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.

A cutting from The Observer.


They see hypocrisy from an international community that ignored the deaths of tens of thousands of Syrians at the hands of their own government for years, then was apparently spurred into action by Isis killings of Europeans and Americans.

“Why is this just in response to Isis? Why was no one moved when the regime was bombing us in Syria? Is it just because [terror] came to western countries? For us, it doesn’t matter which bombs are killing us,” said Mona, a teacher and activist who fled from Isis James Bond-style over the rooftops of her neighbourhood.

Most of all, the Raqqa exiles worry that western and Russian definitions of victory will mean removing one tormentor to give free rein to another, President Bashar al-Assad. Many of Raqqa’s exiles spent time in his prisons as well as in Isis jails, and see him as the main cause of their misery.

“If I went to the UK parliament to make a speech, the first thing I would say is ask them to remove the cause [of our problems], which is Assad, not the symptom which is Isis,” said Abu Ahmad. “Hundreds of thousands of people died in the last few years, and no one came to bomb Damascus.”

To me, the abuses the tories showed to the "young tory activists" seems to point to the same systemic abuses associated with the present tory party in regard to the weakest members of society.

It is not just Shapps is at fault, but the upper "echelons" of the ruling elite of the split tory party.

A self-righteous prig like Fallon fails to understand the tory's problem and it will be interesting to see what the smother-up will be.

For Mao's red book, read Cameron and Osborne kowtowing to the Chinese wheeling the Nation's Nuclear Power and other possessions to the Communist Party of China.

Thinking it is a "clever" idea.

I wonder if negotiations to hire the Nuclear Subs from them is in the diary.

Should go down well in the Shires.

my goodness fred, but you really are so unrelentingly boring in your predictablility
can you really play no other tune?

It's all very well having a pop at Fred, but how do you stand on bomberCam charging in where others fear to thread?


Afghanland, Iraq, Libya: All splendid successes, and poster boys for the delights of intervention.

Lybia was a success. The purpose was to stop Gaddafi massacring his people. It is the same with every dictator that is deposed. The result is a power vacuum and factions that are previously suppressed by the dictator start fighting it out. That will happen when eventually Assad leaves and in North Korea, Azerbaijan, China, Venezuela, Saudi, Bahrain, Zimbabwe and all the rest of the dictatorships. Like it or not, there is not much we can do about it until each party has killed enough of the other(s).

lol, i'll have some of whatever you are drinking/smoking Hays.

Libya was relatively stable until the chaps decided that G'daffys face didn't fit anymore (also a little something about water, not to mention dropping the US$ in oil trades) so they popped him, and the results are plain to see to anyone with even half an ounce of objectivity.

I know Isis fighters. Western bombs falling on Raqqa will fill them with joy

Jürgen Todenhöfer

Friday 27 November 2015 06.00 GMT


Militants in Syria dream of a big showdown with the US and Europe. There are other ways to defeat them


‘How can it be that leading politicians learned nothing from 14 years of counterproductive anti-terror wars?’ Illustration: Ben Jennings


Since the Paris attacks, western politicians have been walking open-eyed into a trap set by the terrorists – just like they did after 9/11. They retaliate with bombs, even though bombs are one of the main reasons why we are facing terrorism in the first place: because bombs predominantly kill innocent people, and thus help to create fresh recruits for the terrorist cause.

As I learned from spending time interviewing Islamic State members in Syria and northern Iraq, George W Bush’s “war on terror” turned out to be a classic terrorist recruitment programme of this kind. In 2001 there were roughly a couple of hundred terrorists in the mountains of the Hindu Kush who posed a threat to the international community. Now, after the war on terror has claimed what some estimate to be as many as one million Iraqi lives, we are facing some 100,000 terrorists. Isis was created six months after the start of the invasion: it is Bush’s baby.


How can it be that leading politicians learned nothing from 14 years of counterproductive anti-terror wars? How can it be that they still believe that the best way to get rid of an infestation of wasps is to batter the nests with a sledgehammer?

The Syrian city of Raqqa, which is now populated by only 200,000 citizens, has become one of the favourite targets of the French president, François Hollande. American, Jordanian, Russian and Syrian military jets have been reinforced by French bombers. British ones could soon be joining them, dropping their deadly load on what remains of the city’s foundations – even though out of 20,000 Isis fighters who used to hide in the city, only a couple of thousand remain at most. The majority have long ago fled to Mosul, in Iraq, or to Deir Ezzor, also in Syria.


France is currently bombing everything that looks like camps or barracks: small factories, communal buildings, hospitals. The majority of the Arab world has seen photos of dead children in Raqqa – Isis is doing everything it can to spread them. And for every murdered child, there will be new terrorists. War is a boomerang, and it will come to hit us back in the form of terrorism.

Of course, Hollande has to react. But no one is stopping him from reacting with a bit of brains. As a head of state he should know that urban guerrillas cannot be defeated with bombs. He should know that Isis fighters only march in tight orderly lines or drive in convoys in their propaganda videos. Off camera, they avoid hanging around in large groups and spend their time among the local population, preferably in apartment blocks that house families. That’s the very first chapter in the dummies’ guide to terrorism.



More common sense here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/27/bomb-isis-west-learned-nothign-from-war-terror-defeat-muslim-world-equal-partner

The rebels in Lybia started revolting against Gaddafi way before we got involved. The trigger was when he cornered a group of rebels in eastern Lybia and was threatening to massacre thousands by air and ground forces. A number of countries, including the French and then the UK. The action was taken as an emergency. We did have a plan, but events overtook us because the eastern and western factions started a civil war.

max - read my posts and you will see where i stand .... 65518 will do as an example

I'll ask again.

