TITTER WITH TWITTER...

Tom Chivers ‏@TomChivers  2h2 hours ago

Tom Chivers Retweeted The Guardian

yes but what do Lord Flour and Lord Eggs have to say

Tom Chivers added,

The Guardian @guardian

Bake Off will be a 'total disaster' on Channel 4, says Lord Sugar http://trib.al/j898qoH 

93 retweets97 likes

 

 

 

BBC NEWS'S SHAMEFUL PRIORITIES

So, on a day when hundreds of desperate people died off the coast of Egypt, in foul overcrowded unseaworthy boats, and when Aleppo was ablaze (none of which, admittedly will affect the Brit government, who want no truck with these refugee types), and when a report came out highlighting the danger of  "button batteries" to children, the BBC decided to lead with a piece crowing about the fact that, even though Channel Four managed to poach the 'Great British Bake Off' from them, the Great British Mary Berry is not going to leave because of "loyalty to the BBC". Take a minute, dear Munguin readers, to dry your eyes...

(Incidentally, nice Mary. What fun it must be, to be so rich you can afford to turn down steady work out of loyalty to Auntie.)

I don't particularly want to knock the GBB. I don't watch tv, but if I did GBB would be far down on my watch list. However, I'm sure many people get a great deal of enjoyment from it. 

That said, everything has a place in life and surely it says something horrific about the BBC and/or the Great British public that a downmarket, cheap-to-produce tv show is more important than real news about real people's real lives and their real deaths.

Thank heavens I don't give this organisation a brass bean.

GREAT BRITISH VALUES IN BY-ELECTIONS

By-election spend is strictly controlled by law. Law which applies equally across parties and over the UK. Presumably there is no lower legal limit, but the upper legal limit is set at £100,000 per election.

It is illegal to exceed that amount. It is illegal to not mention in returns, expenses that have been incurred. It is illegal to doctor your receipts, by, say giving false addresses for hotel bookings, or use any other means to withhold pertinent information from the Electoral Commission.

Rental on premises, hotel accommodation and food, drink, tips, paid staff time, travel, etc, are eligible expenditure.

This is a Channel Four news investigation into three by-elections held in England in 2014, when there was a growing public interest in, and a real threat to the Tories from, UKIP, and when 2 Conservative MPs had triggered by-elections by defecting to UKIP. Two of them were won by UKIP, despite a massive Tory effort.

The investigation looks very specifically at the amount of money spent by the Conservatives and compares that to the expenditure that they declared...

...With interesting results.

Is this what the Tories mean by Great British Values? All in it together? The Big Society?

Channel Four has sent the information to the Electoral Commission. We await the outcome with interest.

It appears the media can no longer quote Billy Connolly as a supporter of the NO Campaign, Project Fear. He has said that it is not the place of a comedian to tell people how to vote. He said he spoke against devolution because it added another tier of government, but he has been in Scotland for a few weeks on holiday prior to some filming engagements and he says it has changed for the better. So NO, you should take him off your list.
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Channel Four News has revealed that costs for tribunals for benefit sanctions have risen dramatically. In 2012/13 the cost was £66 million up from £22 million in 209/10.  The number of appeals had risen by 66%. Liam Byrne apparently said that it's the fault of Atos which is spinning out of control. Well, there you go, Liam. You left no money and a Benefit system spinning out of control. Isn't Labour clever!
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According to the Guardian's Money Blog, to achieve their current pension on the open market MPs would need to save about £60,000 a year for every year they are in parliament. They actually only contribute £9,100, so they are getting a benefit worth £51,000 a year, or 75% of pay. Contrast this to IPSA's view of the value of the pension: it says it costs the taxpayer 20.4% of MPs' pay or £14,000 a year.

After the pay rise an MP with 15 years of service will get an extra £2,850 a year in retirement. On the open market this would need a pension fund of £100,000 to provide. Across 600 MPs this translates to about £60m of value.

So don't believe everything they tell you.... like you would!

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Danny...our man in America... sent me the following cartoons. The first was one of a series used years ago to explain to kids how the federal government of the country worked. The second is what happens now, as Danny says, since the radical right wing of the Republican Party decided that they preferred gridlock in Washington, because they hate the idea of government itself!

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If anyone is in the least interested, apparently hundreds of babies were successfully delivered all over Scotland today. In no case was the state broadcaster obliged to have a team of experts on hand to give a blow by blow account and there were no loonie's standing outside wearing butchers' aprons. But for all that mothers and babies are doing well... and fathers are playing their traditional role getting drunk. Munguin's Republic wishes them all well for their future, hopefully in an independent country.

