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.

From Ukip to the SNP, Britain's anti-Westminster movement is not about class
When London feels like another world, it's easy to hate the establishment – regardless of your background

By Allan Massie3:20PM GMT 25 Nov 2014CommentsComment
An article in The Times says that Ukip is cashing in on our obsession with class. It was sparked off by a poll which suggests that more people (27 per cent) think Ukip in touch with the white working-class than Labour (only 21 per cent). This is evidence of the progress Ukip claims to have been making in what have long been rock-solid Labour seats in the North of England.
It’s on the face of it a strange development. Only 12 months ago your typical Ukip recruit was usually seen as a disaffected Tory which is why Labour was complacent about the progress Ukip was making. It would cost the Tories votes and seats, and deliver the coming election to Labour on its 35 per cent core vote. Now there is panic in Labour ranks – even though its poll rating still hovers around the 32-35 per cent mark.
The present Labour panic is been occasioned by the fallout from Emily Thornberry’s already notorious white van/ St George’s Cross photograph and tweet.
The fact that Ms Thornberry, though a lawyer, comes from a working-class background herself, only makes the whole thing more absurd. The truth is of course that Ukip’s rise has precious little to do with class. If it did, if Ukip really represented a working-class revulsion from Labour, one might expect it to be doing considerably better in the polls than it is. One might even expect the level of support for the two parties to be reversed, as natural Tories deserted Ukip in alarm and returned to their Conservative home.
To understand what‘s happening it’s instructive to look at where Labour really seems to be in deep trouble, for the time being anyway. This is in Scotland, not the north of England. Since the referendum when the Labour Party campaigned for the Union in alliance with the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, it has apparently been bleeding to death. Startling opinion polls threaten it with the loss of all but a handful of its 40 Scottish seats. If they are to be believed, voters are fleeing Labour in flocks, especially in working-class constituencies in Glasgow and Lanarkshire. But these defectors are not rushing to join Nigel Farage‘s merry band; they have no interest in Ukip. On the contrary they are turning to the SNP, a middle-class party now led by a generation of Glasgow University graduates. The SNP’s new leadership is composed of the sort of people who helped keep Scottish Labour on the rails while the Labour Party lost its nerve and cohesion in England during the Thatcher years: middle-class, middle of the road, sensible pragmatists like John Smith, Donald Dewar and George Robertson.


Nevertheless the SNP and Ukip, though in most respects very different (partly because the SNP has now experience of the responsibility of government) have one thing in common: both are anti-Westminster parties, both are tapping in to a mood of disaffection with the British political establishment, with the Conservatives and Labour alike, with the BBC and the City of London, with the banks and the CBI. The Liberal Democrats used to benefit from their distance from power, but by – patriotically, I would say – agreeing to form a Coalition with the Tories, they became part of the political establishment and have suffered accordingly.
The anti-Westminster, anti-establishment mood has nothing, or nothing much, to do with class, because it is shared by people of all classes. It has far more to do with the distance from London.
The SNP and Ukip have something else in common. Nigel Farage often says “I want my country back”, and his supporters echo his words and cheer him loudly. The SNP doesn’t need to put it quite like that, because they already form the (devolved) Government of Scotland, but they say they want their country out – out of the UK – and this comes to much the same thing.
Neither the Conservatives nor Labour have any idea of how to address the problem of the anti-establishment surge. Both have experienced a sharp decline in membership. Once healthy constituency associations are now hollow shells. By playing the metropolitan game and choosing candidates whose whole career has been in politics, they have divorced themselves from the country, and have relied on long-standing habits of voting to win elections.
Their only comfort is that enough people in England aren’t ready to break these habits – not yet anyway. So between them the two big parties will probably still secure some 70 per cent of the vote in May, and one of them will somehow be able to form some sort of government. But their position is fragile. The bonds are fraying, and, unless they can repair their relationship with the country beyond London and the Home Counties, their decline will continue. What we are seeing is a revolt of the Country against the Court, and it’s got very little to do with class.

because the supermarkets decided wonky carrots were not readily saleable just as eu decided that old varieties of apples could not be sold/grown commercially ..... similarly i have no idea what the alleged logic behind that was, any more than the current crap being touted about marigolds and over gloves

Supermarkets give wonky vegetables to food banks. Trussel Trust.

