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.

Check figures for cost, quality of service, overall results for the individuals of other countries and overall health of those countries against the UK.

happiness, like material wealth is pretty subjective, but health and happiness generally have a link

You mean like fish and chips.

that's pure comfort with little health going for it :-)

By Dan Hodges
1:20PM GMT 20 Jan 2015
By giving up on the squeezed middle, Ed Miliband has handed the Tories crucial votes

It’s the middle classes that will deliver the coup de grace. Not the white van drivers of Kent. Or the students of Keele. Or the Bedroom Tax payers of Wythenshawe. It will be the chattering classes who finish off Labour.

They are not chattering at the moment. Instead, they are keeping their counsel. Biding their time. Some, to be fair, are wrestling with their consciences. They would like to do the right thing. They understand times are hard for many people. But...

Yesterday, the Evening Standard ran an interesting piece on the so-called “Shy Tories”. Robert Hayward, John Major’s election guru who correctly called the 1992 election, has been examining the local and European and by-election results. He told the paper: “The balance of probability based on these 2014 election results is that in any given poll the Labour vote is overstated and that the Green and Tory votes are understated”. He cited, the “Shy Tory” phenomenon - Conservative voters reluctant to reveal their true allegiance to the pollsters for fear of being personally tainted with that party’s toxic image - as the reason.

Hayward is partly right. I’ve been arguing for some time the polls were providing Ed Miliband with a comfort blanket that would ultimately smother him. And so it’s proved. Since the turn of the year Labour have hit the Tories with their two best shots: first on "1930s" spending cuts, then on the A&E crisis.

The effect has been no effect. Labour’s poll lead has gone. Amongst the voters the expectation is now of a Tory victory, a clear indication of the prevailing public mood. The bookmakers have now installed David Cameron as favorite to secure most votes, most seats and return to Downing Street at the head of a minority administration.

But this is not as a result of “Shy Tories” gradually returning to the fold. It’s as a result of the Guilty Middle Class preparing their emotional break from the Labour Party.

Anyone looking for the reasons behind the growth of the “Guilty Middle” need look no further than yesterday. First, there was James Blunt’s ruthless takedown of hapless Labour culture spokesman Chris Bryant. Bryant had argued that Blunt’s success was due to his privileged upbringing. Blunt responded by effectively fisking Bryant’s “populist, envy-based, vote-hunting”.

To be fair, Chris Bryant doesn’t believe any of this class war nonsense, it’s just what you have to say to get on in the Labour Party at the moment. But the Guilty Middle do believe it. And it says to them “Labour hates aspiration and success. Labour hates me”.

Then there was the Newsnight debate on tax policy. Peter Mandelson - who made it his life’s work to ease the consciences of the guilt tripping British middle class - described Labour’s Mansion Tax as “crude” and “short-termist”. The Guilty Middle would not use those precise words. Instead, they sit quietly in their million pound homes thinking “A Mansion Tax. Labour hates aspiration and success. Labour hates me”.

There is a great irony here, of course. In Ed Miliband Labour has a middle-class leader straight out of central casting. But as he has struggled to hold his 35 per cent strategy together, he has scrambled around attempting to placate the hard-Left, the Ukip-Right and in so doing abandoned his early commitment to the squeezed middle. Hence their evolution into the Guilty Middle.

Ed Miliband doesn’t hate the middle class. He can’t. He’s as much a son of privilege as David Cameron, a fact the Tories will surely exploit when the appropriate moment arrives.

But I do think he fails to understand the psychological impact the 2008 crash had on the squeezed - latterly Guilty - middle. In the recessions of the early 80s, and the early 90s, the middle classes were broadly insulated. They chaffed at the wider social cost, but did not feel it to any significant degree in their own pockets. But they did feel the last recession. Indeed, they are still feeling it. I’ve lost count of the number of people I meet these days who are working as “freelance consultants”. Never mind the scourge of zero hours contracts, freelance consultancy has become the dole for middle-class people.

But who weeps for the Guilty Middle? No one. The Guilty Middle won’t even weep for themselves. A least not openly. Instead they sit silently, grappling with those tortured consciences. But be under no illusion. Their inner conflict will furnish only one winner.

It is never articulated openly. But at dinner parties, and at the school gates, the Guilty Middle have begun to speak in code. They are “surprised by Labour”. They are “disappointed by Labour”. They “don’t quite understand Labour at the moment”. And then, in the privacy of the polling booth, they will strike. Because the Guilty Middle do not feel quite guilty enough.

Forget the disillusioned white van men. And the angry students. And the furious Kippers. Yes, they will have a say. But come May, it is the Guilty Middle that will have the final word.

Those Labour birds are all mingers and would be very annoying anyway ..

Here's one .................

Alina Kabaeva is a politician. Since 2007, she has been a State Duma deputy from the United Russia party. This Russian beauty was a most successful rhythmic gymnast. She is also one of the most decorated gymnasts in the history of rhythmic gymnastics with two Olympic medals, 14 world championship medals and 25 European championship meda

Do you mean :

I am extremely fit and healthy, but very unhappy about the training I have to do to be so, and the diet I am on?"

OR THIS BEAUTY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Come on Goldfinger you know you want her .

DB3 1/2,

You seem to like Dan Hodge (Wavy Dave's favourite commentator, said to be open for a knighthood if UKIP get into power) writings in the Telegraph for your insights into the myths of the political scene.

Why not broaden your horizon and read the Sun before they remove P3.

GF.

Dead not alive!

hmm
the training's fine though without a personal trainer i know i wouldn't have the discipline
my diet has changed very little indeed, and i still enjoy my 2/3 glasses of wine a night
if i became a health freak, i might feel very virtuous and perhaps enjoy the masochistic buzz
i wouldn't necessarily live any longer, but i bet it'ld feel like 150

Mrs T!

Now you are talking!

Dream girl

I've heard Thatchers cider is very good. :-))

Manuel,

I glad you have a personal trainer at your stage in life.

Exactly, what exercises does she help you with.

I hope that you have told your wife about her, as she may be suspicious when you come home a little sweaty and smelling of La Riviere de la Cologne.

8-)

Exercise gave up on me!

it's a bloke actually :-)
italian (34), but blonde not swarthy ...... just your type i think

The Thather photograph reminds me Albert Pierrepoint in drag.

Manuel,

Wouldn't know what to do with him..


You will have to show me!!

pleasure :-)

I quite like reading the Hodges articles, he's very blunt.

But he is also wrong.

Millibandus might well be a gift to the tories, no doubt to others too.

But the Tories cannot command the allegiance of the natural tory voters anymore, also he dismisses white van man at his peril. There's a lot of them!