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.

Kids Company 'paid private school fees for daughter of toppled boss's chauffeur': Charity chiefs launch probe into claim pupil was bankrolled

Kids Company closed this week amid claims donations were misspent
Among allegations is one about Camila Batmanghelidjh's chauffeur
Ex employees claim charity paid for Jeton Cavolli's daughter's school fees
She is said to have attended £28,000-a-year Dauntsey's School in Wiltshire

Camila Batmanghelidjh’s Kids Company is being investigated over claims that thousands of pounds of the charity’s money was spent on paying the boarding school costs of her chauffeur’s daughter.

The Charity Commission has launched a probe into allegations by former Kids Company employees that the charity helped bankroll a place for the teenage daughter of Jeton Cavolli, her personal driver, at Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire –where fees reach £28,000 a year.

The investigation was triggered last month after employees met the Commission to set out their concerns about whether the arrangement represented proper use of the charity’s money.

It was among several matters raised during the meeting.

The revelation comes just days after Kids Company collapsed amid a welter of allegations about Batmanghelidjh’s organisation, including financial mismanagement and sexually inappropriate behaviour by young people linked to the charity.

The Mail on Sunday understands that Mr Cavolli, 46, known as ‘Tony’, has been on the charity’s payroll for nearly two decades. He is believed to have been paid about £40,000 a year.

Mr Cavolli, who is originally from Albania, is described by staff who worked at the London HQ of the defunct organisation as being so close to Batmanghelidjh that she treated him ‘like a member of her family’.

However, employees are said to have been angered that Kids Company funds – donated to help some of society’s most damaged children – apparently helped to support Mr Cavolli’s daughter at Dauntsey’s.

The school’s chairman of governors, Richard Handover, is also the vice-chairman of Kids Company’s board of trustees.

Late last night Batmanghelidjh contacted The Mail on Sunday to say she could prove to the Charity Commission that no money had been paid by Kids Company to the school to cover academic fees because they had been covered by the school in the form of a bursary.

It is understood the bursary covered the cost of boarding fees, not ‘extras’ and other costs incurred by the girl at the school.

When asked why her charity’s accounts had shown thousands of pounds being paid to the school on behalf of the girl, who was listed as a client of the charity, Batmanghelidjh said: ‘I don’t have the accounts in front of me. I don’t know what those figures relate to.’

A source who until recently worked at the charity said last night: ‘I can confirm that Ms Cavolli was registered as a client at Kids Company, and that Kids Company funds were spent supporting her while she was at school.’ It is understood that the amount paid was a five-figure sum.

The independent school was founded in 1542 and is set in more than 100 acres on the edge of Salisbury Plain. According to school records, Miss Cavolli left last summer. A source told this newspaper that employees had contacted the Charity Commission to inform them that Miss Cavolli’s name was among a group registered formally with Kids Company as ‘clients’ – vulnerable people who used its services.

It is claimed by a source that the charity paid for a number of clients to attend fee-paying schools as part of its Child Poverty Busting Programme. The charity’s website states: ‘We see the impact of such acute deprivation at our centres every day, which is why we need your help to restore dignity and hope to these courageous children.’

The source, who asked to remain anonymous, said: ‘I met Tony Cavolli’s daughter several times. She seemed like a nice, well-adjusted girl. It seems incredible that she was registered as a Kids Company client because there was nothing wrong with her, as far as I could tell.’

any comment about dresden and hiroshima?

They started the war, question: could they not have used a smaller A bomb to get the same result from Japan, could they have exploded it in a unpopulated area outside of a major city to get Japan to surrender ?

Love to see Camila Batmanghelidjh arrested and charged , if only for her bad dress sense [ why is a white women dressed like that ] ?

Nothing like a good Hays smear!

Goes down well with his party.

How is Lynton?

Max,

You prefer the status quo.

Cameroon cant believe his luck...




Are you a voter? Think that you know best? Labour doesn’t

This obsession with issues such as renationalisation of the railways ignores what voters say is important






By Dan Hodges

6:27PM BST 09 Aug 2015



It was all to do with the railways, apparently. Cost of living. Immigration. The deficit and the economy. Europe. The Union. These were the issues we all thought would determine the outcome of the election. But we were wrong. What people really cared about was who runs the buffet car on the East Coast Main Line. That at least appears to be the conclusion of the candidates running for leadership of the Labour Party.


On Sunday Jeremy Corbyn took another bold step through the looking glass, and produced his very own Clause IV moment. If elected Labour leader he would campaign to renationalise the railways, and move to put public ownership back at the heart of his party’s agenda. “We shouldn’t shy away from public participation, public investment in industry and public control of the railways,” he proclaimed.

