threegee

If the cable goes straight to the aerial then pull the coax plug out of the TV or digibox and see if there is any trace of water or corrosion. Also eyeball the aerial (head) and see if it is pointing in the same direction as others.

Are any trees to your South coming into bud?

I'm on the real world Tony where only the FACTS matter. I'm looking closely at whether Miliband's explanation of where he can find more tax money to fund his spending can possibly come from - are you? Chanting "soak the rich" doesn't hack it! The rich will always have a say in whether they want to be soaked or not, and they have the ultimate sanction of telling Miliband to get stuffed. If you've lived long enough, and kept your eyes and ears open, you'll know how easy it is for a Labour government to impoverish everyone! The easiest people to impoverish are people at the bottom of the economic tree because they have little idea of what is really going on, but there are plenty of socialists around to feed them pure BS! That's exactly how Labour works - feed people false information then appeal to their worst emotions. I hold no brief for your "nasty party" (the Tories) but Labour surely is "the BS, jealousy and envy party". There's nothing like 114,000 people paying for the exemption - Miliband claims "over 114,000" and he's lying! Several thousand of those have already quit the country on the increasing fees, and probably because they can see a non business friendly party getting power. We are down to 100,700 at last count, and falling. Only 5000 currently pay the fee, and that will inevitably fall too. Like it or not those people's real wealth is effectively untouchable; they will surely leave if you push them too far and kill the golden goose. The facts illustrate that we've already gone too far in the name of social engineering, and that our aggressive tax policy has already lost more than we've gained. And yes, whether you like it or not, there are quite a few people with non-dom status who have less earnings than you or me. It's a legitimate status, not a convenient label to demonise people with. You and your militant TU chums are very quick to use the "Nazi" label on anyone who you disagree with. Labelling classes of people and demonising them is precisely what socialists do too - it's a substitute for looking at the real world and the real people who live in it. It seems than in Milibandworld non-doms have become the new Jews! You can identify non-doms in the street by their spending habits? That's amazing, there's undoubtedly a job for you in HMRC! But, there's a job for you in immigration too: because you also know exactly what professional people our economy needs, and those we don't need. Great stuff! Both you (and Symptoms) are conveniently conflating tax dodging with non-dom status. Tax dodging is illegal and the way you tackle tax dodging is enforcing existing law, which has all the teeth needed. Let's look at what happened when the original £30,000 charge was introduced. Well, you guessed it, a lot of them left the country! 16,000 of the original 130,000 left. Good riddance you say - well, say good riddance to the people they employed, the establishments they patronised, and the smaller companies they invested in. That charge is ramped in stages to the £90,000 annually you quote, and increasing it further would be idiotic, especially if you combine this with a further hike in income tax, and a wealth tax on houses valued at over £2M. The fact is that non-doms pay a lot of tax. They pay tax on ALL their UK earnings, and they pay tax on their overseas earnings too. The UK government may not see all the tax on those overseas earnings because of (very necessary and fair) double taxation treaties, but that's how the world works - other countries very rightly claim tax just like we do! At the end of the day Miliband is lying in his crooked teeth! Balls knows the truth about non-doms (and has previously told the truth), but he's keeping his trap shut during the election period and letting Miliband tell all the lies. Hey, industrial tribunals - I'd love to tackle that one some day!

Slightly more!

...and to the biased BBC!

