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.

Is tory central office paying for the script?

the story (headlines in telegraph this morning) is no more likely to be false than true

if it related to some high-rank tory mp, i'm sure fred would be proclaiming about it from his dacha roof, or failing that, his soapbox in cambridge or wherever he skulks

Lock him up

Reminds me of Halifax and the Fascists like Oswald Mosley who learnt their trade in the tory party.

Or perhaps the Rothermere or Mail effect on the Neo-cons in the tory party, which is being led astray by Trump-like rednecks.

Mind Haze and Cynic should feel at home.

Day after day

alone on a hill.........

Corbyn, McDonnel and Abbott in charge of the country REALLY?!!!

In your dreams Freda :0)

oswald mosley wouldn't have needed to join any party ..... incipient nazi sympathisers were rife throughout the country, from king edward down

indeed, it lies not far beneath the surface even now, though coloured skin now attracts opprobrium more than semites .... of course russia (and poland) also had a long history of vicious pogroms against the jews

Probably fits in with Cynic's and Haze's ideal views for the tories and fellow con artists.

Rulers of the world unite.


"Theresa May and the Conservative Party’s Alarming White Fascist Aspirations
8.10.16

Theresa May, Britain's Prime Minister, making her first speech as PM. I slightly edited the banner behind her.It was always worrying that Theresa May, on being handed the leadership of the Conservative Party, unelected by either the Party or, more crucially, the British public, was immediately positioned as a safe pair of hands by the corrupt mainstream media, an illusion that was widely embraced by ordinary members of the general public. Immediately, it became apparent that a strong-looking woman in charge of the Tory party — and suddenly the ghost of Margaret Thatcher was back amongst us — appeals not just to Tory boarding school inadequates, but also to the British people in general, as a result, I believe, of the deep damage caused to the British psyche by centuries of class division and Puritanism.

Metaphysically, Theresa May was the only senior official left standing after the brutal denouement of the EU referendum — with David Cameron gone, George Osborne doomed, Boris Johnson disgraced for having campaigned to win something he didn’t even believe in, and Michael Gove just plain creepy — but that didn’t mean she should have been anointed to lead, after the last irritant, Andrea Lettsom, was disposed of.

As I hope I made clear in my article, As Theresa May Becomes Prime Minister, A Look Back at Her Authoritarianism, Islamophobia and Harshness on Immigration, she is not a safe pair of hands at all, but an alarming authoritarian, with a track record on counter-terrorism that is dangerously Islamophobic — remember her obsession with deporting Abu Qatada, rather than putting him on trial if he had committed a crime (see here and here), remember how she crowed about extraditing a Muslim British citizen with Asperger’s to the US, but refused to extradite a white British citizen with Asperger’s (see my Al-Jazeera article here), and remember how she stripped British citizens in Syria of their citizenship so that they could be killed in US drone attacks (see here and here).

As a result of the above, it is no surprise that removing Britain’s human rights obligations has become one of the priorities of May’s government, even though it is idiotic, as I explained in my 2015 article, What Does It Say About the Tories That They Want to Scrap Human Rights Legislation? At the time, however, it looked considerably more difficult than it does now, because withdrawing from European human rights legislation (the European Convention on Human Rights, written in 1949-50, and with a prominent role in its drafting taken by the British Conservative MP and lawyer Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, who had been a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials) means withdrawing from the Council of Europe, and EU membership is dependent on CoE membership. So we leave the EU and we can also join the dictatorship Belarus as the only countries in the whole of Europe (as conceived in its widest sense) that do not subscribe to European human rights legislation.

The bonfire of rights continued at the Tories’ conference last week, with promises to exempt soldiers from pesky human rights legislation, via Theresa May’s chilling promise that “we will never again in any future conflict let those activist left wing human rights lawyers harangue and harass the bravest of the brave: the men and women of our armed forces.”

While British soldiers continue to face calls for them to be held accountable for torture and extrajudicial murder in Iraq, May’s plans — conceived with the not entirely bright defence secretary Michael Fallon — are deeply worrying.

Beyond the assault on human rights, the Tories’ conference was also notable for Theresa May, nominally a pro-Remain MP, enthusiastically endorsing an extremist Leave position, and presenting the UK as a bastion of white isolationism — with exceptions made for supportive non-white citizens, and, of course, any foreigner with money, whatever their colour.

For Politics.co.uk, Ian Dunt described the change in his article, “The Tories have finally become UKIP,” noting how, after May “confirmed on Sunday that she would pursue a hard Brexit and pull Britain out of the single market, [w]hat even 12 months ago would have been considered economically insane is now a cosy consensus.” As he also explained, May’s “hard Brexit” policy “actually goes further than that which Nigel Farage’s allies once held in the past. Even Aaron Banks, the aggressively eurosceptic donor to UKIP, not so long ago supported the Norway option [in which Norway has access to the single market but no vote over EU rules], which apparently now is some sort of wishy washy betrayal of the democratic will.”

I am beginning to understand Manuel and Hazy One's positions.

