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.

By Con Coughlin
4:46PM GMT 17 Dec 2014
Claims that soldiers tortured Iraqi detainees were all lies, says a new report. The BBC must undertake an urgent investigation of its own to find out how Panorama got it so badly wrong

Looking back, it is amazing just how many people were prepared to believe the accusations that the British Army routinely tortured detainees.

Of course it was the BBC and its fellow travellers on the Left who made the most of accusations that British soldiers had committed what amounted to war crimes following a three-hour battle with Iranian-backed insurgents in Iraq in May 2004. Rather than praising the British soldiers for their undoubted heroism in tackling the Shia-dominated Mehdi Army in a fierce battle that could have gone either way, the BBC preferred to concentrate its considerable resources on Iraqi claims that some of the captured insurgents had been killed in cold blood, while others had been subjected to torture.

Coming in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, where American service personnel certainly were guilty of mistreating their Iraqi captives, it was easy for some to believe that British forces had engaged in similar acts of mistreatment, even though the evidence was murky, to say the least.

But rather than conducting a proper journalistic investigation into the incident, the BBC’s flagship Panorama programme, in its edition broadcast in February 2008 entitled “On Whose Orders”, instead preferred to rely on the testimony of former Iraqi combatants and their Legal Aid-funded lawyers to make unsubstantiated allegations against the integrity and professionalism of the British Army.

It has taken nearly six years for the truth to come out, but the conclusions of the al-Sweady inquiry published today makes for some uncomfortable reading for the BBC’s current affairs production team, as well as the teams of lawyers who forced the Government to conduct an inquiry into the allegations, earning themselves handsome legal fees in the process.

For the inquiry, which cost a staggering £31 million, has ruled unequivocally that the claims that British troops murdered, mutilated and tortured Iraqi detainees were “wholly and entirely without merit or justification”, and that the baseless allegations contained in the Panorama programme were the product of “deliberate and calculated lies”.

So much for the standards of the BBC's so-called investigative journalists.

It is hard to imagine a more damning indictment of the Army’s accusers, and all those at the BBC and elsewhere who were credulous, or naive, enough to believe them. But now that the truth is out, perhaps those responsible for making this programme, and who gave an air of credibility to the claims, would now like to issue a fulsome apology to the British Armed Forces for their own grave errors of judgment.

They could even make a new programme explaining why they got the story so horribly wrong in the first place. Now, that really would be a first.

More seriously, though, Tony Hall, who as the BBC’s director-general has overall responsibility for the corporation’s current affairs output (in a previous life he was in charge of BBC news and current affairs), should undertake an urgent investigation of his own to find out how Panorama got it so badly wrong.

Miliband was a disaster at PMQs again. The twittersphere is mainly a playground for left wing activist sycophants.

Milli won hands down at PMQT LOL!!!! Yeah right.

Hays how so wrong you are.

Tory MPs outnumber Labour MP tweeters just over 2-1 and the number of Tory blogs V labour blogs 3-1.

Just remember its quality that counts not quantity.

You must have been watching some sort of fantasy PMQs. The one one I watched was a car crash for Milibland.

so neither fred nor acolyte stan can actually admit that the unions were at least as culpable as management in the collapse of uk's heavy industry ..... ah, i forgot .... it was apparently all the fault of those in power, always provided that it was the conservatives

obviously fred and acolyte stan think the electorate are fools then

Also called alternative universe. (in science fiction, fantasy, etc.) a separate universe or world that coexists with our known universe but is very different from it.

Sounds like a perfect description of gf. He gets changed in a telephone box, don't you know :0)

Of course, the left wing fail to specify the motives of the right wing in ruining heavy industry.

That was simple enough Haystack...there was no (easy) money in it


Far easier to flog a few mortgages to numpties who don't know any better, and call it growth.


The "city" has long since been a driver of british growth, but it's more a bloodsucker these days.

In the days of decline or heavy industry there was little money in selling mortgages. That is a fairly recent phenomenon. The decline of our industry went hand in hand with the expansion of industry in emerging countries who undercut us with lower wages and cheaper natural resources. The same thing had already happened to our textile business. We cannot compete in certain businesses as our cost base is too high.

Are you having memory problems?

The 80's were nothing but mortgages, a bit like today.

It didn't happen in the 80s. The financial services market was a reaction to finding a solution to collapsing industry. It was considered that part of our future lay in the services sector. No one wanted to invest in industries that could not compete in world markets.

Really? look back.

You have to remember that the 70s in particular, were a period of constant strikes, restrictive practices and when we were called the 'sick man of Europe'. We had the three day week due to strikes, rubbish piling up in the street, people going unburied and the unions having brought down two governments. No one was going to invest in that mess.

And your point is?

Cos you havent made one.

The point is that it was the 70s. The unions were destroying our industry and no one in their right mind would invest. Edward Heath and Callahan both tried to curb the destructive power of the unions and failed. It wasn't until Thatcher that it happened. By that time industry was uncompetitive in the world. Restrictive practices and strikes ruined our industry while countries like Germany and emerging countries had more flexible working prectices. Our outdated union methods went back to the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Demarcation was a disease in our industry.

Bookies suspend betting on Queen announcing abdication in Christmas broadcast

Coral said it had decided to close its book on the Queen abdicating after a rash of bets in the past 24 hours, but Buckingham Palace laughs off rumour

The bookmaker Coral has suspended betting on the Queen announcing her abdication in this year's Christmas Day broadcast.

The betting firm said it had decided to close the market after an "unusual" rash of wagers which "instantly set alarm bells ringing".

Sources close to the Queen, however, laughed off suggestions that she might abdicate, saying it was "just not true".

At about midday today, Coral had several online inquiries for the odds it would offer on the Queen abdicating in her Christmas message. It began with a £200 bet, followed by several smaller bets in quick succession.

The bookmaker said the queries were "so specific" and so close together that it smelled a rat.

odds of 10-1 on the Queen abdicating during the Christmas message.

The speech to the nation has already been pre-recorded by the BBC, leading to suspicions that people with inside knowledge, either from Buckingham Palace or the TV camera crew, might have acted on leaked information.

Nicola McGeady, a spokesman for Coral, said: "Throughout the year there has been major speculation about the Queen’s future but today’s gamble has really caught us by surprise.

“As far as we are concerned there’s no smoke without fire when bets like this come through all in succession, so we have decided to be safe rather than sorry and pull the plug on the market."

hays talking out of his bottom again, in the car industry it was the UNIONS who alerted management to the Re Tooling the germans and the japs were carrying out and wanted the same and were prepared to take redundancies.

It was british greedy bosses along with a Tory government who wanted to break them .

hays goes on about the three day week i remember massive riots going on for weeks under the Tories which were far worse, more destructive and costly. 8 million people unemployed and tax revenues (the new savior) spent on keeping people on the dole.

Same was repeated in camorons first year albeit a shorter period, and if you want to look at restrictive practices look no further than professional bodies for solicitors, the Law pro in general and accountancy bodies.

Far worse than restrictive practice by the working man.

Thats the only reason that it costs you so much.

By the way hays Cynic as asked me to go a little lighter on you, but obviously when you get the chance to try and dominate you dont take an inch but take a mile.

All bets off cynic.

sticky - there was certainly a lot of really poor management throughout from the 50s onwards, but to pretend that the militant unions were out to do nothing more than help their members (did they ever fight for equal pay for women?) would be purblind in the extreme

several of the union leaders were in the pay of the russians, and there is no doubt that their brief was to wreck the uk economy
fortunately they failed