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The true winner here is Marine Le Pen - for whom it is all working out beautifully. She knew she wouldn't win, and ordinarily she'd have put Sarky back in by telling her 6.4M voters to make the best of a bad job and vote for him. But she undoubtedly has a long-term strategy of moving her party more to the centre and splitting the UMP. Expect a re-branding and getting rid of the "Front" bit but likely retaining the National in the title. She is brighter than her father, and more street-wise than any male opponents. I think she's reading things right and is going to get power at some point; history is playing right into her hands. Likewise I think Nigel is now in the right place at the right time. I've no doubt that sooner or later he will win on the single issue of Europe, as he's pushing at an open door. But.. if he (or indeed someone else) were to judge the moment right and re-brand UKIP we'd see a new major party in domestic politics too. Too soon or too late wouldn't hack it, but done at the right time and in the afterglow of a major shift of UK policy on Europe... We've been suffering from a huge misalignment in UK politics for decades. Labour suffered a split when the SDP was formed, and the SDP should have been able to take pro-europe Conservatives with it as well as many Liberals, but failed miserably in this leaving only the present stunted LD mess. The Conservatives would have ultimately been better off following a split, but that split could still happen from the other side - indeed needs to happen. This is the true reason for the disenchantment with current politics: no one knows what any party actually stands for any longer! The Coalition of the Unwilling (Conservatives) combined with the distinct possibility of a humiliation of major parties by UKIP could easily spark off the needed realignment.

"only come into their own at European election time" is exactly my point! Though they are polling a decent number of votes in local elections now. At the last eurolections they polled more than Labour and now have the same number of seats - and that was a whole two years ago. The majority Conservative group must know that a lot of their supporters are going to jump ship to UKIP now that they are the second party, and at last have a real chance of becoming the majority one. Sympathetic Labour voters will also see that UKIP is now the real challenger to the Conservatives, and that in voting UKIP they can send a message to Milliband on Europe, and also give the Conservatives a bloody nose; whereas a vote for Labour would be a wasted vote. All UKIP has to say is "We are now the second party in Europe, and the only alternative choice the British people have. This election is the referendum the great majority of the people now want, and the other parties have conspired not to permit. Whatever you think or don't think of our other policies this is your one chance to make the other three parties sit up and take notice of what you are telling them. If you miss this opportunity it could take another five years or more for us to deliver a non-federal Europe for the British people. With a majority in the European parliament we will shame whatever party is running the country into doing the will of the people, and obstruct all their moves until they do deliver." Tactical voting? You ain't seen nuffin' yet! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17974787

I'm no apologist for Sarky, but if Hollande gets in - as looks quite possible - the French are going to repeat the Brown public spending driven boom into megabust scenario for sure. Won't sit well with the Germans either. The value of Sterling many even be reflecting this right now, so not the time to be holding Euros (and we've got as few as we can get away with here!). Greece has already defaulted, but in a way that they won't see the benefits! Only euro politicos could engineer such a mess! Here UKIP is going from strength to strength - where they can manage to get their actual name on the ballot papers! At the next eurolections they might not just be the runner-up, but the majority party representing our country. That will be giving left-leaning Dave a few sleepless nights! His only way out could be to find an excuse for that long overdue referendum - but how would this play with the party with "Democrats" in its name?

There's some hilarious stuff on the net about baiting 419 fraudsters - mostly on the principal if that you waste their time you rob them of resources to scam anyone vulnerable. The Beeb joined in the fun back in 2004: http://news.bbc.co.u...ica/3887493.stm Scam-baiter central is here: http://www.419eater.com/index.php - hours of endless fun there!

Dear Limana, I have some really good news for you. You don't need to be desperate; you don't even need to use the Internet. Just look around you in that Internet cafe in Nigeria you are using. Maybe even sitting right next to you you will find a poor desperate person spending every waking hour in the now near-fruitless pursuit of sending out 419 fraud e-mails. All you need do is give each of these poor wretches a minuscule portion of your wealth - say $1000 - on the strict condition that he/she will return to their family and never be seen near a computer for at least a year. Not only will you be re-uniting these poor people with their families, but you will be preventing countless attempted frauds, and making a real start in restoring the now appalling reputation of your formerly fine country. Two months is very short time to carry the task God has to assigned you, so I'm going to pray that the doctors have made a mistake, or that you are least spared until you have completed God's good work. In any event you really need to get started right now; so turn off that computer for good, and get out your cheque book in the memory of your late dear husband and only child. I can only close by quoting the words of the late, great, Dave Allen - a master teller of fictional religious stories, the like of which we will never see again - "Goodnight, thank you, and may your God go with you". Your beloved brother in Christ. Richard Dawkins

