UK Election June 08

[Stavros]

The Liberal Democrats published their election manifesto yesterday (Weds 17th 2017). The party hopes to win back seats in Scotland and the South West of England which it lost in 2015 and pick up the odd seat here and there, and presents itself as the only party which is opposed to Brexit and promises a second referendum which, in theory, ought to recommend it to those voters who think it is not too late to reverse the Brexit. It is also pitching policies aimed at young people who are voting for the first time who may not have any party loyalty. The policies include:
-Repealing the Investigative Powers Act, or Snooper's Charter giving the state the right to monitor web browsing and inspect emails.
-Replacing single member, simple plurality voting with proportional representation.
-Reducing the voting age to 16.
-Creating an elected upper chamber in Parliament (presumably replacing the House of Lords).
-Creating a regulated cannabis market and raising £1 billion a year in a 'Pot Tax' (my invention!). That's a lot of spliffs, mate.
-Housing benefit restored for 18-21 year olds.

There are a range of environmental measures designed to phase out diesel powered cars by 2025, reduce emissions in towns, and generate 60% of domestic energy from renewable sources by 2060.

A Telegraph presentation is here-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/li...17-key-points/

[Jericho]

-Creating a regulated cannabis market and raising £1 billion a year in a 'Pot Tax'

As much as I like that idea, I could never smoke enough weed to persuade myself to vote for Satans lapdogs!

[Stavros]

Now the Conservative Party has launched its election manifesto, Forward Together.
Among the proposals, there will be an increase in schools funding, spending on the NHS will continue to increase through the life of the next Parliament, but money will be clawed back from pensioners by means-testing the annual winter fuel allowance so that better off pensioners will no get it. The triple-lock pension guarantee has lost a chink and is now a two-lock proposal, while the policy on social care is proving controversial as people with more than £100,000 in assets would have to pay for their own care out of the value of their homes rather than relying on the council to cover the cost of visits by care workers (see Guardian links).

-The current target figure of 1 million new homes by 2020 has expanded to 1.5 million by 2022.
-The honours system will be reviewed so that donors to the party do not get gongs in exchange for banknotes.
-The fixed-term Parliament act will be repealed so that Prime Ministers can call general elections whenever they like.
-There will be no increase in VAT -this is also Labour policy; Mrs Thatcher made the same commitment in 1979 and doubled VAT within a month of being elected.
-Corporation tax should be reduced to 17% by 2020 and reform the business rates system,
-The Tories are committed to reducing immigration to below 100,000 a year, with tougher rules on student visas.
-On Brexit, 'no deal is better than a bad deal':
The deal May seeks would take the UK out of the single market and out of the customs union but maintain “a deep and special relationship” through a comprehensive free trade and customs agreement. It would introduce controls on EU immigration while securing the rights of EU nationals in UK and Britons in EU. And it would maintain a common travel area with a “frictionless” border with Ireland.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...oints-analysis
https://www.theguardian.com/politics...ty-and-country

Theresa May, it is claimed, has put clear blue water between her vision for Britain and the one proposed by Mrs Thatcher in 1979. Rather than extol the virtues of limited government and free markets, Mrs May, speaking at the launch in Halifax said
“We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality. We see rigid dogma and ideology not just as needless but as dangerous.”

Whether or not her party is fully behind this I doubt, as the 'Hard Brexiteers' in reality would not be bothered if there was no deal at the end of the EU negotiations because they see a 'scorched earth' position as one that would benefit from the dissolution of the EU. However, if May does win the election with a large majority, she will be in a strong position to determine policy, but the ability of the Tory party to tear itself apart on Europe is a constant threat, so the negotiations could produce an outcome they don't like.

So here we are: the two main parties are both Brexit parties, both committed to spending more on health and education, building more houses, but we are no closer to knowing what the Brexit negotiations that begin next month will produce and therefore cannot know what the UK's relationship to the EU and its Single Market will be, yet so much is going to be determined by the new relationship and its economic impact, that policies for the 2017-2022 Parliament may be derailed even as they take effect.

As for the differences between the two main parties, what struck me, a few days after hearing Jeremy Corbyn present a manifesto For the Many not the Few,
was to hear Mrs May climax her speech by presenting her government as one that will work
Not for the privileged few but for everyone...

