Forum Replies Created
- Posts
The Tote’s marketing inclinations have perplexed me for years particularly with regard to the Quadpot which they have totally failed to promote to its potential IMO with the effect that pools and hence returns lag disappointingly and highly disproportionately behind the placepot.
Precedent and Convention seems part and parcel of what we need to get away from
Precedent and Convention is
all
we have – after all we do not have a written constitution.
The "easy" answer would be to have a written constitution but that would be a minefield in itself?
Who would define and write it?
Could we trust politicians to write one – I would have serious doubts.
Do we go for a grand constitutional committee?
My personal view and I fully expect to be shot down for this, but I suspect it would actually work, is – when Prince Charles eventually becomes George VII, one of his first acts should be to create a Royal Commission to create a written constitution.
I would like to see it happen now, but I think The Queen is too set in her ways to do anything so radical. Charles strikes me as being more of a reformist and I believe he would be more amenable to the idea.
One of the first actions of the Commission should be to hold a plebiscite as to whether we remain a Constitutional Monarchy, after that the Commission can work on a written constitution which, when complete, would then go to the country in a further plebiscite.
Sorry Paul you’re way too clever for me but I’m not interested in constitutions,plebiscites and commissions I just want honest people in government running the country properly and without waste and corruption.
Most of what you mention sounds very clever but it misses my point.Precedent is when the Speaker retires is he / she retires as an MP, usually getting a seat in the Lords.
Michael Martin has followed precedent and he has been appointed "Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead." the only way an MP can retire between elections and there will now be a by-election to replace him.
It was the same device used by Tony Blair when he stepped down as PM.
It is also known as taking the Chiltern Hundreds.
Bob I would be very surprised if the Conservatives did try to oust the speaker after the election – the damage it would do to Parliament would be incalculable.
Of course precedent and convention does seem to mean little to current politicians. If convention had been followed a conservative speaker would have been appointed when Michael Martin was elected as convention has been the speaker alternates between the two major parties.
Precedent and Convention seems part and parcel of what we need to get away from IMO especially as we now know it has underpinned the systematic theft of tax payers money for who knows how long.
Sacked or defeated MPs and party cronies becoming Lords is part of the gravy train that we all knew about for years but now the genie is out of the bottle re the expenses national disgrace we can only hope that there is a radical overhaul of every parliamentary practice and that systems are put in place to prevent such abuses again.
It really jars with me that the people who are now proposing reform are the same people who have turned a blind eye,benefitted or presided over the abused old system and they are only acting now because they have been caught out, but I find them impossible to trust or take seriously particularly re getting their own house in order.Wouldn’t the best place to start be by identifying the wrong doers and booting them out?
Parliament can’t be any more damaged than it is now and this new speaker comes across as a ‘didn’t I do well pleased with himself ‘ career politician rather than a radical but I accept it is early days. If he is sacked over irrelevant inter-party bickering then that just goes to show that nothing has really changed and that our political system is the joke that most people think it is but if he needs to be sacked because he is not making the changes that are necessary then that can’t happen soon enough and to hell with precedents and conventions
In a General Election the Speaker will campaign as ‘Speaker of the House’ and the other major parties will not stand a candidate.
As an MP he or she will represent all of their constituents equally in the same manner as all other MP’s, but will not be subject to a party whip or vote on commons business, unless a casting vote is required.
Thanks Pompete,not as farcical as I thought but still pretty odd.
What happens if after his ‘ walkover’ he is voted out of the Speakers chair by MPs as the Tories are threatening ? Does he get his vote back even though he was elected on the basis you mention or does he just wander around parliament trousering his MPs salary aswell as his guaranteed ex Speaker’s £40k pension.
As for whether he will be better than Michael Martin time will tell but predictably he is not untarnished by the expenses fiasco so I’m not getting my hopes up that much will change.
As stated before we need a proper stewards enquiry into how ALL public money is spent because I suspect self serving MPs are only the tip of the tax waste iceberg.I think success in Dubai and how it translates is the least of Godolphin’s worries far behind sorting out who is responsible for the end of season acquisition year after year of a crop of flops that leaves me feeling sorry for this once great racing giant ?
Horses who look like reasonable prospects when they appear for their original owners and trainers get purchased by Godolphin for what I imagine is ‘they must have seen them coming’ money and you can’t help feeling after they then flop in the vast majority of cases that they would have done better if they had stayed in training where they were.
I know there have been outstanding successes ( Daylami and Ramonti etc) but I would love to see the balance sheet or even the list of purchases and prices for the last 10-15 years to which we can add Kite Wood and Orizaba for starters this year.Nobody has more respect for what the Maktoum’s have contributed to racing but I find myself supporting Godolphin in the way I would an underdog these days.
