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Saturday, April 30, 2011

SCOTTISH ELECTION - THE ISSUES POLL RESULT + ANOTHER POLL

Last week I put up a poll comparing the BBC list of the top 25 issues, being merely what they chose as the top issues and allowed those surveyed merely to put them in order and allowing comparison with some alternatives. So here are the results. The 12 the BBC wanted (their top 10 and 2 others) are marked.

1 - Cut the bill for the highest paid in the public sector by 10% BBC
2 - Either the promised Lisbon Treaty referendum or an EU referendum
3 - Stop subsidising windmills
4 - Discourage mass immigration
5 - Allow the unsubsidised building of as many nuclear plants as the free market wants
6 - Replace current nuclear plants with new ones to keep the lights on
7 - Keep up the number of police on the streets BBC approved
8 - End or modify the smoking ban
9 - Grow the economy aiming to match the world's best, using the methods which have worked best elsewher
10 - Introduce schools vouchers
11 - Allow issues to be put to referenda (as in California)
12 - Spend more money on apprenticeships for unemployed young people BBC approved
13 - Allow Norwegian style tunnel building to link the Highlands and Islands into our road system
14 - Use the Tartan Tax to cut income tax by up to 3p
15 - Scrap the council tax for pensioners on low incomes BBC approved
16 - Reduce the council tax for households where all the adults are pensioners BBC approved
17 - Reduce the waiting time for suspected cancer cases to see a specialist, from four weeks to two BBC approved - their #1
18 - Keep prescriptions free for everyone BBC approved
19 - Keep free bus travel for everyone aged over 60 BBC approved
20 - Freeze the council tax for the next two years BBC approved
21 - Retain free university education for all Scottish students BBC approved
22 - Grow the economy aiming for the long term UK rate - clearly I phrased this badly since I did not intend this to be an either/or option with #9 but that those wanting 10% growth would also vote for improving it to 2.5%. The combined votes of the 2 would have put it in first place though that would peobably overstate support
1 vote each - Phase out nuclear power stations and replace with wind and wave power BBC approved Green party's major policy
- Build a new road bridge across the River Forth BBC approved
- Use the Tartan tax to raise income tax by up to 3p Green Party's second major policy

Pretty conclusive. Only 3 of the top 14 policies was chosen by the BBC as being of any interest to the Scottish electors (and thus 9 of the bottom 11). 11 of the top 12 are official UKIP policy and the other parallels them. No other party comes close, the Tories being best with #1,6,7,10 & 12. I am satisfied with the tunnels project making 13 considering that nobody but I have ever discussed it.
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Another poll, well 2 actually
How likely would you be to vote for a party whose leader and other representatives you had repeatedly seen on TV for years and generally agreed with?
0% approx
10%
20%
30%
405
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
  
pollcode.com free polls
AND
How likely you would vote for a party whose representatives you had almost never seen on TV, or favourably reported but liked the election leaflet?
0% approx
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
  
pollcode.com free polls

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TRAPPED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE KELVINGROVE RIOT - NOT

EU Referendum reports:

A Glasgow "street party" to celebrate the royal wedding has been broken up by the polis. But what is so delicious about this jolly little riot is that it was triggered after the organisers took David Cameron at his word and set up a street party without permission of the local gauleiters.

Two teenagers had organised the rave in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Park, using facebook to advertise the event. Over four thousand turned up, many proceeding to get rat-arsed. Rather predictably chaos ensued as the drunken revellers turned violent.

It was then left for the police to intervene, with officers on bicycles attempting to make arrests. Much to their surprise, this attempt went pear-shaped as they were surrounded by other "guests", who offered the police various helpful suggestions.


To entertain the rest of the bystanders, the police then obligingly organised a mounted charge on bottle-throwers, who had now promoted the event to a full-blown riot. As groups of "innocent" revellers caught up in the mayhem applauded the display, hundreds of missiles were thrown at the police, but only three were injured - police, that is ... no missiles were hurt in the making of this riot.

....But he (David Cameron) did say: "They have no right to stop you from having fun. I am the Prime Minister and I am telling you if you want to have a street party, you go ahead and have one".