The choice is yours...

[Jericho]

As for the differences between the two main parties, what struck me, a few days after hearing Jeremy Corbyn present a manifesto For the Many not the Few,
was to hear Mrs May climax her speech by presenting her government as one that will work
Not for the privileged few but for everyone...

Like they say, the devil is in the details...and it's nice of TM to leave a suicide note.

[Jericho]

Something i have found interesting is the difference between Social media and Mainstream media.
I've always been fairly dismissive of it (facebook/twitter/etc) in the past, but, I think it's something the Tories seriously underestimated.

[peejaye]

Something i have found interesting is the difference between Social media and Mainstream media.
I've always been fairly dismissive of it (facebook/twitter/etc) in the past, but, I think it's something the Tories seriously underestimated.

Spot-on with that! There is a huge anti-establishment following on social media, I only do Twitter, sites like @TheCanarySays have a huge following & were only mentioned last week on Channel 5's "The Wright Stuff" by a panel member, they expose what these public schoolboys & girls are really up to & very often with very concrete evidence which is more than mainstream media are doing right now with all this "fake news" around.

[peejaye]

The "BIG" difference Stavros forgot to mention between the two main parties Manifestos is The Tory Manifesto doesn't have any costings unlike the Labour Manifesto! Unbelievable & obscenely arrogant as The Tories, with a little help from their friends at The BBC & ITV have spent all week trying to pull the Labour one to pieces! As the man says..."The choice is yours".

[Stavros]

Something i have found interesting is the difference between Social media and Mainstream media.
I've always been fairly dismissive of it (facebook/twitter/etc) in the past, but, I think it's something the Tories seriously underestimated.

This is a weak area for me, as HA is the closest to social media I get to. A few years ago I was persuaded to create a Facebook page but had no idea what to do with it, so it has my name at the top and a blank page, I don't even know how to access it. It is part of the debate about Robert Mercer and the part-Russian owned Cambridge Analytica and whether or not targeting Facebook users with blatant or sly 'advertising' can swing undecided voters, though in the US case it may be whether or not Facebook data was retrieved/laundered illegally. I can't work out if social media is decisive in winning marginal seats, or whether or not elections are won and lost because of local factors, personality issues, or policies, or a combination of all three. I can see that if someone goes into politics, particularly if they are elected, social media is a good way of communicating with the people who voted for them, or are in their constituency, but it also seems to me to run risks, though those politicians who make infantile or offensive remarks in tweets or on their Facebook page have only themselves to blame.

[Stavros]

The "BIG" difference Stavros forgot to mention between the two main parties Manifestos is The Tory Manifesto doesn't have any costings unlike the Labour Manifesto! Unbelievable & obscenely arrogant as The Tories, with a little help from their friends at The BBC & ITV have spent all week trying to pull the Labour one to pieces! As the man says..."The choice is yours".

I agree with you on this Peejaye, and on Question Time last night someone asked a question about the deficit, but the weak response seemed to me to suggest the current government doesn't see reducing the deficit as a priority, at the moment policy is all about spending. And Priti Patel did not give much of an answer to the question around the weekly contributions to the EU that were trumpted during the EU referendum campaign as money we could 'bring back from Brussels' and spend on the NHS. On the other hand, the costing of policies in election manifestos rarely matches up when reality sets in, rather like government pledges to reduce immigration to less than 100,000 a year, a pledge broken every year ever since it was made, and by the Home Secretary responsible for the policy who is now Queen Elizabeth's Prime Minister.

I was also either shocked that when challenged on Foreign Aid, none of the panellists, including the woman responsible for it -Priti Patel- could point out that just under half of Foreign Aid (I think it is around 40%) goes to projects that the UK Government co-ordinates with agencies of the UN such as the UNICEF, UNHCR, UNESCO and the WHO.
In particular Foreign Aid helps the WHO with vaccination programmes that target diseases that afflict the poor in countries which are economically undeveloped and have a limited if any health care system. International co-operation on health has been one of the least discussed, but most successful examples of international co-operation since the co-ordination of disease control in the 19th century. It is a pity, bordering on a disgrace, that people opposed to Foreign Aid prefer to expose the idiocy of funding mythical tap-dancing classes for Ugandan lesbians, rather than the very real and effective projects that benefit from Foreign Aid and enhance the reputation of the UK at the same time. Malaria, River Blindness, Polio and TB are serious diseases that we can deal with, Priti Patel should have made a stand on this and it was a poor performance from her throughout the programme.

