Former Coronation Street star Shobna Gulati says her son was bullied at school and ran away from home because of stories Mirror Group journalists wrote after hacking her phone.
People have begun to make their minds up about EdM. Quite simply Labour have run out of things to say, they have thrown the kitchen sink at the tories and its not working, they have no credibility on the economy and can cry about tory cuts all they like but the people aren't buying it, they know labour screwed the economy, and have failed to come up with a plan to clear the deficit apart from a few soundbites that amount to a small % of the deficit. Labour are heading for defeat, EdM will not become PM
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would ultimately be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Do the EU member states even have what would constitute an army? Russia would roll right through Europe as it currently stands. The only country who could possibly save them is America. The EU need to stop kidding themselves that they keep world peace and realise it is America who have largely kept Europe stable since WW2.
You think Poland and Germany would let the Russkies roll through without a fight?
Fight with what? The German armed forces are in a dreadful state and due to shrink even further. Meanwhile the Poles have an army less than 50,000 strong and would depend on former conscripts manning soviet era equipment.
Former Coronation Street star Shobna Gulati says her son was bullied at school and ran away from home because of stories Mirror Group journalists wrote after hacking her phone.
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would ultimately be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Do the EU member states even have what would constitute an army? Russia would roll right through Europe as it currently stands. The only country who could possibly save them is America. The EU need to stop kidding themselves that they keep world peace and realise it is America who have largely kept Europe stable since WW2.
You think Poland and Germany would let the Russkies roll through without a fight?
The Poles would fight to the last bullet. The Germans would do a deal.
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would eventually be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Why would they disband NATO? Most EU members are also members of NATO. It probably makes NATO easier to run if it becomes an alliance between the US, the EU, Norway, Turkey and who else?
The proposal is more of a concern for those EU countries - like Ireland and Austria - who are declared as neutral.
Finland and Sweden too are neutral. Malta and Cyprus aren't members either (though Turkey occupies the north!).
Non-EU members of NATO are US, Canada, Turkey, Albania, Iceland and Norway.
The Baltic States joining NATO and the EU will probably turn out to have been a huge mistake for them
NATO and the EU accepting them likewise.
When this came up on here recently I read the Wiki page on what is rather grandly called "Baltic Air Policing". This basically involves 4 fighter planes from NATO countries providing the air defence for 3 complete countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Air_Policing
It really is a dangerous joke that we have got away with for years because Russia itself was in such a state.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
I very much hope that Osborne and Cameron commit to the 2%. We have taken peace dividends far too far in a dangerous world. Labour's refusal to commit is yet another reason to add to the long list of reasons why they are not fit to govern.
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would ultimately be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Do the EU member states even have what would constitute an army? Russia would roll right through Europe as it currently stands. The only country who could possibly save them is America. The EU need to stop kidding themselves that they keep world peace and realise it is America who have largely kept Europe stable since WW2.
You think Poland and Germany would let the Russkies roll through without a fight?
The Poles would fight to the last bullet. The Germans would do a deal.
Bullet? Pitchfork I would have thought if they’ ve got any left when the bullets are gone. They’ve got form for doing so.
Hi @Sunil_P2, Our next poll will be released later this month (date tbc), follow @TNS_UK to get the latest updates. bit.ly/1BQLzEg
*Facepalm*
One of the key ingredients of any TNS poll (apart from a complete lack of reliability) is that the information has to be so out of date by the time it is published as to be useless.
I thought if they released a poll last week, they would bump up Labour's lead in ELBOW a wee bit
How very partisan of you Sunil. I am quite shocked.
Nonsense, I just thought TNS were late in publishing their poll, looks like they've gone AWOL for the time being...
Two Labour politicians – Khalid Mahmood and Mohammad Sarwar – wrote a letter to Jacqui Smith in which they said they were ‘amazed, shocked’ that no charges were being bought, saying that the treatment of the ‘innocent young men’ was ‘deeply disturbing and gravely unjust’. To Mahmood and Sarwar, ‘irreparable damage’ to race relations had been done.
The Muslim Council of Britain – a large Muslim umbrella group – said that the government should apologise for treating the suspects in a ‘dishonourable’ fashion. Inayat Bunglawala, then a media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, wrote in the Guardian that the government’s behaviour ‘reprehensible’; ‘underhand’; and ‘cowardly’, and said that it ‘shames our country’. He, too, believed that the suspects deserved an apology from the government, having been ‘disgracefully’ smeared.
An organisation called ‘Justice for the North West Ten’ was launched, with a meeting in July 2009 seeing ‘over a hundred people, community organizers, students, trade unionists, lawyers and civil liberties activists’ demanding the release of the suspects. One of the speakers was Asim Qureshi from Cage (who, it is fair to say, have not had a brilliant few weeks on the PR front after their disastrous press conference discussing their links to Mohammed Emwazi).
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would ultimately be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Do the EU member states even have what would constitute an army? Russia would roll right through Europe as it currently stands. The only country who could possibly save them is America. The EU need to stop kidding themselves that they keep world peace and realise it is America who have largely kept Europe stable since WW2.
You think Poland and Germany would let the Russkies roll through without a fight?
The Poles would fight to the last bullet. The Germans would do a deal.
Sounds a bit like.. Another historical conflict. I forget which.
Two Labour politicians – Khalid Mahmood and Mohammad Sarwar – wrote a letter to Jacqui Smith in which they said they were ‘amazed, shocked’ that no charges were being bought, saying that the treatment of the ‘innocent young men’ was ‘deeply disturbing and gravely unjust’. To Mahmood and Sarwar, ‘irreparable damage’ to race relations had been done.
The Muslim Council of Britain – a large Muslim umbrella group – said that the government should apologise for treating the suspects in a ‘dishonourable’ fashion. Inayat Bunglawala, then a media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, wrote in the Guardian that the government’s behaviour ‘reprehensible’; ‘underhand’; and ‘cowardly’, and said that it ‘shames our country’. He, too, believed that the suspects deserved an apology from the government, having been ‘disgracefully’ smeared.
An organisation called ‘Justice for the North West Ten’ was launched, with a meeting in July 2009 seeing ‘over a hundred people, community organizers, students, trade unionists, lawyers and civil liberties activists’ demanding the release of the suspects. One of the speakers was Asim Qureshi from Cage (who, it is fair to say, have not had a brilliant few weeks on the PR front after their disastrous press conference discussing their links to Mohammed Emwazi).
I refer once again to UKIP's Gerard Batten MEP, and PPC for Romford. He proposed a charter for Muslim "spokesmen", sucj as CAGE and the Muslim council, to sign to makeit clear they had no interest in supporting extremism or Jihad
Guardianistas, and Conservatives on this site, screamed "Wacist"... despite Batten being married to a non white woman
Read back through the old threads and see for yourself how the lazy, smug and self satisfied apologists lampooned Batten for the idea that some groups purporting to speak for Muslims might have links to extremism, and weren't all they seemed
STV News at Six featuring the wonderful SNPTory poster of Salmond with Miliband in his pocket.
