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.

"Do the lights go out first before the show starts?"

merkel states again we want to keep free trade,
but uk will have to pay ,
the woman is a nutter

how can the eu call for free world trade among the g20 and then want the uk to pay for free trade ,
the eu is corrupt and rotten ,

merkel on paris climate agreement ,only Germany are allowed to break that agreement that is why we are going to build more coal fired stations we are above the laws

This was posted up across the road by Gain, no attrib, sorry. Good read tho.



the consequences of Brown/Blair spending spree


One of the worst features of minority governments is that they’re inescapably extravagant. Parliamentary votes become pricey, pork-barrelling affairs. Every pay-out invites a dozen fresh demands. “If you can afford HS2, you can afford a billion pounds for Ulster!” “If you can afford a billion pounds for Ulster, you can afford the winter fuel allowance!” “If you can afford the winter fuel allowance, you can afford a proper public-sector pay rise!” And so on.

With each new concession, the notion of sound finances is weakened, and voters become habituated to the idea that there is a pot of gold somewhere. It’s not anyone’s fault, in particular; it’s just what happens when there is no overall majority.

Now for something that shouldn’t really need saying but that, in the present climate, plainly does. There is no pot of gold. We are getting deeper into debt at the rate of £46 billion a year. That hard, clunking fact should be at the centre of our political debate; but, at some point in the past year, politicians more or less stopped talking about it.

Not talking about it didn’t make it go away, of course. As Ayn Rand once said, we can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality. We may have removed the deficit from our political debate, but we have not removed it from our budget.

I don’t particularly enjoy having to point this out. The people who want to spend more money are, for the most part, decent and well-intentioned citizens. They are looking at their particular cause rather than at the overall picture. In their own terms, they often have a perfectly good argument. Everyone – certainly every politician – will have some worthy projects to fund. Home Secretaries, by and large, want the police to be paid more, Defence Secretaries want the same for soldiers, Health Secretaries for nurses, Education Secretaries for teachers. But – to repeat – we are still borrowing more than we raise to the tune of nearly a billion pounds a week.

Our whole vocabulary is wrong. Austerity, in its non-political definition, is a trait, not a condition. An austere person is frugal, Spartan. Whether you find these characteristics admirable will depend on your point of view, but they are precisely that – characteristics. They are not a response to external circumstances.

By talking of “austerity” rather than of “living within our means”, we suggest that the restraint of public spending is essentially a choice. Hence the jejune slogan that Leftists have taken up the world over, namely: “Growth not austerity”. Seriously, comrades, if it were that easy, don’t you think someone would have done it by now?

Do coppers and soldiers and teachers deserve a pay rise? Most of them do, yes. If we happened to have £9.2 billion lying around, they’d have as strong claim to it as anyone. Indeed, I’d like, in a perfect world, to see wages rise for everyone. As Tim Worstall has pointed out, private sector pay has lagged behind that of state employees: Gordon Brown’s profligacy punished almost all of us. But, for the last time, we don’t have the dosh. We have run up more debt in the past decade than in the previous 30 decades put together.

I’m sorry to bang on about it, but the implication in much of the media coverage is that politicians who oppose these pay rises are stingy, as though it were their own money they were refusing to hand over. It isn’t: it’s money they’d be taking from what our national poet calls “your children yet unborn and unbegot”.

Who is being unselfish here? The claimant who insists that the rest of us get further into debt so as to give him more – or the MP who is prepared to withstand protests and criticism in order to stand up for the rights of people who will never thank him?

Not that there are many such MPs at present. Arguing for more spending is always tempting and, since the election, there has been precious little discipline – fiscal, political or personal. Every measure that might have constrained expenditure was dropped from the Queen’s Speech; every measure that will indebt us further, from retaining the pensions triple lock to increasing defence spending, was retained.

Eventually, though, accounts have to be settled; debts have to be paid. Imagine that you have been lending me a thousand pounds a week for several years, and that I have been using it to fund a lavish lifestyle. If you stop lending me the cash – I say nothing of repaying it, simply no longer getting as much of it – my lifestyle is bound to change. I can go on as many anti-cuts marches as I like; I can write articles demanding “Growth not austerity!”; I can call you a heartless, sociopathic Tory bastard. But, in the end, I will have to fit my spending to my income. That isn’t austerity; it’s reality.

