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.

Leader: History lesson for Jim Murphy



SCOTTISH Labour leader has been gaining momentum, but his party’s disheartening backstory is dragging him down

IN A typically perspicacious column for this newspaper recently, former SNP front-bencher Andrew Wilson assessed the start Jim Murphy had made in his tenure as the new leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Wilson cautioned Nationalist colleagues not to underestimate their new adversary, praising Murphy’s tenacity and political intelligence.

But Wilson said there was one serious doubt about Murphy’s leadership, one question mark over whether he would be successful in convincing Scots to lend Labour their support. Wilson quoted Polonius’ words to Laertes in Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

The insinuation was clear: Murphy was being inauthentic, backing policies and positions he would previously have dismissed on ideological grounds. Wilson’s conclusion was that the voters would recognise this and – seeing authenticity as one of the most desirable qualities in a politician – reject him and his party at the ballot box.

• More pressure on Jim Murphy to choose – MP or MSP?




Murphy’s energy has indeed been impressive, with a new initiative daily. This weekend those initiatives include backing for a not-for-profit bid for the Scottish rail franchise; a requirement on fracking operators to first win a referendum within the local community; and protection for Scottish international football matches in the selling of future TV rights. His stated aim is to secure the support of 190,000 Labour voters who backed the Yes campaign during the referendum and who – according to numerous opinion polls – are now thinking of voting SNP. The most recent of these polls puts SNP support at a remarkable 52 per cent – more than twice the Labour tally. With just over three months until the General Election, Scottish Labour faces an uphill task.

Will it be hampered by what Wilson sees as Murphy’s inauthenticity?

SNP strategists say Murphy’s current and ­previous positions can be easily presented to the electorate, with an invitation for them to draw their own conclusions. They say his lack of ­political consistency will tell its own story, and voters will prefer a party and a leader with more consistency in their message.

But perhaps that would be to overestimate the amount of time or interest most voters have for politics in their otherwise busy lives, with the competing demands of family, work and social life. Do people really have a sense of Murphy’s political backstory as a Blairite fixer and eager participant in Labour’s “TBGBs” civil war? Those within the political bubble may have a fully formed view of Murphy, seeing him as a particular breed of political animal, and ­therefore see his volte face on certain Blairite nostrums as remarkable. Those outwith, who have a life, do not.

Most people take politicians at face value, here and now. They judge them on what they say in a campaign and what they promise in a manifesto. They judge politicians on their ability to shape the future, not on whether they have reshaped their past.

Murphy does not have his troubles to seek as he struggles to hold on to his party’s traditional supporters. But his political antecedents are not in the forefront of his problems


Instead, his biggest difficulty is something over which he has no control. It is the average Scot’s disillusionment with a Labour Party that has been grudging about Scottish home rule, dourly negative about Scotland’s potential, and lacking in both style and substance.

He can try to ameliorate this with a narrative that speaks of a different kind of politics, of a patriotic Scottish Labour party with a sense of its own history.

But there is no escaping the fact that Jim ­Murphy’s biggest political headache is his own party’s recent past.

Exec.

Sounds a bit like Differential precipitation.

I think I would prefer to crack my own eggs (chickens') for an omelette.

By Iain Martin

2:13PM GMT 27 Jan 2015


There are only ten days to go until there are 90 days to go until the general election. Then it will be only ten days to go until there are 80 days to go until the general election, and so on until it is finally polling day (although millions of Britons will have begun voting begun weeks before by postal ballot). You simply can't wait, can you?


The Prime Minister is certainly excited about the campaign. Today, after giving The Daily Telegraph a serious interview, he has had his advisers book him onto every single media outlet in the country, from Orkney FM to Absolute 80s. For those of you having a duvet day, look out, because you can catch the Prime Minister on Cash in the Attic later.


(This is not true. The Prime Minister will not be on Cash in the Attic later. However, he will be on Homes Under the Hammer.)


Host: "We're in the loft of a Georgian terraced house in central London and David has been looking in the attic. Ooh… what have you found?"


David Cameron: "What? This old thing? Oh, it's just my pledge from 2010 to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands by the time of the 2015 election. My, my, was that really five years ago?"

Host: "It's a bit battered around the edges. It's falling apart."

David: "What do you think it might fetch at auction then?"

Host: "Hmmm… I'm sorry. It's probably worthless."

But in his Telegraph interview today the Prime Minister did make several important interventions, not least of which were his comments about Scotland and the threat of a Labour/SNP pact in the event of a hung parliament. He said that the prospect is terrifying.
This follows the release by the Tories of a poster (which is the name political parties now give to mock-ups sent out on the internet) on which they warned that voters' alleged worst nightmare (an Ed Miliband premiership) had just got worse. Former SNP leader Alex Salmond and Miliband were photoshopped to make it look as though the pair were embracing on the steps of Number 10.