Its amazing the crap that out of the EU followed by a directive of some sort later to be followed by a fine because someone didn't obey the directive.... Red tape and bureaucracy....

The below is a good read on the EU.....

http://www.betteroffout.net/the-case/10-eu-myths-about-withdrawl/

Why check the regulations and see why they were initiated and renegotiate the regulations if not applicable.

But, I do like to know if the beef burger I buy is horse meat, kangaroo and mongoose!

Or the 3foot long cucumber doesn't have growth hormone in it!

Why check the regulations and see why they were initiated and renegotiate the regulations if not applicable.

But, I do like to know if the beef burger I buy is horse meat, kangaroo and mongoose!

Or the 3foot long cucumber doesn't have growth hormone in it!

or perhaps had enhancement surgery!

What happened to the:


Secret UKIP Labour Meeting This Lunchtime ?

Rumour from Twits that Miliband is going to defect to UKIP. :-)

lol :-))

Farage defecting to Labour.

labour to force private schools to help local state schools
at last a tacit acknowledgement that the best - by no means all - private schools knock the socks of practically all state schools, and not just academically of course

for all that, one cannot deny that in many ways, the private sector have at least a moral obligation to help their neighbourhood schools, though of course many of them already do, whether through offering usage of their facilities or a considerable number of bursaries to the talented but less well-off (millfield is an excellent example)

it may or may not be relevant that many private schools really struggle to make ends meet .... it is only the few who have wealthy endowments from livery companies, royal patronage (eton was founded by edward iv from memory), or happenstance to own valuable property

=============

separately but not entirely unlinked, it was interesting to read that ISA admitted that the pool of uk residents who have traditionally been the core of supply of pupils, is disappearing fast, with the result that many are now becoming the enclaves of overseas oligarchs and the like

I thought the force implied was that they would take the subsidies given to the private sector schools if they didn't bail out the state section in certain areas.

I.e. school playing (fields sold off) arts and drama facilities allowed ot deteriorate for the last 4 years!

If not the tax raised by government goes to state schools.

Fair enough to me.

By Michael Deacon, Parliamentary Sketchwriter
3:26PM GMT 25 Nov 2014
Speaking at an academy, Labour’s education spokesman Tristram Hunt says private schools must do more to help state schools – or lose out on tax relief

Among the audience for Tristram Hunt’s speech at an East London academy was a group of pupils. They looked as if they were paying attention. For their sake, I hope they weren’t. The influence of the shadow education secretary’s nebulous jargon could damage their essay-writing irreparably.

At one point, Mr Hunt accused David Cameron of speaking in “meaningless rhetorical bromides”. Rather a bold line of attack, for a man who in his speech used the following phrases.

“A holistic, character-focused curriculum… A reciprocal relationship where excellence moves in both directions… Improve educational outcomes through deeper collaboration… Run mentoring and enrichment programmes… An education-led response… Enjoying the same access to excellence… Enriching educational experience which cultivates character, resilience and grit… Benefits richer than any upfront risk… Celebrating a broader ethos of education and partnership…”

How cruel to inflict such circumlocutory gibberish on impressionable young minds. And the pupils may not be the only ones to suffer the consequences. Their teachers may suffer, too. Imagine.

“Jenkins! Why are you looking at Smith’s exercise book?”

“I’m just seeking to improve my educational outcomes through deeper collaboration, sir.”

“Are you copying Smith’s answers, Jenkins?”

“Who, sir? Me, sir? I’m just enjoying access to Smith’s excellence, sir. Smith and I are celebrating a broader ethos of education and partnership. It’s a reciprocal relationship where excellence moves in both directions. He helps me copy his answers, I help him not get punched in the face by me after school.”

