Government, Opposition, what’s the difference? It’s all become shades of “bigness”. With the UK Big-Government orbiting in the shadow of the Mega-Government in the EU, is it any wonder an alternative had to spring forth? And Lo…
In case you haven’t heard, Mr Reckless left the UK Tories, joined UKIP (the UK Independence Party) and just won the byelection becoming UKIP’s second member of Parliament. It surprised quite a lot of people. Analysts are abuzz: the electorate was not as old or white as the first seat UKIP won, and it was ranked 271st on the list of seats UKIP “might win”. Labor won just 16% of the vote.
People seem to like the idea of small government, lower taxes, and politicians who don’t promise to change the weather. Who would have thought?
Perhaps the mighty English will one day even win the right to buy powerful hairdryers, and serious vacuums? We dare hope!
UKIP’s victory was in many ways even more impressive than their triumph in Clacton. The ease with which they demolished a 9,000 Tory majority was striking and this after the Conservatives had strained every sinew to halt the UKIP bandwagon.
UKIP now insists no Tory seat is safe and has suggested other Conservative MPs are more likely to defect.
For the Tories the result was not perhaps the meltdown they had feared and certainly there is no indication so far of panic or calls for Mr Cameron to go. Senior Tories also believe they are poised to win back this seat at the general election.
For Labour not only was their share of the vote almost halved but there was also despair at the damaging tweet by their former shadow attorney general Emily Thornberry, seemingly mocking “white van man”.
As for the Lib Dems, not only were they again overhauled by the Greens, but they secured a derisory 349 votes – their lowest total ever.
Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, described the win as “massive” because it was the party’s 271st target seat. “Looking forward to next year’s general election,” he added, “all bets are off, the whole thing’s up in the air.”
Of course, there will always be some voices predicting that it’s all downhill from here. 😉
But I note the positioning of UKIP crosses the spectrum and they apparently did the hard yards of pragmatic campaigning:
In an article for the Telegraph, Prof Goodwin recently noted a marked increase in the professionalism of UKIP’s campaigning operation.
Since Clacton, it has been using voter identification system software, enabling the party to transmit different messages in different parts of the campaign trail.
Clacton’s Labour-leaning residents were therefore wooed with the UKIP candidate’s “opposition to the ‘bedroom tax’ and the need to punish bankers; Tory voters heard about the need for more GPs”, he wrote.
The same strategy was deployed in Rochester and Stood, he added, while the Conservatives “remain focused on a story about the national economic recovery, which even a quick look at the surveys would show is not being felt by most UKIP voters”.
James Delingpole is delighted, of course: “Why We Should ALL Be Celebrating “
The modern Labour party just doesn’t represent their interests any more. It’s unpatriotic; it’s largely responsible for the mass immigration which is costing them jobs and housing and school places and hospital beds; and it no longer cares about the workers – only about quangocrats and EU directives and immigrants and public sector parasites and tedious battles of no interest to any real person, such as “diversity” and “equality” and “heterosexism”.
A man called Oliver Letwin, a policy chief, apparently took the Tory out of the Tories, as Dellers describes it, then at the last minute, even he uttered the UKIP-like words of independence:
Which is what makes it so surprising that Letwin, of all people, was the latest senior Tory to be given permission by party HQ to talk weally, weally tough on Europe. If Britain didn’t get what it wanted in its European negotiations then it should consider leaving the EU altogether, he told students at University College, London – in a no-doubt, carefully-planned, eve-of-Rochester bombshell.
Why is this incident so significant? Because if it weren’t for UKIP’s burgeoning success, it would simply never have happened. Cameron’s Tories are centrist, Europhile, politically correct. But the march of UKIP has brutally forced them out of their squishy comfort zone and forced them to start thinking like real conservatives again. — Breitbart
Congrats to the fans of freedom in the UK!
Unfortunately they need a wakeup call to realize what their interest really is.
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Could this be the thin edge of the wedge at long last?
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Jo, you forgot to mention that UKIP is the only British political party with a sane energy policy.
All the rest of the parties, apart from UKIP, are committed to increasing the use of unreliable, expensive energy at the expense of cheap and reliable energy. In other words, the three traditional main parties in the UK are committed to expanding energy poverty amongst the general public.
Such is the impact of ‘Save the planet syndrome’ on economic reality and common sense.
The green idiocy never ends in the UK; yesterday prime minister Cameron promised to give £650 million to one of the bottomless and unaccountable green bureaucracies of the UN.
The only benefit of this gift of other peoples’ money is to massage the smug egos of David Cameron and his Lib Dem comrade Ed Davey, both proven ecoloons of the first order.
The UK has an election coming up in May next year, if there is a really cold winter (and the runes are looking good here as the Met Office has just forecast a wet and mild one), then when the lights go out, the electorate may well start turning towards the only political party with a sane energy policy.
At least, I hope it does.
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Peter Miller:
Unfortunately the energy policy of the LibLabCon doesn’t seem to have got much air time. It seems Europe was the main issue with immigrants and loss of liberty, along with the costs were the main issues.
Until the folly of the energy policy is rammed home by blackouts then the public will ignore it. With Davey, or any other Libdem in charge, blackouts are certain, just the timing. Unfortunately these incompetents might get through the coming winter thanks to throwing money away on emergency diesel generators. Wind turbines are no longer the best scam in the UK, you can get more with diesel. Strange way to ‘reduce’ emissions and the deficit.
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Let’s never forget that the Labour party introduced the ludicrous climate change act.
Also, one of the few politicians who speaks with figures and facts about the CO2 nonsense is Roger Helmer, formerly a Conservative Party member and now UKIP.
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Re the limit on vacuum cleaner power.
Vacuum cleaners are very uncomplicated things. A huge proportion of vacuum cleaner power is very often used to fight a clogged filter in need of service. Millions have been sold on the basis of demontrations that took advantage of this.
Used my daughter’s 2000 watt cyclonic one yesterday. Had a big hose. Worked well.
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So a well maintained powerful vacuum is far more efficient than a clogged up but politially correct one. 2000 watts could be a high power unit by the way. The difference between continuous power rating and maximum power rating would vary a lot. A good clue to efficiency is how hot the thing gets. They would have done better to legislate a maximum running temperature shutoff. That would tell people to clean the clogged unit and force the inefficient junk off the market but it is not about protecting the consumer.
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What I was trying to say is that an old, properly maintained vacuum will do the job better than a new, powerful, clogged one. And yes, there is a big variation in the quality/efficiency of the motors.
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Let’s hope Farage knows how to use those high power vacuums to clean up the vacuous MSM that have promoted all this CAGW.
And show Abbott how it’s done.
