. The tragedy of course is we ended up listening to Disraeli rather than Gladstone and the Tory elite rejected Irish Home Rule and we had a century of conflict and tears in our relationship with Ireland.”

In a swipe at traditionalists in his old party – and Ukip members tempted to look to the past – he said he emphatically rejected the reactionary politics of the Tea party. As he hailed the centre left thinker Sunder Katwala for understanding the rupture between voters and their political masters, he said: “If I had remained a member of the Conservative party I would have remained an increasingly grumpy group of people who in many ways represent a British equivalent of the Tea party. I didn’t want to do that. I’m an optimist by nature. The Tea party is angry. It wants reheated Reaganism. I like things too much to get angry and I was becoming grumpy and cross. As Ghandi said, happiness is when what you say what you do and what you think are in harmony.”

Carswell’s success had led to comparisons with the SDP / Liberal Alliance which swept to a series of byelection successes in the early 1980s. But he said that the Gang of Four was an elitist movement, in contrast to Ukip.

He said: “We mustn’t use the sort of language that the Gang of Four used. They were a movement of the elite. These were members of the governing elite who were fearful that Militant would deselect them in their seats which is why they, in most cases, went and joined the SDP. The change that Ukip represents is very different sort of change. It is not a falling out among the elites. It is a change brought by technology.

8 pm channel 4 , Dispatches how the rich get richer

Labour made the rich , richer

Cynic,

I should have hesitated!

Damn!

--------

But with Germany pondering (correct word) its exports to Russia, Russia's economy being slowed down by sanctions.

Ukraine's, tottering economy, and dangers of the Russians to inflame an artificial civil war and Cameron and G20 ratcheting the discourse.

(Not sure how much Air traffic goes over the Ukraine.)

(But I may ask a Russian if he would move his car to let me out of somewhere, but however much I thought he was wrong to block me in I would tell him to get out of his back garden. I would suggest a drink of vodka, a meal and a chat about my problems.)

Also, if QE does start in Europe with already lower "wages" that might drop initially the cost of unit production.

And with a silly billy shouting that unless he gets his way the UK is out of the EU, I can see many in the EU saying "piss off" and reinstatement of "trading cost", in practice even if illegal.

Some, medium and small companies in Europe don't trade UK, because of the exchange palaver.

Etc/

==============

The next 12-18 months are going to be "interesting" in politics and economics.

That doesn't even mention the ME and Israel and Asia and ? Africa and the Americas, starting to stir and reject "Western Standards".

Or Japan, China, perhaps Asia going into slow down and reducing imports from UK and rest of the World.

========

I have succeeded in depressing myself.

I am not putting anything on the table as far as SBs are concerned for a week or perhaps more. Luckily I may be tied up.

Holding share for long term, but may curse myself later.

the effect of the fermented green tea has clearly affected your brain!