General election 2010 - who will (or would) you vote for?

[DACrowe]

Between the lines the Lib Dems have specifically said they do not want to renew Trident.

Yeah. Always better to 'read between the lines' than read what is explicitly written in the manifesto, the policy documents and was a major bone of contention between Clegg and Huhne back in the leadership race. (Remember 'Calamity Clegg'? One of the things Huhne was accusing him there was not wanting to get rid of Trident because he only said he wanted to put it through the defense review process).*

You would not consider the MOD experts?

We would. That's why we want Trident to be subject to the defense review.

And since yuor posting greenpeace data have a read of this
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

The Greenpeace data I posted, reluctantly, because it was a source used in the LibDem policy paper on Trident. I then explained how one might arrive (sensibly) at the Greenpeace figure. The figures I used for nuclear energy costs were from a Friends of the Earth document, an organization which (unlike Greenpeace) I do trust to be accurate when it comes to environmental issues. If you tell me that a nuclear lobbying organisation has different figures all I can say is 'that doesn't surprise me'. I have neither the werewithall nor the expertise to critique the figures, nor I suspect do you.

We've now got both the Friends of the Earth and the 'World Nuclear' papers posted so people can look at both and decide for themselves (perhaps keeping the old principle of argument against interest at the back of their minds). What I will say is I'm pretty unimpressed that you decided to base your argument on the 'cost of the reaction'. Of the top of my head it costs America about $11 billion to build top of the line AP1000 reactors (though the Chinese can do it somehow for about $6billion; probably resource costs). This doesn't include decommissioning estimates (very expensive) or ongoing security costs (very expensive, standards set by international treaty to the best of my knowledge).

Lets also not forget that it is the safest form of power generation in terms of people killed per terawatt hour. Much more so than wind and certainly more so than oil and gas.

Again, we're not luddites. The safety element of nuclear power is part of the cost of construction and the cause of the security costs. I have no doubt that modern nuclear plants are as safe as we can make them; that's why there so expensive.

It makes more sense to pursue renewable energy technologies and work on improving energy efficiency

No, but it makes sense to pursue them in parallel. This shouldn't be an either or situation.

(my emphasis) Really? I say 'and', you say 'it shouldn't be one or the other'. Seriously? (a) I agree, (b) I agree with Nick, he said the exact same thing in the Second Debate though failed to use the key Thomas Friedman words 'job' and 'weatherise' which Obama had used when saying the same thing so it probably got totally ignored**, (c) ways to promote energy efficiency are mentioned in the manifesto on pages 22-23, 28-29, 52-53, 58-59 and 60-61. We're right there with you. That said the party policy is more 'small government' than the one I was suggesting 'cause market liberals get a bit squeamish about public works schemes. Personally if the government is going to be in the business of creating jobs I'd rather they trained people in 'weatherising' than paid them to take down/falsify crime figures so those same people could then get jobs in Europe doing the same damn thing but... hey.

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjLfTMD_zTw
**Source - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/p ... debate.pdf
"All the experts agree that it would take well into the next decade to create new nuclear energy, which would be too late to deal with the energy problems we have now. For a fraction of the money that I think both David Cameron and Gordon Brown want to spend on subsidising the nuclear industry, we could develop mass insulation programmes of our homes, our schools and our hospitals. Remember, 27% of all carbon dioxide emissions in this country go straight out of your window, through the roof of your house. If we only used energy more efficiently and also, of course, invested some of the money which would be wasted on big nuclear projects on wind energy and other renewable energies, I think that is the way towards a sustainable future."

[RedCelt69]

@RedCelt - I know he's got a sizeable majority, but Ming Campbell would still appreciate your vote anyway if you're registered here.

How big a majority does Campbell have? I got a couple of election leaflets through the post today. The SNP one ("elect a local champion") interested me because Sturgeon didn't appear in a big SNP-shaped group photo. What had always been a 2-faced (as in 2 people, not self-contradictory) party has been very Salmond-specific, lately.

The Labour leaflet irked me as it made a big point about this election being a 2-horse race. Damn them and damn their presumptions about democracy.

[Haunted]

Yeah. Always better to 'read between the lines' than read what is explicitly written in the manifesto, the policy documents and was a major bone of contention between Clegg and Huhne back in the leadership race.

When it comes to politics yes, it is very handy to read between lines.

(Remember 'Calamity Clegg'? One of the things Huhne was accusing him there was not wanting to get rid of Trident because he only said he wanted to put it through the defense review process).

This passed me by. Shame really since I've held Huhne in higher regard than Clegg.

We would. That's why we want Trident to be subject to the defense review.