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Hi Ted,
Actually, if you block the hose of a vacuum cleaner, though it sounds like it’s working harder, the current and hence the power, drops. We tested this the other day at work. However the efficiency (cleaning-work/power) also drops, only much more so. So yes, it’s more expensive to vacuum with a clogged vacuum cleaner.
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I admire without reservation any politician who, after schisms from his original party, then immediately stands for re-election. In the US, contrast Jim Jeffords (VT) with Phil Gramm (TX). If the whole concept of “party” is to preserve any meaning at all, those who choose on the basis of party deserve to have a member who shares fundamentals with the party. Those who choose on the basis of personal qualifications or positions, rather than party, as always, lose nothing from the sort of “Reckless” move demonstrated here. Mark Reckless may or may not hold policies I admire. But I admire his honor and honesty and hard work.
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Agree with Peter Millar – Peter – you have represented my views in a few paragraphs far better than any UK politician from the “traditional” parties.
Jo – nice to see a good analysis – many thanks – hopefully we will get politicians like you now have in power that at least in what is the debacle of “Climate Science” – have the balls to stand up for what is right.
I really do feel that the UK is on the cusp of a significant change. NOBODY respects the three main parties. And the election is just months away now.
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I totally agree with you Doug UK, Peter Millar and Jo. I take a keen interest because I was born in the UK, a long long time ago. UKIP are winning over the populace with “common-sense policies”. The ruling Tories have gone “Green” big time with a capital G and Labour, who have deserted their “blue collar” roots, just like Oz’s ALP, don’t know what they stand for anymore. So there you have it – the 2 biggest UK Parties have lost the plot – both have become Idealistic & Socialistic Big Brother Entities [ISBBE]. The electorate have had enough of this nonsense. It is time for the “in touch Party”, UKIP, to grab the “disillusioned vote”. The time is ripe for UKIP to do the unthinkable – win the 2015 UK Election – just how intelligent will the UK Electorate be next year? Do they want their powerful hairdryers & serious vacuum cleaners again? Do they want to use “shale gas” to drive their base load energy generation – at a fraction of the cost of those hideous giant wind turbines? Well as Al Pacino said, playing a lawyer (really Satin)in that brilliant movie “The Devils Advocate” – “It’s my time now”. Let’s trust that the Tories have a devil of a time getting re-elected and that Nigel Farage’s UKIP prevail. It will certainly send a shiver up Charlies back.
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I totally agree with you Doug UK, Peter Millar and Jo. I take a keen interest because I was born in the UK, a long long time ago. UKIP are winning over the populace with “common-sense policies”. The ruling Tories have gone “Green” big time with a capital G and Labour, who have deserted their “blue collar” roots, just like Oz’s ALP, don’t know what they stand for anymore. So there you have it – the 2 biggest UK Parties have lost the plot – both have become Idealistic & Socialistic Big Brother Entities [ISBBE]. The electorate have had enough of this nonsense. It is time for the “in touch Party”, UKIP, to grab the “disillusioned vote”. The time is ripe for UKIP to do the unthinkable – win the 2015 UK Election – just how intelligent will the UK Electorate be next year? Do they want their powerful hairdryers & serious vacuum cleaners again? Do they want to use “shale gas” to drive their base load energy generation – at a fraction of the cost of those hideous giant wind turbines?
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Meanwhile here in the States we appear to be emulating the UK by adding a king… guess he didn’t get the message from our voters a couple of weeks ago.
I’m happy to see sensible government gaining ground in the UK… please keep up the fight.
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Yes, Niels, and you’ve even got a Prince of Wales waiting in the wings.
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There appears to be more restraints on the Crown in Britain taking dictatorial action than with the President. It seems that there is no real way to stop the President from taking illegal actions other than the people who are directed to take them refusing. With the US public service being completely overrun by Marxists this seems unlikely. Like most democracies the US public service now seems beyond the control of the elected representatives in the parliament. The USA seems only a small step away from becoming a single party state run by a dictator.
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CameronH:
Exactly! Just imagine if OZ with a population approaching 24 or 25 million, had a mad leader that just gave 5 million of the poorest and most socialist people from Indonesia amnesty and a path to citizenship. Now imagine that another 10 million were watching and are now loading boats to get their amnesty so they could vote for an Australian Obama. Furthermore, imagine that everyone knew there were Mexican drug cartel members that just received amnesty as well as jihadists and that twice or more as many drug and sex trade Mexican cartel members and terrorists were on their way. The Australians would soon have a one party dictatorship too with all these new votes.
That is what the USA is facing. In the meantime, the establishment Republicans are meeting to see how to defeat the conservative Republicans. Obama smiles.
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Thats somewhat harder for us, our equivalent of the President, the Governor General has no real power except to dissolve parliament for an election at the end of their term.
The Prime minister is merely the majority Leader (Like Harry Reid?) the ruling party can change that on a whim, and we can the public can kick them out every 3 years. It’s suicide in Aus for a Leader to do things that alienate the public, your President gets away with it due to the electoral college and the fact that you can’t unseat him on a whim like we can. For example the Carbon tax caused Gillard to be dumped by her own party, Howard actually lost his own seat in Parliament and couldn’t have become Prime Minister had the LNP won the 2007 election. In addition the Prime Minister or even the Whole parliament can be brought down by a simple majority vote of no confidence, no super-majorities here.
Anybody is allowed to stand for any seat at an election and that couldn’t really be changed without a referendum, the only other real way to stack things is a gerrymander, which would require removing the electoral commission, but the Senate can’t be stacked that way so that approach wouldn’t be effective either since it can only deliver a majority in the House.
Your President is too powerful and too protected from the representative government, the members that represent YOU should be running the show, not an all powerful individual that represents no-one. I say the Congress should bring the public services back under the parliament and remove the right to legislate/regulate from the President. The President should be a figurehead for the nation doing the bidding of the representative government, and commander and chief – nothing else.
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That is how it is supposed to work, the President is not supposed to have the powers that Obama is executing. It was the checks and balances of the 3 branches of Government, Legislative – Congress, Judicial – Supreme Court, Executive – The President.
Congress is supposed to make and change the laws, NOT the president. But through abuses of War Powers, and Executive Order by both parties over the years that system of checks and balances has been destroyed and power has been taken that the Constitution did not grant.
Obama should be impeached, he should have been impeached years ago but too much of his party held sway in congress. Now that that has changed and he the Democrats no longer control congress, no one there has the guts to do it. At least so far.
The Republicans are afraid if they do it will cost them in the next election, the Democrats won’t because like it or not, he is theirs.
Neither party will do what is right, just whatever will protect their party.
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Gee whiz, we get increases in petrol tax by regulation (executive order and decision) from Abbott and you call out the USA, so where’s your call for Abbott’s downfall!
