bridge too far

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-32398017

As an aside - that bastion of decency and honesty, Grant Shapps, has allegedly been telling porkies again http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/21/grant-shapps-accused-of-editing-wikipedia-pages-of-tory-rivals

Yep me! Timing out sometimes but all the other (different site) pages I have open I'm having no problem with.

And they're losing - again!

How would that work in practice? It could mean either exceptionally large rural constituencies that could almost be unmanageable or it could mean many, many more inner city constituencies because of the density. I don't have a particular view on this but I would be keen to know the practicalities of any such change.

Do you mean equal in area or equal in population?

:D

I'm getting the feeling that Ed is growing nicely into the role of PM - his presentation and confidence increases daily.

Farage getting absoutely mullered!

No need - I wasn't sure where to post it yesterday.

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?53940-Valley-Parade-fire-1985#.VS-4fpP_lIo

We've been thinking about drawing up a bingo card for Georgie boy. How many times will he say 'long term economic plan' 'hard working families' etc. etc. Lost count.

Most of them were set up when local councils outsourced. There are 3 in my town. But a lot of them work well because they are local and are staffed by former council staff who know their stuff and their locality. It's not really up to us to say what is right and wrong as they are charitable organisations and have to be self-financing.

There is - my daughter is an IT project manager for one of the largest ones. It has taken over a number of smaller associations and the most recent amalgamation is with a large HA in the north of England. She's worked her socks off on the IT implementation for the past two years and, when the project finally washes up at the end of this month, she'll be made redundant as she doesn't want to move her family to Oldham.

A possible legal challenge to RTB housing association properties? http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/15/general-election-right-to-buy_n_7068904.html

The UKIP manifesto small print http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/what-small-print-ukip-manifesto-5524569

What an excellent piece of work!

From that left-wing bastion the Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2905827/The-tenants-benefits-buying-council-house-one-five-applicants-receive-handouts.html and from the FT http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e3cdcb00-d161-11e4-98a4-00144feab7de.html#axzz3XOLhfhgk

Even the CBI is against RTB http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/14/tory-housing-association-right-to-buy-policy-attacked-big-business

Intriguing article in the Guardian today http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/15/bradford-fire-stafford-heginbotham-martin-fletcher

Back to RTB - some facts and figures http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/right-to-buy-housing-shame-third-ex-council-1743338#ICID=sharebar_facebook

I look after 4 of my grandchildren - 2 who are 2 and a half and 2 for school runs / school holidays. I spend 4 days a week looking after them one way or another (today's my 'day off' ) There's no way I could have done this before retirement because I just couldn't have afforded to. Even had there been the option to take 'unpaid grandparental leave'.

This from the link I posted earlier "Apparently, the Conservative Party believes it can raise £17.5billion to support this policy. Over the course of one parliament, that is enough money for housing associations to build over a million new homes for shared ownership. That is a million households getting a foot on the housing ladder and a million new homes built. That, to me, is aspiration and ambition."

Off RTB and onto banks. I've just read this interesting article although I don't pretend to entirely grasp the concept. But it sounds good and seems to have a lot of educated support http://www.positivemoney.org/2015/04/economists-saying-icelands-sovereign-money-proposal/