I'm not against a review in principle, I am merely suspicious of the motivation for doing so. Apt suspicions I would argue given the strong support for the lib dems voiced by the CND and other groups.

If you tell me that a nuclear lobbying organisation has different figures all I can say is 'that doesn't surprise me'. I have neither the werewithall nor the expertise to critique the figures, nor I suspect do you.

You are free to look up the references I gave. Would you consider the UK committee review on nuclear power a reliable source?

We've now got both the Friends of the Earth and the 'World Nuclear' papers posted so people can look at both

The site I posted does not conduct it's own research, they collate figures from reputable sources. It is worth checking them out.

Of the top of my head it costs America about $11 billion to build top of the line AP1000 reactors (though the Chinese can do it somehow for about $6billion; probably resource costs).

The United States is not a good model since have a draconian attitude to waste and have a horribly swollen bureaucracy. Look at figures from well off nuclear economies like France.

Again, we're not luddites. The safety element of nuclear power is part of the cost of construction and the cause of the security costs. I have no doubt that modern nuclear plants are as safe as we can make them; that's why there so expensive.

And so corollary here is that we are deliberately making wind power dangerous by making it cheap? Nuclear safety is more than just about it's cost. It is practically impossible to have an accident in a modern reactor because of the ingenious design (see negative void coefficient).

It makes more sense to pursue renewable energy technologies and work on improving energy efficiency

No, but it makes sense to pursue them in parallel. This shouldn't be an either or situation.

(my emphasis) Really? I say 'and', you say 'it shouldn't be one or the other'. Seriously?

You have misunderstood me here. I was simply we should be pursuing renewable energy (nuclear is renewable under any good definition btw) and improve efficiency AS WELL AS invest in nuclea power. It should not be nuclear or renewable it should be both.

All the experts agree that it would take well into the next decade to create new nuclear energy

Yes and we can lay the blame for this firmly at the feet of New Labour. That doesn't mean we should abandon all efforts into this economical, reliable and safe form of power generation.

Remember, 27% of all carbon dioxide emissions in this country go straight out of your window, through the roof of your house. If we only used energy more efficiently and also, of course, invested some of the money which would be wasted on big nuclear projects on wind energy and other renewable energies, I think that is the way towards a sustainable future."

I quite agree, but it shouldn't be either or. We can improve efficiency and secure a long term power solution through nuclear energy.

[Frank]

Voting Lib Dem with the aim of producing a hung parliament. I hope for the introduction of a PR system as I think party politics is the parasite thats taken over our legislature. The parties oppose each other because they're on different teams, not because its a useful thing to do. Its my hope that a hung parliament will force cooperating between parties and build the relationships between MPs along new lines. I'd also hope that somehow magically the whip system gets broken and backbenchers break from the party line more often, but I can't see how that would come about.

Hmm, this is an intriguing position and one I vaguely subscribed to almost wholeheartedly until a few weeks ago. Why?

PR, at least as it is in Scotland, entrenches party politics, don't you imagine? With the list system it emphasises the power of parties without much to be gained by either independents or subsets.

Having said that, I'm massively in favour of the other points; being forced to work together could be potentially harmful, but I'm not spell-bound by arguments against a hung parliament. What I am against is further entrenching party politics. A move towards some form of ... evidence- or reason-based politics where you aren't massively politically or financially bound to a team and a team's ideology seems most desirable. PR vs FPtP doesn't seem to resolve that. But, as I've said above, I've recently changed from being generally pro-PR to being generally pro-'balance' (hung).

What we need is a well-hung parliament, eh?

[Guest]

BNP. All the way.

[RedCelt69]

BNP. All the way.

Very brave of you to give your full support in total anonymity.

[Duggeh]

.

[DACrowe]

@RedCelt - I know he's got a sizeable majority, but Ming Campbell would still appreciate your vote anyway if you're registered here.

How big a majority does Campbell have? I got a couple of election leaflets through the post today. The SNP one ("elect a local champion") interested me because Sturgeon didn't appear in a big SNP-shaped group photo. What had always been a 2-faced (as in 2 people, not self-contradictory) party has been very Salmond-specific, lately.

The Labour leaflet irked me as it made a big point about this election being a 2-horse race. Damn them and damn their presumptions about democracy.

To be fair we're the one's who introduced the 'it's a 2 horse race' 'Labour can't win here' stuff into British politics. It worked well at a few by-elections but frankly I think it just encourages suspicion that you're trying to be everything to everyone. Lord Rennard loved that stuff, and 'targeting probable voters' but he's gone now and hopefully the experience of this election means those ideas have gone with him.

