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.

The picture above....caviar and hedgehogs !....

Is Corbyn becoming unhinged? I remember Enver Hoxha (pronounced Hoja). He was one of the worst dictators. At the time Albania was run ubdet a version of Chinese communism with the Chinese under control. I used to listen to Radio Tirana in English and all the nonsense they put out.

8 December

Jeremy Corbyn quotes Enver Hoxha at Labour party Christmas party

The Labour leader quoted the Albanian dictator at the party's Christmas bash, who he dubbed "a tough leader".

Jeremy Corbyn stunned attendees at Labour's staff Christmas party by quoting Enver Hoxha, the Albanian dictator who served as chairman of the Democratic Front of Albania and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces from 1944 until his death in 1985.

Dubbing Hoxha a "tough ruler", Corbyn quoted Hoxha's phrase that "this year will be tougher than last year". Hoxha is believed to have imprisoned, tortured or executed at least 100,000 Albanians during his reign.

The party - thrown for both current staff and veterans of the 2015 election campaign - was stunned by the remarks, which will raise memories of John McDonnell's decision to quote Mao Zedong's Little Red Book in the House of Commons. One attendee described the reaction as "Awkward laughter". Others had to Google the autocrat, who is a relatively-obscure figure in Britain. The row over Mao overshadowed Conservative U-Turns on cuts to tax credits and the social security budget.

Hays,


Can you tell us what the Bullingdon Bully Boys under Flashman have been up to;

Activist says Tory chairman given bullying dossier in 2010
By Esther Oxford & James Clayton
BBC Newsnight
8 December 2015


Lord Andrew Feldman, the Conservative Party

Lord Feldman says he was "wholly unaware" of allegations of bullying before August 2015

A 20-page dossier detailing a culture of bullying within the Conservative Party's youth wing was handed to party chairman Lord Feldman in 2010, according to a former activist.

The activist, who says he was himself a victim of bullying, told BBC Newsnight that the dossier was given by Ben Howlett, now an MP, to Lord Feldman.

Lord Feldman insists he was not aware of any complaints before August 2015.

Two activists involved in producing the document say it named Mark Clarke.
Mr Clarke is the volunteer organiser at the heart of the bullying scandal which has bedevilled the party since September.

He has been accused of bullying, sexually harassing and planning to blackmail other activists - allegations he has robustly denied.


Mark Clarke ran RoadTrip which bussed young volunteers around the country to marginal seats

Patrick Sullivan, who runs a Conservative think tank, said hard copies of the 2010 dossier were handed to Lord Feldman and Tory co-chair Baroness Sayeeda Warsi.

His testimony appears to contradict the account of Lord Feldman, a close friend and political ally of the prime minister.

The Tory chairman has maintained consistently that he was "wholly unaware" of the allegations against Mr Clarke until August 2015.

Mr Sullivan told Newsnight that Mr Howlett, MP for Bath, had decided to tackle widespread bullying within the party's young activists after being elected to a second term as chair of Conservative Future, the party's youth wing, in 2010.

Mr Sullivan said: "He had a strong anti-bullying stance in the campaign because there had been a culture of bullying. As soon as he was elected Ben [Howlett] and myself helped compile a dossier and that dossier was given by Ben to Lord Feldman and Sayeeda Warsi."

Seems pertintent!

Here is a banner and hope for JB, Hazy One and The Tinker to gather behind.

George Osborne says that bombing Syria has given Britain its mojo back

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/george-osborne-says-that-bombing-syria-has-given-britain-its-mojo-back--ZJK6yjsdql?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100


http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/george-osborne-says-that-bombing-syria-has-given-britain-its-mojo-back--ZJK6yjsdql?utm_source=indy&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=i100

This Christmas, more than ever, Britain needs to remember its Christian roots
As our supposed religious leaders call for a more pluralist Britain, Christmas is in danger of becoming the holy festival that dare not speak its name

By Allison Pearson7:00PM GMT 08 Dec 2015Comments300 Comments
All religion is a nonsense – but what we used to have was a set of values inculcated from birth based upon Christianity.
The link between church, state and the population was slowly chipped away at when it was thought funky and fashionable by the brain-free usual suspects to put the religions of immigrants who were not Christians on a level footing, something I’m not aware of any of the countries that the immigrants came from doing or allowing.
This evening, I will be attending a carol service in Canterbury Cathedral, one of the oldest, most majestic Christian structures in the world.

