FlyTheNest

Freeda Brocks 15m ago
todays documents show that 26 of the 56 observed kills hit the badgers in the abdomen/pelvis area. The target area is heart/lungs.

TheGrimSqueaker wrote:

mikems wrote:A lot of hysteria from the right today about the US/Cuba diplomatic agreement. Owen Jones joining in claiming that embargoed and threatened Cuba is a 'dictatorship'. Funny dictatorship that is run by mass participation and non-party elections.

Never mind. It is a dictatorship because corrupt western governments say it is and 'left-wingers' currying favour will fall into line. Fuck 'em. I support the Cuban people and their government - it's not a dictatorship, it is a country living under permanent threat from the world hyperpower and subjected to regular economic, political and military attack, including from state sponsored terrorism.

What the right want, and won't get, is multi-party elections that they can fund and corrupt. The Cuban people aren't that stupid and have learnt enough these last fifty years not to be bought by their enemies.

Blimey, isn't Saint Owen a bit off message there? What happened to solidarity and all that?

Andy Sawford MP ‏@AndySawfordMP 31s32 seconds ago
Pickles lost battle with Treasury & DWP on local welfare assistance, there will be no money next year to help the most vulnerable people

AnatolyKasparov wrote:

TheGrimSqueaker wrote:

mikems wrote:A lot of hysteria from the right today about the US/Cuba diplomatic agreement. Owen Jones joining in claiming that embargoed and threatened Cuba is a 'dictatorship'. Funny dictatorship that is run by mass participation and non-party elections.

Never mind. It is a dictatorship because corrupt western governments say it is and 'left-wingers' currying favour will fall into line. Fuck 'em. I support the Cuban people and their government - it's not a dictatorship, it is a country living under permanent threat from the world hyperpower and subjected to regular economic, political and military attack, including from state sponsored terrorism.

What the right want, and won't get, is multi-party elections that they can fund and corrupt. The Cuban people aren't that stupid and have learnt enough these last fifty years not to be bought by their enemies.

Blimey, isn't Saint Owen a bit off message there? What happened to solidarity and all that?

No, he just values genuine pluralism and democracy.

The OP's view of Cuba used to be faithfully repeated by certain people a quarter century ago about Eastern Europe.

We then found out how true it actually was.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:

TheGrimSqueaker wrote:

mikems wrote:A lot of hysteria from the right today about the US/Cuba diplomatic agreement. Owen Jones joining in claiming that embargoed and threatened Cuba is a 'dictatorship'. Funny dictatorship that is run by mass participation and non-party elections.

Never mind. It is a dictatorship because corrupt western governments say it is and 'left-wingers' currying favour will fall into line. Fuck 'em. I support the Cuban people and their government - it's not a dictatorship, it is a country living under permanent threat from the world hyperpower and subjected to regular economic, political and military attack, including from state sponsored terrorism.

What the right want, and won't get, is multi-party elections that they can fund and corrupt. The Cuban people aren't that stupid and have learnt enough these last fifty years not to be bought by their enemies.

Blimey, isn't Saint Owen a bit off message there? What happened to solidarity and all that?

No, he just values genuine pluralism and democracy.

The OP's view of Cuba used to be faithfully repeated by certain people a quarter century ago about Eastern Europe.

We then found out how true it actually was.

Government attempt to bury badger bad news over Christmas

Thursday December 18, 2014

The Government today has released the results of the 2014 badger culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

In a clear attempt to bury bad news over Christmas, the report paints a picture of a disastrous policy which has clearly failed on scientific, economic and humaneness grounds.

Although 341 badgers were killed in Somerset which met the minimum target figure, the target has been criticised as "rubbish" and"unbelievably easy" by a leading expert. Only 274 were killed in Gloucestershire from a minimum target of 615.

Commenting on the publication of the report Dominic Dyer CEO of the Badger Trust and Policy Advisor at Care for the Wild said:

"Despite spending millions of pounds of tax payers money the DEFRA Chief Veterinary Officer admits for the first time today that the badger cull is failing.

Despite the many recommendations of the Independent Expert Panel from 2013, the standards of training and competence of the cull contractors continues to fall short, badger cull targets have not been met in Gloucestershire and many badgers have taken up to 5 minutes to suffer long painful deaths.

A recent MORI poll showed that badger culling was the fifth most common issue of complaint to MPs in the last 12 months.

This was backed up by a ComRes poll from the Badger Trust and Care for the Wild that shows 9 out of 10 people believe badger culling is cruel and should stop in favour of cattle based measures to reduce the spread of bovine TB.

It's now time for the Government to admit it has got it wrong and bring an end to this disastrous cruel policy once and for all.

