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.

It looks like 67 Labour MPs voted for the government.

No idea. You don't discuss their shareholdings? oh really.

The rest is irrelevant to me.

Why would I discuss anyone's shareholdings? It is all a bit unimportant.

Well if you don't know that..

By Dan Hodges11:01PM GMT 02 Dec 2015
They had said they needed two days of debate. War. Peace. To bomb Isil. Not to bomb Isil. The issues were too complex. The stakes too high. The arguments too nuanced.
They were wrong. It boiled down to one speech and one moment. Parliamentary history distilled in a way few of us have seen in our lifetime.
Hilary Benn’s speech. It is about to become the House of Commons “where were you when Kennedy was shot” moment. Where were you sitting. Who were you with. What were you thinking.
"Hilary Benn did not just captivate the House, he inverted the House"
Our parliamentarians get a bad press. Some of it is deserved. Some of it isn’t. But when the moment comes – and the great issues of state come – they invariably rise to the occasion.
Tonight they did not. David Cameron, hamstrung by his ill-advised comment (one he privately deeply regrets) that members of the opposition were “terrorist sympathisers” never got into his stride. Jeremy Corbyn easily got into his, and delivered one of the worst speeches by a senior party leader the Commons has ever seen.
For a while it looked like Britain’s servicemen and women would be sent to war with partisan point scoring ringing in their ears. And then the shadow foreign secretary rose to deliver his wind-up speech.

Two years ago Hilary Benn was instrumental in convincing Ed Miliband to oppose action against Assad. Tonight he articulately, and passionately and elegantly re-crafted his ploughshares into a swords.
The diplomatic case. The military case. The strategic case. Calmly and forensically he made the argument the Prime Minister could not make and the Leader of the Opposition could not destroy.
“We now have a clear and unambiguous UN resolution. The UN is asking us to do something. it is asking us to do something now, to act in Syria and Iraq. It was a Labour government that helped to found the UN at the end of the Second World War. We wanted the nations of the world working together to deal with threats to international peace and security. Daesh is unquestionably that.”
It was a truly incredible moment. He did not just captivate the House, he inverted the House. Hilary Benn did not look like the Shadow Foreign Secretary. He did not look like the leader of the opposition. He looked like the prime minister. And by extension, his party, which for the past few days has appeared broken and beaten, looked like the government.


Most amazing of all was the effect on the real Leader of the Opposition. Though we may as well now refer to him as the former leader of the opposition. Jeremy Corbyn started by looking agitated. Then he appeared uncomfortable. Then he began to shrink. It was like watching the witch from the Wizard of Oz who has just had a bucket of water thrown over her. All the talk of his “mandate”. All the talk of his legions of new activists. They were destroyed in an instant. Crushed by Hilary Benn and 100 years of the Labour party’s accumulated moral authority.
“As a party we have always been defined by our internationalism,” he said. “We believe we have a responsibility one to another. We never have and we never should walk by on the other side of the road. And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculating brutality but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this Chamber tonight and all of the people that we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt, they hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt, they hold our democracy – the rules by which we will make our decision tonight – in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated. And it is why as we have heard tonight socialists and trade unionists and others joined the international brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice. And my view is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria and that is why I ask my colleagues to vote for this motion tonight.”


It was an incredible moment. As Hilary Benn sat down the House rose as one. Every side broke into prolonged and sustained applause. Benn’s colleagues reached across to embrace him. Angela Eagle physically pushed Jeremy Corbyn back into his seat and reached out to her colleague.
Hilary Benn had successfully made the case for war. He had also made the case for the Labour Party.

Love the riding the bomb loop.

'Dr Strangelove or how I stopped worrying and came to love the bomb'.

Two Tornados have taken off from Cyprus, most likely with a parcel delivery for ISIL.

so then, what does fred have to say of hilary benn?
no doubt he'll call him a turncoat or somesuch

anyway, it's certainly no time for gloating from some quarters, as though i support the decision, it is a very serious step with an unknown outcome - as indeed would have been a vote in the other direction

california shootings
meanwhile the motive behind this latest "crazy america" mass shooting is unknown

it would be nice to think that there may at last be a groundswell to clamp down on the lunatic "right to carry arms" embedded in the constitution

Never happen , no one would get elected on the promise to stop the right to carry arms , mad as that is.

certainly that has been true to date, and usa has a notoriously strong gun lobby
however, even obama has now nailed his colours to the mast on this issue, no doubt to MrT's disgust :-)

300 million+ guns in private ownership.

And that's the ones they know about...how many others?


Plus, as the gun lobby would say....if you disarm the general public, only the bad guys will have guns.


How do you counter an argument like that?

Manuel.,

I don't stoop as low as you do.

I think Benn is entitled to his views and has the right to make those views apparent.

I disagree that the right decision was made.

Looking at the some of the antics of the beginning of debate it reminded me a of a bunch of sophisticated football hooligans.

The hoorah for war brigade ilk were of Boys Own part players.

0-0-0--00-

I hope some are able to look into the eyes of their children and tell them what they are celebrating.

-=-=-=-=-=

Hays, in what he celebrates and lauds, strikes me as a psychopath.

-0--0--0-0

I will watch and wait and if still around view the aftermath of the actions and the way supported for dealing with ISIS.

I hope I am not right in my expectations.

As I wrote before I am not against using "force", but when and how and against what, or whom you use it against, are the problems.

That is what should be thought about and considered before engagement.

-===--

Why don't you go to Syria and watch it for yourself first hand . Be a nice break for us as well .

Is that Fred bleating on again ?

Victim.

I was in Yugoslavia just after the "precision bombing" an the time of a said "victory" and know many on both sides of that crazy war.

I have been in other post-devastation war zones and seen the results, both physically and socially.


Perhaps, you can expand your experiences.

A proper toff for leader of the labour party?


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Benn