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.

Oi Alf, watch yer language sunshine or your banned

certain people have been trying to get me into that position for some time :-)

Keeping an expensive engagement ring is nothing more than common prostitution.

Agreed, fellas?

but an uncommonly lucky and in this case, attractive prostitute :-)

No, a gift is a gift.

Poll tracker...clock the date


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11374181/General-Election-2015-latest-poll-tracker.html

Chilcot has made a mockery of the serious job he was given

Sir John Chilcot couldn't even finish his opening statement to the select committee in a timely fashion



By Dan Hodges

2:47PM GMT 04 Feb 2015

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11389827/Chilcot-has-made-a-mockery-of-the-serious-job-he-was-given.html


Sir John Chilcot has just finished giving evidence before the Foreign Affairs select committee on his ongoing report into Iraq. It was a farce.


This man, so the accusations go, is taking so long over his inquiry that it’s starting to look like all the key participants in the decision to go to war will be dead before its published. Well, his opening statement began with the announcement that one of his committee members, the historian Sir Martin Gilbert, had indeed died.


He then began to explain why a report that had been scheduled to last a year, had not been completed after six. And he explained. And he explained some more. He would probably be explaining still if the committee chairman, Sir Richard Ottaway, hadn’t stepped in politely to ask him to conclude. Not only is he unable to publish his report on time, he can’t even complete an opening statement on time.


Things went downhill from there. Was the reason for the delay obstruction on the part of government? No, it wasn’t. Was the reason obstruction on the part of witnesses? No. Was the reason obstruction on the part of foreign governments? No.


The select committee tried to dig a little deeper. There were reports that the Maxwellisation process - whereby witnesses facing criticism are given the opportunity to respond to that criticism - was a major reason for the delay. Could he tell the committee how many people formed part of that process? No, he couldn’t. Could he confirm a report that one witness had been sent hundreds of pages of criticism? No, sorry, he couldn’t do that either. What he could say, though, was that the people facing criticism were all people who had appeared as witnesses at the inquiry. That revelation will have come as a relief to John, my local butcher - he’s been worried sick about whether the Chilcot report was going to criticise him.


The committee started to look slightly frustrated. Chilcot attempted to reassure them, by pledging he would try and avoid slipping into civil-service Mandarinese. Was the process of declassification of documents still ongoing, he was asked? No, he responded. Well, maybe a bit. Actually, this is how he would characterise it. There was “a tale of classification”.

He was asked if the evidence base, upon which the report’s conclusions would rest, was now broadly finalised. Yes, he said, essentially it was. So could that not be published? No. Sorry. It couldn’t. Because to publish the evidence without Chilcot and his committee providing the appropriate “context” would be unfair. People would be able to take the evidence and draw any old conclusion they liked. From the evidence.


For me, the most telling moment was when he explained how he had been unaware - when he took up the chairmanship - just how complex the inquiry would be. It had taken them off into all sorts of unexpected avenues, he said. This, remember, is an inquiry into the greatest single foreign policy blunder this country has made since the conclusion of Second World War. 100,000 dead. A region destabilised. Global consequences that we are feeling today, and will continue to feel for generations to come. Did he really think it was all going to roll out neatly in front of him, like an A level history primer?

If the chair of the inquiry into the war in Iraq was unprepared for the scope and scale of that inquiry, then by definition, he was the wrong man to chair it. But we knew that anyway.

Chilcot had one job. It wasn’t to produce a definitive report into Iraq. None is possible. It wasn’t to change perceptions of that war. Perceptions are locked in stone. It was to produce a report that at least demonstrated that the decisions taken in the run up to that catastrophic war would finally be the subject of open and transparent public scrutiny. And he’s failed. He’s failed because his inquiry is now tainted by the same suspicions of cover-up, politically motivated obfuscation and self-interested evasion as all the other Iraq inquiries.

Sir John claimed he didn’t want it to look he was “scamping the work”. Six years on, there is little danger of that.

i wonder what's happened to Hays?
he hasn't posted since 1st i think, so hope he isn't poorly

.

I am hopeful about Haze!

8-)

good morning fred .... i see you have DTs again this morning
i dropped a note to Hays a day or so back, but haven't heard from him

Holiday I expect.

Stan,

I hope he makes it a long one.

Or, even better they have locked him in the cloak cupboard and Party Central Office and forgotten about him.

========-=-=-=

Manuel,

Actually been more or less dry for about 6 weeks.

Double posting is B nuisance.

I think it it due to delay in uploading posting and my impatience and repeat keying.

It is irritating though.

======

have a stiff drink to calm you down then :-)

I see that the morning tv perves have been on about bondage and such.....what tremendous standards that dirty perverted TV rabble set....

must be something to do with the "50 shades of grey" effect

it's amusing that what some consider perversion others will consider just good fun
is it not perversion only when one of the partners does not enjoy it and/or it is carried out in public and offends passers-by or similar?

No.

Outcomes have to be consider!

.

Somebody is making me nervousssssssssss!

which two outcomes have to be considered pray?

Start reading :

'
when you have finished it you will understand!