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.

They all seem reasonable until their editor tells them to spice it up. Reasonable stories dont sell newspapers or promote the cause. They have to find a story or invent one. Doesn't matter as long as it makes the deadline. I have a bridge I can sell you, Hays.

Leadsom complained and asked for the newspaper to release the transcript. The Times has released it and it supports their version.

She was still whining about being misrepresented so they have released the audio of the interview which supports the newspaper again. Leadsom clearly caught out in a lie.

A distinct lack of experience in handling media.

Someone pointed out that Sadam Hussein, Stalin, Himmler all had children, so not much of a qualification.

Its quite easy to give the impression that you(haystack)is giving in your quick
response to the Times article.

If you'd heard or read it in context, then it wouldn't just serve to your agenda,
I'm not particularly bothered who becomes the Tory leader, but being a neutral
observer i didn't find anything offensive in what Leadsom said, In fact when she
said having children and gandchildren gives her an added incentive to think, and
believe that coming out of e.u and trading with the rest of the world would be better
for their future.....That I agree with..

I had heard the audio and read the transcript.

Here is a Tweet from Andrew Neil after listening to the audio

I've listened and concluded report of The Times @thetimes fair representation of interview https://t.co/CyVp8fDWlt

— Andrew Neil (@afneil) 9 July 2016

Chris Froome wins stage 8 of the Tour and has the yellow jersey. Steve Cummings won Stage 7 yesterday . Brits have now won 5 of the 8 stages completed. As they say - chapeau!

Conservative Party leadership candidate Andrea Leadsom is under pressure to match competitor Theresa May’s level of transparency, after the former published just a single year tax return.

Declaring an income of nearly £85,000 in 2015, Ms Leadsom paid around £22,000 in tax, compared with more than £40,000 paid that year by frontrunner Ms May.

A surprise contender to be the next prime minister, the MP for South Northamptonshire published one year of tax information, just days after rival Theresa May released four years of returns.

Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, said all Tory leadership candidates should be “transparent about their income”, but Ms Leadsom had refused to publish the information unless she reached the final two of the Tory leadership battle.

Ms Leadsom’s tax return, calculated by Isis Accountants, shows she was due to pay an overall tax rate of 27 per cent, on income of £83,930 – more than three times the average UK salary.

What a surprise, she gets paid as an MP plus some investment income. Seems to me that she is being hounded by a bunch of Tory twits. Or should that be twats?
As a matter of interest, Theresa May gained about 50% more a year over the 4 years she declared, more than 4.5 times average UK salary - so where's the story?

This is the problem now two months of tearing someone apart and would you believe it they are from the same party . Just nauseous .

The "establishment" have made their choice, and appear to have thrown all caution to the wind.

There seems to be little in the way of balance to what is being reported on the mainstream news.

This echo's the UKIP and referendum run up...they appear to have learned nothing.

not sure what the last post means, but trade negotiations with eu or even the rest of the world are and were never going to be simple

Not sure what the last post is referring to??.

MAY , is a gutless baron weak and a bloody liar a woman who wil wreck the uk she is gutless and will be walked over and cry

There is an episode of The Simpsons where Bart becomes known as the "I didn't do it boy".

The reason for this is he smashes a vase on the Krusty the Clown show during a sketch which he was not meant to be in and shouts out loud "I didn't do it".

The audience laugh.

Then he appears in sketch after sketch uttering this line over and over again until he is tagged as 'the I didn't do it boy'.

It seems we have been living in the "I didn't do it society" since at least the war crimes trials at the end of The Second World War.

This has since become known as the "Nuremberg defence".

This is where all the Nazi's who were charged with crimes against humanity while not shouting "I didn't do it" were in fact saying "I was just obeying orders" hence the Nuremberg defence.

It was the same in the mid 1980s when there was the 'Yuppie defence'.

When the so called Yuppies worked in the city and did something terrible such as making someone go bankrupt or having people evicted from their homes,the yuppie would say "Someone's got to do it and I have to pay the mortgage". - The Yuppie defence

And last week, The Blair defence has emerged.

This is where you admit responsibility for something, in Blair's case, taking Great Britain to war with Iraq.

He accepts full responsibility for his actions, of course he does, because there is no punishment, any fool can do that. I am responsible but what I did will go unpunished.

It is like a child breaking a window while playing football in the garden.

He scores the best goal but breaks the kitchen window at the same time.

When challenged the child states: "It was an old window, at least 15 years old. I did you a favour in breaking it as now you will have a new window which will be so much better, you should be thanking me, not telling me off."

The parent would then ask " Are you deluded? "

It would be the same for a boy or girl when they fail an A level or GSCE in August, they too can use the Blair defence.

After failing the exam or exams they will say: "Yes I failed and I accept full responsibility for this, but I would have passed if it had not been for the examiner.

"He marked me down. It was a case of my paper being the last one marked on a Friday afternoon. A Friday afternoon fiasco, I am a victim. I should be applauded not booed. I am the injured party here."

The parent would ask : "Are you deluded?

