threegee

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!

The chintz curtains are a big clue I think. Whould do credit to a high-class bro.... umm... better not say that! So who lives in a hose liek this?

You're winding us up! (There will be a two day pause whilst Monsta works that one out. )

It would be a lot harder if they were close-ups. Like maybe a detail on a building, with just a subtle clue to fox Monsta.

You were saying?

I'm beginning to think that there are two Alastair Darlings! The tricky dicky one who puts out a load of puff and buries the bad news in the small print that he hopes no one will read, and the honest truthful one! Obviously the budget was presented by A. T. D. Darling, but tonight A. H. T. Darling was on the tele saying that if Labour is re-elected public spending cuts will be "tougher and deeper" than those implemented by Margaret Thatcher. An alternative - but almost unthinkable - explanation would be that Alastair's budget speech was heavily censored by Gordo's spin doctors.

The P in PIGS gets downgraded. http://news.bbc.co.u...ess/8584812.stm Doing well then isn't he? Someone was throwing a projection around after the budget saying that we were scheduled to spend more on simply servicing debt than the entire education budget. A really good use of public money! That, of course, presumed that our own debt rating would be maintained. Thing is a lot of Darling's figures are based on very optimistic projections, and some of them sound (particularly the proposed public sector "efficiency" savings) plain barmy. I'd take a bet that he's wildly wrong in more than one mission-critical assumption.

I had to Google it to make sure, but yes, I was right. Won't spoil it for others though. Really nice building when you stop to look at it. BTW you could probably get that down to about 30 or 40KB with almost no loss in quality. 630KB is a little large for the web!

Actually the change to the law put the unions of the same basis of civil law as the rest of us have to obey. Before they'd considered themselves above the law, and in Arthur Scargill's case above the democratically elected government. Arthur's contempt for democracy extended to not even allowing his own members a strike ballot. There's a very good reason why Labour didn't revoke the changes: the Country once again became governable! They were tacitly supported by large sections of the Labour party as well as by the vast majority of the electorate. And that's not at all true about the Town. The decline had set in decades before Mrs T. The mining industry had become complacent and inefficient under the post-war nationalisation. There was a lack of investment where it mattered, and wages had run a little ahead of what the market would support. Hence it was cheaper to import coal (and opencast it here through private mining companies) than the NCB mine it. Much of the decline here happened under a Labour government - that's the inconvenient truth of it! Point to any job that a strike has saved? Where is the logic in withdrawing your labour to save your job? What you can do is to bring down your employer, thus losing all the jobs that are available.

Pretty much as expected. Spent most of the time slapping himself on the back and trying to make a place for himself in history. What was interesting was the huge difference between what he said and what is in the red book. The stamp duty holiday for properties under £250K is hedged with so many conditions (15 tests) in the small print that it will benefit very few people. There were public spending cuts announced - obviously just the very first round - but he completely failed to mention them in his speech. These include a £4,200,000,000 cut in the NHS budget! Not the sort of thing you want to make a fuss about with an election imminent. Three more rises in fuel duty - that's six rises in 24 months. He's phasing them because they've learnt from the fuel protests. He's hoping people wont notice that fuel should be falling in-line with falls in the wholesale oil price, and making a steady grab at the reductions. So just another Gordon Brown type stealth tax really! The Treasury bods themselves are now on record as saying that this budget is pointless. What more needs to be said? But I did wonder how many times he'd do a "global" - thus sustaining the brainwash. He didn't disappoint: a "global" right in the very first sentence! After the first dozen globals I lost count.

Confirmed - not a serious investment! Such behaviour should be strictly reserved for Annual General Meetings!

The short answer to your question is - no! There's another tranche been groomed in local government who simply can't wait to get on-board the gravy train. Am I wrong in thinking that at that time MP's weren't paid? Add this element, to the ability to set your own renumeration and you get to the current situation; by(ers) way of the avenue of ditching all principals in the cause of career advancement and personal gain - of course! At least Alf Robens didn't continue to pretend that he was still a socalist; or even - in his later days - a Labour supporter!

