Vince Green

My take on it is that a political career in Labour party is a cushy number, and it attracts the wrong people for all the wrong reasons.. Candidates get selected not on their ability but on their loyalty to the Party and the cause. Not only in Parliament, local government is full of them too. Go to all the meetings, clap at all the right times, tell the branch chairman that was a wonderful speech from time to time and no matter how big a plonker you may be you will get on. First it will be committees etc and gradually you will rise through the ranks

The Boundaries Commission should be continuously monitoring the situation. The subject did come up a while ago but, like you said, it all went quiet again.

Actually he is correct, the electoral system is rigged. That's totally true and he should know because it was Gordon Brown who tried to rig it. They altered the constituency boundaries, "allegedly" because population densities had shifted in different areas. However it was done in such an obviously underhand manner that it gave Labour about a 10% advantage over the Tories in the final outcome back then. Scotland being a classic case in point. Scotland has nearly twice as many seats as it should have given the size of the population. When Scotland was a safe labour stronghold that worked in Gordon Brown's favour an he was more than happy to leave it that way, They got about half a dozen more Scottish Labour MPs in Westminster than they should have based on the electorate headcount. Now its predominately SNP it works against them, shot themselves in the foot. Actually it has shot all of us in the foot, we now have to put up with about six more SNP MPs than we should have to. Time for another Boundaries Commission review in Scotland I would say? soon please? Same as where they divided up four safe labour seats in the North of England to make five. Giving them a "free" extra MP on the Labour benches. That was OK until they lost the red wall, now instead of an extra Labour MP Boris got an extra "free"Tory MP out of it. BOOM BOOM! Gordon Brown was a slippery customer, a manipulator through and through, but in this instance it has backfired. It wouldn't have changed the outcome of this election but if it had been a close result Gordon's fiddling could have tipped the balance. He certainly cost Cameron an outright victory and saddled us with Clegg.in May 2010 with his boundary changes.

I'm told that if you start going on veggie or vegan websites you will soon start getting unsolicited emails from all sorts of protest groups like extinction rebellion and animal rights. Probably momentum etc as well. I see it as a recruiting portal and there may be a hidden agenda. Adults may see it for what it is but kids are more easily drawn in.

We forget, the Unions own the Labour party. They started it in 1900 (in Merthyr I believe?) and that ownership has never been relinquished. The Party tries to present itself as an independent party but that's smoke and mirrors. However, its possible now that even the unions are coming to realise R L-B is a donkey after all the bad interviews and exposed lies about her background.

Yes that is a big factor, plus apparently people have been planting lots of trees in the newly developed residential areas because they want the shade and wooded land is considered more upmarket (valuable) compared to bare bush. Its been going on for decades apparently and people have been warned its creating a time bomb. But people like trees over there, as soon as somebody buys a plot of land they want to plant trees

My aunt died in November, she would have been 102 had she lasted another couple of weeks. She had dementia fairly minor dementia really in the scheme of things. She didn't know us in the end though. However, she decended into a really happy sort of never never land where long dead relatives still visited her and she was able to inhabit it with great joy. Who knows what is reality after all when it comes to it? She died happy and content in her own little world. Now I am not a spiritualist by any stretch of the term but seeing her in her last days talking to people who were apparently there but had been dead for years was unbelievably unsettling for me. I still don't know now what I think really .

It was Labour who invented the female only shortlists, positive discrimination, etc If they go true to form it has to be a woman

It shows they have not got a scooby

Ed Milliband unintentionally killed the Labour Party with the £3 membership. Now they find themselves in a situation from which there is no way out. Its checkmate. .It will be Wrong Daily who gets the job, mark my words, the deal has already been done. Vince Cable almost killed off the Lib Dems with his blind refusal to accept the result of the referendum and ensuring his soppy sidekick Swinson got elected as his successor because she was just Cable in a skirt

It started before Disney though, what about Beatrice Potter for example? Wind in the Willows perhaps is another? The Jungle Book? Alice in Wonderland? All are giving animals human personalities and human values even though they are not always positive values. It blurs the perception between animals and humans. Now we are to believe they can sing and dance

Spooky isn't it? Its almost enough to make me go back and re-read my George Orwell books. Only now they won't quite be the works of fiction they once were

I don't get cringe comedy at all

Yes there is quite a lot of discussion now regarding the Australian fire situation. Several issues around deliberately allowing, even encouraging, large tracts of land to become more 'forested' because wooded land is considered more fashionable and desirable for settlement than arid dusty scrub land. Its all about the money as usual. The aborigines burnt back the undergrowth deliberately to prevent this sort of thing but they were seen as stupid and primitive. Not anymore they are not.

