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@Edward Huxley: envy?
Nigel Farage says he made tax offshore mistake
So they don't turn up in the European Parliament when they need to be there to defend British interests, pocket the money and then put it in a tax avoiding trust fund for the kids. Real mould breakers UKIP!
Nigel Farage says he made tax offshore mistake
Nuclear subsidies?
Nigel Farage attacks the "LibLabCon" for all backing expensive AND ineffective renewable energy
The UKIP leader also says that controlling immigration is critical to tackling the jobs and homes crisis.
Londoners will want to know how much they will have to cough up, given the vast amounts that the tax payer has already contributed, and also how much West Ham will be contributing.
http://glaconservatives.co.uk/blog/west-ham-stadium-deal-londoners-deserve-to-know-how-much-theyll-have-to-cough-up/
Boris Johnson defends taxpayer grant to West Ham to help them afford Olympic stadium
Former Labour minister Richard Caborn was critical of the deal: "This is the biggest mistake of the Olympics and lessons should be learned from this. West Ham are basically getting a stadium costing more than £600m for just £15m and a small amount in annual rent [£2m]."
Promoted by the United Kingdom Independence Party, at Lexdrum House, Unit 1, King Charles Business Park, Heathfield, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 6UT
Farage - the key issue is that Britain's contributions to the EU will continue to rise
Click here to comment
Legalise the lot.
Nick Clegg: If you are anti-drugs, you should be pro-legalisation
Stand corrected. Though it doesn't detract from the fact that we could leave the eu tomorrow (which would be nice) but it wouldn't affect our relationship with the ECHR. ps: I'm not a legislator.
Reacting to Abu Qatada's release, Robert Halfon MP says UK should suspend ECHR membership until Court returns to its founding principles
Robert Halfon, Tory MP for Harlow, was speaking to Radio 4's World at One.
Nope, that's the European Court of Justice. Spends its time talking about fish quotas and straight bananas.
Reacting to Abu Qatada's release, Robert Halfon MP says UK should suspend ECHR membership until Court returns to its founding principles
Robert Halfon, Tory MP for Harlow, was speaking to Radio 4's World at One.
So getting evidence by torture is OK as long as it's used against people we don't like.
Reacting to Abu Qatada's release, Robert Halfon MP says UK should suspend ECHR membership until Court returns to its founding principles
Robert Halfon, Tory MP for Harlow, was speaking to Radio 4's World at One.
I agree but the ECHR is not an EU institution.
Reacting to Abu Qatada's release, Robert Halfon MP says UK should suspend ECHR membership until Court returns to its founding principles
Robert Halfon, Tory MP for Harlow, was speaking to Radio 4's World at One.
Bye bye UKIP
Teatime newslinks for Friday 9th December 2011
DAVID CAMERON'S EU VETO What the PM really asked for: "Let’s be clear about this: what David Cameron tried to do in Brussels wasn’t merely to try to safeguard Britain’s financial services. He just attempted to repatriate powers which have already legally been transferred to Europe ...The issue ...
@fred I think you're probably right. A new design should learn from the examples in other countries and apply it to a London context. I do not think that just looking where accidents were, which is Jennie Jones' proposal, would have been enough: we shouldn't wait around for fatalities to happen before taking action. A design guide would provide a template for all junctions so that we can anticipate where accidents are likely to happen.
16 cyclists dead but Tories refuse to debate road safety
Conservatives on the London Assembly today sparked outrage when they refused to debate a call to improve road safety despite the death of 16 cyclists this year. Boris Johnson’s allies, who each earn at least £54,000 a year, walked out of a City Hall meeting, meaning a cross-party call for an urg...
@tommi - It certainly is not the status quo - TfL are remarkably opaque when it comes to revealing raw data, road designs pop out of nowhere after being considered by 'experts' and the LCC are not involved at a design level but are just consultees.
As to the design guide, there are guides, standards and technical manuals but no one place to test good practice in design that can not only be used to design new junctions but reveal the weaknesses in existing ones.
