The Aged P

…just toasting and ruminating….

I Couldn’t Care Less About Her Legs – It’s Her Taxpayer Funded £93k Non Job That Concerns Me…

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Wow – such a storm over a woman crossing and uncrossing her legs during a TV interview…

A woman politician has created a storm of anger for describing a new government official as a ‘cocky little £93k madam crossing her legs Sharon Stone-style’. Former mayoress Ruth Price, 56, hit out watching deputy police and crime commissioner Sophie Howe giving a TV interview

Ruth Price’s remarks cause the sort of twitterstorm so beloved of the Daily Mail because itmeans some cheap hack can stay in the office and cut and paste tweets without having to expend any shoeleather. But, oddly enough, nobody seemed to be too bothered about her new job – funded by the taxpayer at a rate of £93,000 per annum.

Ms Howe, 38, was on a programme talking about her new government role as the future generations commissioner for Wales.

Excuse me?

Apparently the role of the Future Generations Commissioner is to make sure ministers’ actions are made with sustainability and the long-term interests of Wales in mind because, apparently “Planning for future generations requires a real capacity for making things happen across a wide range of policy areas, agencies and institutions”

There has been some concern that Ms Howe is a bit of a Labour Party insider and might therefore be unwilling to criticise a Welsh Labour government

She was a Labour political appointee to the role of deputy Police and Crime Commissioner and also previously worked as a Special Advisor to a Minister as well as being a failed Labour parliamentary candidate. In fact, if you look at her biography it is clear that she has followed the classical modern route of working as a political hack since leaving university.

Sounds just the ideal person to take over a taxpayer funded non job paying £93k which will mainly involve shuffling bits of paper, sending out meaningless memos and fancy declarations while sitting on platforms crossing and uncrossing her legs.

Just fancy – we thought the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party was just a figment of someone’s colourful imagination…but then he wasn’t paid from money taken out of our pockets by the government….

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BBC Question Time Audiences Leftward Leaning? Surely Not……..

 

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The proverbial Martian who was observing Earth and listened to “Any Questions” on BBC Radio or watched BBC Question Time on TV could be forgiven for assuming that, ever since 2010 the British people have been groaning under the boots of a fascist/capitalist/fatcat banker clique and are crying out for a left wing messiah who will lead them to the promised land of rainbows, unicorns and money trees – and (quelle surprise), welcome hundreds of thousands of “refugees” with open arms

Outside in the real world, of course, that particular type of infantilism fails to resonate.

So – why the discrepancy? Alison Pearson, who recently appeared on one of the panels, thinks she might have the answer

After the recording, the show’s excellent host, Jonathan Dimbleby, sighed heavily and told me it was a constant problem. He and the whole AQ team found it immensely frustrating that Tories simply did not show up on the night to add their voices. The producer said it would cost £5,000 a week to pay someone to assemble a politically balanced audience

Maybe – but one anecdote in the comments painted a slightly darker picture

I applied to join the Question Time audience four times using different details each time. Three times I expressed conservative views and voting and I heard nothing. One time I expressed socialist views and voting, and was invited to take part. Only an anecdote, but perhaps it reflects a wider issue. Question Time’s audience is never balanced. Any Questions is always loaded by lefties who use forums or rely on union shop stewards to urge each other on to go along. But I suppose these people feel at home because the current affairs output of the BBC aligns so closely with their political stance

BBC being rather selective? That can’t possibly be true…can it?

 

 

 

 

 

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Dan Hodges Throws His Toys Out Of His Pram Over Corbyn

CryingBaby

You couldn’t make it up. Dan Hodges, the hack who resigned from the Labour Party a year or so back, breathes hellfire on those who have recently joined the Labour Party to take part in the current leadership election. Shocked by the fact that his recent broadsides have failed to break the Corbyn surge the man who spent three years demonising UKIP and its members has now thrown his toys out of the pram because he and his ilk are being demonised by Corbyn’s supporters.

Hodges talks as if he is a wise old political bird with a swathe of experiences on the doorstep, in committee rooms and the corridors of power.

He isn’t.

He was a trade union official – but unlike Alan Johnson he wasn’t a worker who over the years rose from the shop floor to elected office. He cut his teeth as an office boy for a Labour MP who also happened to be a wealthy showbiz celeb – and his mum. She then pulled strings to get him a nice little number in a union. Later (probably again via mum) he discovered the world of “campaigning”…i.e shadowy little political think tanks with charitable status funded by private institutions and public money and he specialised in playing the race card.

With this background he managed to slide into the world of scribbling and was adopted by the DT as their latter day Sion Simon, a pet Labour hack. As a result he has morphed into that most worthless of creatures the “political commentator”, a male Polly Filler who is tasked to put 1200 word into an empty space and generate click bait to give advertisers the impression that a failing rag has legions of readers.