Someone has said a prayer there every single day since 597. An awful lot of human hoping is contained within those walls.
The content of the service, though, will not be grand at all; it will be wonderfully familiar. Most of the congregation will know it by heart.
We will join in, lending our voices to the songs that were taught to us when we were small and which our children and grandchildren will – furious, glowering secularists permitting – one day teach their children. And this is what we mean by a nation’s culture.
Admittedly, some of the carols don’t bear close scrutiny. I love O Come, All Ye Faithful, but who has ever known what is meant by the creepy, “Lo! He abhors not the Virgin’s womb”? Best to focus on the descant and not think about the unviolated uterus, that’s my advice.
Several centuries old, the carol has become part of the fabric of Christmas. We know that the first and second “O come let us adore him” need to be sung softly, all the better to belt out, “O COME LET US A-DORE HI-IMM, CHRY-AYST THE LORD!” And this, too, is our culture, transmitted to us like rain to the roots of a plant.
There will be several hundred people in the cathedral tonight; some will be Christian, undoubtedly, but most, I imagine, will be Christian agnostics.


I mean those of us whose faith may be tattered, or nonexistent, but who love the traditions we were brought up with and who feel, rather mysteriously, that through re-enacting them, we are brought nearer to something bigger than ourselves.
The same thing is happening in schools across the land this week, as excited small persons don teatowels and sparkly angel wings and deliver their own unique interpretation of the Christmas story.

My friend’s grandson, demoted at the last minute from Joseph to Third King (harsh!), dropped his present like a tactical stealth bomb on the baby Jesus’s head, the Nativity play being the only stage production in which such mistakes get more star ratings than perfection.
And into all this loveliness and wonder and people doing something warm and communal for a change instead of shopping 'til they drop comes the Commission on Belief and Religion in Public Life (Corab).
Let’s just say the commission doesn’t seem to have got the Tidings of Great Joy memo.


Corab, which includes pillars of the establishment like Baroness Butler-Sloss, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, former head of the Muslim Council of Britain, and Lord Williams, better known as the former Archbishop of Canterbury, says that Britain has seen “a general decline” in its Christian affiliation, and the time has come for public life to take on “a more pluralist character”.
Only two in five British people now “identify” as Christian, and the commission wants a new settlement for religion in the UK. Major state occasions should be changed to be “more inclusive”. “Socially divisive” faith schools must be phased out.


The number of bishops in the House of Lords should be cut to make way for other religions, the law requiring schools to hold a collective act of worship should be scrapped.
Apart from God help us, two thoughts occur to me. Firstly, if Corab gets its way, British children will never become familiar with the Judaeo-Christian religion which underpins 2,000 years of Western civilisation; if you banish it from schools, they will certainly not get it at home. And the stories and attendant values which those of us over the age of 40 take for granted will be lost.

Sadly, you have to conclude that this is exactly what those hand-wringing members of the liberal establishment want.
Second? We probably have 10 years tops before we stop greeting each other with the unpluralist “Happy Christmas”.
A Nativity play, should such a regressive, sexist construct be allowed to exist in 2025, will probably begin with a four-year-old Angel Gabriel reading out a disclaimer: “The baby Jesus was meek and mild, but unfortunately he does raise major questions around gender and ethnicity. If you are affected by any of the issues in this Nativity play, please call the free helpline, Offended Anonymous, or speak to Mrs Michaels, the Head of Non-Religious Transgender Studies.”
In this new, secularist Britain, you will still be allowed to buy a Norwegian spruce to decorate, but it will be called a “holiday tree”.


That sad and joyless nomenclature is now the norm in the United States, where Christmas, to the great sadness of many Americans I know, is the one religious festival that dare not speak its name.
Is that what Corab has in mind? Baroness Butler-Sloss claims that the suggested changes would add to our heritage, rather than take anything away.
I’m afraid our lady of multiculturalism is so open-minded that her brains have fallen out.