Something we should be celebrating! If Moronband and Balls (sorry can't improve on that one!) got their way (except I'm fairly sure he isn't quite that stupid, and it's just for the audience) they'd all be up and off to sunnier climes, and we'd be taxing £0.00 at a the penal 50%. Of course a fair proportion of this wealth is generated from government intervention in free markets and dumb things like long-past-fit-for-purpose and increasingly nonsensical patent law, that governments have absolutely no interest in freeing enterprise from. Anyway, good luck to Paul and his well-healed and r-a-t-h-e-r smart catch; might have been suffering from a mental aberration when he got heathered through the mills, but the boy learns good! Think we may know a song about that!

A few weeks back I had a shiny new Samsung Galaxy Note! But "teacher" confiscated it for her own use! Funny the people who laugh at the size of the Note - assuming it's very uncool phone - then shorty afterwards are seen sporting one themselves - as a hot Tab! My current companion out walking is a Motorola Milestone 2 (because I like real keyboards, and it was a bargain at £165) with a cheapo Chinese fat-boy battery compartment clagged on the back. Great for Internet Radio, Skype etc.

http://www.theregist..._investigation/ By no means the first time the Apple Marketing Corporation have over-egged it! Anyone else would have been brought to book in no time, but... we are so big and rich (and have so many over-rich air-heads in tow) that we can ignore normal advertising standards. Anyway, tablets are crashing in price now through sheer oversupply, so Joe Average is going to be spoiled for choice. Just been looking at a Android ICS one with HDMI output, 8GB Flash and 1GB RAM for £85 post free - and it has a microSD slot, and a swappable battery! At 7" it's just about pocketable too; which, to me, seems to be the whole point of a tablet.

Yes, but look how much less the trade gap is now than it was under Gordo. If you are saying we should stop all imports, that's quite impossible. The majority of what we import we couldn't possibly obtain in this small island, and even (for things like coal) if we did ignore international market forces we might gain in the short-term, but beyond that we doom our industries to being uncompetitive and turning out tat that no one else wanted to buy. The real trick is buying what other people are good at making and mining, then adding value to them. There's another post on this thread about just that! Imports have always been this small island's life-blood, and what made us a small nation that changed the world. Part of that is using our skills to supply thing other nations really want/need to buy, and protectionism is the sure way to ruin all that. On the face of it the EU is about free trade, but in reality it has become a protectionist racket. There's another factor in the trade figures besides "invisible earnings" from services, and that's what British companies earn by operating overseas and don't immediately repatriate. We are good at this too, but a high tax regime at home encourages what are essentially British companies from repatriating their overseas earnings. There is an optimum tax rate to maximise take, and that's essentially what is behind George's so-called gift to the rich.

http://www.tradingec...kingdom/exports

We are just bouncing along the bottom, and are going to be for years. Given Gordon's binge there's not really much anyone can or could have done about it - the cuts had to come and would have come more or less the same under Alistair Darling. The figures will likely be revised either way so it's just a technical argument at this point, though that won't stop the media and Westminster village idiot Too-Deep-Too-Fast Miliband trying to make political capital out of nothing of consequence. The fact that the Pound is still improving against the US Dollar and the Euro shows that the markets have some confidence that we are moving in the right direction in reducing the debt, and that the eurozone and US aren't. This will help stem inflation, though it's not going to help our exports too much. We ARE in a hole, but at least we've stopped digging! Just now Sterling is one of a tiny few really trusted currencies in the World and we'd be lunatics to destroy that stability by falling for more of Ed Balls' crap.

Yup, played the odd tune: http://www.bertweedon.com/discography.htm Some photos, some taken only last year: http://www.bertweedon.com/features.htm - raising the interesting question: was there anyone in British entertainment he didn't know, or hadn't worked with?

Unfortunately you don't! Economic reasons, or not? So why aren't you protesting about the stupid Carbon Tax instead of playing the blame game? And.. if you want to see what happens when a socialist regime nationalises (i.e. misappropriates other people's property for wholly political ends) then follow this one as it develops: http://www.bbc.co.uk...europe-17739204 She seems to have given up on thieving the Falklands for now, and is now targeting Spanish assets for political glorification. Like all nationalisations, it will end in tears, and everyone will lose in the end! But, she'll buy a bit of political popularity with money Argentina can ill afford, and be long gone to her luxury villa (in our Labour MP Robens case it was a castle) by the time the chickens come home to roost.

