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.

DB, ok Clarksons taken the piss and the Argentinians have complained.... That's it, end of storey, I don't think its ammunition for anything... After all the complaint was voiced to the BBC and not the government... I'm sure Argentina has its own piss-takers that will no doubt come here and wind up the English from time to time for their own TV entertainment... Personally I don't see anything wrong with it..

I think he should have stayed in Argentina and let the locals show their appreciation of him.

Government borrowing is up by 10 per cent; Treasury says deficit reduction plan “is working” 21/10/2014



If you’re boggling at the headline, rest assured it is correct!

Let’s run down the figures. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), government borrowing (excluding the public sector banks) was £11.8 billion last month, an increase of £1.6 billion, or around 10 per cent, compared with September 2013.

Public sector net debt (again excluding those banks) was £1.4513 trillion – 79.9 per cent of GDP. This was an increase of £100.7 billion compared with September 2013, meaning the national deficit for the year to September 2014 was the same amount.

George Osborne’s target for the financial year 2014-15 is to reduce borrowing to £95.5 billion. With tax receipts going down – by £1bn in the six months since the start of the financial year, against Treasury predictions that they would rise (because we’ve all got jobs, right?) – this seems less and less likely.

According to The Guardian, a Treasury spokesman responded to the figures by saying the “government’s long-term economic plan is working”.

Really?

The trouble is, the Coalition Agreement states that “We [Conservatives and Liberal Democrats] recognise that deficit reduction, and continuing to ensure economic recovery, is the most urgent issue facing Britain”.

The deficit is increasing, not reducing, yet George Osborne says his plan is working.

Perhaps he has been lying to us all along.

Perhaps he has a different plan.

Should be a very good PMqs tomorrow Fred.

I cant wait to see Balls taunting Giddeon.

Good point Fred, I agree and it does give me ammunition to complain about how my licence fee is spent! It just seems to follow on from various other unsavoury sagas which the BBC have been involved in - particularly when they broadcast a sketch by a 'comedian' about the fact that Lord Mountbatten was blown up by the IRA. I must be losing my sense of humour .

He should take a cross with him raise it and show it to Theresa and George and see if they "disintegrate" into a pile of dust!

Wonder why Hays is hiding and his new band of merry men

Why is the PM and Chancellor obsessed with economic growth and recovery? Surely nothing can grow all the time, there has to be times of stagnant growth and recession to keep the economy in check and healthy...

On a separate note you could argue that the reason why the government has over spent is all done to its obsession to drive growth.... Now if it'd hit its deficit target and not overspent in its failed attempt to stimulate growth (which may I add is really a job for the BofE) I wonder what the economic growth picture would really look like.

Just take football for example where are all the entertainers/characters we once had in the game. Marsh, Best, Stan Bowles, Franny Lee, Mike Summerbee Frank Worthington etc etc.

Faceless wonders these days, its the same in all modern life, whats happened to the sit com?.

Its all about money now adays and we dont have people with a character, a sense of humour and this board mirrors that at times.

Yep but Shortie its the fact that Dave and Giddeon keep lying to the public time and time again.

If they just showed a little humble side to themselves Im sure they would pick up more votes.

Len Goodman shopping at Farm Foods again, buying some cheap sausages. He says "Farmfoods gets a 10 from Len".

Yep I bet it does Len, I bet you havent stepped one foot in there shops.

Oct 19, 2014 11:20 By Mail Opinion
MAIL OPINION on ex-First Minister Jack McConnell's warning that Scottish Labour must rediscover its purpose.

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Warning: Jack McConnell
JACK McConnell has been at pains to stay out of it.

The former First Minister resolutely kept his mouth shut as he watched Scottish Labour stagger onwards and downwards in recent years.

He would not have wanted to pile more pressure on those who followed him at the top of the party.

And he must also have hoped that Scottish Labour would eventually find their way
home, that the People’s Party would start showing their people a glimmer of hope.

It is just as well that Jack McConnell, like Labour voters up and down the country, has not been holding his breath.

His comments yesterday were measured but his assessment that Scottish Labour have abjectly failed to learn from their defeats to the SNP was no more than a simple restatement of an obvious truth.

After being dismantled by the SNP in the Holyrood election of 2011, there was a clear
opportunity to tear down Scottish Labour’s engine and rebuild it.

The party were demoralised, in disarray, and there was a window for a strong leader to come in, take charge and clear the decks; take an axe to the dead wood; encourage fresh talent at the grassroots; enforce new selection procedures at all levels; find good people and promote them; find good policies and promote them too.

And, just for a little while, stop acting as if Scottish Labour were still the natural party of
government in Scotland and that the SNP were charlatans conning voters by pretending to be lefties.

It didn’t happen, of course. Nothing did.

New policies? Polices that have a real resonance in the real lives of real voters. Perhaps, a fleeting glimmer of an idea, here and there, but nah, not really.

New talent? Nope. To be honest, there is not much old talent either.

Of course, the SNP have flattered to deceive with two of Britain’s best politicians leading their charge.

There are just as many deadbeat MSPs in the rows behind Alex Salmond and Nicola
Sturgeon as there are on the other side but Labour have become well-drilled in making their opponents look better than they are.

They are lucky it is a Westminster election and not a Holyrood poll coming next because the Nationalists – despite the fire in their belly and hope in their heart – will need big swings to win more than a clutch of new seats.

But Scottish Labour would be fools if they read that as a licence to keep calm and carry on. This is the time to take action, with purpose and urgency or risk seeing their party slide further into the hole.

The SNP clearly believe those swings are challenging but not impossible and, with Sturgeon in charge, they have a leader who has always walked to the left of her old boss.

And a Holyrood vote will be along before long, a vote that could inflict devastating damage on a party clinging to the ropes.

