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.

did no labour MP's claim big expenses too?
none of the shadow cabinet???

Course they do, they are all at it!

it was a rhetorical question :-)

it's just that it would be nice to have some balance on this thread occasionally from the non-rabid section of this board

Boris bridge news....




The Thames garden bridge is nothing but a wasteful blight

The cost of Joanna Lumley’s idea has risen to £175m so far and the impact on the surrounding area will be horrendous



Rowan Moore


The Observer, Saturday 22 November 2014 17.45 GMT




How the garden bridge will look, according to its backers. Photograph: Arup/Heatherwick Studios



You get a cold call from someone charming and plausible, who tells you about something wonderful – solar panels, let’s say, or a conservatory – that will transform your house, give a faint glow of green virtue and which due to some miraculous financing arrangement will cost you nothing. Feeling weak, you say yes, and end up with a leaking roof, unmet promises and large bills. Something like this is happening to the public with the garden bridge proposed for the Thames.

Lord Davies, chairman of the Garden Bridge Trust, says that “support for the bridge has been overwhelming”. You would expect this: who could not want the free gift of a poetic-vision-cum-infrastructural-facility? Except that such public consultation as has happened is rendered worthless by the fact that it was vague or silent on a number of significant details, which might well have led to different responses. The small print for the Amazing Garden Bridge Offer is itself fantastical.

Presented last year as a £60m project entirely funded by the private sector, it is now has a budget of £175m and requires £60m of public funding, money that could otherwise be spent on much needed crossings of less privileged parts of the Thames. Described by its inventor, Joanna Lumley, as “a chance to walk through woodlands”, it actually has 2,500 square metres of vegetation, which is less than half a football pitch, and is reached by hefty stairs and ramps. In the space of three months, its estimated annual running costs have gone from £2.5m to £3m to £3.5m.

It is called a place to “linger and enjoy the river and all of its attributes in a peaceful and tranquil environment”, but Transport for London has estimated that the football match-size crowds around its landing point will sometimes have a “pedestrian comfort level” of D – this is the second worst of five categories and means “very uncomfortable”. The project will create potentially dangerous crowd pressures on nearby parts of the southern Thames embankments that haven’t been studied. On the bridge itself, numbers will be controlled by security, with resulting queues to get on. This is hardly a ramble of Wordsworthian bliss.




More good news here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/22/thames-garden-bridge-huge-expensive-folly

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Manuel, P51024

No chance, when your favourite runner, Hazyone from Tory Central Office posting mantras, latest spin and smears handed down from Lynton Crosby and Grant.

Forgot, also his C+P from the fish and chip dailies.

Reform the laws, "Bring Back the Axe."

Conservatives and Labour tied

Latest YouGov / Sunday Times results 21st November -

Con 33%, Lab 33%, LD 7%, UKIP 16%

.

Dr Éoin Clarke ‏@LabourEoin · 1 hr1 hour ago

#CameronMustGo because 1,265 days ago he made these 5 NHS Promises & since then he's broken every single 1 of them

Max,

Be careful the Cons Party and Shapps are going to pinch your emblem and future policies.

Privatise the lot!

Can he go much lower?

http://news.yahoo.com/6-sun-readers-miliband-good-pm-062757909.html

6% of Sun readers say Miliband would be good PM

London (AFP) - A poll in The Sun on Sunday found that just six percent of people who read Britain's biggest-selling newspaper think Labour leader Ed Miliband is prime ministerial material.

The survey came as Labour backbencher David Lammy, a London mayoral hopeful, warned the party was "culturally adrift" from its own supporters.

The YouGov poll overall put Labour on 34 percent, the Conservatives on 33 percent, the UK Independence Party on 15 percent and the Liberal Democrats on eight percent.

However, among Sun readers, the Conservatives were on 38 percent, UKIP on 28 percent, Labour on 25 percent and the Lib Dems on three percent.

Six percent of the red-top tabloid's readers think opposition leader Miliband would make a good prime minister, the poll found. Conservative premier David Cameron scored 33 percent, UKIP chief Nigel Farage 17 percent and Liberal leader Nick Clegg two percent.

Some 75 percent of Sun readers said immigration was the most important issue facing Britain, while 21 percent thought there should be a block on all immigration. Six in 10 would vote to leave the European Union.

The survey comes following UKIP's by-election win in Rochester and Strood on Thursday and amid the Labour snobbery row surrounding it.

The row, which forced Emily Thornberry to resign from the Labour shadow cabinet, tied into claims that they are losing working-class support to the anti-mass immigration, anti-EU UKIP.

"We are going to take the fight to UKIP," said a Labour spokesman.

"There is only one party that wants an economy which is geared to help working people and paying off the deficit in a fair way and that's Labour."

Farage said: "This poll reflects what has been clear to us for some time -- that UKIP is eating into the Labour vote. Ed Miliband and his team have been burying their head in the sand over this for too long."

Meanwhile a Conservative spokesman said the May general election would be a "straight choice" between Cameron and Miliband as prime minister.

"David Cameron has the plan and the leadership to deliver more growth, more jobs and a brighter future," he said.

"But Ed Miliband is too weak to take the difficult decisions to secure Britain's recovery.

"All he offers is more borrowing, more spending and more taxes."

Meanwhile Lammy said politicians from "liberal, professional backgrounds" found it difficult to identify with regular working people.

"The Labour Party feels culturally adrift, not just from large parts of Britain, but from its own traditional working class base," the former universities minister wrote in The Mail on Sunday.

"Large parts of the country feel that Labour not only disagrees with them, they think we disapprove of them too.

He said the party's "discomfort hinges on immigration".

"By and large, modern Labour politicians come from liberal, professional backgrounds," he wrote.

"They have benefited from globalisation -- they mix in social circles with people who work in multinational firms, enjoy foreign travel and find diversity enriching.

"Much of Labour's traditional electoral base does not feel this way.

"This is what UKIP is tapping into -- and Labour has to have an answer."

'I got it wrong' says MP as England flag tied to her home

The Labour MP who resigned from the shadow cabinet after her white van Rochester tweet has said she "got it wrong" as a flag of St George was tied to railings outside her London home.

White Van Dan Turns Up at Thornberry’s Mansion

It looks like he may have earned a quid or two with sponsorship and interviews.

Just another "Con" Party Murdoch oink.. in fact a H/S self photo.