It should now follow the example of Wales and introduce annual TB testing for cattle combined with tighter bio security and cattle control movements, with compliance linked to CAP single payments for farmers. This policy has delivered a 48% drop in the number of cattle slaughtered for TB in Wales in the last 5 years without killing any badgers at all.

This article lists political parties in Cuba. No party is permitted to campaign or endorse candidates for election, including the Communist Party. Candidates are elected on an individual referendum basis without formal party involvement, though elected assemblies predominantly consist of members of the dominant party alongside non-affiliated candidates.[1]

Cuban Liberal Movement (Partido Liberal Nacional de Cuba)
Cuban Liberal Union (Unión Liberal Cubana, member LI)
Christian Democratic Party of Cuba (Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba)
Cuban Democratic Socialist Current (Corriente Socialista Democratica Cubana)
Democratic Social-Revolutionary Party of Cuba (Partido Social-Revolucionario Democrático de Cuba)
Democratic Solidarity Party (Partido Solidaridad Democrática, member LI)
Social Democratic Co-ordination of Cuba (Coordinadora Social Demócrata de Cuba)
Orthodox Renovation Party (Partido de la Renovación Ortodoxa)

As a result, political rallies by opposition parties occur sporadically on the island.[2]

Cuban law also stipulates that it is punishable to receive funds from a foreign government for purposes of a political organization.[3]

mikems wrote:AngryAsWell,

I read that they left the field hospitals behind when they left as a gift.

Venezuela despite these deals operates in an international capitalist market, and has an 11.5% deficit already, and the oil price has plunged further. The most obvious way to improve that is by selling more of its production on the open market. The deal with Cuba is good value for both (one swimming in oil, one that produces excess doctors) but that's not the point. It'll probably need to sell more oil.

Venezuela seems to have pretty bad economic problems.

Tubby Isaacs wrote:Venezuela seems to have pretty bad economic problems.

I'm not sure it's been protected against anything. It's basically chucked oil money about. Brazil has done much better, as has Bolivia.

Network For Animals see it as no coincidence that today, Thursday 18th December, unchallengeable in parliament, Elizabeth Truss and the Conservative government have released the results of their controversial 2014 badger cull.The reported figures make clear that the Gloucestershire cull was an even greater failure than last year, and that in Somerset not even the midpoint of the government's targets could be reached:

...
The UK Chief Veterinary Officer has stated that culling should continue in Somerset for the next two years, but acknowledged that it should only take place in Gloucestershire if training, assessment, planning, monitoring and delivery can be improved, otherwise benefits of reducing disease in cattle may not be realised. Based upon this, Network For Animals see absolutely no case to expand the cull beyond Somerset and Gloucestershire during 2015, and without significant measures being made clear in the public domain, Network For Animals see no option but for a further cull in Gloucestershire to be called off.

In the past two years, the actions of the Department for Environment under Elizabeth Truss and Owen Paterson have resulted in the death of 2386 badgers. Network for Animals view each of these lives to be a tragic loss, and call for the rhetoric of culling to be drawn to a close, and vaccination projects seized as the humane, cost effective alternative.

mikems wrote:

Venezuela despite these deals operates in an international capitalist market, and has an 11.5% deficit already, and the oil price has plunged further. The most obvious way to improve that is by selling more of its production on the open market. The deal with Cuba is good value for both (one swimming in oil, one that produces excess doctors) but that's not the point. It'll probably need to sell more oil.

It doesn't deal entirely in a capitalist market. It deals on reciprical trade bases with many countries in Latin America and the rest of the world including China and Vietnam. You may be right that the Venezuelan leadership may want to sell more oil on the open market, but it won't breach its ALBA commitments.

Of course, it is not immune to outside economic pressures, but it is not going to ditch its main programmes of regional integration and independence to deal with a cyclical economic problem of lack of demand in the world economy.

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Angela Eagle ‏@angelaeagle 17m17 minutes ago
UKIP nativity play: the 3 wise men have been sent back where they came from & they've told the Virgin Mary to stop breast feeding in public

mikems wrote:

Venezuela seems to have pretty bad economic problems.

The choice in Venezeula is not to have some sort of liberal social democracy or the current system. It is the current system, under attack from those who own the bulk of wealth and the USA, or the old system of corrupt rule and oppression masquerading as democracy.

Venezuela does have bad economic problems, but none of them are going to be solved by abandoning their future to the vagaries of world markets. Quite the opposite.

Sadiq Khan MP ‏@SadiqKhan 8m8 minutes ago
Today's Signing of the #probation privatisation contracts is a bad day for public safety " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; …

StephenDolan wrote:The language used by Lord Ashcroft to spin his polling results is ridiculous. As is the headline. These aren't the top Labour targets, yet they're polling well.

