SOPPY SUNDAY IN TRIS'S GARDEN

OH, OK, THIS ISN'T EXACTLY IN THE GARDEN,
OR EVEN THE SAME COUNTRY, BUT IT'S NICE, DONCHA THINK?

JUST HOW LOW CAN THEY GET?

“Does Iain Duncan Smith need breakfast money??”

 Less than 55 days after my son takes his own life, because he was let down by a system already under funded, which this government intend to make when further cuts to, they have the audacity to send me this??

 I love the “I love the ” we hope you will appreciate that when public funds are incorrectly paid we are obliged to ask for them to be refunded” 

When are the MP’s paying back ask the “false claims” they received?? 

You want your £41.36 Mr I Needham, fight me for it.

 I Needham those pounds more than you!! 

And whilst we’re at it, how about a counter claim for the death of my child??

 A man clearly let down by a government that is now trying to claim money back on his death.

NICOLA IN THE USA

RELATIVELY RANDOM PICS

YOU CERTAINLY DO

BIT OF A WASTE OF AN EDUCATION IF YOU ARE ANYTHING TO GO BY

TRICKLE UP ECONOMICS IN FACT

HOW APPROPRIATE

NO SHIT SHERLOCK?

SAD BUT TRUE

WHAT A PLONKER

SMART MOVE GUYS

NASTY TWISTED OLD  WOMAN

NOT ONE OF MY BIGGEST PROBLEMS

SHADES OF CAMERON

OUCH

OH... 

HE PROBABLY THINKS IT NOT ENOUGH...AND WILL RAISE THE TARGET

YEAH, BUT GIVEN THAT ITS A TORY GOVERNMENT ISN'T THAT A PREREQUISITE 

AYE, WE'RE A' DAFT

ESPECIALLY ONES REPEATED BY THE CLUNKING FIST!

A 'WHO DONE IT' TO PUT MISS MARPLE TO THE TEST

I know this is a long piece, but it is worth the time to watch and listen to just how corrupt the English legal system and the British Establishment is. Bonus it's produced and narrated by the brilliant is Keith Allen (of Sheriff of Nottingham fame).

SOPPY SUNDAY

Thanks to Gerry for sending me this one and the one above.

WHEESHT, WOMAN!

So... yesterday the press was alive and crawling with criticism of Alex Salmond's "behave, woman" comment directed at a Tory minister during his speech in the Commons. 

This despite the fact that it is a perfectly normal thing to say in certain parts of Scotland, and could equally have been  "behave, man", had Anna Sourface not been female.

Now, it's fair to say that Eck probably should restrict himself to speaking the Queen's English when he's in the English parliament, because Scottish expressions are likely to be misunderstood by the main stream London media. However much we are a part of this union, they don't speak our languages and they don't understand the way we say things. We should rememebr too that they a gie easy offendit!

We, however, do understand theirs, and these comments could be interpreted as anti Scottish, even if they were said in jest. 

They are not offensive to me because, honestly, even if I put a great deal of effort into it, I simply couldnt find a tiny part of me that gives a stuff about what some stuck up Tory woman from South Cambridgeshire thinks of us.  Still it's hardly the way to show respect for fellow countrymen, which is presumably what she considers us to be.

I look forward to the press making as much of that as they did with Alex.

I wonder too if, given today's announcement, following the post mortem, that Charles Kennedy's untimely and sad death was caused by haemorrhaging which in turn was brought about by long term over-consumption of alcohol, that those people who took to Twitter to blame the SNP for 'killing him', would like to issue apologies, or at least retract their tweets, and consider looking for careers outside of criminal pathology at which they are clearly not very good.

EVEN SHE DOESN'T THINK IT'S A CREDIBLE IDEA

WHAT CONTRASTS....

So this is life for some Brits

And this is life for others

And justice for public servants is dependent on class

We take rather different attitudes to who can break rules and who can't.

And some people face this embarrassment...

...whist others are just this embarrassing.

CHARLES KENNEDY 1959-2015

I was genuinely shocked and saddened this morning when I read on Twitter that Charles Kennedy had died. Mr Kennedy had been in politics since ever I can remember. He was 23 when he was elected and 55 when he died. I simply can't remember politics without him.

I was never a Liberal, although I liked a lot of what they stood for in the days before Clegg, and I certainly voted Liberal on several occasions when Charlie was leader. 

He seemed to stand for decency in a world (politics) where there is precious little of that about.