That’s just the sort of hard-Left showboating you’d expect the great, white, bearded hope to come out with just before ballot papers are sent out. Except that a few days before, Andy Burnham – bookies’ current favourite to win the contest – had said more or less the same thing. Unveiling his leadership manifesto, A Radical Labour Vision for the 21st Century, Burnham demonstrated that a radical 21st-century vision looks remarkably similar to a vision from 1948. He would, he announced, implement a “policy of progressive renationalisation of the railways”. Progressive renationalisation. As opposed to regressive renationalisation, presumably.



Rather than listen to the will of the people, Labour has again decided to tune them out


More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11793205/Are-you-a-voter-Think-that-you-know-best-Labour-doesnt.html

I wonder.

Fancy a pint of cow? Sorry, I mean milk.



The farmers have a good point? They did ought to get more for their milk but don't they sell it to a middle man who sets up the price with the supermarkets?

Would the supermarkets go abroad for milk, if the price weren't as low as it is?

It seems that they would.

So what's the EU for then?

So what's the EU for then?.


Ask Fred

No wonder Cameron is avoiding the press and one can feel safer without his hand at the tiller!

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/david-cameron-is-failing-to-pr-himself-in-the-middle-east-maybe-he-should-start-looking-closer-to-home-10447516.html

ROBERT FISK

Monday 10 August 2015
David Cameron is failing to PR himself in the Middle East. Maybe he should start looking closer to home
Latest blunders include "delayed" reports, confused allegiances and invited dignitaries who never arrive. It seems Cameron isn't quite cut out for the region

David Cameron is failing to PR himself in the Middle East. Maybe he should start looking closer to home
Latest blunders include "delayed" reports, confused allegiances and invited dignitaries who never arrive. It seems Cameron isn't quite cut out for the region

-=-=-=-
PR Dave is my favourite British prime minister – because you can never be sure of his next blunder in the Middle East. Last year, you may recall, he demanded a report on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood by our former ambassador in Saudi Arabia, Sir John Jenkins, in the happy expectation that it would condemn the group as a bunch of terrorists. It was important, he said then, “that we understand... what its beliefs are in terms of the path of extremism and violent extremism...”


PR Dave knew very well, of course, that Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi – victor of Egypt’s first democratic election – had been overthrown in 2013 in an army coup led by Field Marshal Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, which provoked a bloodbath at the hands of al-Sisi’s “security” forces.

READ MORE:
CAMERON FACES PROTESTS AFTER INVITING AL-SISI TO LONDON
AL-SISI 'REGRETS' JAILING OF AL JAZEERA JOURNALISTS
CAMERON SHOULDN'T DELUDE HIMSELF ABOUT WESTERN POWER IN THE MIDDLE EAST

PR Dave also knew very well that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states loathed the Brotherhood, now designated an “illegal terrorist organisation” in Egypt, and that Sir John’s report on the iniquities of this foul organisation would curry favour with the Wahhabist regime in Riyadh – whose late king’s death, we all remember, prompted Dave, in mourning mode, to fly the British flag at half mast.

But the “whoops” factor intervened. Sir John’s report, which Dave described as “an important piece of work”, did not after all label the almost 87-year-old Brotherhood – the most influential pan-Islamic group in the world – a “terrorist” organisation.

So what does a good public relations man do when his minions don’t produce what he demanded? In March, he simply “postponed” the report indefinitely. In other words, for ever.

Then he decided to invite al-Sisi, now the elected president, to London. Yes, just two months ago, right on cue, Dave asked the field marshal to pop over to Downing Street for a chat, exactly one day after ex-president Morsi had been condemned to death by an Egyptian court.

It was important, Dave’s factotum announced, that “we engage with countries where there are issues which are important to the UK’s national interest”. Note here the giveaway vocabulary of every public relations man: “engage” and “issues”. Certainly Dave could chat about the mass killing of at least 817 Egyptian male and female supporters of the Brotherhood at the Rabaa al-Adawiya square in 2013 – the second anniversary of which, by chance, falls this very week. Or he could discuss the slaughter that followed near Ramses station; or the burning to death of alleged Brotherhood members in a police truck two days later.

He could even produce the witness statement I have just been sent by an Egyptian doctor working in Britain who went to the aid of his wounded countrymen and women in Cairo, more than 60 of whom were killed a month before the Rabaa slaughter. This doctor discovered that many of the dead and dying had gunshot wounds to the head – “patients with their heads blown off” – the first of whom was a middle- aged man who had “quite literally a fountain of blood pouring from his head”. The man died on the operating table.

The same doctor discovered a dead body in a street on the way to his Cairo hospital. The man “had been severely tortured. There were signs of electrocution on various parts of the body, skid marks all over the body, particularly the thighs, buttocks and torso, and there were rope marks on the wrist.”



Every few days, the doctor writes, “we would get random dead bodies that were found on the roads, tortured to death in prison and thrown into the streets to scare protesters off”.