“Oh God. You’re one of the boys who went to Tristram Hunt’s dratted speech, aren’t you, Jenkins?”

“Oh yes, sir. It was terrific, sir. Transformatively holistic, sir. It’s really helped me to raise achievement and spread excellence, sir.”

“Oh, for pity’s… Akinyemi! I saw that! Why did you just give Singh a dead arm?”

“I was cultivating his character, resilience and grit, sir.”

“Don’t test my patience, Akinyemi. What made you think you could get away with behaviour like that in my classroom?”

“I decided that the benefits were richer than any upfront risk, sir.”

“Right. That’s it. You’ve just earned yourself a detention.”

“Oh, but sir! Detention is a discredited top-down initiative, sir! What’s required is the rigorous pursuit of a pupil-centred education-led enrichment programme, sir!”

“Akinyemi’s right, sir! You can’t punish him, sir! You’re widening the disparities in the distribution of power, sir!”

“Shut up, Jenkins, or you’ll be doing detention with him.”

“Oh, but sir! You can’t say that, sir! You’re fostering a culture of low expectations, sir!”

P.S. I’ve only just noticed that I’ve yet to mention the subject of Mr Hunt’s speech. It was about how private schools should do more to help state schools. But I’m sure that from the clarity of his phrasing you’d already worked that out.

Yep same here Fred, just watering down an elitist situation that our society shouldnt face in either education or health.

Why should someone get a head start in life just because there parents are wealthy.

What have they to fear taking on and competing with someone else on the same level playing field.

Tells you a lot that of the mindset of a typical Tory, sneaky greedy and devious.

Camoron still trending on Twitter it must be a World Record, now in third was fifth earlier on.....

Trends · Change
#Ferguson
OPEC
#CameronMustGo
#ManCityVsBayern
#MTVStars
Benatia
Darren Wilson
Phil Hughes
#MCFCFCB
Jurassic World

By Dan Hodges
9:42AM GMT 25 Nov 2014
The Left's rhetoric has become as toxic as that of the hard-Right

This morning I got up, made myself a cup of tea, got myself a bowl of cereal and logged onto Twitter. That’s how the out of touch, metropolitan media class starts its day.

At the top of my messages was a post from someone called Mike Campbell. To the best of my knowledge I haven’t come across Mike before. We don’t correspond regularly, or follow each other. But according to his biography he's an RMT trade union rep and a socialist.

His message referred to the Guardian columnist and food blogger Jack Monroe. “She didn't tweet about Cameron's son. She tweeted about Cameron. Even you should be able to work that out”, he said.

This was a reference to a tweet Monroe had herself sent as part of the “#CameronMustGo” Twitter campaign. Her tweet read: “Because he uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric to legitimise selling our NHS to his friends: “#CameronMustGo”.

When I saw Monroe’s message I thought “that’s horrible”, said so, then carried on working on yesterday’s post about Ukip and their repatriation policy. Then I pottered about a bit, did some work on a book I’m writing, then returned to have another browse on Twitter.

By this point my timeline was filling up with two distinct threads. The first related to my Ukip post. It basically consisted of a few Ukip supporters claiming I’d made up the whole thing, (I didn’t, read the post), and a lot of others coming up with stuff about me being a race traitor, a member of the LibLabCon, and inviting me to combine sex with travel.

The second was from people defending Jack Monroe. They were posting about me being a traitor to the Labour Party, a closet Tory, and comparing me to various intimate parts of the male and female anatomy.

So I leapt into the Twitter mosh pit, and began happily tweeting my responses. After a while, I noticed something weird. The Kippers and the CamMustGoers started to merge. I was literally sending the same responses to both groups of people. “No, I’m not a traitor to my race. I just don’t like racists”. “No, I’m not a traitor to the Labour Party. I just don’t like people who play politics with other people’s dead children”. And then I realised I wasn’t as happy as I thought I was.