It really makes you wonder if the Tories realise how much it will harm them if they help the SNP achieve a whitewash in Scotland. It might hurt Labour in England but then what, the Union is probably going to be finished by this election and the Tories are supposed to have the Union as a fundamental principle of their party.
The Tories just just as incapable of coming up with a coherent strategy to deal with the Constitutional issue. They should be all over FFA even if it's only Scotland that becomes a Federal associate. But their strategy doesn't seem to be looking past May 7th.
WOW. The Tories are intending to run the poster IN SCOTLAND. SNP must be laughing all the way to the Ballot Box.
"Panos Kammenos, the Greek defence minister, warned that if the eurozone allowed Greece to go bust it would give EU travel papers to illegal immigrants crossing its borders or the 10,000 currently held in detention centres."
As nice a bit of blackmail as one could wish to see.
Sunil Prasannan @Sunil_P2 · 12s12 seconds ago Labour lead in ELBOW (Electoral Leader-Board Of the Week) since August 2014. Lab lead w/e 8th Mar = 0.3%, lowest ever
Who's given it to the national party - Blair or Palmer?
Blair has given the money to the national party to be distributed to the target marginals as the party sees fit (as I understand it from NP's tweets). It has not been given to individual campaigns or people.
Two Labour politicians – Khalid Mahmood and Mohammad Sarwar – wrote a letter to Jacqui Smith in which they said they were ‘amazed, shocked’ that no charges were being bought, saying that the treatment of the ‘innocent young men’ was ‘deeply disturbing and gravely unjust’. To Mahmood and Sarwar, ‘irreparable damage’ to race relations had been done.
The Muslim Council of Britain – a large Muslim umbrella group – said that the government should apologise for treating the suspects in a ‘dishonourable’ fashion. Inayat Bunglawala, then a media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, wrote in the Guardian that the government’s behaviour ‘reprehensible’; ‘underhand’; and ‘cowardly’, and said that it ‘shames our country’. He, too, believed that the suspects deserved an apology from the government, having been ‘disgracefully’ smeared.
An organisation called ‘Justice for the North West Ten’ was launched, with a meeting in July 2009 seeing ‘over a hundred people, community organizers, students, trade unionists, lawyers and civil liberties activists’ demanding the release of the suspects. One of the speakers was Asim Qureshi from Cage (who, it is fair to say, have not had a brilliant few weeks on the PR front after their disastrous press conference discussing their links to Mohammed Emwazi).
The mindset of people who respond like this is that Muslims - or at least these particular Muslims - are never ever responsible for anything they do and that Muslims accused of crimes or even found guilty of crimes are never responsible for their own actions. Why they think that infantilising Muslims in this way is doing them a favour is a mystery. Best understood as part of the whole victimhood/grievance culture successfully promoted by jihadists and which has so captured a part of the liberal establishment who either cannot or refuse to see people as grown ups. Both views are deeply insulting and belittling. But curiously - in a culture where offence is taken (or pretended to be taken) at the slightest thing - no-one takes offence at this rather more serious insult.
Sunil Prasannan @Sunil_P2 · 17s17 seconds ago LibDem and Green in ELBOW (Electoral Leader-Board Of the Week) since August 2014. W/e 8th Mar LibDems 7.3, Greens 6.0
STV News at Six featuring the wonderful SNPTory poster of Salmond with Miliband in his pocket.
It really makes you wonder if the Tories realise how much it will harm them if they help the SNP achieve a whitewash in Scotland. It might hurt Labour in England but then what, the Union is probably going to be finished by this election and the Tories are supposed to have the Union as a fundamental principle of their party.
The Tories just just as incapable of coming up with a coherent strategy to deal with the Constitutional issue. They should be all over FFA even if it's only Scotland that becomes a Federal associate. But their strategy doesn't seem to be looking past May 7th.
WOW. The Tories are intending to run the poster IN SCOTLAND. SNP must be laughing all the way to the Ballot Box.
Who's given it to the national party - Blair or Palmer?
Blair has given the money to the national party to be distributed to the target marginals as the party sees fit (as I understand it from NP's tweets). It has not been given to individual campaigns or people.
In a letter to the candidates, Mr Blair says winning the marginal seats is “vital” to the success of Labour’s campaign.
"This is where the election will be won for Labour and that is why I am making a donation to all 106 campaigns."
@CCHQPress: .@grantshapps “With Scottish voters fleeing @Ed_Miliband faster than Chris Hoy in a velodrome, he knows SNP deal is his only road to No.10"
Lowest Green score in ELBOW since December. Lowest LibDem score in ELBOW for four weeks. and Lowest Lab lead in ELBOW since August (inception of ELBOW) Highest Tory score in ELBOW since November!
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would eventually be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Why would they disband NATO? Most EU members are also members of NATO. It probably makes NATO easier to run if it becomes an alliance between the US, the EU, Norway, Turkey and who else?
The proposal is more of a concern for those EU countries - like Ireland and Austria - who are declared as neutral.
Finland and Sweden too are neutral. Malta and Cyprus aren't members either (though Turkey occupies the north!).
Non-EU members of NATO are US, Canada, Turkey, Albania, Iceland and Norway.
The Baltic States joining NATO and the EU will probably turn out to have been a huge mistake for them
NATO and the EU accepting them likewise.
When this came up on here recently I read the Wiki page on what is rather grandly called "Baltic Air Policing". This basically involves 4 fighter planes from NATO countries providing the air defence for 3 complete countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Air_Policing
It really is a dangerous joke that we have got away with for years because Russia itself was in such a state.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
I very much hope that Osborne and Cameron commit to the 2%. We have taken peace dividends far too far in a dangerous world. Labour's refusal to commit is yet another reason to add to the long list of reasons why they are not fit to govern.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment. Okay, it will stop Osborne from getting public spending down to 35% of GDP, but does that really matter, now?
Great move by Greece.. If the EU doesn't give em what they want then they will issue EU passports to anyone who asks for one..Takes the pressure off Lampadusa I suppose
Indeed, and with the Libs out of it, the SNP are the best option for the Tories.
Labour weakened, and a clear line into EV4EL + maximum autonomy within the union. The election outcome would demand those outcomes.
By 2020, Scottish unionists will need to have coalesced around a single party, and it's only by removing the Westminster scapegoat through maximum autonomy that the SNP position will ever get weakened.
@CCHQPress: .@grantshapps “With Scottish voters fleeing @Ed_Miliband faster than Chris Hoy in a velodrome, he knows SNP deal is his only road to No.10"
Looks like the Tories believe it will be a hung Parliament.
Two Labour politicians – Khalid Mahmood and Mohammad Sarwar – wrote a letter to Jacqui Smith in which they said they were ‘amazed, shocked’ that no charges were being bought, saying that the treatment of the ‘innocent young men’ was ‘deeply disturbing and gravely unjust’. To Mahmood and Sarwar, ‘irreparable damage’ to race relations had been done.