Jamie Reed ‏@jreedmp 1m1 minute ago Birmingham, West Midlands
The country's top doctors have named Andrew Lansley as the worst Health Secretary ever. Ever. Think about that.

Matthew d'Ancona to join the Guardian as columnist
Former Spectator editor’s column to begin in new year
http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of ... -columnist

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Matthew d'Ancona to join the Guardian as columnist
Former Spectator editor’s column to begin in new year
http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of ... -columnist

Well - is it just a rather big error of my memory .... or wasn't Matthew d'Ancona writing for the Telegraph most recently ... and was one of those whose services were no longer required in their recent cull? But in this piece there is absolutely no mention of being published in the Telegraph.

He was one of their better contributors though.

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Matthew d'Ancona to join the Guardian as columnist
Former Spectator editor’s column to begin in new year
http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of ... -columnist

Well - is it just a rather big error of my memory .... or wasn't Matthew d'Ancona writing for the Telegraph most recently ... and was one of those whose services were no longer required in their recent cull? But in this piece there is absolutely no mention of being published in the Telegraph.

He was one of their better contributors though.

frightful_oik wrote:

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Matthew d'Ancona to join the Guardian as columnist
Former Spectator editor’s column to begin in new year
http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of ... -columnist

Well - is it just a rather big error of my memory .... or wasn't Matthew d'Ancona writing for the Telegraph most recently ... and was one of those whose services were no longer required in their recent cull? But in this piece there is absolutely no mention of being published in the Telegraph.

He was one of their better contributors though.

Consolidates the Graun's swing to the right.

frightful_oik wrote:

rebeccariots2 wrote:

Matthew d'Ancona to join the Guardian as columnist
Former Spectator editor’s column to begin in new year
http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of ... -columnist

Well - is it just a rather big error of my memory .... or wasn't Matthew d'Ancona writing for the Telegraph most recently ... and was one of those whose services were no longer required in their recent cull? But in this piece there is absolutely no mention of being published in the Telegraph.

He was one of their better contributors though.

Consolidates the Graun's swing to the right.

D’Ancona’s Sunday Telegraph column is treated as the best insight into Cameronism by Conservative MPs

refitman wrote:

frightful_oik wrote:

rebeccariots2 wrote: Well - is it just a rather big error of my memory .... or wasn't Matthew d'Ancona writing for the Telegraph most recently ... and was one of those whose services were no longer required in their recent cull? But in this piece there is absolutely no mention of being published in the Telegraph.

He was one of their better contributors though.

Consolidates the Graun's swing to the right.

They'll be hiring DFH and Toady next

Finally, if the right hon. Gentleman is worried about poor care, why is he still saying it was wrong to have a public inquiry into Mid Staffs? This is what Julie Bailey, the Mid Staffs campaigner, said this week about his comments:

“It is very worrying, because if he becomes Health Secretary again at the election it is clear we would go straight back to the old days of covering up.”

That was a closed internal report without publication

mikems wrote:I'm sure you are more up to speed with the details than I am, Tubby. I only keep up with the headlines from the region. From Telesur mainly. I don't trust the coverage in the Guardian or any of our other media outlets.

Also, I didn't say Venezuela's problems are cyclical, but that the world economy is cyclical. Venezuela's economic problems are exacerbated by low oil prices now, just as they were eased when oil was trading at much higher rates. If the price of oil stays as low as it is, many other countries, including some projected independent Scotland, as has been pointed out here, will have them too.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:

StephenDolan wrote:The language used by Lord Ashcroft to spin his polling results is ridiculous. As is the headline. These aren't the top Labour targets, yet they're polling well.

Overall it is the lowest pro-Labour swing in these groups of surveys, though - the Pendle score in particular is rather disappointing (as are the Labour-UKIP findings - it confirms G Grimsby is their best hope of a gain from us, though)

But as Smithson says, they were done a few weeks ago.

RogerOThornhill wrote:Anyone see that Hunt managed to shoehorn in a Mid Staffs reference to Burnham's A&E question earlier?

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publi ... known/184/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Finally, if the right hon. Gentleman is worried about poor care, why is he still saying it was wrong to have a public inquiry into Mid Staffs? This is what Julie Bailey, the Mid Staffs campaigner, said this week about his comments:

“It is very worrying, because if he becomes Health Secretary again at the election it is clear we would go straight back to the old days of covering up.”

I've been treating the trolls to some Mid Staffs facts on the Graun article - one even told me that the original Francis 2010 reports was:

That was a closed internal report without publication

After I gave him the link, he's simply ignored it and given me the Lansley report - Sorry seems to be the hardest word...