PokerTime

Sue, l am not raking over this with you all over again. You are not truthful. You take no responsibility for your own behaviour ever and there is never any point discussing anything with you. You browbeat and bully. You throw temper tantrums. Why should anyone have to put up with that? There are at least three occasions on this forum where you have written things that can be absolutely refuted by footage shot by the documemtary crew. The final straw was being called unreliable after working 21 days straight because I took two days off after that. That's when you asked for a meeting that you then cancelled and did not rearrange. You are ridiculously unreasonable. I am in no way the only person to have had problems with you. That is my final word on it.

Angelina Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Poker Face - have you changed your user name ? No I haven't. I had a different username when I ran the football but haven't used that one in many years. I have no new username since this one and don't post on the forum these days. Actually that means I changed it once but l have never posted from the two names if that makes sense.

Just because Sue says something is so does not mean it is true. I have had enough of her lies too. BUT the point is that no-one can know from a forum or a news report what the truth is. That requires concrete evidence. I have no vendetta but I will defend myself from things that are just not true. Sue cancelled a meeting and never rearranged it. End of story.

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Exactly. > > Oh and btw, "PokerTime", I did not go to the Small > Claims Court because you told me there was no > point in doing so because you had no money. > > Edited for typo. C I said no such thing. You cancelled a meeting that you did not rearrange. The next thing you are on this forum playing the victim as you always do.The problem is that you don't remember details. I will stop short of saying you deliberately lie. Your behaviour was terrible. Even the production company thought you were out of order. Who in their right mind would do anything but stay well away from that. You drive people mad.

Sue Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Having been involved in a disagreement with a > "builder" who also refused mediation, I have every > sympathy. > > Why would somebody who thought they were in the > right refuse mediation? Because it was never offered in your case and similarly why would a client who thinks they are so right not go to small claims court? There are indeed two sides to every story and sometimes there is even documentary evidence to support one side.

Yes Photoshop is best for what you want to do, along with Adobe Pagemaker, which is a programme specifilly designed to create brochures, magazines and all types of press materials. Indesign and Illustrator do different things and After Effects is a high end Editing Software for Film and TV Visual Effects.

Hong Kong used to be the most expensive city on the planet. That title now goes to london. In Hong Kong, the cost of property and rents went so high they had to slap a 26% tax on foreign property purchasers. It was a bubble. London is heading for the same disaster. Growth is not infinite. What multiple of average salary do prices have to reach before we all get it? And when there are no min wage people left in London to do all the dirty jobs, who are we going to blame then? The poor? For not being able to earn enough? A vibrant city (and I'm talking in economic terms) needs a range of demographics to keep functioning. If we price everyone but the most affluent out of the city, that economy will suffer. The article may be irritating but it hits on real issues. The rise in the cost of property in London over the past 40 years is unprecedented. The reasons are many. But it can't be allowed to go on.

I was there yesterday and it was a great day but I agree with Otta. The government don't care. The only good thing is that the majority is so silm. They were actually better off under coalition (70 seat majority I think? ish). The way to fight back will be to lobby tory backbenchers bill by bill (Cameron already lost the first vote re EU referendum).

I was there yesterday and like some of you above, when Charlotte Church came on stage to give her speech, didn't expect much. I was pleasently suprised. She gave a terrific speech, that she'd written beforehand and clearly put a lot of thought into. It's very easy to be cynical and sneer, but how many of you above heard her speech yesterday? Russell Brand is not the best speaker as we all know. To be honest I think he makes it up as he goes along, but his support does bring coverage of what is for many a serious cause. Austerity is hitting the poorest and most vulnerable people hard, especially people like the disabled. 250,000 people joined that march (a police estimate annonuced on the main stage). And let's remember that only 23.5% of the electorate voted for this miracle conservative majority. They don't represent 76.5% of the electorate at all, some of whom are celebrities and should be free to lend support without being ridiculed.

