UK Politics II

[Daeric]

Alan and Ann Keen, the Labour MPs nicknamed "Mr and Mrs Expenses", face the repossession of the house they have designated as their main home with the Commons authorities because it appears to be unoccupied.

Although the couple's family home is only 10 miles and a 30-minute commute from Westminster, they claimed almost £39,000 between them from the taxpayer last year to run a flat in central London.

The threat of repossession will raise new question marks over the Keens' expenses claims because MPs are supposed to spend the majority of their time at the property they have told the authorities is their main home.

Yesterday, however, Hounslow Council said that the Keens' house in Brentford, west London, appeared to have been empty since last November. The building is understood to have fallen into disrepair, with windows boarded up and building materials filling the garden. The council said it had written to the couple asking them how they intended to bring the property back into use. It added: "As with all such cases, they now have one month to respond."

The article

I'm probably expecting abit much, but come on if your going to be corrupt about your expenses at least try to do it competly. If you claim for an unneeded second house try to at least to give the illusion your living in it.

[Lyanna Stark]

The article

I'm probably expecting abit much, but come on if your going to be corrupt about your expenses at least try to do it competly. If you claim for an unneeded second house try to at least to give the illusion your living in it.

Have hope. Maybe they can get help under the repossession scheme. :P

[Paddy]

Hurry the day that the Tories get back in and BNP voters drift back to Labour.

I know there was a discussion of this before, but I was always under the impression that the BNP were getting support from people who would consider themselves closer to the Tories than Labour.

There was a documentary on Sky 3 last night called "BNP Wives" and the all party members that I saw them talk to were very open about their ideals being right-wing and about how they believed that the Left was responsible for all of the issues that they were protesting against.

Granted that is the party membership and not the voters, but still, I would find it extremely odd to discover that the main of their support would sympathise with Labour more than the Conservatives.

Also, lets say you're right about the sympathies of BNP voters; why would a Tory government make these people go back to supporting Labour again?

Oh and about that documentary... anybody who doubts that the BNP are actually a party of racists should check it out. I only saw a little part of it, but what I did see was a group of women BNP members protesting plans to build a mosque and selling their newspaper. One of the women was trying to convince a passerby saying "You wouldn't want one of these built 'round here, would ya?" and when the passerby said they wouldn't mind, she said more quietly "You will mind when one of them bleeding rapes your daughter."

I found the video of the documentary here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6145793487676011977. The bit I'm talking about occurs from 22mins in.

[Night Watchman]

I found the video of the documentary here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6145793487676011977. The bit I'm talking about occurs from 22mins in.

I watched the bit you suggested. Thos racist pigs made me laugh, and then despair. They're disgusting.

[Daeric]

Also, lets say you're right about the sympathies of BNP voters; why would a Tory government make these people go back to supporting Labour again?

The way I understand it Paddy, is that the belief is that Labour is losing touch with its core principles and with that its core voting block, the less well off working man. With what seems increasingly likely that Labour loses the belief is that they will go back to a degree to what made them so these principles and that should make them regain some of the votes who left for the BNP who were overlooking the many flaws of that party and its main members for what they percieved as policies designed to help them.

[Zoë Sumra]

Alan and Ann Keen's "main home" has been occupied by squatters.

Permit me a: :rofl:

[Lyanna Stark]

Bwahahahahaha!!!

Maybe they should have kept their oh so precious second home under closer surveillance. Or at least picked up the mail every now and then.

[MinDonner]

And some good news comes out of the government's general incompetence - ID card scheme dying on its arse.

[Chaldanya]

This made me chuckle on the way in today.

What isn't so funny is the amount of money spent on this ridiculous scheme before deciding that a) it won't work, b) most of the population don't want it and c) even if it did work and the population did want it the government still couldn't keep the data safe or accurate.

N

[Hereward]

I'm still trying to grasp the whole point of the compulsory identity card for foreigners. How are the police or an employer going to decide someone is a foreigner and therefore required to carry the card? What's to stop the person claiming to be a British citizen and therefore not required to have one? I dare an employer to risk ending up in court by insisting someone looks a bit swarthy foreign, to be British. Am I missing something? :unsure:

Edit: I enjoyed salt-of-the-earth Alan Johnson claiming on Radio yesterday that black is white the government hadn't made a u-turn as there had never been any intention to make ID cards compulsory.

