Average 10% swing against Labour, only 6% to Conservatives, 4% to minor parties (UKIP and BNP).
Not enough to make Conservatives confident at all.
07 May 2010
UK election: live blogging
So it is 11.28pm BST and there are only two results (safe Labour seats) and a silly exit poll which has little validity because, quite simply, so many have engaged in postal voters.
However, there has been a swing to the Conservatives in both seats. Over 8% in one and 11% in the other.
Could this mean a Tory majority?
Libertarian Party UK publishes manifesto - work in progress
Indeed, but the Libertarian Party UK is young, and needs to grow and mature.
The manifesto was published a couple of days ago, but at least it has been done.
It's not perfect, I for one cannot argue for armed neutrality whilst being a member of NATO. It is quite contradictory. Membership of NATO means an attack on a NATO member is an attack on you. Planning shouldn't be a policy, and it should be about private property rights, and the transport policy is too complicated.
but it IS better than the one I read a few months ago. Albeit a bit too long. Still, light years ahead of the others, and something to build upon further.
Given the appalling state of the competition, it is hard to criticise at this stage, but the UK electoral cycle is up to five years. Enough time to really provide a platform for disenchanted small government liberal Conservatives (who aren't obsessed with the EU) to escape to perhaps?
06 May 2010
Bureaucrats prepare austerity plans for the UK
Whatever party wins the UK elections, the Treasury has prepared plans to cut spending drastically according to The Times.
In order to preserve the UK's credit rating, drastic measures are needed:
"Options drawn up by the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions in the past few weeks include means-testing child benefit, cutting disability and housing benefits and freezing all payments in cash terms. Freezing benefits for one year would save £4 billion while freezing them for a whole parliament would save £24 billion in the fifth year alone. "
Welfare is the priority, why? Because it is the single largest item of spending at £200 billion per annum. Yes you read right. The state spends £3300 in welfare per man, woman and child every year, which means it taxes about £5000 per adult to pay for the income of others.
The opportunities are enormous:
"Spending on social security benefits has shot up from £93 billion in 1997-98 to nearly £170 billion this year because of a growing number of elderly people, increased payments to lone parents and working families, and rising unemployment....Billions could be saved by means-testing child benefit, which goes to 7.5 million families at a cost of more than £11.7 billion. Officials are also looking at cuts to disability living allowance, which costs £11.3 billion, as well as setting housing benefit, which costs more than £20 billion, at a much lower level."
Do any of the main parties have half the courage to do any of this?
In order to preserve the UK's credit rating, drastic measures are needed:
"Options drawn up by the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions in the past few weeks include means-testing child benefit, cutting disability and housing benefits and freezing all payments in cash terms. Freezing benefits for one year would save £4 billion while freezing them for a whole parliament would save £24 billion in the fifth year alone. "
Welfare is the priority, why? Because it is the single largest item of spending at £200 billion per annum. Yes you read right. The state spends £3300 in welfare per man, woman and child every year, which means it taxes about £5000 per adult to pay for the income of others.
The opportunities are enormous:
"Spending on social security benefits has shot up from £93 billion in 1997-98 to nearly £170 billion this year because of a growing number of elderly people, increased payments to lone parents and working families, and rising unemployment....Billions could be saved by means-testing child benefit, which goes to 7.5 million families at a cost of more than £11.7 billion. Officials are also looking at cuts to disability living allowance, which costs £11.3 billion, as well as setting housing benefit, which costs more than £20 billion, at a much lower level."
Do any of the main parties have half the courage to do any of this?
UK political tribalism from one side
People on the right, whoever they are, don't hate the Labour Party or those who stand for the Labour Party quite as much as those on the left hate the Conservatives. I loathe socialism and loathe socialists, but I don't think that they are, by and large, people with bad intentions. With a few exceptions, like Sue Kedgley and Helen Clark, both of whom absolutely drip with desire for power over others, most of those in leftwing parties are "do-gooders" who genuinely care about other people, and genuinely have good intentions. Yes, they pave the road to hell with them, but rational arguments about the means, and the ends arising from the means they support can tend to sway them to an alternative.
The classic example of this happening on the left was in both Australia and NZ in the 1980s. Both Labour (Labor in Australia) Parties governed with reformist agendas that substantially liberalised markets, opened up sectors to competition, privatised major government businesses and transformed their economies. Let's be clear, David Lange and Roger Douglas both believed at the time that they were acting in the best interests of the country, that the reforms would increase prosperity and the ability to afford the social services beloved of most. The difference was that Douglas saw the means being more and more oriented towards the private sector, whereas Lange was cornered by a certain person who convinced him the means were as important as the ends.
Quite simply, significant number of the National Party from 1984-1990 wished THEY had done what Labour was able to do. Rarely does the left say the same about the right.
This is, in part, because the right rarely does what the left wishes it could do. However, even when the left does NOT turn around what was done by the right (e.g. Tony Blair), there is still a visceral hatred for the right. Gary Younge in the Guardian outlines his own, emotive, irrational hatred of the Conservatives.
He says:
"I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about."
Well hold on.
The miners were an issue because Labour nationalised the mines and protected them for so long, prolonging men in jobs that were not affordable or sustainable (and had it not happened then, environmentalism would have closed such jobs down eventually). Communist unionists using violence, who opposed secret ballots for strikes, refused to allow reality to be confronted. Why does he not hate those who essentially saw the other side of the Iron Curtain as an economic model to emulate?