The Muslim Council of Britain – a large Muslim umbrella group – said that the government should apologise for treating the suspects in a ‘dishonourable’ fashion. Inayat Bunglawala, then a media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, wrote in the Guardian that the government’s behaviour ‘reprehensible’; ‘underhand’; and ‘cowardly’, and said that it ‘shames our country’. He, too, believed that the suspects deserved an apology from the government, having been ‘disgracefully’ smeared.
The mindset of people who respond like this is that Muslims - or at least these particular Muslims - are never ever responsible for anything they do and that Muslims accused of crimes or even found guilty of crimes are never responsible for their own actions. Why they think that infantilising Muslims in this way is doing them a favour is a mystery. Best understood as part of the whole victimhood/grievance culture successfully promoted by jihadists and which has so captured a part of the liberal establishment who either cannot or refuse to see people as grown ups. Both views are deeply insulting and belittling. But curiously - in a culture where offence is taken (or pretended to be taken) at the slightest thing - no-one takes offence at this rather more serious insult.
I agree with your sentiment, but would beg to differ on this part
"part of the whole victimhood/grievance culture successfully promoted by jihadists and which has so captured a part of the liberal establishment "
It is the weak multiculturalists in the establishment who promoted the victimhood & grievance culture, and the immigrants, or children of, that have been equal parts insulted by being patronised, and used it as a weapon against the rest of society
But if power is there to be grabbed, people grab it. Doesn't matter which religion, skin colour or nationality you hide behind.. The British establishment offered it, and the Islamists took it
Watch this video, it is the last 8 mins of the BBCs Enoch Powell programme
From 4:12 on the "architects of multiculturalism" are interviewed, even they admit to being shocked by the unforseen consequences of their "experiment"
"it never occurred to us..."
"We didn't realise..."
It occurred to someone, and he was hounded out of office for saying so
before that ghastly woman Margaret Hodge gets too shouty about the HSBC guy not answering the question, it would not be amiss to look at her record at Islington Council..
Frankly how she can shout at anyone else is beyond me.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment.
Tough to go into an election promising to increase defence spending by more than spending on hospitals or schools.
People shouldn't go into government if they can't make tough decisions.
Well. Yes. But there is always the possibility that Cameron and Osborne think it is right to increase health / education spending by more. There's certainly nothing particularly sensible about sticking to a 2% of GDP target for defence spending: it means having to hire more squaddies when ONS decides to include drug dealing in its GDP estimates! If there are programmes the defence chiefs want funded and they cost 2% of GDP then obviously that is something different.
"Panos Kammenos, the Greek defence minister, warned that if the eurozone allowed Greece to go bust it would give EU travel papers to illegal immigrants crossing its borders or the 10,000 currently held in detention centres."
As nice a bit of blackmail as one could wish to see.
Well,they could lose the union, which for a Unionist party would be a bit of a bigger.
The genie is out of the bottle in my view. The union as we have known it needs to be reformed.
If the Tories are going to propose that post GE it would explain their current strategy - unless they have given up on the Union and are now happy to see it come to an end.
WOW. The Tories are intending to run the poster IN SCOTLAND. SNP must be laughing all the way to the Ballot Box.
It should do what it's meant to - damage Labour.
What do the Tories have to lose up there?
Tory-SNP Molotov-Ribbentrop pact suits them both.
Don't recall that working out too well for Molotov or Ribbentrop. The SNP won't agree non-aggression with the Tories. They will do what is needed to achieve the long term goal.
STV News at Six featuring the wonderful SNPTory poster of Salmond with Miliband in his pocket.
It really makes you wonder if the Tories realise how much it will harm them if they help the SNP achieve a whitewash in Scotland. It might hurt Labour in England but then what, the Union is probably going to be finished by this election and the Tories are supposed to have the Union as a fundamental principle of their party.
The Tories just just as incapable of coming up with a coherent strategy to deal with the Constitutional issue. They should be all over FFA even if it's only Scotland that becomes a Federal associate. But their strategy doesn't seem to be looking past May 7th.
WOW. The Tories are intending to run the poster IN SCOTLAND. SNP must be laughing all the way to the Ballot Box.
Not really - they want to capture as much of the pro-union vote as they can (which did win 55-45 after all)
I refer once again to UKIP's Gerard Batten MEP, and PPC for Romford. He proposed a charter for Muslim "spokesmen", sucj as CAGE and the Muslim council, to sign to makeit clear they had no interest in supporting extremism or Jihad
Guardianistas, and Conservatives on this site, screamed "Wacist"... despite Batten being married to a non white woman
Read back through the old threads and see for yourself how the lazy, smug and self satisfied apologists lampooned Batten for the idea that some groups purporting to speak for Muslims might have links to extremism, and weren't all they seemed
To be honest, I don't want spurious oaths of loyalty. Meaningless and any jihadi will give it while not meaning it. I would much rather we ignored the MCB and Cage, put pressure on those more reputable organisations funding them and made sure that we did not let into the country more jihadists or their apologists (as well as getting rid of those already here). We should also be much more aggressive about putting in the public domain who these people really are, their background, what they say, who they associate with so that people stop taking them at face value.
Take Cage - whose spokesman was unwilling to condemn stoning. Why isn't the Minister for Women on the airwaves asking what the hell an organisation like Amnesy or the Rowntree Foundation is doing associating with a group that is in favour of stoning women?
Why isn't the Minister for Women asking Oxford University why it has given a professorshipto Tariq Ramadan who is equally unwilling to condemn stoning? Why isn't she asking the relevant Labour Shadow and Ms Harman herself to agree that with her that this is wrong and that no group advocating this should be given government funding or help or assistance or even so much as the time of day?
There is so much material available with which to put these people on the spot, to show them up for the disgusting barbarians they are. It's infuriating that it is not done.
Great move by Greece.. If the EU doesn't give em what they want then they will issue EU passports to anyone who asks for one..Takes the pressure off Lampadusa I suppose
What a stupidly dangerous policy given the presence of IS barely 300 miles away. The EU should tell the Greeks that in that case they will need to suspend free movement for anyone with a Greek passport.
Indeed, and with the Libs out of it, the SNP are the best option for the Tories.
Labour weakened, and a clear line into EV4EL + maximum autonomy within the union. The election outcome would demand those outcomes.
By 2020, Scottish unionists will need to have coalesced around a single party, and it's only by removing the Westminster scapegoat through maximum autonomy that the SNP position will ever get weakened.
What if the Tories can't offer FFA because they know that the fundamental numbers are not in Westminster's favour?
Because even a cursory examination says those figures will work to the SNPs advantage. FFA will be a demonstration not a danger.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment.
Tough to go into an election promising to increase defence spending by more than spending on hospitals or schools.
People shouldn't go into government if they can't make tough decisions.
