"The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained.
The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.
We can hardly forget that thousands of innocent people fighting for their political rights in Argentine are in prison and have been tortured and debased. We cannot forget that fact when our friends and fellow citizens in the Falkland Islands are suffering as they are at this moment."
@another_richard - when Mr Putin's personal advisor stated that Russia ought to have control of Cyprus in return for bailing them out - it said it all.
And Cyprus' Finance Min has been holed up in the Kremlin for most of this week - what a mess for an Ezone country to be cap in hand to gangsters and their ilk in preference to the ECB beggars belief.
I didn't think it was possible to handle a bad situation this appallingly - and the EU manage it again. It's too far fetched for Yes, Minister.
"Kenneth Clarke argued against fighting Argentina to win back the Falkland Islands, saying Britain should “blow up a few ships but nothing more”, newly-released files disclose today."
The EU would love to crush the Cypriot offshore banking model. They hate anything not in line with their central control model. They hate Ireland's corporation tax rate. They hate the City.
@JosiasJessop Were they offered a British passport too ? Anyway Antifrank's offer sounds perfectly reasonable, they do build bloody good roads wherever they go too (See Rwanda in the Top Gear special)
40% ?! They are going to piss off alot of 'well connected' Russians with that much, you'd be better off heading to Vegas to launder your cash with that sort of haircut. Wouldn't like to be a cypriot bank manager or politician if they do that...
Riiight so I back England and Lay the draw. 250-1 NZ at close. What a terrible move that was. Least its only a tenner. Not even going to look at Betfair current odds.
@Pulpstar : I'm going from memory, but I think the Argentinians made two offers: firstly one for the islanders to get the money and go back to Britain. When that was rejected, the offer was amended for the same amount, but with them being allowed to stay. That too was rejected.
All from memory, so treat with a pinch of salt. I think it was sometime around 1979-80.
An early morning quiz for PBers: can anyone tell where my profile picture shows? It's a fairly distinctive location.
@Morris Dancer: it's snowing a bit but I doubt it will stick. Bloody cold, though. Thank God I got all my insulation done and as my neighbour is completely refurbishing his house, there is lots of spare wood outside for the fire!
Now I need to find how to change my avatar. I look like a demented child.
On Cyprus, if they're sitting on all these gas reserves, why the hell don't we bail them out in return for first dibs on the gas.?
@Carlotta. "On Cyprus the Telegraph reports the latest plan is to maintain the <€100 guarantee but implement a 40% haircut on everything above that....<br />"
Good move. That should remind the Russian mobsters and their Cypriot patsies that a laundry is somewhere where you wash clothes
@Roger: except that some of the money above 100,000 euros will be legitimate savings, pension money etc. It's appropriation of other people's property. That sets an appalling precedent.
Miss Cyclefree, just click your username and you'll reach your profile. Hover the cursor over your avatar/picture and the option to change it will appear.
It's snowy underfoot and snowing now. The hound will probably be pleased.
@Cyclefree It would increase our national debt, also we'll need a bloody long pipeline going through alot of countries. Russia on the other hand actually has cash, also they'll only need to do a deal with Turkey (Or failing that, Bulgaria (Which won't be a problem) to pipe through to Russia. From there they can link it into their main infrastructure.
The possibility of Russian battleships harbouring up in Nicosia is practically nil FOR THE MOMENT (Though no doubt they will reserve the option, just a warfleet would look a little too imperialist) but of pipes, oil tankers and oil wells being there.. very high.
Anyway didn't they sell the rights or some such to Israel ? In which case they've probably stuffed themselves...
@Jessop. "And where do you fall on the islanders' right of self-determination?"
This is too big a question to get into here. If you believe that facts on the ground are the only determining factor then the Israeli's building on occupied land as fast as they can is clearly the way to go whatever the UN might say.
Suffice to say that I was impressed that Argentina has got 100% support for their claim among the nations of South America. I suspect their perspective is less likely to be skewed than ours particularly as British chauvinism is involved.
Testing new comment system .... So far, I really like it. I was concerned about the "newest first" regime, but I've found that after reading the header, you can go in through politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com and see the conversation from top to bottom. Nice work, and thanks to Mike, Robert and Max.