Hodges on politics? Nah – I’d rather read Bryony Gordon on the importance of lip gloss in the game of getting a husband….

 

BTW….do read the comments underneath Dan’s article – best collective take down ever!!!!!!

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Labour – The Party Of The Urban Middle Class…..

The chaps at The New Statesman, the parish magazine of the chattering class left, have clearly not been paying too much attention to Planet Telegraph and the musings of Benedict Brogan and Dan Hodges who have used the Newark by election result to prove, beyond doubt that UKIP has shot its bolt and is now in terminal decline

Yet Ukip’s results in the 2014 local and European elections demonstrate the importance of blue-collar voters for Labour. These are the voters it has been haemorrhaging for over a decade; those who once sat at home on election day and are now coming out to vote Ukip………….This is a logical consequence of abandoning blue-collar Britons and becoming a party of the urban middle class alone.

Wow…..you mean winning Hackney with a coalition of young white middle class professionals and ethnic minorities won’t make much of an impression on those working class people in Rotherham and Thurrock? You know, the ones who never appear in colour supplements?

As John Denham, MP for Southampton Itchen, has observed, we need to recognise the pressures immigration has put on some working-class communities

But…but…but…I thought uncontrolled immigration was A Good Thing….

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Tory Pundits Ecstatic As Conservatives Flatline Yet Ignore UKIP Surge

The pundits at the Telegraph and Spectator went into overdrive with the latest Guardian/ICM poll and the changes since last month. Reading between the lines (and remember that Brogan and Hardman especially have a hot line to Tory HQ) the Tories are quietly confident that it’s all in the bag, all part of the master plan that will see them coasting to victory in 2015

Support for Labour drops six points as Tories take lead in latest ICM poll. Labour support falls to 31%, Conservatives rise one point to 33%, Lib Dems are up one on 13% and Ukip rises four to 15%

Only one problem – Tory support has virtually stayed the same, as has the Lib Dems. One party. Labour, shows a decline greater than the margin of error.  One party shows an improvement greater than the margin of error – UKIP.

Wonder where those UKIP votes are coming from?

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Dodgy Deal: “Ukip Supporters Should Vote For The Tory Liars, Otherwise The Labour Liars Will Get In”

A vote for ukip will let Labour in says Alex Wickham.

It’s a mantra that we shall be hearing more and more over the months leading up to the next general election.  It usually begins with a statement that the author is sympathetic to much of what ukip stands for and, yes, for a long time Cameron and Co were badmouthing its members but Dave has seen the error of his ways and is now firmly committed to a referendum and immigration reform and will be “watching like a hawk…etc..etc…blah blah”

So now is not the time to be rocking the boat by putting ukip candidates in every seat (especially the marginals) and thus decanting a measure of the Tory vote and letting Labour in.

However, leaving aside the obvious issues (not all the ukip vote comes from former Tory voters / on many issues the views of Cameron and Miliband are interchangeable) there is one major flaw in the Wickham argument.

If it is assumed by many conservative politicians and pundits that a substantial proportion of Tory voters are willing to “desert” to ukip at the ballot box isn’t it a sign that Cameron’s party has alienated a significant element of their core support?  Shouldn’t Wickham and his friends be asking themselves why this has happened AND WHAT THE TORY PARTY SHOULD DO ABOUT IT?

In other words it is a problem for the Tories, not for ukip

While Cameron and his clique are in charge the Tory Party will be exactly like those abusive husbands who regularly beat their wives black and blue then sob uncontrollably and promise to reform when the wife threatens to leave.

For a few days they appear to be thoughtful and caring – then their fists come into action again.

Wickham’s cri de coeur is pure, unadulterated moral blackmail. It’s the eternal siren song of the dodgy salesman. Only a fool would buy into it and, this time, many Tory voters will say they have been fooled once too often….

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Pic h/t

 

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The Sons Of Labour’s Guilty Men & Women Should Look For Atonement, Not Political Power…

Both Dan Hodges and Guido report that a slither of “Red Princes” are following in their fathers footsteps and offering themselves as Labour candidates for 2015

Dave Prescott is a member of quite an exclusive club, the so called “red princes and princesses”, whose parents are MPs or former MPs, and who will be contesting seats in 2015. Others include Will Straw, recently selected for Rossendale and Darwin; Euan Blair, who is said to be interested in one of the Coventry seats; and Joe Dromey, who was showing an interest in Lewisham.

Joe Dromey’s  mummy, of course, is Harriet Harman.

Have these young men no shame? Each of them has a parent who was at the very centre of the Labour regime that did everything in it’s power to destroy the very fabric of our country.