Well. Yes. But there is always the possibility that Cameron and Osborne think it is right to increase health / education spending by more. There's certainly nothing particularly sensible about sticking to a 2% of GDP target for defence spending: it means having to hire more squaddies when ONS decides to include drug dealing in its GDP estimates! If there are programmes the defence chiefs want funded and they cost 2% of GDP then obviously that is something different.
It's more that without that commitment, we'll see the army cut further to 50-60,000.
They will do what is needed to achieve the long term goal.
Yes.
So, the only workable solutions in the face of a SNP landslide are for the 'English' parties to gang up and always out-vote them (counter-productive, ultimately) or for the 'UK' government to offer enough autonomy/give 'em enough rope.
The SNP can't afford to align with Labour because it legitimises Labour again.
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would eventually be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Why would they disband NATO? Most EU members are also members of NATO. It probably makes NATO easier to run if it becomes an alliance between the US, the EU, Norway, Turkey and who else?
The proposal is more of a concern for those EU countries - like Ireland and Austria - who are declared as neutral.
Finland and Sweden too are neutral. Malta and Cyprus aren't members either (though Turkey occupies the north!).
Non-EU members of NATO are US, Canada, Turkey, Albania, Iceland and Norway.
The Baltic States joining NATO and the EU will probably turn out to have been a huge mistake for them
NATO and the EU accepting them likewise.
When this came up on here recently I read the Wiki page on what is rather grandly called "Baltic Air Policing". This basically involves 4 fighter planes from NATO countries providing the air defence for 3 complete countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Air_Policing
It really is a dangerous joke that we have got away with for years because Russia itself was in such a state.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
I very much hope that Osborne and Cameron commit to the 2%. We have taken peace dividends far too far in a dangerous world. Labour's refusal to commit is yet another reason to add to the long list of reasons why they are not fit to govern.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment. Okay, it will stop Osborne from getting public spending down to 35% of GDP, but does that really matter, now?
Well, they could pay for it by abandoning the 0.7% aid commitment so far as I am concerned.
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would ultimately be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Do the EU member states even have what would constitute an army? Russia would roll right through Europe as it currently stands. The only country who could possibly save them is America. The EU need to stop kidding themselves that they keep world peace and realise it is America who have largely kept Europe stable since WW2.
You think Poland and Germany would let the Russkies roll through without a fight?
The Poles would fight to the last bullet. The Germans would do a deal.
Bullet? Pitchfork I would have thought if they’ ve got any left when the bullets are gone. They’ve got form for doing so.
They charged the German Panzers with cavalry - and 30 pilots were killed in the Battle Of Britain (one regrettably by an English mob who though he was German after he crashlanded)
Who's given it to the national party - Blair or Palmer?
Blair has given the money to the national party to be distributed to the target marginals as the party sees fit (as I understand it from NP's tweets). It has not been given to individual campaigns or people.
before that ghastly woman Margaret Hodge gets too shouty about the HSBC guy not answering the question, it would not be amiss to look at her record at Islington Council..
Frankly how she can shout at anyone else is beyond me.
This is what I said downthread on the very same topic -
"I'd cheer if someone being asked questions like that by Hodge turned round and said that they were no more incompetent or naive than she was when in charge of Islington Council and child abuse was going on under her nose and that child abuse is rather more serious and damaging than tax evasion. Oh and that they haven't insulted any victims either.
It would probably cost them the job but what a way to go!"
So, the only workable solutions in the face of a SNP landslide are for the 'English' parties to gang up and always out-vote them (counter-productive, ultimately) or for the 'UK' government to offer enough autonomy/give 'em enough rope.
Which as I said in another post, they may be unable to do.
Westminster will know (in all likelihood) just how much extra money is allocated to London in the UK accounts which is actually Scottish (The Scottish Government can only estimate). They know exactly how much is fudged by GERS.
There is a very strong likelihood that Westminster KNOWS that it cannot grant FFA because, put simply, the UK Exchequer cannot afford it and for the SNP it will demonstrate the quite unpalatable truth for the Union - that Scotland is being raped**.
** and before someone feigns outrage, look at the actual definition of rape.
I refer once again to UKIP's Gerard Batten MEP, and PPC for Romford. He proposed a charter for Muslim "spokesmen", sucj as CAGE and the Muslim council, to sign to makeit clear they had no interest in supporting extremism or Jihad
Guardianistas, and Conservatives on this site, screamed "Wacist"... despite Batten being married to a non white woman
Read back through the old threads and see for yourself how the lazy, smug and self satisfied apologists lampooned Batten for the idea that some groups purporting to speak for Muslims might have links to extremism, and weren't all they seemed
To be honest, I don't want spurious oaths of loyalty. Meaningless and any jihadi will give it while not meaning it. I would much rather we ignored the MCB and Cage, put pressure on those more reputable organisations funding them and made sure that we did not let into the country more jihadists or their apologists (as well as getting rid of those already here). We should also be much more aggressive about putting in the public domain who these people really are, their background, what they say, who they associate with so that people stop taking them at face value.
Take Cage - whose spokesman was unwilling to condemn stoning. Why isn't the Minister for Women on the airwaves asking what the hell an organisation like Amnesy or the Rowntree Foundation is doing associating with a group that is in favour of stoning women?
Why isn't the Minister for Women asking Oxford University why it has given a professorshipto Tariq Ramadan who is equally unwilling to condemn stoning? Why isn't she asking the relevant Labour Shadow and Ms Harman herself to agree that with her that this is wrong and that no group advocating this should be given government funding or help or assistance or even so much as the time of day?
There is so much material available with which to put these people on the spot, to show them up for the disgusting barbarians they are. It's infuriating that it is not done.
Two Labour politicians – Khalid Mahmood and Mohammad Sarwar – wrote a letter to Jacqui Smith in which they said they were ‘amazed, shocked’ that no charges were being bought, saying that the treatment of the ‘innocent young men’ was ‘deeply disturbing and gravely unjust’. To Mahmood and Sarwar, ‘irreparable damage’ to race relations had been done.
The mindset of people who respond like this is that Muslims - or at least these particular Muslims - are never ever responsible for anything they do and that Muslims accused of crimes or even found guilty of crimes are never responsible for their own actions. Why they think that infantilising Muslims in this way is doing them a favour is a mystery. Best understood as part of the whole victimhood/grievance culture successfully promoted by jihadists and which has so captured a part of the liberal establishment who either cannot or refuse to see people as grown ups. Both views are deeply insulting and belittling. But curiously - in a culture where offence is taken (or pretended to be taken) at the slightest thing - no-one takes offence at this rather more serious insult.