Ming's majority is about 12,500 give or take demographic changes and Scottish Parliament votes. We're hoping it will go up. Don't put money on it, but at this point it's looking like it's going to. He's a really good case worker from what I can see from canvassing so the votes tend to accumulate.

Yes, I was particularly puzzled that they chose to use their 'elect a local champion' slogan here given (a) their candidate a councilor from Perth and (b) Ming is an Olympic gold medalist. I don't disagree with the slogan, I just think the strict semantics of it imply a candidate other than the one they intended.

"not self-contradictory" - An alliance of former socialists, social conservatives and outright fantasists who now have a steady track record of promising things they can't and don't deliver? I think 2-faced works well for both meanings on this occasion. As to the point you're making, it does seem doubly odd given Salmond isn't standing for Westminster (the old 'two jobs, low attendance' thing was getting harder to just laugh off it seems) but maybe Sturgeon was ill or had other things to be doing; it can happen.

The Tory leaflet had a different 2 horse race claim; the one they're distributing in 'the badlands' claims that this election is between the Conservatives and Labour. Obviously, on a national level it looks like that's no longer true, but even if it were that certainly aren't what the facts on the ground are in Fife.

You should have had at least one of our leaflets by now, no?

[Al]

An alliance of former socialists, social conservatives and outright fantasists who now have a steady track record of promising things they can't and don't deliver?

That's the Lib Dems in a nutshell.

[DACrowe]

An alliance of former socialists, social conservatives and outright fantasists who now have a steady track record of promising things they can't and don't deliver?

That's the Lib Dems in a nutshell.

Tee hee hee hee hee

But seriously. That's now two Glasgow by-elections in which you've stood social conservatives - Mason gave an interview saying that his two great goals in politics were Scottish independence and banning abortion, yir chap for Glasgow North East was a member of opus dei. Mason and Robertson have a better Tory voting record than David Mundell. Care to point to a LibDem you feel is a 'social conservative'? This might help - http://mygayvote.co.uk/

Salmond and the 79 Group were socialists; I don't think they'd deny it. If there were any ardent economic socialists amongst the SDP their influence is not particularly noticeable in the party's platform.

And as for the fantasist point, it's a cheap shot I know but the number of SNP faithful I've met canvassing who are willing to talk and talk about how England's stealing all their money is... rather depressing. And the empirical evidence? Let's be generous and say 'limited'.

We got 85% of our manifesto passed when we were the minority party in a coalition government. How much have you got through Holyrood that you promised in 2007? Scottish Future's Trust showing us a viable alternative to PFI-based government finance is it? Or did it just delay almost all municipal building funding in Scotland for two years and now end up as a massive quango devoted to setting up exactly what it was supposed to be an alternative to? Haven't noticed my student debt being written off, think I would have spotted that. Class sizes? Local income tax? Alex Salmond made a big song and dance about how the 'SNP had experience of how things could be done in a hung parliament'; seems to me the current Holyrood administration is a case study in how to epically fail at minority administration. And then we have the new manifesto which promises such gems as getting the cost of the London Olympics (£135million) as a Barnett consequential. Despite that the SNP could not conceivably have a majority and having ruled out being in a coalition cannot be in a position to bargain with the other parties for this, and despite that things like spending on major sporting events have never been subject to the Barnett formula in the past, we're in a recession wherein everyone is trying to cut unnecessary waste from the budget; why the heck would Westminster vote to give Holyrood an extra £135million for no reason? They wouldn't. Not 'it's not likely'. It will never happen. It's a lie, in other words. Just like it's a lie to suggest you'd be able to get trident scrapped unilaterally. Just like it was a lie to say you could write off student debts in 2007. Just like it was a lie to say you'd magically come up with a 'new system of infrastructure funding'.

But I'm sure as a left of centre Scot with nationalist sympathies I'm just biased. As is the Scotsman. As is the Herald. As is the record. I'm sure it's just a massive media conspiracy against you and not a total fuckup punctuated by elections in which you promise the Earth and then (strangely) are unable to deliver it; keep fighting the good fight.

[donpablo]

Maybe I am being completely naive but spending all that money on trident still seems like madness to me. Kinda like putting all your eggs in one basket. Id prefer to take the moral high ground and have a shit load of spending money for other things. Even if it is better kit for troops and other non-nuclear defence things. Very much sounds like a damned if you do damned if you dont situation but one of them has a huge price tag.

[Haunted]

"All your eggs" would be more than just 0.0009% of the budget.
£100 Bn (ridiculous upper estimate but lets go with it) is chump change for the ultimate weapon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_budget

[another guest]

BNP. All the way.