"Policing the language" is such a French thing to do that you are going to need to become "Le Taureau Noir"! http://www.french-pr...e_rules_france/ Any Anglo Saxon government wouldn't dare meddle in the vernacular. And, thank your luck stars your pub isn't in Montreal: http://www.cbc.ca/ne...c-olf-0214.html Ciao!

Mrs. Thatcher of course kicked no one out of a job. It would be just as silly to say that the Redcar steel works that has just re-opened was closed by Labour, and was re-opened by the Conservatives/LibDems. http://www.bbc.co.uk...d-tees-17719747 Economic forces closed it, and economic forces have re-opened it. If it had been nationalised it would have plodded on producing steel that no one wanted to buy, running up huge losses for the Country and disrupting the market of profitable plants, until being closed by the decree of some overpaid state supremo, on the advice of dozens of overpaid senior "civil servants". A Thai company has ploughed a couple of billion into it as it has a market for the steel. Granted it now employs less people, but given the huge investment its future is now much more secure. That is real "modernisation" - not the sort of mass delusion that took place under post-war nationalisation and the Robens cull of the mining industry.

Explain "unelected"? 2010 General Election ===================== Conservative: 10,703,654 Liberal Democrat: 6,836,248 Labour: 8,606,517 C+LD: 17,539,902 = 67.08% Labour: 8,606,517 = 32.92% Total votes: 26,146,419 Maybe you mean the 1974 General Election? 1974 General Election ===================== Conservative: 11,872,180 = 37.90% Liberal: 6,059,519 = 19.3% Labour: 11,645,616 = 37.18% ...and the winner is: Harold Wilson - Labour!

Not quite that simple Adam! Harold was just as bent on joining as Heath. It was only a matter of timing that the final negotiations fell on Heath's watch. The only reason we had a referendum later was pure politics where the Labour Party picked holes in the terms, but would in fact have agreed to exactly the same ones - they were all that were on offer as the French didn't really want us in, and had indeed blocked us under De Gaul! Harold Wilson told exactly the same fibs as Heath. We were all conned, and that includes a young and silly me! Why it went through on the nod was that we were already a member of another trading group called EFTA (European Free Trade Area) which included many Scandinavian countries. It was a rival of the EEC and indeed worked very well. It sort of set a precedent for such things. What all the politicians (including Labour ones) knew, but didn't care to tell us, is that the ultimate aim was a political union and not the economic one we were sold. I remember being a little puzzled at the time why we didn't simply expand EFTA. The reason is now clear; EFTA had no hidden political agenda! Believe me that if it had been Harold's signature on the treaty there would have been no referendum either - or more likely it would have been a Tory referendum. The only reason we had one then is that they KNEW they could win it. The very same reason that despite all the broken Conservative AND Labour promises (and a recognition that there has been fundamental change in the later treaties) we don't have one now, as they wouldn't con us a second time!

Yep, Ted Heath was the second worst PM this country has ever had. But at the time of The Big Common Market Con it was the Labour Party who were by far the biggest supporters of dragging us into it at all costs. And... the only people warning about the consequences was a very large part of the Conservative Party. More or less the same people who were warning about the consequences of unlimited immigration, and being vilified for their prescience. The sad thing about people who play at "social engineering" is that they are seldom around to take the flack when the true outcome of their pet theories becomes apparent to all. It may also have escaped your notice that the only PM to stand up to the Eurocrats in a robust manner was your very good friend Mrs T! And... if you are going to exclusively knock David Cameron then imagine the sort of mess we'd now be in with either of the other two twit party leaders in full control. I was - of course - talking about being rescued from the Germans. But, then, maybe even the Germans can be rescued from themselves?

We've been here twice before - let's just call it WWIII ! But, this time, why bother saving the French?

Even if we did European law would prevent it! And, even though I don't agree with being run by Brussels, they have a very good case to make. All of Europe (and 99% of the rest of the world) has discovered for itself that government subsidies and nationalisation is bad! Only other thing I can disagree with there is about Front Street rents.

Ah, I see. If you do a lot by command in one fell swoop (so as you can't move to another more productive mine) it's called "modernisation". If the Industry does it itself due to long-delayed economic forces, and more slowly (so there's more chance of redeploying), you blame the PM of the day and call it butchery? So, you are saying that Margaret Thatcher deliberately set out to butcher our Industry? But, we still have a Coal and Steel industry, so she didn't do very well did she? Granted the later is run by an Indian enterprise which seems to do it quite well, and the former has been returned to its private roots. Everyone can still buy British coal and steel, and the taxpayer doesn't have to continually give either hand-outs like it had to do under nationalisation. Is this bad or good for us and for the rest of the country?