I think this opposition is the first to entirely give up the pretence that it wants what is best for the countryrather than what is best for the party. The desperate attacks on the budget for something, anything just amply demonstrate this vile trait of a vile party.
@Pulpstar: thanks. Maybe we could do a deal with the Russians though. We need gas; we also have an interest surely in Cyprus not going bust and it would show that there is an alternative to the ludicrous EU-enforced austerity where the survival of the euro is put above that of the people and countries it is meant to serve.
Although the Lib Dems are still doing poorly, or very poorly, in Labour-held urban wards, last night's council by-election results do tend to confirm that they are now recovering in other types of ward, and particularly in those where the Conservatives represent the only serious opposition to them. As there will be many such Conservative - Lib Dem contests in the forthcoming County Council elections, particularly in the South and South-West, it may well be that the oxygen of favourable publicity for Lib Dem gains in these areas will give the party a much-needed boost - or so we Lib Dems hope !
@NoSpaceName : Yep, somewhere I've only visited once when I walked past, and want to visit it again. Indeed, I'd love to do all that stretch of coast between Edinburgh and Berwick again.
On Cyprus, what evidence is there behind these claims of Russian mafia / mobster money in the banks being widespread? The way some people are speaking, you'd think that *all* of the Russian money in the bank is dodgy.
Yes, the exception to the Lib Dem collapse in London are those areas where the Lib Dems hold GE seats. Precisely the kind of areas where it is important for them to retain support.
Both us and the Germans have missed a trick re Cyprus bailout and have looked too short term.
I do not know if Cyprus has reached any agreement with an oil major to exploit their gas, as presumably they could not afford to do it themselves. Seems a no-brainer for either UK or Germany.
My new avatar is a pic from the county where \i was born and brought up.
@Roger What rot. The Falklands have only ever been inhabited by Falklanders. It is a very simple situation, they all wish (bar 3) to remain the Falkland Islands and a British Overseas Territory.
“we want the Chilean Government to remember that there is a piece of Chile here in the Islands….the problems Great Britain and Argentina have are issues between them, we are for the Falklands and Falkland Islanders and for what they want.”
The Falkland Islanders haven't bulldozed any of their homes, there are not stones and bullets thrown between the populations. In fact I'd be willing to bet the racial harmony is better than many parts of the UK. They respect the Falklanders right to self determination, it is a nonsense to compare it to Israel - Palestine.
Morning all. First, I thought Michael Gove was very impressive on Question Time last night. Clear and passionate in his contributions with a dose of self-deprecation thrown in.
On the comments system, thanks to Robert et al. for the changes. A couple of things I have noticed: first, if I write a comment and then login it seems to not post my comment and I have to write it again. Second, on older threads it removes the post time if they were posted the previous day. Not a huge issue, but something I thought I would flag up.
@JamesM Why did he give up on the idea of a single exam board. I was fairly agnostic on the rest of his education plans but I thought his plans for a single exam board were sensible enough. OIr would it be bloody EU competition law or some such getting in his way ?
I look forward to the expose on Guido's site! "Shock as son of Labour politician is discovered to live in a Labour seat that is about to become vacant!"
@Pulpstar I don't think he actually said the reasons last night, he just said he listened and decided it was a bridge too far. Someone else may know the reasons though.
Not quite true, Pulpstar, re the Falklands population, but AFAIK the current population are all descendants of British immigrants, or British immigrants themselves. There was certainly no "aboriginal" population.
I'm not entirely happy with Vanilla, but am willing to wait for Junior to work on the templates.* What worries me is this; another popular web-site* has just lost it's hosting due to the fact that it received more than 3-million page-impressions per-annum. It has fewer - though more informed - contributors than this site!
I fear that OGH cannot afford this system. Unfortunately the viable solutions - WordPress and vBulletin - require hosting systems (and we all remember why Junior dumped his servers)....
* Vanilla does not have a "Developers Guide" that is open. I'm killing-time at the mo' and would have offered my services.
You are right. My favourite place is Ebor Rocks which is high on the south edge of the Mendips where you can park and gaze over the Somerset countryside below (Including Glastonbury) and it looks like a relief map.
A good walk is from Bath Abbey to Wells Cathedral - you can start near Monkton Coombe to make it a bit shorter.