Yes, I do know what it is Tony, and OK I won't provide any links for you, but I don't think you know what it is. I think you know what you've been told by Labour, but - as usual - Labour is economical with the truth. There are about 110,700 people with non-dom status. They pay tax on every penny of their earnings in this country. In aggregate they pay about £8,400,000,000 a year in direct tax. That's an average of about £76,000 directly to the exchequer, and if they didn't pay this we'd have to double the tax paid by the bottom 10 million taxpayers (the people who can least afford to pay it). In addition to this they pay far higher indirect taxes than the average person, provide considerable employment, and reputedly invest heavily in our country. They don't burden the NHS, or any other public services, but do spend a lot. The majority of these people are doctors, surgeons, lawyers, specialists and other top professional people who we sorely need. It's impossible to say exactly what these people contribute indirectly to our country but in direct, indirect, and trickle down economics the figure must be well over £30BN a year. However that's not the full story, not all of these people are wealthy, quite a lot of them earn less than you or me, and only a tiny percentage of them fall into the super-rich Abramovich category. What we are talking about from here on is what they earn simply from overseas sources. Firstly about 64,000 of them (in theory) declare ALL their overseas earnings, and pay full UK tax on them. This isn't necessarily a huge gain for our country because they will also be taxed in the country where the earnings originate, and it's quite likely that (under international double taxation treaties) they'll be able to deduct this from what they pay to HMRC. In an event they are pretty much on the same terms as you or me, and you have to discount all these people as a source of further higher rate taxes. 110,700 - 64,000 = 46,700 In that 46,700 people are the already mentioned poorer people who simply have inherited non-dom status and aren't good for much or any overseas earnings (taxed at source or not). Already Ed Miliband's "soak the rich" is starting to look pretty limp, but how many of them can actually yield any more tax revenue? Well the number of people who chose to have their foreign earnings exempted in exchange for an ever increasing fee is in fact a paltry 5000! Yes, we are not talking about 110,000 we are talking about 5000. And the vast majority of those 5000 flit around the world, have houses in multiple countries, and their true wealth is hidden behind chains of companies, and is, to all practical extents untouchable - because they don't own it, they simply CONTROL it (in fact just like Tony Blair!). They pay the fees because it's often cheaper than paying international accountants, or concealing, transferring, or laundering the wealth, and some of them don't want their affairs flagged up to other tax authorities. So... we do have a nice little earner of about £300M from those fees, but Ed M wants to throw those fees away (not impose further taxes "on top" of those fees, like a silly Labourite claimed at the weekend) because he thinks he can get more. Do you think this is true, or do you think that Ed B was right when interviewed earlier this year, when he said income might fall if we try to up the take? Or, do you think that this isn't a matter of money at all but a matter of "fairness" and principle (in which case you'd better tell Ed M this before he spends even more money he hasn't got!)?

If you mean that she's going to rob Red Ed of a majority then he's done that to himself, as has Desperate Dave. Dave would have walked it if he'd kept his promises on the EU vote etc. - few Tories now trust him, let alone his own back benchers. A total lack of common sense at the top of the Tory camp, to match with a total lack of any sort of sense in Labour! If Ed scrapes in with fewer votes than the Tories and with SNP support it's going to be a bleak day for our country (and I mean England) This has a lot to do with the fact that none of them have ever had to earn their own living - unlike "the dodgy broker" who actually gave up quite a good career (as a metals trader) for just about enough to scape by on, because he truly BELIEVES in Britain! Please explain to me where the Miliband millions came from? Better than that please explain who funds Blair's private jet and his web of companies, and what he actually does for his huge wealth? It's interesting that lots of Scottish people who don't want independence are voting Scot Nat regardless. That's a rational thing to do if you are Scottish, but voting for either Dave or Ed is a totally crazy thing to do if you are English and not a member of the cosy metropolitan elites! Ed however is playing the jealousy and envy card for all it is worth, banking on the fact that most of his voters are totally clueless about things like non-doms, NHS funding, and a host of other issues. That's why none of the local Labour crowd want to publicly debate any of these things - Labour thrives on prejudice, jealousy, envy, and total ignorance of the issues! [Topic split here to: The Non-Dom Debate]

8 minutes - sorry! Probably another one in the next day or three to add new hardware.

We might be off line for five minutes or so quite soon while the engineers check inside the server. Any such disruption will only be for a few minutes. The aim of the outage is to increase long-term data security.

.... Ed however is playing the jealousy and envy card for all it is worth, banking on the fact that most of his voters are totally clueless about things like non-doms, NHS funding, and a host of other issues. That's why none of the local Labour crowd want to publicly debate any of these things - Labour thrives on prejudice, jealousy, envy, and total ignorance of the issues! As a TU official you must be more clued up than most Tony - so, explain to me exactly what a non-dom is, why Ed is attacking their status, and why any of this would actually help the common man?

Correct link: http://www.northumbria.police.uk/news_and_events/news/details.asp?id=106248

The Tories have just lost their Hull West and Hessle GE candidate to Ukip. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11517900/Conservative-candidate-defects-to-UK-Independence-Party.html I probably forgot to mention that Labour Party Chairperson, Harriet Yeo - who wasn't going to go for political office this time around - is now standing as a Ukip MP in Folkestone. This rather scotches Labour official's claims that she hadn't actually joined Ukip, but had merely expressed support for their European policy.

Not arguing Merc, but I'm sure I read that claim somewhere prominent. Maybe the get-out would be to include the word outright? Anyway, the Beeb reports that the Greek finance minister has just said that Greece intends to meet all its debts, and that sweeping and necessary reforms will be introduced. Suspiciously contrite that! Maybe he's going to place emphasis on the word intends. I must look up the justification Harold Wilson deployed. The "public interest" defence?

