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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Marf on Merkel; a date for your diary and polling highlight
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Marf on Merkel; a date for your diary and polling highlights
Thanks once again to Fat Steve for making the arrangements. The next PB gathering will be at the Dirty Dicks pub just across the road from Liverpool Street Station in London from 1830 on Wednesday November 20th. These have become very much a tradition and a good time is generally had by all.
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Correct AA Fuel Prices and rankings
Good on the Lib Dems for making a fuss, though perhaps they might like to have taken a stand earlier, and on similar Tory ideological crusades like ripping up our NHS.
"Cameron 'not interested in education'"
I always had a soft spot for Kenneth Baker and he's got Gove spot on.
It seems all Thatcher's ex cabinet are now falling in line behind Russel Brand!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24658177
Why tapping mobile calls is 'trivial'
The dispute first flared up in the summer over the company's treatment of Unite official Stephen Deans, who has worked at Grangemouth for more than 20 years He was accused of trying to rig the selection of a Labour candidate for the Falkirk seat at Westminster but was later cleared. But Ineos has been carrying out its own investigation into claims Mr Deans improperly used the refinery for union business. Its findings are due to be published on Friday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24647843
At least Tom Watson is maintaining radio silence, perhaps until he has had his foot surgically removed from his mouth.
In a nut shell Mr Nabavi - far to early of course to know if free schools are a success or not, but the shake up of bog standard state schooling certainly has some in a tizz.
Of course in numeric terms the Blair-syle academies are a much more significant part of Gove's reforms. Oddly, tim seems remarkably reticent about praising Gove for getting on so successfully with the reforms which Blair wanted to do but which were held back by the forces of darkness.
http://order-order.com/2013/10/24/that-recovery-in-full/#comment-1913125
Tis a good job that there are no nationalised breweries.
That would make a good C4 documentary!!
Those obsessed with choice, competition and all the targets, bureaucracy, ineffeciency that comes with it?
Those like Michael Gove and New Labour before him?
"I am sure that the Secretary of State will be as saddened as many of the workers were to hear that the negotiations that he managed to secure around the table at ACAS were slightly thwarted because the billionaire hedge fund manger who runs INEOS, Mr Jim Ratcliffe, was on his yacht in the Mediterranean, so the negotiating team had to phone him. I think that shows a lack of seriousness. One of the big concerns people have is that tax avoidance disguises the profitability of the site. Will the Secretary of State consider conducting an independent financial assessment of the site to see what options future buyers might have?"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8325274/Mussolini-balcony-to-be-reopened-after-decades-of-neglect.html
One, two, three, four, keep him waiting at the door,
five, six seven, eight...come.
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/story/38051/
Just to say your comments have been so kind lately, and thanks as always for cheering me up.
Re-DD's on the 20th of November, sadly I can't make it. I'll be visiting my Mum. Have a great time, everyone, and thanks, SeanT, for the drinks fund.
Jim is just a top bloke. A nice ordinary chemical engineer (and northern to boot) who bought a near bankrup plant from ICI (chlorine possible?), turned it around and then used it as collateral to buy a series of bigger businesses. The last one being BP Chemicals, which is what nearly flattened him.
I can only assume that Watson (a) hasn't done his research and (b) is using "hedge fund manager" as some kind of insult.
What I do object to, as with all schools, is their being run by religious nutters who send girls to the back of the class and who teach malleable little brains that a beardy bloke walked on water before turning the same chemical compound into a punchy Malbec.
Hopefully someone will do something about that.
Just your normal please keep your shoes on in the office smell, or bog of eternal stench smell?
"The public are finally sensing that the Tories are an arrogant out of touch bunch, who will not tackle the strong vested interests in the country."
Tackle them! The public think they are there as a pressure group for the vested interests and if anyone reads the Tories on here what else could they think. Making Sir Philip Green whose wife pays tax in Monaco 'waste tzar' should have been a pointer....
Lab 1.11
SNP 3.25
LD 100
Any other 100
Not that I'm suggesting you did so, but just that Mike posted how much had been matched on Betfair earlier, and I wondered how much the total had gone up by.
http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/labours-great-big-cover
How many times have you heard that, or a variant, from Rightwing commentators over the last few years, as if it's an article of faith?
Very different to how the public see things and, er, reality.
In a speech in Birmingham, Mr Blair said he wanted 400 academies, double the present target for the year 2010.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6157435.stm
Well, he missed that target by a wide margin, but luckily Gove came charging to the rescue:
May 2010: 203
October 2013: 3,364
This is much, much more significant than the free schools, and, as a good Blairite, you must be delighted:
[An academy] belongs not to some remote bureaucracy, not to the rulers of government, local or national, but to itself, for itself. The school is in charge of its own destiny. This gives it pride and purpose. And most of all, freed from the extraordinarily debilitating and often, in the worst sense, politically correct interference from state or municipality, academies have just one thing in mind, something shaped not by political prejudice but by common sense: what will make the school excellent.
Women have fashion. We have rules.
