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.

Well i wouldn't worry too much , Oh hang on , the Police and Local council tend to turn a blind eye to certain goings on .

Nice one H...it's grim oop north.

Yesterday, whilst walking the dog in a local park, I chatted with a guy in the car park who had a telescope set up and was looking at the sun.

He also had a notice hanging from it, reminding people not to look at the sun through any kind of optical instrument and which explained his telscope was fitted with a hydrogen alpha filter to make doing it safe.

He explained how he was looking at some of the solar filaments that shoot out and can be seen to the side of the sun and he told me that there was "particular activity today at the 'circa '4 o'clock' position." He invited me to take a look.

Here's the sorta thing I saw:

Eric Pickles to be knighted and become Sir Eric Pickles for services to local government.

i thought he was a Knight of the Gherkin .

what on earth did he ever do that was useful?

Hilary

This is how you do it.

I just found one of these in my garden in a tub which contains a Fig tree. It was sitting on top of a large pebble sunning itself (that's the beetle not the tree):



It's called a Golden Scarab Beetle ('Chrisina Resplendens'). Nice, yes? It's an expensive-looking thing, isn't it?

Anyone want to buy it for £50 (+ postage)?

Put it on Ebay Exec they will be bidding like wildfire ,just remember to feed it !

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/22/election-2015-who-voted-for-whom-labour-conservatives-turnout

Election 2015: turnout crucial for Tories as Labour supporters stayed at home

Tories were most successful among voters aged 65 or above and Labour only had a clear lead among those in the 18-34 age bracket, according to Ipsos Mori

The general election result can be summarised in a nutshell: the Conservatives did well with voters that turn out. Labour did well with voters who don’t vote.

More than eight in 10 of those who had supported Cameron’s party five years ago did so again in this election, according to estimates calculated by Ipsos Mori.

But even more crucially to the election’s outcome, the Conservatives were not only best at holding on to their 2010 voters, they were also the most successful party among those groups with high turnout.

With voters aged 65 or above, the highest turnout group (78%), they gained a 5.5 point swing from Labour since 2010. And among ABs – the social class with the highest turnout (75%), defined as “households with higher and intermediate managerial, administrative, professional occupations” – the Conservatives registered a three-point swing from Labour.

Within the 65-and-over age group, the Conservatives won 47% of the vote compared with Labour’s 23%. With ABs the Tories captured 45% of the vote, and Labour 26%. In both cases a far greater margin than the overall election result (38% to 31%).

Meanwhile, Labour were only able to achieve a substantial swing in their favour among young people – registering a 7.5 point swing from the Tories among 18- to 24-year-olds, and a four point swing among 25- to 34-year-olds – and renters.

Labour only had a clear lead over the Conservatives among 18- to 34-year-olds, voters in social class DE (the “semi-skilled and unskilled manual occupations, unemployed and lowest grade occupations”), among private and social renters, and black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) voters.

But among all these groups, turnout was lower than the overall level of voter turnout (66%).

To make matters even worse for Labour, the party’s vote share actually fell among those aged 65 or above. Within this age group, Miliband’s party won 23% of the vote – down eight points on 2010.

Overall, Ed Miliband’s party held on to 72% of those who said they voted Labour in 2010. The party lost votes in relatively equal numbers to the Conservatives (8%), Ukip (6%), the Lib Dems, SNP and the Greens (all 5%).

However, the losses to the SNP are of course somewhat more dramatic due to the fact that the switchers from Labour to the nationalist party are all concentrated in Scotland’s 59 seats, where Miliband’s party lost all but one of its 41 seats. The SNP won 50% of the vote, while Labour’s share dropped 17.7 points to 24.3%.

In Glasgow North East, the swing from Labour was an eye-watering 39.3% – the biggest in the country.

Broadly speaking, support for Labour and the Tories remained quite stable (support for both parties was up one point compared with 2010). Both the swing and relative vote share among men and women was very similar to the overall result. In fact, the differences between Labour and the Tories among male and female voters are more acute when the figures are looked at by age rather than homogeneously within each gender as a whole.

However, the dispersion of Labour’s vote, and the party’s inability once again to attract C1 voters (the Tories enjoy a 12-point lead with what is the country’s largest chunk of the total electorate, remaining fundamentally unchanged since 2010), implies that there isn’t one straightforward answer to what approach Labour should take between now and the next election.