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Good lord, could you keep your mouth shut for once since you never have anything intelligent to say? I live in the US, I will condemn our politicians as I see fit. Whatever your politicians are doing, whether I like it or not, is your problem. I can’t vote there just as you cannot vote here, thank god.
Now shut up and deal with it.
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The USA has a very small government.
It is now down to one person (“person”, not ‘man”).
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toorightmate
I hit the wrong button. I wanted an up thumb.
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I while back I wrote a comment on this blog about UKIP and Nigel Farage and was taken to task by a few Australians who believed the misleading UK mainstream media hype that must have somehow found its way to Oz – I wonder how that could have happened?
One of Nigel’s favourite jokes is about the late, great comedian Bob Monkhouse:
Monkhouse used to say that when he was younger he told his family that he wanted to be a comedian and they all laughed!
” they’re not laughing now though” he quipped.
Nobody’s laughing at UKIP anymore either.
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It is good to see UKIP providing a means through which an absolutely fed-up electorate can kick the major parties, and, especially, send a strong message to the gutless, leftist Conservatives.
I hope UKIP does supplant the Conservatives as Britain’s main conservative party, but if they do I suspect they will again fail to deliver the agenda people want.
For example, to all political parties the ‘Europe question’ has boiled down to one of ‘in or out’, but that is NOT the issue. Britons want economic integration with Europe but they do NOT want all the commie crap that comes with it – mass immigration, british law and sovereignty being subsumed under european law, the so-called ‘human rights’ charter and so on. They want the Swiss model – that is, economic integration with Europe but a big thumbs down to ceding their sovereignty.
Even if UKIP approached this with the best of intentions they would probably find the leftist media and institutional juggernauts impossible to overcome. You only need look at Australia’s own gutless, impotent, failed conservative governments to see that beating the entrenched Left is so difficult a task that it is beyond them.
But there is an easy workaround. Think of it in these terms. How do the commies in our country bind us to obligations that would be difficult to get through parliament. Simple. They pass their responsibility on to a body other than parliament. Specifically, they sign treaties that bind all of us to the edicts of a handful of unelected leftist bureaucrats in Europe.
The conservatives have use the same technique but come at it from a different angle. Specifically, if they brought in direct democracy (citizen initiated referenda), that would allow us to create an obligation to which government is bound. In doing so the institutional opposition of the Left is circumvented.
Looking at it in Australian terms, it would be a way for an utterly gutless conservative government to get around the Left bullying it into not introducing free speech laws. If we demand it through a referendum, government is obligated to do it. They have no choice in the matter.
You can read here about how the Swiss have the power to stop government and entrenched powerful minorities from destroying their society.
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Barry, it is truly niave and wishful thinking that you can intergrate in the EU without the communist crap. Sadly, you must leave to take control.
The EU is controlled by the commissioners who are not elected but appointed. They are appointed by a group of very left wing politicians who are looking to be commissioners for their retirements. The EU is a socialist soviet group of republics the UK does not belong among them. For your familly, you children and their future vote UKIP.
Some american economists were asking today how anyone thought that putting 27 completely different cultures, economies and 12 different languages with a common currency and individual money and fiscal policies would work. It is destined for complete and disastrous failure but very slowly (because the teat suckers will be hanging on for grim death).
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Yes, I got into serious trouble once, for writing in an official report, “… when the Berlin Wall came down, and all of the Communists escaped …”.
Yet here we are. I am still plying my trade, but the objectors have all disappeared into Hampsted, or Holland Park, or Highbury, or some other appallingly gentrified gulag.
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Barry, Switzerland is always held up as a poster boy for CIR, let me point out the poster children for misuse of CIR , namely the peoples republics of california and san francisco. In Sfo CIR are resonsible for the massive loss of property rights in favour of tennants from poperty owners. Eg in SFO if you have a tennant on rent control, and you want toeither sell, or move into your own prpoerty, you have to pay @ 80k in go away money (sorry compensation which is not means tested nor do you have to remain in the city !!!)
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Three things, Diogenes:
1. I am not a Libertarian (in fact, a reformed one) but the Libertarians are right that there should be certain inalienable rights in a civil society. For example, CIR obviously should be limited to prevent people from voting to kill someone, arbitrarily jail someone, restrict their free speech and so on. Equally, CIR should not be permitted to be used to enable someone to hand a profit to someone else at a third party’s expense. Rent control has always been an abomination. If the state wants to provide subsidised housing, let them do so, but don’t force it upon individual property owners. Similarly, property rights have to be defined clearly enough to prevent people from using it to stop others from developing their land. These are not faults with CIR, they are simply flaws in our present system of government. As we know, in socialist Australia the only people who have rights are those who attract the sympathies of those who hold power.
2. With CIR – that is, where everyone has an equal say – you have to accept that some things are not going to go they way you want them to. It will be frustrating, but better that than having power concentrated in the hands of a few.
3. To borrow and modify Winston Churchill’s saying: CIR is the worst possible system you can have, except for all the other ones.
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Hi Barry
Have found the discussion interesting but see CIR as just another proof that currently governments are hard to control.
The basic control is and always should be the ballot box even if it does mean waiting three years for justice.
Other controls should be in forcing politicians to make all decisions compliant with law and better/more appropriate financial scrutiny.
Adding CIR is possibly just another way of saying : “the system ain’t working” and I’m not sure that CIR would not introduce more problem than it solves.
What we need is more scrutiny of government and more PUNISHMENT or outing of political deals that scream corruption.
This blog does a good job of informing us of things that need changing; the SFO CIR on rent control is a beauty!
How can any community with shackles like that on it move forward?
We should keep the present system and make it work by constant scrutiny and action.
KK
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With the greatest of respect, KinkyKeith, you need to watch the episode of Yes Prime Minister (I can’t recall which) in which ‘Humpy’ ridicules the electoral system as one in which people vote every three years for people and polices they have no knowledge of.
KK, did you vote for:
1. The Howard government to ratify the Rome statute;
2. The Keating government to introduce 18C and the Howard government, and Abbott government, not to repeal it;
3. The Howard government using record immigration to keep the housing bubble going without regard for the social and infrastructure problems it would create;
4. indexation of the fuel excise – OR – did you vote for $6 billion in fuel excise to be collected and only $2 billion of it to be spent on roads and the rest to be splashed up against the wall by incompetent, unprincipled, self-serving bloody government …
Obviously, if i listed a thousand things it would not even come close to being a complete list of things we got or did not get from government but we would like to change.
There are two choices: we can have government as our master or our servant.
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Hi Barry,
I’m not sure I was aware of or understood all of the issues you mention but there was a qualifier to my comment to the effect
that people should be able to control politicians during the elected period: “What we need is more scrutiny of government and
more PUNISHMENT or outing of political deals that scream corruption”.
CIR may seem like another solution but it seems, at least in the “rent control” comment above to be capable of serious failings in it’s own right.
