Really? Are you mad? What if everybody assumes that Labour will win and so votes for another party - Labour won't win!! At the last election a friend of mine living in the safe Labour seat of Norwich South normally votes Labour but assumed Labour would win so voted Lib Dem because of the tuition fee con - no other reason. He has spent the last 5 years regretting it as Labour narrowly lost. The Greens? You say that a lot of their policies are plainly ridiculous - have you read their manifesto? The whole thing is plainly ridiculous. Did you see Natalie Bennett interviewed on Sky? They produced an independent report showing that their policies would double public spending and bankrupt the Country - her answer ' Yes it would but we would then have to start again from scratch and in time end up with a better Country' When they pointed out that taxing the rich excessively as she proposes has never worked as the rich just move their money elsewhere - her answer ' no problem - we don't want them here anyway ' In answer to ' where will you get the money from then she just looked blank and couldn't answer. I have in front of me the leaflet from the local Green Candidate signed by her, Caroline Lucas and Natalie Bennett. The following - and I quote word for word - is the final line. ' Lets follow Greece and vote bravely for a prosperous caring and co-operative society ' There you have it - vote Green to make you bankrupt, the Country bankrupt but you can enjoy the view out of your back window of a bloody great windmill!!
Steady on 1950. It is very unlikely the Greens will make up any part of government. Like I said, if I wasn't in such a safe Labour seat, I'd probably vote differently. LibDems came 2nd in 2010 in my constituency, with the Tories even further back. It will EASILY be Labour this time around. I agree, an awful lot of the Green manifesto is ridiculous. However, my academic background (undergrad and postgrad) is environmental, and my primary political issue is Environment/Energy. Climate Change needs to be tackled NOW. Not soon. NOW. The only party that echoes that substantially is the Greens. Given my constituency, I feel absolutely comfortable letting them have my vote.
I'm sorry JK but you can never be certain how many other Labour voters will think the same way. Norwich South was always a safe Labour seat but enough Labour voters felt it safe to vote Lib Dem because of Cleggs con resulting in a Lib Dem win and that party keeping Cameron in power. I could see where you were coming from on environmental issues if the Greens were not all over the place on that issue as well. They are opposing 2 feasible tidal barrier systems because of possible damage to other environmental issues but are pushing hard on another even though it has been proven that it cannot be built as it will prevent access to a large port. They are obsessed with solar panels and onshore wind turbines even though the vast majority of people don't like or want them, they will never be economically viable, they cannot guarantee supply and can never produce the amount of energy we need. Unfortunately they have no Plan B. I did in fact support the Greens years ago but soon realised that their proposals were really all pie in the sky nonsense and left their planet to rejoin the real world.
I dispute that, and regardless, I take a more authoritarian stance on the environment. We need proper, robust legislation, and fast. It is a necessity. Granted, their energy policy isn't 100% perfect, but a lot of their rhetoric for radical change in the energy sector is absolutely warranted. In the last decade, there has been dozens of energy 'road maps' (written and peer reviewed by climate/energy scientists AND economists) on how renewables can address both of these issues. The issue is not that they are not viable, it's that the fossil fuel industry has too much interest in not letting it happen. Denmark for example is well on track to powering itself solely via renewables, with the potential for exporting excess power generated. Like I say, the main reason I am voting Green is not because I want to see them in power, but because I want the UK to have a proper policy on energy that attempts to mitigate against millions (not hyperbole) of potential deaths and displaced people around the world in the next 50-100 years.
I know one thing and that is I'll be glad when this election malarky is over and we can (hopefully) go back to being mates and discussing all things NCFC once again.
Really! Are you going to tell everyone how they must vote? Is it madness to vote for anyone who does not represent your beloved labour party? If you ask me it is madness continuing to vote for both Labour and conservative when neither are addressing an issue that you see as fundamentally important. Good on ya JK for not being cowed by this notion that you must vote to prevent the Lab/Con oposition from reaching power. More votes that challenge this status quo might just in the long term help better this country. I vote in a marginal and I didn't vote Labour either, you can stick that in your pipe and smoke it, 1950! Bah!
