General election results 2015

[ahinton]

EN412 The Green Party will outlaw ownership of energy retail by profit making companies that have a stake in energy production, unless the generation is wholly renewable. The current pattern of vertical ownership has worked to concentrate market power into an oligopoly, to the detriment of energy conservation and price competition. Vertically-integrated energy companies will be required to divest their ownership in energy retail (currently the least profitable aspect of the energy industry). Energy retail will be conducted by community-owned, municipally-owned or cooperative not-for-profit regional monopolies and we will require open-book accounting practices to ensure fair pricing, sufficient investment and good value for consumers.

EN420 We will encourage the ownership of decentralised energy production and energy saving by community and municipal companies. This will be enabled through favourable supply and demand feed-in tariffs as well as relief from all transmission charges and disproportionate distribution charges for local generation. Small-scale and community-owned renewables will be provided with fixed price feed-in tariffs for installations of up to 50MW to ensure their output can be sold for a fair price. Community groups, cooperatives and local authorities would be supported by the Green Investment Bank to purchase renewable power plant and contribute to local energy supply at competitive rates.

Thank you for this. I don't agree with it all 100%, albeit only in the sense that, in seeking to weaken the grip of large private energy supply corporations, it seems only to want to replace it with "community and municipal companies" and "community groups, co-operatives and local authorities", which seems to me to be a welcome part of the answer rather than the whole answer which would need also to embrace individual renewable installations; that said, it is at least pretty clear and embraces much that could be of great benefit to society.

[James Wonnacott]

Animals is a great Floyd Album don't you think?

Taken at face value I think that's probably one thing we'd agree on MrGG!

[James Wonnacott]

I hope so, since it says younger people tend to be opposed.

But I see no reason to consult the electorate on what electoral system is used. They weren't consulted on FPTP. Nor do I think they should be consulted on whether we have the death penalty.

Of course not, Nanny knows best.

[Serial_Apologist]

Of course not, Nanny knows best.

I must admit to not having understood what french frank wrote in that message either. After all, a high premium on the importance of community political involvement surely must extend to the methods by which any decision making will be expressed.

[french frank]

I must admit to not having understood what french frank wrote in that message either. After all, a high premium on the importance of community political involvement surely must extend to the methods by which any decision making will be expressed.

It was following on from calling a (constitutional) referendum on the EU (which I can agree with).

I'm not sure that the actual system used to vote needs to be the subject of a referendum (as AV was). There are many other electoral rules and regulations where we don't vote every time there's a change. You could extend the Nanny comment to anything which any government decides to do without a specific vote having taken place first.

It's when one gets to the point where people are persuaded that PR is unfair because 'some people get two votes' that one feels a referendum isn't wise.

PS Actually, it wasn't the EU - it was the death penalty, wasn't it?

[Conchis]

Not the result I wanted but there is a sort of poetic justice to what has happened to the Liberal Democrats.

They pretended to be principled, when in fact they were just greedy for office: Clegg sold his soul for (not a lot of) power and now he must survey his vastly diminished kingdom from his lonely South Yorkshire redoubt.

Paddy Ashdown was very funny (albeit unintentionally) on the exit poll: this man has been consistently WRONG about every major issue since h e entered politics.

I've long felt that the LDs are a joke party: a bunch of people who 'like' the idea of political involvement but have no idea what political involvement actually involves.

Well: they've helped to birth a right-wing Tory government and have placed themselves further from the levers of power than at any time since 1970.

It's hilarious. :)

[Serial_Apologist]

Not the result I wanted but there is a sort of poetic justice to what has happened to the Liberal Democrats.

They pretended to be principled, when in fact they were just greedy for office: Clegg sold his soul for (not a lot of) power and now he must survey his vastly diminished kingdom from his lonely South Yorkshire redoubt.

Paddy Ashdown was very funny (albeit unintentionally) on the exit poll: this man has been consistently WRONG about every major issue since h e entered politics.

I've long felt that the LDs are a joke party: a bunch of people who 'like' the idea of political involvement but have no idea what political involvement actually involves.

Well: they've helped to birth a right-wing Tory government and have placed themselves further from the levers of power than at any time since 1970.

It's hilarious. :)

Your shares gone up on the stock market, have they?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I've got a new desktop picture of David Cameron's first cabinet meeting. Around the table with him are George Osborne, Darth Vader, Blofeldt, Cruella De Vil, Voldemort, etc. It cheers me up to know I'm not alone in my utter despair.

[Conchis]

I've got a new desktop picture of David Cameron's first cabinet meeting. Around the table with him are George Osborne, Darth Vader, Blofeldt, Cruella De Vil, Voldemort, etc. It cheers me up to know I'm not alone in my utter despair.

We got a hint of what the 2015 election result would be when Scotland rejected independence last year. The mood of the UK was conservative then and has only become more so in the nine months since.

It was genuinely funny listening to the squeals of outrage from the rag tag and bobtail army of people who had split the anti-Tory vote by voting for the Greens, the Scots Nats and other parties that stood not a change of achieving real power. These people seem to have forgotten that we DON'T live under PR, which was deciively rejected by the electorate in 2011. There won't be another referendum on AV in any of our lifetimes.

I fully expect a Conservative government to be in power for the rest of my life (and I'm 'only' 47), largely because of the Left's inability to come up with convincing alternative arguments/figures.

'Progressive' politics in Britain is as dead as a thousand dodos.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The mood of the UK was conservative then and has only become more so in the nine months since.
.

Are you making the assumption that the UK is a synonym for England?

[David-G]

...But I see no reason to consult the electorate on what electoral system is used. They weren't consulted on FPTP. ...

No reason to consult the electorate? I am astonished at your totalitarian point of view.

...It's when one gets to the point where people are persuaded that PR is unfair because 'some people get two votes' that one feels a referendum isn't wise. ...

I do not want PR. Am I not entitled to hold this view? Does this view not carry any weight? This is my view - I have not been "persuaded". Do I get no say at all as to whether PR is introduced?

[Conchis]

Are you making the assumption that the UK is a synonym for England?

No: the rejection of independence signified the 'conservative' mood in Scotland. The fact that they have now gone massively for the SNP (not a Party with a socialist agenda, as some people mistakenly believe) means nothing other than that the Scots, having made a practical decision and binding decision nine months ago, have now followed it up with an emotional (and non-binding) one.

In Wales, the Tories made their biggest gains in forty years.

My point is that the WHOLE of the UK has swung to the right - the direction in which it naturally inclines, anyway.

[MrGongGong]

No reason to consult the electorate? I am astonished at your totalitarian point of view.

That's a bizarre conclusion.

[mangerton]

No: the rejection of independence signified the 'conservative' mood in Scotland. The fact that they have now gone massively for the SNP (not a Party with a socialist agenda, as some people mistakenly believe) means nothing other than that the Scots, having made a practical decision and binding decision nine months ago, have now followed it up with an emotional (and non-binding) one.

In Wales, the Tories made their biggest gains in forty years.

My point is that the WHOLE of the UK has swung to the right - the direction in which it naturally inclines, anyway.

I'm not convinced.

If the SNP doesn't have a socialist agenda, what does it have? It certainly isn't right wing by any normal definition of "right wing". Scotland has not "swung to the right". It has swung from a labour party that swung to the right and stood shoulder to shoulder with the tories during the referendum campaign.

[jean]

PR...was deciively rejected by the electorate in 2011. There won't be another referendum on AV in any of our lifetimes.

AV isn't PR.