We must make our system work by hounding and legally attacking bad politics.
We have seen with the Global Warming debate how easily the average voter is led by the nose.
In political campaigns voters become totally confused because of the number of issues and basically give up.
They default and vote as their parents did?
We need voters who are better informed of the ways of the world, but that’s a long way off; perhaps the twelfth of never?
KK
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We need a way to hold every selected person accountable, for their actions and for their promises at the election. But, we would also benefit of a more active democracy where we vote on single subjects. Today that is so easily done on the internet, but politicians kind of hijacked every right to the decision making process and all we might do is to buy a package at the election time. This is not a good form of democracy, we could do much better, but we are not really part of that process unless we support a new thinking at the ballot box. Vote UKIP !
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Barry, It is not as difficult as all that (Citizen Initiated Referenda) all you need to do is make parliamentary divisions a secret ballot. The major parties maintain discipline by peer group pressure, based on your being sacked from the party if you dissent. The easiest way to allow the representatives to vote as their electorate would wish is to remove that peer power. That means that noone in the Parliament is allowed to know who voted which way, members who are discriminated for the way they vote should have rights to take legal action against the party for victimisation. In short the way to make the nation democratic is to make the parliament democratic.
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Good point Bob
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Bobl,
Good idea, but how do we hold individuals accountable if we do not know how they voted.
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Iam a life long labour voter that for the first time switched to voting UKIP in the recent euro elections. MY only reason for voting UKIP was because they are the only party that are climatechange sceptical and want to repeal or at least examine the climate change act. I was hoping that as UKIP’s strength grew that their sceptical policy’s would get more publicity and at last help us sceptics gain a foothold in the main stream media ,which lead by the BBC have done all they can to keep us out.I am certain that if UKIP can take advantage of extra airtime in the msm to promote their climate sceptic views, then many other ordinary socialist voters will wake up and realise how the main parties aided by the msm have conned us with this green crap. In my mind you just couldnt get more anti socialist than to legislate policies that take from the poor to give to the rich.
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It’s interesting that the BBC comment is in there. They were paid €6.000.000 (million) by the EU last year. I find it hard to believe it was for broadcasting criticism of the EU.
I really hope the british people will kick out the current scumbags but it will be very difficult with the communists from scotland and wales in the english parliament.
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It will be interesting to watch the rise of the Australian Liberty Alliance. It now has twice as many members as the Liberal Party.
Hasn’t yet launched as a party and when it does I suspect the Libs will bleed more members. The Libs have been disappointing in government.
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It will but it is Autocratic in the extreme and it’s manifesto shows it has a soviet socialist structure , and it has huge Big Government policy on health. It needs to introduce tax advantaged self managed health funds so individiuals are empowered to take control of their own health. I think there is a big risk that the ALA is a wolf in sheeps clothing.
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We’ll see, bobl.
I believe the harder elements of their Manifesto can be polished, so to speak. The rise in membership is spectacular. At this rate ALA will have more members that the majors combined.
I might add that I am not a member of any political party and doubt I ever will be such.
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But Scaper it’s all so easilly fixed…
People join ALA at the whim of the executive, this is backwards, the Executive must serve at the whim of the members. You can be thrown out for merely disagreeing or being a member of another party – huge recipe for groupthink, bad, very bad, think CAGW bad! Ordinary paid up members have no automatic voting rights, they must be annoited by the executive to vote, disagreement and individuality are good things – the ALA is supposed to represent individualism and small government for the people, so how come their internal rules are so opposite to that high ideal? They have a policy to be national but allow the setting up of localised groups (ALA Soviets) which can politic locally but have no power in the party, not only that, the executive can dissolve a local “Soviet” unilaterally – how Totalitarian is THAT! That Party is schitzophrenic, and they really need to fix that if they want to represent citizens who believe in freedom and individualism.
These are easy things to fix, but I won’t even think of joining an organisation that doesn’t want me to express my dissident thoughts within the Party. It shouldn’t be massaged later, these glaring problems should be fixed NOW
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The latest UKIP member said it well………..
Reckless though he may be….
The voters are HIS boss.
ALA have it totalitarianly the wrong way around.
They seem to be the VERY OPPOSITE of what is needed.
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Surely Eurovision was the warning of what would eventuate if all Europeans came together in harmony, cooperation and friendly competition. It’s been all downhill since Volare.
You remember that demon in The Exorcist? I’d even vote for him if he’d get me free of Big Green and Big Europe.
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Waterloo. 😉
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And don’t forget,Pauline Hanson taking over the reins of One Nation.The MSM are going to try and discredit anything and everything she does.Don’t believe what they say.At least she doesn’t speak with a forked tongue.
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I hope for her sake Tony Abbott hasn’t opened another “Australians for Honest Politics Trust” for entrapment on another bull$hi& court case.
It’s behavior like this that makes you realize they really are all tarred with the same brush with the voter left with little choice for genuine change, political fence sitting is clearly a sign of preference to a one world government, I didn’t vote for a party to be indecisive or take a softly softly approach to something they claimed was bogus and would act on my wishes to be rid of it.
I voted early today in Victoria and it was F&^%ing depressing.
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I am still waiting for someone to explain to me that what she said last time around was not right on the mark.
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Watching UKIP becoming the third party in UK politics and threatening to become a king maker has been the best fun. The supposedly “left” and “right” of mainstream politics have stood in line to vilify them with the active and vindictive aid of the MSM. The worse the propaganda became, the more the person in the voting booth shrugged it off. Not everyone lives in fashionable Hampstead I suppose.
They represent the nightmare scenario for both parties, someone who upsets a comfortable Westminster status quo and who appeals to the foot soldiers of both of their parties. No even the BBC, who cover them as if they’re neo-nazis, seem able to marginalise them.
Pointman
BTW, nominations are now open for this year’s pratties.
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/the-pratties-2014-the-race-is-on/
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Watching UKIP becoming the third party in UK politics?
Conservative 303
Labour 257
Liberal Democrat 56
Democratic Unionist 8
Scottish National 6
Sinn Fein 5
Independent 3
Plaid Cymru 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party 3
UK Independence Party 2
Alliance 1
Green 1
Respect 1
Speaker 1
Total number of seats 650
Bloody hell so significant!
Pratt of the year must go to Julie Bishop for her false and farcical comments on Obama and the GBR!
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That mostly represents the results of the General Election over 4 years ago. You are out of date, but then you like living in the past.
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Been at the mouldy hay again I see, malignant mule.
You haven’t learnt anything since you left junior high, have you, you poor brainless dolt.
Very limited !!!
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What worries me most these days is the propensity of young people to look to the Government for everything. I don’t just mean handouts or positive change, I mean everything. They seem to have no concept of solutions to anything that does not involve a new law or regulation being passed. The notion of libertarianism is to them a threat. People making their own decisions is the worst possible outcome and small government just allows people to make too many of their own choices.