8-)

sidestepping as usual by fred

i really do recommend that you read Red Famine
inter alia it will remind you of the disaster that collectivism brought in its wake in Bolshevik Russia ....... this was not just confined to agriculture but also industry

in a nutshell, because capitalism, even on a tiny scale like a smallholder farmer, was stamped on, no one saw any point in working hard as the state just gobbled everything ..... this attitude remained for surely 60/80 years

could we find such a situation developing in uk? ...... assuredly so

though privatised railways (for example) leave much to be desired, they were certainly pretty awful when in public ownership, being hopelessly over-manned and strike-prone ..... ditto ship building and steel
and yes, much of the management was (and perhaps is) as culpable in its own way

I am amused by all the mock horror at the alleged interference in the US elections by 13 Russians. We are informed that, starting in 2014, they tried to sway voters from Lying Hilary to Bernie Sanders and, later, Donald Trump - along with about half the voters in the USA. To be even handed, after the election they supposedly encouraged demonstrations of "Trump is not my President". All this via social media such as Fbook, Twitter, Instagram etc.
Now in my experience, this type of persuasion is only taken up by those that have already been converted, while very few over 50s, the most reliable voters, use social media in the same way as the Milleniums.
So the target was supposedly the Milleniums, many, if not most of the younger fraction, would be socialist inclined. It was partly successful in that Bernie Sanders did give Lying Hilary a run for her money, despite the best efforts of Debbie Whatshername Schultz and the DNC to fix the democratic(?) nomination for Hilary. But maybe it was just that even the young socialists could not stomach her.
The Russians apparently spent millions, while Lying Hilary spent $1.2 Billion, twice as much as Trump, and still lost. For Mueller and his highly paid team, good work if you can get it. Welcome to the Internet. Now how about getting down to the really serious business of stopping the ever increasing slaughter in America's High Schools?

I'm sure most of you will have heard of the expression, "Shit or bust!"

It's mostly applicable to the likes of Olympic athlete and speed skater, Elise Christie. Bless her.

She has now crashed out of the 1500m and 500m events, leaving the 1000m as her remaining hope of an elusive Olympic medal, if she is fit enough to compete after her crash tonight.

Christie was hoping to her put her Sochi 2014 nightmare behind her in Pyeongchang but so far it has been a case of deja vu for the Scot.

Her 'S or B' score is currently 5/5.

Can she make it 6/6? Watch this space.

Have you been watching it, Doc? Elise crashed out on the final bend of her semi - she had to be taken off the rink on a stretcher to hospital.

Lizzie Yarnold and Laura Deas up next with their final runs in the skeleton.

After you have read a few books on the social and economic history of Britain in the 1920s and 1930s.

Look at the deprivation and squalor in South Wales, Scotland Ireland and North or England due in part to Capitalism and failed elitist and conservative policies.

Down to failure of capitalism and government's incompetence.

-=-==-=

Much of the reasons for the Coal Industry, Steel Industry and Railways etc. being nationalise after WW2 was due to them being run down and bombed out and antiquated after that war.

(The UK coal mining industry also had geological problems to contend with when competing with the overseas producers. The mines were going bankrupt. The railway stock was "old" and inefficient.

Without nationalisation, there would have been mass unemployment. The owners were more than compensated.)

Much of the management and unions did not help each other. Etc..

There is no real reason for a "business" to be more inefficient or efficient because it is state-owned rather than privately.

The question which should be asked is related to the motivational skills required in either sector.

To me, it would seem easier and more sensible to organise, control and plan centrally those sectors which effect a unit as a whole, with of course input from the periphery.

(My father's attitude to "strikes" was that both sides lost out when they happened and it took time to recover financially from them. Talk-talk, when possible was better.)

Like with Brexit, it would be better to discuss grievances than taking one's ball home.

discussing grievances in Bolshevik Russia in 20's and 30's (and beyond) would not have got you far other than to the nearest gulag

uk coal deposit owners "The owners were more than compensated" ..... i don't think so! .... well shafted would be apposite


"There is no real reason for a "business" to be more inefficient or efficient because it is state-owned rather than privately" ..... other than that unions traditionally fight modernisation, lower manpower etc etc


"control and plan centrally" - as in Bolshevik Russia in 20's and 30's and beyond .... totally disastrous as was proved

Cynic check your facts and then try and engage your brain. I can see why you supported Farage and the ugly bunch.

Mosley was a conservative party member and a conservative MP 1918-1924.
I suggest you read up a little more on Britain in the 20s and 30s. Have a look English history, 1914-1945 by A. J. P. Taylor

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

My father was responsible for drawing claims for a coal mine which was nationalised and didn't think that many of the claims were being made were realistic and the owners were overjoyed with what they received. (He had intimate knowledge of the pits of South Wales and later said regarding the closure of pits that "the writing had been on the wall in the 1950s and before that date. He thought that nationalisation of the pits, the steelworks and railways etc. had saved mass unemployment for many of those returning from the armed forces.) One of the reasons for nationalisation.

But also, you could look at the social and medical conditions of those living in the industrial areas, as well as considering the health and safety conditions of those working in the heavy industries. Especially. In the period 1900 to 1950.

I suggest you read more about the period a see the industries and businesses where relations between the unions, workforce and Management were harmonious and where "modernisation and technical advancements" were accepted willingly.
Mind there are none so blind as those who don't want to see.

-=-=-=-=-=

One reason for central government is that thiefdoms have gone out of fashion and to have an organised society you need an organising unit similar to a body having a brain. Mind I suppose for some time that you have managed to survive without one.
But perhaps, the tory losers, right-wing loonies and Brexiters want their thiefdoms back but for others to pay the bills for their madness.

Did the earth move for anyone else today ?

Never experienced anything like that before , whole house shook twice about 30 seconds apart.

I hope Mrs Dil had the same experience but it was probably the first of many tremors as the tectonic plates of European separation started to detach the UK from Europe. Many more to come eh?

What baffles me is Freda has the gall to denounce Capitalism in all it's forms but yet buys shares. What is he doing here? Answers on a post card. Plastic socialist :0) . Even Stan his best mate (pretty sure his only mate) is absent without leave. Come on Stan Burnley are doing ok defend your mentor (even if he is a sad bastard) You may have noticed Freda doesn't reply to my posts. Filtered since 2010 LOL! we all know why.

She certainly did M :-)

Was really weird you could actually feel the ground moving. Centre of the quake was only about 25 miles away.