So any mention that Miliband was funded through university by wealthy Jewish donors, and there's absolutely no visibility about where his present millions have come from is "pure anti-semitism - nothing more, nothing less"? Well... knock me down with a copy of The Guardian! Excuse me but the link to Bilderbergers was in connection with the EU and crony capitalists... ...and, I never even mentioned that he was a Jew. In fact I had to spend quite a while to find a balanced link to the Bilderbergers, because the Internet is teeming with sites pouring out invective and the very "creating some sort of New World Order" conspiracies you mention. Click on that link and read what it says following "Is Bilderberg a secret conspiracy?". The question about loyalties, and following the money trail, is a perfectly valid one. It's one I've asked about The Telegraph and HSBC recently too, and I'm sure you'd have given me permission to go there. The purpose of the thread was to flag up his hypocrisy of repeatedly attacking hedge funds to uninformed Labour supporters whilst taking lightly laundered hedge fund money to fund his campaign. He was slagging off hedge funds again during the "Leaders Debates" the other night for good measure. So, no, I'm not saying he's involved in wittingly creating your new world order (Semitic, Gentile, or any combo) - I'm simply saying that he's as tainted as the rest of LibLabCon, and already as up to his neck in international crony capitalism as the rest of the establishment politicos. The dumb trade unionists think that they are pulling his strings, but - like PC left-wing debate - the range of possibilities was severely pre-limited to create the illusion of democratic choice. If he gets power he's going to be yet another crushing disappointment to tribal Labour supporters - particularly those who still haven't worked out that the Labour Party they support died in 1995, and what replaced it is essentially no different from new Tory or new LD. The trivial difference in emphasis doesn't matter two beans to ordinary working people; it's working against their own interests, and is once again an illusion of democratic choice. I hesitate to call them turkeys voting for Christmas, but I can't think of anything more succinct.

The world financial system is now a ponzi scheme, but how long can it keep going? I think that there's so much vested interest in it that it will likely last beyond the lifetimes of most people here, but the Euro is a different matter. To borrow from Churchill, I think what we are about to see is not the demise of the Euro but the end of the beginning of the demise of the Euro. You could argue that this might trigger bigger things, and that wouldn't be an unreasonable suggestion, but I think there are now enough stops in place to limit the damage of a Greek default this year. However, there has never been a default on an IMF loan before, so we are into uncharted territory.

The Leaders Debate didn't really tell anybody anything new, except... well, I might just go into that on another thread, but I think I possibly picked something up from David Cameron that the political pundits completely missed. In touting his careful stewardship of the economy he quipped that he'd been careful not to expose us the Greek debt. He was implying that practically all the other EU governments are heavily exposed, and that he fully expected that both Miliband and Clegg would surely have gone there. It could be that he's even had cabinet rows with the LDs about this. But it was a strange thing to offer in a point scoring debate, because Greece has not defaulted, so how could it be relevant to a voting public? Well my guess is this. It's on his mind because he's recently been involved in Treasury meetings that have been planning for a mega default in the Euro and to limit the fallout for the UK. He can't say what he knows, but I think that behind closed doors the European banks are currently in panic mode. They've been so profligate in doling out money to prop up the failing EU that they fear a second global financial meltdown triggered by a Greek default. That the Euro has been so volatile in recent weeks, and losing out to the dollar and Sterling, backs this thought - people in the know have surely been moving vast sums around. If I'm right - and that Dave knows a lot more than he's currently saying, or can say - then we'll all know fairly soon too. Watch this space (and don't be in any hurry to buy those Euros for your holidays)!

What Jewish question would that be Sym? If someone was inserted into public life (particularly someone who is now a millionaire with no visibility as to how that status was achieved) by US Neocon money, and was asking for our nuclear button, I'm sure you'd be asking questions about the "influence" of their paymasters. As quite a few Neocons are Zionists too things must be getting rather tricky for the PC left these days. Is there a PC Leftie Handbook available (from The Guardian bookshop?) to resolve the demonise/worship dilemma? If not then there's your path to certain fame and fortune; get scribbling!

The April fool is anyone who is suckered into believing that Miliband + Balls will be any different to Blair + Brown. Though I'd bet that they will regret putting the two Ed's in a lot lot quicker than they did the last time around. Ed M now has to show a return on the Jewish money that put him through university quite quickly now I'd imagine - it's patient money, but not that patient! Is that money connected back to the Bilderbergers? I've no idea, but you can be sure that the "influence" is. Interesting that politicos are always talking about that nebulous thing called "influence", and that this crops up most frequently in connection with the EU. Concidentalliy I'm just reading: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11507993/A-toxic-lack-of-trust-is-blighting-Tory-and-Labour-campaigns.html Which concludes with.. . and seems to just about sum it all up.