I agree with your sentiment, but would beg to differ on this part
"part of the whole victimhood/grievance culture successfully promoted by jihadists and which has so captured a part of the liberal establishment "
It is the weak multiculturalists in the establishment who promoted the victimhood & grievance culture, and the immigrants, or children of, that have been equal parts insulted by being patronised, and used it as a weapon against the rest of society
But if power is there to be grabbed, people grab it. Doesn't matter which religion, skin colour or nationality you hide behind.. The British establishment offered it, and the Islamists took it
Watch this video, it is the last 8 mins of the BBCs Enoch Powell programme
From 4:12 on the "architects of multiculturalism" are interviewed, even they admit to being shocked by the unforseen consequences of their "experiment"
"it never occurred to us..."
"We didn't realise..."
It occurred to someone, and he was hounded out of office for saying so
I refer once again to UKIP's Gerard Batten MEP, and PPC for Romford. He proposed a charter for Muslim "spokesmen", sucj as CAGE and the Muslim council, to sign to makeit clear they had no interest in supporting extremism or Jihad
Guardianistas, and Conservatives on this site, screamed "Wacist"... despite Batten being married to a non white woman
Read back through the old threads and see for yourself how the lazy, smug and self satisfied apologists lampooned Batten for the idea that some groups purporting to speak for Muslims might have links to extremism, and weren't all they seemed
To be honest, I don't want spurious oaths of loyalty. Meaningless and any jihadi will give it while not meaning it. I would much rather we ignored the MCB and Cage, put pressure on those more reputable organisations funding them and made sure that we did not let into the country more jihadists or their apologists (as well as getting rid of those already here). We should also be much more aggressive about putting in the public domain who these people really are, their background, what they say, who they associate with so that people stop taking them at face value.
Take Cage - whose spokesman was unwilling to condemn stoning. Why isn't the Minister for Women on the airwaves asking what the hell an organisation like Amnesy or the Rowntree Foundation is doing associating with a group that is in favour of stoning women?
Why isn't the Minister for Women asking Oxford University why it has given a professorshipto Tariq Ramadan who is equally unwilling to condemn stoning? Why isn't she asking the relevant Labour Shadow and Ms Harman herself to agree that with her that this is wrong and that no group advocating this should be given government funding or help or assistance or even so much as the time of day?
There is so much material available with which to put these people on the spot, to show them up for the disgusting barbarians they are. It's infuriating that it is not done.
A small number of people like Douglas Murray and others at Henry Jackson and Maajid Nawaz at Quilliam Foundation have been banging on about this for years, but they are often treated like they are somehow the extremists or mad.
When Peter Allen on R5 tried to spin that Jihadi John might have gone to Syria for noble intentions and that well are unis all sorts of whacky ideas are shared, the bod from the Henry Jackson Society armed with realms of evidence of not whacky but instances of extremist speakers, illegal material etc was basically just told yeah yeah whatever. Allen even said, well what real threat are these people to us anyway....
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment. Okay, it will stop Osborne from getting public spending down to 35% of GDP, but does that really matter, now?
Well, they could pay for it by abandoning the 0.7% aid commitment so far as I am concerned.
Well they haven't ruled it out, have they? The Tories could simply be waiting for Labour to rule it out, only to commit to it in the Tory manifesto. Well, I can hope....
Sunil Prasannan @Sunil_P2 · 12s12 seconds ago Labour lead in ELBOW (Electoral Leader-Board Of the Week) since August 2014. Lab lead w/e 8th Mar = 0.3%, lowest ever
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would eventually be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Why would they disband NATO? Most EU members are also members of NATO. It probably makes NATO easier to run if it becomes an alliance between the US, the EU, Norway, Turkey and who else?
The proposal is more of a concern for those EU countries - like Ireland and Austria - who are declared as neutral.
Finland and Sweden too are neutral. Malta and Cyprus aren't members either (though Turkey occupies the north!).
Non-EU members of NATO are US, Canada, Turkey, Albania, Iceland and Norway.
The Baltic States joining NATO and the EU will probably turn out to have been a huge mistake for them
NATO and the EU accepting them likewise.
When this came up on here recently I read the Wiki page on what is rather grandly called "Baltic Air Policing". This basically involves 4 fighter planes from NATO countries providing the air defence for 3 complete countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Air_Policing
It really is a dangerous joke that we have got away with for years because Russia itself was in such a state.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
I very much hope that Osborne and Cameron commit to the 2%. We have taken peace dividends far too far in a dangerous world. Labour's refusal to commit is yet another reason to add to the long list of reasons why they are not fit to govern.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment. Okay, it will stop Osborne from getting public spending down to 35% of GDP, but does that really matter, now?
Well, they could pay for it by abandoning the 0.7% aid commitment so far as I am concerned.
Who's given it to the national party - Blair or Palmer?
Blair has given the money to the national party to be distributed to the target marginals as the party sees fit (as I understand it from NP's tweets). It has not been given to individual campaigns or people.
Labour accepted money from Blair?
I thought he was a tax avoider or evader.
How do they justify accepting his money?
But but but but his tax efficiency is good tax efficiency....Tory donor tax efficiency is BAD tax efficiency. I am sure Ed will be returning the money as he wouldn't be a hypocrite now would he?
It is like hacking, NOTW evil phone hackers, Mirror phone hacking on a much larger scale....tumbleweed.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment. Okay, it will stop Osborne from getting public spending down to 35% of GDP, but does that really matter, now?
Well, they could pay for it by abandoning the 0.7% aid commitment so far as I am concerned.
Well they haven't ruled it out, have they? The Tories could simply be waiting for Labour to rule it out, only to commit to it in the Tory manifesto. Well, I can hope....
Likewise. It is a golden opportunity to once again show who the grown ups are. And it is the right thing to do as well.
Suzanne Evans @SuzanneEvans1 Mar 8 Defend 'European values' with an army, says @JunckerEU. What he means is take over UK army & crush British values of freedom & democracy.
I hear on the Telegraph grapevine that Cammo and Co want to reduce our armed forces (land) to only 50K.
That means that after taking all the support troops out, there will be a maximum of 15K frontline forces, (i,e. Soldiers that actually fight). Tories and the rest of the lab/Libs selling out the country.
If the EU is to have an army, what then for Nato?
Probably they would disband NATO?
But were an EU army to eventually go to war with Russia no doubt the EU would lose and the US would ultimately be forced to come in and rescue us, LOL!
Do the EU member states even have what would constitute an army? Russia would roll right through Europe as it currently stands. The only country who could possibly save them is America. The EU need to stop kidding themselves that they keep world peace and realise it is America who have largely kept Europe stable since WW2.
You think Poland and Germany would let the Russkies roll through without a fight?
The Poles would fight to the last bullet. The Germans would do a deal.
Bullet? Pitchfork I would have thought if they’ ve got any left when the bullets are gone. They’ve got form for doing so.
They charged the German Panzers with cavalry - and 30 pilots were killed in the Battle Of Britain (one regrettably by an English mob who though he was German after he crashlanded)
Cavalry were a very effective arm of battle on the Eastern Front in WWII. Men on horseback could function over terrain, and in temperatures, where machines couldn't.