Very brave of you to give your full support in total anonymity.

Bravery has nothing to do with it.

When psychotic "anti-fascists" publicly harass people who support the BNP and BNP supporters are discriminated against in employment and public life because of their political beliefs (which, objectively, have as much value as any others) can you blame them for wanting to be anonymous?

Good for you. Believe whatever you want to believe.

[Al]

I don't, and didn't, deny that there are (former) socialists, social conservatives, and, yes, some outright fantasists who promise things they can't deliver in the SNP. I was merely pointing out that the same description is equally true of the LIb Dems. You only have to look at the STARLINK group for evidence of Lib Dem fantasy. As for social conservatives in the Lib Dems, 23 MPs voted, in 2008, to lower the legal time limit on abortion to 22 weeks, and three voted to lower it further.

And yes, the Lib Dems managed to get a lot of their policies through. Being the minority partner in a coalition is hardly the same thing as being a minority government though, is it? Let's face it, the Labour Party needed to support Lib Dem policies or they would have killed the coalition. Labour politicians generally oppose SNP policies on principle. The principle of hating the SNP.

[RedCelt69]

BNP. All the way.

Very brave of you to give your full support in total anonymity.

Bravery has nothing to do with it.

When psychotic "anti-fascists" publicly harass people who support the BNP and BNP supporters are discriminated against in employment and public life because of their political beliefs (which, objectively, have as much value as any others) can you blame them for wanting to be anonymous?

I believe that the generally-accepted next-stage in anonymity involves a white pointy hood.

People have the right to any belief they choose to hold. Other people also have the right to mock them for their strange beliefs - which is especially effective when you use logic to show the farce in their insanities.

Provide some "arguments" about "indigenous Brits" so I can mock you and point out that the British Isles has been (and always will be) a hotch-potch of bastardised races.

The Celts were European migrants. The Saxons (funnily enough) came from Saxony (the general vicinity of Germany, these days). The Normans came from Normandy, although their ancesters were Norse - so that's Scandinavia included. Which is handy, as the Vikings left lots of their blood behind... and I don't mean on the battlefields. The Angles and the Jutes weren't local, either. Oh, and FWIW not all Romans came from Rome.

In between all of the above, people knew how to use boats and came and went from every navigable country you could name.

Indigenous, to the BNP, means white people. The very same white people who were living in wood huts, caked in mud, whilst brown people invented written language, mathematics, cultivation and (to cut a very long list short) the wheel. So screw you and any other moron who wants to parade the supremacy of the white race. Microphone or no microphone, I'll call you a bigot to your face.

[Archie]

BNP. All the way.

Indigenous, to the BNP, means white people. The very same white people who were living in wood huts, caked in mud, whilst brown people invented written language, mathematics, cultivation and (to cut a very long list short) the wheel. So screw you and any other moron who wants to parade the supremacy of the white race. Microphone or no microphone, I'll call you a bigot to your face.

Agree with RedCelt69 100%.

Guest, you're a twat.

[Benjamin]

I'd vote Green, but as they (or we) are not standing in Fife North East, by process of elimination I'm going to have to vote SNP.

[LonelyPilgrim]

Gee golly! I wonder if I ought to go get my ten foot pole for this discussion! Hmmmm... nah... think I'll go do something less likely to upset me, like hit myself in the head with a beer bottle and pretend someone said something nasty about my mother...

[kerryflett]

I'm voting SNP, because they are one of the more socially democratic parties around in the system right now. I'm on the pretty far left of the party, and would count myself as a socialist, but the fact is that a) I believe in Scottish independence as an ideal, and b) the SSP is a fecking joke. New Labour don't represent the working classes any more (particularly good at shafting students, the elderly and immigrant populations); the Lib Dems I can cope with. The Tories...sorry, but I (like a lot of people on the board, I reckon) have seen what Thatcherism did to Scotland. I will never support a party that believes in keeping privilege to a small section of the population, taking money from the poor and giving to the rich, and which is full of people who don't understand anything about how life works in the real world. Overly capitalist, socially conservative idiots who don't appear to care about anyone but themselves (the leadership of the party, certainly).

[kerryflett]

Also: why are so many people so against socialism? It's like this country's had a complete social responsibility bypass. Everyone has a moral responsibility to do what they can to help the poorest and most vulnerable in society, and if that means you giving hard earned money in taxes and accepting that you should help those less fortunate than you: boo fecking hoo. If, on the other hand, it's an issue with the ideology and its effectiveness: fair play to ya. Flame away.