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.

Geldof has been complaining that companies don't pay enough tax. Well, it is interesting that Saint Bob has all his companies registered in the tax haven of British Virgin Islands. He also has a collection of businesses that have been set up to profit from activity in Africa. He uses his name to get preferential treatment from the governments there.

There are more Labour MPs in prison than any other party.

Bono is also registered in British Virgin Islands.

Geldof has properties in Central London and Kent that are all registered in BVI.

I am beginning to believe that the Cons party is becoming the party for liars.

40 years ago, I wouldn't thought it so.

What has change about the leadership and membership?

There are more Tory MPs and ex Tory MPs peudophiles than any other party..........waiting to go to jail.

So H/S give us the "full list" of "all off shore' donators as you boast that you are so well informed.

Geldof's business partner is former deputy chairman of the Conservative party.

Geldof is chairman of a £125 million private equity firm, seeking to make large profits for its rich clients by investing in Africa.

No wonder Geldof wants to do charity songs for Africa. It will raise his profile there no end.

Haystack Send an email to Haystack View Haystack's profile - 18 Nov 2014 12:25 - 50571 of 50573

There are more Labour MPs in prison than any other party.



That is possibly because too many con party members have "establishment" contacts and "legal advisors", or seemingly disposed of any incriminating evidence.

What did happen under the Maggie (the mother of a gun runner) in the 70s and 80s to investigation and legal files .

Was that the Geof Archer period.

It that the reason for needing an establishment figure for the enquiry?

Why Adele was right to ignore Bob Geldof and Band Aid
Bryony Gordon wonders why, when it comes to charity, the rich and famous donate their precious time while the rest of us must donate our money

Bryony Gordon By Bryony Gordon7:00AM GMT 18 Nov 2014
I have so many problems with the latest Band Aid single that I don’t really know where to begin, but begin we must so let’s get going with the fact that two-thirds of the line-up are unrecognisable to anyone over the age of 30 – not least Bono, who in the group photo looks as if he’d rather be anywhere else than at the feet of a YouTube Vlogger (Zoella) and slightly to the left of a bloke who once lost The X Factor (Olly Murs).
Still, that’s not really a bearing on the single as such – it’s more a sign of how out-of-touch I am with popular culture, that when I looked at the picture my thoughts were 'gosh, it looks like a school photo on mufti day!’, followed by 'thank goodness for One Direction – making elderly women feel young since 2010’.
My real problem is Geldof’s insistence on shaming Adele for not appearing on the track. “Adele is doing nothing,” said Geldof at the weekend. “She’s not answering the phone… she’s not writing. She’s not recording. She doesn’t want to be bothered by anyone. She won’t pick up the phone to her manager. She’s bringing up a family, you know.”
This is as condescending as the song itself – do Africans know it’s Christmas? Given that over 500 million people living there are Christians, we must presume the answer to that is yes – and worse, it is a form of bullying that has sneeringly been dressed up as do-gooding.
The message is loud and clear, even if the music isn’t: Geldof is here to save West Africa from Ebola, and Adele, with her peculiar un-celebrity desire to sod the limelight as she brings up a toddler, is a selfish little woman who must be publicly humiliated.


Later, we learnt that Adele had quietly made a private donation to Oxfam. But in the shallow, self-promoting world of celebrity, the simple and silent act of handing over money to charity is not the done thing – that’s what we impoverished plebs do.
Instead, the rich and famous donate their precious time, and for this they expect to be celebrated and congratulated, as if before they flashed their expensively whitened teeth in the video for a song, we had no idea that Ebola was a problem, or that thousands of Africans were spending their last days on this earth in unimaginable horror, bleeding from every orifice, unable even to be comforted by their family and loved ones.


“Give us your f***ing money,” was Geldof’s message way back when, and it is his message now – you all dig deep and give up your hard earned cash because these famous people who make millions singing songs have deigned to give up a few hours of their time on a weekend.
“We really can stop this… foul little plague,” said Geldof when he appeared on BBC Breakfast yesterday morning, with no mention of the Disasters Emergency Committee, which has raised £20 million for the region, or Medecins sans Fronteries, who have been out there since March.
It’s not the troops deployed to Sierra Leone who are going to make a real difference – that honour will go to Geldof and his merry army of pop stars, even though they probably think a hazmat suit is a creation by a hot new designer.
Which all reminds me of something Noel Gallagher said during Live 8 nine years ago: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick fifteen-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox seeing 'Sweet Dreams’ and thinks 'f**k me, she might have a point there, … we should really drop the debt, you know’. It’s not going to happen, is it?”