They (young folk) seem obsessed with the notion that compulsion will always work. So going forward Im not convinced that the major parties wont continue to dominate, simply because they will be held in power (as in Australia’s case) by cobbled together fringe groups (such as PUP and The Greens) who will only deliver power under their own broken value set.
http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/?p=4905
Young people calling for totalitarianism is a growing movement. It displays rank ignorance and little or no understanding of world political history. So basically business as usual for the green/left.
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Sadly I have to agree with you Safetyguy. I’ve been bothered by this for a number of years. Not only do they think that bigger government and more laws/regulations are the answer but anyone who doubts it is demeaned, ridiculed and deemed stupid, irrelevant and also should be disposed of in some fashion.
90
Social engineering in action, these young people have been conditioned through the entire school system and MSM bombardment of doublethink values, social media has given the young activist an excellent outlet to hone their emotional detachment skills so when that stupid uneducated older person is verbally attacked in public for ‘climate denial’ it’s an easy step to justify the physical assault that follows when they fail to understand ‘the science’.
And people think the Hitler-Jugend was just a terrible memory, memories have a way of manifesting back into reality.
50
Social engineering is right. I suspect that k-12 schooling is designed to thoroughly rinse common sense from the minds of the young. The vast majority of those who take on humanities in higher education – and a fair share from other disciplines – are pelted with sophistry in order to cement and further propagate leftist groupthink among students. I know, I’m in the middle of it. Mot all bad though; sometimes it’s just a lot of fun pointing out logical fallacies and disinformation to an audience for the fun of it. Doesn’t earn me a lot of extra marks but at least I have a clear conscience.
30
Apologies in advance for an off-topic comment – but have a look at http://www.theregister.co.uk and their report on Google scientists (Stanford) who have been examining renewable energy technology and have concluded that it will Never be Economic and Never be a Practical source of energy.
This has been highlighted on the Bishop Hill blog.
100
Going O/T …
Warwick Hughes sees the BoM hoisted by it’s own petard:
The BoM was asked to calculate the climate of the Canberra district in the process of deciding on a location for the Australian Federal Capital Territory
1910 Bureau of Meteorology report shows Canberra region temperatures pre-1909 were similar to the ten years 2004-2013
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=3426#comments
Hottest year ever?
60
slightly O/t…or perhaps not
The ABC is currently running this poll……….http://www.abc.net.au/news/thedrum/
Was Foreign Minister Julie Bishop justified in her comments about US President Barack Obama’s speech on climate change and the Great Barrier Reef?
No 77%
Yes 22%
Unsure 1%
1360 votes counted
Seems the green force is strong in this one.
70
The thing is.. you have know these polls exist before you can vote.
The Drum is not somewhere a normal person would visit too often,
certainly it is not on my bookmarks. !! 🙂
Thanks for point out the survey, now those who are not rabid left wing get to have a vote too ! 🙂
90
Darn, I was sure I wrote
Thanks for pointing out the survey……
30
Griss,
You got a mention from Pointman today, did you notice?
He didn’t mention you by name, but gave a very accurate description …
40
“and furry dice dangling underneath it.”
Well, yes.. but is it really polite to comment ??
Pointy does not know me that well !!!
50
Ahem, those aren’t dice……
00
The Drum poll has mud on its face this week, or worse if somebody in authority chased it up. In my view it stands totally discredited.
30
Couldn’t agree more Ted……..
unfortunately those within the ABC BELIEVE these polls and structure the news/current affairs around the results……
except when they get a wrong answer!!
30
A poll with 1360 votes from a country the size of Australia is a bit meaningless ( no offence intended redress) -my guess is the Drum has got to the stage of just “preaching to the converted” or the converted talking among themselves.
00
I was listening to comments by an English academic, whose name escapes me, about the need to calculate carbon credits and debits for various exporters and importers of primary produce, meat, cheese, milk etc. In essence, although your country doesn’t produce much meat or dairy, you will have to pay something for the carbon dioxide and methane emitted in the process elsewhere. There seems to be a whole bureaucracy set-up ready to calculate the carbon credits and tax you. The mind boggles at the madness, what next a tax on air or a solar tax when they realise the sun controls our climate!
90
A tax on CO2 IS a tax on air. All mammals, which is what we humans are, exhale it.
There is no “What’s next, a tax on air?” That is exactly what this nonsense is, every politicians wet dream, the ability to tax the air we breathe.
60
Not so long ago in here on Jo’s blog I commented that I believed the western world was shifting towards the Right in it’s politics after decades of leftist dominated, economically destructive governmental imposed policies.
So what have we got?
*Australia; Abbot as the right’s Liberal Party Prime Minister.
*Xi in China who is well to the right in the Communist Socialistic orthodoxy in promoting capitalistic methods to raise China’s living standards while still imposing heavy governmental controlling strictures on free and open discussion.
*Modi in India who as some past Indian PM’s is now moving India away from the Ghandi family era highly corrupt socialistic based, all pervasive, government bureaucracy controls.
*Abe as the Japanese PM and definitely not a socialist promoter.
*Merkel in Germany who is moving right as she allows her coalition partners, the left’s SPD, Social Democratic Party to destroy itself with in fighting over whether green environmental policies should take precedence over economic development. [ NTZ; Germany’s CO2 Reductions “Fetish” Causing National Policy Turmoil: Economics And Environment Ministries Collide –]
*Cameron in the UK is being forced to move right as the UKIP [ UK Independent Party which wants the UK out of the EU.] eats into his vote.
* The US Republican’s mid term Senate control victory along with an increasingly irrational policy free zone around Obama who is on the way to becoming arguably the worst American President since Warren Harding in the 1920’s.
*Canada which we here in Australia have rather stupidly ignored as a major power in it’s own right has the Tory’s Conservative Harper Government in power.
*Poland another country we should know a lot more about which is at the approximate centre of the European nations, elected and then re-elected the centre right Civic Platform Party headed by PM Donald Tusk.
*The Russian Federation headed by Putin it has been argued is much closer to being Fascist than Socialist in it’s actions rather than heeding to it’s stated policies.
There are other nations that have shifted to the right in both politics and their social policies and structures.
There are very few nations which have shifted towards the left in their politics let alone in their social structure over the last decade or so. Venezuela is one that comes to mind but it has done so with disastrous economic consequences.
50
Do you believe that any of this is a good thing?
The important difference is not between left and right, Fascist or Communist, but rather our concern should be the differentiation between moderate government and intrusive government.
Have another look at those ten regimes, and rate them according to how much personal freedom the average citizen has, to do what they like, and say what they think, in public.
And add New Zealand to your list, because we have more freedoms than most other countries (Iceland might beat us).