Excellent read. It's about time MP's of all parties got real.

Another action to incense the ordinary folk, especially those unable to insure their properties against flooding.

TM sanctioned £30m to Africa to enable them to obtain insurance against flooding. This is what's totally wrong with this country's politicians, they have this urge to be seen as good guys around the world at the expense of the taxpayer who is paying for the politicians vanity project whilst being unable to obtain the same for themselves. Bl---y stinks.

Here, here.

Do less moaning and stop voting for your usual lot and start voting for someone different and that goes for the 30% or so who don't vote then we might just might get some integrity in our elected representatives over time.

The choices are very clear Stan, vote Tory and expect to get p----d off at times but knowing they will at least try to put the country on a stable footing, or:- vote Labour and have a Marxist governing body intent on destroying the UK, or;- vote Lib Dem and waste your vote, or vote UKIP which was a one man band, or is there some other body to vote for? Please enlighten

Rom arrested in the States, you couldn't make this up. A legend in his own mind. Welcome home Wayne LOL!!!

George,

"The choices are very clear Stan, vote Tory and expect to get p----d off at times".

I think the choices are very clear to the public if you vote Tory then expect to get p----d over by them.

Mind there is always Mother Theresa to look after you!

Fred, At first glance I'm afraid George's last post above just shows the level of Tory rhetoric followed by Labour paranoia on display by his thinking.. I'm busy at the moment but will return later.

Never mind Stan, carry on with what you're doing.
Remember the "no money left" note of labour Treasury Secretary Liam Byrne? Remember Bruin's promise of no boom and bust? Remember the same genius selling half of the countries' gold reserves, almost 400 tonnes, or 12.7M troy oz, at the bottom of the market. Average price of $277/oz, almost $1000 below the spot today after peaking at over $1600/oz between then and now. That would have paid for a lot of cladding.

IT.

Repetition.

Reginald Maudling left the same message for Callaghan in 1964.

It was a parting joke.

Have a look at the reasons for sale of gold. Have a look at the fluctuation of gold prices prior to that period.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Not justifying the decision, but have a look at Black Wednesday and Torrid inflation of at 21.9% in 1980.

Managed by the tories. Seems it might happen again.

Have a look at Tory devaluation of pound under Lamont an inflation in the tory 90s of 29%.

The tory boys are barrow boys and hangers-on in fancy clothes.


Hey ho.


-=-=-=-=-=-

"In politics and economics, Black Wednesday refers to 16 September 1992, when the British Conservative government was forced to withdraw the pound sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) after it was unable to keep the pound above its agreed lower limit in the ERM. In 1997, the UK Treasury estimated the cost of Black Wednesday at £3.4 billion.[1] In 2005, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that the actual cost may have been slightly less, £3.3 billion.[2] Until the United Kingdom's decision to leave the European Union in June 2016 it was the most significant event[according to whom?] to happen during its time as a member of the European Communities (EC)/European Union (EU) and was made even more embarrassing as the United Kingdom was holding the Presidency of the European Communities at the same time.
The trading losses in August and September were estimated at £800 million, but the main loss to taxpayers arose because devaluation could have made them a profit. The papers [clarification needed] show that if the government had maintained $24 billion foreign currency reserves and the pound had fallen by the same amount, the UK would have made a £2.4 billion profit on the pound sterling's devaluation.[3][need quotation to verify]"




(Take into consideration inflation when looking at the figures.)

Chairman Jeremy wants to leave too Fred, or had you forgotten?

And, he want to hand out free stuff to everyone, lots! What a scrummy deal from our Jeremy.



Anyway, you seem to be getting your wish, Treesa is history.

But not yet.

I wonder how long she will last?

stan @ FRED IF YOU LOSE AT THE BALLOT BOX TAKE TO THE STRETS AND RIOT

BURN CARS BURN DOWN HOMES BUSINESSES THATS THEIR VIEW AS LEFT WING

...Say good night Dick.

those thugs in hamburg your left wing thugs were a disgrace it showed the world what you lot stand for .

if you can not win at the box riot