So, the only workable solutions in the face of a SNP landslide are for the 'English' parties to gang up and always out-vote them (counter-productive, ultimately) or for the 'UK' government to offer enough autonomy/give 'em enough rope.
Which as I said in another post, they may be unable to do.
Westminster will know (in all likelihood) just how much extra money is allocated to London in the UK accounts which is actually Scottish (The Scottish Government can only estimate). They know exactly how much is fudged by GERS.
There is a very strong likelihood that Westminster KNOWS that it cannot grant FFA because, put simply, the UK Exchequer cannot afford it and for the SNP it will demonstrate the quite unpalatable truth for the Union - that Scotland is being raped**.
** and before someone feigns outrage, look at the actual definition of rape.
So, the only workable solutions in the face of a SNP landslide are for the 'English' parties to gang up and always out-vote them (counter-productive, ultimately) or for the 'UK' government to offer enough autonomy/give 'em enough rope.
Which as I said in another post, they may be unable to do.
Westminster will know (in all likelihood) just how much extra money is allocated to London in the UK accounts which is actually Scottish (The Scottish Government can only estimate). They know exactly how much is fudged by GERS.
There is a very strong likelihood that Westminster KNOWS that it cannot grant FFA because, put simply, the UK Exchequer cannot afford it and for the SNP it will demonstrate the quite unpalatable truth for the Union - that Scotland is being raped**.
** and before someone feigns outrage, look at the actual definition of rape.
I don't think the definition of rape is what you think it is.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment. Okay, it will stop Osborne from getting public spending down to 35% of GDP, but does that really matter, now?
Well, they could pay for it by abandoning the 0.7% aid commitment so far as I am concerned.
Well they haven't ruled it out, have they? The Tories could simply be waiting for Labour to rule it out, only to commit to it in the Tory manifesto. Well, I can hope....
But Cameron has backed himself into a corner, because just like gay marriage, not only has he done it, he has made a great deal about how important it is, and how it separates him from the evil nasty tories, who think that either might not be the best idea.
Had another pair of targeted LD mailshots, one for the environmentally concerned other half implying that a Green vote is a waste of time, complete with green and white background and fonts - stresses LD 'environmental' achievements; and for me a fetching portrait of Ed Miliband and his numerous failings. Vote LD to stop Labour in Bristol West.
Green leaflet through the door complete with dodgy bar chart based on 'recent' local government results - trying to use LD tactics.
Take Cage - whose spokesman was unwilling to condemn stoning. Why isn't the Minister for Women on the airwaves asking what the hell an organisation like Amnesy or the Rowntree Foundation is doing associating with a group that is in favour of stoning women?
Why isn't the Minister for Women asking Oxford University why it has given a professorshipto Tariq Ramadan who is equally unwilling to condemn stoning? Why isn't she asking the relevant Labour Shadow and Ms Harman herself to agree that with her that this is wrong and that no group advocating this should be given government funding or help or assistance or even so much as the time of day?
There is so much material available with which to put these people on the spot, to show them up for the disgusting barbarians they are. It's infuriating that it is not done.
A small number of people like Douglas Murray and others at Henry Jackson and Maajid Nawaz at Quilliam Foundation have been banging on about this for years, but they are often treated like they are somehow the extremists or mad.
When Peter Allen on R5 tried to spin that Jihadi John might have gone to Syria for noble intentions and that well are unis all sorts of whacky ideas are shared, the bod from the Henry Jackson Society armed with realms of evidence of not whacky but instances of extremist speakers, illegal material etc was basically just told yeah yeah whatever. Allen even said, well what real threat are these people to us anyway....
Depressing I know. There are none so deaf as those that don't want to hear. And part of it is fear - of what we might have to do if we took this stuff seriously. It's as if unconsciously we've decided to accept one or two bombs or other atrocities now and again rather than do anything meaningful. Because the latter would be too hard. And would offend our delicate liberal sensibilities in a way that, for instance, having gender segregation at a British university did not, until some of us made a fuss. What we don't realise is that the ratchet moves ever in favour of the jihadist: not just a bomb now and again but a de facto and then a de jure Islamic blasphemy law and then - well who knows.
Maajid Nawaz is my local Lib Dem candidate and for this - and other reasons - I will vote for him, even though he is most unlikely - sadly - to win.
When he was engulfed by the Jesus and Mo cartoon furore the Tory candidate supported him. The Labour candidate - by contrast - was rather silent. Not a good omen.
I simply don't see what is stopping Cameron and Osborne from making this commitment. Okay, it will stop Osborne from getting public spending down to 35% of GDP, but does that really matter, now?
Well, they could pay for it by abandoning the 0.7% aid commitment so far as I am concerned.
Well they haven't ruled it out, have they? The Tories could simply be waiting for Labour to rule it out, only to commit to it in the Tory manifesto. Well, I can hope....
But Cameron has backed himself into a corner, because just like gay marriage, not only has he done it, he has made a great deal about how important it is, and how it separates him from the evil nasty tories, who think that either might not be the best idea.
No reason he couldn't keep the 0.7% foreign aid commitment as well as the 2% on defence.
Bets against Jim Murphy might be much more attractive than people think.
From James Kelly's site : - "3) The Greens received 3% of the vote in the poll, and yet someone who attended the Greens' spring conference emailed me today to say that they'd heard the party won't be standing in East Renfrewshire."
This on top of the 2010 weighting and Spiral of Silence. I think Jim is in a lot of trouble. The leader of Labour Branch in Scotland must be a sitting parliamentarian (MEP, MP or MSP). He will be none of those.
Which as I said in another post, they may be unable to do.
Declining greatly increased autonomy, which could be imposed anyway, would start to look a bit silly, wouldn't it?
You didn't read my post.
WESTMINSTER may be unable to offer FFA if they know it would look positive for the SNP. Scottish FFA GDP at 110% of rUK GDP would demonstrate that the Unionists have been lying for years.
Take Cage - whose spokesman was unwilling to condemn stoning. Why isn't the Minister for Women on the airwaves asking what the hell an organisation like Amnesy or the Rowntree Foundation is doing associating with a group that is in favour of stoning women?
Why isn't the Minister for Women asking Oxford University why it has given a professorshipto Tariq Ramadan who is equally unwilling to condemn stoning? Why isn't she asking the relevant Labour Shadow and Ms Harman herself to agree that with her that this is wrong and that no group advocating this should be given government funding or help or assistance or even so much as the time of day
A small number of people like Douglas Murray and others at Henry Jackson and Maajid Nawaz at Quilliam Foundation have been banging on about this for years, but they are often treated like they are somehow the extremists or mad.
When Peter Allen on R5 tried to spin that Jihadi John might have gone to Syria for noble intentions and that well are unis all sorts of whacky ideas are shared, the bod from the Henry Jackson Society armed with realms of evidence of not whacky but instances of extremist speakers, illegal material etc was basically just told yeah yeah whatever. Allen even said, well what real threat are these people to us anyway....