But anyone who refuses to go along with Geldof is pilloried or sworn at; so, when a Sky News presenter asked him a perfectly reasonable question yesterday morning about the tax practices of some of the artists featured on the song, his only answer was “it’s b******s”. This is the kind of response you might expect from a 21-year-old with a YouTube channel, but from a 63-year-old trying to engage the public in a subject as grave as Ebola, it just seems churlish. How can he expect us to take him seriously if he cannot behave in a serious manner himself?
Nobody wants a world full of Ebola, but nor do I want a world full of Malaria and HIV and Tuberculosis and numerous other diseases – not to mention conditions such as hunger and poverty - that are destroying the lives of many millions of Africans every day.
Certainly, I don’t want to be told how to behave philanthropically by a man worth an estimated £32 million, a man who is said to use tax avoidance schemes (it is telling that when a journalist asked him two years ago how much tax he paid, Geldof exploded at her, saying: 'My time? Is that not a tax?’ Well, no, Bob, it isn’t).
I don’t want to be implored to give charitably by a band that travels in separate private jets because they don’t get on (One Direction), or by a man who avoids Irish taxes while simultaneously telling the Irish government to help developing countries (Bono).
“It really doesn’t matter if you don’t like this song,” said Geldof as he launched it, “what you have to do is buy this thing.” But do we? Really? If we don’t, does this make us unfeeling and uncaring, or does it mean that we have already donated money to the cause, or a different cause, even?
This, I think, is my main objection to Band Aid 30: it is all predicated on a belief that the British public are mean-spirited and uncharitable, when in actual fact nothing could be further from the truth. It’s time the likes of Geldof stopped asking us to give money, and like Adele, started donating some themselves. Charity, after all, begins at home.

Why Adele was right to ignore Bob Geldof and Band Aid
Bryony Gordon wonders why, when it comes to charity, the rich and famous donate their precious time while the rest of us must donate our money

Bryony Gordon By Bryony Gordon7:00AM GMT 18 Nov 2014
I have so many problems with the latest Band Aid single that I don’t really know where to begin, but begin we must so let’s get going with the fact that two-thirds of the line-up are unrecognisable to anyone over the age of 30 – not least Bono, who in the group photo looks as if he’d rather be anywhere else than at the feet of a YouTube Vlogger (Zoella) and slightly to the left of a bloke who once lost The X Factor (Olly Murs).
Still, that’s not really a bearing on the single as such – it’s more a sign of how out-of-touch I am with popular culture, that when I looked at the picture my thoughts were 'gosh, it looks like a school photo on mufti day!’, followed by 'thank goodness for One Direction – making elderly women feel young since 2010’.
My real problem is Geldof’s insistence on shaming Adele for not appearing on the track. “Adele is doing nothing,” said Geldof at the weekend. “She’s not answering the phone… she’s not writing. She’s not recording. She doesn’t want to be bothered by anyone. She won’t pick up the phone to her manager. She’s bringing up a family, you know.”
This is as condescending as the song itself – do Africans know it’s Christmas? Given that over 500 million people living there are Christians, we must presume the answer to that is yes – and worse, it is a form of bullying that has sneeringly been dressed up as do-gooding.
The message is loud and clear, even if the music isn’t: Geldof is here to save West Africa from Ebola, and Adele, with her peculiar un-celebrity desire to sod the limelight as she brings up a toddler, is a selfish little woman who must be publicly humiliated.


Later, we learnt that Adele had quietly made a private donation to Oxfam. But in the shallow, self-promoting world of celebrity, the simple and silent act of handing over money to charity is not the done thing – that’s what we impoverished plebs do.
Instead, the rich and famous donate their precious time, and for this they expect to be celebrated and congratulated, as if before they flashed their expensively whitened teeth in the video for a song, we had no idea that Ebola was a problem, or that thousands of Africans were spending their last days on this earth in unimaginable horror, bleeding from every orifice, unable even to be comforted by their family and loved ones.