However, many would assert that there is no greater entertainment for the average Glaswegian than for them to get smashed out of their skulls and then indulge in prolonged, gratuitous violence against the police. And unlike the wuzzies in Bristol, this lot managed to smash the windows of at least three police vans...{sarky English bastards - no offence]

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I have previously commented on EURef expressing sympathy for the police in their, albeit tactically unwise, action in Bristol so this comment I put up does not come from a knee jerk opponent.
I was there at about 4.20 yesterday. Me and my girlfriend went to the park to feed the ducks in the pond & possibly squirrels, knowing nothing about this. We immediately left because it was very noisy & crowded and not worth the effort. However I saw no violence or anything approaching it, nor were there any police visible, at least near the park entrance. I did, shortly after see a police car, lights and siren on racing that way, which, at the time, I said looked like overkill because the crowd had been there all day. Then a police helicopter turned up circling the park for several hours. Had I been there listening to the music I would have taken umbrage at the helicopter's noise, indeed living nearby I wasn't too pleased either.

This was not an aggressive crowd (It is in the posh area of Glasgow). My opinion is that had a few police been there from the beginning, just patrolling on foot, like bobbies used to, and ignoring the bylaws against having a drink in public, like sensible polis do, they could have avoided the stramash at a cost considerably lower than several hours of helicopter time.

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Thursday, April 28, 2011

STV PROMISE TOTAL PARTY POLITICAL CENSORSHIP DURING THE ELECTION



Brian Monteith's pro-UKIP article is up on the ChangeScotland website and I have put up as a comment the letter to the Scotsman that didn't get published. I am referring to it here because it is the unedited article. 2 parts were left out. First the introduction
THE SNP NOW APPEARS to have confirmed its lead in final weeks of the Holyrood elections, the only remaining questions being can it govern as a minority administration again, and if not, who might form a coalition with Alex Salmond?
....not because I have any animus towards Alex Salmond or his party – the election of the SNP was a breath of fresh air to the stale and predictable Scottish political scene – but
and more interesting in my opinion this
Unfortunately UKIP is being blanked by the broadcasters in Scotland and is thus denied the opportunity given to the four old parties and the Greens to have its message heard. With more than 80% of the Scottish public obtaining their information from the BBC alone that is an affront to democracy that must be addressed.

This correlates with something from UKIP Scotland's site.
Viscount Christopher Monckton revealed on the Alex Jones TV Show {US}today, that he has been camped out in an Edinburgh flat for 14 days, and has been blatently ignored by Scotland’s major TV News organisations. Monckton disclosed that in a conversation with the STV political correspondant, who eventually came on the line and he said, “Look, we have mentioned the UK Independence Party once, before the campaign began. We are not going to mention it, at all for the rest of the campaign, whatever happens.” (during the Scottish Holyrood Election). This is an apalling disgrace and a blight upon true journalism.
I would go further. Democracy is only meaningful where /everybody gets an equal, or at the very least equal to their known popularity, opportunity to put their case. If the people are prevented from hearing the case ny government controlled media they obviously cannot correctly judge it. The "democracy" then is merely a rubber stamp for what is otherwise a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism.

OK we less have a single dictator, more joint leadership by a dictatorial political class and while aggressively nationalist enough to engage in a remarkable array of senseless wars, some involving promoting racial genocide, child sexual slavery and the dissection of living people, they are not nationalist enough to support British interests against Brussels bureaucracy. The definition given above is a dictionary one of Fascism which therefore is what we are seeing, albeit a less flashy, far less ambitous, less openly violent but overwhelmingly more bureaucratic version.

Where what we have now differs in a destructive way from the original Mussolini's fascism (and indeed Stalin's totalitarianism) in that while they both consiously aimed towards progress what we have is consciously aimed at preventing progress. All 5 of the officially approved parties are unanimous in wishing to destroy most of our economyin the eco-fascist cause of "fighting catastrophic global warming" though the SNP and Greens are a lot more eager. That, to my mind, makes it worse than either Mussolini or Stalin because it destroys not just life but the human spirit of curiosity and inventiveness - the thing that separates us from the beasts. It is also the case that over time it kills more people because lives lost from natural causes almost always greatly exceed those lost from human action and human progress has cut the number of lives lost by disease, famine and natural disaters by many orders of magnitude.