Depressing I know. There are none so deaf as those that don't want to hear. And part of it is fear - of what we might have to do if we took this stuff seriously. It's as if unconsciously we've decided to accept one or two bombs or other other atrocities now and again rather than do anything meaningful. Because the latter would be too hard. And would offend our delicate liberal sensibilities in a way that having gender segregation at a British university did not, until some of us made a fus.. What we don't realise is that the ratchet moves ever in favour of the jihadist: not just a bomb now and again but a de facto and then a de jure Islamic blasphemy law and then - well who knows.
Maajid Nawaz is my local Lib Dem candidate and for this - and other reasons - I will vote for him, even though he is most unlikely - sadly - to win.
When he was engulfed by the Jesus and Mo cartoon furore the Tory candidate supported him. The Labour candidate - by contrast - was rather silent. Not a good omen.
FPT Maajid Nawaz was among those nominated for "Islamophobe of the Year" along with Douglas Murray, UKIP, and Charlie Hebdo. I'm rather pleased to see UKIP in that company.
FPT Maajid Nawaz was among those nominated for "Islamophobe of the Year" along with Douglas Murray, UKIP, and Charlie Hebdo. I'm rather pleased to see UKIP in that company.
Given by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), another very interesting organization....and endorsed by another idiot Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
WESTMINSTER may be unable to offer FFA if they know it would look positive for the SNP. Scottish FFA GDP at 110% of rUK GDP would demonstrate that the Unionists have been lying for years.
I've read so many variations of what Scotland's finances are, it remains to be seen what the truth is.
The next UK government needs to push the boundary as far as it can and see where it leads.
Which as I said in another post, they may be unable to do.
Declining greatly increased autonomy, which could be imposed anyway, would start to look a bit silly, wouldn't it?
You didn't read my post.
WESTMINSTER may be unable to offer FFA if they know it would look positive for the SNP. Scottish FFA GDP at 110% of rUK GDP would demonstrate that the Unionists have been lying for years.
Of course, that does not follow at all. Just because it is positive in one year does not mean it has always been positive and will always be positive.
WESTMINSTER may be unable to offer FFA if they know it would look positive for the SNP. Scottish FFA GDP at 110% of rUK GDP would demonstrate that the Unionists have been lying for years.
I've read so many variations of what Scotland's finances are, it remains to be seen what the truth is.
The next UK government needs to push the boundary as far as it can and see where it leads.
Yes, indeed there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get a proper estimate of actual Scottish GDP, especially major items like VAT and Corporation Tax being skewed by the Head Office effect.
But Westminster *probably* knows the answer. And this would explain why the Tories - with no represenation to lose from Scottish Home Rule - are still reluctant to offer FFA.
There is no constitutional problem with the Tories allowing FFA. Scotland would still be in the Union, the UK would still exist. Logically, the only possible reason is that Westminster has the numbers and they have supressed the reports - just like they did with McCrone for 25 years.
Did you find it baffling when William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard made it?
I did. It is a stupid idea and the Tory party needs to drop it we are funnelling billions of pounds into failed states and into the hands of dictators. Emergency disaster relief and medical aid should be the extent of our aid programme. That is, of course, unrealistic, but I would at least start with cutting all aid to India and any other developing nation which has a space programme and spends more than us on their military than we do by a proportion of GDP.
Did you find it baffling when William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard made it?
I thought it was folly back then, and it's folly now.
Fair enough. I'm not terribly keen on it myself, for exactly the same reason that I'm not keen on a 2% defence spending commitment: I don't like arbitrary spending targets.
Comments
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31799533
Ed...I am waiting....
http://tinyurl.com/qaob726
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Air_Policing
It really is a dangerous joke that we have got away with for years because Russia itself was in such a state.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
I very much hope that Osborne and Cameron commit to the 2%. We have taken peace dividends far too far in a dangerous world. Labour's refusal to commit is yet another reason to add to the long list of reasons why they are not fit to govern.
Completely clueless springs to mind.
Completely clueless springs to mind.
Public utterings like that make me think its a crooked heat and the Labour guy is using the dough to back Farage
The Muslim Council of Britain – a large Muslim umbrella group – said that the government should apologise for treating the suspects in a ‘dishonourable’ fashion. Inayat Bunglawala, then a media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, wrote in the Guardian that the government’s behaviour ‘reprehensible’; ‘underhand’; and ‘cowardly’, and said that it ‘shames our country’. He, too, believed that the suspects deserved an apology from the government, having been ‘disgracefully’ smeared.
An organisation called ‘Justice for the North West Ten’ was launched, with a meeting in July 2009 seeing ‘over a hundred people, community organizers, students, trade unionists, lawyers and civil liberties activists’ demanding the release of the suspects. One of the speakers was Asim Qureshi from Cage (who, it is fair to say, have not had a brilliant few weeks on the PR front after their disastrous press conference discussing their links to Mohammed Emwazi).
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/03/gordon-brown-was-right-about-abid-naseer/
Nick Palmer @Nick4Broxtowe 3h3 hours ago
@Anna_SoubryMP @Independent @UKLabour Had the letter - he's paying to the national party. Now, do tell us about YOUR funding sources?
ELBOW for week-ending 8th March. Lab 33.5 (nc), Con 33.3 (+0.5), UKIP 14.4 (+0.1), LD 7.3 (-0.5), Grn 6.0 (-0.1)
https://twitter.com/Sunil_P2/status/574993604659298304
Guardianistas, and Conservatives on this site, screamed "Wacist"... despite Batten being married to a non white woman
Read back through the old threads and see for yourself how the lazy, smug and self satisfied apologists lampooned Batten for the idea that some groups purporting to speak for Muslims might have links to extremism, and weren't all they seemed
SNPTory poster of Salmond with Miliband in his pocket.It really makes you wonder if the Tories realise how much it will harm them if they help the SNP achieve a whitewash in Scotland. It might hurt Labour in England but then what, the Union is probably going to be finished by this election and the Tories are supposed to have the Union as a fundamental principle of their party.
The Tories just just as incapable of coming up with a coherent strategy to deal with the Constitutional issue. They should be all over FFA even if it's only Scotland that becomes a Federal associate. But their strategy doesn't seem to be looking past May 7th.
WOW. The Tories are intending to run the poster IN SCOTLAND. SNP must be laughing all the way to the Ballot Box.
"We don't want to leave the EU because we're nationalists, we want to leave the EU because we're democrats"
https://www.youtube.com/user/ukipofficial/videos
"Panos Kammenos, the Greek defence minister, warned that if the eurozone allowed Greece to go bust it would give EU travel papers to illegal immigrants crossing its borders or the 10,000 currently held in detention centres."