@fluffythoughts Correct. The cost of Vanilla is a real worry. We can see from usage so far that we will be in the higher rate when the month's free trial is over.
We are taking a cottage in Cornwall (Landrake near Saltash ) in 2 weeks time- any ideas for things must do pubs/restaurants must go to round there. Apparently my wife will have been married for 40 years and wants to celebrate/drown her sorrows.
I assume Roger is just trying to wind people up. Anyone that can't tell the difference between a situation involving a people displacing another people in the last few years, and a situation where one people have lived in a place for nine generations with no previous population, clearly is below creationist levels of intelligence.
Oh... and I notice you can't go back and edit any typos away. Never mind - I will simply have to be more careful.
(As an aside, I read "Fifty Shades" on my holidays last year. Complete and utter sh*te from start to finish. Anyway, having done so, I was expecting something completely different from "vanilla forums", if you catch my drift.)
@LucyJones - go to Edit Your Profile and hover over your avatar - it gives you an option to upload any pix you like.
And you can edit - put your cursor in the top right corner of your comment and a wheel appears - click on it and its says Edit - click on it and you can.
Easy answer - life isn't binary. On the measure of how high the deficit would be and how much debt we'd owe, the Coalition Government is still beating the plans of the former Government hands down. Darling would have failed all three measures of the Darling plan (according to the IFS analysis) and the deficit would be tens of billions higher.
I knew it was too good to be true. Is there anything to be said for supplementing the ad revenue with a way for regular posters to set up a direct debit to contribute to costs monthly? It would be more reliable / predictable than the donate button (which often causes me trouble to operate because I can never remember what email / password combination I use for PayPal). Not sure if that would raise enough to meet the likely shortfall.
On cost, perhaps a suggested percentage (5% or maybe 10%) of profits from winning tips others offer could help. It'd also encourage more tips and those that pay out would have the added bonus of helping to fund the site.
Could bookies also help with costs? I imagine the site helps drums up business both directly and through its media profile.
Oh, and Miss Jones, you *can* edit posts. When the cursor is over a post you wrote a cog appears on the top-right. Click it and (for an hour after posting) you can edit.
@PtP checked it on wiki, yes there were. It was very sparsely inhabited and the 'conquistadors' weren't all that nice to them. The admixture of Argentians as given on wikipedia indicates a certain amount of well quite frankly.. rape I suspect.
It's not just the software. The move to disqUS was prompted by hosting issues. [Remember the dieing-days of www -> www7, not least during GE2010?]
Junior cannot spend hours doing basic server admin. So disqUS offered a software solution that abstracted server-support and maintenance. Whatever package OGH goes for must minimise the support costs whilst supporting a suitable framework for this blog to operate within.
OT: Good morning. Well Ukip won a council seat last night and Tories keep losing their's. I would rather trust that than YouGov which way the wind is blowing.
And talk about wind, It's blowing cold and all that snow is heading London way. Brrrrr!
@Andy_Cooke 'Darling would have failed all three measures of the Darling plan' We simply don't know whether or not that would have been the case because the last administration didn't produce a comprehensive spending review which set out how Darling intended to meet his obligations. You might say, therefore, that the Darling Plan was empty rhetoric. But the correlative to that conclusion is that this government's fiscal policy was based on similarly empty rhetoric. It set out a fiscal mandate in June 2010 and turned out to be completely unprepared to do the heavy lifting required to meet it.
Comments
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21884556
Yes, they're just beginning to see it in all it's master strategic glory.
"The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained.
The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.
We can hardly forget that thousands of innocent people fighting for their political rights in Argentine are in prison and have been tortured and debased. We cannot forget that fact when our friends and fellow citizens in the Falkland Islands are suffering as they are at this moment."
http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands
And of course the EU has just upset nice Mr Putin.
And Cyprus' Finance Min has been holed up in the Kremlin for most of this week - what a mess for an Ezone country to be cap in hand to gangsters and their ilk in preference to the ECB beggars belief.
I didn't think it was possible to handle a bad situation this appallingly - and the EU manage it again. It's too far fetched for Yes, Minister.