By now I would have thought bloodlines as strong as the Aga Khan and Khaled Abdulla operations would have been established as the source of continued success rather than what seems like the failed annual scattergun offers that can’t be refused for apparent prospects that go on to establish what seems to me to now be a consistent pattern of failure overall.
The pieces from the betting ring are quite possibly the worst stuff I have seen in a long time – I prefer the fashion segments to that drivel
I can see why they would annoy some but I can’t help thinking that despite my expectations Gary Wilshire is adding a bit of something to the beeb coverage he definitely has TV ability IMO much more so than Barry Dennis for example and I am no casual observer, but he needs to avoid the inaccurate exagerations as referred to in an earlier post here.
What doesn’t work for me is Ian Bartlett and Kevin Darley doing a dissection of the race on their plasma tv after each race = very dull I’m afraid. When given the chance Bartlett is a good commentator and good interviewer but he is very dull presenting to camera IMO.
Fashion presenter is a just a ten a penny catty old queen who could never be as funny or cutting as he thinks he is and as such it is quite amusing watching him trying to shoe horn in his tired spontaneous unoriginal bitchy comments that he spontaneously thought up hours before.
IMO I think we have to deal with the real issues long before we get to the death sentence stage.
Take a significant number of unwanted,unloved,indisciplined and I’m afraid to say probably should never have been born children that an under resourced not fit for purpose education system can’t ‘turn around’ ,add in some unhelpful cultural and media influences ( negative message music,film,tv,video games etc that combine with a general something for nothing ‘get rich or die trying’ culture plus a wholesale downturn in old fashioned good manners,self discipline and respect for each other and you will produce these outcomes in a minority of cases.The solution?
We need to reform the education system at a basic level so that kids aren’t having children and being non existent parents or commiting crime because they don’t have anything better to do.Everybody must leave the education system with their self esteem and self worth and respect for other people sky high. Its boring but its back to basics I’m afraid.Words like ‘please’ thank you,sorry and excuse me become the most important words in the language for everyone.
Culturally we need to raise the bar and watch what influences and values we expose our children to and try to keep those influences positive or at least non negative as a starter get the badly motivated crap off of the television,off of the ipods and out of the game consoles.
Alas it may be too late for a minority of the current generation however if we get the systems right for the future we can stop the problem repeating itself for the next generation.Agree with Pompete but respectfully don’t want to go into specifics of individual cases but parenting on both sides of knife crime is definitely an issue.
Non existent parenting is a major factor in the creation of feral youth with no repscet for anyone or anything and 16 year old kids in pubs will never have a satisfactory outcome.In addition to the other points here I have to add how totally devoid of any sense of humour Jim McGrath is IMO. Apart from his occaisionally quirky but well used turns of phrase during his race commentaries which I have never had too much issue with he consistently displays zero personality and it is him I think of when I conclude how grey and boring BBC racing has become.
A million people voting BNP is certainly not something to ignore or get hysterical about but equally nobody should be afraid of a proper discussion about immigration which in my view the media make the politicians and the general public terrified of doing for fear of being branded racist.
Putting aside the unique set of circumstances that politics in general is in at the moment in this country, If the 3 main parties aren’t ‘brave’ enough to tackle particular issues either at national or local level ( and they aren’t) there can be no suprise when those that can be bothered to vote turn elsewhere.
The BNP want to make the debate about the old National Front hobby horse of skin colour which is really something different and factually speaking is not a factor in the vast majority of current immigration cases which is directly attributable to the opening of EU borders between EU countries.
Talking about the effects of immigration is a legitimate debate in my view whereas prejudice and racism should be kept out of the political mainstream.As said before,politics needs to be an honest debate about issues not personalities.
IMO although the newspapers have done their usual sensationalist ‘proverbial ‘stirring job over the expenses issue ,this time the ends have justified the means because the corrupt use of taxpayers money which has probably been going on for decades is a very important issue to resolve and the drip drip effect of the Telegraph coverage has had the effect of campaigning journalism in that we are now promised change.
I would like to see the campaign move on to all uses of taxpayers money which we probably would not be happy with if we knew about from MEPs,to overpaid leaders of local councils right accross the board to overpaid BBC presenters.Its time to see the books regarding everything tax and rate payers are responsible for.
Expenses aside I agree that generally the media have turned politics into a shallow popularity contest about who has the nicest smile etc with little or very hard to find discussion of policies and even less regard for doing anything other than hyping events of no importance or plain untruths……s**t stirring is all it amounts to but it seems to be incredibly effective and powerful.
