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message 3151: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers. Many still are and they vote Tory


message 3152: by Lynne (Tigger's Mum) (last edited May 07, 2016 09:11AM) (new)

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I'm so glad I didn't have to vote for any of the candidates in the London mayor elections. I think I'd have abstained as I didn't want any of them. When I joked about voting for Neil Hamilton (he wasn't in my area) he did get in on the proportional system. I would never vote for people with previous form for expenses cheating.


message 3153: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments I voted Khan but not because of the man. He strikes me as purely self-serving and ambitious. I voted for him to keep out another Tory mayor, especially one too weak to rein in the disgusting tactics of his campaign team. Now if they just give the go ahead to build the new runway at Heathrow Zac can resign as he's promised to do and go retire to live off his inheritance


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I thought Goldsmith was a very weak candidate.


message 3155: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments strange choice in many ways, a Green tory. But then there was no obvious candidate


message 3156: by R.M.F. (new)

R.M.F. Brown | 2124 comments The dead walk the Earth: Neil Hamilton of all people is now a member of the Welsh Assemble for UKIP!!!!

'king hell!! :)


message 3157: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments I do get the feeling from listening to mates of mine in London, that it will be firmly for Staying in the EU.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments R.M.F wrote: "The dead walk the Earth: Neil Hamilton of all people is now a member of the Welsh Assemble for UKIP!!!!

'king hell!! :)"

Apparently he has Welsh roots! He gives me the creeps


message 3159: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments Jim wrote: "I do get the feeling from listening to mates of mine in London, that it will be firmly for Staying in the EU."

yes we're out of sync with the rest of the country. Like I say, a city-state


message 3160: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments I'm no lover of the City of London since it houses amoral bankers with obscene bonuses, but Brexit must surely mean that the EU will relocate its financial hub to Frankfurt, which means the City of London will become less important and generate less wealth for the country. I think Londoners have made that calculation


message 3161: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments one evening last month I was sitting in a London 'greasy spoon' cafe having my evening meal listening to working class men of my own age talking
Most of the time about football, but the EU did get mentioned. It was interesting. The young Polish couple running it were obviously well known and liked
But they were sick of the way houses were getting snapped up.


message 3162: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments there are no working class in London :-)


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments Will wrote: "Finally, I see that some Police forces have commenced criminal enquiries into the hidden election expenses of some Conservative MP s. Only the Independent seems to have carried the story though"

It's been all over the BBC Radio news, Will, which is where I got it. I would say that I read it on the Telegraph site, but after their "relaunch" it's impossible to read and full of quite serious bugs. At times it will not go back to the front page, just displays "page not found". You then have to clear the browser cache to get it back.


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "The dead walk the Earth: Neil Hamilton of all people is now a member of the Welsh Assemble for UKIP!!!!

'king hell!! :)"
Apparently he has Welsh roots! He gives me the creeps"


Having met him and his "delightful" wife (He was MP for the next constituency) he's even creepier in person. I counted my fingers after shaking hands with him.

Unfortunately, after one period of sanity, they elected George Osborne.


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments Khan has certain attributes that gave him a clear advantage in London. He is a Londoner, good working class stock (His father was a bus driver) and Muslim.

Goldsmith, on the other hand, was born with a platinum spoon in his mouth (No common silver there), upper class, disconnected from reality and ineffectual.

It was not a matter of who would win, but more like how much by.


message 3166: by Lynne (Tigger's Mum) (last edited May 08, 2016 04:46AM) (new)

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Just listening to Khan he sounds very level headed but I just don't trust him. As for the Goldsmith dynasty it's refreshing to see that money can't buy every whim.


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments He's a politician, Lynne. Why would you even consider trusting him?


message 3168: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "Just listening to Khan he sounds very level headed but I just don't trust him. As for the Goldsmith dynasty it's refreshing to see that money can't buy every whim."

every time I've seen him speak he seems only motivated for himself. Don't forget he distanced himself from Corbyn during his campaign, because he saw it as an electoral liability.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments The Welsh labour leader also distanced himself from Corbyn by asking him not to come and speak.


message 3170: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments amazing isn't it?


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments I think you'll find the Scottish Labour leader did the same.


message 3172: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments What members of political parties forget is that they win elections by reaching out to people who are not party faithful
They want a government that does a 'bit' of redistribution, or one that lets them keep more of their own money

Labout cannot win in England unless Corbyn starts talking nicely about those who create wealth and jobs.