If you shut down faith schools, most of which are CofE or Catholic, you not only deny children one of the best free educations in the country, you block up the well of Christian teaching for good.
There appears to be some kind of fuzzy hope that, with Christianity marginalised, we will create a more harmonious society. Experience elsewhere suggests exactly the opposite.
In 2012, for example, Belgian authorities caused outrage when the giant Christmas tree, which had always been erected in the Grand-Place in Brussels, was replaced by a politically correct, minimalist “tree” made of TV screens.
In addition, the city’s historic Christmas Market was renamed – adopt the brace position, chaps – Winter Pleasures.


Critics claimed this was done to appease the booming Muslim population in Brussels. That worked well, didn’t it? Brussels, now better known as the jihadi gun-running capital of Europe, is hardly a shining advertisement for multiculturalism.
It makes sense for some Anglican bishops to give up their seats in the Lords to leaders of other faiths – we want to draw on the wisdom and experience of all our people.
But to put those religious traditions on a par with Christianity is still totally unacceptable to the majority of Britons, whether they “identify” as Christian or not.
Try to picture the countries that many immigrants come from making similar concessions; they’re more likely to burn down a church than promote pluralism.


There’s not much that makes me want to run amok, but the spectacle of eminent judges and religious leaders signing the death warrant of Christianity in these isles is just intolerable. It is literally beyond belief.
Hands off our faith schools! Hands off our Christmas! At this most unsettling of times, we want public life to have a character that is deeply familiar and comforting; we need our traditions more than ever.
“Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
For this is our culture.

It just makes me sick this type of stuff . Giving in to these sorts .

A couple of comments from the article :-


There is nothing wrong with 'internationalism'. We have had it for years - people from other places coming to live and work here. It's nothing new.

What we cannot do and must not do in our country is dismantle our culture to please someone else's.

You name me one multi-culture country in the Middle East. They don't allow it.


.... which is why our political elites babble about "British values" but are completely incapable of discussing or defining them, because they are not specifically Christian, but they ARE specifically non-Muslim, as many Muslim states and cultures make perfectly clear.

- freedom of conscience, to follow any religion or none
- equality before the law, regardless of religious affiliation
- equality before the law, regardless of sex (note that as long ago as the Crusades, there are numerous references to Muslims being surprised by the latitude and freedoms enjoyed by Western women)
- secular democracy, in which the vote is exercised in confidence, at the polling booth
- freedom of marriage. Our marriage ceremonies are quite specific in their intent, that a person may only be married freely, in public and by their own actions, as a legally competent person or with the publicly given consent of their guardians (and that is rare), and that marriage is binding in law with obligations and privileges applying equally to both partners.
- simple Christian charity. I've seen the Salvation Army, and other charity groups out in all weathers handing out tea and soup to rough sleepers, running Christmas dinners for the old and isolated and the rest of it.
- the NHS, often described as "the nearest thing the English have to a religion". Orwell observed in the 30s that the British, and especially the English had a culture deeply tinged with the values of a faith whose formal observations they had largely abandoned. They have a deeply held notion of "fair play" which bears little relation to "fairness" as presented by the likes of Whimpering Nick Clegg, and a strong belief in communitarianism which bears no relation to "diversity and inclusion" because it relates to shared values. The NHS is intrinsically British.
- probity and responsibility in public life, another characteristic not noted among our political elites. The great purge of corruption in public life which characterised the Victorian age, the charitable foundations (notably the Quakers) and the rise of the concept of legal equality and democracy, in which Methodist orators played a crucial role

Dickens summed up the modern CofE, and the politically correct fellow travellers of the liberal left in the words of Mr Bumble the Beadle - that "the law is an ass for supposing such things, and the worst I would wish the law is that it's eyes be opened by experience"

Personally, I'd watch with amusement as cloistered fools like Rowan Williams and the Butler-Sloss woman enjoy daily life in a Muslim theocracy, but I don't intend them to drag me with them.

If people want faith schools then let them have them and they should be private only. All state funding and charitable status should be removed. It is not right that the state should support and legitimise the encouragement of teaching fiction. We would not give money to schools founded on principles of a flat earth or schools with a belief system based on Father Christmas studies. Religion is no better and is the cause of much harm in the world. Christianity is no better than any other religion and worse than some. Religion should be treated as a hobby and have no official status.

Hays,

I would ban all utterances from Cameron, Osborne, disciple Leyton Crosby of the tory party central office on the same basis.

