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.

stan - quite seriously .... have a look at how the current french wealth tax is levied ..... it is so-called socialism gone mad and with far-reaching effects even for hard-up farmers and the like

Hollande was in atricky position when he was elected. He won on an anti-austerity, socialist platform. The problem is that he didn't have an alternative plan that was costed. He essentially had the same plan as our Labour party, which was to pump money into the economy. He wanted to spend money on infrastructure projects and took a Keynesian stance of trying to spend his way out of a recession.

He found quite quickly that funds were not available. He had two choices. One was to increase taxes or borrow. It was then that France's credit status was downgraded making borrowing more expensive. He did borrow quite a bit, but there were threats to downgrade France even further. Clearly borrowing was a dead end, especially as the medicine was not working. He then switched to taxes and introduced very aggressive higher tax rates. These have hit wealthy people, some of whom have left the country. As cynic says, it has hit farmers and people with any assets.

The sad thing for Holland's, is that even the tax hikes haven't worked and he is now France's most unpopular leader. If there was an election tomorrow, his party would be wiped out.

There is a lesson to be learnt by the UK.

cynic

You might like this

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2843835/Photographer-snaps-nauseating-selfie-Dubai-s-Burj-Khalifa.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490

great pix ..... confess i have never bothered to go up there as it's something of a hassle to book

i'm very surprised that it hasn't become a prime terrorist target, though i'm sure it's very well guarded and protected
apart from the fact that it is an iconic building, i believe many orthodox moslems find it offensive as they consider it hubris or somesuch for humans to try to climb to or as high as Allah

i'm sure we must have some moslems on this site, or at some with decent knowledge who can confirm or demolish this statement

DAILY MAIL COMMENT: It's no good Dave. To keep out Red Ed, you MUST change

By Daily Mail Comment

Published: 01:40, 22 November 2014 | Updated: 01:54, 22 November 2014


Asked yesterday what goes through his mind when he sees a white van parked outside a house, an awkward-looking Ed Miliband paused and, oozing sincerity, recited … ‘Respect’.

Whether this is true or, more likely, just a desperate and slightly ludicrous sound-bite dreamed up by his spin doctors didn’t matter a jot.

The damage had already been done by his close friend Emily Thornberry, whose sneering tweet of a van parked outside a home decorated with England flags will be the abiding — and most devastating — memory of the Rochester by-election.



David Cameron must scrap his commitment to spending £12billion a year on foreign aid, appeal to Ukip defectors by advancing the date of the promised EU referendum, and stop sneering at Ukip supporters



In a single image, this champagne socialist MP — a human rights lawyer who lives in a £2.9 million house in trendy Islington with her High Court judge husband (whose chambers offers advice on setting up offshore trusts), and who send their children to a selective school 13 miles away so they can avoid the appalling local comprehensives — summed up Labour’s condescending and arrogant disregard for ordinary voters.


In a single image, this champagne socialist MP — a human rights lawyer who lives in a £2.9 million house in trendy Islington with her High Court judge husband (whose chambers offers advice on setting up offshore trusts), and who send their children to a selective school 13 miles away so they can avoid the appalling local comprehensives — summed up Labour’s condescending and arrogant disregard for ordinary voters.

Indeed, how telling that a schism opened in the Labour Party yesterday, with many of Mr Miliband’s MPs believing Ms Thornberry should not have been made to resign from her shadow post, perhaps because they share her disdain for ‘everyday people’, to use her leader’s own cringemaking phrase.

Doubtless, David Cameron was grateful to Labour for providing a distraction from his own woes in Rochester, where Ukip overturned a 9,500 majority to win its second MP in a month.

When the by-election was called, ministers spoke bullishly of pricking the Ukip bubble — with Mr Cameron saying unedifyingly that he would stop the defector Mark Reckless from getting his ‘fat arse’ back on the green benches of the Commons.





Emily Thornberry's sneering tweet of a van parked outside a home decorated with England flags will be the abiding memory of the Rochester by-election

But, despite flooding the Kent constituency with Cabinet ministers — the Prime Minister himself made an unprecedented five visits — the Tories lost by almost 3,000 votes.



More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2844947/DAILY-MAIL-COMMENT-s-no-good-Dave-Red-Ed-change.html

Dennis Skinner MP

what does he contribute to the debate ? His all outdated class war ranting and doesn't put forward anything of substance, his become a joke.

Christian Horner's guests at Red Bull:

It is a sign of Labour's woes, when Miliband has to remind people that the party supports working people.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/rochester-byelection-forget-emily-thornberry-labour-long-since-betrayed-the-working-class-9876518.html

Rochester by-election: Forget Emily Thornberry, Labour long since betrayed the working class

What is striking about the Emily Thornberry affair is not that a Labour minister has “shown contempt for the working class”, as has been suggested, but that this should be a surprise.

This contempt wasn’t a clause in the party’s constitution, but increasingly it came close to being a policy within the past fifty years - finally becoming official in the 1990s when the Labour government embraced an open-door approach to immigration, fully aware that it would be opposed by the masses. And so - it didn’t tell them. It kept the news within its ranks in the hallowed halls of Westminster, and at north London dinner parties far from the postcodes where white vans are parked and the flag of St George flies. Well, it certainly smelt like contempt.

