threegee

Any sensible person will avoid tax where feasible and the people who they are targeting can and will put their wealth outside of any governments clutches. I think we are already very close to what will be tolerated by many, so rather than increasing tax take it's possible that further grabs could be counterproductive. Either way any Lib Dem delusions on this score are doomed to fail miserably. Both the main parties know this, but the conspiracy we have to keep the bad news out of the debate lets Clegg get away with the Lib Dem nonsense. If it had been possible to "soak the rich" any more Gordon would already be doing it! As for the bigger picture: well... if the politicians are right about concealing the true picture we're doomed to government by the most skilled liars, and the best outcome we can hope for is that the most skilled liars are also the most skilled economists.

Thanks for taking time to let everyone know Maria. I had noted he'd been quiet of late - he's always got something valuable to contribute. Please let him know that everyone here sends their best wishes.

100% success for Unite - ALL planes grounded!

Clegg got far too easy a ride: "I agree with Nick". Actually they didn't but were jockeying to look the most consensual. Almost looked as if they were both making a pitch for an alliance, anticipating a hung parliament. Gordon was his usual master of BS, but got away with a lot of it due to Cameron being too rehearsed, and nothing like aggressive enough. Too many spin doctors on both sides, but Labour's probably earned their money just by advising Gordon to avoid going into his well worn routines, which Cameron is practised at poking holes in. Cameron would have been better off throwing away the script and being more reactive. The "None of the above party" currently leads in the debate! ITV easily the ratings winner: viewing figures will surely be a lot less for the next two!

Thankless task being a local rag reporter these days. Next to no one reads your work, and constantly worried for your job. Only an apprenticeship hoping for the "big-time" really. I'd be sorely tempted to slip something like that in - just to see if anyone noticed!

No they are not! This thread is DIRECTLY related to commerce. For the others the connection is indirect, or incidental. i.e. Vacant shop now occupied = Town News. Former vacant shop does great pies = Consumer News. The test: is the post about something - an article or service - being directly bought or sold? It gets a bit hazy when someone says why can't I buy xxxxx in Bedders, but if someone asks where can I buy xxxxx there's a direct intention to buy being expressed, so it's consumer.

What I said. BUT there's only one Labour candidate who openly supports a referrendum at the moment, and no LDs. This year we pay Brussels over £6,000,000,000 and next year it's set to rise to £10,000,000,000 odd when the rebate runs out. Any mention from the major parties about this? The cost of membership used to be an issue, now it's just too embarassing to talk about. Remember this when they are shutting a post office, or a library, or a community center, in order to save a few tens of thousands of pounds!

Monsta: I will follow your recommendation, but not a General election where UKIP themselves are saying go out and vote for another candidate who supports a referendum. BTW there's only one Labour candidate they support. He alone has enough clout to resist the party line. At this election it's the Tories who support local democracy, and Labour who wants to continue with the big government farce. At the European elections things are very different, and unless the Conservatives go a lot further than the current manifesto they deserve to lose badly then. Whilst the LibDems are often the best choice at the local level their thinking on Europe is completely barmy. Though Vince Cable is a decent guy he called it very wrong on Northern Rock. Also I don't trust them not to form an alliance with power-mad Gordon Brown. They've kept an unpopular minority Labour government in power before, and ambitious Nick Clegg could easily do this again. This didn't do the Country any good back then, and it would be read as a disaster by the markets now!

'cos I don't like difficult typing, even though I do like tiny machines with sometimes awkward keyboards. And, in this recent case, I got a brilliant Logitech Bluetooth keyboard (with track-pad) for next to nowt, on that auction site that's not as good as BedBay. Only problems are: that it's an Italian layout (fixed with the supplied key-top stickers), AND that it's customised for the Playstation! Now my (trackpadless) ancient netbook has a trackpad and a brilliant top-quality 102 key wireless keyboard that beats any modern hardware combination at any price. Even so, I can think of several Windoze keys I never use on other machines that would be a lot more use if changed to key codes I do use. For instance what would you do if say the return or CTRL key on your favourite notebook was dickey? Or if you didn't like the wonky key placement on an EEE PC (many don't)? The messages are: one size does not fit all, and that you'll never know there IS a better way if you don't experiment.