110
Apologies Rereke.
I thought of NZ and got side tracked.
Perhaps you put it better than myself in your comments on freedoms as I am associating both lack of freedom and often quite disastrous economic policies as well “intrusiveness” into all aspects of our lives as you put it, with leftist leaning governments
I have the impression that NZ got it’s more intrusive governments sorted out quite a long time ago before the rest of the world started to wake up to what the leftist governments were doing.
Regardless of political persuasion, whether of the left or right, when a governing body or a government starts heading towards an extremist and fringe position politically they should be just eliminated from the political scene as rapidly as possible.
Extremist political stances of every colour [ including Green and its 50 to 70 million dead [ malaria fighting DDT bans / energy deprivation and poverty / Golden Rice bans ] from Green imposed policies over the last five decades ] are deadly in just about every manner in which one can describe them.
The unfortunate contrary is that some, in fact a considerable proportion of the population from the academic elite to the lower life types [ bit hard to distinguish which is which in some cases ] like to have governments poking around as they have figured how to enjoy the governmental largesse, without any obligations in return, that is handed out willy nilly to any and all who can work the handout system.
20
With Abbott severely hobbled.
I recall that in 1996 when somebody commented: “We have a change of government at last!”, I replied: “Believe it when you see it! They all went to the same universities”.
Time proved this all too true. Howard did more damage to Rural Australia than Hawke did, by maintaining Hawke’s policies. Eliminating small business capitalism.
There will be no change until a leader comes out aggressively against the lies, and the biggest of the lies is AGW “science”.
50
ROM,
Warren Harding wasn’t that bloody bad.
00
History in my mind is driven by testosterone. Is today,s youth different to me when I was young. I was fighting communism in 1980-ties and most of previous generations were fighting against tyranny and no freedom. If there is no obvious cause now with the fall of evil soviets then what do u do with this testosterone? Music, sex, drugs, but this is not enough. Fight against the establishment and show your parents that you somehow an individual but voting green? But moving toward totalitarianism is a new one for me despite anarchistic sign on the banner.
I am in the political wilderness now and if there is no similar ukip in Australia than will be forced to vote liberal based on the principle of the least demage. And for the life long liberal vote this is a sad statement to make.
Libertarian guy who is currently in the parliament is pro any migration into this country and I can,t agree with that. Also the idea of guns for citizens abhors me as I have seen first handed what people can do when they have them.
71
So have I, the rational ones can defend themselves from the criminals who WILL get guns regardless of the laws. You know, that is why they are criminals. By the time your local police/constabulary arrive it is too late. Not willing to defend or protect yourself? Then why should anyone else have to defend or protect you?
50
As a gun owner I would probably defend your life with my guns if the situation was such – even though you think I am a homicidal maniac because I have the audacity to possess firearms!
00
Pardon my colonial ignorance, but did Mr. Reckless’ move from the Tories to UKIP automatically trigger the byelection, or did he resign and force it?
30
He resigned, claiming that he could no longer be in a party that didn’t even attempt to keep its promises.
80
Both.
A member is elected to represent an electorate. In doing that, they can stand as an independent, based on their own manifesto, or they can nail a party’s manifesto on their door (figuratively today, although it used to be literally). So they can say, I stand for this …
If they find that they can’t abide by the party’s manifesto, then they need to resign from the party. At which time the party leader can argue that, since they were elected on the basis of the manifesto, they should stand down as a Member of Parliament, if they cannot abide by it.
The leader cannot force them to stand down, but the member would get no opportunity to speak in Parliament, nor sit on any committees, or do anything else useful, so they usually choose to stand down.
It is standing down, that triggers the need for a by-election.
Normally the party will put forward a new candidate with the original party manifesto, and they will normally win. In this case, however, they did not win, and in fact failed to win quite spectacularly.
Mr Reckless presumably nailed the UKIP manifesto to the door (figuratively), when he re-stood for his previous seat.
It is hard to say how much the result of the by-election relied on the man, the manifesto he was (now) following, or the electorates dissatisfaction with the current Government.
No doubt we will get a clearer indication next May.
60
Indeed, the by-election result may well have done so and in addition, highlighted a ground swell of revulsion to ‘Big Government’. There appears however, an omission in both the Guardian and Telegraph of any reference (in these articles) to the potential role that “climate change” and consequent energy policies, the focus being instead on more immediate and pressing ‘local’ issues. Whether this omission is deliberate and explicit is the question.
The Guardian report actually suggested that the key issues for the by-election were:
In The Telegraph
Nix about Climate.
20
Yep, The Guardian and The Telegraph … the best reporting that money can buy …
60
You didn’t need a sarc/ there Rereke.
40
The EU is an anti-democratic Marxist superstate often characterised in the UK as the EUSSR and able to dictate around 80% of UK legislation. It stopped most of the trade between the UK and commonwealth countries through tariffs.
There is a real prospect that the UK will leave the EU and public sentiment is marginally in favour. One of the fears (like global warming) that europhiles use to try and persuade UK voters to stay in is that the UK economy will go down the tubes.
That is far from the truth but, as with global warming, too many voters are taken in by the lies.
To many in the UK a swift redevelopment of Free Trade with all of the commonwealth countries would farm surpass trade with the EU.
It has long seemed to me that were the commonwealth to come together to create a free trade area with supportive policies then together we would be the the pre-eminent and strongest trading force in the world and with a solid democratic base.
How would Australians feel about that ? It would need to be a freely entered into arrangement with no dominant country and all equal. We could work to eradicate my poverty in the poorest commonwealth countries and raise the living standards of all along with true democracy , and public accountability of elected politicians.
Is that a pipe dream or something we could work together to achieve ?
60
The world has moved on.
The Commonwealth is an anachronism that still has the advantage of getting a lot of senior politicians from a whole group of extremely diverse backgrounds and cultures together for a talkfest.
When the Commonwealth was formed in 1949, India was Asia.
The World Wide Web and the Internet did not exist for another few decades.
Travel was by piston engined aircraft or ship.
International trade was by far dominated by Commonwealth countries and the USA. a vast difference to the international trade of today.
The British were just starting to get going economically after the end of WW2 and desperately needed access to all the resources that the Commonwealth countries held.
The Governments of the Commonwealth countries still had large numbers of expatriate Poms running bureaucracies and etc.
In Australia it was the time of the “Five Pound Pom”, the British migrants who came to Australia for a five pound fare to settle here.
The rest of the fare was subsidised by the Australian government.
The Commonwealth is still a political useful tool for as Winston Churchill is quoted as saying; “It is much better to Jaw, Jaw than War, War.”
But as world trade dominating entity it has been far outclassed by the intergrated global trading systems that have developed, particularly over the last quarter of a century.