[MinDonner]

I'm still trying to grasp the whole point of the compulsory identity card for foreigners. How are the police or an employer going to decide someone is a foreigner and therefore required to carry the card? What's to stop the person claiming to be a British citizen and therefore not required to have one? I dare an employer to risk ending up in court by insisting someone looks a bit swarthy foreign, to be British. Am I missing something? :unsure:

Filthy Swedes like yourself can easily be recognised by their pale skin Communist garb Ikea furniture backpacks worn on both shoulders. Get back to Sweden and enrich your own culture!

[Chaldanya]

Get back to Sweden and enrich your own culture! With education given to you by good Englishmen and sometimes, in very limited circumstances women

There. Fixed it for you...

N

[MinDonner]

There. Fixed it for you...

N

Silence, wench, the men are talking. :P

[Hereward]

I'm appalled to discover that even Mother Nature is a male chauvinist pig. Now, not only do we get woken up to make coffee for the "breadwinner" of the family, but it gives us a heart attack when we do so. :mad:

[Chaldanya]

Silence, wench, the men are talking love the sound of their own voices and won't shut up for love nor money.

Fixed it again for you. If you didn't keep making mistakes that a lowly woman could fix I could be silent as my gender dictates.

N

[Usotsuki]

Foreigners can easily be distinguished from the trueborn Briton thanks to their slumping posture, quivering lips, sloping foreheads, webbed feet, suspiciously whitened teeth and residual tails.

There is thus no need for an identity card except possibly in East Anglia where residual tails and webbed feet are an all too common occurrence due to either the local enthusiasm for incest or repeated incursions by the Dutch.

[mormont]

And some good news comes out of the government's general incompetence - ID card scheme dying on its arse.

I'll cheer when the National Identity Register - which was, in the end, the main aim of the scheme and the thing that the government actually wanted out of this - is dumped. That day, alas, is not upon us.

[Lyanna Stark]

I'm still trying to grasp the whole point of the compulsory identity card for foreigners. How are the police or an employer going to decide someone is a foreigner and therefore required to carry the card? What's to stop the person claiming to be a British citizen and therefore not required to have one? I dare an employer to risk ending up in court by insisting someone looks a bit swarthy foreign, to be British. Am I missing something? :unsure:

Easy answer, mon alias, ask Nick Griffin. He has the majick skillz needed to weed out Those In Need of Deportation Immigrants from the Proper Brits and Decendants of the Norse. :P

In other news, Our favourite Dark Lord Lord Mandelson is apparently embroiled in a "bitter row" with none other than George Osborne. One wonders, Mandelson being the Sauron of politics, does that make Osborne the Steward of Gondor, i.e. Denethor, and will he in that case burn himself alive anytime soon?

[Vestrit]

Fixed it again for you. If you didn't keep making mistakes that a lowly woman could fix I could be silent as my gender dictates.

N

whoever you are, you're doing a pretty good job of impersonating her

[williamjm]

In other news, Our favourite Dark Lord Lord Mandelson is apparently embroiled in a "bitter row" with none other than George Osborne. One wonders, Mandelson being the Sauron of politics, does that make Osborne the Steward of Gondor, i.e. Denethor, and will he in that case burn himself alive anytime soon?

I think Gordon Brown is maybe a bit more like Denethor, slowly going mad as he realises he has no power to control his situation and everything he worked for is about to fall apart. The only problem with this analogy is that it would imply David Cameron was Aragorn coming to take his throne from him, and comparing Cameron and Aragorn just doesn't sound right at all.

On a similar note, Boris Johnson is surely Pippin, the clumsy foolish one who keeps getting into trouble but somehow ends up in the right place at the right time, without anyone (even him) being quite sure how he managed it.

I did attempt to figure out who Grima Wormtongue would be in British Politics, but the number of potential choices was overwhelming.