If he's riding a learner bike which will be a 125 then it doesn't require an expensive course to learn to ride that. The CBT is one day of training anyway. He can learn to ride in a car park, with some cones, and then do a CBT once confident handling the bike.

It's a ludicrous idea and I can't see it happening. The proposal would not hand over the entire home, just 60% of it, so the tenant would still have rent to pay, and other charges, but would also no longer have the safety net of Housing Benefit open to them if they lose their job. So would work for some people but would be a risky route for others, especially those who gain low paid or insecure contract work etc. It's worth pointing out also that LA's can now charge up to 80% of market rate on new tenancies, and that once part ownership is handed over it's no longer a social home. So anyone being gifted 60% of their home under this scheme may well find they are paying market rent on the other 40%. The claim about reduction of the Housing Benefit bill is a red herring too, given the much higher cost of housing people in the private rented sector. If IDS really wanted to save money, the answer would be to create enough low rent property for those who need it. The last thing the social housing sector needs, is more transferance to the private sector. It's easy to claim that money raised can be reinvested in new homes, but practically impossible to deliver on any like for like scale. 2 million social homes lost since the 1980's. 1.7 million people/households currently on council waiting lists. We never needed to be in this predicament on the first place, and it shows how out of touch and uninterested the Conservative party are when it comes to the UK's Housing Crisis. Nothing to do with a pink bus I know.

I'm pretty sure that maintenance of new trees lies with the supplier for the first three years and not the council. When I enquired about getting funding for tree planting/ replacement, that was the system explained to me, that a new tree costs on average ?800 and comes with a three year initial maintenance by the supplier.

The cost of this scheme is ?1.59 million. At a time when vital services to the most vulnerable have been cut, should we really be wasting money like this? You really have to question what planet some councillors and council departments live on. It's not as though our roads are a constant war zone of death and injury.

Ah you are right, I did not read it and thought we were talking about Labour's manifesto promise. Again, given that no capital debt is attached to 80% of the rental market, a rent control could work, but the figures would have to be regionally set, and an annual inflationary increase allowed. London is unique again in that 52% of households rent, whereas regionally it is only 30%. Of course, the situation is not helped by LA's selling off former council estates for redevelopment, which in reality is displacing the poorest out of London. I think there are better ways though, to slow the market, and to give wages a chance to catch up.

First of all, rent caps are not capping the amount of rent charged, but cap the percentage at which it can be increased year on year. Social housing rent increases have been capped at between 1-3% above inflation for decades, which is why they have rents more realistically in line with the salaries of those that live in them. Building homes is a solution and Labour have committed to building 200,000 homes per year for the next five years if they are elected. The conservatives have made no such commitment. But similar promises were made by New Labour and fell well short. It takes times to build homes, and it takes time to find public private partnerships to deliver them (under the current system of financing). But I totally agree with RC that the Conservatives have no interest whatsoever in affordable housing and even less in local authority owned housing. They are completely Victorian in their outlook and attitudes towards the poorest members of society (which includes the low waged). Loz you are completely wrong on this. 80% of rental property is already paid for and has no mortgage attached. There is no negative loss to the landlord from a rent increase control. The other 20% is also not under threat unless interest rates rise faster than the allowed rent increase. Then we have a problem, but buy-to -let is such a small part of the overall rental market, that to champion the risk to that sector, over the lack of risk to the rest of the sector is a distortion. It is better to target help at buy-to-let investors hit by this policy than to reward all landlords with taxpayers income through top-up benefits, while they continue to raise rents at any level they like. ?28 billion was spent last year in tax credits and HB to families with at least one parent in full time work. That is tax payer?s money subsiding low wages and landlords. The tax credit makes no distinction between the minimum wage of a small business, or the minimum wage of a large corporation. Just as HB makes no distinction between the rent increase of a buy-to-let investor with a mortgage attached, and the 80% of properties with no capital debt attached. Rent increase controls WILL work in that they will over time allow salaries to catch up and cost the nation less in welfare. Who cares if landlords make less profit in all of that as long as they do still make a profit. Balancing the economy isn?t just about deficit control (as hard as that is to do in an economic system built entirely on credit and debt), it?s also about putting value back in to peoples wages, and away from capital assets. Another good reason for controls is that it will dis-incentivise fluid income, through changes to the pension lump sum rules, from being invested in buy-to-let and exacerbating the problem. The prediction is that the over 65?s will further push first time buyers out of the market. A lot of the arguments levied again rent increase controls are the same arguments levied against the introduction of a minimum wage. They are scaremongering, with no basis in reality. We know what the problems are. The free market is not going to sort them out. There has to be regulation. Also there needs to be measures to bring empty properties into use as well. There?s a march on Jan 31st if anyone is interested on the shortage of affordable homes in London.