As nice a bit of blackmail as one could wish to see.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11459675/Greeces-defence-minister-threatens-to-send-migrants-including-jihadists-to-Western-Europe.html
Labour lead in ELBOW (Electoral Leader-Board Of the Week) since August 2014. Lab lead w/e 8th Mar = 0.3%, lowest ever
https://twitter.com/Sunil_P2/status/574994996128014336
LibDem and Green in ELBOW (Electoral Leader-Board Of the Week) since August 2014. W/e 8th Mar LibDems 7.3, Greens 6.0
https://twitter.com/Sunil_P2/status/574996509894262784
"This is where the election will be won for Labour and that is why I am making a donation to all 106 campaigns."
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tony-blair-donates-more-100000-5277143
Typical Blair, nothing is quite as it seems :-)
What do the Tories have to lose up there?
Tory-SNP Molotov-Ribbentrop pact suits them both.
Lowest LibDem score in ELBOW for four weeks.
and
Lowest Lab lead in ELBOW since August (inception of ELBOW)
Highest Tory score in ELBOW since November!
Labour weakened, and a clear line into EV4EL + maximum autonomy within the union. The election outcome would demand those outcomes.
By 2020, Scottish unionists will need to have coalesced around a single party, and it's only by removing the Westminster scapegoat through maximum autonomy that the SNP position will ever get weakened.
"part of the whole victimhood/grievance culture successfully promoted by jihadists and which has so captured a part of the liberal establishment "
It is the weak multiculturalists in the establishment who promoted the victimhood & grievance culture, and the immigrants, or children of, that have been equal parts insulted by being patronised, and used it as a weapon against the rest of society
But if power is there to be grabbed, people grab it. Doesn't matter which religion, skin colour or nationality you hide behind.. The British establishment offered it, and the Islamists took it
Watch this video, it is the last 8 mins of the BBCs Enoch Powell programme
From 4:12 on the "architects of multiculturalism" are interviewed, even they admit to being shocked by the unforseen consequences of their "experiment"
"it never occurred to us..."
"We didn't realise..."
It occurred to someone, and he was hounded out of office for saying so
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCgHh29Vhhg
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/09/uk-aid-un-idUKKBN0M51SR20150309?rpc=401&
Frankly how she can shout at anyone else is beyond me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hodge
Well. Yes. But there is always the possibility that Cameron and Osborne think it is right to increase health / education spending by more. There's certainly nothing particularly sensible about sticking to a 2% of GDP target for defence spending: it means having to hire more squaddies when ONS decides to include drug dealing in its GDP estimates! If there are programmes the defence chiefs want funded and they cost 2% of GDP then obviously that is something different.
Take Cage - whose spokesman was unwilling to condemn stoning. Why isn't the Minister for Women on the airwaves asking what the hell an organisation like Amnesy or the Rowntree Foundation is doing associating with a group that is in favour of stoning women?
Why isn't the Minister for Women asking Oxford University why it has given a professorshipto Tariq Ramadan who is equally unwilling to condemn stoning? Why isn't she asking the relevant Labour Shadow and Ms Harman herself to agree that with her that this is wrong and that no group advocating this should be given government funding or help or assistance or even so much as the time of day?
There is so much material available with which to put these people on the spot, to show them up for the disgusting barbarians they are. It's infuriating that it is not done.
If anyone wants to back EdM for next PM @ ~2.4, head on over to betfair
It's a stonking bet, that I'll be rebacking once the cheltenham fun is over.
Because even a cursory examination says those figures will work to the SNPs advantage. FFA will be a demonstration not a danger.
So, the only workable solutions in the face of a SNP landslide are for the 'English' parties to gang up and always out-vote them (counter-productive, ultimately) or for the 'UK' government to offer enough autonomy/give 'em enough rope.
The SNP can't afford to align with Labour because it legitimises Labour again.
"what's the purpose of your loan, sir?"
"I need it to gamble"
Nah, I'd rather just take the hit on a few ticks on betfair than piss around borrowing a few K for a week.
I thought he was a tax avoider or evader.
How do they justify accepting his money?
"I'd cheer if someone being asked questions like that by Hodge turned round and said that they were no more incompetent or naive than she was when in charge of Islington Council and child abuse was going on under her nose and that child abuse is rather more serious and damaging than tax evasion. Oh and that they haven't insulted any victims either.
It would probably cost them the job but what a way to go!"
Westminster will know (in all likelihood) just how much extra money is allocated to London in the UK accounts which is actually Scottish (The Scottish Government can only estimate). They know exactly how much is fudged by GERS.
There is a very strong likelihood that Westminster KNOWS that it cannot grant FFA because, put simply, the UK Exchequer cannot afford it and for the SNP it will demonstrate the quite unpalatable truth for the Union - that Scotland is being raped**.
** and before someone feigns outrage, look at the actual definition of rape.
When Peter Allen on R5 tried to spin that Jihadi John might have gone to Syria for noble intentions and that well are unis all sorts of whacky ideas are shared, the bod from the Henry Jackson Society armed with realms of evidence of not whacky but instances of extremist speakers, illegal material etc was basically just told yeah yeah whatever. Allen even said, well what real threat are these people to us anyway....
It is like hacking, NOTW evil phone hackers, Mirror phone hacking on a much larger scale....tumbleweed.
50,000 seconds
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31799541
No....I am shocked I tell you. I thought he was just there to see baby Elephants while on a trip organized by Jihadi Safari Tours of West London.
Green leaflet through the door complete with dodgy bar chart based on 'recent' local government results - trying to use LD tactics.
Maajid Nawaz is my local Lib Dem candidate and for this - and other reasons - I will vote for him, even though he is most unlikely - sadly - to win.
When he was engulfed by the Jesus and Mo cartoon furore the Tory candidate supported him. The Labour candidate - by contrast - was rather silent. Not a good omen.
From James Kelly's site : -
"3) The Greens received 3% of the vote in the poll, and yet someone who attended the Greens' spring conference emailed me today to say that they'd heard the party won't be standing in East Renfrewshire."
This on top of the 2010 weighting and Spiral of Silence. I think Jim is in a lot of trouble. The leader of Labour Branch in Scotland must be a sitting parliamentarian (MEP, MP or MSP). He will be none of those.
I'd find it very easy to vote for Maajid no matter which party he represented. He knows about militant Islamism, because he's been there.
WESTMINSTER may be unable to offer FFA if they know it would look positive for the SNP. Scottish FFA GDP at 110% of rUK GDP would demonstrate that the Unionists have been lying for years.
Do we buy into this 2010 Con-Lab comparison when ukip & LDs are completely and totally different this time round?
The next UK government needs to push the boundary as far as it can and see where it leads.
But Westminster *probably* knows the answer. And this would explain why the Tories - with no represenation to lose from Scottish Home Rule - are still reluctant to offer FFA.
There is no constitutional problem with the Tories allowing FFA. Scotland would still be in the Union, the UK would still exist. Logically, the only possible reason is that Westminster has the numbers and they have supressed the reports - just like they did with McCrone for 25 years.