Xianggang: 20 Years of Liberation

BREAKING: FAIRBANK REPORT PROJECTS "NO" WIN IN SCOTTISH REFERENDUM!

IT IS 02.09 IN GREAT BRITAIN AS ELECTION OFFICIALS CONTINUE THE VOTE COUNT ON THE QUESTION OF SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE.

THE FAIRBANK REPORT IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT IT HAS CALLED THE ELECTION FOR THE "NO" SIDE.

BRITISH UNITY IS THEREFORE SECURE.  THE UNITED KINGDOM REMAINS UNITED -- FOR THE TIME BEING.

Toast?

PM Gordon Brown on track to lose the May 6 General Elections, ending 13 years of Labour rule.

Source: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/elections/news/article/leaders-out-as-tories-edge-forward/N0108001272736823479A

The three party leaders embarked on a whirlwind rush around the country on the final weekend before the May 6 General Election, encountering supporters, hecklers and protests as they battled for votes.

Polls in the Sunday papers suggested that there was still everything to play for in the tightest election for a generation, with Conservatives extending their lead but still looking unlikely to secure an outright majority.

An ICM survey of key constituencies for the News of the World suggested that a swing from Labour to Liberal Democrats in marginals could let the Tories seize the extra handful of seats which would put them within hailing distance of forming a government with the support of Northern Irish unionists. But David Cameron insisted that he was still fighting for outright victory, and was not thinking about the prospect of post-election deals with other parties.

And Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, boosted by the endorsement of the formerly Labour-backing Guardian, said the contest was now a "two-horse race" between his party and the Tories. He declined to say how many seats he was aiming for, declaring only "the sky's the limit".

Prime Minister Gordon Brown admitted he was fighting for his political life as he warned voters that a Tory victory would cost thousands of public sector jobs and cost one million families up to £10 a week in tax credits.

Mr Cameron added the backing of the Sunday Express - which said he offered "a long overdue return to decency and traditional values" - to earlier endorsements from The Times and The Sun. And Tories edged forward in a number of polls for the Sunday papers, recording support of 35%-38%, compared with 23%-29% for Labour and 25%-29% for Liberal Democrats.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Vince Cable denied that "behind the scenes talks" were under way to determine what would happen in the event of a hung Parliament. And Mr Cameron dismissed talk of deals with the Lib Dems.

Mr Cameron - who faced British National Party protests as he visited Stevenage and Romford - launched his "contract" for the NHS, promising to increase health spending by more than inflation every year, fund extra cancer drugs and scrap targets.

Meanwhile, Mr Clegg urged voters to follow their hearts when they cast their ballots, rather than voting tactically for the party which they thought could win in their constituency.

The Independent on Sunday urged its readers to vote tactically against Conservatives in the hope of securing a hung Parliament in which a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition could usher in electoral reform. But Mr Clegg told voters in Somerset: "Every single vote counts. It's precious. Vote for what you believe in. Vote for the future that you really want."

TREACHERY!

The british government's release of the convicted Pan-Am Lockerbie bomber, who in one instance killed over 270 American men, women and children in 1988, under the guise of putative Scottish autonomy is nothing less than TREACHERY. I wish to remind our pasty white british "friends" that it was the USA who bailed them out of trouble during WWII, and it will be the same Yanks who will bail them out of future difficulties.

This weblog has been very friendly toward small britain over the years, but this decision on the part of the Labour government to hurt the American people is inexcusable.

Mrs. Thatcher in Her Sunset Years...

Source: bbcnews.com

Thatcher dementia fight revealed

The daughter of former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher has spoken for the first time about her mother's struggle with dementia.

In her new book, serialised in the Mail on Sunday, Carol Thatcher says she first noticed her mother's memory was failing over lunch in 2000.

She says she "almost fell off her chair" seeing her mother struggle.

Baroness Thatcher, 82, had to be reminded several times her husband, Sir Denis, had died, Ms Thatcher says.

In her book, A Swim-On Part in the Goldfish Bowl: A Memoir, she tells of how her mother's "blotting-paper brain", which had always absorbed information, began to fail eight years ago - a decade after leaving power.

Mum started asking the same questions over and over again, unaware she was doing so Carol Thatcher

The former Conservative prime minister got confused between Bosnia and the Falklands during a conversation about the war in the former Yugoslavia, Ms Thatcher writes.

"I almost fell off my chair. Watching her struggle with her words and her memory, I couldn't believe it," she says.

"She was in her 75th year but I had always thought of her as ageless, timeless and 100% cast-iron damage-proof."

The contrast was all the more striking because she had always had a memory "like a website", she writes.

'Repeated questions'

Ms Thatcher goes on to describe how telltale signs of dementia then began to emerge.

"Whereas previously you would never have had to say anything to her twice, because she'd already filed it away in her formidable memory bank, Mum started asking the same questions over and over again, unaware she was doing so.

"It might be something innocuous - such as 'What time is my car coming?' or 'When am I going to the hairdresser?' - but the fact she needed to repeat them opened a new and frightening chapter in our lives."

Ms Thatcher describes how she had to learn to be patient and that her mother "had an illness and that it wasn't personal".

"That's the worst thing about dementia: it gets you every time," she says.

"Sufferers look and act the same but beneath the familiar exterior something quite different is going on.

"They're in another world and you cannot enter."

Losing Sir Denis to pancreatic cancer in 2003 "was truly awful" for her mother, she says, "not least because her dementia meant she kept forgetting he was dead".

"I had to keep giving her the bad news over and over again.

"Every time it finally sank in that she had lost her husband of more than 50 years, she'd look at me sadly and say 'Oh', as I struggled to compose myself.

"'Were we all there?' she'd ask softly."

Series of strokes

On bad days her mother can "hardly remember the beginning of a sentence by the time she got to the end", she says.

But on good days there are flashes of her old self, and she retains a good memory of her time in office "as if her dementia had sharpened her powers of long-term recall", she adds.

Lady Thatcher, who was prime minister from 1979 to 1990, had a series of minor strokes in 2002 and was advised by doctors to stop making public speeches.

Friends of the Tory peer, who lives in central London, said earlier this year the strokes had affected her short-term memory.

But Ms Thatcher's book is believed to be the first time a family member has spoken publicly of her condition.

Lady Thatcher briefly returned to the limelight in September last year when she visited Downing Street as a guest of Gordon Brown.

She had won praise from the prime minister who described her as a "conviction politician".

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk_politics/7579352.stm

Published: 2008/08/24 01:54:46 GMT

© BBC MMVIII