I personally would be outraged if the fox hunting ban was repealed. We have banned lots of things, and often in the face of huge protest, because they are ethically wrong. This really is the bleating of a small number of people, of whatever class, who think they have a divine right to do whatever they like. Chasing a fox and ripping it to pieces is inhumane and cruel, end of. And there is no longer any place for it in a civilised society.

Bob I was talking specifically about the business of terrestrial broadcast television who are the people that make and buy up the reality shows referenced by the OP. They can?t compete with the budgets of HBO for example, because they don?t have the same international market. You?re comparing American studios to UK television broadcasters and the vast majority of drama and films made by American studios don?t get distribution outside of America either. You can?t look at the odd successful drama and think that reflects the industry as a whole. It doesn?t. People do not watch live tv in anything like the numbers they did. Every now and then a drama will attract a large audience, but it?s not enough to command the advertising revenue required to make the drama on the first place. And a broadcaster has to fill every second of its broadcast time. More channels, more content, equals smaller audiences across the board, and that?s before you even get into the competition from streaming and catch up services, who can cherry pick what they offer. And as anyone who works in television knows, the hours are a killer and the rates of pay have gone down over the last 20 years, not up. Here?s just one example of pricing differences for internet broadcast rights and terrestrial broadcast rights. If you use a piece of archive Pathe footage in a programme, you intend only to distribute via the internet, it will cost you around ?150 for the copyright. The moment you show that programme on a TV channel, that same clip costs ?800 in copyright. I can give lots of examples of budget differences that are prohibitive to TV broadcasters in making quality documentary or drama. It?s not a level playing field.

Just to come back to your reply to me bob; The average budget for a tv show is a fraction of what it was twenty years ago. More channels mean diluted audience share so advertising revenue has plumetted too. Tabloid programming has emerged the leader in this, because the cost of making it compared to the revenue it can raise, is profitable. High end drama on the other hand has declined. It's expensive to make and it can no longer attract enough viewers to get the advertising revenue to pay for it. Even the BBC looks to make drama it can export for rights revenue, rather than making the ground breaking stuff it used to. Soap drama on the other hand is again comparatively cheap to make, and popular enough. It's a business at the end of the day. Having said that, it costs nothing to edit a documentary or current affairs programme in a balanced and informative way. But as I said, controversy sells, and in that respect, the programme makers ARE exploiting those it features, to their own ends. Edited to add that yes, formula programming has always existed.

The first thing to say is that these kinds of 'fly on the wall' programmes are really cheap to make - that's why production companies make them and channels buy them. They have tons of channels to fill with content at a time when less people are watching broadcast TV, so from a media industry perspective it is the slippery slope into cheap programming that no-one really wants to watch, made by people who are cheap to employ. You get what you pay for. The quality of these programmes is another matter. They are almost like the tabloid equivalent of programming - designed to inflame, sensationalise and skew. What it's hard to say is whether that's a genine lack of intelligence within the ranks of the programme-makers, or that the opposite is true, an understanding that the only way to get ratings, is to be controversial. The impact of these programmes on wider thinking however is indeniable. It have become very much the mantra of the media to follow conservative demonisation of the poorest and most vulnerable, including immigrants, but what shocks me is the ignorance of those that swallow it all. Who would have thought that terms like 'deserving' and 'undeserving poor' would pervade our vocabulary again?

