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.

Shame about David Bowie, one of the more talented performers.

For anyone doubting what really happened in Germany on New Year ,i think now with video footage seen on the news and all the interviews it can not be denied that it was Syrians who carried out these assaults ...

Max.

How many tory MPs will have the courage to resign from the split cabinet when Cameron wins the in or out political fiasco?

Using public money to try to keep his con party together.

Number of complaints in Cologne alone is now over 500, approx 40% of which were sexual assaults including rape. The assaults and thefts were 'almost exclusively' by recent immigrants and illegals. The Cathedral and main railway station are adjacent with much of the celebrations being on the plaza between the two. So much for the comments that women shouldn't have been there.
Fact is that the assaults were deliberately played down to avoid recriminations. The political elite are the same the world over. Brush the muck under the carpet and make soothing noises. The idiots that voted us in will soon forget. After all Christmas only comes once a year.
The police are accused of leaving the plaza on New Year's eve but of course returned with water canon to disperse their own citizens a few days later.

worth reading this morning's guardian
there's an excellent article in there on this cologne affair, and the german media do not come out of it smelling too good (i like the pun!)

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i can't find what i found this morning, but it seems that the german public tv or news station made no mention of this affair for 3-4 days

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anyway the following is also worth reading
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/10/ensure-germany-welcome-refugees-cologne-attacks?

I hear there were over 200 complaints from elderly and portly over 60-year-old men complaining because they weren't assaulted in the suggested manners.

No pleasing some!

Ps. Where is Manuel to-day?

go to specsavers!

Merkel is beginning to look a bit stupid now .

"worth reading this morning's guardian", the boy Garnett reading the Guardian.. what ever next.

it's free already :-)

OK my boy -):

Heard a German reporter interviewed and she said there were more attacks in other cities but they were not reported openly .

quite possibly suppressed as in cologne

She also said Merkels popularity is waning , would you believe .

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2016/jan/11/jeremy-corbyns-today-programme-interview-politics-live

Unions will strongly oppose Corbyn's bid to change Labour's Trident policy, GMB boss says

GMB boss tells Corbyn unions will fiercely oppose his attempt to change Labour policy on Trident

Sir Paul Kenny, the outgoing general secretary of the GMB union, has just been on the World at One telling Jeremy Corbyn that he might have to think again if he wants to commit the Labour party to unilateral disarmament. Here are the key points.

Kenny indicated that the GMB union would fiercely oppose any attempt by Corbyn to abandon Labour’s commitment to Trident.

Kenny said the GMB would oppose any attempt by Corbyn to change Labour policy making rules in the hope of getting the party to endorse unilateral disarmament. On the Today programme this morning Corbyn confirmed that he was considering this option. But Kenny said that Corbyn could not bypass existing rules and procedures.

The Labour party policy at the moment, reaffirmed at the party conference recently, is the renewal of Trident. Jeremy is perfectly entitled to say he wants to change that policy. He needs to go through the same democratic process that arrived at that policy in the first place ...

There are rules. This isssue of a mandate: I don’t remember any speech anywhere where someone said ‘I’m standing on a platform that I will do what I want, when I want, irrespective of what the rules of the Labour party are’. So let’s just get back to the basics.

Of course people are entitled to want to change policy. Why not? That is how it evolves. But there is a process and there are rules. And if anybody thinks that unions like the GMB are going to go quietly into the night while tens of thousands of our members’ jobs are literally Swaneed away by rhetoric, then they’ve got another shock coming.

(Kenny deserves credit for a particularly creative use of the word Swanee.)

He said the GMB would soon be helping to organise a conference to highlight the tens of thousands of jobs that would be lost if Trident renewal did not go ahead.

There are tens of thousands of British jobs involved here, and British workers. We are going to call a conference. There are about 50 sites around the UK whose livelihoods depend on defence contracts. We are going to ask those people what they think about the Labour party effectively shutting down their jobs. We want their voices heard in this debate.

Ah one of the many Jezzer fans has woken up.

Might put Cologne in perspective.

Last year nearly 3,800 migrants died in attempts to enter the European Union by sea. More than one million people made the sea journey successfully.

Haze,

Can you tell me where the Con party stands over the EU and the UK continuing involvement and what their political masters (donors) are telling them what to vote.


Far more important than the Trident renewal of a system which is highly unlikely and probably impractical and probably already probably has the technical systems already jammed.

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Maggie Thatcher and her crew destroy the Manufacturing and heavy industry of the UK (possibly one of the problems with the economy at the moment), changing course of the work done by the Scottish workers may be possible.

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You think the labour party have problems, wait until the referendum the tories will be at one another's throats.
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Mind having a go at Corbyn is a good diversionary tactic from Cameron ongoing failures, except when it comes back to bite his --0-0-.

Tell that to the women involved , you do have a daughter don't you Freda .

funny old life, but corbyn has leaked yet another cabinet member (catherine mckinnell) and even leader of GMB is totally opposed to corbyn's stand on trident

not much chop at creating party unity is he, but then i don't suppose mccluskey cares as i'm sure he has a different agenda of his own

Nineteen individuals are currently under investigation by the state police in connection with the attacks, NRW's interior ministry says in a report (in German), none of them German nationals.
Those 19 suspects include 14 men from Morocco and Algeria. Ten of the suspects are asylum seekers, nine of whom arrived in Germany after September 2015.
The other nine are possibly in Germany illegally, the interior ministry says.
The scale of the assaults on women in Cologne and other German cities has shocked Germany.