My particular memory of Kennedy was that he showed himself to be a strong and decisive leader when Blair (and whoever was the Tory leader that week) were salivating over the prospect of going to war in Iraq at the behest of, and with the hope of attracting the approval of, DubYa. It's maybe easy to say that it wasn;t that hard to disagree with the tissue of lies that Blair came up with, but the pressure from Blair and his entourage for a united front from the UK political parties must have been very strong.

Kennedy did the honest and decent thing. Invited to see the evidence, as a Privy Counsellor, ie not for political purposes, he refused to agree to Blair's cry for war, having found the pretexts to be flimsy in the extreme.

His refusal to agree to this, despite having seen the "evidence" that the Secret Services had amassed, sewed the seeds of doubt in the minds of other people who had not been in the privileged position to view the "evidence". (Alex Salmond also refused to vote for the war, but as he was not a PC he hadn't seen the privileged information, thus his opinions didn't carry the same weight as Kennedy's.)

What was disappointing about Kennedy, I thought, was that at a time when it seemed that the Tories and Blair had merged into one party, and the Liberals with 60+ members could have provided some opposition, they didn't.

It might have been due to his illness (for that's what alcoholism is) about which none of us knew. 

After he resignation the Liberals were never the same again. Neither Campbell nor Clegg were a patch on Charlie. Both lacked charisma and his air of honesty and decency. Despite Cleggmania in the run up to the 2010 election, he couldn't manage the numbers Kennedy had overseen as leader.

Tributes have come from across the political spectrum today for a man who seems to have been genuinely popular with all manner of politicians.

In Scotland Willie Rennie paid a tribute to his friend and colleague, saying he was "devastated". They had been together only a short time ago to discuss his political future. Presumably this would have involved him in working for the YES campaign to keep the UK in Europe, a subject close to his heart and an area in which he would have excelled because of his passion for Europe..

Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond paid him glowing tributes too, even if Alex Massie of the Spectator, managed to distort what Salmond said for his own miserable political ends.

Stuart Campbell has already covered the sickening Twitter abuse of the SNP, accused by some of being responsible for Kennedy's death, by taking the seat he was contesting, so there is no point in my mentioning, except to say I never cease to be amazed at how low some people will sink.

++++++++
From the First Minister (at the European Policy Centre, Brussels)

I want to begin today with a few words about Charles Kennedy, former Scottish MP and Liberal Democrat leader.

Charles Kennedy was one of these rare people in politics. He was an incredibly talented, gifted, effective politician - I think one of the most talented politicians of his generation. And yet somehow he also managed to be universally liked across the political spectrum and indeed across wider society. That is no mean feat.

Charles will be remembered for many things. He made an outstanding and extraordinary contribution to, not just Scottish, but UK politics over a 30 year period. But I think he will be chiefly remembered for his principled opposition to the war in Iraq in 2003 and many of the concerns and criticisms he made then were of course subsequently found to be very well founded. And he also then – and perhaps partly because of that – went on to lead his party to its best ever election result in the 2005 general election.

I have some very fond personal memories of Charles. I had the privilege of spending some time with him on a political study visit that we made together to Australia in the mid-1990s. Perhaps my fondest memory from that visit – if perhaps a slightly bizarre memory - was of the two of us skiving off one day to watch Trainspotting in a Melbourne cinema.

I think we were the only two Scots in the audience at that time, so we drew some very strange looks from other people as we were uproariously laughing at lots of jokes that nobody else in the cinema were even beginning to understand. That’s a small, but very special memory that I certainly will always treasure.

The last thing to say about Charles for the moment is this – Charles Kennedy was a proud and passionate advocate of Europe and the UK’s membership of the European Union. His would have been an incredibly powerful voice in the upcoming EU referendum, so for that reason but also for many, many other reasons I think our country today is much poorer for the passing of Charles Kennedy. I am sure I am not the only one here today who wants to send thoughts and condolences to Charles’ family, his friends and to his party colleagues.

EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION

Well yes, I'm sure respect are indeed culture in some parallel universe. Seriously if the womble who got this done didn't know how to spell "our", or that "are" was a part of the English verb "to be", surely the lad doing the tattoo might have. The Red Hand of Ulster, huh!

And what's this duffus going to do when Charlie comes to the throne?
Get a new chest?

Yep, that's a very good answer to a really silly question.

I'll bet you break sweat finding a way though...

The old ones are the best... as John will tell you.