The Scotsman's deletion of Monteith's criticism of the BBC, which parallels experience I have had with letters, shows how much unofficial power the state broadcasting authority has. STV have more excuse since they are government "regulated" by Ofcom. Ofcom exist, not to ensure balance but to ensure anything the state dislikes is slated, even though it means reversing the way they "interpret" their code to do so. Basically the entire media is, unofficially, run according to rules set by the dominant BBC state broadcaster. Which in turn functions to propagandise and indeed lie to promote the civil servise line. The Precautionary Principle was, not under that name, a guiding value of the civil service bureaucracy long before the eco-fascist movement had heard of it.

I have previously discussed how the BBC fascists refuse to allow true debate to be broadcast. We are now in the closing days of an election in which, though the Greens have received some, supportive, coverage, UKIP, which gets 4 times their vote at national elections and is the 2nd UK party in PR elections to the EU, has been virtually entirely censored. When US TV is giving nore coverage to the only real opposition party in a Scottisj election than our own broadcasters, the term "fascism" is not overstating. For fairness I should also point out that the BNP received twice as many notes as the Greens and are, if anything , more rigorously censored and poitical censorship is fascist in principle and must be opposed by all liberal minded people in all cases.


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And on a lighter note BBC's Newsnight Scotland allowed a few minutes of discussion of the looming blackouts and the refusal of the officially approved parties to discuss it. Sir Donald Miller argued, respectfully, that not having electricity would be a bad idea. David Maxwell whose company makes them, argued that windmills were now the same cost as gas (without calling for the end of subsidies which are required only because he was lying); that the SNP policy was not actually to end all cobventional power (Salmond has been quite clear that it is); on replacing 100% of our traditional power with windmills "If you achieve 80%, fair enough" which leaves a permanent 20% blackout. Newsnight then moved on, in the last week of an election, to a library piece about the decline of the town (now village) of New Cumnock, followed by a "debate" between 2 governmental types arguing how to revitalise it - either pumping money in to produce government non-jobs or pumping money in to produce government non-jobs. The fact that the town was built on free enterprise and could thus be rebuilt on it, was not even allowed into the discussion.

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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Montieth's Scotsman Article Endorses UKIP



I want to highlight this from Brian Montieth's article in the Scotsman on Monday. The first half dissects the 4 main parties for lying about what will be affordable, ignoring the fact that free markets work and that we need electricity to keep the lights on then says:

"I thought the absurdity of the SNP's tuition fees policy ... could not be beaten, but Alex Salmond trumped it with his plans for 100 per cent renewable power generation that is worthy of a science fiction creativity award...

Instead I am left looking at UKIP as the only party that proposes with sincerity smaller government with fewer regulations and lower taxes as the way for Scotland to rediscover economic prosperity that can provide enviable public services. This is because it has the audacity and nerve to say that so much for what passes as government in Scotland is predetermined not in London but in Brussels and that for us to change the way we do things in Edinburgh would be far easier if we were not governed by EU institutions and their unfiltered decrees.

The SNP, when it looks to Norway in energy and Iceland in fishing policies, knows this is the truth but will not say it, for it now looks to Ireland as the economic model of choice, notwithstanding its self-induced problems.

Were the SNP to commit to full independence, not just from the union with England but with the union with Brussels, it would have a far more potent and honest offering that could attract a wider following than those that just want a change from Labour. Enough studies have been done to show Britain could be better off outside the EU to suggest the same could be so for Scotland.

Unfortunately for UKIP, its name is a significant disadvantage in Scotland from the get-go and its policy of using Scottish Westminster MPs to work part-time in Holyrood suggests it has its own problems with realism.

You cannot hold a government to account if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Still, the coming convalescence of the Scottish Conservatives will require a realignment of the centre right in Scotland, possibly by the birth of a new party or the merger of a number.

Either way, if UKIP can overtake the Liberal Democrats in Wales, as current polls show, then its ambition to supplant the Scottish Tories might not be wishful thinking.

Watch that space."

