Tag Archives: labour

Suitably Despairing’s Green Guide to Manifestos in #sp11

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I did plan to go through each of the Manifestos with a fine tooth comb looking for Green commitments, but the excellent Suitably Despairing has already done the job for me.  I’ll just give links to each below and summarize the key points from each.

Scottish Conservatives

Transport projects based on economic benefit with the Forth Crossing the top priority, wanting to stretch rail to breaking point, and breakup the ferry services. Anti-localisation and with no commitment to reduce carbon emissions except for the unproven Carbon Capture technology and the dangerous and expensive nuclear “industry”.

UKIP

UKIP don’t believe in climate change.  I don’t believe UKIP will ever have a say in Scottish Government so that’s okay then.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

Commitment to biomass power plants (but they oppose the one in Leith). Setting a target of Scotland to generate the equivalent of 100 per cent of Scotland’s electricity consumption from renewable sources by 2025 (not, not energy).  No new nuclear power plants, hoping to work with the UK government on transmission charges, a Scotland wide transport smart card. I see conflict with public transport commitments and the desire to build more roads and bridges.  A program for insulation (details lacking), a strategy for on-street recycling across the country.

Scottish Labour Party

Any application for a new nuclear power station will be considered, any replacement coal power station will have to have the imaginary carbon capture technology, a target of 10,000 electric car charging points, a “zero waste” Scotland.  Pledging to reduce the tax on fuel for rural areas – would be better to invest the money from that tax and better and cheaper public transport.

Scottish Socialist Party

Free bus, rail, underground and ferry travel.  A bold challenge but incredible expensive. A system of ferry pricing based on the Road Equivalent Tariff.  (Selfishly I’d like this, but can it be extended to trips to Ireland?).  A national strategy on cycling and training for children in P6/7 (which already exists).  No new nuclear and plan to decommission existing ones. A ban on GM foods.

Scottish National Party

Scotland will produce 100% of its usage of electricity by 2020 from renewables, exporting excess, a Futures Generation Fund for the renewables wealth, carbon capture (coming shortly after cold fusion nuclear power I believe). £50 million towards home insulation, funding for a Climate Challenge Fund, and a young Climate Challenge Fund.  All good stuff.  But a giant new bridge casts a shadow over it somewhat.

(Aside: you can tell the SNP have considerable more money available; and get social networking)

That is just a brief summary of the points in the manifesto’s and you should click through to @cowrin’s posts to get the full details (and extra commentary)

UPDATE (19th April) : The Scottish Green Party manifesto is now out and Suitably Desparing reviewed it here :-  #Sp11 Manifestos: Scottish Green Party

The review is, as expected very positive with the only negative being the storage of nuclear waste.  Briefly, no large biomass, universal home insulation, developing plans for the “supergrid”, 100% renewable electric by 2020, no nuclear, no coal, cycle hire schemes (yes! big win), extra public transport infrastructure investment, peatland restoration, an increase in native woodland cover to 40% by 2050.

Livingston Constituency Results 2007

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Following on from my post on the Linlithgow 2007 results, I’m looking at the sister constituency of Livingston.  In the upcoming election the boundaries have changed and there is a new name, the beautifying Almond Valley.

The interesting point about the 2007 vote was an independent, Ernie Walker, campaigning to save the services at St. John’s Hospital.  Here are the results of the constituency vote in 2007 :-
Here are the constituency results :-

Angela Constance, SNP 13,159
Bristow Muldoon, Labour 12,289
Ernie Walker, Independent 2,814
David Brown, Conservative 2,804
Evan Bell, Liberal Democrats 2,158
Majority 870

Here are the regional voting results (click to enlarge) :-

As in Linlithgow, the most faithful voters are the SNP.  82% of those that voted for Angela Constance followed up with a vote for the SNP on the Regional List.  Apart from the independent voters, again the Liberal Democrat voters were most split with only 63% staying with the LibDem.  10% gave their vote to the Green Party.

The Greens polled 3% of the list vote in total, whilst Margo MacDonald polled 4.5%.  Margo picked up most of her votes from SNP Constituency votes (29%) but it was pretty even from all the parties.  The Greens picked up a quarter of their votes from the SNP and Labour.  As in Linlithgow, the LibDems were twice as likely to vote Green than Margo.