Keytweak changes the MS Windows registry entries to remap keys the way you want them to be, and it's FREE! http://webpages.charter.net/krumsick/ Works great, though you do have to reboot for the changes to take affect. I've remapped some of those silly media keys to do useful things. As it simply makes one-off changes to the registry, it doesn't appear to use any memory, or slow up booting the machine at all. So NOT yet another draggy utility to kill your PCs performance.

A pretty fair look at the current position in the housing market here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rush-to-sell-homes-before-the-general-election-fight-1943148.html Still doesn't look good for our area, and I think it will get a lot worse after the public spending cuts.

Things will inevitably get worse because that's the way they are already headed. Not only do we have a £850,000,000,000 debt, but we are increasing that debt at nearly £170,000,000,000 a year, and Gordon doesn't plan to stop spending for another four years on the highly mistaken assumption that it will all come right by itself - "the recovery" that you hear mentioned in every other Nu Labour sentence. He's killed off, frightened off (abroad), and taxed to death any source of revenue that would normally bring about such a recovery. Government simply has to stop borrowing one pound in every four it spends, and it needs to face up to that NOW! You don't get out of debt by taking out another credit card at an even higher rate of interest, or putting off the day of reckoning. They've been trying to brainwash people by this constant "Global, Global, Global". It's our debt, and Gordon got us into the mess by not saving during the good times - as we used to - to pay for the downturn. His boast he ended Boom and Bust is correct: it's all Bust from now on. We need a responsible Government who will face up to the disaster and slowly drag us out of it. Not one who constantly blames someone else for their own string of mistakes. Every Labour Government in history has ended in a financial disaster, but never on this massive scale! Whatever their politics it's amazing to me that there are people who can't see through power mad Gordon Brown, who will do or say anything to keep power. By contrast I think Alastair Darling is a pretty honest person who is trying hard to make a difference. But he's a solicitor and not an economist and shouldn't be running the economy. He'd probably make quite a decent Prime Minister if he could get rid of the greasy hangers-on like Milliband, Balls, and Mandleson. Though it was his mistake with Northern Rock (which I pointed out at the time) which started this whole disaster off. But by then Gordon had already planted all the seeds - including (as Malcolm observed at the time) giving away our gold reserves. So, don't blame the next government for the mistakes of this one. It's going to take a very long time to pay off Gordon's debt mountain. If we don't the pound will tumble and the result will be dire for everyone. You can see just a little of what will happen by following what is now happening to Greece. But our problem is already immensely bigger than theirs; it's simply that at present the markets THINK we can get out of it. Once that confidence goes we are really sunk - and that's the way we are going under power-mad Gordon!

Do they still make Segways? Bring back the Sinclair C5 I say.

Well there you have it in Labour's Manifesto just out: A promise not to increase Income Tax; and a promise not to increase the extent of VAT; but no promise not to increase the rate of VAT. It's the only way "squaring the circle" of starting to pay off Gordo's public spending binge is now possible. Even the LDs won't give a commitment not to raise it - so none of the major parties even wants to discuss it before the election.

Attlee pulleese! As in Clement Avenue. Can't have people knocking double letters out of Bedlington place names!

http://www2.labour.org.uk/ppc/ian_lavery/898/ Can it be that what our prospective MP thinks about Nu Labour is unprintable? Hell, it's got Labour on the tin, so you're going to vote for it anyway Wansbeck! Why waste effort with policies and all that garbage?

Neddy! (or should that be Rosebud?)

http://www.timesonli...icle7094311.ece

So how does this help Bedlington Stephen? Due to a political stitch-up in former centuries the station is in the wrong place anyway! If Stevenson had had his way and put the station in the natural place the town would be a lot bigger and more prosperous than it is now. The local landowners and politicians screwed this one up for sure! Where is the mention of Bedlington Station in this LD proposal? Seems to me this is a recipe for being told that we are subsidised for x millions already for a transport link that it is impractical to use. Probably better for us that main-line Morpeth is made more accessible by a better bus service and stopping main line services - even Cramlington station! If this is a real pitch for votes we need details to determine if it's something actually worth Bedlingtonians voting for. Too many completely empty promises here already I think! http://www.senrug.co.uk/campaigns/8/re-open-ashington-blyth-tyne-line-to-passengers

Is either Brown or Cameron coming anywhere near us? Are any Nu Labour or Tory big wigs coming here to campaign? Only when we stop living in the 19th Century will we move into the 21st. Use your head and vote against the dominant party. When we're "a marginal" that can go either way we will get noticed by central government As ever it's in Nu Labour's interests to keep this a poor "working class" area. It's in the Tory's interest to divert investment elsewhere. This problem feeds on itself. If you really don't believe this then please explain why we have both the highest unemployment and very lowest house prices in the country? Is it that our area lacks anything other than a bit of enterprise and real sustained investment? Are we really so dumb that it will take another 50 years (and leave it to our kids or kid's kids) to work this out for ourselves?