20
“The Commonwealth” still includes India. India alone could keep the UK busy.
30
“Since Clacton, it has been using voter identification system software, enabling the party to transmit different messages in different parts of the campaign trail.”
That’s not, in fact, a good thing, and I can’t understand why anyone would think it should be. In Britain, the highly inaptly named “Liberal Democratic Party” inherited the aptitude of saying all things to all people from the old Liberal Party (nothing to do with the Australian one). The Liberals, notoriously, would say anything that appealed locally, in order to get elected. It didn’t matter that the supposed local policy was the diametrical opposite of the stated policy of the national party. Because the Libs, between Lloyd George and 2010, never had a sniff of government, it was a successful strategy, to the extent that kept them in Parliament; they always won some seats. During an election to the European parliament, something beloved of every true LibDim, quite a few years ago, I saw an old couple interviewed from the West Country (I think they were in Devon, or Somerset), in a region which the Libs consider their English stronghold. These two dears were voting for the Libs, they said, because they had been assured by the local Libs that Liberal policy reflected their opposition to European integration. Libs and LibDims in the European parliament, since then, have invariably succeeded in squaring their consciences with their support of insane policies. Anything with “Euro-” in front of it is good.
UKIP has been built on the supposition that something with “Euro-” in it is, in fact, bad. That’s not a position I am inclined to dispute. The problem comes if UKIP, forced to produce a national range of policies, including environmental ones, is now simply going down the old Liberal route, to say what, it thinks, voters want to hear in any particular constituency.* It will pick up seats, I’m sure, but will quickly lose its appeal. Already, there is a suggestion, even from UKIP-friendly journalists, that UKIP’s muddled economic message, aimed at detaching Conservatives in the South of England and Labour voters in the North of England, can’t do both at the same time. If UKIP can surrender any semblance of economic coherence so easily, I hold out little hope for its environmental policies. We all know that most voters don’t vote for a party for its man-made-global-warming policy, so why would UKIP allow a detail like that to get in the way of a bigger representation in Parliament?
Before any enraged UKIPper (such things do exist and they are as vicious as the green ones) accuses me of being an activist for another party, I’m not and I have never been one. I see politicians as they are.
*I am not suggesting that Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless haven’t been re-elected on their own merits.
10
I doubt it has any significance at all. Pauline Hanson won a single term is a fairly safe labor seat. Unlikely events happen from time to time.
The only thing a far Right party in Australia will achieve is keeping Labor in power.
10
Will the australian liberty alliance turn out to be an analogue of ukip? They intend to register as a new political party next year.
20
Judge for yourself.
Manifesto and policies.
Was to meet Debbie Robinson (Director) yesterday but could not make it. I want our country back in our hands.
20
Be careful Scaper, there’s treachery in them thar manifestos. I wrote them about it, heard only crickets since… Not a good sign I have to say.
30
I don’t know whether reform of the Liberal Party might best be achieved from within or without? But if we had our own Nigel Farage clone that would make a good start.
For those who seek to compare UKIP with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation I suspect you are in for a big shock.
20
I recall reading some time ago that one of the Scandinavian countries? has a limit on the maximum number of consecutive terms a politician can serve before they have to stand down for a for a number of terms, before they can again re-contest a seat in parliament.
It ends the career of politician as has become in Australia and other Westminster style Parliaments. Politicians who only concern themselves with staying in parliament as long as possible and therefore make decisions on what is popular and not what is needed.
PS can any one name the country?
10
Here in America I’m using this against one of the Big Government parties. We shall see if it goes anywhere.
Cannabis cures cancer. Cancer kills 586,000 Americans every year. Every Prohibitionist is complicit in mass murder.
All that is based on a post I did a few days ago.
http://classicalvalues.com/2014/11/cannabis-and-cancer-of-the-brain/
Be sure to watch the whole of the first video if you have any doubts about the veracity of my statement. The science is explained. By scientists. Well that is no longer a solid recommendation. But judge for yourself.
21
Great Essay. on Quadrant
10
Could have been better if given a little proof reading, but says it all. A tiny clique of third raters generating a scare campaign, and expanding as various rent seekers and ‘activists’ joined in. Misses the main point in that various bureaucracies are now on board, pushing the scare for their own benefit, so getting it controlled will be difficult.
20
Even the bureaucrats like to eat. A sustained cold spell (Dalton or Maunder minimum) will put the fear of hunger even in them. And they will still be paying heating bills. I predict opposition to fracking will collapse.
50
He has not studied the economics of solar. It is very bad.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/21/renewable-energy-solar-and-wind-power-capital-costs-and-effectiveness-compared/
He has a point about storage. But we won’t see volumes for at least a decade after the breakthrough. And we haven’t quite had the breakthrough yet.
20
How many times and in how many different ways has the Coalition been told we don’t need Labor Lite? Like those in the UK, we want our country back.
90
” Like those in the UK, we want our country back.”
You mean, you don’t want it owned and run by the Americans and/or the Chinese?
Have to get rid of the Coalition and the ALP then.
(Vote RoHa for Supreme Leader in the next election.)
00
A BIG THUMBS UP !!!!
30
That was a reply to Sean @ #31 !
10
Writing as a ‘kipper (UKIP member) and having been active in campaigns (though not Rochester or Clacton) I can say that in talking to voters, “green” policies don’t come up as a main concern. Uncontrolled immigration and sovereignty (right to make our own laws and reject EU ones) are the repeat complaints. It’s very difficult and expensive to get UKIP’s policies through to the public, especially as the BBC and “independent” media (broadcast and print) are almost 100% pro-EU. Even when negative stories are published they often have misleading captions which many people don’t read beyond. It’s not a conspiracy but there’s a solid, institutionalized foundation which is going to be hard to demolish. The Party’s policy on wind and solar energy is to stop any further projects and to phase out all forms of subsidy – but that may be impossible to carry out in a short space of time, particularly as most of the contracts will have some long-term guarantees with cancellation costs more than are bearable – and probably done deliberately to confound logical, rational thinking.
I could say much, much more about the EU tyranny, but that won’t interest Jo’s prime Aussie readership.
80
Much of the “EU tyranny” is national governments willingly implementing legislation.
If they don’t want to make laws according to the dictates of the eminently corruptible EU, all they have to do is to send back a memo with the word “NUTS!“.
But the national parliaments are generally not of a mind to do so because they “employ” the EU to produce dictates. Especially for stuff that’s domestically unpalatable. Like sending all your savings to bail out Greece and Cyprus. (Against the rules of the EU/Eurozone, but in the EU such rules are “formalities”.)