Jim Devine goes down for 16 months

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Ex Livingston Labour MP, Jim Devine, was sentenced to 16 months in prison for his expenses claim fraud.

This brings to a close a very sorry tale of incompetence and deception.  To find out more about the actions of this man, I suggest you read Caron’s report from when he was found guilty.

When I see a number of excellent politicians fighting for their careers, it still  annoys me that in certain parts of the country it doesn’t matter a jot who you are or what you can do.  If you stand for a certain party, you are a shoe-in.

There is a chance to make a start to change this, by saying Yes to Fairer Votes.

Linlithgow Constituency 2007 Results

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The wonderful @PeatWorrier posted a link to a positive data bomb of election results which you can download yourself at http://www.scotlandoffice.gov.uk/scotlandoffice/files/updatedversionJune08.xls

The detail is quite extraordinary. Not only has a constituency breakdown for regional and consituency votes, it has a box by box count of votes per party, the boxes linked to the postal district. It also gives an incredible useful Cross Paper Combination of Regional Candidate by Constituency candidate so you can see how many SNP voters, for example, voted for Liberal Democrat, or Green or even Labour in their second vote.

So detailed is it, that I know that for my postal district that the SNP outvoted Labour, the Conservatives outvotes Liberal Democrats, and Margo polled better than the Greens.

My constituency is Linlithgow in the Lothians region. The boundaries have changed for 2011, but it ranges from Whitburn in the south, Winchburgh in the east and Linlithgow in the north.

Here are the constituency results :-

Mary Mulligan, Scottish Labour Party 12,725
Fiona Hyslop, Scottish National Party 11,565
Donald Cameron, Scottish Conservatives 3,125
Martin Oliver, Scottish Liberal Democrats 2,232
Majority 1160

Now look at the Regional Vote by Constituency Candidate (click to enlarge) :-

The most faithful votes are from the SNP where 78% of people who voted for Fiona Hyslop voted SNP on the regional list. The least faithful are Martin Oliver’s voters, only 55% of voters for Martin Oliver voted LibDem on the list. Not called Liberal for nothing.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the biggest gainer of votes from the constituency candidates was the Independent, Margo MacDonald. She picked up nearly 5% of the list vote in the Linlithgow constituency. After their own Party, Conservative, Labour and SNP constituency voters were mostly likely to vote for Margo.

The exception was the Liberal Democrats who were more like to vote Green (13.9%) than Margo (8.1%). This might actually be Green voters voting LibDem because they didn’t have a choice of voting Green. The Green vote was actually very evenly split between Labour, SNP and the Liberal Democrats (310,307,310).

There are few other surprises. Both BNP (of which there were 490 in the constituency) and UKIP voters where more likely to vote Conservative and Socialist voters were not likely to vote Labour; 3 times more voted SNP and indeed, just as many voted LibDem.

The Big Ideas?

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Broken bridge, originally uploaded by Eva the Weaver

Where have all the big ideas in politics gone?  I thought I’d have an opinion on the Scottish Budget that had the first round of voting this week, but there wasn’t anything much to do.

John Swinney has been given less pennies to hand out, and he has arranged them in a form that is more or less the same shape as before but smaller.

Most of the other parties disagreed, perhaps more for the fact that they should look like they disagree (and in Labour’s case purely for the reason that they have to disagree with the SNP) and said that in instead of 10 pennies here and 15 pennies there, there should be 11 pennies here and 14 pennies there.

The SNP are coming to the end of their current administration and feel their hands have been tied by the UK government.  The other parties don’t want to offer much at this stage. The Scottish Lib Dems want extra money towards further education, which is good in itself, but doesn’t really make a big difference if I’m honest.  Labour want to borrow money to build some things which is just typical Labour and quite worrying for the future – don’t they ever learn – but again, does this change anything?

Which is why the Scottish Green Party are a quite interesting organisation.  They reject the budget on their own clear grounds, but that is not my point.  They are offering ideas on changing taxes; Land Value Tax is a very interesting idea.  They are different when the other parties are the same.

