badgerx16

Was that on expenses ?

The LGPS is NOT managed by the Government, it follows rules set out by Parliament, but is administered by regional groups of Local Councils. http://www.lgps.org.uk/lge/core/page.do?pageId=100438

And what exactly is your experience of working in the Public Sector ? Or do you merely read the Daily Mail ?

Don't lump all public sector pensions into one bucket - Local Government schemes are self-funded, civil service, many NHS, and armed forces ones are funded by the state.

Maybe Manchester should sue Budweiser ? Bellevue is part of Gorton.

At the risk of monopolising the thread, from one of my favourite English poets : Slough Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death! Come, bombs and blow to smithereens Those air -conditioned, bright canteens, Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans, Tinned minds, tinned breath. Mess up the mess they call a town- A house for ninety-seven down And once a week a half a crown For twenty years. And get that man with double chin Who'll always cheat and always win, Who washes his repulsive skin In women's tears: And smash his desk of polished oak And smash his hands so used to stroke And stop his boring dirty joke And make him yell. But spare the bald young clerks who add The profits of the stinking cad; It's not their fault that they are mad, They've tasted Hell. It's not their fault they do not know The birdsong from the radio, It's not their fault they often go To Maidenhead And talk of sport and makes of cars In various bogus-Tudor bars And daren't look up and see the stars But belch instead. In labour-saving homes, with care Their wives frizz out peroxide hair And dry it in synthetic air And paint their nails. Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough To get it ready for the plough. The cabbages are coming now; The earth exhales. ( Sir John Betjeman )

Allegedly the shortest poem in English, ( would be hard to get a shorter one ), entitled "Fleas" - but apparently originally named "Lines on the antiquity of microbes" ; Adam had 'em

A chicken is a noble beast, The cow is much forlorner; Standing in the pouring rain, With a leg at every corner. ( William McGonagall )

If you can't afford to put a roof over your pool, and have it heated all year round, you shouldn't buy it in the first place.

The less you learn about foreign parts, the less guilt you feel when bombing or invading them.

How many clubs can't afford 2 stewards ?

Why can't they do their Haka ?

The point about Prism is that in the main it's the US authorities 'snooping' on non-US citizens, outside the USofA. They have explicitly stated that this isn't happening on US soil as it contravenes their Civil Rights - "the communications-collection programme was 'designed to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning non-US persons located outside the United States". "It cannot be used to intentionally target any US citizen, any other US person, or anyone located within the United States...'", ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22809541 ). The Verizon Court Order enforces surveillance on telephone calls where one participant is outside the US, calls entirely within the borders are not affected.

Would that be your facts or mine ?

How many terrorist acts have ever been committed in GB or the US by Afghans, or more specifically the Taliban ? How many Afghan civilians have died since the US started the military campaign ? Who is the 'terrorist' ? The UN SC did not make the war 'legal', it endorsed military and Police support for the Afghan Interim Authority, which was formed as a result of the Bonn Agreement, from a number of anti-Taliban groups and some exiled political leaders that the West approved of. Following your logic we would have been entitled to invade Eire because the IRA had training camps and arms caches there.

But 'war' can only be declared by one state against another - the US instigated an action of 'collective self defence', ( not a 'war of aggression' ), against a terrorist cell, which the UN Security Council did not ratify the action; ISAF was only created after the Afghan Interim Authority had been established, when the UN was presented with a fait-accompli.

As I said, you can pick & choose the legal opinion, ( from WIKI ): The UN Charter is a treaty ratified by the United States and thus part of US law. Under the charter, a country can use armed force against another country only in self-defense or when the Security Council approves. Neither of those conditions was met before the United States invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban did not attack us on 9/11. Nineteen men – 15 from Saudi Arabia – did, and there was no imminent threat that Afghanistan would attack the US or another UN member country. The council did not authorize the United States or any other country to use military force against Afghanistan. The US war in Afghanistan is illegal. — Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild[3]

There is legal opinion that it is, there is similarly legal opinion that it is not. You can pick whichever opinion best supports your position.

Neither the Government nor the people of Afghanistan perpetrated 9/11 - the war was effectively declared against OBL and his clique; the fact that parts of the country have been bombed back to the stone age, thousands of innocents have died, and there is currently no effective administrative control over large swathes of land is merely collateral damage.

It is an unnecessary, unwinnable, and technically illegal war. I find it odd that the USofA, which fought a war of independence to free itself from foreign tyranny and imposition, now sees fit to impose it's view of 'world order' on those areas of the world with resources that may prove valuable to American consumers..

Iraq, Afghanistan, sending guns to the Syrian opposition, Libya - what have they got in common ? You cannot impose democracy on a country - people have to find their own way; you may not like the outcome but you are duty bound to respect it.

The security services knew about the Woolwich attackers for years before Drummer Rigby was killed, this knowledge failed to prevent the attack. The problem is as much about how the data is used as the process of collating it - incompetent data management and flawed analysis generate significant risks.

The best way to maintain national security is to not start illegal wars.

Does somebody taking 3 part time jobs count in the stats as 3 new jobs created ? If so, what a great way to inflate the figures !

Given the number of us on here, maybe we could open a SWF PRINCE2 Project Management consultancy ?