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.

Haze,

Yes Miliband is maturing nicely.

I wonder what his lead will be close of polls on May 7th. Should give him a nice majority and after coupling with SNP should give the needed working majority for 5 years.

I can't see much difference Sturgeon's policies and Miliband's policies, other than on devolution of Scotland which can be put on the back burner for 5 year.

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The chances of lib/dem bolstering a con party coalition is zero and any deal of Cameron doing a deal with Farage will be laughable with Berlusconi Boris looking on.

=========

Farage in the debate represented the Shakespearean fool sent out to entertain the audience with a smattering of gossip and teasing beliefs.

25,

Could you have done as well?

Perhaps more appropriate!

Fr --- what a stupid reply.
2517

It was just a simple question.

But it is surprising what traits, or characteristics individuals project onto others.

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

Anyway Cameron, some people's hero, can't escape his history of broken promises (liecs) failures!

Also, surprising how he seems blind to his "successes".

A leader to follow?

The voters are not as daft as Cameron and Osborne think they are!

let's leave fred to blather away to his non-existent audience

============

last night's pie throwing contest
general informed consensus is that there was nothing to choose between dc and em; nf lost ground; sturgeon did very well, though that only matters to the scots as labour are already pretty much dead in the water up there; clegg was almost forgotten; the other minors remained just bit players


interestingly IG's betting shows tories have now increased their predicted lead in seats from 12 to 16

Let's hope so.

The chicken didn't manage it!

Listen to Dodgy Dave and his mates in the city.

The rest of you plebs just go to your own FOOD BANK

They said Bennett of the greens had the most tweet's , didn't say what they said.

The polls only gave her about 3%. An even more nutty party than UKIP.

Green policies


Top-ups [will be] given for people with children or disabilities, or to pay rent and mortgages. No-one will see a reduction in benefits, and most will see a substantial increase. Parents will be entitled to two years’ paid leave from work.

•The policy will enable people to “choose their own types and patterns of work”, and will allow people to take up “personally satisfying and socially useful work”. It will cost somewhere between £240-280 billion a year – more than double the current health budget, and ten times the defence budget.

•Under Green plans, inheritance tax – “to prevent the accumulation of wealth and power by a privileged class” – will no longer just tax the dead.

•Under radical reforms, it will cover gifts made while the giver is still alive – raising the prospect of levies on cars, jewellery or furniture given by parents to their children.

•New resource taxes would apply to wood, metal and minerals, and steeper levies imposed on cars.

•Crucially, import taxes will be levied on goods brought to Britain reflecting the “ecological impact” of making them – with tariffs reintroduced for trade between Britain and the rest of Europe, ending the free trade bloc.

•All elements of the sex industry will be decriminalised, and prostitutes could no longer be discriminated against in child custody cases.

•The Greens also want to see “significantly reduced” levels of imprisonment, with jail only used when there is a “substantial risk of a further grave crime” or in cases where offences are so horrific that offenders would be at risk of vigilantes. Prisoners will be given the vote.

•SATS, early years tests and league tables will be abolished, and “creative” subjects given equal parity to the “academic”.

•Independent schools will lose their charitable status and pay corporation tax, while church schools will be stripped of taxpayer funding. Religious instruction will be banned in school hours.

•Tuition fees will be abolished – but state research funding for universities will increase to reduce a reliance on “biased” commercial research.

•The “overall volume” of advertising on TV and newspapers will be controlled and cut, as part of a war on the “materialist and consumption driven culture which is not sustainable”.

•The England football, rugby and cricket teams would no longer play against countries where “normal, friendly, respectful or diplomatic relations are not possible.” Football clubs would be owned by co-operatives and not traded on the stock markets.

•No more new airports or runways will be built, and existing ones nationalised. All new homes and businesses must by law provide bicycle parking. Helicopter travel would be regulated “more strictly”. The sale of alcohol on planes and airports will be tightly restricted to prevent air-rage, and the air on inbound flights tested for disease.

•Advertising of holiday flights will be controlled by law to halt the “promotion of a high-carbon lifestyle”. New taxes would be imposed on carriers to reduce passenger numbers.

•Assisted dying will be legalised, and the law on abortion liberalised to allow nurses to carry it out. “Alternative” medicine will be promoted. Private healthcare will be more heavily taxed, with special levies on private hospitals that employ staff who were trained on the NHS.

•It will be a criminal offence, with “significant fines”, to stop a woman from breastfeeding in a restaurant or shop, and formula milk will be more tightly regulated.

•In order to prevent “overpopulation” burdening the earth, the state will provide free condoms and fund research for new contraceptives.

•Merely being a member of al-Qaeda, the IRA and other currently proscribed terrorist groups will no longer be a criminal offence under Green plans, and instead a Green Government should seek to “address desperate motivations that lie behind many atrocities labelled ‘terrorist’,” the policy book states.

•Terrorism, it adds, “is an extremely loaded term. Sometimes governments justify their own terrorist acts by labelling any groups that resist their monopoly of violence ‘terrorist’.”

•Britain will leave NATO, end the special relationship with the US, and unilaterally abandon nuclear weapons. A standing army, navy and airforce is “unnecessary”. Bases will be turned into nature reserves and the arms industry “converted” to producing windturbines.

•“Richer regions do not have the right to use migration controls to protect their privileges from others in the long term,” the party’s policy book states.

•A Green Government will “progressively reduce” border controls, including an amnesty for illegal immigrants after five years.

•Access to benefits, the right to vote and tax obligations will apply to everyone living on British soil, regardless of passport. The policy book states: “We will work to create a world of global inter-responsibility in which the concept of a ‘British national’ is irrelevant and outdated.”

•Political parties will be funded by the state, and the electoral system changed. The monarchy will be abolished.

That Greeny manifesto is so good, I'm going to post it across the road.