The SNP want independence for Scotland.  But what happens afterwards?  I’d like to see what they offer that is actually going to be different in an Independent Scotland.  I don’t think I’ve seen it yet.  I’ve seen the SNP complain that whilst the Scottish Green Party are pro-independence, they don’t campaign about it.  But the Scottish Greens have an idea of what should happen in this region of the United Kingdom, and that idea is more important currently than whether it should be an independent region or not.

I hope that all the parties take the opportunity of the coming election to produce some big ideas that will make a difference.

A Simplistic Look at the motivation on Tuition Fees

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What are the various parties agendas on higher education?  What is the underlying ethos guiding what they do?

I’m not talking about the current fashion for demanding hard and fast cuts “in the current economic climate”.  There was no recession when Labour introduced top up fees in 2004.

Let’s take a simplistic look at why each major political party would want to increase fees for students :-

  • Conservatives.   If you have to pay much much more to go to the best universities, then only the rich will be able to afford to go, and therefore Tory children won’t lose their Oxbridge places to the poor however stupid they might be.
  • Labour. The whole point of Labour is to keep people in poverty so they need to work, need the social crux of the Welfare State.  What better way to keep even the brightest young person under the cosh?  Saddle them with as much debt as possible.
  • Liberal Democrats. Well, I can’t think of a good reason here.  Care to supply one?  I think the better educated, the more likely to be liberal and therefore more likely to vote LibDem ( I did say this was simplistic didn’t I?).  That’s one of the reasons that the party policy is to abolish tuition fees (I’d link to the website, but it has been removed).  So why are the LibDems raising the fees?  Well, they are not.  Coalition ministers are.  LibDem policy remains the same.  The rebels here will be the MPs who votes for raising fees.

One final thought as the whole thing is depressing me.  The LibDems should be better than Labour, who had in their 2001 party manifesto

“We have no plans to introduce University top-up fees, and have legislated to prevent their introduction.”

and then proceeded to introduce them.

Is breaking a pledge worse than breaking legislation?

Digital Economy Bill passed by House of Commons

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Nice breakdown of the voting in the Digital Economy Bill from Alix Mortimer :-

Of the 189 Aye votes, I make it 185 Labour and 4 Conservatives. Plus the two tellers were Labour.

Of the 47 Noe votes, I make it 23 Labour rebels, 16 Lib Dems, 5 Conservatives and 3 others (DUP, PC, Ind). Plus the two tellers were Lib Dem

Alix points out that the Tories were largely absent with only 9 voting.  The Labour MPs (and what appears to be normal for them) voted like sheep with the very notable exceptions of  the likes of Tom Watson and Falkirk’s Eric Joyce.

The flaws in the Bill could probably have been fixed had it gone through the usual process and not the wash up.  One cannot help think that the government knew exactly what they were doing with the timing of the Bill and wanted the bill to be this flawed.  Lord Mandelson wasn’t likened to Darth Vader in the Commons for nothing.

Of particular interest to me was that Michael Connarty voted in favour of the bill and is therefore one of the party sheep.  I suspect he knows very little about the internet and should have deferred to experts like Tom Watson or someone like Eric Joyce who took the time to learn about the problems in the bill after getting many emails, tweets and letters about it.  My MP simply ignored me.  He was around for the second reading of the bill, but his main contribution to the debate was the bring up spurious points that looked like delaying tactics to me (trying to pick a point of history about enclosures against Tom Watson?  fine if the Bill had the time it deserved but not if there is only an hour).

The other point was that only 18 LibDems were there to vote against the Bill (16 noes and 2 tellers ?).  Not that it would have made a difference but where were the rest?  I’m assuming that this is another consequence of the timing of the Bill, but it would be nice to have it confirmed.

The Liberal Democrat party and the Digital Economy Bill

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One of the most important issues to me in this coming election is the attitude of candidates and parties to the Digital Economy Bill proposed by Peter Mandelson which

imposes obligations on internet service providers to reduce online copyright infringement, and allows the Secretary of State to amend copyright legislation to the same end

Quite the illiberal bill as described by Cory Doctorow, who concluded it “consists almost entirely of penalties for people who do things that upset the entertainment industry” You could say it was almost typical of New Labour’s Nanny State legislation, but it was almost breathtaking in the way it could create the power to add any penalty or change it liked without it having to go through parliament.