This poster provoked some criticism in Scotland, not least from my friend Alex Massie, who described it as a "stupid" poster. I get the point, that for short term gain the Tories risk helping the SNP, because many Scottish voters would actually rather like the idea of the Nats holding the balance of power and checking the increasingly hated Scottish Labour party.

But such complaints can be filed, as they so often are with Cameron, in the "worry about that later" folder. First, the Conservative leader has to get from neck and neck with Labour to four or five points ahead by polling day. That battle will be fought overwhelmingly in England, where there are ten times the number of voters as there are in Scotland.

And one of the most powerful weapons available to the Tories could be, if it is given enough attention, the risks that flow from a minority Labour government being propped up by the SNP making further demands. Miliband has declined to rule out a pact on the duff advice of Labour in Scotland, based on the theory that voters north of the border are well used to pacts at Holyrood and would have little problem with a Labour/Nat deal in London. So that's okay, then?

No. It overlooks how unpopular the notion of Scots dictating to England is likely to be in much of England, particularly in the heavily populated south.

The Labour strategy also leaves the party looking utterly ridiculous on both sides of the border, with Miliband contemplating a deal with the Nats, while Jim Murphy fights to avoid the death (yes, the death) of the Scottish Labour party at the hands of the SNP.

If the Tories can capitalise on this chaos, it really could make the difference in May. It supplements their story of the economic recovery being at risk from Miliband (and potential Euro chaos) with a gut instinct appeal to the English electorate's sense of justice. It will have particular appeal to Tories thinking of defecting to Ukip but unsure what it could lead to. You can imagine in being said in pubs, and by families several days from the election watching the TV news (in the manner of Gogglebox). "Miliband could do a squalid deal with the Scot Nats to stitch up England? What a bloody cheek. We won't be doing that."

The Tories, I suspect, will hammer this theme. They would be crazy not to.

Telegraph

Hundreds of live and dead cockroaches found in kitchen, microwave and crawling up walls of pizza takeaway… but inspectors close it for just three days
Cockroaches and eggs found 'huddled together' in pizza base cupboard
Pizza Pan takeaway in Birmingham also sells fried chicken and chips
Infestation of insects found in cool drinks chiller and under work surfaces
Also discovered on work surfaces where pizza boxes were being stored
Owner Shaid Salim, 38, is fined £900 and ordered to pay £2,000 costs

Should be put in prison for 2 years.

Bloody election, they will be knocking on doors before long pestering people... As per previous years I always tell whoever knocks they have my vote and refuse to put one of there posters up in my window. I may just stick this up instead!!

electric gates work too :-)

By Laura Donnelly, Ben Riley-Smith and Steven Swinford

10:00PM GMT 27 Jan 2015

Ed Miliband’s attempts to make the NHS his key election weapon have descended into chaos after he was accused of running a “comfort zone campaign” and refused to endorse the shadow health secretary.


As both parties stepped up their election campaigns, the Labour leader’s efforts to put the NHS at the heart of his party’s strategy appeared to backfire.


At a speech in Manchester on Tuesday, he set out a 10-year plan for the health service. But within hours, he came under attack from party heavyweights, with the former Labour health secretary Alan Milburn accusing him of running a “pale imitation” of Neil Kinnock’s doomed electoral operation in 1992.


The leading Blairite said that Mr Miliband was sticking too closely to Labour’s “comfort zone” in its campaign, and was at risk of making “a fatal mistake” in its approach to the NHS, by failing to promise real reform.


The attack came as Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, made a speech in London setting out the detail of Labour’s NHS plans. But he was left pleading for a place in a future cabinet, after Mr Miliband pointedly refused to say whether Mr Burnham would become health secretary in the event of a Labour victory.

In a further embarrassing slip, Alan Johnson, the former Labour home secretary, was revealed to have been discussing the depths of the party’s dark mood.

“Some of our colleagues think optimism is an eye disease,” Mr Johnson was recorded as saying at a fundraising event last week.

With the NHS set to take centre stage in the battleground between the major parties, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has offered a pay rise to more than a million workers, resulting in the suspension of major strikes across the health service which were due to start tomorrow.

The offer means that NHS staff earning up to £56,000 will receive a one per cent pay rise in 2015-16, with an increase of more than five per cent for the lowest paid. Officials said the costs would be paid by freezing incremental pay rises – a controversial system that gives staff automatic increases linked to time served – for those earning more than £40,000 during the year.

In addition, reforms will be made to NHS redundancy rules for the highest paid, capping payouts at £160,000 rather than the current £500,000.

The proposals agreed will now go to union members for consultation. They will affect more than 1.1 million nurses, midwives, ambulance workers, administrators, porters and cleaners.

The suspension of planned strikes, which could have badly disrupted NHS services at a time when they are under unprecedented pressure, is likely to insulate the Conservatives from attacks over their handling of the NHS.