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PAY YOUR TAXES, GEORGE

Further to the Dispatches Programme which Cynical Highlander highlighted last week on this blog, I came across this petition.

http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/osborne-pay-your-taxes#petition

It is a ridiculous state of affairs that the people at the top of government, and in particular those who are responsible for, for whatever reasons good or bad, showering utter misery on large numbers of the population, to be taking advantage of tax loopholes to save themselves millions in taxes. Taxes which would otherwise be helping to pay down the massive deficit left to the government by the previous administration.

The petition text is as follows:

George Osborne, pay your fair share of taxes!

Stop using loopholes to avoid millions in tax. Start closing tax loopholes and make a real effort to get everyone to pay their fair share.

George Osborne likes to say "we're all in this together." But last week, Channel 4 revealed that he's avoiding paying tax. He pays accountants to help him find loopholes which Channel 4 reckons will help him dodge £1.6million. These kind of "legal tax dodges" cost the rest of us billions.

How can we trust George Osborne to do all he can to close tax loopholes when he uses the loopholes himself?

The government doesn't want to tackle tax dodging, but together we can embarrass them into action. Let's build a huge petition against George Osborne's tax dodges. We can prove that as long as he's not paying his fair share of tax, the public won't buy his claims that "we're all in this together".

I’m seriously incredulous that there are members of the Cabinet who are engaged in this kind of thing...just as the last lot were, except in the last parliament they put their tax accountants on expenses.

Tax loopholes are legal. I’m not suggesting that Osborne, Hammond and Mitchell are doing anything illegal, just immoral, and decidedly two faced when they spout that “we’re all in this together”

Until they plug the tax loopholes they should really be saying “YOU’RE all in this together”.

Pics: Osborne in the drinking uniform of the Bullingdon Club; Mitchell and Hammond. All of them Right Honourables!

NADINE DORRIES PROVES THAT THE UNEMPLOYED NEED £114 A WEEK TO LIVE

I'VE ALWAYS had mixed feelings about politicians who take part in experiments involving living like ordinary people do.

In a way it does no harm for them to see the dilapidated housing, the poor public transport and the rotting infrastructure that is so much a part of millions of Britons’ lives. On the other hand, it can’t possibly give a real feeling of what it is like to live like that.

Sure, it will be unpleasant having to cope with living in a tower block for a week, of having to listen to next door’s music competing with downstairs’ telly blaring and upstairs’ baby screaming. It will be a real hardship going to the shops knowing that the £64.30 that you have in your pocket is going to have to last 7 days, and buying the very cheapest of everything from food to washing powder, from toothpaste to toilet paper. If it runs out before the next payment... you go without.

However, the “experimenter” can only get a taste of the misery and hopelessness that the real “job-seeker” lives with all the time. He or she knows that come the end of the experiment there is a comfortable centrally-heated house in a nice part of town, a first class meal in a nice restaurant, and possibly a couple of weeks in the sun to wash away all discomfort.

So I was less than impressed when I read about the Channel Four reality television show where 5 MPs live with families on a council estate. This is even less realistic than other attempts. They are surrounded all day by film crew....

But, after all that we have heard about MPs’ dishonesty over the last year, I would have thought that at least they would have learned a lesson and have tried not to cheat.

Wrong!

Nadine Dorries, MP for Mid Bedfordshire, after spending only one night on the project, broke the rules by hiding a £50 note down her bra. Of course she maintains, as we would expect, “no wrong doing”.

"I did have money in my bra," she admitted to the Telegraph. However, she added: "I was staying with children, and it being two weeks before Christmas, I wasn't going to leave my family without leaving some Christmas presents behind for the children, so I popped £50 where any self respecting female who knows how to get what she wants would – down my top.”

I don’t know how long she was going to be staying with the family, but I suspect that she would have left by Christmas. So, if she wanted to get something for the kids she could have done it after filming had finished.

Additionally, Mrs Norris, £50 between four kids and the mother equals fairly niggardly gifts from someone on your salary, if you don’t mind my saying so...No. I don’t believe you. You couldn’t face being in the situation of an unemployed person for one week without back up. You insulted the experiment; you insulted the poor people you were supposedly trying to find out about, and you cheated.

Well, you’re an MP so we shouldn’t be surprised about that. Your party leader might be interested to know that, as well as being a cheat, you have just admitted that you think that it is impossible to live on the money that the government pays the unemployed, of which there are rather a lot. I wonder if he will be happy to know that you think that they require an extra £50 a week to live on.

Stupid woman.