Of course, it is not too late. The bells are sounding an alarm for Scottish Labour, not the death knell.

But these clanging bells will not ring forever.

Politics writer Owen Jones warns Scottish Labour face 'existential crisis'

Oct 19, 2014 10:59 By Owen Jones
WRITING in today's Sunday Mail politics expert OWEN JONES warns the Labour party in Scotland face terminal decline unless it returns to its roots.

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Allan MilliganJohann Lamont and Scottish Labour face mounting problems
WHAT a mess does not even cover it – Scottish Labour are staring into the abyss.

Polls may go up and down but, in the aftermath of the independence referendum, their message is consistent – Labour have suffered a calamitous collapse in support.

Their only real consolation for next year’s general election is the lack of SNP-Labour marginals as only a few SNP candidates came within touching distance of Labour’s vote in Scotland in 2010.

Even if that represents a firewall against a disastrous wipeout, there is no pretending that – for many of the party’s traditional base – Scottish Labour have become anything other than a brand scarcely less toxic than the widely reviled Tories.

What a tragedy as the British Labour Party are, in part, a child of Scotland.

Lanarkshire-born Keir Hardie was the first leader. His four successors – Arthur Henderson, George Nicoll Barnes, William Adamson and Ramsay MacDonald (who is a hate figure in Labour history for forming a National Government with the Tories) – were all Scottish-born.

It is difficult not to wonder what iconic Scottish Labour figures, like the socialist fighter Jennie Lee, would make of the fate of their party in 2014.

Under-fire Johann Lamont today made a plea for unity

It is somewhat of a myth to portray Scotland as a long-standing Labour heartland.

In the 1950s, most Scots were voting for the Tories’ sister party the Unionists, who adeptly manipulated and benefited from religious sectarian divisions.

But the declining salience of Protestant and Catholic tensions and the trauma of Thatcherism consigned Scottish Tories to near-fringe status.

This decline should have represented a grand opportunity for Scottish Labour to develop a distinctly radical, coherent alternative. But the New Labour project – fashioned by two Scots-born leaders, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – reduced the Scottish party to a husk, even
before the referendum.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown
At the beginning of Blair’s term in office, the party had over 30,000 members. Today, there are around 13,000 left.

The party allowed the SNP to fill the progressive space they vacated. In their disastrous 2011 Holyrood campaign, Labour’s headline policy was a crackdown on knife crime. Where was the
message of hope?

Under Johann Lamont’s leadership, the party have condemned the SNP for abiding by traditional social-democratic principles such as a welfare state based on universalism.

For my own parents, that was enough. They would have cut up their membership cards if it wasn’t for the lamination. In any case, they left.

Perhaps if the party rested on stronger foundations, they would have better survived the referendum debacle. But rather than setting out a progressive vision based on hope, of a new socially just Scotland within the framework of a federal Britain, they instead formed a catastrophic alliance with the Conservatives.

It cheered on Establishment threats of businesses threatening to pull the plug and other warnings of economic disaster should the Scottish people vote the wrong way.

That they have lost their hold on their own voters was demonstrated by the mutiny in traditional Labour heartlands, such as Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, who voted en masse for independence.

It was precisely those who felt that they had nothing to gain from the status quo – those Labour were founded to champion – who were more likely to opt to build a new nation. Scottish democracy is now flourishing and should be the envy of the world.

At the last UK general election, 76 per cent of middle-class professionals voted, but just 57 per cent of unskilled workers did so.

Contrast that with the Scottish referendum which demonstrated that – if presented with a meaningful choice – voters will engage.

But the thriving of Scotland’s democracy is taking place anywhere but the Labour Party.

The SNP’s membership has more than trebled and the Greens have surged from 1700 to 7000.

Nicola Sturgeon represents a more radical brand of politics than her departed predecessor and groups like the Radical Independence Campaign have inspired and mobilised the previously voiceless.

Scotland is crying out for radical politics. 220,000 Scots children languish in poverty; nearly 180,000 families are trapped on social housing waiting lists and one in five workers are paid below the living wage, forced to earn their poverty.

Another 120,000 Scots are on zero-hour contracts, denied security or basic rights like pensions and paid leave.

But Scottish Labour are hollowed out and have profoundly alienated many of their natural supporters.

They face an existential crisis. Greece and Spain provide examples of how traditional social-
democratic parties – when they turn on their own supporters – collapse and are surpassed by more radical rivals.

Whatever happens, the tradition of working people in the UK uniting against their common enemies – today, bankers, tax dodgers and poverty-pay firms stripping workers of rights and security – must surely be strengthened.

It is up to Scottish Labour to decide whether they will be part of that, or whether the party of
Keir Hardie and Jennie Lee face a long, painful period of terminal decline.

■ Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist and author of The Establishment: And How They Get Away With It.

Well you have your ear to the ground in Scotland, Chris!:-)


WHAT a mess does not even cover it – Scottish Labour are staring into the abyss.
Polls may go up and down but, in the aftermath of the independence referendum, their message is consistent – Labour have suffered a calamitous collapse in support.

Don't forget the NHS mess in Wales .. don't think many from Wales will be voting for Labour again.

Every cloud alders, every cloud :0)

26 seats in Wales plus 41 seats in Scotland potentially going down the plughole for Labour then?

Ashcroft UK NATIONAL Poll: Con 28%, Lab 31%, Lib Dem 7%, UKIP 18%, Green 8%
Monday, 20 October, 2014 in The Ashcroft National Poll.

They are lucky it is a Westminster election and not a Holyrood poll coming next because the Nationalists – despite the fire in their belly and hope in their heart – will need big swings to win more than a clutch of new seats.

You thought Miliband had trouble with a bacon sandwich!