Similarly Cameron won because enough people who might otherwise vote labour felt that the system was getting just too unbalanced


message 3173: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments I think more that enough Labour voters in England defected to UKIP, a trend continuing on Thursday. Immigration is a big issue for Labour as well as the Tories whether they care to admit it or not


message 3174: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments I think that the northern towns also struggle to see any advantage from the EU.
Given that one farming magazine discovered that the number of farmers wanting out was considerable larger than those wanting to stay in. getting the money doesn't guarantee enthusiasm. The hoops you have to jump through to get the money mean that some farmers have already opted out of it


message 3176: by Patti (baconater) (new)

Patti (baconater) (goldengreene) | 56525 comments I'm sickened that it's probably all true.


message 3177: by Jim (last edited May 08, 2016 11:51PM) (new)

Jim | 21811 comments It's pretty well entirely true.
I am a volunteer for FCN (It was the Farming Crisis Network but that was felt to be a bit negative so we're the Farming Community Network

One weekend I was asked to do the coordinator's job in Cumbria because the coordinator was having a weekend off going to her daughter's wedding

I got three calls from the help line
One was a chap who'd been flooded,still hadn't got his single farm payment, and we managed to get him forage aid (other farmers have given away spare forage and agricultural haulage firms are delivering it free as 'back loads'
That's how bad things are

Then we had a lady who phoned me. She sounded in such a bad way I drove round to see her. (It was Good Friday which was vaguely appropriate)
I talked to her and her husband, leaning on a gate in the yard in the dark.
Basically their plan was that they had no children wanting to farm, so they'd retire, sell the cows, pay off the borrowing and then they'd rent the farm out as a pension.
Except that because of the milk price their debts have been increasing more rapidly than they thought,
Add to that the value of dairy cows is related to the value of milk, and that has dropped, so selling their dairy herd is going to bring in less that it would, to cover debts that are more than they should be.
And on top of this they haven't had their single farm payment. So there's 13k added straight to the overdraft. With of course the arrangement fee and suchlike
So they were now looking at selling buildings for development. They're in the lakes, they'd get it and they'd sell.
But nobody will ever be able to farm that farm properly again
So having a plan they can go to the bank and explain what they're doing. I think the bank will support that one.
He went to start this evening milking, It was 9pm

The third was a chap, they'd taken no money out of the business since September. After Christmas they'd just stopped paying suppliers
Now his credit card is maxed out, her credit card is maxed out, and the children were being fed by one grandmother and dressed for school by the other

To be fair to the EU, Margaret Beckett bears a lot of the responsibility for this. She chose the most complicated option of those the EU allowed, and insisted it be implemented faster than any other member state, to show what good Europeans we were
The damage that woman has done to the lives of ordinary people is beyond calculating. The stress, hassle and financial grief
Some senior civil servant should just have called her a mad bitch and resigned over it
I do know that if I am ever at some event where she is, (unlikely) I would not shake her hand


message 3178: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments And just to show what it's like
We've been sent the maps, and the forms describing the maps. Lady Wife has printed everything out because she wants to sit with it on a table in front of her to see everything

Remember these maps are the maps that were agreed way back when the system started.
On ours NOTHING has changed.

This time some bright spark has noticed the electricity substation and has decided it's a farm building. It's been an electricity substation for over sixty years!
So Brenda will have to correct that and get them to take the correction
Then we gave a wet area, Thirty years ago I gave up on it, on the grounds that we'd been chasing these ponds about for a century or more. I stuck a few trees in. Two days ago we had a newt survey (a major project going through nearby, they're tunnelling the electric cables under Morecambe bay)
Apparently we have great crested newts and smooth newts. I thought fair enough.
But some muppet in the RPA has described one of the two points as a 'water course' (It's a pond, it doesn't even have an outlet) and the pond with the newts in is now 'salt marsh'
A mile from the coast, about 30 meters above sea level, how the hell can it be saltmarsh?
The problem is that it's not merely getting the maps right, we're having to keep them right!


message 3179: by Patti (baconater) (new)

Patti (baconater) (goldengreene) | 56525 comments I won't be surprised when the whole country starts starving to death.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments http://www.euronews.com/2015/10/02/fa...

