大象传媒

Could we for once not have to be afflicted with a typical Newsnight attack on a politican and actually discuss some real news?.

I would like to hear more on the Kosovo question, the spectre of a Nationalist becoming leader of Serbia has a much bigger impact on us all than the latest idiot from a political party getting caught out.

The fact that the EU jumped the gun with it's declaration about Kosovo independence is going to cause problems for all of us, what one earth where they thinking?, Serbia may very well have voted for a modorate who wish to join the EU, now the exact opposite looks likely, oh yes!, and Russia will have an ally in Europes own backyard!.

Come on Newsnight start reporting the news not the latest instalment of the sitcom that is British politics.

There is nothing new about MPs fiddling their expenses. I know a, now retired, Labour MP of 20 years who 'employed' his wife, son and daughter none of whom did anything, all the constituency work was carried out by an underpaid secretary. I knew the family even before he became an MP and he got every'freebie' going that's what they called the perks. Conway seemed particularly inept, but it is high time they all had to account for all their expenses. What other job can you get with no experience, no qualification and never having had a job in the real world. In business my husband had to account for all his expenses and they should too. Money for another house and able to pocket all the profit, travel, council tax etc. it beggars belief and is high time it was stopped.

am sure mr conway is not the first or last MP to be involved in this
misuse of public funds.
transparency and accountability
is part and parcel of public office.
MP can spend 拢250 a day without having to show receipt/proof as part of their "perks" ... does this not encourage fraudulent use of public funds.
If MP/politicians are to regain public trust they must be open in their everyday lifestyles...ie anywhere in public. They elect to be public property and they must remain so. Why even in their parliamentary
sessions we can all see what value we are getting for our money. With some asleep in the back benches.
Wish I was a cameraman !

And now we will be duplicating them again in EUROLAND.

Do we need all these people to make laws that are obsolete the day they become law...or can never be policed/enforced....as per fox hunting.
regards
de castro

Congratulations Joe - the only problem is that the 大象传媒's only way of justifying it's existence is to attack British politicians, and further erode confidence in the political system.

The REAL question that should be asked on Newsnight is are arrogant Oxbridge types like Paxman and Humphries, who do not believe in democracy, really worth their over-inflated salaries (much more than MPs get paid) and when are we going to see their expenses published - after all they are paid through the licence fee, which is taxpayers money!

Today's report by the Commons Select Committee overseeing the security services on the threat to GCHQ and Aldermaston during last year's floods raises in my mind a lot of questions about the adequacy of the contingency planning review carried out by Douglas Alexander MP a couple of years back when he was a Cabinet Office Minister ..... but Channel 4
news reported tonight that D Notice measures were taken against them at the time when they tried to report!

Michael Pollon's comments are long overdue. Western eating habits are now seriously bad.

But he's no expert either! Not everything eaten by our grandparents was good for them. There are some useful foods in the modern world. And they aren't all only found in markets and under the name of organic farming - good though these may be.

The Western world doesn't have to be blown apart by terrorists. It's self destructing on its own.

Looks like it will be a good show.

Re The Derek Conway affair. Small family businesses, particularly husband and wife companies are tightly regulated by HM Revenue and Customs to ensure the maximum tax take from their income. Indeed the law is about to be changed to tighten the rules yet further. Moreover, if judged to be operating outside of the regulations, they must pay back all monies plus a heavy fine on top. Yet it appears that MP鈥檚 can misappropriate public funds with impunity amongst their relatives and if found out pay only a small proportion back with no mention of a fine.

The fluffy rabbit had a visible Hamleys label on it

When the cost of food is more than the price..we know the difference is made up with psychiatric effects...

Eg...Horseradish "the ideal accompianment" ...who want's to be accompianied by an idealist retentive ..expressing middle income prejudice feedback from a dislocated reflex exertion...???

But the spreadeagle funding means the more people complain about the shrink effects..the cheaper the actual food product gets but the more money the biotech companies get...

Someday soon... entire biotech companies will be taken over by complete staff systems.... rather than school sites taken over by biotech offices..