Brian is certainly right that there is an evolutionary niche for a party committed to the proposition that Economic Freedom + Cheap Energy = High Growth - remedy to a lagging economy is low cost energy and economic freedom. Capitalism's creative destruction will do the rest: look at the German Economic Miracle after World War II for a picture of what hard work and freedom can do. At least there is if it can force itself onto the media (which mainly means the BBC). SNP seats are largely in areas which, elsewhere, would be expected to be SNP seats. Presumably most Conservatives want a free market party though they don't get it. Since most Conservatives eveywhere want an EU referendum I assume they would like one here too. What the Scottish Conservatives don't have and UKIP even more seriously lack is a distictively patriotic Scottish identity. Since it is obvious that the SNP actively intend to produce blackouts and destroy our economy for purely Luddite ideological reasons their claim to any hold on patriotism may soon vanish. I can see that where Brian is pointing there is a real, if long odds, possibility of saving the country.

I sent the Scotsman this letter yesterday but they haven't printed it.
Brian Monteith's article (Monday) confirming that only UKIP, in Scotland, understands the laws of economics, that make free markets more successful than command ones and indeed the laws of physics, is absolutely right. His minor criticisms of UKIP are reasoned and constructive. My only disagreement is when he describes the SNP policy (pursued with less rigour by the Lab/Con/Dems) as "science fiction". As someone who makes their living selling both science fiction and fantasy I can say that the former is distinguishable by being compatible with science as it is known at the time of publication - new "discoveries" are proper so long as they do not, with some double talk, breach what is known. Thus interstellar drives and intelligent computers are allowed (so long as the author is suitably imprecise about how they work) as are orbital retirement homes and mining thousands of tons of gold from one asteroid. In that spirit the SNP policy of building enough windmills over the next nine years to provide, on average, 80% of our electricity, so long as they made clear that this involved a crash programme taking as much from the budget as formerly went to the NHS, could be counted as science fiction.

However that would only be average production. To provide that power, unvaryingly, without back up, from a source as variable as the wind is beyond physics to be classed with flying dragons in Earth gravity (breaking the square cube law), the walking dead (breaching entropy) and Alice shrinking to enter a rabbit hole (law of conservation of mass) as pure fantasy.
However they did print this from what appears to be most of Scotland's Professors of Engineering saying the same about the insanity of political parties that intend to put the lights out.
NO developed economy can function without a reliable and economic supply of electricity but with present UK policies we have been warned that within a few years there will be a risk of power failures while increases in prices to consumers will rise by more than 50 per cent by 2025.

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Sunday, April 24, 2011

TOP 25 ISSUES IN THIS ELECTION - YOUR CHOICE NOT THE BBC's

The BBC told us what the 25 top issues are in the Scottish election. They did so by choosing their own 25 and asking 1004 to pot them in orfder. Though they made an issue over replacing windmills (19th) SNP policy they did not ask about building new nuclear *UKIP & to a smaller extent Tory & Labour policy). Well I'm going to try a few here and see how the choice goes. The BBC's top ten are here and if the BBC have chosen in an unbiased way should be the to 10 here as well. Vote for as many of these as you support (2 are more extensive versions of other - if you want the more extensive one but would accept the less extensive fote for both).
Top 25 Issues in the Scottish election
Replace current nuclear plants with new ones to keep the lights on
Allow the unsubsidised building of as many nuclear plants as the free market wants
Grow the economy aiming for the long term UK rate
Grow the economy aiming to match the world's best, using the methods which have worked best elsewher
Use the Tartan Tax to cut income tax by up to 3p
Use the Tartan tax to raise income tax by up to 3p
Introduce schools vouchers
End or modify the smoking ban
Stop subsidising windmills
Allow Norwegian style tunnel building to link the Highlands and Islands into our road system
Reduce the waiting time for suspected cancer cases to see a specialist, from four weeks to two
Keep up the number of police on the streets
Retain free university education for all Scottish students
Spend more money on apprenticeships for unemployed young people
Reduce the council tax for households where all the adults are pensioners
Freeze the council tax for the next two years
Scrap the council tax for pensioners on low incomes
Keep free bus travel for everyone aged over 60
Cut the bill for the highest paid in the public sector by 10%
Keep prescriptions free for everyone
Allow issues to be put to referenda (as in California)
Either the promised Lisbon Treaty referendum or an EU referendum
Discourage mass immigration
Phase out nuclear power stations and replace with wind and wave power
Build a new road bridge across the River Forth
  
pollcode.com free polls

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