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.

By Telegraph View
6:25AM GMT 20 Nov 2014
Telegraph View: Nigel Farage's party can no longer get away with simply behaving like the outsiders of British politics

In all likelihood, the people of Rochester and Strood will elect the same MP in today’s by-election as they did at the general election in 2010. The reason why this contest has caused such consternation and attracted the attention of so many politicians and media pundits is that this time he is standing for Ukip rather than the Conservatives.

Such is the febrile nature of modern politics, and so great the apparent disaffection of the electorate, that they will re-elect Mr Reckless under his new colours whether he would make a good MP or not. After all, was he really such an assiduous champion for his constituency before he joined Nigel Farage’s insurgency, as he now claims to have been?

He was, for example, in favour of a big housing development on former MoD land on the Hoo peninsula when he was a Tory – yet is now opposed to the same scheme. He has made blocking the plans on a natural conservation site, home to a flock of nightingales, a key plank in his by-election campaign.Since a central element of Ukip’s appeal is that the “mainstream” parties are always saying one thing and doing another, this about-turn is indefensible. But there is a pattern here. Mr Reckless yesterday suggested that EU migrants would be asked to leave the country if Ukip ever formed a government and withdrew the UK from Europe.

“In the near term we’d have to have a transitional period, and we should probably allow people who are currently here to have a work permit at least for a fixed period,” he said. However, within hours his comments had been disowned by the party, which said he had “misunderstood the premise of the question”. As immigration is a central issue in a by-election that Mr Farage has called the most important for 30 years, such casual flip-flopping is at best careless and at worse, it must be said, reckless.

The voters of Rochester and Strood may well return a Ukip MP in order to give the two big parties a bloody nose. They also have the luxury of doing so in a by-election that does not even change their representative in Parliament. But should they return Mr Reckless, they might wish to reflect at the general election in a few months’ time upon the way he and his new party have conducted themselves in this contest.

Following the election of Douglas Carswell at Clacton, Ukip may well have two MPs by tomorrow. The party can no longer get away with simply behaving like the outsiders of British politics, free to dish out criticism but outraged when it is directed towards them. Over the next few months, their policies on every issue should be subjected to the closest possible scrutiny.

Not sure what happened there Haystack, here is the link again.



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11241479/Rochester-by-election-live-what-is-Britain-saying-about-Ukip.html

Max,

I think there was a problem between the chair and the keyboard.

:o)

Very likely hilly :-)

The truth about East European migration: One in 30 Latvians are living in Britain, one in 60 Poles are also over here - and statistics don't even show latest influx
Statistics show 1.3 per cent of Eastern Europeans living anywhere in Europe are now in the UK
Britain is giving citizenship to more migrants than any other EU country, figures show
Since 2000, more than 2.1m migrants have acquired British citizenship
Data compiled by independent Migration Observatory at Oxford University
Romanian and Bulgarian migrant numbers have also continued to increase

By Jack Doyle And James Chapman For The Daily Mail


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2841686/The-truth-East-European-migration-One-30-Latvians-living-Britain-one-60-Poles-statistics-don-t-latest-influx.html#ixzz3JdAyuEuh
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

is it not amazing that the true facts come out when most have gone to the polls
why was this information not put out when it going to be put out answer
the gov stopped it

Tanker, that article was published at about 10am I think and the Reckless result has been a foregone conclusion for weeks!

Don't worry, Tanker. UKIP are going to win it.

I wouldn't confuse true facts with what is published in the Mail.

Any idea when the results will come through?

Or your Torygraph.

The Tories deception Bible.

Conservatism in a nutshell, part 2: Laissez-faire isn’t – kittysjones 20/11/2014



The first part of this article hits the nail right on the head:

Oh, the irony of Cameron trying to blame the “global economy”for the utter mess of the UK economy that his party has created. (Well, unless you are a millionaire, then it’s all a pretty good mess, actually.) Cameron’s mess is an entirely homegrown one, and is entirely down to his policies. Worse still, no matter how desperate things get, his message to the UK is that the only solution is to stick to his plan – more austerity – the plan that has created the problems in the first place.

Labour dealt with the global banking crisis without the need for austerity, and had steered the UK out of recession by 2009/10, Cameron, and his government caused a homegrown recession just like Thatcher and Major did, through redistributing public wealth to private pockets.

Cameron’s “long term economic plan” is to continue transferring public funds to private bank accounts. Not for the benefit of the economy, or the public, but for the sole benefit of hoarding millionaires and Tory donors who are sucking our public funds out of circulation and killing the economy.

To read the rest of it, and find out what it has to do with ‘laissez-faire’ economics, visit the kittysjones blog.

Michael Gove ‘100% convinced’ no more Tory MPs will defect to Ukip

Any more defections, following those of Mark Reckless and Douglas Carswell, will provoke a crisis in the Conservative party



Rowena Mason, political correspondent, and Madeline Ratcliffe


The Guardian, Thursday 20 November 2014 16.58 GMT




Conservative chief whip Michael Gove has hit back at Ukip claims that two MPs are on the verge of joining Nigel Farage, saying he is “absolutely 100%” sure there will be no more defections in the wake of the Rochester & Strood byelection.

The senior Tory, who is in charge of party discipline, said he is “quite confident” his party will win, despite all the polls over the last seven weeks suggesting Ukip is on course to have its second MP. One bookmaker has even started paying out on a victory for Mark Reckless, the former Tory MP whose defection to Ukip triggered the contest in the north Kent constituency.



More: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/20/michael-gove-100-per-cent-no-more-tory-defections-ukip

See Osborne is down on his knees to EU. once again.

The bankers are going to love him.

U-turn U-bend!

How bad will the Labour vote be tonight? Labour must be quaking in their shoes Losing in Scotland and look like loosing in England

How much did it cost the UK poor tax payer for Osborne's futile challenge?

Ask Hays if he can get the figure from Party CO.


=======

“I’m not going to spend taxpayers’ money on a legal challenge now unlikely to succeed. The fact remains these are badly designed rules that are pushing up bankers’ pay not reducing it," the Chancellor said.

Regarding Labour MP's and Scotland, yes they will stand to lose around 40 MP's, but in any resulting coalition the SNP are going to be a powerful source imo.
2517

d4
That's right. The EU rules specify bonuses not greater than salary. To give bonuses that are high then salaries have to rise to be able to give a bigger bonuses. City bankers are already being lured to Asian banking markets in advance of the rules. The rules are likely to damage London as one of the premier finance centres