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.

Rochester by-election: Ukip has started a class war - and is winning


By Tim Stanley

5:22AM GMT 21 Nov 2014





Thank goodness that’s over! Mark Reckless won the Rochester and Strood by-election after what felt like the longest election count in history: Robert Mugabe has faked national elections in a shorter time. But when the announcement finally came, the result was clear. Ukip first with about seven points over the Tories (as Ukip insiders were saying the day before voting); Labour embarrassed into third place; the Lib Dems garnering a pathetic 349 votes. I sincerely look forward to the day when my children say to me, “Daddy what was a Lib Dem?” And I can reply, “They were what people voted for before Ukip came along.”


The ghost of the Lib Dems might whisper that they were the leopards before the jackals – and Ukip is certainly starting to look like a more plebian third party. In his victory speech, Reckless claimed that the radical “working class tradition” has “found a home in Ukip”. And he’s not far wrong. Britain now has a political class war on its hands and – in perverse British fashion – it’s the Right, not the Left, that started it.


Cast your mind back to 2010. Ukip was a single issue party: anti-EU. Dig beneath the surface and it was composed of disaffected Thatcherite Tories – in favour of a flat tax and broadly libertarian in a way that stood to benefit the upper middle-class. Fast forward to 2014 and they are completely different. One suspects that their core appeal is on the subject of immigration; Europe is a background theme but by no means their standard; and they’ve adopted a populist philosophical position that confounds old golf course stereotypes of this party. Yet their leadership remains pure Maggie Thatcher! Nigel Farage is on camera saying that he’d like a privatised NHS and Douglas Carswell is a free market guru beloved of online libertarians. Mark Reckless looks and sounds (and probably thinks) like an awkward squad Tory MP from the 1990s – the kind that kept John Major on the verge of a nervous breakdown with countless threats of revolt over the EU’s war on imperial measurements. Somehow these posh, wide boys have managed to connect with an extraordinary coalition of angry middle-class and alienated working-class voters. How?


The answer must surely lie with collapsing faith in Westminster. The Credit Crunch, the expenses scandal, NHS horror stories, child abuse nightmares, even the dark hints of paedophile gangs at the heart of power – it all adds up to a sense that the establishment is irredeemably broken. And attempts by the mainstream parties to fix it are undone by their lack of cultural legitimacy. If there really is a class war going on, Labour has totally abandoned its position as the voice of the workers. On the day of the election, Emily Thornberry had to resign from the shadow cabinet after posting a bizarre tweet of a house covered in St George’s flags that many interpreted as a snobby comment about white van drivers. She may well have been totally innocent of ill-meaning, but by resigning/being sacked she helped add to the impression that Labour is now dominated by a metropolitan elite that looks down its noses at ordinary people. It’s the party of students and their professors, of NHS bureaucrats, welfare workers, actors, Marxist intellectuals, teachers who don’t believe in teaching, and male potters who get their kicks by dressing up as women and calling themselves artists. In short, Labour is bourgeois.


The Tories remain the Tories (the party of cuts and fox hunting) and the Lib Dems are just the past time of the half mad. Out of this slide towards metropolitanism, only Ukip has managed to project a sense of “getting” hard pressed voters. People don’t necessarily agree with Farage or even possibly like him. But they know what he is; they understand a man like that. And so long as Ukip is respected for being unpretentious, it also won’t be punished in the same way as the other parties are for doing things like u-turning or harbouring the odd racist.


To beat Ukip and retake command of the national political narrative, the mainstream parties have to reconnect with the people and to demonstrate that they share their concerns, are being honest about the problems ahead, and have faith in the common sense of ordinary people. Labour and the Tories have to remember that – to borrow an American phrase – the average man and the average woman is the king and queen of British politics. They are the masters and the successful politician is simply their servant.

what a vile horrible women that Kelly tolhust is now condemning the voters in stood
just imaging waking up with her by your side nightmare or what

grant shapps is the reason voters are ditching the party another vile up is own backside shite.

the uk I a cesspit ever party is full of MPs o are only in their for their selves and do nt give a toss about the public they insider dealing in shares knowing gov policy
yet the fca have never taken any action on their insider dealing .

we need a complete clean out of gov and start aain

Bulgaria Latvia romainia Poland have all released prisoners if they leave the country
over 50000 have been released and they are now in the uk the uk is now a prison

always said my fine fedora would easily be saved from the cooking pot :-)

She may well have been totally innocent of ill-meaning, but by resigning/being sacked she helped add to the impression that Labour is now dominated by a metropolitan elite that looks down its noses at ordinary people. It’s the party of students and their professors, of NHS bureaucrats, welfare workers, actors, Marxist intellectuals, teachers who don’t believe in teaching, and male potters who get their kicks by dressing up as women and calling themselves artists. In short, Labour is bourgeois.

goldfingers logic

THORNBERRY resigns after bollocking from Ed Milliband and good god shes gone.