On the internet, it was clear that most Liberal Democrat members and supporters were against the bill so it came as a big surprise when the Bill went before the Lords and Liberal Democrat peers appeared to make matters worse

This caused the Liberal Democrat Party members go into action to sort matters out, Julian Huppert and Bridget Fox created an emergency motion at the party conference that declared

Conference therefore opposes excessive regulatory attempts to monitor, control and limit internet access or internet publication, whether at local, national, European or global level.

The main worry since then is that the Bill would be passed in the “wash up”[1] and this morning there was growing concern on Twitter (@alixmortimer and @hashbangperl) that the Lib Dem front benchers had gone quiet on it and seemed to be supporting the Bill.  The concern was that despite the party members actions, that the had achieved nothing.

Two posts caught my eye, Lib Dems fiddle while the Net burns and Are we the party of empty rhetoric? and the concern was the party couldn’t move fast enough in the world of blogs and Twitter.

Yet the fears appeared to be unfounded and whilst it still doesn’t go as far as it could, Bridget Fox later today announced that

And I’ve now had a response through from Don Foster MP and the DCMS team, the full text of which is on my blog here.

Now it’s perhaps not the response as the Open Rights Group would have written it; but then I’m in favour of LibDem positions being written, well, by Liberal Democrats.

It’s a long text, setting out why our MPs feel parts of the Bill – on areas such as Channel 4 and regional TV – merit support; and why they want to balance internet freedom with support for the creative industries. So there is no commitment to vote against the Bill as a whole. But, unlike Labour and Tory front benches, the LibDem DCMS team do acknowledge that further debate is definitely required. “The controversial parts of the Bill will need to be scrutinised and voted upon by the next parliament before they can be brought into law. Liberal Democrats MPs would not support these sections of the Bill without this process.”

Indeed, I know full well what my Liberal Democrat candidate, Stephen Glenn, thinks of the Digital Economy Bill.  It is clearly stated on his blog.  I wrote, to my MP Michael Connarty to urge him to give the Bill proper scrutiny and not have it rushed through, but he has yet to respond.

It is very interesting to me (as someone who is new to politics) how the Liberal Democrat party works.  In public, taking criticism on board and having party members (non-MPs) help create party policy.    It is hard indeed to imagine the Labour party working this way.  Whilst Tom Watson MP is clear and certain in opposition to the Bill, he will never have a chance to change Labour’s stand on this bill.

Linlithgow and East Falkirk Candidates

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A summary of the candidates confirmed for the Linlithgow and East Falkirk UK Parliament constituency General Election in 2010

Andrea Stephenson (Conservative Party)
Michael Connarty (Labour Party)
Richard Boyle (United Kingdom Independence Party)
Stephen Glenn (Liberal Democrats)
Tam Smith (Scottish National Party)

Andrea Stephenson

Conservative candidate, aged 29 and lives and works in the Lothians. Andrea is involved in working with elected representatives and the public as an Operations Co-ordinator in the political field.

Michael Connarty

Michael Connarty is the sitting MP for Labour with a majority of 11,202. He, according to his website, “believes that speaking up for all of his constituents is the first duty of an MP”. Michael has been an MP since winning the Falkirk East seat in 1992.

Richard Boyle

Richard Boyle is the UKIP candidate. There is no information about Richard Boyle on the internet (yet?).

Stephen Glenn
Twitter : stephenpglenn

Stephen Glenn was the Liberal Democrat candidate in Linlithgow and East Falkirk in 2005 receiving 7,100 votes. Stephen is a strong local voice and has been standing up for shopkeepers, local transport provision, St. John’s Hospital and environmental concerns. He also runs a very successful blog.

Tam Smith
Twitter : tamsmithsnp

Tam Smith is the SNP candidate and has been a leading member of the Linlithgow SNP party since the 1970s and a West Lothian councillor. If elected, Tam “will be your local champion – putting the interests of Linlithgow & East Falkirk first every time”