You don't know your history Adam. Long before Margaret Thatcher there was a guy called Alf Robens. He happened to be the usual bussed-in Labour MP for our area. He was appointed chairman of the NCB in 1961. And, I quote from Wikipedia: That's when the major decimation of the coal industry happened. What happened in Margaret Thatcher's era was painful for our area, but it had been coming for many years. Nationalisation did what it always does do: it stifled competition and made people complacent; other countries moved on and produced coal more efficiently at lower prices, and we lost markets. There was a short "golden era" post nationalisation because during the war (WWII) much needed rationalisation didn't happen and nationalisation brought that rationalisation, but it brought with it a command economy which didn't take proper account of market forces. Those 406 mines were closed by a stroke of the command economy pen - by a system you think you now want. But Margaret Thatcher closed nothing, ordered nothing closed; long building economic pressures forced those more gradual closures! Yes, I most certainly have heard of Northern Rock, RBS and Lloyds TSB. I was a Northern Rock shareholder for quite a while, but sold my shares when I saw how idiotically it was being run. I got out before the shares started to nosedive. These were not nationalisations they were government rescues "in order to protect the banking system". Northern Rock should have been allowed to fail. The shareholders would have lost all their money, but the depositors would have enjoyed the usual protections, and the mortgages would have continued under another banner. No public money should have been wasted as it has been. If you search this board you will see that I and others predicted the NR collapse before it happened. Unfortunately the Conservatives and LDs would have done the same silly thing as Labour did - they both said so! It was a big mistake and has cost you and me a lot of money. Not money you can easily appreciate, but future tax revenue that could have been spent on things we really need. There's another factor here called "Moral Hazard", but do your own research on that. It's the ambition of all political parties to attract foreign investment. In the past our area has attracted lots of overseas companies - and so it should it's a great place to come! But it's tough times at the moment, so no one may be looking at setting up in the North East at all. Though, if I was thinking of setting up production or distribution in the EU I'd be attracted to an English speaking country, and an area where there was plentiful labour, and lower living costs. What would quickly send me scuttling off somewhere else would be the prospect of a "bolshie" and militant unionised labour force that was going to strike at the drop of a hat. Or, worse still, a government that seized private assets in order to buy tax payers votes with their own money. Fact: Governments do not create jobs, and can not run enterprises. This has been proven time and time again in every part of the world - capitalist, communist, and every system in between. Governments can only create the conditions in which enterprise can thrive, or be stifled. And, creating the conditions is a s-l-o-w, and at times uncertain, process.

Alcan weren't there in the late 40's! In fact we've never had a nationalised aluminium industry! What do you think that's going to say to other overseas corporations who are thinking of investing in the UK and providing jobs? And name me one nationalised industry that has ever been a commercial success and provided lasting employment? Also please tell me why the Labour Party never nationalised anything in the last half century when they were in power? I'd suggest to you it's because they knew it would end up a total disaster, like all previous nationalisation attempts! The fact is there are no easy answers, and the present coalition is making the best of a pretty poor hand it has been dealt by Gordon Brown. Have you noticed how silent he is these days?

Another correction then: the names aren't spelled the same. Millne and Milne; just as you'll observe at Millne Court. I never thought I'd be caught saying this, but Eddie Milne was a good deal whiter than most of the Labour MPs that have been bussed in by Socialist Central to "represent" us. He was kicked out of the party because he asked too many questions about exactly what was going on in the North East Labour Party in the Dan Smith / Poulson Era.

Curious that something got me thinking about this the other day. i.e. the High Tension (HT) and Low Tension (LT) batteries used by early valve, and indeed later portable valve radios. The ones I'm familiar with used dry batteries - not a million miles away from the transistor radio power packs (the PP7 PP9 etc.) you will certainly remember. Indeed I think you can still buy some of those at a horrendous price. The HT batteries were quite expensive and lasted a good while if you didn't use the thing all the time. However the LT ones didn't last very long at all because they simply powered the heaters in the valves (the parts that glowed in the dark). Anyway, way back wet batteries (accumulators, like a modern car battery) were used for the LT supply instead of the later dry batteries, and that's what is involved here. They had the obvious advantage over dry batteries that you could recharge them, but you still needed an HT supply of around 120 volts, which is not at all easy with wet batteries; though I seem to remember the final generation of valve portables used quite compact 90 volt HT batteries. I'd have been very interested to see what they did for their HT supply.