Any party of an EU member nation with a serious attitude towards national sovereignty and working for the interests of their constituency would put invoking Article 50 of The Lisbon Treaty at the top of its policies. Article 50 triggers the process of an EU member leaving the Union and immediately places the EU at the negotiating table with the member nation; with the member nation having the same power as the EU. A member nation is otherwise “subservient”. It is the sole lever that EU members have to actually negotiate with the EU. If agreement fails to be reached within 2 years, the nation leaves the Union.
2 years is considerable time (but a tight schedule) to negotiate basic, essential trade deals, etc. But the UK already has excellent trade relationships via the Commonwealth and bi-laterally with countries outside of the EU. Trade with remaining EU members is viable by (re-)joining EFTA or formalising membership of the EEA. Bi-lateral trade agreements are also possible. Non-EU members have more leverage in trade negotiations with the EU than do EU members.
Besides trade, the major concern is that of immigration. UK borders are already controlled more strictly than those of Schengen Agreement (not an EU treaty) countries; but they cannot block immigration by citizens of other EU countries. Breaking the EU link means that the labour force and social security network won’t be bled dry by “EU-citizens”. (It also means rising prices if you can’t get a Polish plumber over the weekend.)
There are lots of complexities as the EU has infiltrated almost every aspect of life in the UK and other member nations. They will take time to simplify but such doesn’t necessarily have to happen on a nationally-uniform basis so can occur in parallel; as needed; on a “local” basis.
The show-stopper is that once outside of the EU, UK parliament would no longer be able to blame stuff on the EU.
00
Your Spoonerised namesake had a poem about a kipper:
A Haddock is a lucky fish
From all disease insured,
For if he’s ill, and caught at sea,
Immediately, he’s cured.
00
“I could say much, much more about the EU tyranny, but that won’t interest Jo’s prime Aussie readership.”
On the contrary.. we are very interested.
The EU was a pre-cursor to possible further global governance.
Hopefully not in my lifetime, but certainly its an aim of the non-elected socialist bureaucrat wannabee !
The more we see beforehand, the easier (maybe) to fight back.
40
The precursor to all this was the global drug treaties foisted on the world by the US, aided and abetted by the Brits in the early 1900s or there abouts.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/publications/reports/pdf/SR014/Overview.pdf
As you may or may not know the Progressives championed this stuff. And now we have “Conservatives” defending it as “traditional”. Very amusing.
What we do know – opiate use – other than for very serious PTSD – is a drug of poverty. As a country comes out of poverty opiate use declines. This was quite true of the US from at least the late 1700s to the early 1900s. Look up opium use on Nantucket for a snapshot.
42
UK voters may wish to scowl and gnash their teeth over this video from David Saddington, a kid who claims to have argued successfully for inclusion of climate change explanations into the national school curriculum by meeting with government bureaucrats at every level up to and including Tony Blair [2:51].
He initially claims [0:16] to aim to make the audience believe they shouldn’t care about climate change, then he finishes by saying [12:17] “The pressure it exerts on our everyday lives threatens to derail everything you do or want to do”. The whole speech is a bait-and-switch tactic.
He’s trying to say people should stop worrying about it, stop talking about it, and start changing their lives and business activities to reduce the impact of climate change. The massive reduction in lifestyle affluence this implies is only vaguely hinted at.
He actually says the science and education about climate changes is “clouding our minds”, and is preventing people from acting, so [4:30] “we should care far less about the science”. Well I guess if science isn’t working then just issue orders to people irrespective of the justification for them, eh?
At one point [7:58] he actually tries to draw a causal connection between climate change and the invasion of Syria and Iraq by ISIS terrorists. Add it to The Warm List!
Much ado is made about a predicted increase in world food prices due to “climate change” in a graph shown at 9:31. The source of the graph is research sponsored by do-gooder outfit Oxfam, written by one Dr Willenbockel in 2013. The only report I could find with this title by Dr Willenbockel was actually first published in 2011.
In his original paper we find this rather frank admission:
It is no surprise that pessimistic assumptions lead to pessimistic conclusions.
Furthermore, there is a whole other scenario modelled in which “externally funded” climate adaptation measures are implemented in African agriculture, which result in almost no increase in prices relative to the non-climate changed baseline scenario. Where was this message of technological optimism in the presentation? Young Mr Saddington seems to have neglected that scenario, maybe it wasn’t scary enough. Or could it be the funding comes from the developed countries via the World Bank?
Indeed, the argument that climate change will cost all of us, one way or another, is a recurring theme, though I’m not sure I like the logic of it. Saddington declares:
Why will climate change affect every citizen of the UK? Because the government decided to make it affect every citizen of the UK. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now if people can build on a floodplain and still get insurance, there is no financial disincentive to respect the known hazards, so houses will keep being repaired and continually damaged. What a boon for the members of the construction unions, as so much more work is coming their way! But this is an example of the fallacy of Broken Window economics. The best solution is to prevent houses from being damaged by floods by not building them in a floodplain. In that case the occupier is better off for not losing intangible possessions and repeatedly repairing their house, and everybody else is better off for being able to buy things they actually wanted with the money saved from not having to pay someone else’s home insurance. But that would be logical and would not redistribute wealth from rich areas to poor areas.
Oh yes, the UK, where The Society is both the cause and solution to all of life’s problems. Big government, big insurance premiums, big wealth redistribution, and a lot of voters happy to pass the buck.
30
Excellent! He might as well have advocated the teaching of phlogiston vs how thermodynamics is currently taught. Because we are headed for a Dalton/Maunder type minimum. There will then be all these books about reminding people how government got it totally wrong.
00
That Emily Thornberry sounds like a product of the Australian Labor Party.
00
The need for global government, the threat of the unseen enemy and removal of personal decision making has occurred since George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm were removed from the compulsory reading list for year 12 students some years ago.
Don’t believe me.
Ask any 20 year old if they have read them.
it is quite scary that such insightful social tomes are now ignored.
Lets hear it for newspeak and beds without sheets. (sarc)
00
It is really scarey to think about how people want government to smooth every bump in their lives.
They are obviously unaware that democracy only works with small controllable government with specific limitations and that big government leads to slavery; at least if you are one of those taxpayers who actually works.
In Australia governments have gotten bigger by giving: more social security (never existed for our family early on) , more dole (used to be bus fare money but is now enough to give a few drinks and a few bets), more benefits.
All this “giving” from a “rich country” is no doubt in exchange for the vote of the receiver of these blessings.
What a wonderful world.
And the numbers of those “blessed” just keeps on growing until like most of Europe it just collapses.
KK
10
Great news, they are a Conservative Party that is actually conservative!
10
It was very astute of UKIP to do this in the year before an election and with already sitting MPs.
Familiarity counts for a lot, and if present MP’s can blame any perceived shortcomings on party discipline, which they are now casting off, even better.
It gets UKIP MPs established before a general election when it would be much harder.
00
John Brignell writes at Numberwatch:
Common ground.
00