Widen that Patti, it's a lot of European farmers as well, same policy, same problem.


message 3181: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments it's bluidy grim


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments And I used to laugh at my parents when I found some (blue) bags of sugar in their wardrobe from the 1950's. Not so funny now is it.


message 3183: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments 'm not at all surprised


message 3184: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments Geoff (G. Robbins) (The noisy passionfruit) wrote: "Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "The dead walk the Earth: Neil Hamilton of all people is now a member of the Welsh Assemble for UKIP!!!!

'king hell!! :)"
Apparently he has Welsh roots! H..."


Hamilton clearly shows the practical problem with PR. No one has voted for him per se, he's been given his new job simply by being second or third on the Party List and the party getting enough numpties to vote for the list.

It's turned me right off PR.


message 3185: by Lynne (Tigger's Mum) (last edited May 09, 2016 04:39AM) (new)

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments My daughter asked when she filled in her voting paper could she choose the same candidate for her first and second option as she didnt want any of the others to get the transferred vote but it wasn't allowed. I don't know if a form with only one vote on it was accepted. It was quite a complicated deal as we had one lot of wrongly printed papers as well and I nearly gave up on mine as the wording wasn't logical.


message 3186: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments Will wrote: "It's turned me right off PR.


"


I confess that the PR with party list system was designed by party apparatchiks to ensure democracy doesn't get too much exposure

You've got to brown nose the apparatchiks to get far enough up the list to pretty well guarantee a seat whatever happens and the opinions of the electorate are an irrelevance


message 3187: by Patti (baconater) (new)

Patti (baconater) (goldengreene) | 56525 comments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appar...

Seriously Jim.

I've learned more from you in the past few years than I have in all my years of school. And you're a damn sight more entertaining.

I hope your influence is making my poor attempts at teaching more entertaining.

I love how our conversations in here (not just conversations with Jim. All of our conversations) broaden my interests and my desire to understand our world.

I doubt I'll ever understand it. My lack of understanding shall never quell my desire to.


message 3188: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments Just think, I get to chat to a Canadian dairy farmer's daughter (so she's too well brought up to swallow nonsense :-)


message 3189: by Patti (baconater) (new)

Patti (baconater) (goldengreene) | 56525 comments Jim, I'm not a dairy farmer's daughter! My father was a product of the industrial revolution. He died when I was very young.
My love of and understanding of the land is maternal.


message 3190: by Jim (new)

Jim | 21811 comments right I knew there was a link


message 3191: by Elizabeth (new)

Elizabeth White | 1761 comments Jim wrote: "It's pretty well entirely true.
I am a volunteer for FCN (It was the Farming Crisis Network but that was felt to be a bit negative so we're the Farming Community Network

One weekend I was asked to..."


Jim, is it that there is a bottleneck in the payment system? Does the money get transferred directly from Brussels or does it get distributed via our government?
Or is the delay caused by an overlong evaluation of claims for funding? And who is responsible for this?


message 3192: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments Damaging allegation (for cameron) this morning from IDS: that Merkel had a de facto veto over his negotiations with the EU for 'better terms' for staying in.


message 3193: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments damaging for The Remain campaign. Nothing seems to stick to teflon Dave not even f***ing a pig's head


message 3194: by Lynne (Tigger's Mum) (last edited May 10, 2016 04:50AM) (new)

Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I've so little faith in the voting system/government etc that shoukd the leave campaign win, they would manipulate it.


message 3195: by Will (new)

Will Macmillan Jones (willmacmillanjones) | 11324 comments And now, UKIP 's Assembly Members have voted Neil Hamilton to be leader of their group in the Senedd.

I wonder if he still charges the same as he did as a Tory in Westminster?


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I've got some brown envelopes if anyone needs them :0)


message 3197: by Marc (new)

Marc Nash (sulci) | 4313 comments Will wrote: "And now, UKIP 's Assembly Members have voted Neil Hamilton to be leader of their group in the Senedd.

I wonder if he still charges the same as he did as a Tory in Westminster?"


surely you have to factor in inflation?


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments I've got big envelopes as well. Foolscap. Seems appropriately named. :0)


Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo) (snibborg) | 8204 comments Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "I've so little faith in the voting system/government etc that shoukd the leave campaign win, they would manipulate it."

As I've said before and will repeat now:

It's not the number of people that vote, it's the people who count the votes. Stalin.


Lynne (Tigger's Mum) | 4643 comments Further to to PR debacle in Wales I've just heard that the Welsh labour leader is to offer a cabinet post to the only elected Lib Dem. It really isn't a fair system is it?


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