RT @aintreeinfo: So the forecaster got it right. The way Aintree is at the minute you'd be better off with Franz Klammer riding rather than Ruby Walsh
Who else has a tonne of the white stuff ?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/margaret-thatcher/9947164/Kenneth-Clarke-opposed-fighting-Argentina-over-Falklands-Thatcher-papers-show.html
"Kenneth Clarke argued against fighting Argentina to win back the Falkland Islands, saying Britain should “blow up a few ships but nothing more”, newly-released files disclose today."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9947147/Cyprus-overhauls-two-biggest-banks-to-stave-off-collapse.html
That should finish off their offshore banking business pdq.
"The overall worth of the 101 people on the Asian Rich List has increased by 10 per cent, to £45 billion, while the number of Asian billionaires [resident in the UK] has risen from three to seven." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9946994/Family-firms-key-to-rising-wealth-of-Britains-Asian-billionaires.html
Like the new format. Just one question: is it possible to reorder the comments i.e. newest / oldest first.
Thanks and greetings from a freezing North London!
The EU would love to crush the Cypriot offshore banking model. They hate anything not in line with their central control model. They hate Ireland's corporation tax rate. They hate the City.
In my case the feeling is mutual.
If you read on PB main site - its newest first, if on the message board bit [that's behind your user name] its newest last.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BF8sF3oCAAAjJyS.jpg:large
All from memory, so treat with a pinch of salt. I think it was sometime around 1979-80.
An early morning quiz for PBers: can anyone tell where my profile picture shows? It's a fairly distinctive location.
Now I need to find how to change my avatar. I look like a demented child.
On Cyprus, if they're sitting on all these gas reserves, why the hell don't we bail them out in return for first dibs on the gas.?
Good move. That should remind the Russian mobsters and their Cypriot patsies that a laundry is somewhere where you wash clothes
It's snowy underfoot and snowing now. The hound will probably be pleased.
The possibility of Russian battleships harbouring up in Nicosia is practically nil FOR THE MOMENT (Though no doubt they will reserve the option, just a warfleet would look a little too imperialist) but of pipes, oil tankers and oil wells being there.. very high.
Anyway didn't they sell the rights or some such to Israel ? In which case they've probably stuffed themselves...
This is too big a question to get into here. If you believe that facts on the ground are the only determining factor then the Israeli's building on occupied land as fast as they can is clearly the way to go whatever the UN might say.
Suffice to say that I was impressed that Argentina has got 100% support for their claim among the nations of South America. I suspect their perspective is less likely to be skewed than ours particularly as British chauvinism is involved.
So far, I really like it. I was concerned about the "newest first" regime, but I've found that after reading the header, you can go in through politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com and see the conversation from top to bottom. Nice work, and thanks to Mike, Robert and Max.
On Cyprus, what evidence is there behind these claims of Russian mafia / mobster money in the banks being widespread? The way some people are speaking, you'd think that *all* of the Russian money in the bank is dodgy.
Anyone know if this is from individual users or just page refreshes?
Yes, the exception to the Lib Dem collapse in London are those areas where the Lib Dems hold GE seats. Precisely the kind of areas where it is important for them to retain support.
Both us and the Germans have missed a trick re Cyprus bailout and have looked too short term.
I do not know if Cyprus has reached any agreement with an oil major to exploit their gas, as presumably they could not afford to do it themselves. Seems a no-brainer for either UK or Germany.
My new avatar is a pic from the county where \i was born and brought up.
The situation in Israel is completely different. The palestinians have been displaced there and a two state solution needed. Anyway here is the view of the 'other' population in the Falklands, the Chileans. http://en.mercopress.com/2012/02/13/chilean-community-in-falklands-plan-to-write-a-letter-to-president-pinera
“we want the Chilean Government to remember that there is a piece of Chile here in the Islands….the problems Great Britain and Argentina have are issues between them, we are for the Falklands and Falkland Islanders and for what they want.”
The Falkland Islanders haven't bulldozed any of their homes, there are not stones and bullets thrown between the populations. In fact I'd be willing to bet the racial harmony is better than many parts of the UK. They respect the Falklanders right to self determination, it is a nonsense to compare it to Israel - Palestine.
On the comments system, thanks to Robert et al. for the changes. A couple of things I have noticed: first, if I write a comment and then login it seems to not post my comment and I have to write it again. Second, on older threads it removes the post time if they were posted the previous day. Not a huge issue, but something I thought I would flag up.
