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.

If I were an England player, I would refuse to play in Qatar.

But I would only do this if I'd previously chatted with my mates and we had all agreed to do the same.

I'm pretty sure, that the whole UK would be EXTREMELY supportive.

depends which question you're asking me fred


straw and rifkind
confess i have not heard the allegations in detail, but given that both of them are stepping down, it must be pretty borderline at best


overseas accounts
there are certainly many legitimate reasons for having an o'seas a/c
there is certainly nothing remotely illegal or even "aggressive" in setting up trusts and similar overseas
in the latter case, i think they would need to have been done a good few years ago, as the rules on trusts are regularly changed every few years - keeps the accountants in business

you know my views on morality and tax, so i won't bother to repeat them

Straw and Rifkind,

There was a subtle difference between the 2 "cases".

Straw had already decided to leave Parliament and in the interview with him he pointed out he would no longer be a MP, although he may or may not consider he would be a "lord".


======

Rifkind,

Different, he was trading on his MP position and expected continuation and boasted that due to previous appointments and present was able to "grease" the slippery road to ambassador's and ministers due to those positions and being paid a little extra.

I suppose he could admit to/in Parliament his "interest" and "fee" for being so.

---

"you know my views on morality and tax, so i won't bother to repeat them"

Does the same rationale extend to your other areas of life?

Will Cameroon be Pm after the next election?



The Coming Chaos in the U.K. Election


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-25/the-coming-chaos-in-the-u-k-election

Yes Fred... he is assuredly a git -):

and old and bald too!

Of dear, what a shambles -):

Rifkind,

I disliked Rifkind's for his certainty for others, but thought him politically "smart".

But the another thing which irritated me about him is the use of index finger to point out and "TELL" me that what he thought for himself was "correct" and "right" for others and his was the "opinion" which counted.

(I disliked being lectured by poor quality fraudsters!)

-------
Dodgy Dave uses his hands in a different way, generally in his “dodgy” moments and indicates "there, there dear it will be alright”, used frequently when he is lying through his teeth.

Interesting figures and one can see the reasons for poor "production figures" against "falsified or distorted" employment figures used by Osborne.

==========

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31619639
UK firms use 1.8m zero-hours contracts, says ONS
Protest over zero-hours contracts
Some workers are unhappy about zero-hours contracts but others say it suits them
Firms in the UK used 1.8 million zero-hours contracts at the height of last summer, official statistics show.

The total, in the first two weeks of August, was higher than the 1.4 million contracts revealed when figures were first collected in January last year.

This is likely to be the result of a number of seasonal industries using more of these contracts, making a direct comparison difficult.

Zero-hours contracts do not guarantee a minimum number of hours of employment.

Some workers and unions are unhappy that staff can simply be sent home if there is no work to be done. But supporters of the contracts like the flexibility that they can offer.

Awareness
Additional data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that 697,000 workers said they were on a "zero-hours contract" in their main job between October to December last year.

This represents 2.3% of all people in employment.

This figure, collected in a survey, is reliant on these workers being fully aware that they are on a zero-hours contract.

The ONS said that a rise on the 586,000 workers who said they were on zero-hours contracts during the same period in 2013 could be the result of greater awareness and publicity for these kind of contracts.

line
Zero-hours contracts explained
One in five employers has at least one employee on a zero-hours contract
Staff have no guaranteed hours
The contracts are often used in retail and in the hospitality sector

Is GF your new spin doctor Fred, e-mails flying from Yorkshire To Brum at a fast rate? Your left wing shite seems to be picking up more speed at a faster rate of knots. :0)

Hands that do dishes can be soft as your face, with mild new fairy liquid!

It would be a pity to return the economy to the Labour Party, only for them to balls it up again.
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Yes Norman, we need another Black Wednesday and further relaxation of regulation in the city.

Perhaps, our donors will give us jobs on the board of a few hedge funds.

(Sorry, we already promised.)


Mind labour might cut down on back handers and part time MPs!

Mind if we can split the NHS and sell off part of it, that should get rid of one of the tory problems.

Snippet from the link in post 980, in the latest prediction of the result (GE) from YouGov President Peter Kellner, he sees the Conservatives getting 293 seats, and Ed Miliband’s Labour Party 270 — both well short of the 326 target for a parliamentary majority.
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2157,

Can you see Lib.Dem wanting to be blighted by the Tories again.


Can you see SNP forming a coalition with Tories. Hell would freeze over first.

Can you see greens trusting the tories.

Can you see 5 UKIPPERS MPS.

Plaid would never join the tories and only 50% of the Irish, but the charge for doing do would be interesting.

Either Ed Miliband or no government, but none of the Left leaning parties would want an another election until they rebuild their kitties.

Fred.

All of them (all) would sell their souls for a sniff of power.


Cleggy's a good example:

Andrew Whitaker: Scottish independence take two
COULD a Tory General Election win and an SNP landslide provoke a second referendum, asks Andrew Whitaker.

The SNP leadership made it plain during the referendum campaign that the independence vote was a “once in a generation” event, and even appeared to suggest it was a once-in-lifetime thing, with no chance of a rematch.

Although there were somewhat ambiguous hints the weekend after the referendum from Alex Salmond that Scotland could achieve independence by stealth, the party’s big hitters have, for the most part, boxed clever on the topic.

Nicola Sturgeon has very effectively kept the party’s guard up, by stating that a second referendum would be held only if and when the majority of Scots wanted such a vote.

The carefully crafted line – that a fresh independence vote is not in the gift of the SNP leadership, it’s for Scotland to “decide” – has given the SNP room to breathe in the five months-plus since its referendum defeat. So given the dominance of the SNP and the very real prospect that it could come close to sweeping the board in May’s General Election and then go on to become the first party to win a third term at Holyrood in 2016, are there then circumstances in which a second referendum might be possible?

