threegee

What's your take on this Mr Lavery? We really need to know!

This isn't a real country by Anglo Saxon standards, and is still very regionalised. It's what made it a push over for the EU. Berlusconi has his areas of support in the center of politics. The Northern League are far to the right of him and they have their geographic areas. You would certainly call the Northern League right wing extremists. My point is that all major parties are now advocating policies which you would label extremist. I think your supposed "right wing" views are international capitalist, and you'd have been a Tony Blair supporter in the times before he was totally discredited in the eyes of practically all UK voters. Tell me this isn't true? I'd be interested to hear your take on Corbyn when you've a moment.

Excuse me but you've told us all quite clearly in the past that you hold left wing views, and are proud of this! Good use of the old Ad Hominem there Merc! Berlusconi is reflecting the views of most people - it's how he regularly gets elected. The bent EU compliant judiciary have tried to disqualify him, but he keeps on coming back as he represents the views of the majority in a large part of the country. Upstart and left wing Five Star will get most of the votes in the South, and they need to adopt exactly the same tone to get a majority. There are right wing extremist parties but they won't get near government. You are getting very agitated and irrational as the world increasing fails to conform with your ideas of how things must be. I like the "even in Italy!" Try Israel: Israel to Deport 40,000 Illegal Immigrants

Always amusing how leftie keyboard warriors urge people who are in touch with the real world to get out into it. This is what "ordinary people" here think: Social bomb ready to explode’ Berlusconi pledges to deport 600,000 illegal immigrants And... before you tell us it's the right wing extremist Daily Express, this is the sanitised version of what you'll find in the Italian press! Italy is far from alone, and even the brain dead conformist Germans have had enough. Regarding the "some of different persuasions": left wing Five Star is promising more or less the same, so it's now beyond simple left right politics here.

If you are referring to slavery, we pioneered the abolition of that - a practice which had gone on for thousands of years before we brought the forces off Empire to bear on it. But you lefties only wish to highlight the bad of Empire (and remove it from historical context) and never the overwhelming good. Your historical arguments have just been blown out of the water, and you still refuse to address the here and now! I ask you once more: how many immigrants are enough?

The "somehow" is evident if you read the earlier posts. There are two dimensions to this unprecedented mass immigration and the left loves to muddy the waters by conflating them. Though, at the end of the day, the both represent an existential threat to our country and to Europe as a whole. My views ar anything but radical, though representing moderate views like mine as radical and extremist is the way the left furthers its own brand of extremism. People aren't quite as stupid as they think, though decades of infiltration into the media and education system is going to be a hard one to tackle.

Note that the above in no way represents the ongoing dilution of the native population it's simply new immigrants. The last census was seven years ago now, and can't include illegals - of which the government hasn't a clue how many. If you are advocating further mass immigration then you need to tell us how many is enough Pilgrim? I can tell you right now that the population HERE really does feel threatened. All that is keeping a lid on things is EU slush/hush money, a lot of which is going into the hands of unscrupulous people. That money can't continue, and the numbers are still going up. I ask you again: how many is enough?

Islam's time horizon is a lot longer than any Brit's (including me). Islamists are still living the crusades, and if you think this is a fiction I''d be happy to enlighten you. This afternoon I cycled 35Km over the dirt roads on the coastal plane here - no Italian would do this. I was chased by feral dogs but got a glimpses of the conditions many (mainly) sub-Saharan Africans are living in and spoke to a couple. Stick to your illusions - until the wake up call! There are millions more on the way!

No CL, I'm not an immigrant! I'm British, and my documents clearly say "resident". I'm not going to argue with that in any way at all. Quite unlike foreign residents from the EU who come to the UK, I don't get to tell my hosts how they should run their country, and that is how it should be. I wasn't permitted to vote in the recent referendum on constitutional change, and I wouldn't have presumed to do this anyway, as at best I've only a lifetime interest. If I'd been forced to vote I'd have agreed with the majority, and said "we don't trust the EUrophiles". They are actually about to vote again, and I don't think you (or Brussels) will like the result.

We don't need to dig our own bunkers here as there are plenty of illegals who will dig anything for peanuts. In fact Italy is now discovering the British lawn - formerly impossible due to the 24/7 labour intensive nurturing of real grass. No, bunkers aren't necessary anywhere; though I would advise avoiding any public gatherings in a few years time when the sleeper jihadists are activated.

If you can't see the core difference between someone who sneaks into a country flouting all the rules, and someone who goes through the proper immigration procedures and is accepted or rejected on their basic merits and value to another society, then I'm happy to pass on this medication to someone who is in far greater need - you! Please tell us where this universal right to the product of other people's (and their ancestor's) labours ends? With most socialists it seems to end at their own doorstep. BTW I'm told that Happy was over the moon with his new bike and sent me his regards, but I think that he's still waiting for your address and phone number. In view of the above you shouldn't have a problem with the fact that he (in common with the others, and on good sound advice) threw his temporary papers away.