I don't know how long they've been doing this for, but it's a useful repeat.
I look forward to the expose on Guido's site! "Shock as son of Labour politician is discovered to live in a Labour seat that is about to become vacant!"
Wait for the cries of nepotism to rise up!
For a random avatar - yours is perfect ;^ )
We will discover that sons of Labour politician choose their living arrangements based on the age of sitting MPs.
It's a little premature ... I'm not drunk yet!
There was certainly no "aboriginal" population.
Another place I want to walk again.
I fear that OGH cannot afford this system. Unfortunately the viable solutions - WordPress and vBulletin - require hosting systems (and we all remember why Junior dumped his servers)....
* Vanilla does not have a "Developers Guide" that is open. I'm killing-time at the mo' and would have offered my services.
** Think Defence.
You are right. My favourite place is Ebor Rocks which is high on the south edge of the Mendips where you can park and gaze over the Somerset countryside below (Including Glastonbury) and it looks like a relief map.
A good walk is from Bath Abbey to Wells Cathedral - you can start near Monkton Coombe to make it a bit shorter.
@Slackbladder – Is your avatar a picky of the Southend pier railway, Southend-on-Sea ?
Barmouth?
No, that's a photo of Neil sober.
Another place I've walked, in this case many, many times. It's a pleasant place, and that part of Southampton Water is always busy with shipping.
Ouch!
I see ColinW's Mum missed her chance to say hello to us all when we briefly had the old style PB back last night.
Nice pic, John, but who's the shady looking geezer to your right?
(As an aside, I read "Fifty Shades" on my holidays last year. Complete and utter sh*te from start to finish. Anyway, having done so, I was expecting something completely different from "vanilla forums", if you catch my drift.)
And you can edit - put your cursor in the top right corner of your comment and a wheel appears - click on it and its says Edit - click on it and you can.
http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/507/#Comment_507
Easy answer - life isn't binary. On the measure of how high the deficit would be and how much debt we'd owe, the Coalition Government is still beating the plans of the former Government hands down. Darling would have failed all three measures of the Darling plan (according to the IFS analysis) and the deficit would be tens of billions higher.
Look, I'll do ANYTHING for that peerage. I wonder if he's lurking this morning. Hi Dave!
Chichester...or maybe Havant?
I knew it was too good to be true. Is there anything to be said for supplementing the ad revenue with a way for regular posters to set up a direct debit to contribute to costs monthly? It would be more reliable / predictable than the donate button (which often causes me trouble to operate because I can never remember what email / password combination I use for PayPal). Not sure if that would raise enough to meet the likely shortfall.
.....and so are the cherubs that replaced it - Like the edit button!
Could bookies also help with costs? I imagine the site helps drums up business both directly and through its media profile.
http://vanillaforums.com/plans
Erm...weren't there some Indian chappies there before the Spanish arrived, Pulpy?
Test edit.
Cool!
I've just set up Henry G's piece which has a brilliant political betting tip at a very long price which won't last five minutes once I click publish.
This is a sensible idea.
...some 'solutions' here ?http://politicalbetting.vanillaforums.com/discussion/comment/634/#Comment_634
It's not just the software. The move to disqUS was prompted by hosting issues. [Remember the dieing-days of www -> www7, not least during GE2010?]
Junior cannot spend hours doing basic server admin. So disqUS offered a software solution that abstracted server-support and maintenance. Whatever package OGH goes for must minimise the support costs whilst supporting a suitable framework for this blog to operate within.
I believe there was an indigenous populations. The Indians were mainly in India.
And talk about wind, It's blowing cold and all that snow is heading London way. Brrrrr!
Is that so, Socco?
Guess that's why the Argies not very good at cricket.
'Darling would have failed all three measures of the Darling plan'
We simply don't know whether or not that would have been the case because the last administration didn't produce a comprehensive spending review which set out how Darling intended to meet his obligations. You might say, therefore, that the Darling Plan was empty rhetoric. But the correlative to that conclusion is that this government's fiscal policy was based on similarly empty rhetoric. It set out a fiscal mandate in June 2010 and turned out to be completely unprepared to do the heavy lifting required to meet it.