16 cyclists dead but Tories refuse to debate road safety
Conservatives on the London Assembly today sparked outrage when they refused to debate a call to improve road safety despite the death of 16 cyclists this year. Boris Johnson’s allies, who each earn at least £54,000 a year, walked out of a City Hall meeting, meaning a cross-party call for an urg...
I'm astonished that there is an impression that the unanticipated rescheduling of some motions has any effect at all on the improving safety record for cyclists.
If we thought for one millisecond that the absence of the debate today was going to result in the safety record of London's roads getting worse we simply wouldn't have taken the action we took. Quite frankly, the narrow motion that was presented could do with a period of reflection; the motion as presented just requested information from the Mayor- our group wanted action.
The walkout was about democracy, pure and simple. We do not have a majority on the Assembly, we do not seek a majority of the say in the direction of Assembly business. What we are seeking is that 40% of Londoners are not maliciously cut out of a full role of scrutiny of the Mayor. It's about fairness and representation. To disguise it as anything else is simply wrong.
16 cyclists dead but Tories refuse to debate road safety
Conservatives on the London Assembly today sparked outrage when they refused to debate a call to improve road safety despite the death of 16 cyclists this year. Boris Johnson’s allies, who each earn at least £54,000 a year, walked out of a City Hall meeting, meaning a cross-party call for an urg...
We walked out on item 6 where once again the other parties decided to deprive the 40% of Londoners who voted for us a voice. The motion by a member on cycling was the very last debate at item 11. It cannot reasonably be argued that the action was about that issue.
That motion amounted to a collection of freedom of information requests concerning only 10 accident spots. This can still be pursued without a motion. We did not refuse to debate - indeed we proposed an amendment which would have read:
This Assembly deeply regrets the deaths of cyclists on London's road network and wishes to express its condolences for the loss felt by their relatives and friends. We are concerned that, despite a falling accident rate amongst cyclists, more should be done to increase the confidence that cyclists have in the road network and calls on the Mayor to:
Publicly engage with cyclists and the London Cycling Campaign on a review of all future major schemes on the TLRN;
Review the design of the major junctions on the Cycle Superhighways and publish the findings;
Ensure that raw accident data is made publicly available;
Prepare and publish a design guide to inform and instruct all future schemes.
Despite the positive nature of this motion and call for Mayor's action, as opposed to just information, Jennie Jones, whose support it would require, rejected this.
We regret that the members of other parties have decided to fix the democratic process so that only they get to chair major committees, unlike the practice in the House of Commons where such committees are chaired by all parties. And, as a reminder, the London Assembly is a scrutiny body with no executive powers.
16 cyclists dead but Tories refuse to debate road safety
Conservatives on the London Assembly today sparked outrage when they refused to debate a call to improve road safety despite the death of 16 cyclists this year. Boris Johnson’s allies, who each earn at least £54,000 a year, walked out of a City Hall meeting, meaning a cross-party call for an urg...
Experiences from Tower Hamlets, Newham, Hackney and even London suggest that Salford would be very unwise. Democracy is not improved by concentrating power in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
Referendum in Salford next month for directly elected mayor
There is to be a referendum in Salford next month on having a directly elected Mayor. This follows a petition with 9,062 valid signatures, over 5% of the electorate, calling for one. If the referendum approves the proposal then an election for a directly elected Mayor will follow in May. The dri...
What an excellent choice! This guy WORKS!
Mark Bowen selected as the Conservative candidate for Feltham and Heston by-election
By Matthew Barrett Follow Matthew on Twitter. As indicated earlier this evening, the Conservative candidate for the Feltham and Heston by-election due to take place on the 15th December has now been confirmed. Mark Bowen, who fought the seat in 2005 and 2010 - over which period he reduced the L...
The party with the largest eurosceptic membership is the Conservative Party. Some of us think that leaving the EU next Tuesday is not soon enough but we just happen to have views on other things as well. UKIP are a pressure group who, by splitting the eurosceptic vote, are prolonging the agony of our EU membership.