Who do you want to bomb?

Targeted missions against ISIL. Command control centres, hardware such as tanks, APCs, trucks, oil tankers and oil terminals, ISIL units in transit. These are the targets that involve several hundred strikes a day currently.

Don't forget that there are special forces on the ground pinpointing targets and drones and satellite gathering intelligence. They are also eavesdropping on mobile and social media 'chatter'. That is how they targeted Jihadi John recently. We have staff in Cyprus and inside the rock in Gibraltar working in what are called 'listening posts' who intercept radio and phone traffic apart from GCHQ in the UK. The Israelis are providing a huge amount of intelligence as a result of intercepts.

Us to bomb Syria? the USA, Russia and France are dropping bombs as we speak and have been for some time (France apart) and what did dropping thousands of bombs in Viet Nam achieve except thousands upon thousands of innocent people being killed?

Also I thought that we were short of money, how much would it cost?

Bomb them?.. Don't be ridicules.

Vietnam was a very different war. There was no targeted bombing capability with jungle cover and no air surveillance. They were supported by China. Syria is a desert mainly. The military in Vietnam were hampered by lack of political will. The military wanted to bomb North Vietnam cities but could only bomb the jungle with carpet bombs.

I am sure we will be bombing them in about a week as we should have done in 2013. The targets are being prepared even now.

You have only answered one question, now answer the rest please?

Corbyn's former lover backs traffic scheme which could see her house value soar above £1million

Neighbours' fury as Diane Abbott ignores vociferous opposition campaign





By Robert Mendick, Chief reporter

9:05PM GMT 29 Nov 2015







Diane Abbott, the left wing Labour MP who once had a fling with Jeremy Corbyn, has angered her neighbours by giving her influential backing to a traffic scheme that could see the value of her house rocket above £1m.


While almost 1,000 residents have signed a petition demanding the scheme be scrapped, Ms Abbott, the darling of the Left, has tweeted her delight.








“Welcome trial traffic filtering scheme for cleaner greener Hackney,”

MP Diane Abbott









“Welcome trial traffic filtering scheme for cleaner greener Hackney,” announced Ms Abbott, Labour’s shadow international development secretary and MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, on Twitter.


Her ringing endorsement flew in the face of a vociferous campaign fighting the scheme. It may be coincidental that Ms Abbott is expected to see a rise in the value of her house if it goes ahead.





Land registry documents show Ms Abbott is the sole owner of a townhouse on Middleton Road in fashionable Hackney which she bought for £325,000 in 2001.

Local estate agents say the house is now worth in the region of £950,000 but could be worth a fair bit more once the scheme gets the go ahead.

The traffic plan will mean her road, which sees about 5,000 cars, vans and lorries trundling down it every day, shut off to through traffic. Ms Abbott’s road will be transformed from a busy and noisy thoroughfare to a quite haven of calm while those in the surrounding streets fear that the extra traffic will head their way. Others complain the road closures will make massively increase short car journeys, increasing pollution rather than reducing it.






“Actually it’s not that welcome. Nearly 500 residents signed a petition opposing it. Council arrogantly asked no one locally”

Resident Patrick Wintour








Estate agents said the measure will add tens of thousands of pounds to the value of her townhouse.

A spokesman for local estate agents Blake Stanley said: “Houses on Middleton Road are a little bit cheaper at the moment because of the through traffic. We do take that into account when we value properties. It is a bit more of a cut through.”

Residents in surrounding streets are furious with the scheme. They believe the traffic plan will simply push traffic on to other roads and make getting in and out of the area needlessly time-consuming, making car journeys longer and actually more polluting.

Opponents include Patrick Wintour, the long-standing political editor of the Guardian newspaper, who in response to Ms Abbott’s praise for the scheme, wrote on twitter: “Actually it’s not that welcome. Nearly 500 residents signed a petition opposing it. Council arrogantly asked no one locally.”

In the time since he wrote that two weeks ago, a further 500 signatures have been added.

Claire Brossard, 43, a mother of two and a leading campaigner, said: “It’s a disgrace. The Middleton Road residents were lobbying for this and so probably was Diane Abbott. It’s a complete waste of money.”






“It’s a disgrace. The Middleton Road residents were lobbying for this and so probably was Diane Abbott. It’s a complete waste of money”

Claire Brossard, who opposes the scheme








The scheme will see 12 separate road junctions closed to through traffic in an area covering roughly half a square mile. Hackney Council, which is Labour dominated, described the measure which comes into force on a trial basis in January as “one of the largest and most progressive of its kind”. The trial scheme, costing £60,000, is being paid for by Transport for London as part of its plans to make cycling safer in the capital.

Ms Abbott, 62, who has been an MP in Hackney for almost 30 years, said: “Across London, councils are looking for ways to reduce traffic and improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. I understand the concerns that some residents have about this scheme, but at the moment what the council is proposing is a trial. Presumably, if high levels of traffic are displaced onto surrounding roads, the council will think again about its proposals.”

A source close to Ms Abbott said it was unfair to link Ms Abbott’s support for the scheme to her house price. “She isn’t thinking of selling so that has nothing to do with it,” said the source.

Barrel scraping alert.

LOL STANLEY!!!! POT CALLING KETTLE ME THINKS!

Wrong Haystack...yet again!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20719382