I know Langholm, my mother's side of the family came from there and until recently I had family there although they have passed away now. What these environmentalists don't realise is the only thing that earns money for the maintenance of moors in any significant way is shooting.

or a fox, yet not that many years ago that was the recommended method for dispatching cage caught foxes and squirrels. The goalposts are moving all the time. The RSPCA prosecute using Cruelty to Animals legislation not firearms legislation and the wording of that legislation is so vague as to what constitutes cruelty that they hold all the cards. That bloke with the squirrel was prosecuted on the evidence of the RSPCA's own vet. Hardly an impartial witness. Are vets trained in forensic pathology the way doctors are? They are very hard to defend yourself in court all the same. Did he get a fair trial? I wonder? But this thread is not about whether its legal to shoot the fox, its about why urban foxes are being released in the country and the answer is for the reasons I have said

Its perfectly legal to shoot squirrels but people have still been prosecuted for doing so

Having lived in the States for some time I can tell you the contrast is amazing. I lived, and worked, in Upstate New York on the shores of lake Ontario. Although it was a pretty rural location any call to the police would result in not one but several cars turning up within no time, Having established what had happened the police would go all round the neighbourhood knocking on doors looking for witnesses. If it was a 911 you would easily get six cars and a film crew from the local TV station. By British standards the style of American policing is chalk and cheese. Even a small town would have six or more cruisers out at any given time, often just sitting doing nothing at a busy junction or shopping mall. Just "showing the badge" as they call it. Massively overmanned by our standards but it works, nobody messes with an American cop, there is no such thing as PACE over there. Often cops in small towns will go a whole shift with nothing to do, they complain about the boredom. If you watch the American police reality TV programmes just pay attention to the number of officers and cars they have attending any sort of incident, even a minor one and be amazed.

It sounds to me like there is some sort of mental health issue here. If so that's very sad

Its a bit the same with the NHS 111 service. Several times my elderly mother tried it for different ailments and my stepdaughter used it when one of the grandchildren was ill recently. After asking a load of totally irelevent questions on every occasion the final advice was to go A&E. I suppose, realistically, that always has to be their default suggestion to cover their own tails. Since I believe the purpose of the service was to prevent time wasters clogging up A&E the whole thing looks like a complete waste of time and money.

Another thing you should all be aware of is that a lot of policies have now had the "policy holder is allowed to drive other cars" clause quietly taken out. Presumably because it was being abused.

I agree Gordon, its actually quite tragic how unsuited they are for the roles they aspire to.

Silly season, too much time on his hands Its a bit like that Greta Thumburg who was photographed sitting on the floor of a train last week in Germany when it turned out she and her entire party had seats in first class. Or the little girl who allegedly found a message from a Chinese prisoner in her box of Christmas cards. No coincidence her father was a human rights activist??? Social media allows anybody to put anything up, no guarantee its true

Most pest controllers release foxes, that's a fact. The screen shot says "shouldn't" it doesn't say "illegal" ; most pest controllers don't have any legal method of despatching them once caught so they have to release them.. I can despatch them, I am legal but I still have to justify my action. Medically unfit to be released because of mange would cover about 75% of urban foxes but I still have to be wary of the cruelty legislation. Killing a fox for "no reason" can still be interpreted as cruelty under separate legislation. Its a minefield these days, in the end you think sod it, take it for a drive and problem solved. The RSPCA are a rogue organisation from our perspective. They are not terribly interested in animal welfare unless they can find a story that will make the news and give them publicity. they can and do put innocent people through their legal shredder just to give themselves a bit of publicity and get on the news.

There has to be some explanation beyond a freak accident, three people, healthy and apparently sober don't just drown in a hotel pool. Whether they could swim or not would be an issue but not the complete story. Pools should be designed to be fail safe. Reports said there was a whirlpool device, what part that played ? Definitely a cover up, but that's always the way in these places. The police know who pays their wages, they are not impartial.