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.

A feeling in your water rf?


I'm not laughing, it's as good a sign as any on this (lol) transparent stock market!

Alan Cochrane
9:27PM GMT 08 Jan 2015
The former SNP leader may dream of holding Westminster to ransom after the next election, but that's no reason to indulge his fantasies

As Britain enters one of the strangest election campaigns in its recent history one man's name crops up all the time, often couched in the most reverential of tones.

Could he hold the balance of power and wring concessions out of desperate Westminster politicians that might lead to the reversal of that humiliating defeat last September?

He is taken at his own estimation of his worth by London's political classes but his increasingly eccentric behaviour has even one-time associates wondering what the future holds for him.

Joking that he might be deputy prime minister in a Labour administration, welching publicly on a bet with a famous journalist and now demanding full control of all Scottish taxes just as the oil price has collapsed are just a few examples of his strange behaviour.

We are talking here, of course, about Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland and the man who led his Scottish National Party and their allies into a referendum on breaking up Britain – a contest that he should have won. That he didn't was primarily due to the stupidity of his economic policy where he insisted that an independent Scotland would continue to use the pound sterling even when the rest of the United Kingdom said he couldn't.

And now that he's no longer either First Minister of Scotland or SNP leader Alex Salmond is, to paraphrase what Dean Acheson once said of Britain, someone who has "lost an empire but has yet to find a role".

After initially saying he'd take his time before deciding where his future lay he announced that he couldn't bear to be "on the sidelines" and that he'd run for the Gordon constituency in his adopted North East Scotland homeland and lead an army of SNP MPs into the Commons.

There, like Charles Stewart Parnell and his Irish nationalists a century earlier, they'd hold the balance of power and force Labour, Conservatives or Liberal Democrats to dance to their tune.

His leadership in Scotland may well have passed to his long-time deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, but that would mean Alex Salmond would still command the headlines, still firmly in the limelight and still dominating the political scene … only this time in London, not Edinburgh.

But while he plots his next move, more than a few Scottish eyebrows, and some of them belonging to nationalists, are being raised at the man's often extraordinary conduct of late.

Nobody grudged him the long and clearly jolly lunches in the Scottish Parliament's Members' Restaurant following his referendum defeat; after seven hard years as First Minister – four of them leading a minority government - he was entitled to the odd glass of rioja with friends.

Many thought he was entitled to fool around, too, after escaping the strains of office when he posted a picture of himself with some pretty girls on his staff, entitled " Sexy Socialism". And nobody much batted an eyelid when he turned up on the Holyrood backbenches not wearing a tie.

People began to be surprised by his antics, however, when he decided to write a personal letter to The Herald newspaper to denounce one of its columnists, who also happened to be his biographer, to say that the man in question "doesn't know me at all". That was followed by his calling a BBC radio phone-in as "Alex from Strichen" – the town where he now lives – to harangue the Labour leader of Aberdeen city council.

Salmond-watchers have become even more perplexed lately. For instance, there can't be many men who'd happily allow a total stranger to witness them ordering their wife's Christmas present over the telephone and making a great play, too, of how he was sending her a dress from Harvey Nicols ("the last one in the shop"). But that's what Alex Salmond did when being interviewed for the student newspaper of St Andrews University, his alma mater. (During that same exchange he also said that the staff of this newspaper were "deranged" but I shall certainly not hold that against him).

The other day Mr Salmond told us of his bet with Trevor Kavanagh, the political guru of the Sun newspaper, about how far the oil price would fall. Nothing especially strange here, as such wagers are not uncommon and Alex loves a flutter, having for many years written a horse-racing column for a Glasgow newspaper.

What is odd, however, is that Kavanagh is now claiming that Salmond, who before the referendum had been claiming that oil would soar to over $130 a barrel, is now trying to back out of the bet as its price plunges to below $50.

In the Sun yesterday, Kavanagh said to Salmond: "You are as poor an economist as you are a gambler."

Then, on Wednesday, Mr Salmond created more political waves by suggesting – a joke he said later – that he might be deputy prime minister in a Labour-led coalition after the election. It took an official statement from an obviously embarrassed SNP spokesman to kill that one.

His judgement is being questioned more than ever now, having said in a friendly newspaper interview that he still wants Scotland to have control of all of its tax revenue – this, at a time when the value of North Sea oil has collapsed.

In spite of all these eccentricities Alex Salmond expects to be taken seriously by the British political establishment. A pinch of salt might be much more appropriate.

DB4.

I think Wee Alec is taking the ----- out of a few people.

He got carried away with his own importance years ago and as a Scot I could cheerfully have killed him when Andy Murray won the Wimbledon title and Salmond stood behind Cameron in the stands waving the Scottish flag over his head!

Getting back to the child abuse cover up, what names have been "floated", politicians and others?

Stan.

I don't know.

But I know who was supposed to be in charge of the Home Office when the records were lost and also who was PM at the time.

And what about the outfit that was in charge before?

required field - 08 Jan 2015 11:11 - 54566 of 54671

Hilary : read my menu new year's eve.....(no joke and I'm not in the mood...)....I dream ahead of terrible events that occur later....(I'm not joking)....sometimes the events are clear sometimes not.....sometimes my thoughts become reality....(I'm not joking)....



Feck me you must have had a real bad nightmare about Cardiff City about 2 years ago !!!

Max,

Can't remember them losing the records!

uuuummmh

Well apparently they are onto them , hostage taken such brave souls for their cause , not,

the uk gov should allow all police now to carry a gun and shoot on site if they do not respond to the policeman calls

Is this the end for Jeremy Huntbottom?




Circle in talks to exit private contract to run Hinchingbrooke hospital

Healthcare company managing Britain’s first privately run NHS hospital blames funding cuts and surge in A&E demand



Sean Farrell and Nicholas Watt


The Guardian, Friday 9 January 2015 07.59 GMT



Nurses on Daisy ward in Hinchingbrooke hospital, Huntingdon. Circle was given a 10-year contract to run it from 2012. Photograph: John Robertson



A politically charged hand grenade has been thrown into the general election debate on the NHS after the healthcare company Circle said it planned to pull out of its contract to manage Britain’s first privately run hospital, Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire.

Circle Holdings issued a statement to the London Stock Exchange blaming funding cuts, a surge in demand for accident and emergency services and a failure to deliver “joined up” reform between health and social services. It said the company had entered into discussions with the NHS Trust Development Authority “with the view to ensuring an orderly withdrawal from the current contract”.



http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/09/circle-exit-private-contract-hinchingbrooke-nhs

that is great news CAMERON THE LIAR IS FINISHED . hays this is why we are ditching our party they are just liars filling their own pockets selling of the nhs
when the problem with the nhs is because it is the world nhs not the uk
all immigrants must be stopped using the nhs for free if they have no insurance then no treatment . and before you reply yes let them die its their fault for having no insurance I know a lot of tourists who have been refused treatment because of no insurance in spain and Portugal and have had to go home

the nhs is beening ripped apart by scum from the eu time to stop their free treatment for good

Who gave them the contract?


UMUMUMUM

Tanker when the police become armed as standard then so will the people... To arm these people wou only cause far more problems than are resolved.

its funny our cowards become brave with a gun they are just cowards and would never fight without one ,

shortie we must arm our police and if some one as a gun shoot on site

You are right Shortie, this country would then become exactly the same as America.