TLC BCD... young family women should be liberated from psychiatric regimes..

I know people are killing each other in the world and MP's are all a bit bent but what i want to know is...who bagged the fluffy bunny after filming? was it Jeremy?

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These words sum up Michael Pollan鈥檚 In Defence of Food. Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations..."

Michael Pollan is an idiot. Human life expectancy is now longer than it has ever been. We die of diseases we never got in the past nearly as often such as cancer and heart disease because we died of other diseases resulting from among other things poor nutrition or tainted food (so called "naturally grown organic foods" are IMO very dangerous and risky compared to food processed with chemical preservatives because they are more likely to contain mold and bacteria.)

Human beings need ten essential amino acids in the same meal and the only foods which have them all when not eaten in careful combinations with other foods are meats, fish, poultry, and other animal products like milk, cheese and eggs. Plants have mostly carbohydrates which are worthless. Their only value consists of vitamins and minerals and fiber bulk for digestion. The one valuable nutritional asset of some plants is essential oils which can also be gotten from some fish. My aunt who just died at 98 1/2 years old lived her last two years on a diet entirely of cottage cheese and vitamin pills. Every time she went into a hospital or nursing home for some infection and recouperation and they fed her a "balanced diet" including vegetables, she came home weaker than she went in. Meat is the best food you can eat because it most resembles what the functional elements of your body are made out of, protien in the enzymes, hormones, and organelles manufactured from essential amino acids according to instructions from your RNA. These are the building blocks of our cells. The vegamania hype is a political scam invented by animal rights wackos. My neighbor's daughter was a vegan. She had a miscarriage and now has breast cancer. Her body couldn't build the tissue to develop an embryo into a viable healthy baby and she couldn't manufacture the self defense mechanisms we have built into our design to destroy cancer cells. She paid a heavy price for listening to people like Michael Pollan. When your body cannot replace no-longer functioning proteins because it does not have all of the necessary amino acids to make new ones, you are dying.

I am not saying weight control is not important or that we should allow ourselves to become obese risking diabetes and heart disease but experience with low carbohydrate diets shows that people lose weight and are healthier than they are on a diet rich in refined grains (especially wheat), refined sugar, and salads. BTW, it is these carbohydrates which cause oversecretion of insulin leading to a constant feeling of hunger due to hypoglycemia and ultimately diabetes and other serious chronic ailments. A life on salads is IMO a self imposed nutritional death sentence.

I reckon a few of the posters on here must be related to MPs. The matter is of great concern to those of us who pay up for the rotten lot of them. I'll bet that a trawl through MPs unaccountable expenses would reveal that many have been working a similar scam on the public. There has been altogether too much media scrutiny of foreign affairs (over which we have no control) in recent years, allowing our MPs to get away with fleecing the voters. I am for more items covering MP expenses frauds. Life here is all pay, pay, pay - and for what?

Derek Conway deserves all that's coming to him but it's a but rich for his sins to be picked over by a well [over?] paid 大象传媒 noisemaker who gets at least a dozen times more than a back bench MP [taxpayers money just like Ross and Norton] another member of the inky trade where expenses are a perk and a serial quangista who has been well paid and honoured for telling other people what to do for years.

MPs should deal with him themselves. You may remember Garry Allighan who was expelled by his fellow members for inserting his fingers in the till but went on to a ditinguished career in [guess what]journalism!

Ex homine, I had one serious attempt to enter parliament in 1983. The boundary commission scuppered me at the last fence. I declared that my wife, a graduate and trained secretary, would be my secretary if I got in: the hours being what they were then it would have been the only way to see her regularly and the money would have made up a bit of the salary cut I would have taken even if it owuldn't have been as big a [say] the other JP. my prosepctive constituents liked the ide two for almost the price of one.

I tend to aggree with Mark as I am old enough to remember 'real' food as a war baby we had to endure 'rationing' which was the best thing that happened to forties babies. No excesses unlike today with diets rich in sugar and salt and everyone got a bit of the cake,'cept there was no cake! I wish we could go back.....

That Silbury Hill report was excellent.