[Jericho]

Also nice of them to promise to repeal section 40.
Can't think who that would help!

Theresa May has vowed to repeal controversial plans to make newspapers pay both sides’ costs in libel actions if the Tories win the General Election. The Conservative Party’s manifesto published today says it will repeal the infamous Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, originally designed to force publishers to sign-up to a ‘recognised’ system of press regulation.
The legislation would have seen media organisations having to pay the legal costs of both sides in libel and privacy cases, regardless of whether they win, unless they signed up to an approved press regulator under the government’s Royal Charter.
At present, the Max Mosley-funded body Impress is the only such organisation to have gained approved regulator status. The Independent Press Standards Organisation, which most national and regional publishers are signed up to, has refused to seek approved status on the grounds that it would amount to state regulation of the press.
Culture secretary Karen Bradley had already announced a consultation into whether to go ahead with the implementation of Section 40, and with polls showing the Tories on course for a comfortable victory the controversial clause now appears dead in the water.
In today’s manifesto the Tories also pledge to scrap part two of the Leveson Inquiry, which would have looked into the corporate governance issues which gave rise to the phone hacking scandal.
The manifesto states: “At a time when the internet is changing the way people obtain their news, we need to take steps to protect the reliability and objectivity of information that is essential to our democracy and a free and independent press.
“We will ensure content creators are appropriately rewarded for the content they make available online. We will be consistent in our approach to regulation of online and offline media.
“Given the comprehensive nature of the first stage of the Leveson Inquiry and given the lengthy investigations by the police and Crown Prosecution Service into alleged wrongdoing, we will not proceed with the second stage of the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the press.
“We will repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2014, which, if enacted, would force media organisations to become members of a flawed regulatory system or risk having to pay the legal costs of both sides in libel and privacy cases, even if they win.”
The move was warmly welcomed by the Society of Editors which has spearheaded the campaign against Section 40.
A spokesman said: “The role of a free press that is vociferous and investigative in holding power to account is something even its fiercest critics claim is vital in a democratic society and yet too many politicians have been steadfast in lending support to a piece of legislation which, if proposed in any other country, would have our democratic instincts up in arms.
“While the Society does not support any one political point of view, it is regrettable to see that other parties are fighting the election on manifestos which fail to deliver commitments to safeguarding freedom of expression.
“As many editors made clear publicly through their papers during the consultation process, Section 40 costs orders would have a seriously chilling effect on their work and, to put it simply, they would be less inclined to pursue investigations in the public interest when the risk of crippling legal costs would be increased.
“There has been an arduous 300-year battle to achieve press freedom and freedom of expression in the UK and we welcome the Conservative party’s recognition that Section 40 would be a giant step backwards.
“In a year in which the threat of such illogical legislation has seen the UK fall once again in the World Press Freedom Index, the repeal of Section 40 would ensure that other countries continue to look to the UK as a nation that upholds and protects the values it seeks to promote abroad.”
However campaign group Hacked Off denounced the move as “a wholesale betrayal both of victims of press abuse and ordinary members of the public.”
A spokesman said: “If this pledge is carried through, there will be no effective, independent regulation of the press in this country and no access to affordable justice for victims of press abuse. We wish to make it clear that those who have suffered at the hands of powerful and unaccountable newspapers will not tolerate this betrayal.
“It appears that the Prime Minister has stitched up a calculated deal to trade the interests of the public for favourable election coverage in powerful newspapers.
“We will fight throughout the next Parliament to ensure that the voices of ordinary people are heard above the megaphones of self-interested newspaper editors and proprietors. We will fight to ensure that the careful regulatory framework proposed by Leveson and agreed by Parliament is not systematically dismantled by a government subservient to newspaper editors.”

http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/20...ion-manifesto/