The sad thing is, no one party has all the answers and your one cross countenances a load of stuff that you would not want to support. I do agree that the Greens are an idealogical muddle and God forbid that they gain any firther seats, one is enough. In my view the same goes for UKIP. It looks like we are stuck with the Clacton muppet but one result I will be looking out for tonight is hopefully the end of Farage in Thanet South. I ma worried abotu the rise of the SNP because of the effect on the UK as a whole and what they would force Miliband to do to gain their support (although not in an official coalition). I have said it before, but while it has been far from perfect, the last Government served the country well and brought stability in the financial markets which aided recovery. A repeat result would not be too bad again in my view, but the arithmetic may not add up.
Blimey - got out of bed the wrong side this morning? I'm not telling anybody how to vote. All I did was suggest that if you wanted Labour to win then the only way to guarantee that was to vote Labour. It was JK who said that many of the policies of the Green Party were ' plainly ridiculous ' and I just queried the wisdom of encouraging them in such policies by voting for them. I don't think that anything I said justifies your outburst.
Well I voted Lib Dem, they fully deserve my vote for the work they have done and put the country before their ideals. They are the only ones I'd trust in a coalition not to put a spanner in the works at every given turn whilst still retaining a sense of morals. They have been excellent this term and Nick Clegg should be commended for just getting on with it and taking criticism on the chin. Best policy for me goes to the Greens in stopping public funding to faith schools.
Judging by the news last night, a lot of LDs seem to be virtually cracking out the champers as they think the campaign has gone very well. Seems odd, but they could lose 25 seats and it would be perceived as a strong performance from them as the polls have been so bad.
I have no idea why everybody feels so let down by them. Just because of tuition fees and the people who voted for him seem to think Nick Clegg was Prime Minister.
Fair points and I tend to agree. I think the main gripe is that a lot of people voted LD in 2010 because they specifically did not want Tories winning. So it was tactical though they might have wanted to vote Labour they probably saw it as risking a split and letting the Tories in. So when the LDs let the Tories into power that felt like a betrayal. Of course, the reality is that the LDs did a lot to moderate the Tories' policies and going into coalition with Labour would have been equally disastrous. But the electorate don't really think logically and, with it being 30 years of solid majorities, have forgotten that coalitions mean compromises. Plus the LDs have the problem that they don't really have a base of newspaper support. The majority of use press are right-wing and have been ignoring the LDs since before the coalition formed or pressurising them since, and the left-wing press turned on the LDs once they teamed up with the Tories. The only thing the LDs do have going for the have going for them is, as CT point out, there is a lot more mistrust of the press these days. Whether that will be borne out in a stronger return for the LDs than expected, I don't know, but it wouldn't be surprised.
I just picked out two of the main tory myths from this to counter. Firstly, leaving countries finances in a mess. The tories have borrowed more in the last 5 years than every labour government in history combined during this parliament Osborne has gone from plan A, quietly abandoned that when the country was dying on its arse and then promises to go back to plan A again after the election. The tories have pledged to make 12bn in cuts after the election and 8bn extra Spending for the NHS but will not tell us where either have come from . If labour were saying this the tories would be screaming about magic money trees They tories have done nothing to address the skills gap in this country leading to a productivity in this country being 30% lower per capita than the USA and Germany. Finally, tax, every tory government has increased Vat when they have come into power. This directly reduces the spending power of everyone and disproportionately hits the poor
' just because ' doesn't do it justice. It was a pledge and on that basis they picked up millions of votes and lots of university seats. They then not only failed to honour their pledge but voted through a large increase in fees. They could have made their pledge a condition for coalition but they were bought out by the promise of an extra Lib Dem bum in a ministerial car. It will be a long while before the electorate forgive them and they will undoubtedly lose all the university seats they got by their pledge. Their fate tonight will depend upon how well they have been able to fight off the Tory onslaught in other seats they hold and I will be surprised if they manage to cling on to more than 30 MP's.
Interesting that Clegg has been the most successful liberal leader in actually getting liberal policy onto the statute books for around 100 years and yet the poor bugger gets slated for it.
To be fair to clegg, the lib dems have had a few decent policies put into law - increasing the personal allowance, private pension reform , support for gay marriage (which was the one issue that Cameron stood up to their lunatic right on and does deserve credit for) were all originally lib dem policies. Unfortunately that's outweighed by some of the policies they have enabled.
