OneGuyFromBarlick

And in both cases the driving force is the leasers wanting power over others and accumulation of wealth.

A word I haven't heard before - someone on the Today programme calling his smartphone a `cleverphone'. He also referred to `all this digitality'.

Stiglitz, under the heading 'The evisceration of our democracy' quotes Paul Krugman:
"Extreme concentration of wealth is incompatible with real democracy. Can anyone seriously deny that our political system is being warped by the influence of Big Money and that this warping is getting worse as the wealth of the few grows ever larger?"

Tony Blair to John Mc Ternan Tony Blair's chief enforcer. (No me neither.)

People are complaining that you are roughing up the back benchers too much. You just need to break one leg, not both legs.

He kept a low profile and left a trail of destruction behind him. See this LINK.

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”
― Ayn Rand

From last night's Question Time:

"We pay all the appropriate taxes in any jurisdiction we operate in" Amazon replying to criticisms of tax avoidance. Classic weasel words. Mind you, we set the rules, why not close the loopholes?

I am grateful for Wedgie Benn reminding me this morning of something Harold Macmillan said in his 1938 book 'The Middle Way'. He was talking about the rise of the multi national companies and globalisation of capital and trade. Remember, this was over 75 years ago but even more true now than it was then. On a day when Ed Milliband is advocating improvements in the minimum wage it makes one realise how long this idea has been around.
“We have lived so long at the mercy of uncontrolled economic forces that we have become sceptical about any plan for human emancipation. Such a radical and deliberate reorganisation of our economic life would enable us, out of increased wealth production, to establish an irreducible minimum standard which might be progressively raised to one of comfort and security.”

"You don't have to pay at the point of use... therefore it is not costing you any money.

SCG.

Reasons for not voting Labour - No 1.

"We will have to listen more carefully" Harriet Harman. (We said that in 1997 dear!)

"The good news for Nick Clegg is he's still leader of his party. The bad news is his party no longer exists. "



Dennis Skinner.

Good old Dennis... Unfortunately, like many of Dennis' sayings. it's very close to the truth.

Boris the buffoon when asked if Clegg was 'toast'. Future PM - I don't think so.

"Yes yes ...er er er er no no er er er er possibly er er who cares er er er none of my business"

"Thankfully, the crisis has prompted a major course correction—with the understanding that the true role of the financial sector is to serve, not to rule, the economy. "
Christine Lagarde at a meeting on 'Inclusive Capitalism' yesterday.

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it - Margaret Thatcher

Coroner -

"A perception of collusion" was created by officers sitting together in a room for hours writing up their accounts of the incident.

A perceptive Coroner.....

QUOTATION FROM BACK BENCH DIARIES OF RICHARD CROSSMAN (PAGE 36)

“One of the difficulties with politics is that politicians are shocked by those who are really prepared to let their thinking reach any conclusion. 'Political thinking' consists on deciding the conclusion first, and than finding good evidence for it. An open mind is considered irresponsible – and perhaps it really is.”

" 'Political thinking' consists on deciding the conclusion first, and than finding good evidence for it"

For 'political thinking' read 'planning decisions' , and High Court judgments.

Indeed.....

Quote from BBC News this morning - regarding the father of the Jihadist pictured recently with a Kalshnikov, urging others to join him with ISIS in the Middle East..

"His son has been failed by the government's 'Prevent' strategy."

Well - that's one way of looking at the situation.

Geoff Boycott's two bits of advice on the Today radio programme this morning:
"Bat better, bowl better and you'll win matches"
and
"There is no `I' in `team'"

I heard him say that as well. Whilst I hold no brief for Boycott (I have a long memory....) he does have a habit of getting to the point!
"Scotland is a vile country, though God made it, but we must remember that he made it for Scotsmen, and comparisons are odious, but God also made Hell" (Samuel Johnson.)
A typical example of how London views Scotland. For that matter anything North of Watford! See the devolution debate.

"Mo no-show but Jodie on the, erm, podie:"

Naff headline re Commonwealth Games, from the BBC. Jodie won the Triathlon.
Not half as naff as the opening ceremony. Oh dear - what a cringer.

Francis (`Frank') T. Buckland writing in a preface in 1866 to one of his books on natural history...

"In our leisure moments, when the business of the day is over, we can hardly walk along London streets - and certainly not along the hedge-rows and fields of the country, or the wave-washed shore of the ocean - without finding at almost every step something or other worthy of observation; may-be our specimen is, and probably will be, common enough, yet if it be rightly examined it will be found to possess great interest, and to have an unwritten history of its own, which it should be our pleasure to interpret.

"There is nothing so wearisome, or destructive to the human mind, as the disease called "Nothing to do": there is always and everywhere something to be done; there are no two places in this world exactly alike in their products, animal, vegetable or mineral and the objects you do not find in one place you will find in another.

"If the eyes be instructed and trained to observe what is brought before their gaze, the mind is employed, and the feeling of wearisome passes off: one fact follows another; a new observation may be tacked onto an old observation; the result being not only pleasure in discovery, but pleasure in recollecting and recording."
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Frank Buckland was the son of William Buckland, one of the great early geologists. It's worth reading Frank's Wikipedia page...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Trevelyan_Buckland