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.

you're keen enough to make false assumptions about everyone else, so what's your problem if the tables are turned? ..... but certainly your sense of self-importance is clear for all to see

i find it truly amazing that you apparently managed to con people to pay for your views, or so you boast, though i can readily imagine them clubbing together to buy you a one-way fare to somewhere very distant and remote

It's not looking good in the Ukraine tonight...that's for sure.....it should be a quiet, prosperous country but having the Russians trying to bully you into submission is quite unacceptable !.....the problem with the Russians is that they just don't know how to behave (a bit like some of our own I might say)....but on a bigger scale.....they just think that the rest of the world are mugs and do just about anything....if the West and the Rest of the world give them a good beating : they will welcome a peace deal at the Kremlin...all smiles ..handshakes...perhaps even a hugbear of a kind....(I would have a knife in their ribs whilst that is going on)....but yes all smiles for the cameras...everybody happy....because that is what they are like (their leaders anyway).....

Are you on drugs rf?

Far from it.....check out the latest news.....there is no difference between Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia than the present modern one.....unless something is done : their invasions and quest for domination will continue !....and get worse...

Russia is like a cross between the wild west and the Mafia. I have an acquaintance who is the MD of a diamond and gold exploration company. He lives in the UK, but travels extensively in Africa, Russia, Australia, South America etc. He used to deal with Chavez and deals with Putin. The only place that he regards as dangerous is Russia. When he goes there, he has a substantial bodyguard detail with arms and bulletproof cars. The normal rules of business don't apply.

I have an old friend that is an arms dealer. However, he deals with memorabilia and all the guns are fixed to not fire. He is married to a Russian girl and lives in the UK. Some time ago he was in Russia and bought a few items. One of them was a grenade launcher which had been fixed. He went through customs and was stopped. The customs officer asked to open the case. He saw the contents and closed the case. He then said that he thought the suitcase was overweight. My friend asked how much overweight. The customs officer said it was overweight by $100. The money was paid and that was that. The interesting part is that the customs officer couldn't have known the grenade launcher did not work and he let him take it out of the country on a plane. This of course was before 9/11.

PS,

I thought it was Manuel for a moment!

Update - Labour lead at 4
by YouGov in Politics
Sun March 2, 2014 6 a.m. GMT

Latest YouGov / Sunday Times results 28th February 2014 - Con 34%, Lab 38%, LD 9%, UKIP 12%;

Looks like a 1962 Kennedy Cuba missile crisis situation is now on.....perhaps not quite as serious but still the same it doesn't look good......heavens knows what crude will do tomorrow....

And a possible depressing effect on the stock market.

Yes...but not for oil stocks.....ftse has a large proportion of producers....so some might rise....the rest down....

Tesco lorry hit bungalow with cars in devon which now has to be demolished.....on the side of the lorry is written : you shop, we drop......

Tesco lorry hit bungalow with cars

Do they deliver cars now ?

Why did Thatcher defend a P.I.E. member after his conviction for child sex attacks
02 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted by Tom Pride in hopeless naivety

Here’s a conundrum.

Who do you think would be more likely to be telling the truth – former PM Margaret Thatcher or the Daily Mail?

In one of its recent articles attacking Harriet Harman for her links to the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), the Daily Mail wrote about a notorious member – a convicted paedophile called Geoffrey Prime.

Here’s the Mail article:

The child sex attacker and Soviet spy who was in the vile group legitimised by Harman and chums

But what the Mail article fails to mention is that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defended Prime in the House of Commons just days after his conviction for child abuse (and espionage) and denied he was a member of PIE.

Here’s what she said in reply to a question in Parliament from anti-paedophile campaigner Geoffrey Dickens MP:



Thatcher defends paedophile

Well that’s strange.

Because in its article, the Mail writes that the police found documentation at Prime’s home which showed he was a member of PIE.

But Thatcher clearly states that no such documentation was found.

Which of course, means if Thatcher and the police didn’t know Prime was a member of PIE even after he was convicted of child abuse – how could Harman or anyone else have known?

Unless of course the Mail is suggesting their beloved Margaret Thatcher was lying?

But if Thatcher was lying, why would she be covering up for a paedophile organisation?

What do you think:

.

Who's more likely to be telling porkies?
Margaret Thatcher
The Daily Mail
The Police
All of the above
Vote
View ResultsPolldaddy.com

No?. You are misquoting from the text that you have yourself posted.

What she said was, "I understand that stories.....are without foundation..."

She didn't say that no documents were found and she did not defend Prime. It is clear that her comments are based on what she has been told.

Yet another stupid story,

Im misquoting??? Im just the messenger.

No when the boots on the other foot the Tories dont like it up em.

Vote so far..........

Thank you for voting!
All of the above 78.09% (253 votes)


The Daily Mail 11.11% (36 votes)


Margaret Thatcher 9.88% (32 votes)


The Police 1% (3 votes)

Who cares. Just a silly story that appeals to the usual suspects.