Last month, the Australian rugby union team lost a test series 3-0 to England. You are now interrupted by Aussie Jim Diesel..."It is produced Dizel...not Diesel. And while I grant you, Australia lost the first test, we did not lose the next two. We let England win, lulling them into a false sense of security.

"Where is the joy in winning all the time?

"It was all part of the Michael Cheika Jedi mind games. It is browtal (brutal) and like me his is a geni (genius).

"Letting you win, giving you hope. That is such a good thing, we are good people.

"Next time we play you we will go back to winning. You won't know what hit you. We should be applauded for such a Christian act, a benevolent act, letting you win and giving you hope."

The English rugby fan would ask: "Are you deluded?"

The response would be: "No mate, I'm Australian".

The grievances of the Tory scorned may yet decide this leadership vote

By
James Kirkup


10 July 2016 • 9:30pm





David Cameron and Andrea Leadsom



David Cameron isn't quite saying it publicly, but he wants Conservative members to make Theresa May his successor. Will they listen, though?

After all, Mr Cameron has not treated them well. Yes, he led the Conservatives back into government and delivered the first Tory majority in 23 years, but what about the party outside Parliament, the voluntary organisation made up of people who give their time and money for the cause? Those people have become fewer.

When Mr Cameron became leader in 2005, a total of 253,000 Conservative Party members were eligible to vote in the election. Today, the entire party membership is little more then the 134,446 who voted for Mr Cameron in 2005. The decision about who leads our country now rests with a remarkably small number of people, a fact that will only help to expose the next prime minister to arguments that she lacks legitimacy and should engineer an early election.

In one of the many acidic ironies of Mr Cameron's fall, during the referendum campaign he accused Leave-minded voters of being "quitters" and delivered a homily on British steadfastness. Yet it was Mr Cameron who quit, abandoning his post precisely as he had promised not to.


The Tory members who will vote on his successor, by contrast, are not quitters. They have stuck with the party despite the disdain their leadership showed them. Mr Cameron began his referendum campaign urging Tory MPs to ignore their local party associations when deciding how to vote on EU membership. The clear majority of grassroots Tories responded by ignoring his appeal to Remain. Three years ago, we revealed that a member of Mr Cameron's inner circle had described Conservative members who opposed gay marriage and the EU as "mad swivel-eyed loons".

No apology has ever been offered for a phrase that encapsulates Cameroon contempt for the people who paid their membership fees, organised fund-raising raffles, knocked on doors and otherwise ensured that there was actually a party for Mr Cameron to lead. There was always something almost Freudian about the Mr Cameron's treatment of the party's older members over issues like gay marriage, grammar schools and Europe, since they were quite literally his family. His mother, Mary Cameron, was one of many Tory members with doubts about the same-sex marriage law he now lists among his proudest achievements.

The sense of grassroots grievance against a ruling elite that has largely ignored and sometimes belittled their views is Andrea Leadsom's greatest asset. Her recent words about marriage only being between a man and a woman and - however tasteless and ill-judged many find them - about the political importance of motherhood were not accidents. They were appeals to Tories who feel their ideas of the family and its values are ignored and derided in the party. Reports that some senior Tory MPs are so horrified by the prospect of a Leadsom leadership that they'd quit the party can only reinforce that feeling of being scorned. And what a message to send to to voters who admire and share Mrs Leadsom's Euroscepticism and "family values": such ideas are apparently so repellent that "progressive" Tories could not bear to share a party with their advocate, apparently.


Others in the May camp simply sneer, painting Mrs Leadsom as Sarah Palin or Donald Trump and her followers as Tea Party extremists. So much for post-referendum reconciliation. So much for the Conservatives being a broad church. The grievances of the scorned threaten Mrs May. It's sometimes hard to see it behind her strident anti-immigration rhetoric, but the Home Secretary has as much claim to call herself a Conservative "moderniser" as Mr Cameron. Three years before he became leader telling Tories they had to change their image and attitude to win elections, she told them they were seen as the "nasty party". She's spoken at scores and even hundreds of local constituency fundraising dinners to atone for those two words.

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/10/the-grievances-of-the-tory-scorned-may-yet-decide-this-leadershi/

Almost forgotten in the leadership contests of Labour, Conservatives and UKIP is the election of a new leader of the Greens.

People forget or more likely do not know that the Labour party is two different parties. 25 Labour MPs are CO-OP MPs, such as Luciana Berger who work with Labour and accept the Labour whip. If the Labour party splits then there is a ready made home for them.

https://party.coop/lists/members-of-parliament/

history CAMERON THE COWARD

The Greens should join up with the LibDems, there's very little between
them, maybe the Greens want/need to carry on as an independent party
to receive their funding from the EU(until we leave)..

Well the Greens don't have much choice, so i should imagine it'l be Caroline Lucas.

Wow, I must follow that. I thought they had a deluded Australian already.

As for those Tories that would quit the party if Andrea is elected PM; they should come out now from their closets. No need to expose themselves, otherwise we may find that they are gender neutral.

Good Morning Prime Minister May