Sandro Raniere

I would be totally against the idea of MP's being 25-27, barely out of university, it is impossible to have the business experience and life experience at that age to be able to represent tens of thousands of people Sure the typical 25-27 year old has backpacked alone or with friends to Australia and has lived away from home for 4 years at uni but that is not enough life experience to qualify someone to help make the laws of the land MPs need to have experience of running a decent sized business or be a professional like a lawyer, doctor, banker, accountant, dentist etc imho Who is more suitable? A 'trendy youth' with a 2:1 in media studies or someone who has run a hedge fund or been on the board of Tesco? its a no brainer

A 300,000 people petition was given to the government calling for bingo tax to be slashed, clearly enough care about it, it is not the important issue of the day but 300,000 people clearly care about it, if that is bought in and some more money thrown at them enough might think that the tories are the party that thinks about them and vote for us

Minimum wage has gone up to £6.50, tax on Bingo is going to be cut to 15%, the start of the attempted tory revival among the working class has begun Once minimum wage goes up further and the tax allowance goes up to over 10k it is game on

I meant that people who are not able bodied would have a valid excuse as to why they cant get to a polling station but I totally forgot about the postal voting system :o When I was in Thailand a few weeks ago the voting for the general election opened in the district i was staying, the queue for the polling booth must literally have been half a mile long, several hundred young and extremely old queueing in the heat to be able to cast their vote, there was one lady there who must have been the other side of 100 yet the thais made the effort as they wanted to have their say, put the stay at home Brits to shame

From a purely selfish perspective the more younger people that stay away on polling day the better chance of us getting a majority, pensioners overwhelmingly vote tory, think it was a 24% lead for us with pensioners at the last election, whereas young people tend to vote tory less, so a strong turnout of pensioners and a low turnout of youths would help us My personal opinion selfishness aside is that voting should be mandatory for every able bodied adult in the UK, like the system they have in australia where you get fined if you dont vote

Labour have reached their glass ceiling, 38% or so, that is the absolute most they can expect in an election but they will not get that, i would be surprised if they get more than 34%, probably nearer 32% Plus Shapps has announced plans to rebrand us as the 'workers party' so the battle lines are drawn, we will focus hard on working people, probably bribe them with a few tax cuts and an increase in the minimum wage and paint labour as the benefits party, expect a constant drip drip effect in the right wing media of continual stories of benefit cheats and employers being wheeled out to say they cant fill a vacancy Crosby's 'dog whistle' in full effect, and it will work

The key to everything is UKIP, we are haemmoraging supporters to UKIP compared with 2010, if they return to the fold in 2015 like i suspect many of them probably will, then we have a chance of outright power or being the largest party in a coalition. One of the top people in my local association reckons we have lost about 7% of our supporters to UKIP since 2010, if we can get say 5% of those 7% back then we have a fighting chance To win the next election: Osbourne has to cut taxes, particularly for the lower paid, he has to carry out his alleged promise to up the minimum wage to £7 an hour, both of those would be popular with lower earners Crosby has to bang the drum repeatedly about how a vote for UKIP is a vote for Labour by the back door IDS has to keep lowering the benefit cap, strike while the iron is hot post Benefits Street I am still confident that most of our UKIP people will return

I do think Harman has a case to answer, while I do not for one moment think she supports paedophilia this does rightly question the judgement of someone who could possibly be deputy pm in 2 years time. I am not too worried about the polls atm, they are stubborn but there is 15 months to go nearly till next election 2 potential giveaway budgets 15 months of falling unemployment 5 quarters of strong growth 15 months of low inflation and low interest rates Good news is not a trickle now it is a flood

There has been many a time i have expressed my unhappiness with the performance of a company, but i have never crossed the line and been personally abusive or threatening to staff, never will either I have been known to say stuff like 'in 20 years of having mobile phones this is easily the worst company i have signed up to' but i have never been personally abusive with staff The ATOS stuff sounds like hardcore intimidation and harrassment, a whole different level

Hope the police track them down and deal with them Iain Duncan Smith is fair game for any abuse or threats, he makes the rules, the ordinary members of staff who enforce them and have no discretion on the matter are not

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the tests etc it is wrong on so many levels to harrass and threaten ATOS staff, ordinary men and women who are just doing their job, they don't make the rules the DWP do, they just enforce them, threatening them is the same as threatening bank clerks at RBS because of what Fred Goodwin did

If he had been honest at interview and just said 'the job centre made me apply for this, I want really to be a car mechanic or whatever' then fine, no problem, would have sent him on his way and that would have been that, would have chosen someone who actually wanted the job, but he accepted the position so he had a duty to see it through, he let us down badly so it was felt unanimously to report him to the job centre

Am pretty sure you said once that you have paid builders/tradesmen cash in hand, I would imagine that few of them declare cash in hand jobs to the taxman

He was there for 2 days, made a couple of mistakes but who doesn't when they are still learning the ropes. Our company spent a lot of money (no idea how much but recruitment isn't cheap) and the HR director spent half a day interviewing 8 people so time was wasted and money so we reported him to the job centre That's the rules though, if you leave a job voluntarily without good reason then you are denied benefits for 3 months Sure he didn't like the job, but few people in life get their dream job, just have to get on with what you got

He hasn't found another job, he just didn't fancy this one

Last week we hired somebody to do general admin in my department, follow up calls, data entry etc, young lad turned up, 22 years old, been out of work for a couple of years, thought would give him a chance, do bit for the unemployment figures and all that, he was ok in the interview etc Today his mum phones up at half 9, lad was due to start at 9, she says that he wont be coming in as he decided office work is not for him. He wasted our time, our money, our recruitment man hours, so a call was made to his job centre explaining what has happened, this will be followed up with an official letter, he will certainly lose his benefits for at least 3 months, maybe more as you can get sanctioned for up to 3 years for leaving a job voluntarily/turning down a job offer, the bone idle good for nothing bast*rd will likely end up using foodbanks :rolleyes: If you knew someone who was cheating the system like he clearly is, would you report them?

It is a fast increasing right wing general public now Most of the country are very anti benefit claimant Most of the country are anti immigration Most of the country are anti Europe Most of the country are anti human rights act That is just a selection of right wing areas that are very popular in this country

He is the most right wing of the current cabinet :) and liked by the grassroots, but i see him as a John Redwood type guy, a great intellectual and ideas man but not pm material

He made headlines all over the world with his dad dancing to the Spice Girls and also swinging along that wire etc, plus the olympics happened under his watch even if he didn't play a huge part in organising them

But look at what happened to Major in 1997, worst defeat we have suffered probably ever, May is solid and reliable but she is not dynamic and we need a dynamic leader, Maggie was dynamic, Blair was till Iraq, Boris is

Boris is a shoe in for the job i would say provided it is after 2015 and not before, although it should really be now

Absolutely no chance of Gideon getting the gig, he has done a great job as chancellor but has a serious image problem May is at best a safe pair of hands, a female Major

The main thing that has bought about the foreign investment is the world seeing London as such an amazing place due to the olympics, Boris played a huge part in that

But Boris doesn't have a hand in it, Boris himself has said he would like to see more affordable housing built, he has also championed the redevelopment of Heathrow into housing with the airport moving into the estuary, but house building is dictated by Cameron/Osborne/Pickles, Boris' hands are tied

Even if those are the case, and i am not denying they are, how is it personally down to Boris? the economy and interest rates and housing policy are rules made in Downing St not City Hall