Former Conservative councillor defects to UKIP
Cllr David Potts, a former Conservative councillor on South Tyneside, has joined UKIP. He says: “The Conservative Party is no longer the party I once loved. Modern Tories have sold our country down the river, and seem obsessed with being entirely consumed, both socially and economically, by the ...
If it's not natural, who invented it? Could you also provide a list of those documents and a comparison with the state of the evironment in those countries where capitalism has been expunged.
Anthony Browne: Conservatives must join the debate about the morality of capitalism
If you chose not to take part in a debate, you can’t complain when it doesn’t go your way. It is the reason why I have long urged those who believe in science, aspiration, markets and modernity to engage in environment debates, otherwise they will be won by default by those who don’t believe in ...
Why not have a debate about the morality of the weather.
Anthony Browne: Conservatives must join the debate about the morality of capitalism
If you chose not to take part in a debate, you can’t complain when it doesn’t go your way. It is the reason why I have long urged those who believe in science, aspiration, markets and modernity to engage in environment debates, otherwise they will be won by default by those who don’t believe in ...
It's about the extent to which a two-thirds majority should be required to change legislation.
http://www.venice.coe.int/docs/2011/CDL-AD%282011%29016-E.pdf
Tibor Navracsics: Why Hungary will remain a democracy among the democracies of Europe
Tibor Navracsics is the Deputy Prime Minister of Hungary Is a country democratic if its most senior judges are appointed for life by a President on purely political grounds? Is freedom impaired if only two political parties ever hold power? Is democracy compromised if a country’s electoral syst...
If not now, when? Give us a date.
David Lidington MP: A serious Conservative Party must reject this referendum motion
David Lidington is Minister for Europe. Earlier this year, the European Union Act 2011 became law. This and any future government is now obliged by statute to hold a referendum before it can ratify a new treaty or treaty amendment that transfers powers or competences from this country to the ...
This is all about national vanity. Grassroots sport would gain so much if Government would stop being obsessed about hosting world championships. Government's insistence on the athletics track being retained at the Olympic Stadium is all about hosting the 2017 World Athletics Championship which it is backing to the tune of another £25 million. This means that the stadium is now unattractive to any bidders who may want to give it a sustainable use. The justification for this is that, if they win the bid, this could mean £95 million worth of earnings for the UK. This figure is in a confidential report so we can't test that highly dubious assumption.
Spending half the money on encouraging grass-roots sport would reduce the number of fat kids and may give us those champions of the future from their number. Spending money on TV sporting events just sells more sofas and take-outs. Unfortunately, the political class don't think like that - for them it's about reputation, national pride and the hope of getting snapped at the opening ceremony.
Len Shackleton: Get the state out of sport
Len Shackleton is a fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs. The Government recently produced its response to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry into the governance of football. There are of course some ways in which professional football may impinge on government responsibilit...
We should come back to this debate at a time when heads are a little clearer, crisis is not on our doorstep and we have allowed time for the Government to make the changes on the mandates on which we were elected. By then and only then will we have the time and space for a reasoned debate on Europe. Date? Time?
Richard Harrington MP: An EU debate amounts to a "kneejerk indulgence" for Eurosceptics
Richard Harrington, Tory MP for Watford, says the EU vote equals a folly for Conservative Eurosceptics and an unnecessary diversion for Government. The talk of the tea room has been whether members are voting for or against the referendum motion now to be debated on Monday. I believe the motion...
Replacing the Big Society with a streetwise description of compassionate conservatism. Otherwise written as replacing "doing good with people to make them feel better" with "doing good at people to make us feel better".
The Conservative Party we have and the Conservative Party we need
By Tim Montgomerie Follow Tim on Twitter. Today sees the launch of MajorityConservatism.com*. It's my thinking on how the Tories might win the next election. Over time, however, I hope it will be much more than my thinking. I hope others will critique my thoughts and others will offer alternat...
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