Jacqui Smith resigned months ago and Blears resigned because she was going to be fired anyway.A junior minister deciding to resign and slagging of the PM as he went is really no big deal and Flint went in a huff because she wasn’t promoted.The shameless hyping of all this into a Government meltdown resulted in the poor election results which will in turn result in what is starting to look like the end of the Brown government.
I am no Brown fan and far less so Cameron but the patronising dumbing down of politics by the media when clearly they know better is a damaging disservice to the country and I can’t help hoping Brown and Mandelson can face them down and make the debate about the real issues.
Not a phenomenal performance IMO to saddle half the field in the Derby and get 2nd to 5th places inclusive when it appeared beforehand that this was entirely possible on the form,potential and ability of the horses concerned and just as importantly the opposition.Dre I say I remember thinking much the same about the much lauded Dickinson Gold Cup first 5 which from memory was the 1st 5 of a single figure field and actually involved no real upsets in how those horses were entitled to run on what was known about them.
My point is that if the races were ultra competitive 30 horse fields I would have much more admiration for the achievement.
It turned out that all of the O’Brien horses were entitled to run on what they had actually acheived prior to the Derby but I can’t help agreeing that the apparent scattergun approach particularly from Ballydoyle to this and other races doesn’t sit comfortably as a spectacle and the potential for team tactics to creep in is definitely bad news all round i.e running a squad of horses possibly not on their merits to get an opponent beaten, as has been alluded to here.As has been shown ALL of the major parties have been complicit in allowing the expenses gravy train to rumble on.Even if they haven’t indulged personally there is no excuse for not making it their business to get their house in order.
Therefore IMO none of those parties are worthy of a vote…anybody who has been in parliament probably for the last 30 years can claim to be innocent of at least allowing it to happen.
As for being no worse than any group of people would be in the same situation,speak for yourself and that is no kind of excuse ever.Honesty does exist and where it doesn’t systems should be in place to uphold it.
What we need to know is how long this national disgrace has been going on for.
The next issue for me is that the European parliament will prove to be even worse IMO and how do we get to the situation whereby every country in the union gets the opportunity to find out how corrupt their politicians are before making sure that the whole lot of them are forced out in disgrace ASAP ahead of a fresh look at how Europe is governed or whether it needs a parliament at all.
Its too late this time obviously but hopefully this will be the last time that we have to elect this nameless shower of moneywasting self serving bureaucrats.
I’m going to guarantee that Susan Boyle wins by putting her up as a definite lay.
I think the draw will be critical and whoever performs latest out of the Shaheen and Aidan has a chance of beating her especially if the box walking rumours are true.Then again if like in the last semi final on Friday there is some kind of ‘ failure’ or stoppage it can only help who ever suffers it even allowing for weight for age in Boyle’s case.( This is a reference to her age not her weight by the way ( honest) i.e not just 10 year old’s having stage fright and stopping win votes with the Great British Public).
The semi’s were full of no hopers apart from the highly predictable finalists who got throughto make what looks like an excellent final with the possible exception of the Grandfather/daughter act which without being hard hearted is well below final standard IMO even though everyone seems to have missed how good the Granddaughter would be on her own.[quote="
Good luck claire, you are a trailblazer for the LGBT comunity within racing and broadcasting.Putting the cancer bit to one side for a minute ( although I don’t think anyone here has made any iffy comments about cancer anyway)……..I think you have missed precisely the point about Claire Balding in that she is absolutely NOT trying to blaze a trail for the ‘LGBT community’ ( unhelpful surely to lump all of these together as if they were all the same, as bigots might have you believe) she is just Claire Balding an individual person not representing ‘a community’ but just doing her job( extremely well IMO) and getting on with her life not making a fuss about anything, not Cancer and certainly not her sexuality.
Someone’s personal illness has nothing to with racing,anything or anyone else
That’s too emphatic a statement, I fear. Anyone familiar with the Quixall Crossett story, for example, will know that the gelding’s "dotty pilgrimage" ((c) Simon Barnes,
The Times
) first and foremost gave his three carers their lives back after they all lost sons in terrible circumstances.
Racing, not least the horses, can give life and hope to the afflicted. Ms Balding is doubtless drawing positives from the prospect of being back among the animals and people she loves at this difficult time for her.
gc
Oh gawd!……..this is the opposite end of the extreme but is exactly what I’m talking about but I don’t expect any ‘professional’ posters to agree with me. I naturally defer to anyone like Rory who has found things here worth posting about 5000 times but IMO with the greatest respect to ANYONE who has cancer this subject is not it.
