´óÏó´«Ã½

Given your kerfuffle with the 'Policy Exchange', I hope you will be giving a similar level of 'due diligence' and forensic examination of the CC report into the 'Smith Institute' ???

winter gas prices up 60% yet the wholesale price is sinking like a stone? We should have 90 days storage capacity in the uk but we don't because the govt don't think it important. However european energy firms will be buying the gas at the low summer prices storing it [because they have the capacity] then selling it to us in the winter at the higher price.

the govt keeps saying there is nothing they can do about high energy prices because its global price action yada yada. For some reason, unlike nearly every other major country, the uk govt ignore summer storage and so leave the british people to at the mercy of european energy companies and to pay more than necessary.

THIRD SECTOR: WHAT'S THAT THEN?

Some time ago there was a CC investigation into RM Plc. Now the CC's report is no longer on their site. It seems that in some cases, the CC's reports are removed after a while and I'm not entirely sure of the legitimacy of the CC's logic (in all cases) when they do so. They make an efffort to protect investigated parties where appropriate, but if their reports list *any* irregularity (as they did in the above case), why remove the report I ask?

Furthermore, the new Charities Act 2006 seems to bring a lot more activities under this 'Third Sector' umbrella. So much more in fact, that it left me feeling, well... just that little bit more jaded.

Have a look at 2(2) - it seems to cover quite a bit doesn't it? I'm surprised they didn't just go through ALL the Whitehall departments and list them here (or is that just me being unkind/over-imaginative/paranoid?).

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

On Obama I think he was losing domestic support as people implied he was playing to the world stage rather than home. Still a shame.

Glad that Chambers lost his appeal. I was surprised but it would have been a disaster for athletics.

With Glasgow East I would like to know whether the votes that are sliding away are likely to return? Is the "genetic" factor shattered.

I am also assuming that while not yet another catastrophe Labour must be thinking about "background issues" at the conference - or brassing it out until they lose the next election.

On Glasgow East it would be great to have some coverage of the two front runners: Curran (M) and Mason.

Ideally interviews - on the 93 year-old hero vs her 67 year-old Labour seconder if there's nothing juicier, but following them on the campaign trail would be interesting.

Given yesterday's note from Michael re the Tories, why not cover one of the other minor parties like the Greens and what they're doing?

This is of course the second year they will have 'rewritten the fiscal rules'? The last Budget postponed by a year the planned move to the new International Financial Reporting Standards required by the EU which would have meant that all the PFI 'off balance sheet' borrowing would now have to be properly counted for as well:[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] "Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first practise to deceive!" ('Marmion', Sir Walter Scott 1808) To explain the implications you will need Paul Mason but also perhaps: eg Vince Cable MP; John McFall MP; Martin Weale of the National Institute; or David Heald?

Coordinates for Professor David Heald of Aberdeen University and Professor Allyson Pollock of Edinburgh University who might
help us understand your fiscal rules story:

this is the 'broken/unsuitable' HM Treasury link (sic) mentioned in post #7 Enjoy ...... (until the bubble bursts!) [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]

I would be interested to see more about the Government sneaking through final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty a day or so ago while an appeal was pending, and more on reports that the Austrian coalition government has collapsed over the "referendum on Lisbon" issue.
These are hugely important political questions for all of us in Europe and I am astonished that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ ignores them.

Michael has a nice new suit for Glasgow hpe he wears it tonight !

neilrobertson (#9)

MAybe it would be acceptable if you simply named the article or report and let us go and find it for ourselves?

Could someone ask Curran (M) whether John Michie received a fee or other expenses?

When her election expenses are filed we may find out for sure, but that will be long after the last ballot has been cast.

still no thurs newsnight uploaded?

Re #14 bookhimdano

If you have Real Player installed, you can watch the London Newsnight at the following URL. It worked for me this morning to watch Thursday's edition:

/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/od/bbc2/nb/rm/video/newsnight_nb.ram

Brownedov - what on earth makes you think that the published Scottish Labour election expenses will bear any relation to their actual expenses?

Re #16 DrKF77

I accept it will likely be a long and tortuous process along the lines of Bendy Wendy's leadership fund but yes, I do think it will come out eventually with the aid of FOI and interest from the hacks because a "star" is involved.

Re #10 deadtired
"I would be interested to see more about the Government sneaking through final ratification of the Lisbon Treaty"

Agreed - looks like NuLabour's "bad news day" ethos still thrives. Possibly being saved for after Glasgow East or is it just being buried?