The plans detailed by Labour promise 10,000 more nurses, partly funded by a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2 million, and a system combining health and social care, to keep more older people out of hospital.

Mr Miliband said the election campaign was “a fight for the future of the NHS” and suggested that a Conservative victory could leave the NHS “sunk by a toxic mix of cuts, crisis and privatisation”.

But the Tories questioned Mr Miliband’s sums, accusing him of promising the same money twice, having said in Tuesday's speech that the mansion tax would be used to cut the deficit.

Mr Miliband also said that he “honestly can’t remember” using the word “weaponise” to describe his party’s strategy of fighting on the issue of the NHS in the run-up to the general election.

The Prime Minister has said the use of the term was “disgusting” and accused him of treating the NHS like a “political football”.

Meanwhile, in an interview with the influential magazine Health Service Journal, Mr Miliband refused to promise Mr Burnham the post of health secretary if Labour were to win the election.

Mr Burnham has been in the shadow post since 2010, but has repeatedly come under fire for his handling of the NHS when he was health secretary before that – most notably for refusing a public inquiry into the Mid Staffs hospital trust scandal.

While praising Mr Burnham’s current work, Mr Miliband told the journal that his policy was “never to nominate anybody for government” because it suggests he is presuming victory or “measuring the curtains”.

The shadow health secretary was left making a desperate plea for the post, saying he hoped his “passion” for his policies and the 10 to 15 years he had spent working on them would give him the chance to deliver his plan. He told a press conference: “Of course I want to see these plans through – I’ve put a lot of my thinking and myself into them, it’s been a long process.” But he conceded that the decision would be made by Mr Miliband.

At the same time, speaking on BBC Radio Four’s World at One, Mr Milburn – who is credited with being a reforming health secretary during his tenure from 1999 to 2003 – raised fears that Labour was set to repeat the 1992 defeat, when a victory was widely expected. “I think the biggest risk for Labour on health, and indeed more generally, is that we could look like we’re sticking to our comfort zone but aren’t prepared to strike out into territory that in the end the public know any party of government will have to strike out into – which is to make some difficult changes and difficult choices,” he said.

They're all third rate turds...bobbing around in the toilet of Westminster, waiting to be flushed.

Looks more like the retreat from Moscow!

Greek government halts privatisation plans – business live


http://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2015/jan/28/greek-government-privatisation-programme-alexis-tsiptas-live

Looks good to me!

But you would prefer this!

Even better!

Conservatives lead at 1

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 27th January -

Con 34%, Lab 33%, LD 7%, UKIP 14%, GRN 7%;

Someone has messed up the font size on this thread recently!

Yep Hays but did you see the SKY poll last night an ongoing poll. Had labour as the biggest party not an overall majority but with the SNP as coalition a 20 seat majority.

I said it would happen.

Get ready for your mansion tax bill..............................smirk.

David Cameron churns out another Benefit Cap lie 27/01/2015



Cameron’s heart really isn’t in this election campaign, is it?

Today he’s been rehashing an old lie about the Coalition’s Benefit Cap – that it encourages people into work.

The Cap – for those who have been out of the country or incapacitated in some way since 2012 – limits benefits to £26,000 per family. When it was first put in place, the Tories claimed that this was equal to the average income of British families, and people on benefits should not earn more.

That might seem fair – but the average income of British families – taking everything into account, rather than just wages as the Tories did – is in fact around £31,000. And that was just the first lie!

It wasn’t long before Work and Pensions ghoul Iain Duncan Smith was implicated in another untruth, when he claimed that the mere mention of the Cap sent around 8,000 benefit claimants scurrying into employment. It was another lie; he was reprimanded by Andrew Dilnot of the UK Statistics Authority for that one!

Now Cameron has repeated his assertion that the Tories will reduce the capped figure to £23,000 if elected into office in May – because £26,000 clearly isn’t humiliating enough for unemployed familes and he wants to make them suffer (his words may have varied from this).

According to the BBC, “He said he was responding to public concerns the cap, which sets a maximum limit for state support for individual households, was set at too low a level.” Too low – so he wants to make it lower? The man is demented.

He also rejected calls for Child Benefit to be exempted from the Cap – showing his true colours on the matter of child poverty. Cameron is all for increasing it!

Cameron claimed on Radio 4’s Today programme that the Cap was having the desired effect and that about 40 per cent of households which were no longer subject to the cap had found work. Tory figures are notoriously untrustworthy, though.

Also, when he says a policy is having “the desired effect”, what effect is that, exactly?

“The evidence is that the cap set at £26,000 has worked. Many thousands of households that were subject to that cap have gone out and found work.

“It shows that many who have been subject to the cap have been more successful in finding work than those who have not.”

Does it really? If so many people have found work, then perhaps Mr Cameron can explain why Income Tax receipts have fallen under his leadership?