Apartheid was an issue that the Conservatives were slow to confront. There was a real need for a genuine liberal confrontation of the fascist racism that ran South Africa, but no one should pretend that those who embraced Mugabe and the pro-communist ANC were angels either. Apartheid ended when the Cold War saw an end to white South African fears of invasion from neighbouring states. The Labour Party meanwhile campaigned to effectively be neutral in the Cold War.
Bobby Sands was a terrorist, as were many of the unionists and the British forces were hardly innocents. However, if Irish republican terrorists murdered one of your closest friends a couple of years earlier, you might not want to be generous to them either.
Greenham Common? Well if you want to unilaterally disarm against the Soviet Empire then fine, but I have noticed Gordon Brown prepared to replace Trident. The Cold War was won because Marxism-Leninism collapsed in the face of its own failings, and a strong determined Western alliance unwilling to capitulate.
Council houses? Yes, nothing so bad as letting people buy their own council house. However, if you think the big brutalist council estates of the 1950s and 1960s have been a social success, then good luck to you.
Section 28? Yes, that was ridiculous. The Conservatives have shed this fortunately, but then it's a crime to speak openly against homosexuality now.
Finally "lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor" is that myth that somehow governments give money to the rich and take from the poor. No, it is quite the opposite. Look at where taxes come from.
So sorry Gary, I doubt very much that when you say "I hate them because they hate people I care about." that they actually DO hate the people you care about.
However, it is clear you fall into the "co-parent" model I wrote about before. You support Labour so it can look after those you "care about" instead of you doing it for them, and you hate the Conservatives for reasons that mostly don't stand close scrutiny.
The truth is your big nanny state is and will continue, and you can keep evading reason, so will keep supporting it. If you want to look at one of the consequences of doing so, take a trip to Athens.
The classic example of this happening on the left was in both Australia and NZ in the 1980s. Both Labour (Labor in Australia) Parties governed with reformist agendas that substantially liberalised markets, opened up sectors to competition, privatised major government businesses and transformed their economies. Let's be clear, David Lange and Roger Douglas both believed at the time that they were acting in the best interests of the country, that the reforms would increase prosperity and the ability to afford the social services beloved of most. The difference was that Douglas saw the means being more and more oriented towards the private sector, whereas Lange was cornered by a certain person who convinced him the means were as important as the ends.
Quite simply, significant number of the National Party from 1984-1990 wished THEY had done what Labour was able to do. Rarely does the left say the same about the right.
This is, in part, because the right rarely does what the left wishes it could do. However, even when the left does NOT turn around what was done by the right (e.g. Tony Blair), there is still a visceral hatred for the right. Gary Younge in the Guardian outlines his own, emotive, irrational hatred of the Conservatives.
He says:
"I hate them for a reason. For lots of reasons, actually. For the miners, apartheid, Bobby Sands, Greenham Common, selling council houses, Section 28, lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor – to name but a few. I hate them because they hate people I care about."
Well hold on.
The miners were an issue because Labour nationalised the mines and protected them for so long, prolonging men in jobs that were not affordable or sustainable (and had it not happened then, environmentalism would have closed such jobs down eventually). Communist unionists using violence, who opposed secret ballots for strikes, refused to allow reality to be confronted. Why does he not hate those who essentially saw the other side of the Iron Curtain as an economic model to emulate?
Apartheid was an issue that the Conservatives were slow to confront. There was a real need for a genuine liberal confrontation of the fascist racism that ran South Africa, but no one should pretend that those who embraced Mugabe and the pro-communist ANC were angels either. Apartheid ended when the Cold War saw an end to white South African fears of invasion from neighbouring states. The Labour Party meanwhile campaigned to effectively be neutral in the Cold War.
Bobby Sands was a terrorist, as were many of the unionists and the British forces were hardly innocents. However, if Irish republican terrorists murdered one of your closest friends a couple of years earlier, you might not want to be generous to them either.
Greenham Common? Well if you want to unilaterally disarm against the Soviet Empire then fine, but I have noticed Gordon Brown prepared to replace Trident. The Cold War was won because Marxism-Leninism collapsed in the face of its own failings, and a strong determined Western alliance unwilling to capitulate.
Council houses? Yes, nothing so bad as letting people buy their own council house. However, if you think the big brutalist council estates of the 1950s and 1960s have been a social success, then good luck to you.
Section 28? Yes, that was ridiculous. The Conservatives have shed this fortunately, but then it's a crime to speak openly against homosexuality now.
Finally "lining the pockets of the rich and hammering the poor" is that myth that somehow governments give money to the rich and take from the poor. No, it is quite the opposite. Look at where taxes come from.
So sorry Gary, I doubt very much that when you say "I hate them because they hate people I care about." that they actually DO hate the people you care about.
However, it is clear you fall into the "co-parent" model I wrote about before. You support Labour so it can look after those you "care about" instead of you doing it for them, and you hate the Conservatives for reasons that mostly don't stand close scrutiny.
The truth is your big nanny state is and will continue, and you can keep evading reason, so will keep supporting it. If you want to look at one of the consequences of doing so, take a trip to Athens.
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