Hang on! Terrorism is whatever our security services say it is, but they don't actually have to give us a what why and where, because that would compromise their "intelligence" gathering. If it's a militant striker then so be it. They're probably secretly trying to bring down the government, and remove our "democratically elected" Prime Minister. No? Well they have it coming anyway! This is all in our best interests you know. Just like our MP's they'd never do anything wrong, and need no independent supervision. They never tell fibs to feather their own nests (or duck islands), never break the law, never frame innocent people, and never ever empire build. None of this is ever counterproductive either! That "Iraq Dossier" was all a load of tosh you say? Ah, we've got a million dossiers where that came from; they can't ALL be full of pure garbage, and can be forgiven the odd WMD mistake. No, those billions are all spent in our best interests. Just keep on signing the cheques and be grateful. It's all done "in the public interest" - you have our word!

Or she bought the company, or a controlling interest therein? Which would be why Punch doesn't see it as a change. Easy to check online, but there's a small fee to pay.

There's was a limited company formed in 2008 - but it hasn't filed any accounts. http://wck2.companie...362/compdetails With beer up again at the budget my guess is you'd be struggling right from the off. So, perhaps just as well! Wonder how many more pubs Mr Darling has closed this time? Though perhaps you could offer the directors/executors a tenner to take the company off their hands. Then if you have to fold it you'd be in the clear yourself. I'm assuming it's that company that holds the lease.

He's said that VAT won't go up - "at the budget" - but they've also said that there will be a spending review after the election. What sort of nonsense is that?! If they need a "spending review" why are they having a budget now? And, if you know what's going on in the economy - and after 13 years you bloody well should - why then do you need an extraordinary spending review? Catch 2010! The answer is that they can't NOT have a budget. That would speak volumes in itself. This is simply to maintain a sense of normality, and the steady-as-she-goes illusion. What it actually tells you is that the treasury IS considering a VAT rise, odds on to a nice round 20%. That's going to happen whoever wins the election. The other thing that's going to happen, but not happen just yet, is a tax on the banks. Gordon has screwed that one up by this International agreement thing - another GB attempt at have-your-cake-and-eat-it - so AD can't actually impose one yet. But he will try to queer the Tories pitch on this. Gordon wants a good old fashioned pre-election give away, and Alastair and he have had a tiny disagreement here. But this time Alastair wins because he can't be sacked, and he knows he's going to lose his job anyway - so what the hell! He's only thinking about his place in history. And, that dictates that he be seen a "responsible chancellor". Even though he has made one devastating mistake after another, he's probably kidding himself that history will concur with this self-delusion, and that this will yield the lucrative directorships that most any ex-Chancellor can count on. Thing is Mr D.: I wouldn't want to invest in any company who would be dumb enough to pay you to be on their board, and most of the small investors I know would likely feel the same. So you're going to have to rely on some little-known branch of the old boys network for a living from here on in. For his sake I hope the Edinburgh law biz is holding up during the recession. Don't you think that appearance is one of a rather expensive (aren't they all?) wise old big town solicitor Monsta? But, in this instance, one who knows b.all about economics! How long will it take? However long it takes to say "haven't I been a great Chancellor" without actually using the words "haven't I been a great Chancellor". Not too short and not too long - just sort of steady-as-she-goes. But, hey! Can't you just smell those green shoots of recovery - even if you can't see any green quite yet?

Another Candle In The Life of Brian! (Sounds like a good title for a film sequel) Happy Birthday

So do cows! But I didn't say they were those either! But getting increasingly obscure. I said people weren't using their brains, not that they didn't have any. And I was talking about the Bedlington electorate in general, as much as about this issue. No people can't! They have no right to tell me (or you) how we think! I correct you. You are wrong! No personal attack was made or even implied! It never even occurred to me that you'd doctored anything!