Part of the Labour party story - beyond the fleeting triumphs and the false dawns - has been that of championing an image of the working class, while showing contempt for the working class that fails to fit this image. Way back, this was anyone who wanted to own their own home, run their own business, watch ITV, send their kids to grammar school, or live next door to people they felt they had something in common with. This changed over time, thankfully. The party realised that the multitude didn’t exist in some folksy, prelapsarian, mythical north somewhere in the 1930s.

The perennials of unemployment, housing lists and the north-south divide persisted, but essentially the outlook and the aspirations of the working class changed. What didn’t was the party’s failure to address concerns among the multitude - immigration, multiculturalism, Europe - that didn’t fit with the image in which it had cast the average bloke, whoever he was. (As a cub reporter the late Gilbert Harding charged into a pub and bellowed: “Where will I find the average man?” Only to discover that every example was the exception to the rule).

From the off, those early supporters of the Labour party, the Fabians Beatrice and Sidney Webb, showed contempt for the leisure of the working class. Those steeped in the internationalism of the hard left, and the self-loathing of the soft-centre, never understood the patriotism of the British working class - something that was an extension of the neighbourhood, as surely as this was an extension of the street, and the street an extension of the home, for those that had little else to align themselves with. Along with this came an insularity, localism, collectivism (that was celebrated), but equally, a negative reaction to outsiders arriving en masse and changing the cultural landscape (which was condemned).

Seeing the image tweeted by Labour’s now former shadow attorney general, it’s as though this concept of the working class is being held up to ridicule. The absence of an accompanying comment appears to underline this. Thornberry’s fatal faux pas has been compared with that of Gordon Brown’s almighty slip-up, when he was heard to refer to Labour voter Gillian Duffy as a bigot for daring to raise the taboo of immigration. Chances are this might have a similar impact.

Emily Thornberry claims there was no malice aforethought in her eagerness to keep her Twitter followers updated on her day out. It was simply that she never comes across such sights on the Islington street in which she lives. But we all live in a culture where such cries of innocuousness and innocence are redundant. It’s a culture that the Labour party itself has created - a false triumph you could argue - and now it has come along and bitten one of its own on the rear. Before, and certainly beyond the era of the Macpherson Report and its thought crime of “unwitting prejudice”, we had to be seen to be offended, and often on the behalf of others; of being guilty until proven innocent; of giving interpretation precedence over intention. How ironic, that it should now be a character so much part of that culture who has been condemned and forced to apologise and resign - the very stereotype and caricature, no less: a multi-millionaire, Islington-living, Labour minister who married well, and created her riches in the nebulous but lucrative field of human rights law.

The stereotypical white van man with his St George flag, must be absolutely relishing this as he prepares to give his vote to another party. Just like so many of his number in Rochester, Clacton, and Heywood and Middleton.

Labour tries to rebut claims party is out of touch with working class voters

Hazel Blears backs Ed Miliband’s decision to sack Emily Thornberry but warns of disillusionment about career politicians



Chris Johnston, and Henry McDonald in Belfast


theguardian.com, Saturday 22 November 2014 16.42 GMT



Hazel Blears: 'People right across the spectrum do feel that politician who have never done a different job somehow cannot be in touch with their lives.' Photograph: Jon Super/AP



But she warned of a growing disillusionment among voters because an increasing number of MPs had little experience of life outside the Westminster bubble and were perceived as being out of touch with the general public.

The former communities secretary said parliament contained too many career politicians who had moved from jobs as professional political advisers to gaining safe seats in the Commons and then becoming ministers.

“In 1979, 3% of all MPs came through that path, the ‘transition belt’ I called it, of being a special adviser, getting a safe seat ending up in the government,” she told the programme.

“At the last election in 2010 it was 24% and rising. There is a genuine issue here. People right across the spectrum do feel that politician who have never done a different job somehow cannot be in touch with their lives.



http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/22/labour-rebut-claims-party-out-of-touch-working-class-voters

MORE MORE Hays, just shows how u and

your boys are shitting.

Dont forget Rochester 271 on UKIP list.

Have u seen todays papers, UKIP to get at least 40 seats.

Your posts at the moment have fear written all over them.

Not long now Hays before Mansion Tax........ keep your piggy bank topped up.

Just think how Im going to get done.........a £7.9 million pound house but do I care??????

Not in the least.

I unlike you am not selfish and had to work my way to this position, you on the other hand was handed down everything.

Pampered puffs(non sexual) like you are going to be hit but lets face it, its really nothin g of your disposable income per week.

Grow up and accept it and pay it.

Would you like to be a rent boy!!!!!!!!!!!

Hazel Blear backs Ed Miliband’s decision to sack Emily Thornberry

Is that the Hazel Blears who flipped her houses

I thought her name was spelt Blair ?

Scotland, Scotland Scotland!!!!!

who says £7.9m?
for example, in the current climate, houses on the wentworth estate regularly fail to get near the value attributed ..... mind you £7.9m won't get near the price asked for many of those tasteless monstrosities

Join the twitterstorm #CameronMustGo


https://twitter.com/hashtag/CameronMustGO?src=hash

Anyone watching 'It Was Alright In The 1970's" on Channel 4, absolutely brilliant. How did we get away with it? Black and White Minstrel Show etc. Different world :0)

That comment applies the Labour front bench as well, apart from many on the back benches.

Agreed Haystack, all flavours are at it!

Gordon Brown is standing down, just announced. He is probably getting on the same gravy train as Blair.

Has Fred died? Awfully quiet :0)