What a snob she is.

She should be with the Tories.

But she is/was with the Labour party , you just don't get it do you

AND - 'We need a top piece of totty taking her place' CLASS!

Cameron Osborne shapps what a bunch of arseholes
sold the uk down the pan allowing all the criminals from all over the eu

facts the eu we now have most of their prisoners walking our streets and claiming benefits over 50000 criminals now in the uk

MAX..........................................

is that what's been eating all your carp?

Morning gf.


You still reckon Millibandus is going to get the top job?

French gloat over EU budget bill as they pocket a billion

Finance minister Michel Sapin says his country will benefit from the new EU budget contributions despite the country's economy having underperformed for over a decade





By Henry Samuel, Paris

10:22PM GMT 20 Nov 2014



France sent a gloating message to David Cameron on Thursday saying that a €2.1 billion budget bill from Brussels to Britain had benefited France, which is one billion euros up on the deal.


The Prime Minister has previously dubbed the retroactive EU surcharge on Britain’s budgetary contribution, raised due to the UK’s economic success, as “outrageous”, warning that it was “making thousands of voters believe the country should leave the European Union”.


In a galling case of Schadenfreude, Michel Sapin, the finance minister and a staunch ally of President François Hollande, boasted that Britain’s loss was France's gain, even if this was due to the country’s poorer than expected economic results.


“It just so happens that what is sending Mr Cameron into a rage is actually a source of comfort for us, because it enables us to pocket one billion euros, and that’s not nothing when you’re trying to balance your budget,” Mr Sapin told the Telegraph on Thursday.



More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11244508/French-gloat-over-EU-budget-bill-as-they-pocket-a-billion.html

When you consider the amount of time our MP's waste on the EU, the vast cost of being in it, it a no-brainer we should simply leave and have our MP's and resources focused on true British issues...

Within the EU all member states are supposed to be equal... yeah right "but some member states are more equal than others", quite clearly... Now where have we heard all this before I wonder.

That Croc is trained to eat Tories.

Watch out Hays.

Makes you wonder how much of this bill from Brussels is a direct consequence of MP's overstating our country's position, growth and GDP in their obsession to report growth!!

Rochester and Strood by-election full results


Mark Reckless (UKIP) 16,867 (42.10%)

Kelly Tolhurst (Conservative) 13,947 (34.81%)

Naushabah Khan (Labour) 6,713 (16.76%)

Clive Gregory (Green) 1,692 (4.22%)

Geoff Juby (Lib Dem) 349 (0.87%)

Hairy Knorm Davidson (Official Monster Raving Loony Party) 151 (0.38%)

Stephen Goldsbrough (Ind) 69 (0.17%)

Nick Long (People Before Profit) 69 (0.17%)

Jayda Fransen (Britain First) 56 (0.14%)

Mike Barker (Ind) 54 (0.13%)

Charlotte Rose (Ind) 43 (0.11%)

Dave Osborn (Patriotic Socialist Party) 33 (0.08%)

Christopher Challis (Ind) 22 (0.05%)

camerons family
hestines
hoe
duke of west mins
Charles
queen
cleggs
and several others get millions ever year in land subsides from the eu our money
its corrupt and the torys will never let you vote to leave never its another con

Hays,

How much did it cost the Torrid party to lose Rochester.


These are the same group of boyos who promise economic austerity for the future due to their failed policies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30142601

Public borrowing at £7.7bn in October

Government borrowing fell to £7.7bn in October, official figures show, down £0.2bn from a year earlier.

Between April and October, government borrowing was £64.1bn, an increase of £3.7bn from the same period last year.

I know I am missing something, but what the devil is the fuss over:




It is factual.


I am getting fed up with the pussyfooting about that the leaders of the main parties are performing.

A little more honesty and less media fright would improve opinion of politics.

What a stinking period of politics, when main parties are frighten of a rabble rousing spiv, leading a rabble or mob without any real feasible policies other than being "Little Englanders".

I would expect Nigel to appear wearing an eye patch and a cocked hat and a hook, if it gave him a larger pint and a mob paying for it!