I write a lot of critical stuff about Ed Miliband and the Labour Party. And a lot of the people who read it desperately, desperately want them both to prevail at the next election. So when they dish out the “you’re a traitor stuff”, I get it. I don’t think they quite understand what the job of being a political commentator entails, but I used to be a Labour Party member, so I grasp the tribal antipathy.

In fact, I’ve still got a little bit of that tribalism lurking someone deep down inside of me. I must have. Because yesterday, when I saw the Right an the Left engaged in the same desperate attempt to defend the utterly indefensible, I thought to myself: “Hang on. You’re on the Left. Aren’t you supposed to be better than that?”

It would be a stretch for me to claim some of my best friends are Ukip supporters. But I know several people who work in the party who are good, decent, honourable, people. When I went to the party’s conference in Doncaster I met several ordinary Ukip activists who were funny, warm, generous and clearly believe passionately in their party and its cause.

But I’m not going to lie. I think Ukip is a thoroughly racist, thoroughly prejudiced, thoroughly reactionary party. And I think the majority of its core supporters reflect that. Racism. Islamophobia. Homophobia. Misogyny. Rightly or wrongly, those are the values I associate with Ukip.

It may sound ludicrously simplistic, but until recently I genuinely thought people on the Right were the bad guys and the people on the Left were the good guys. In my mind’s eye, the Left still retained a semblance of moral authority. Yes, the Right were good at running the economy and taking the hard choices and all the usual “firm but fair” clichés. But it was still the Left who had cornered the market on compassion and fairness and basic humanity.

Then I saw Jack Monroe’s tweet. Or, even more tellingly, the response of the Left to Jack Monroe’s tweet.

The Left is losing its way. Not in an “Ed Miliband isn’t going to win Stockton South”, kind of way. In a “where the hell did we put that moral compass of ours?” kind of way.

When people can’t look at a tweet publicly taunting a man over the death of his six-year-old son and realise there is something deeply, horribly wrong, then they have a problem. If they can’t understand that a tweet like that transcends the most basic laws of human decency, they have a problem. And if they can’t simply and unequivocally condemn that tweet, without constructing straw men, throwing deflections and trying to draw spurious moral parallels, then they have a serious, serious problem.

That is the Left’s problem this morning. “Oh what, the whole Left?” someone will no doubt ask, facetiously. No, not all of the Left. In the same way not all of Ukip’s supporters advocate repatriation, or stigmatising people on trains who don’t speak English, or whipping up moral panics about Romanians. But enough. Too many.

Yesterday, the organisers of the #CameronMustGo campaign were boasting of their success. Their message was being tweeted 100,000 times a day, they claimed. So where were the tweets of condemnation for Jack Monroe? Where were the angry voices denouncing her for hijacking their campaign, or distorting its message? The answer, of course, is nothing had been hijacked or distorted. Cameron has to go. By any means necessary.

Now the sharks of the Right are circling themselves. Jack Monroe is receiving her own vile online abuse. In response her abusers will be abused. And the whole tawdry, vicious spiral will continue.

Perhaps I’m being naive. Maybe the Left never occupied the moral high ground. When I worked for the Labour Party maybe I was one of the people who unwittingly helped negotiate its surrender.

I don’t know. What I do know is some of the stuff the Left is coming out with at the moment is as toxic and malign and devoid of basic humanity as anything I’ve ever seen from the hard-Right. Both are now equally blinded by their own brand of narrow, ideological hatred.

So let me respond to Mike Campbell. Jack Monroe did tweet about David Cameron’s son, Mike. The words “he uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric” are the giveaway.

You’re an RMT official and a socialist. She was wrong. Wasn’t she?

All you need to know about the Tories #CameronMustGo

Let's see Nye Bevan on a stamp #CameronMustGo

Your NHS cuts will kill patients says Lead consultant neurosurgeon Matthias Radatz #CameronMustGo