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.

me :-)

It is a b..


ummh, not what I expected.

Just had a look around the boards, cockneys joint sticks out as usual, all in denial as usual, all talking it up as usual. My God what a thread of fantasy merchants.

Even talking up stocks that have bombed 5% or more today.

They are either nutters or Im a downright out and out manic depressive.

thought you were thumping away about a strong rally from next week .... or have you changed your mind already?

Some good bargains on offer already, patience required, this too shall pass.

Cynic Im talking as in the present, not what I expect going forward.

Have you seen me bumming any stock up today?

NO.

fortunately, i haven't seen your bum either :-)

No surprise that human rights lawers are lining up and salivating over the CIA report.

Hey gf, fame at last!!!!!! Go on admit it that's you in the Aldi advert,

'I Like This Champagne and I Like This Champagne......

But I Don't Like These Tight Underpants' LOLLOLLOL!!!!

The Blob gobbled up Michael Gove – now it’s coming for David Cameron

The Prime Minister treats school reform like a dirty secret, but it is by far his greatest triumph, writes Fraser Nelson




David Cameron can't escape The Blob Photo: Carla Millar


By Fraser Nelson

6:15AM GMT 12 Dec 2014



Where, do you imagine, is the best primary school in the country? Competition is fierce: there aren’t many things that Britain does better than everyone else nowadays, but education is certainly one of them. Any self-respecting foreign billionaire wants their child educated here, which is why we have so many prep schools charging up to £17,000 a year. Their lucky five-year-old pupils enjoy state-of-the-art auditoriums, fencing salles and even dojos for martial arts – not to mention the best tuition on the planet. But last year, none of these schools did as well as the best primary school in the land – Ark Conway, a state school in a deprived part of west London.


Its emergence at the top of the results league table is all the more remarkable because, until just over three years ago, this school did not exist. It was set up under David Cameron’s “free school” scheme, which allows all sorts of providers to help communities by setting up new schools.


Ark, an education charity, took over an old library and applied a new formula: a Singapore-style Maths curriculum, for example. Now its pupils have the best results in the land. It’s a landmark achievement, showing there is no reason why state schools can’t wipe the floor with private schools – and all thanks to Conservative reforms. Precisely the type of success that the Prime Minister ought to be shouting from the rooftops.


But almost no one has mentioned it. Indeed, now that Michael Gove has disappeared, no one talks much about school reform any more. His successor, Nicky Morgan, was put in office with a remit to kindly stop talking about these new structures. There are now 1,260 academy schools that have been turned around by sponsors like Ark, six times the number inherited from Labour. By any standards, this is stunning progress – but it’s a brave Tory who says so in public. School reform has now become unmentionable.


It is now five months since Mrs Morgan was parachuted into the Department for Education – to everyone’s amazement, including her own. Gove had almost three years preparation for the job; for Mrs Morgan, it was closer to three hours. Her remit, according to one ally, is to advocate “school reform with a human face” – Gove’s face, apparently, no longer fits this description. He is now the Chief Whip, a back-room boy, his punishment for fighting too hard and making too many enemies. There are almost half a million vote-wielding teachers, runs the argument, and he annoyed them. So off he goes.

From the offset, Mrs Morgan was put at a disadvantage. Mrs Morgan is a reformer by instinct but has been given contradictory instructions: how can she protect the reform agenda, while making peace with the people who want it crushed? Worse, she has been asked to be a part-time Education Secretary – her other job (a fairly demanding one) is minister for women and equalities. Worse still, she must balance both jobs while making frequent trips to her highly marginal seat in Loughborough. No one, Gove included, could run the department with so many conflicting demands. So slowly, the bureaucracy has started to reassert itself.