And the matter of “predicting” what might happen over the next five years is even more complicated once you add the other parties to the mix – their voting patterns have completely changed compared with 2010.

The Lib Dems held on to barely a third of their 2010 vote, losing to Labour (24% of the 2010 Lib Dem vote went to Miliband’s party), the Conservatives (20%), Greens (11%) and to Ukip (7%).

The vote share for Nick Clegg’s party collapsed across the board, only hitting double figures with ABs and 35-44-year-olds. Unsurprisingly, the biggest drop in support for the party was among voters under 34. Within these age groups, the share of the Lib Dem vote fell by about 25 points.

Meanwhile, Ukip finished in third place among every group, except ABs and BAME voters, with whom they won 8% and 2% of the vote respectively. Nigel Farage’s party did best with older, white, and working-class voters – winning more than 15% of the vote with C2 and DE voters, and those aged 65 or above. Ukip performed marginally better with men (14%) than with women (12%). And 13% of 2010 Conservatives claim to have voted for Ukip this year.

Before the election, many, based on polling, were expecting turnout to substantially increase compared to 2010. In the event, turnout only increased by one point to 66%. It is estimated to have remained low with 18-24-year-olds (43%), almost half the level for those those aged 65 or above (78%).

The above shows the folly of Labour wasting time on social media which appeals mainly to the 18-24 group.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3092054/Mac-Hatton-Garden-heist-Barclays-Libor-rigging-scandal.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3092054/Mac-Hatton-Garden-heist-Barclays-Libor-rigging-scandal.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3092054/Mac-Hatton-Garden-heist-Barclays-Libor-rigging-scandal.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3092054/Mac-Hatton-Garden-heist-Barclays-Libor-rigging-scandal.html

Delta do you do everything in triplicate . I hope hope hope not .

As some see life!

Others see it differently:

Hazey,

Can you give the figures of the cons party signed up membership now, compared with 10 years ago?

I wonder if we will see the report!


The England has confirmed it is researching the financial risks of the UK leaving the EU after it "inadvertently" sent details of its work to a national newspaper.

A senior official sent an email about its confidential project on the issue to an editor at the Guardian newspaper.

A spokesman for the bank described the error as "unfortunate".
Prime Minister David Cameron has promised an in/out referendum on the UK's EU membership by the end of 2017.

Labour's shadow chancellor Chris Leslie called for "a full and informed debate, not clandestine processes shrouded from public view".

The Guardian reports that the email indicates a small group of senior staff are to examine the economic effects of the UK leaving the EU under the authority of Sir Jon Cunliffe, who is the deputy director for financial stability.

The email also spells out that should anyone ask about the project - codenamed Project Bookend - the taskforce should say it concerns "a broad range of European economic issues", and not make any reference to the forthcoming referendum.

'Say no more'

The email, from Sir Jon Cunliffe's private secretary to four senior executives, was written on 21 May, the Guardian reported.

James Talbot, the head of the monetary assessment and strategy division, was also involved in Project Bookend, the paper said.

The email is quoted as saying: "Jon's proposal, which he has asked me to highlight to you, is that no email is sent to James's team or more broadly around the Bank about the project.

"James can tell his team that he is working on a short-term project on European economics in International [division] which will last a couple of months. This will be in-depth work on a broad range of European economic issues. Ideally he would then say no more."

The memo goes on to propose that questions from "other parties" about "whether this was a project to look at the referendum", should be given the answer, "that there is a lot going on in Europe in the next couple of months - pointing to some of the specific European economic issues (eg: Greece) that would be of concern to the Bank".

'Not sensible'

A statement from the bank said: "Today, information related to planned confidential Bank work on the potential implications of a renegotiation and national referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union made its way into the public domain, due to an internal email sent inadvertently to an external party.

"There are a range of economic and financial issues that arise in the context of the renegotiation and national referendum. It is one of the Bank's responsibilities to assess those that relate to its objectives.

"It is not sensible to talk about this work publicly, in advance. But as with work done prior to the Scottish referendum, we will disclose the details of such work at the appropriate time.

"While it is unfortunate that this information has entered the public domain in this way, the Bank will maintain this approach."

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Interesting.