225 Responses to WEEKEND OPEN THREAD…

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  1. EnglandExpects says:
    March 21, 2016 at 10:40 am

    The CBI is not a source of dispassionate, serious research about the economy. Even the BBC website report points out that once you get beyond 5 years, the UK may do better by being OUT of the EU. This is not the message from its own commissioned research that the CBI wants us to hear!

    Average annual GDP growth forecasts (PWC research for for CBI)
    2016-2020 2021-2025 2026-2030
    Britain remains 2.3% 2.3% 2.3%
    FTA scenario 1.5% 2.7% 2.3%
    WTO scenario 0.9% 2.6% 2.4%

    In any case, anyone who thinks that they can forecast economic growth with any precision is a charlatan.

    Carolyn Fairbairn ex BBC now CBI is a good example of the New Elite that dominates positions of influence in the UK. Currently they are all colluding to keep us in the EU. I hope ‘johnny public’ sees through them when the EU referendum takes place, and their Project Fear fails, in order to show that the democracy can occasionally triumph over nepotism. The CBI does not represent the interests of the smaller businesses that provide the majority of employment and economic growth in the UK.
    The New Elite often has a New Labour background. Other examples are Helen Ghosh at the National Trust (ex civil servant and cabinet office adviser under Blair), her predecessor was another female New Labour apparatchik. So many women with New Labour backgrounds are still running the ever expanding quangocracy that Cameron promised to slim down. Is the ubiquitous Dame Suzi Leather still on the gravy-train?

       5 likes

    • Grant says:
      March 21, 2016 at 11:22 am

      Cameron has done nothing to replace the Labour “place people” . I think Cameron is a Labour plant !

         4 likes

    • GCooper says:
      March 21, 2016 at 11:47 am

      You’ve put your finger on a serious problem there, England Expects. This country now has an establishment every bit as ossified and autocratic as that which the Left likes to pretend it rebels against. And at the very heart of it is the revolving door of largely air-headed BBC management types. Ghosh was a good call, BTW. She is proving to be a as much of a complete disaster at the NT as she was everywhere else.

         4 likes

  2. Thatcherrevolutionary says:
    March 21, 2016 at 10:50 am

    After discussions in the pub at the weekend, the topic of Spring/Summer breaks had come up. I had indicated that I hadnt been in Paris since early 2000’s and didn’t fancy Europe at all, and would have to be mentally ill to want to go to Turkey, Morrocco, Tunisia or Greece/Cyprus.
    All 6 others in our group were all of the same mindset, thinking breaks within the UK, Tenerife as it was least enriched, or the USA. Iceland also seems now to be a choice for short breaks.
    If our group is in anyway indicative, this must be financial meltdown for European tourism?

       9 likes

    • G.W.F. says:
      March 21, 2016 at 10:57 am

      Agree TS. Add to this discussions with many of my US friends who indicate a reluctance to visit the UK – unpunished child rapes, violence against infidels, no protection from the police, welcome mat for potential terrorists and cities which were once places of tourist attraction reduced to third world slums,

         8 likes

    • Sir_Arthur_Strebe-Grebling says:
      March 21, 2016 at 12:00 pm

      I feel just the same about going to London, another foreign place. Of course the bBBC thinks it is the centre of the universe.

         4 likes

      • Grant says:
        March 21, 2016 at 12:39 pm

        I avoid London like the plague but, whenever I visit UK, I have to change planes at Gatwick and feel like an alien in my own country.

           4 likes

  3. scribblingscribe says:
    March 21, 2016 at 11:12 am

    Amazing. OMG! How grateful I am to the BBC for sharing …

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35843991

    Who’d have thunk it. There was actually a Muslim, yes a Muslim, in the UK in the first Elizabethan period. I know. Shocked? I could have rubbed myself down with the New Statesman.

    Well thank you wondrous BBC. You are an education.

    I now look forward to pieces about the first Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists etc in our country … odd, no signs of that, so wonder why they wasted web space about a couple of Muslims in Britain all those years ago.

       8 likes

    • Grant says:
      March 21, 2016 at 11:34 am

      scribbling, the BBC has become a parody of itself . The problem is that they are still influential with some unthinking people in the UK and trusted by many overseas. Next news story ” Queen Elizabeth 1 was a closet muslim “.

         6 likes

    • Geoff says:
      March 21, 2016 at 1:10 pm

      Oh come on everyone knows that, the market place in the recent BBC Tudor Farm program was awash with them, oh hang on…

         7 likes

    • Aborigine Londoner says:
      March 21, 2016 at 6:36 pm

      Don’t forget it worked both ways and Englishmen were flocking to become Muslims according to that article.

      “Nor were such conversions one-way. Hundreds of Elizabethan men and women travelled into Muslim lands in search of their fortune, and many converted – some forcibly, but others willingly – to Islam. They included the Norfolk merchant Samson Rowlie, who had been captured by Turkish pirates off Algiers in 1577, where he was imprisoned, castrated and converted to Islam.”

      Unfortunately al-Beeb forgot to say that cut out Samson Rowlie’s tongue and made him deaf after cutting his balls off. I doubt he could really say much about his ‘conversion’ to Islam.

         1 likes

  4. Dover Sentry says:
    March 21, 2016 at 1:32 pm

    Once again, I’ve been reliably informed via BBC sources that their Saint Bob of Geldof is still thinking about housing Syrian refugees in his multiple homes.
    Today is Monday, and Saint Bob feels passionate about Mondays. Tomorrow will be a better day to fulfill his promise to the world.

    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/12/so-bob-geldof-where-are-your-refugees/

    “”Sir Bob Geldof offered to house not one, not two, but three families in order to help with the refugee crisis. Speaking in September, the Band Aid founder blasted the government’s response as an ‘absolute sickening disgrace’ and said he was prepared to take three families immediately:

    ‘I’m prepared – I’m lucky, I’ve a place in Kent and a flat in London – me and (partner) Jeanne would be prepared to take three families immediately in our place in Kent and a family in our flat in London, immediately, and put them up until such time as they can get going and get a purchase on their future.””

       2 likes

    • Nibor says:
      March 21, 2016 at 1:44 pm

      Harry Homeless is also willing to let a Syrian family take his accommodation . It’s a new cardboard box this week under the flyover with good views of the recycling centre .

         1 likes

  5. Framer says:
    March 21, 2016 at 6:53 pm

    From BBC website on Tudor Muslims in England
    “One of them, known only as Chinano, is the first known Muslim to convert to English Protestantism. He was baptised at St Katharine’s Church near the Tower of London, where he took the name William Hawkins, and insisted that “if there were not a God in England, there was none nowhere”.
    Perhaps he meant it and relished his new Anglican identity, or he knew what to say to his new English masters. Whatever the truth, like many of his fellow Turks he quickly disappeared into London’s bustling life, taking with him his true religious beliefs. How sincere Chinano’s conversion was may never be known, but he was not alone, and others like him were clearly keen to make a living in diverse urban occupations.”
    Six qualifications required by the BBC writer to ram home the message nobody converts to Christianity from Islam voluntarily.

       2 likes

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