It burdened us with a mountain of debt and brought us into the longest lasting recession of modern times.

It allowed a foreign court made up of a motley collection of European academics to overrule the very fabric of our ancient common law

It willingly saddled us with an inefficient and expensive energy policy without any serious attempt to question the voodoo “science” upon which it was based

It deliberately allowed a massive influx of immigrants from every corner of the globe by reducing our border controls to a mere token

It led us into wars for the flimsiest of reasons without any notion of strategic overview and with an underfunded army leading to the killing and maiming of hundreds, maybe thousands, of our brave servicemen and women.

Rather than seek to place themselves in power over us once again perhaps these young men should atone for their parents’ shame by devoting themselves to the humility of good works by working as minimum wage care assistants or cleaners in homes for the elderly.

Then, in the evening of their lives, they might be able to regain a small measure of family dignity by going Profumo rather than Kim Jong Un

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Never Expected To Say This But Cameron’s EU Speech Was Absolutely Spot On….

There is a time in politics as well as in all things when one must eat one’s words (or some of them) and give credit where it is due. David Cameron’s speech was a good one, carefully crafted to bring out some home truths without sneering at our European partners as a bunch of Johnny Foreigners smelling of garlic and trying to seduce our women and steal our silver. By offering a straightforward in/out referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU in 2017 on the basis of a negotiated repatriation of certain powers he made a bold, and honest, commitment. There are none of the familiar weasel word which politicians conventionally use when making public promises – “almost certainly”, “certain circumstances”, subject to these conditions”.

There are always voices saying “don’t ask the difficult questions.”
But it’s essential for Europe – and for Britain – that we do because there are three major challenges confronting us today.
First, the problems in the Eurozone are driving fundamental change in Europe.
Second, there is a crisis of European competitiveness, as other nations across the world soar ahead. And third, there is a gap between the EU and its citizens which has grown dramatically in recent years. And which represents a lack of democratic accountability and consent that is – yes – felt particularly acutely in Britain.

For once it was Cameron as Thatcher, not Cameron as Blair.

It‘s a canny move. It might well have for the moment shot the UKIP fox, which had been threatening to bite at Tory heels – though I suspect that puttting a bet on predicting Nigel Farage’s political demise would not be the wisest of moves.Indeed one could argue that Cameron’s offer has been forced on him by the impact of Farage And UKIP. However Dave has left Labour in complete disarray. As for the Liberal Democrats, who in 2007 were supporting a referendum, they are busily backpedalling, calling the idea unhelpful.

This must be sweet music to Tory ears – those champions of the “people” Clegg and Milliband boxing themselves into a corner and saying actually we, the great and the good, not the public, should decide these matters.

The fact that political has beens like Mandelson, Clarke and Heseltine are against a referendum is clearly a badge of honour considering that all three were once fervent advocates of joining the Euro. Add the French and President Obama to the mix and it must be drinks all round.

The only voice that matters in all this is the one that emanates from Berlin and Cameron must be pleased that Angela Merkel is not going negative on the idea of having a second look at the power relationship between the EU and member states.

Maybe, just maybe, Dave might have a bit of backbone after all……

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Labour Hopes That In 2015 UK Will Follow USA In Electing Lunatics To Run Asylum

A few weeks ago a majority of Americans voted to put the lunatics in charge of the asylum. That is essentially what Matt Welch was saying in a rather sombre piece at Reason – an article so depressing it ought to have had a health warning attached.

If elections are up-or-down assessments of politicians’ job performance, then this was a vote in favor of trillion-dollar annual deficits, bailout economics, and failing the minimum competence test of passing an annual budget. Federal policy for four years has produced lousy short-term results for the price of long-term insolvency, and now the characters responsible for this misgovernance have been given a pat on the head.

That’s right, despite Sarah Palin’s uncannily perceptive prediction in 2008, the USA wants more Styrofoam columns…..

So, just because Milliband and Balls are being constantly mocked in many of the public prints for their infantile money grows on trees rhetoric against public spending cuts, don’t imagine that our own band of lunatics cannot possibly party their way to power here in the UK in 2015….

Time to take to the hills?

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Phone Hacking And The Police Under The Labour Government – A Question Still Unanswered?

As Alistair Thompson points out the biggest mystery behind the phone hacking scandal that spawned the Leveson Inquiry is why the police and the Blair/Brown Labour government turned a blind eye to this illegal activity. Yet this is a question still largely unanswered by the Leveson Report – and, of course, ignored by Ed Milliband, Ed Balls and Tom Watson who were very close to the levers of power in those Blair/Brown years.

Could it be that from 1996 to 2010 Rupert Murdoch supported the Labour party?

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