More blob here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/11288932/The-Blob-gobbled-up-Michael-Gove-now-its-coming-for-David-Cameron.html

'Questionable Time' The papers have had time to digest the appearances of UKIP leader Nigel Farage and comedian Russell Brand on the BBC's Question Time, with the Daily Mail quoting viewers likening it to an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show. Its sketchwriter, Quentin Letts, remembers that "Question Time was once a forum for rapier wit and cerebral dialectic... Now the BBC, hooked on egalitarianism, promotes foaming demagogues and meretricious self-publicists." However, he adds: "You could not fault Thursday night's show for entertainment... it was every bit as good as the wrestling on Saturday afternoon in the 70s." Ann Treneman, in the Times, complains that there is "officially, no escaping Nigel Farage... a never-ending, self-perpetuating news cycle" and suggests the show should be renamed Questionable Time. The Daily Express, as well as identifying a "blue-haired heckler" who screamed abuse at Mr Farage in the studio as a member of Kent International Socialists, says the UKIP leader's row with Brand spilled over onto Twitter after the show. Russell Brand, Nigel Farage MEP Noting Mr Farage's claim that he saw Brand having his chest hair straightened before the programme, the Sun has a question for "Russell the revolutionary". It asks: "Come the glorious day, when bankers hang from lamp post and the newly-enriched poor dance for joy... Can we all have a state-funded personal stylist for our chest hair?" Anne McElvoy takes in the two panellists' "entertaining and stupid solutions" and argues in the Guardian that the pair are "more similar than they care to think: lords of modern misrule without a clue about the way forward". She writes: "The appeal of each is that they offer an easy-peasy solution, which will prevent us doing the hard stuff of working out how Britain deals with the tendency of modern, technologically-driven economies to exacerbate the gap between rich and poor and a fall in the value of wages shared across the western economies." Several headlines zone in on the comedian's dig that Mr Farage was a "pound shop Enoch Powell". The Daily Telegraph quotes from letters from the 1990s it says show Mr Farage "personally begged" Mr Powell - the ex-Conservative minister best remembered for making a "Rivers of Blood" speech on immigration - to support his attempt to win a by-election, while the party also asked him to join as an electoral candidate. However, the paper says the UKIP leader would not be upset about this revelation.

Farage saw Russel Brand having his chest hair straightened before the program.

And goldfinger thinks his brilliant

Times have arrived.

Happy Xmas.

Anybody have a cartoon of Poundland Nigel?

BBC QT audience member who attacked Russell Brand is UKIP MEP’s brother – Pride’s Purge 12/12/2014

I’ve written before about how the BBC seems to be encouraging UKIP activists to pretend to be ordinary members of the audience on Question Time, writes Tom Pride.

Well, it now seems that a member of last night’s BBC QT audience – the one who accused Russell Brand of being all mouth and told him to stand as an MP – is the brother of Farnborough-born UKIP MEP James Carver:

Man who clashed with Russell Brand on BBC Question Time is UKIP MEP’s brother.

Tom reckons the BBC isn’t allowing UKIP activists to be planted in audiences to improve that party’s standing politically, but because it makes entertaining television. What do you think?

Like dogs fighting over bone.

Poor old Snappy isn't getting the bone.

But how many would grab at the money!

What the tories and Ukippers will stoop to.

I wonder how far Nigel had to bend over?

Nigel Farage and Richard Desmond’s cosy deal making




"Ukip are cock-a-hoop this afternoon with news that controversial proprietor Richard Desmond is to donate £300,000 to Farage’s party ahead of the 2015 election. Express sources confirm that Dirty Desmond gave the Ukip leader the full treatment on 2 December, with the Nigel personally given a full tour of his Northern and Shell Thames-side complex.

Farage visited both the Express and Star as well as the Channel 5 newsroom before retiring up to Desmond’s budget-Bond Villan style lair overlooking Tower Bridge to hammer out the deal. ‘He was shown the full-weight of the machine Desmond was promising to throw behind him’ says one inky-fingered whisperer.

The porno-peddling baron has form in political donations — whacking Tony Blair £100,000 in 2002— but news of this particular bung will come as a hammer blow to Tory party chairman Grant Shapps who has been buttering up Desmond himself. Mr S snapped them deep in conversation over lunch late last year:"


http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/12/nigel-farage-and-richard-desmonds-cosy-deal-making/

The face of reason and moderation.

GF.

I am waiting to see which colour the shirts will be when, or if, UKIP start issuing them.

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Mind you can recognise many by the Ku Klux red and white shirts they parade in.

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The 30s are back.

Max.

I think UKIP should adopt her as a mascot!

Would fit in nicely.