I used to do tons of sailing years ago and would love to know more about your club Graham. Will take a look at the site.

Yes uncleglen, there is a black economy, but there always has been. Your brother isn't homeless. He's managed to keep the mortgage paid.

It's a good question. There is no-one in our political system representing those people, because no party, including UKIP wants to do anything to change our free market economic model. Council accomodation is at least the most secure of tenure but government want to change that too. And more than a third of the labour force (currently in work) have no pension provision whatsoever, so that problem goes beyond the poorest, and is a financial disaster looming for the future. No political party wants to talk about it. We have to get wages up, and we have to get more jobs in the economy. We are having to give thousands of pounds in tax credits and Housing Benefit to people in full time work because the big companies they work for don't pay enough. They are all at it, from Tescos to Wallmart. No-one frankly has any balls to take these corporations on. It is very bleak indeed for those at the bottom.

After not even serving half his sentence! What is the point of judges handing down sentences if they don't actually mean anything?

uncleglen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > (On a par with Brown's 'bigoted woman' comment > methinks) My brother is a very qualified and > experienced white van man, West Ham supporter and > in the last 10 years has struggled to find work > because he cannot afford to work for ?20 a day (he > has a mortgage and 2 children).... I am sure he > will vote UKIP It's illegal to pay anyone just ?20 for a days work and he's managed to hold down a mortgage so he must be earning enough somewhere? Many people don't even have that. What is probably more likley the case is that your brother is only just making ends meet and has no job security. It's the stress of that and only just making ends meet that are probably the source of his disillusionment. He's not the only one feeling like that. Millions are in the same place of insecurity. And there's a reason why interest rates have been kept as low as they are. The Government and the Bank of England know how fragile the economy is, and the diasater coming when those interest rates have to go up. But if he thinks UKIP are the answer and that Europe is the reason times are hard for him, then he is mistaken. We just don't have enough jobs in our economy and the jobs we do have don't pay enough in general to supply the taxes needed to support our public services, pensions and the needs of the growing proportion of over 65s. In addition, wealth in the economy has shifted from wages to capital assets and investments - that's why those doing best are getting richer faster, and those in work are seeing their wages fall in comparison in real terms. Leaving Europe won't change any of that. Closing the borders won't change any of that either. Every western country is in the same boat. Declining economies and higher public service costs to keep it all going. Ultimately the neo-classical free market capitalist model will have to reform. It came in to fix the stagnation of the 70s, but it's quite clear it no longer delivers a fair, stable or balanced economy.

The Labour Party though has always had middle classes amongst it's ranks and dare I say higher than that too. Tony Benn didn't exactly slum it at any point in his life. It's not class that matters but what you stand for. The Labour party has shifted away from the socialism of Atlee, and we can talk about why, but it's the culture that defines a party, not class per se. Similalrly the Tory Party of old also had 'working class' supporters and MPs that represented their interests. All parties have changed, because they've all become dominated by career politicians with economics and law degrees. And they've all jumped on the free market economy bandwagon too (for better and for worse). It's no accident that the average age of a prime minister/ cabinet minister has fallen hand in hand with a disconnect from ordinary people either. There are very few intellectuals in Parliament now. And the demography of the nation has changed dramatically. The strongest voting block is no longer the 'workers'. It's the over 50's. All these things translate to a shaping of policy to win those votes. Of course the other thing is that the modern political machine means that if you join any of the main parties, the odds of gaining candidate selection are stacked against you, without the right background. So it's not just a disconnect for ordinary working people, the low waged and unemployed from politics, it's also a diconnect from the machine that would enable change. This is precisely why people like Nigel Farage are making an impact. They are filling that void and to be honest, soaking up votes on that rebellious energy alone. Vey few people actually know what UKIP stands for outside of a few core issues, but they somehow think a former city trader, with as privileged an upbringing as it gets, speaks for them. Smoke and mirrors.