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.

No. That one is a right wing petition. There a few

Suggest you re read and then amend then.

I said mainly left wing!

It’s all kicking off in Wales. The Tories and UKIP have backed Plaid’s Leanne Wood for First Minister, meaning the Assembly vote is tied 29-29 between her and Carwun Jones. The presiding officer is overheard asking “What do I do now?”

Yes but that was only in your opinion which we know is biased.

I hope it is biased.

stan, "Yes but that was only your opinion which we know is biased"

And your opinion isn't biased...Tell that to the fairies!!

Wouldn't expect anything else from you H/S.

Get back to Granny..boy.

Show me an unbiased person and I will show you someone with no opinions.

How did the Welsh Assembly tie 29 each when there are 60 members ?

Have two died since last Thursday ?

And I just read we have to have another election if they can't elect a first minister within 28 days of the election.

Just goes to show what a waste of money the Assembly really is.

That would be 28 days from 5 May. So they have just over 2 weeks.

Under the Welsh devolution legislation, a First Minister must be elected within 28 days of polling day or another election must be held.

Current First Minister in tears as he faces the prospect of Labour losing control of Wales.

You'd be crying too if you saw the chuck wagon pulling out of Dodge.

Not content with being pushed into third place in Scotland, Labour may lose control of Wales altogether.

He is probably upset as he may lose the £140,000 salary as First Minister.

He just assumed that he would be allowed to be the First Minister again and lead a Labour minority government in fact he had already made a speech to that effect.

"He is probably upset as he may lose the £140,000 salary as First Minister."

A bit like Cameron then.

What do they expect with Corbyn as leader ,it's a shame because right now we need a strong opposition .

You have half the con party as opposition already.

How many more do you want?

Dumbo try and read this,




WILL THE UK GO DOWN THE SAME ROUTE AS BRAZIL?




http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/12/crony-capitalist-corruption-david-cameron-british-tax-havens-avoidance

Was it a spoof? Was it a set-up? Was it real? Like a hologram from Madame Tussauds, the Queen, the archbishop of Canterbury, the prime minister and the Speaker of the House of Commons stood in a circle, while cameras roamed round them. They instinctively defaulted to type, discussing Kipling’s “lesser breeds without the law”. Ma’am, said the prime minister, they’re fantastically corrupt, those Nigerians and Afghans. Ho-ho, they all laughed. The archbishop did his bishop bit, suggesting the Nigerian chappie was not all bad. But did he buy his own ticket, quipped Speaker Bercow on cue. Ho-ho again. The Queen added her bit at the garden party, that theChinese too were dreadfully rude.

Nigeria not seeking a Cameron apology, but 'wants its assets back'

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It was the diplomatic equivalent of a drone attack. George Osborne had spent two years meticulously crafting good relations with the Chinese, in a desperate bid for cash for his Hinkley Point and HS2, vanity projects so imprudent that no British or European bank would touch them. Whitehall knew the Chinese would swap a bad loan for a western kowtow, and the Queen’s role had been to grovel. This week she deftly took her revenge.
Meanwhile, Cameron had decided to make “war on corruption” a personal crusade, culminating in this week’s bizarre London conference. Participants accused of “fantastic corruption” would quaff British government hospitality, accept their aid goodie bags and queue up, like sinners in Guys and Dolls, to sing Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat.
Then along comes a palace-owned, camera-launched, hypocrisy-seeking missile. It was devastating. A mushroom cloud rose over Hinkley Point. Splat went theBritish Virgin Islands. The Nigerian president demanded Cameron return his stolen goods. On to our screens came yet more footage of Osborne saying Beijing was “Britain’s best friend” (ie not the EU). The shaky edifice of international diplomacy dissolved into a mush of champagne, canapes and mildly xenophobic chit-chat. Nemesis chased hubris round the chandeliers.
We assume that in some palace dungeon a press officer is having evil done to his private parts. The essence of monarchy is symbolic discretion. Opinionated remarks at a virtual press conference infringed that discretion. Whoever let a microphone near the Queen was way out of order.
Yet all clouds have silver linings. We know that diplomacy is 90% a waste of time, but no one can tell which is the other 10%. To watch Cocktails at the Palace is to see the 90% lurching towards the 10%. Something suddenly mattered.
The essence of a corrupt state is “crony-capitalism”. It is the deployment of covert influence to subvert the disciplines of the market and revenue. It is bribery, tender-fixing, lobbying, tax-evading and otherwise abusing political power to secure individual or corporate gain. This week’s Economist carries a survey of thestate of play in world crony-capitalism. It publishes a league table showing Britain’s record as appalling. It is the worst country in Europe, and 14th worst in the world – worse than France, Germany, America and Japan.
What are the top 10 most secretive tax havens?
Nor does the index cover Britain’s role in oiling the wheels of crony-capitalism, through its supply of homes and tax havens to the global rich. It appears that the British establishment, Labour and Conservative, has sincerely believed that Britain is squeaky clean, as if in the same camp as Scandinavia, Germany and North America, rather than down with Switzerland, Luxembourg and Brazil.

The UK’s deals worth billions with China: what do they really mean?

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Since the 1987 big bang, when Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson boldly smashed the old City cartels, London’s bankers, lawyers, accountants and consultants simply booked the same comfy seats on the gravy train. They gained privileged access to Westminster and Whitehall. Privatised utilities and transport oligopolies ran rings round regulators – as did BHS round the pensions police. Party financiers bought seats in the House of Lords, making Britain the only assembly anywhere whose membership is auctioned annually. There is no need to bribe the British establishment, as was once said of its press, “seeing what unbribed [it] will do”.

As with crony-capitalism so with tax avoidance and tax havens. For decades British governments have maintained offshore vehicles for rich people and corporations to evade their obligations to whatever they call society. British havens were set up as cheap ways of holding colonies without having to subsidise them. They now constitute a massive diversion of global resources away from sovereign states, for no other reason than to avoid taxes.

A British corruption conference is like selecting Libya in 2003 to chair the UN Commission on Human Rights

Some $20-30 trillion is now estimated to be lurking in tax havens round the world, of which £9 trillion is from poor countries. In 2011, the British audit office found 91 British government PFI (private finance initiative) contracts had been channelled offshore. The loss of money from the world’s welfare states is astounding. Offshore finance is way beyond a minimal blip on the world economy. According to an Economist survey, 30% of global foreign investment is now channelled through havens, mostly British.

For six years Cameron and Osborne have promised to clean up this mess. A British world corruption conference is a bit like the selection of Libya in 2003 to chair the UN Commission on Human Rights. Little or nothing to end the plague has been done. British ministers are happy to impose the world’s most draconian electronic surveillance on the British people, yet are curiously reluctant to get tough with the finances of the rich.

A feature of the top 10 crony-capitalist countries is that their citizens feature prominently as (notional) residents of the Royal and Empty Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

The stories you need to read, in one handy email

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Gaffes may make British politicians less inclined to rudeness about foreign corruption, and more ashamed of their indolence in not cleaning out their front and back yards. On these pages today Cameron does offer more pledges and hesitant steps towards greater transparency. We have heard this so often. Continuing to allow British dependencies to refuse transparency is a continuing smear on Britain’s name.
Cameron should tell these enclaves, from Jersey to Gibraltar and Bermuda to the Virgin Islands, that they and their citizens can go independent and federate to Panama or elsewhere if they want. Otherwise their hospitality to thieves from the world’s taxpayers should end. They should be treated by the Treasury in the same way as the Isle of Wight, and taxed accordingly.