“Give us your f***ing money,” was Geldof’s message way back when, and it is his message now – you all dig deep and give up your hard earned cash because these famous people who make millions singing songs have deigned to give up a few hours of their time on a weekend.
“We really can stop this… foul little plague,” said Geldof when he appeared on BBC Breakfast yesterday morning, with no mention of the Disasters Emergency Committee, which has raised £20 million for the region, or Medecins sans Fronteries, who have been out there since March.
It’s not the troops deployed to Sierra Leone who are going to make a real difference – that honour will go to Geldof and his merry army of pop stars, even though they probably think a hazmat suit is a creation by a hot new designer.
Which all reminds me of something Noel Gallagher said during Live 8 nine years ago: “Correct me if I’m wrong, but are they hoping that one of these guys from the G8 is on a quick fifteen-minute break at Gleneagles and sees Annie Lennox seeing 'Sweet Dreams’ and thinks 'f**k me, she might have a point there, … we should really drop the debt, you know’. It’s not going to happen, is it?”


But anyone who refuses to go along with Geldof is pilloried or sworn at; so, when a Sky News presenter asked him a perfectly reasonable question yesterday morning about the tax practices of some of the artists featured on the song, his only answer was “it’s b******s”. This is the kind of response you might expect from a 21-year-old with a YouTube channel, but from a 63-year-old trying to engage the public in a subject as grave as Ebola, it just seems churlish. How can he expect us to take him seriously if he cannot behave in a serious manner himself?
Nobody wants a world full of Ebola, but nor do I want a world full of Malaria and HIV and Tuberculosis and numerous other diseases – not to mention conditions such as hunger and poverty - that are destroying the lives of many millions of Africans every day.
Certainly, I don’t want to be told how to behave philanthropically by a man worth an estimated £32 million, a man who is said to use tax avoidance schemes (it is telling that when a journalist asked him two years ago how much tax he paid, Geldof exploded at her, saying: 'My time? Is that not a tax?’ Well, no, Bob, it isn’t).
I don’t want to be implored to give charitably by a band that travels in separate private jets because they don’t get on (One Direction), or by a man who avoids Irish taxes while simultaneously telling the Irish government to help developing countries (Bono).
“It really doesn’t matter if you don’t like this song,” said Geldof as he launched it, “what you have to do is buy this thing.” But do we? Really? If we don’t, does this make us unfeeling and uncaring, or does it mean that we have already donated money to the cause, or a different cause, even?
This, I think, is my main objection to Band Aid 30: it is all predicated on a belief that the British public are mean-spirited and uncharitable, when in actual fact nothing could be further from the truth. It’s time the likes of Geldof stopped asking us to give money, and like Adele, started donating some themselves. Charity, after all, begins at home.

bob Geldof . a very dishonest person .he uses the poor to make him rich he would not give a way the drippings of is nose a vile horrible man . does not give a toss about anyone only money .

mansion tax
i don't think any party which is advocating this tax has actually set out exactly how it will be levied - always assuming it gets through parliament

some have implied that it will be a flat tax like stamp duty - totally iniquitous
others have guessed that it will be staggered like income tax - eg nil up to £2m and then Xp per £1 thereafter

that is at least a fairer application, though with a pretty arbitrary value set at the outset and all the exemptions that are bound to apply, the yield to the exchequer is likely to be very small
in other words, it will be no more than a "jealousy tax" and a sop to the left-wing of the labour party to "prove" that the so-called rich are being soaked

gf what did you think of kens speech last night it was all 100% correct

Just the sight of Geldof makes me want to throw up. How he can slag off Adele for staying at home and bringing up a family ------------- coming from a bloke who has been a disaster as a husband and father.

Good article by Bryony Gordon, says it all.

why can we in England not have a great leader like SALMOND A MAN WITH BALLS

MANSION TAX SI SIMPLE MAKE ANOTHER TAX BAND HOUSES OVER 2M 10K A YEAR

even if it was double-posted :-)

i'll get round to reading it over my bowl of delicious home-made soup

GELDOF A VILE HORRIBLE MAN WHO SHOULD KEEP IS MOUTH SHUT AND REFLECT ON WHAT HE AS DONE TO IS FAMILY

Can only apologise re double posting, think it's a dodgy mouse.

Thanks for that H/S.. names please.

Labour has said that the mansion tax will be levied through the current property tax system. The drawback to this, is a costly revaluation process by the councils. Then there will be endless appeals. How long will it take to collect a single penny? Could it be two years or maybe three? Another policy that has not been thought through.