Correction CL: you are a LEGAL immigrant! You're also someone who isn't lying about persecution, or even where they come from, in order to obtain economic advantage. I also doubt that you are in touch with fifty relatives who also want to sneak in without paperwork. And... if the Swedes say ENOUGH you probably won't call them racists for not wanting the major social problems that unlimited immigration causes. Anyway, it's Spring here and all starting up again. The offer is still open: tell me how many you want and I will point them your way. Something even more worrying is that there are now significant numbers of Pakistanis in the boats. I've just done a bike up for my Nigerian friend "Happy" so he can get from his hotel to the supermarket car park on the other side of town with less risk of being own down on these treacherous roads, and the way things are shaping up here this might not be a genuine accident. Happy - like all the Nigerians - is perfectly honest that he comes from what Trump quite correctly calls a s-hole country. He probably won't be quite so honest with officials though, as the network tells him exactly what he needs to say to gain max Merkel brownie points. He speaks far better English than most locals and has no intention of taking the brain dead German government up on their language lessons offer. Like all the others he'll be on his way before too long, and I hope he gets a good price for the bike to help him along. P.S. Don't worry about your Sterling pension; another Eurozone crisis coming. The "more free stuff" EU will run out of other people's money in true socialist fashion before too long, and their friends the bankers need to move things around wildly at intervals in order to keep up their lifestyle. Think swings and roundabouts.

We must leave the EU completely in March 2019 - No transition period, No delay Elizabeth Watson's petition is doing amazingly well: 27,147 signatures now and about 5000 up on when I signed it last night. Actually... pretty disgusting that we should even need to petition so very long after the referendum. Vested interest walks the corridors of power in our country, and we've a long way to go to "drain the swamp".

Two f's in Rediffusion! Which was the trading name of Broadcast Relay Service Ltd. Last full owner was The British Electric Traction Company plc - them wot formerly operated the trams in many cities - demise of the whole thing around 1988 I think.

...and he added a bit at 2:40 just for Merc!

We seem to have two already, and only one of that two is me! Here comes the rush!

Keep clicking to enlarge.

Seems you've started something WT, and it's going to cost me!

If that could be arranged I'd be the first subscriber, but I'd happily be the second too.

Ah, don't do that! Andy gets a tiny bit of revenue from them which helps to pay for the server and camera connection costs etc. Click on the ones that actually interest you, but don't artificially boost the revenue by clicking on ones that don't. Every click through helps build a better bedlington.co.uk in a tiny way.

Well, go win one for me Eggy, as it's the only way I will ever acquire a vastly overpriced "Apple product". I get bombarded with ads from the company we already have an internet connection with. So much for Google's carefully targeted advertising!

Ah, yes, yet another nationally recognised family that was a representative of free enterprise and job creation that Bedlington has honoured with a street name or memorial - not! When I mentioned the shameful treatment of the Gooch and Longridge legacy being the product of political myopia some while ago I was ridiculed. I feel that the whole thing goes far deeper, and that our town is now very much poorer (and a lot more obscure) simply because of leftist political dogma. If we are waiting for the teaching profession to rectify this then we are in for a very long wait!

http://www.sirjamesgoldsmith.com/timeline/ Life is full of unappreciated connections!

Sorry, I don't have any medicine to take, and the pretty young oncologist seemed quite happy when she looked over the medical tests on Monday morning. Good for another year, subject to another MRI which is proving difficult due to funding problems here, was the verdict. I might pay the clinic for it myself, but as we've just paid a wodge of income tax to help prop up yet another failing Eurozone economy, I was rather expecting a little of it back. Have you read the Swedish government pamphlet delivered to your house about what to do when war breaks out between the EU and Russia? "Duck and cover" is it?

I think the Carillion failure highlights a problem with HOW the contracts are awarded. The government actually encourages shaky companies to underbid, as a large government contract provides them with cash flow to try to dig themselves out of trouble. The government is a monopoly buyer in these circumstances and could easily draft a contract which avoids this pitfall. The contracts should require that when public funds are involved public money is placed in escrow in favour of subcontractors and their employees, any use of those funds to shore up the main contractors balance sheet should be declared fraudulent and therefore a criminal offence. The government could also dictate the maximum delay in paying subcontractor's invoices. Superficially this would add to the cost of the contract, but in fact those costs wouldn't be anything like they first appear because it would give smaller subcontractors more incentive to enter the market and lower costs that way - I'm told that many subcontractors simply refused to deal with Carillion because of their ridiculously extended payment periods, and any sensible subcontractor would factor the finance costs into their bid. The argument about public/private is all rather artificial, because at some point everything in government is furnished by privately controlled resources. Blair's Labour government rightly recognised this, but as is usual with our politicos they went totally overboard in favour of what "seemed like a good idea at the time". The government should be encouraged to carry out limited experiments with public funds, but these experiments shouldn't become general public policy until the results are in. This, of course, doesn't suit the "I have all the answers" politicos.