'CHIMP' BITES POLICEMAN (something else)

Now 'the group' have attacked (and bitten) the police. This is exactly what a bunch of chimps might do (males only – they don't embrace the cultural travesty that incites rowdy-ism in the female, in chimp-world). In young human males, the animal is barely covered by a veneer of cultural sophistication. They need lots of diversionary activity (equivalent to tyres and stuff to climb and bang on) to lower the 'pressure' of maleness. Then you stand some chance of civilising them. The few male politicians who know the truth of this, have sold out their kind to oppression and prison. If they admitted their past mind-set and had the wit to harness that knowledge: instead of 'prison works' we might enjoy 'parliament works' - at least in terms of crime. Human pretence that we are anything more than 'The Ape Confused by Language' is yet another lie within which we struggle – and fail – to advance as a species. 'Ape's inhumanity to ape' will continue until we admit that most of our motivation is animal and we are not (yet?) human enough to make a decent fist of life. We are the collective Global Village Idiot.

Further to post #12: the broken link is to the HM Treasury site and in particular the
media release dated 26 June 2008 from
The Financial Reporting Advisory Board -
whose 11th board report warned that
'the implementation of IFRS, now scheduled for 2009-10, should not be permitted to slip'
- after having been postponed for a year in the 2008 Budget. The PFI clock's still ticking!

ANARCHISM (C/O THE SI) COMING TO A COMMUNITY LIKE YOURS - SOON

barrie (#19) The only way we'll ever be able to improve behaviour en mass is via better breeding en masse.

Even if we knew how to improve behaviour through better training, the days are rapidly approaching when numerically/proportionately we just won't have enough able people to effectively manage the ever growing numbers who are (probably innately anyway) demonstrably unmanageable.

Elsewhere, cultures adapt to their lot - ALAS.

So long as we naively capitulate to the rosy delusions of political correctness and vilify authority as fascism, this is inevitable - and that's precisely the objective of Political Correctness (aka Cultural Marxism) i.e demographic dysgenesis, i.e. the removal of the ruling class.

barrie, do you write the cryptic clues for the Times crossword?
I sometimes wonder!

DO YOU HAVE A CUNNING PLAN JJ?

Or is it impossible? Does it need an enlightened dictator? Is that you? Surely it is a truism that the only really stable and altruistic humans don't aspire to domnate others? Catch 22? Or have I missed something?
Spell it all out please - I am a bear of small brain. How do tribal 'stone-age' groups - static for thousands of years in South America - fit in? Small is beautiful/sustainable?

CROCK AND YAWN

Oldunelm (#22) Barrie's from that lmost fading generation which once prized effort and initiative rather than entitlement and impulsivity.

Dysgenesis explains a lot here.

Loved the New Labour (SI) leitmotif by the way:

NEVER A CROSS WORD

Blimey oldunelm, that is rich coming from an anagram for 'loud men'. I'm more craptic than cryptic with aspirations to styptic in view of the bleeding state of the nation.
I am no more obscure that '42'. (Now that IS cryptic.) Anyway - thanks for the name check. (;o)

MISS-POKE

Sorry oldunelm - delete 'loud men' and insert 'dull omen'. I made a miss poke when inserting into the anagram box!

Although capable of tool use, empathic to a degree disquieting to human thought, similarly disquieting in its grasp of language and even capable, perhaps, of laughter, the chimpanzee remains an aggressively territorial animal in many respects.

Tending to aggregate in groups, they will defend, aggressively, a territory they have come to regard as their own.

I am unsure as to their capacity for euphemism, though.

ON BEING HAD

Barrie (#23) Command economies have a habit of ending up with 'enlightened dictators' (except they call them 'premiers' or such like). Oddly, they do all seem to be 'very bad people' from liberal-democrat' observers' perspectives but not to their own people. Newsnight keep reminding us of just how nasty these regimes are, and I for one am most grateful.

Hitler was an 'enlightened dictator'. He was democratially elected on a 'let's get rid of liberal-democracy (aka the Comintern aka SI)' ticket when they were actively undermining his nascent nation state. But clearly he was also a very bad (paranoid?) man as he also said some unforgiveable things about capitalists/internationalsts (as did those 'tyrants' Stalin and Ahmadinejad).

As to who it should be, well, I guess I'm far too jaded. I hatched a cunning plan from within one Westminster 'silo' nearly 20 years ago and have wathed them making pigs' ears of it everywhere ever since. They don't appear to be able to understand English (or logic/science) and just do as they're told. They always want to interpret/translate into something else. Initially I made the mistake of thinking they were aliens, now I know they just can't get the staff (I think it's somethng to do with their believing they have to put everything they're taught 'into their own words' or they'll be called plagiarists or fascists (just following orders).

Only moderator-free (enlightened) dictators have any hope of sorting all this out. I note that China's doing rather well as the largest Stalinist state on the planet. Who won the cold war? China's 10x the size of Russia demographically and she regarded the latter as revisionist from the death of Stalin onwards (and look what happened in '89). It will go from strength to strength given that she practices eugenics in the interests of its people - far better than we do. Meanwhile we will continue to deteriorate with all our supermarket economics of free-choice and we won't have a duty to anyone but ourselves.

We think we haven't been 'had' because we go by feelings rather than facts.

It's a girl thing.