None so blind as those who refuse to see an EU mess

Angela Merkel's visit and the Somerset Levels floods highlight how this country is in thrall to policies demanded by the European Union



David Cameron welcomes Angela Merkel but got little joy over EU reforms from the German Chancellor Photo: FACUNDO ARRIZABALAGA/EPA


Christopher Booker
By Christopher Booker

4:29PM GMT 01 Mar 2014


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/10668708/None-so-blind-as-those-who-refuse-to-see-an-EU-mess.html


Last week brought two more glaring examples of what – it is time we came to recognise – has become one of the most alarming features of British politics. This is our extraordinary inability to understand the realities of the strange, all-pervasive form of government that now rules so much of our lives, thanks to our membership of the European Union. One example was summed up in those headlines that greeted David Cameron’s meeting with the German Chancellor. “Merkel dampens Dave’s EU dream,” said one; “Merkel dashes hopes for overhaul of the EU,” ran another.


Nothing should have been remotely surprising about this encounter. As I have often tried to explain here – ever since Mr Cameron came up with his notion, a year ago, that he could somehow hope to negotiate a new relationship for Britain with the EU, then put it to a referendum in 2017 – every point on his wish list was just pie in the sky. It defied every bedrock principle of how the EU works: that, once powers of government are handed over to Brussels, they cannot be given back; that, under Article 48 of the Lisbon Treaty, he would never get the required majority from 27 other countries allowing him to negotiate; that the tortuous procedures now laid down for such a new treaty could not possibly be completed by 2017.


In other words, those millions of words that in the past year have been spoken and written by pretty well every politician and pundit one can think of have been devoted to discussing something that could never possibly have come about in the first place – as Mrs Merkel confirmed on Thursday.


Another, very different, example of the same phenomenon has been the public hoo-ha over how and why parts of England, including my own county of Somerset, have lately been subject to abnormal floods. As again I have been trying to explain in recent weeks, these floods were not just an unfortunate act of nature. They were deliberately made much worse by a major shift of government policy, designed to put the interests of wildlife and “biodiversity” above those of people, homes and businesses.


This new policy has been driven at every point by a plethora of EU-funded study groups and EU legislation. It is impossible to understand what has happened without some knowledge of the EU’s 1992 habitats directive, its water framework directive of 2000, its 2007 directive on the management of floods; and a mass of policy documents that show how, in parts of Britain, specifically including the Somerset Levels, the intention has been to “increase flooding” in the interests of nature and the concerns of “green” lobby groups, heavily funded by the EU, including the WWF, Friends of the Earth and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.


Yet when, on Wednesday, MPs spent three-and-a-half hours solemnly discussing the floods in the House of Commons, not one of the 25 who spoke showed the slightest knowledge of this EU legislation. The only mention of the EU came from a Labour front-bench spokesman, calling for Brussels funding to help towards paying for the damage, which, as she seemed wholly unaware, had been largely brought about by the EU’s own policies.

Virtually the only senior politician who does understand this is our Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, who wishes to see a complete reversal of the policy that has caused this disaster: first, by dredging those deliberately silted-up rivers, then by putting the management of flooding on the Levels back in the hands of those local boards that kept them properly drained for generations.

But when, on Thursday, an array of local organisations met to discuss the plan Mr Paterson has asked for, the key part played by EU legislation in the flooding was scarcely mentioned. An alliance of the Somerset county council, the Environment Agency and green lobbyists, all of whom have received millions of pounds in funding from Brussels to shape and implement EU policy, looks ominously like winning the day, to the point where any hope of reversing that policy and preventing a repetition of this disaster begins to look pretty forlorn.

So, as with Mr Cameron’s dreams of “winning back powers” from a “reformed EU”, the elephant in the room yet again remains hidden from view. Until we find a way to reach some grown-up understanding of how this shadowy form of government actually works, we are doomed to stumble on like helpless children from one folly to another. We must remain as bewildered as was our Prime Minister on Thursday, when Mrs Merkel politely kicked over the little house of cards that has been at the centre of his “European policy” through all this past, wasted year.

Cameron pokes the bear

Strangely enough, among those who could be said to have played a part in the events leading up to the current, worsening crisis between Russia and Ukraine is David Cameron.

Few remarks in the past year can have rung louder alarm bells in the Kremlin than his hubristic boast in Kazakhstan last July that he looked forward to the day when the European Union would stretch “from the Atlantic to the Urals”.

No one with any knowledge of history could have imagined that the EU’s lengthy wooing of Ukraine would not be looked on by President Putin as highly provocative, to a country that has been accustomed to looking on Ukraine as its own backyard and Russia’s “soft underbelly” through much of the past millennium. Just as many eyebrows might have been raised at Mr Cameron’s parroting of that ironic mantra blazoned over the European Commission’s website: that the EU wishes to see Ukraine ruled by genuine democracy, free from corruption and with “sound public finances”.

These noble aspirations have been similarly echoed by Baroness Ashton, posing as the “high representative” of an unelected form of government that has itself become a byword for corruption, has not had its accounts signed off for 20 years because of their countless “irregularities”, and that has been responsible for indulging in the most obviously “unsound” currency experiment the world has ever seen.