1) Loved attending the last do, got to meet quite a few of you
2) I have some new footwear I wanted to debut at the next PB meet, they are that good, I have to hide them from my wife.
If I'm not there, can someone please keep an eye on JohnO to make sure he gets home safely. That naughty Irish Green Neil is a terrible influence.
I don't want to read that JohnO ends up in Bruxelles or Birmingham the next morning.
It's a conspiracy.
Simple, host the cabinet in Dirty Dicks!
But it's more than that - the Cons have redefined the terms in which we discuss the economy; the Eds' plan has been thoroughly discredited.
And in the same way the Cons are (with a kickstart from Blairite Labour) in the process of determining the way education is defined. By GE2015 it will seem ridiculous to criticise free schools or question their value albeit there may be refinement along the way.
Lab opposition to free schools is simply following the classic five stages of grief and at the moment is on Bargaining (change them, qualified teachers, only where there is a need, etc). Acceptance will soon follow although I regret there will be a period of interim depression.
Not to say the Cons don't still need a coherent energy response.
A place called Dirty Dicks will give you plausibility.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24661963#
From the article -
And Labour former minister Lord Rooker hit back at Lord Mandelson's criticism of HS2, saying: "The Labour government started this project and it will be inconceivable to withdraw support.
"I am getting cheesed-off listening to ex-ministers swanning around the political salons pouring cold water on this project."
lol,you couldn't make it up.
But sometimes you seem to be way out Right, as you've been beamed up and had your brains scooped out by the crazed Govians in their sinister mothership.
I mean all that in a nice way. I think.
Interesting rumour about Cam not attending - the issue of whether Britain has been part of the listen-in party has, oddly, not been asked to my knowledge. But if the Americans were listening to Merkel, I expect we were too.
FT index standing at 6713.
And to top it all, Marf will have visited her mother.
In a separate development, Italy's weekly L'Espresso reported that the US and UK had been spying on Italian internet and phone traffic.
The revelations were sourced to US whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is alleged that the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK spy centre GCHQ eavesdropped on three undersea cables with terminals in Italy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24647602
Of course, our EU friends, especially France and Germany, might have been doing a spot of prudent information gathering as well.
Thing is, there is a need for extra school places. I don't think anyone disputes that. Were it not so then you could reasonably argue that allocating funds to a free school takes money from the overall educational pot that could be spent on, for example, textbooks or bunsen burners in the state sector.
But many state schools are bursting at the edges. I don't think free schools are therefore the demonic presence some paint them out to be. Often for example it is simply not possible to expand capacity in existing schools, or the will is not there.
Add to this the ethos which is that free schools (with some exceptions) are founded by enthusiastic parents, must be non-selective (despite the accusations of FSM place allocations thrown around by some of this parish) and are unashamedly of the market, I am a fan.
In an ideal world all those enthusiastic parents would send their offspring to their local state primary but, and I'm not just channeling Diane Abbott here, often there simply is not the room. So given the choice....
but that was a cheap shot, Topping. Do show a little class.
559 days
13421hours
805302minutes
48318173seconds
until General Election 2015.
Come on UK, lets get our country back!
Vote #UKIP
Lab 1.11
SNP 4.4
LD 100
Any other 100
(Answer to your question: £771 matched.)
*TODAY: 24th October - 10
Charnwood BC, Loughborough Hastings - Labour resigned ONS DATA
Charnwood BC, Shepshed West - Conservative died ONS DATA
Fife UA, Dunfermline South - Labour died
Havant BC, Waterloo - Conservative resigned ONS DATA
Norfolk CC, North Walsham East - Lib Dem resigned
South Lanarkshire UA, Hamilton South - SNP died
Teignbridge DC, Bovey - Conservative sitting as Independent resigned ONS DATA
West Sussex CC, Warnham & Rusper - Conservative died
Wigan MB, Winstanley - Labour died ONS DATA
Wirral MB, Upton - Labour resigned ONS DATA
Is SLAB really losing it?
He has repeatedly told us time after time after time that the FTSE is about to crash and up to now it has never happened.
Of course if he keeps posting the same thing for 10 or 20 years then he is bound to be right eventually.
But his posts have repeatedly given the impression that the crash is coming in the near future. Sometimes he has said it may be a couple of months but never much more than that.
It really is time for this to end. Hunchman has no more idea than anyone else what is going to happen.
Throughout my entire life there have ALWAYS been pundits with extreme views predicting wild movements whether up or down. They are usually wrong.
One final point - don't forget Hunchman also told us that oil would fall to $10. That looks likely doesn't it!
What made you think that he did?
Absolutely nobody expected the 2008 banking crash to come when it did, except nouriel roubini, and he;d been predicting it for many years.
If I recall, some people lost a little money by taking his advice.
If they did then Buyer Beware. Not all tips will inevitably win*
*see all of Mr Dancer's tennis and F1 tips for further examples
wonderfully generous of Sean T for drinks - thanks, dude. I hope to be able to make it, I'm starting a new job, albeit short-term, on the 4th.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-18/weil-on-finance-u-k-s-censorship-diktats.html