jeffs post
oh dear plolice not coming out hmm is this a sign g4s will
Shop owners are expected to fill out a form and hand it into police if shoplifters steal less than £100 worth of items.
POLICE will not hunt a town’s shoplifters if they steal less than £100 worth of goods.
Store owners must now fill out a form to report the crime to cops.
A senior officer broke the news at a council meeting in Hungerford, Berks, where the police station is up for sale.
The High Street in Hungerford Berkshire
Alamy
Sgt Holly Nicholls said that the police wouldn’t investigate thefts under £100 as they prioritise more violent crimes
Sgt Holly Nicholls, of the Thames Valley force, said they would no longer send an officer to investigate.
She said: “We won’t be making arrests all the time and taking it to the courts. It’s not practical.”
She added “Our main priorities are violence against the person, burglaries, theft from motor vehicles and so on.”
Posted by jeffrey davies [86.17.83.77] on 12 March 2017
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gas or electric hmm
Privatisation was meant to cut costs by allowing us to switch suppliers. Instead, most have stuck with the same rip-off firms. This week, MPs will try to find a way to fix the broken energy market.
Denver Mckay is used to being cold. Heating his one-bedroom flat in Hamilton, just outside Glasgow, is a luxury he can’t always afford. “I pay £20 a week now and this is a struggle,” he said. “Sometimes I have to go without the heating on at all. Sometimes it’s just one room.”
He is worried about impending gas and electricity price rises. In the last month Scottish Power, Npower and E.ON have all raised their prices by about 8%, adding up to £100 a year to customers’ bills. Mckay’s supplier, EDF Energy, raised electricity prices in December but cut gas prices, amounting to a 1.2% overall increase.
“I can’t afford to pay any more, so I’ll just have to not switch it on as much,” he said. “I get £70 a week. I have to pay £30 extra to cover my rent. I can’t afford more than £20.”
Mckay moved from Cheshire three years ago after his marriage broke down, and although he has found some temporary jobs as a warehouse worker for Marks and Spencer he is currently unemployed.
To make his £70 a week go further, he switched suppliers from Scottish Power in September, but is still in dispute over a final bill for an extra £600.
“It was £500 for gas and £100 for electricity,” he said. “I don’t know why, but I checked it out and apparently they can do that. I was on the wrong tariff or something, even though I was pre-paying. But I can’t pay it – where am I going to get £600 from?”
Mckay’s problem is shared by about one in 10 households across the country who are classed as in fuel poverty. Ofgem, the energy regulator, is introducing a price cap on pre-payment customers from April, but the majority of people in fuel poverty have standard meters, and everyone will be affected by rising prices.
The stock answer that Ofgem, energy suppliers, price comparison websites and consumer champions give to complaints about rising fuel prices has been the same for a decade: switch.
Switching from “standard variable tariffs” – the default price plan – to the cheapest deal would save about £230, the regulator says.
Yet even though UK consumers have been able to choose suppliers since 2001, and price comparison websites like uSwitch.com, TheEnergyShop.com and moneysavingexpert.com have been in business for nearly a decade, only a third of us have bothered to switch.
E.ON price rise branded 'monstrous' as users face £97 a year extra
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That leaves 66% – 20 million households – who still pay more than they need to, the so-called “sticky” customers. About 45% of us don’t remember ever changing suppliers.
It is no wonder few people switch when switching remains complicated, according to Joe Malinowski, founder of TheEnergyShop.com. “One supplier asks you 28 questions just to get a quote.
Posted by jeffrey davies [86.17.83.77] on 12 March 2017
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jeffs post
RIDDLE me this: When is a memorial unveiling not a memorial unveiling?
Answer: When it’s a crassly cynical propaganda exercise which sneers at democratic principles and thumbs its nose at international law.
That was exactly the case this week when the new edifice purporting to pay tribute to those British soldiers and civilians killed by political cowardice and imperialist adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq was revealed at a lavish ceremony in London.
Except it was nothing of the sort.
Oh, I have no doubt that the artist commissioned to make the sculpture had good intentions but, as we all know, the road to the downstairs boiler room is paved with them.
Unfortunately for him he had the misfortune to have his proud moment hijacked in odious fashion in a spectacular demonstration of jingoist revisionism.
Setting aside the question of why we need a new memorial — there’s already quite a big one, it’s called the Cenotaph — let us focus on the specious claim that this was an event to pay tribute to the armed forces and civilian contribution rather than a blatant attempt to give some legitimacy to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Whatever your view on both the wars and this country’s armed forces — I think I have made my opinion perfectly clear on both subjects over the years — if it truly was about paying respect to those who died you might have thought that, oh, I don’t know, their families would have been invited…
But then, according to the government and event organisers, this was not a memorial to the dead as such, they don’t like to mention that bit for some reason, instead it was a “commemoration” of dutiful service.
Speaking prior to the event Lord Jock Stirrup, chairman of the memorial project’s board of trustees and former head of the armed forces said: “Literally hundreds of thousands of British military personnel and UK civilian citizens served this country in all sorts of various ways in support of those campaigns and we felt that it was extremely important that the way they had conducted themselves, carried out their duties and the service they had given to the nation was honoured and commemorated.
“So the memorial is exactly that, it’s to commemorate duty and service, it’s not about the campaigns themselves per se, it’s about those principles which are important in any civilised society and have always been an integral part of who and what we regard ourselves to be as a nation.
“We wanted to acknowledge the contribution of the many who had served.”
Ah, yes, of course! Because let’s face it, nothing says respect and acknowledgement like not telling the bereaved that there was even going to be an event and then, when they find out by other means, blithely telling them they can turn up if they want but they’ll have to pay their own way there and stand with everyone else.
Then we turn to the grotesque spectacle itself and those who were invited. There were more bogus gongs in evidence than at a rigged talent competition. The Windsor parasites were of course there in force, each sporting more medals than Usain Bolt, except he earned his.
Even arch-ligger Airmiles Andy turned up. He must have thought there was a free buffet.
This is a scumbag whose sole contribution in life has been to further the noble tradition of selling eye-wateringly expensive weaponry to despotic regimes and schmoozing mass murderers at the taxpayer’s expense.
And speaking of scumbags, Tony Blair was there of course showing yet again that his hypocrisy and arrogance know no bounds, probably squeezing out a few crocodile tears when he thought anyone might be looking.
Posted by jeffrey davies [86.17.83.77] on 12 March 2017
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taxing the women
Is any further comment necessary?
If you take nothing else away from this Budget remember that the tampon tax is back. Two years on from George Osborne’s announcement that the £15 million in funds it raises would be used for women’s charities; one year on from David Cameron’s announcement it would be scrapped and it still exists.
It will now, as the Chancellor Philip Hammond was “honoured” to announce be used to fund women’s charities. Although the funding has been cut from £15 million to £12 million.
Happy International Women’s Day!
Brexit is already such a success that we will have to keep a universally reviled and unfair tax for another two years. Not only that, but women are now back to being forced to fund their own domestic violence shelters.
And no, these services are not optional. They are vital for the protection of women in our community and £12million doesn’t even scratch the service of previous cuts.
Under Tory austerity, 30 per cent of specialist domestic violence services have closed as funds disappear. In 2016 alone, grants to local authorities, used to fund women’s refuges, were cut by 56 per cent. This is not sustainable and forcing women to fund their own protection is frankly insulting.
Posted by jeffrey davies on 12 March 2017
