They have clearly no understanding of their own rules, or the way to handle such matters.
Clegg, Farron, and all the other rent-a-quotes should have kept schtum, restricting their utterances to something like "I am not a lawyer. It would be inappropriate for me to comment. The matter is in the hands of our disciplinary committee and the party's legal advisors." which is the exact truth.
The Leaders have no input to the process, and no role to play. By taking sides in a matter clearly beyond their competences, they encouraged every Jill and Jack to do the same.
Absolutely agree with you on this issue JackW. I suspect that all the Queen is doing is easing her workload a fair bit by sharing it out more among her immediate family in view of her age, and that of her husband Prince Philip. IIRC, Prince Philip did something similar a few years ago. And as he has not been in the total best of health in recent months, who can blame the Queen for simple wanting to spend more time with him while allowing Prince Charles to take on an even more prominent roving role as her successor in waiting.
I wondered if we were going to see a subtle shift in weight of duties when Prince William announced he was stepping down from his RAF job. And now he is in training to step into his father's role managing the Duchy of Cornwell just as Prince Harry also steps down from his front line military job to take on a more prominent public role in the Old Firm too. The Queen will not abdicate anything more than the arduous day to day public appearances she has maintained for the last last sixty years.
Just been accused of being a typical Whig over on the Telegraph. Good or bad thing? Granted, it was because of sitting on the fence, which I was not aware was a Whig stereotype, but nevertheless...
Very, very bad !!
.........................
FPT various
HM Queen will not abdicate under any foreseeable circumstances. She would consider abdication as a fundamental breach of her coronation oath.
Link 9's basic statistic is pretty stunning, even for those used to worrying about that sort of thing. 85 people=3.5 BILLION.
" UK people get 42 times more income than the worlds poorest" would probably have the guardian frothing.
The truth of the matter is however those UK people aren't necessarily 42 times better off than these people by the time you take cost of living into account.
This is one of those eyebrow raising statistics which is actually totally meaningless
They're right to froth, as you rather offensively put it. Of course UK benefits are 42 times the income of the poorest people in the world, after allowing for the cost of living. They are supposed to provide a passable basic income to get by in a developed country, whereas the poorest people in the world are on the starvation line.
You're free to find it "meaningless" if you like, of course, but don't complain if some of the latter seek to come here.
I have asked on a previous occasion, but I got no sensible explanation: why does the size of the slices in the pie-charts have no resemblance to the odds shown in the numbers? For example, the odds for UKIP getting 2nd places are given as 2/5 (about 71%) but the pie chart has a slice which is about 25%.
Oh, and one for Bloggers, Journos and Newspapers, etc...
Describing an individual as "expelled", "suspended", etc when subsequently the individual succeeds in having the domestic tribunal's verdict overturned as void, may leave the publishers open to a suit for defamation.
See Birne v National Sporting League Ltd (1957)
Could make MacAlpine look like a kid's teaparty...
antifrank nailed the this situation on the previous thread. I do wonder if some of our Libdems Lords are using the current Rennard scandal to go after and undermine Clegg with the view to either putting him back in his place in the power base pecking order (below them), or to try to force him out before the next GE. Either way, this internal Libdem party row is now extremely serious and possible very publicly damaging, but it would seem to go far deeper than the Rennard issue alone now. By the way, has Vince Cable or his pal Lord Oakshott in the Lords waded into this row yet, or have they disappeared completely from the Libdem radar during this escalating row. Just asking?
Rennard was near enough the top of the Lib Dem party for long enough to not only have played the role of kingmaker, but also to know where the bodies are buried. This might get very brutal and I cannot see a way out of this for either side. Positions have been set, and backing down will be a humiliation.
I fail to see what he will gain from going to court, except for revenge. People with either believe he may have pushed things a little too far with the women, or that he did nothing wrong. A court case is unlikely to sort things out, or persuade many people of the other view..
Oh, and one for Bloggers, Journos and Newspapers, etc...
Describing an individual as "expelled", "suspended", etc when subsequently the individual succeeds in having the domestic tribunal's verdict overturned as void, may leave the publishers open to a suit for defamation.
See Birne v National Sporting League Ltd (1957)
Could make MacAlpine look like a kid's teaparty...
Reported in The Times (11 April 1957). How on earth did you find that precedent?
As I pointed out a few months back, Ed Miliband seems to think he is competing to be the top Consumer watch dog rather than the next PM of this country. When I heard his latest suggestions about Which I couldn't help but laugh, he really is becoming a one dimensional caricature of a Labour Leader who follows on from a previously economically disastrous Labour Leader and PM.
No 16 is a classic of good political journalism. Janan Ganesh neatly skewers the vacuity and inconsistency of Milibandism, and holds it up for inspection in the clearest possible light.
No-one will have the excuse that they weren't warned.
With his latest plan to have Which? and the CAB advise on business competition I'm officially declaring Miliband to be "madder than Brown".
You're free to find it "meaningless" if you like, of course, but don't complain if some of the latter seek to come here.
Feel free to check my back posts and you might find immigration is not something I have ever complained about.