It's quite simple: To Nu Labour we are taken for granted. To the Tories we are no-hopers, to be ignored. To the LD's - well they haven't got the clout at the national level. The way to break out of this is to vote with our heads, and not be taken for granted. The most productive thing a life-long Labour supporter who can't bring themselves to vote against Gordon Brown can do is to stay at home! What a pity they don't have the guts to put a none-of-the-above box on the ballot paper!

You remember well, but you don't remember enough! Tell us what you paid for your house and what it would be worth at today's prices? The reason that mortgage rates were 14.5% is that we'd just had a flirt with the Euro. That was something which Maggie wouldn't have any truck with. But she was stabbed in the back by her own party, half of who wanted the Euro at any price and half who were opposed. The Labour Party and LDs would also have dragged us in at any price. Once Maggie was gone the result would have been the same whatever party was in power. The Labour Party learnt from this and decided that they'd only join "when the time was right"- which of course was a nonsense, as Mr B wouldn't tell us what that actually meant. The reality was that the time was never and would never be right! Here UKIP was the only sane voice in the asylum. You've forgotten two things: First that your house was going up in value much more than the inflation rate. Second that the Hire Purchase controls were to stop private sector debt getting out of control. They didn't actually cost you anything; in fact they saved you money as you didn't have to pay interest on the deposit! When those Hire Purchase controls were abolished by a spend-spend-spend government the result is the staggering levels of private debt we have today, and people simply struggling to meet interest payments on credit cards rather than have the discretion to spend their money on anything useful. Today one pound in every four that is spent by big government (and it really is BIG government these days) is borrowed. Gordon wants you to believe that this party can go on, and somehow it will all work out right in the end. It wont! We have to stop spending, and right away. You and I have been repaying our debts for quite some time, but Gordon Brown is planning to go on borrowing at this ludicrous rate for another four years! The bill is already staggering; to carry on under the false assumption that the party can resume at some point is madness. Sooner or later roaring inflation is going to break out to match the huge printing of money that has been going on. That is inevitable - it's simply a matter of when and how bad it will become. The choice now is to wake up to reality and take some medicine right away, or carry on with Gordon's public spending binge. If the Country chose the latter Sterling will get devalued, the price of imports will rocket and we'll be into the biggest bust of all time (we are already carrying by far the biggest debt of all time). All this talk about the recovery being put at risk is complete nonsense. There will be no recovery in the sense that we can get back to the former ludicrous government spending splurge. I'm afraid that things can only get worse - it's just a matter of how worse! This is the price to pay for being fooled by Tony at the last election. He said he'd serve a full term; maybe he believed that at the time, but he saw this mess coming a lot sooner than Gordon! So you either vote Nu Labour out of mistaken self-interest, and get screwed anyway. Or you vote LD or Tory for the Country as a whole. Either way it's not going to be pretty. But in NOT voting Labour, you'll be voting for some sort of sanity; you'll be voting against the man who got us into this mess; and you'll be voting against the career politicians (particularly the likes of slimy Mandleson and Balls) who have been taking us all for a ride. It's not a choice for the sunny uplands as depicted on the old colliery banners, but it's not entirely Hobson's choice either!

So what exactly does that mean in the 21st century? Suppose I have a software company - what's to stop you competing with me? A computer perhaps; well blow me down but doesn't every kid have one these days, and someone here says you get £500 for one if you are on the dole! Isn't this Marxist Leninist crap just a supremely outdated excuse for lack of enterprise, envy, and sloth? The world owes us a living comrades; no matter that we can't be arsed to produce anything that anyone needs! P.S. Sorry for my lack of familiarity with the NUM rulebook. I suppose the miners union that broke away from the NUM around that time thought those rules were transparent and honest too. Did Arthur write them all himself, or did he have a little help from Uncle Joe? BTW I absolutely agree with you about resistance not being an outdated or futile concept. But there are real enemies of the people out there; you don't have to invent them, or import them from days long past!