You can be sure that this is one story you aren't going to read in The Guardian! http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/03/20/labours-mystery-600k-donor-martin-taylor-revealed-as-mayfair-hedge-funder/ What it amounts to is that the third biggest contributor to Ed Miliband's election campaign is linked to international capital in the shape of a hedge fund! Yes, one of those "evil" hedge funds that Ed is so keen on demonising. It gets even more interesting: Yesterday (just as I predicted in the Cameron -v- Miliband thread) Miliband dropped the last thin pretence that he'd ever allow a referendum on the EU. He claims that this is because British business would be damaged, but he knows that this isn't the case - the only businesses that would be net disadvantaged by a EU withdrawal are the international crony capitalists who exploit cross border transfer pricing, cheap immigrant labour, and tax havens - particularly those Bilderberg people! Yes, Miliband & Balls ambitions are bought and paid for by international capital, just like Dodgy Dave, Teflon Tony and the whole of the LibLabCon game! They are wedded to international capital and the EU for subtly different reasons, but the best interests of ordinary native Brits feature nowhere! None of them have any intention of stemming the immigration tidal wave. This suits international capital hugely, because it depresses wages to all except the elites, and those the elites wish to buy. It would be interesting to hear what local Labour Party members have to say about this?

No it's not merc. I'm not exactly well at the moment - hopefully fully recovering from the big C - and so I do a little of what I can from afar. That might not always be true, but quite frankly there are some excellent and enlightened people in our town, and I'm not in the slightest bit irreplaceable.

Can't have been X22 bus threatening man? Naa.. he's obviously an Ashington lout.

Calculator now to hand: I think we are going to see a 75%+ turnout this time - hopefully more. But let's say it's only 70% and a 65% split shared between Lab-Con, that's 48.75% and says you are wrong. But, that misses my main point in that people need to know why they are voting which way they are; they should even know why they aren't bothering. "why does an intelligent person have to watch a largely scripted tv debate to get the picture?" because life is full of surprises, and politicos are only "economical with the truth" part of the time. Second hand observation is little better than second hand thinking. Or, to put it more glibly: the script is never the movie!

There's always been a section of the population that's opted out of politics, but it's always a minority. Sorry if I disregarded them. Check the raw data and you'll appreciate that the ONLY significant fall in political engagement occurred after Tony Blair was elected. It's not hard to appreciate why that would be. http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm But since 1997 people have clearly been becoming increasing more politically engaged. No one has to watch the "debate", but I'd imagine anyone who'd visit this topic is at least curious. My bet is that this topic will be well down on the site's hit list, but that's no reason not to run it, and invite the opinion of those who did. I'm really sorry you find me "smug and superior", but at core that's exactly what I'm not! I believe that everyone has the capacity to change their life for the better, and that there's generally very little difference between our thinking ability. That's a humbling thought that we all need to take on board. However I believe that there are a class of people who step forward to do that thinking for us; that their motives are generally suspect, and that our town has cruelly suffered as a result. I'm generally not talking here about the people who stuck with the place and who's names are sometimes preserved on our place names, or even significant figures in the early Labour party. This is much more a modern phenomena. I don't accept the popular belief that formal "education" is the solution to everything, and a path to universal advancement. And, I don't believe that ability to communicate clearly is in any way indicative of ability to think. Life has taught me that creative and independent thinking is only possible if you turn your own brain on, and that nature rewards INDEPENDENT thinking. Too often formal education is used as an a cypher for indoctrination and conformity. i.e. I'm just an average lazy Joe with a tiny few luck breaks who, through life experience, is urging other average Joe's to stop accepting the spoon feeding of a elitist class who parasitically advances themselves by direct lies and pandering to populist myths. That's a major reason why I don't engage directly in politics myself, but that doesn't mean that I'm opting out - anything but! If this comes over as smugness or a superior attitude to you, then hard cheese! I will continue my crusade to better the lot of everyone in Bedlington until my dying day, and hopefully beyond. I don't expect any kudos, or formal recognition, or indeed want any; I do this simply because I owe it to my hard working, humble, and amazing ancestors, who were also committed to self advancement of all in Bedlington. Thank you for providing the opportunity to formalise my late-in-life mission statement.

Nope, I just want to e-x-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-e the LibLabCon.