Of course, Ms Sturgeon is far too astute to suggest that overwhelming majorities for the SNP at Holyrood and in the Scottish section of the General Election would mean a mandate for independence.

Likewise Mr Salmond, who is almost certain to win a return to the Commons and once again emerge as the SNP’s dominant figure at Westminster, has done more than any Nationalist politician to see off the tendency within the party that has been out of favour for decades – a position associated with figures such as the late Margo MacDonald, Jim Sillars and Winnie Ewing.

Just as at the 2011 Holyrood election, when the SNP campaigned on a “re-elect a competent SNP government” platform, Ms Sturgeon has appealed to Scots who “don’t normally vote SNP” to lend her party their votes in May to boost Scotland influence in the Commons and deliver more powers for Holyrood.

But could various scenarios play out whereby the SNP overwhelmingly wins the election in Scotland in May, as in 2011, on a platform of being a “strong voice that stands up for Scotland”, but of which the main consequence is a vote on independence?

There’s every chance the SNP could take between 30 and 40 seats at Westminster on 7 May, with the Tories wiped out and Labour and the Lib Dems left with massively depleted Scottish representation in the Commons.

What then if David Cameron were to remain in Downing Street with a majority of any kind, but with no MPs in Scotland, which would be represented almost completely by Nationalists at Westminster?

Such an outcome would precipitate a constitutional crisis of sorts and be the first time a Nationalist party had won a Westminster election in a constituent part of the UK since Sinn Fein won the 1918 election in Ireland – prior to it seceding from the UK with the creation of the “Irish Free State”.

Imagine then a second-term Tory government with a programme of welfare cuts, along with policies already announced such as a plan to effectively outlaw public sector strikes and workfare for young people – policies that would affect Scotland despite the lack of a mandate for Mr Cameron north of the Border.

With the Tories’ plan to hold a referendum on European Union withdrawal, there would also be the prospect of Scotland being dragged out of the EU against its will and it’s hard to imagine Mr Cameron agreeing to the SNP’s already stated demand for a Scottish veto on the nation’s own status in Europe.

Ms Sturgeon will know that the SNP faces a choice at its annual conference in late 2015 about whether to include a pledge for a second referendum in its manifesto for the 2016 Holyrood election.

Any ambiguity would dominate the 2016 election campaign, with the SNP under fire for refusing to state one way or another its intention on holding an independence vote, handing Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy an open goal and, who knows, a possible lifeline for his party.

The First Minister would not have too much difficulty convincing her party that “circumstances had changed” since the talk of a “once in a generation” independence vote, with Mr Cameron ruling over what could be a Tory-MP free zone and an SNP-dominated Scotland about to be hit by ultra-austerity from Westminster.

Of course, the SNP would then have to win the 2016 election and even with Labour taking a drubbing in Scotland this May, it’s possible the party under Jim Murphy’s leadership could make a limited recovery and deprive the Nationalists of an outright majority at the Holyrood election next year and block a second referendum by teaming up with the other Unionist parties.

However, voting overwhelmingly for the SNP is something that many people now just appear to do in the same way as they voted New Labour in the late 1990s until the mid-2000s and for the Tories in the 1980s.

Such is the current dominance of the SNP, that the Nationalists are in with a chance of successfully styling themselves as the “party of Scotland”, with a populist style that could establish a political hegemony not dissimilar to that of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael – two centre-right parties that have dominated politics in the Irish Republic for almost a century.

Another enduring political hegemony involving a populist-style nationalist party, that has often used social democratic or leftist language, is that of the Peronist movement in Argentina, one which has been in and out of power for much of the past five decades based largely around the legacy of the country’s former president Juan Peron and his wife Eva (Evita).

But whatever differences or similarities there are with such parties and the nationalist movement here in Scotland, it may well be that the SNP dominance is now such a fact of political life in Scotland that a second referendum is coming one way or another.

Of course, it’s completely possible that even with massive SNP gains at Westminster that the scenarios of a Tory victory will not play out and that Labour will in fact be the biggest party – which is still a highly possible outcome.


I love reading the comments on here. Everyone feels so hard done to which is totally hilarious. If Scots vote in the SNP then they are telling Westminster that the Tories and Labour are not representing the best part of the UK. It is most likely inevitable that Scots will separate and the only real option to stop it would be to create a completely federal system. Smith is a joke the vow is also a joke. I would actually think the Tories would offer a proper federal Scotland in exchange for giving the power. If the SNP had all those seats all they would have to do to let the Tories vote in whatever they want is abstain. Scotland on the other hand would have autonomy which is really what the whole referendum was about
I notice that there has been a fair bit of talk about tactical voting against the SNP lately, both on forums and from Labour.

Indeed Robert James McNeill, Labour's Scottish Policy Forum, Vice-Chair of East Lothian Constituency Labour Party, has been caught red handed encouraging people to vote against the Labour candidate in many constituencies and vote Tory or LibDem instead to keep the SNP out.


So not only have Labour betrayed the people of Scotland, they even betray their own candidates!

I notice that Whitaker makes reference to Labour being the largest party at the end of his article.

This is, in fact, irrelevant if Labour do not get a majority, as "In a situation of no overall control the Government in power before the General Election gets the first chance at creating a government. If they cannot do so, the Prime Minister will resign."

http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/general/hung-parliament/

So if you hear Scottish Labour spouting "the largest party gets to form the government", they are lying. Again.

It is what you do with power which matters.

Fred re post 992
Lib Dems will be decimated
Correct re SNP
The Greens showed their ineptitude yesterday
UKIP won't have enough MP's
Plaid see UKIP
Miliband hopefully not.
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