When family members, some clearly Brotherhood supporters, arrived for the bodies, “there were people crying all around, and some rejoicing that their relatives were martyrs. It was the most mortifying scene.”

But Dave’s a public relations man to his bones and this, I promise, will not be an “issue” in which he will want to “engage” the Field Marshal. Far more likely, he will want to mull over the £7.58bn deal that BP signed in Egypt this year to help the country through its energy crisis. Or perhaps the “new” Suez Canal launched with ludicrous fanfare only last week. Dave would understand the public relations success of the word “new”, when all that was constructed was a 20-mile bypass system for ships on the 120-mile canal.

He could comment on what a noble figure the Egyptian civilian president cut when he appeared on King Farouk’s old royal yacht at the opening – he was once more in military costume adorned with lots of medals – to watch an air display by more fighter aircraft than Britain can produce for its “new Battle of Britain” against Isis; those were the words of Dave’s Defence Secretary Michael “Chocks Away” Fallon, of course, who doesn’t possess Dave’s PR skills.

But public relations were scarcely up to the mark at the canal last week. Egyptian banners with the state eagle missing from the national flag ... Egyptians dressed up in Pharaonic dress like the soldiers at the late Shah’s grotesque Persepolis party before the 1979 Iranian revolution ... the presence of President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan – wasn’t he supposed to be in The Hague on war crime charges?

Now, however, many are asking when (or if) al-Sisi will actually come to London. The president-field marshal long ago conflated his Muslim Brotherhood antagonists with the ferocious Isis faction that is now massacring his soldiers and policemen in Sinai and attacking Egyptian naval vessels off the coast. And in Cairo itself, there are now disturbing signs that the Brotherhood is suffering its own divisions, its leadership neutered and its youth asking whether their “blood sacrifice” might not better be pursued with Isis-style violence.

Wasn’t there another Arab regime in 2011 whose opponents were condemned as “terrorists”, only to be replaced by Isis itself? Yes, maybe the Downing Street invitation should also be “postponed”. Then Dave can find a sandpit closer to home in which he’ll make fewer blunders.

Here's 'a bit what it's like to fly like an eagle' (over Dubai). At the end of the clip the eagle drops quickly and comes back to its handler's gloved hand:

How ISIS plans to take over the world:



More at: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/isis-unveils-chilling-new-map-6224227

Choose anyone but Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader, says Alastair Campbell


Former No 10 communications director changes his mind about intervening in campaign, saying party would head for ‘car crash’ under Islington MP


Rowena Mason Political correspondent

Monday 10 August 2015 14.33 BST





Labour could be finished if Jeremy Corbyn wins the leadership, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former chief spin doctor, has said.

In a lengthy blogpost, the former Downing Street head of communications and strategy urged the party to choose “anyone but Corbyn”, despite having previously said he would not intervene in the contest.

He changed his mind about intervening because he believes the party would head for a “car crash, and more” under the Islington MP’s leadership.

“Whatever the niceness and the current warm glow, Corbyn will be a leader of the hard left, for the hard left, and espousing both general politics and specific positions that the public just are not going to accept in many of the seats that Labour is going to have to win to get back in power,” Campbell wrote.

In stark terms, he said that Labour’s consideration of Corbyn must stop if it wants to be a serious party of power rather than just a “party of protest that marches, campaigns, backs strikes, calls for ministerial resignations, more money for every cause going, shouts and bawls and fingerjabs”.



More panic here: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/10/anyone-but-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader-alastair-campbell

Anyone using Chromecast, is it worth trying?

Jeremy Corbyn hints at Russia ties as he surges to 53pc in Labour leadership poll

New polling gives Jeremy Corbyn the support of more than half of those with a vote, while the leftwinger hints at closer ties with Russia






By Michael Wilkinson, Political Correspondent

7:45AM BST 11 Aug 2015


Britain should create closer ties with Russia, Jeremy Corbyn has hinted as he surged ahead in the latest Labour leadership poll.


Mr Corbyn, who takes 53% of support in the latest YouGov polling, told Russia Today that Britain should treat international opponents with more respect.


Mr Corbyn told the channel: "What is security? Is security the ability to bomb, maim, kill, destroy, or is security the ability to get on with other people and have some kind of respectful existence with them?"



The leftwinger now has the support of more than half of those with a vote in the Labour leadership contest, the new opinion poll suggested.


Stark warnings from a string of senior party figures that choosing the veteran left-winger would be catastrophic for its chances of returning to power appeared to have had little effect.





More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11795420/Jeremy-Corbyn-surges-ahead-in-Labour-leadership.html

Max,

Have a look at business ties with supporting Russia and the Russian money being laundered through the City financial services.

But again you may prefer this:

What as that to do with Jeremy making overtures to Russia Fred?