Promising Xmas and failing.

Long may the utterances from Corbyn and his three quid disciples reign in charge of the Labour Party. Guaranteed to be cast out in the wilderness of unelectibility!! LOL!!!!

I bet Fred's with that Butler-Sloss woman , maybe he should move to one of the middle east countries and see how his Christmas goes.

BRUTAL dog fights with prize pots of up to £100,000 are drawing owners from across the world to Britain, according to a report by an animal welfare charity.

The practice is now so prevalent that a fight takes place every day. Losing dogs are electrocuted, drowned or shot.

Training methods include suspending dogs from ropes to increase their strength and boosting their aggression by encouraging them to kill cats, which may be stolen pets. Fights are advertised through social media.

Criminologists at Middlesex University interviewed participants for the report, which was commissioned by the League against Cruel Sports.

Traditional dog-fighting practices are being abandoned. Injured dogs are no longer scooped up by their owners during a fight but are allowed to carry on to the death. If they survive, they are usually denied medical treatment.
The report found an upsurge of fights in immigrant communities particularly Afghan and Pakistani ,where the activity has a high degree of tolerance ...

-----
The last paragraph says it all ,do we really need these people in Britain .

Oh Jimmy these people are our future how can you , people feel sorry for them and we must let them in .

Maybe dog fighting is in their culture so we need to be careful not to upset their human rights .
Support is rising for Marine La Pen in France.

CLOSE THE BORDERS NOW !!!!!

Too late I'm afraid , quite strange though people trying to stop Trump visiting the country , but let in any murderer , rapists , preacher of hate etc and they don't bother .

Dog baiting and fighting were common in England (London, Black country etc,) although banned in 1830s.

Frequently reported in the press up until 2000s.

The traits of the owners commonly seen.


A bit like the ENP and BNP and bomb Syria brigade?

But I agree some in England should have their borders closed and those within isolated and caged!

Allway's making excuses for other people sad .

Was that Fred ? I knew it ,i knew he would make an excuse for them ,i don't know what he said but he will defend anything ,one sicko .

Vic,

Here is a chance for you.

It's conclusion many actually please you!

But I guess you won't read it!

And probably JB without help won't understand the content!

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/10/tories-deceitful-political-sorcery-eu-cameron-magician-labour-must-learn

=-=-=-=

David Cameron’s EU negotiation is a sham. He knows it, and so do the ardent Tory proponents of Brexit. The prime minister understands that a considerable source of anti-EU hostility is motivated, above all else, by opposition to immigration. And so he conducts a charade, pledging to satisfy a lust to close British borders by compelling EU migrants to work in Britain for four years before they can receive in-work benefits.


He didn’t need Sir Stephen Nickell, a senior official at the Office for Budget Responsibility, to tell MPs that the impact of such a move would be “not much”. No impartial source has offered evidence suggesting that it would work, or that the vast majority of migrants are attracted by anything other than work and a fondness for Britain. This is politics as illusion, with Cameron as chief illusionist, and the magician George Osborne completing the circus troupe.

George Osborne is a magician – despite his record he’s seen as a success


Yes, the EU is examining a proposal for an “emergency brake” on migrants entering Britain under certain circumstances. But this is something for which Cameron reportedly has little passion, and he is redoubling his efforts to secure a four-year limit.

As one EU diplomat told the Financial Times: “The reason Cameron hasn’t gone for this must be that the problem that he has in Britain is mainly one of perception, not of real economic impact.” And that is what matters to an illusionist: how something is perceived, rather than how it actually is.

For the Tories, immigration works in their favour whatever happens – or at least until their opponents come up with a convincing message. They have set an arbitrary immigration limit that has been repeatedly – and devastatingly – missed. Its main achievement is to further undermine the public’s faith in politicians delivering what they promise. Nonetheless, if immigration remains high it means an issue on which the left is poorly trusted remains a political priority in the minds of millions. Sure, it risks boosting the currently flagging Ukip, but though Nigel Farage’s diminished purple army is an imprecise weapon it certainly inflicts significant damage on the Tories’ Labour opponents. If immigration decreases, then the Tories can claim success and warn that the opposition would reopen the gates.

-=-=-=

read on