The point I was making which you seemed to have missed is
wages have a relation to cost of living
comparing absolute wages across countries is therefore meaningless because that does not take into account the cost of living
A man on a 1000$ a day in a country where the daily cost of living is 1001$ a day is poorer than the man on 2.50$ a day where the daily cost of living is 2.40$ a day
Agreed. A David Davis led Conservative party might have kept some of the former Conservative posters here happy and contentedly bashing another Labour Government while we languished in Opposition for yet another term achieving sod all for the good of the country.
I'm being positive, 5 years of Ed as PM will herald a truly right wing government in 2020.
The sort of government that will cut benefits by 90%, make the unemployed work for their remaining benefits, abolish the client state, outlaw trade unions, reduce government spending to 15% of GDP, introduce a flat rate tax of 20% for all, tell the EU to what to go do with itself, ditto the ECHR.
Basically the sort of government that will give me the horn.
Maybe, but an alternative and quite likely scenario is that the fruitcakes and loons manage to snatch even worse disaster from the jaws of 2015 disaster. Bear in mind that the UK managed over a decade of decline before finally coming to its senses in 1979.
The outrage and disgust felt by the Vast Majority Of Ordinary Normal Decent People (the VMOOND) at the unconstitutional, irrational and ultra-vires behaviour of the renegade Webster QC and the running-dog lickspittle Clegg in terrorising the innocent Lord Rennard is as nothoing compared with the howls of outrage and condemnation by the VMOOND at the irrational banning of the political prisoner SeanT at the hands of the renegade tyrannical and despotic Old Grumpy Head. The VMOOND have been demonstrating in their thousands in spontaneous demonstrations in towns and cities up and down the land in protest at the despotic dictatorship which has been cast over PB Land in recent weeks. Free the Thailand One! Bring Back SeanT! As Cherie Booth once said, Sic Semper Tyrannis!
Quentin Letts managed to get a birds eye view of proceedings in the Lords, and his first hand report of proceedings was attached to the end of this article. Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail - A Rennard-sized crater had been left by his absence "I managed to grab a good little eyrie right over the Lib Dem benches. And Lord Rennard was not there. Oh.
Was the career luncher detained over his jam roly-poly and custard in the peers’ subsidised dining room? He was not. The embattled/beleaguered/troubled/persecuted Rennard was at that very moment releasing a statement, some 2,500 words long, in which he stated his distress and shock at the way his case has been handled by his party.
He also noted, with pleasure, the role he played in the House of Lords recently when he helped block parliamentary-boundary changes which would have made constituencies more evenly sized (a democratic outrage which will probably cost the Tories 20 seats in the next general election).
The grotesqueness of unelected Lib Dems doing that in the undemocratic Chamber they claim to hate was rum as a Caribbean punch."
Comments
Clegg, Farron, and all the other rent-a-quotes should have kept schtum, restricting their utterances to something like "I am not a lawyer. It would be inappropriate for me to comment. The matter is in the hands of our disciplinary committee and the party's legal advisors." which is the exact truth.
The Leaders have no input to the process, and no role to play. By taking sides in a matter clearly beyond their competences, they encouraged every Jill and Jack to do the same.
Fade to Red...
I wondered if we were going to see a subtle shift in weight of duties when Prince William announced he was stepping down from his RAF job. And now he is in training to step into his father's role managing the Duchy of Cornwell just as Prince Harry also steps down from his front line military job to take on a more prominent public role in the Old Firm too. The Queen will not abdicate anything more than the arduous day to day public appearances she has maintained for the last last sixty years.
You're free to find it "meaningless" if you like, of course, but don't complain if some of the latter seek to come here.
I have asked on a previous occasion, but I got no sensible explanation: why does the size of the slices in the pie-charts have no resemblance to the odds shown in the numbers? For example, the odds for UKIP getting 2nd places are given as 2/5 (about 71%) but the pie chart has a slice which is about 25%.
Describing an individual as "expelled", "suspended", etc when subsequently the individual succeeds in having the domestic tribunal's verdict overturned as void, may leave the publishers open to a suit for defamation.
See Birne v National Sporting League Ltd (1957)
Could make MacAlpine look like a kid's teaparty...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2542605/British-violinist-Vanessa-Mae-represent-Thailand-skiing-Sochi-winter-Olympics.htm
The point I was making which you seemed to have missed is
wages have a relation to cost of living
comparing absolute wages across countries is therefore meaningless because that does not take into account the cost of living
A man on a 1000$ a day in a country where the daily cost of living is 1001$ a day is poorer than the man on 2.50$ a day where the daily cost of living is 2.40$ a day
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail - A Rennard-sized crater had been left by his absence
"I managed to grab a good little eyrie right over the Lib Dem benches. And Lord Rennard was not there. Oh.
Was the career luncher detained over his jam roly-poly and custard in the peers’ subsidised dining room? He was not. The embattled/beleaguered/troubled/persecuted Rennard was at that very moment releasing a statement, some 2,500 words long, in which he stated his distress and shock at the way his case has been handled by his party.
He also noted, with pleasure, the role he played in the House of Lords recently when he helped block parliamentary-boundary changes which would have made constituencies more evenly sized (a democratic outrage which will probably cost the Tories 20 seats in the next general election).
The grotesqueness of unelected Lib Dems doing that in the undemocratic Chamber they claim to hate was rum as a Caribbean punch."