David Cameron wins majority for Conservatives in Election 2015 victory
Britain’s Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey has lost his seat to the Conservative party, in an election night that has seen the Liberal Democrats presence in the House of Commons decimated. —The Mirror, 8 May 2015
David Cameron has won the general election with an outright majority after Labour was virtually wiped out in Scotland and the Liberal Democrat vote collapsed. Mr Cameron hailed the “sweetest victory” as his party secured the 323 seats needed to form a government without needing to go into coalition. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, has resigned. Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor was the biggest scalp of the night, losing his Leeds seat to the Tories. —The Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2015
The Prime Minister has pledged to stop future government funding to windfarm projects including the delayed inquiry and to give local people the final say – if he is re-elected today. Mr Cameron pledged to stop the windfarm project and any other on-shore windfarms within Montgomeryshire if he was elected to take a second term in Government. He said: “I want to make it clear that if there is a Conservative Government in place we will remove all subsidy for on-shore wind and local people should have a greater say.” –Ben Goddard, County Times, 7 May 2015
Speculation is growing that energy and climate change department’s days of independence could be numbered. A government source said that if David Cameron is re-elected, he is likely to fold it into the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, where the government has more staff with commercial experience. –John Collingridge and Danny Fortson, The Sunday Times, 5 April 2015
New government will have to address capacity shortfalls to avoid blackouts. Avoiding a power blackout will be one of the first priorities for whoever forms the next government, a leading consultant has suggested. Critics argue that a focus on renewables has left Britain’s power network now dangerously short of spare capacity. –Andrew Critchlow, The Daily Telegraph, 8 May 2015
Thanks to Dr. Benny Peiser of The GWPF
I looked over the articles on RealClearPolitics this morning and I’ve had a smile on my face since. Maybe people are starting to wake up and pay attention, and think for themselves
Add the improved vote for the UKIP who are fully opposed to CAGW and we see the mandate from the voters to scrap this nonsense..
The leader of the UKIP lost his seat and has resigned, and the UKIP won 1 seat – wow, that is indeed a mandate!
What is really interesting is how the proportional representation crowd will react to the result.
If the UK had proportional representation UKIP would have the same number of seats than the Lib Dems and the SNP party combined. Under first past the post SNP have 56, the Lib Dems have 8 and UKIP have 1 seat
Chris…… 4.000.000 voices said that they agree with UKIP. Add those to the Tories and you have your mandate. Hopefully they will follow it through
Chris, 12% of the votes went to UKIP, but they got 0.15 % of the seats. The UK has an ancient system of democracy that fails to address or represent an increasingly complicated and diverse society.
Chris, as has been pointed out. Scotland, with 4.2 million voters, has 56 seats in parliament. UKIP, with over 3 million voters, has just one. While they might not have the MPs, their voice cannot safely be ignored.
Chris. The leader of UKIP didn’t lose his seat as an MP, he has never had one.
Nigel and other UKIP people still have their MEP seats arrived at via a PR voting
system and that remains the case. If you take it that UKIP is a protest party that
pushes other larger parties to hold an EU referendum then job done,
The tories have pledged to do that.
As for this, 1 seat, it doesn’t, really relate to what actual UKIP GE voting numbers
were, which is 3rd.
General Election is FPTP.
If the GE was under PR Nigel would be leading an
80 plus force in the commons.
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Did you blokes moaning about vote share, vote in the referendum on PR we had 4 and a bit years ago ??
The majority voted to keep First Past the Post, and I doubt that the voting system will be a topic of political debate for another 20 year at least.
It might also be worth remembering that the system as it stands, is the very one that All the established parties had to jump through in order to hit the big time. That includes the LibDems who went from 6 MP’s in the 70’s, up to nearly 60 in 2010, and now back to 11.
Its a game of Snakes and Ladders that is sure to eliminate parties representing short lived topics, and as such it works well.
Given that the Tories will have an In, Out, referendum on the EU in 2017, the raison d etre of UKIP will evaporate, and as their only other major platform concerns ‘Nasty Foreigners’ we may well give thanks for the snake that UKIP are about to slide down 🙂
Downside is that SNP now have a substantial say, and they are very pro-EU, which means they wil believe and support all of the CAGW propaganda. I’m kinda surprised that the Scots, proud to be different, are so willing to kowtow to a bunch of Edward Longshankses in Brussels.
Are we seeing a trend? Australia, Britain, who’s next?
USA
It hasn’t happened yet! Let’s wait & see who puts our money where his mouth is!
It already happened in the US, with a more complete reaping than in Australia or UK if you bother to look past the that over-reach guy in his corner of the 3-way power design plan of the Constitution.
Actually in Britain, our electoral system has produced the most unrepresentative result in the history of UK elections. The SNP are vastly over-represented, the Libdems, UKIP and Green Party vastly under-represented and the Conservatives have an absolute majority polling barely over 1/3 of votes cast and under 30% of those entitled to vote. The election will be presented globally as a benchmark of how First Past the Post electoral systems can destroy the concept of ‘voter representation’. There are 24% of voters who have 10 MPs out of 650 between them.
How is that democracy??
UKIP is now the third largest party, and that is from scratch. Daily Express pie chart for the rest of us:
https://twitter.com/Daily_Express/status/596702297603710976
Zeke … yes it would be ‘fair’ … but utterly useless. Trying to get a legislative agenda through with a PR system would be an absolute nightmare.
Yes sir. But nevertheless, credit must be given where credit is due. If it were not for Nigel Farage, who has succeeded (to the astonishment of all) in piercing through the thick media, the parties would offer no difference on membership in the EU, or on green energy.
Also, as Nigel Farage himself remarked,
…How is that democracy??…
It’s what FPTP is DESIGNED to do! It delivers a majority government, and saves us from continual coalition bickering.
Remember how scared we were when we thought we would have a hung parliament? That’s what FPTP saved us from…
Here in Oz we have preferential voting in each seat (State and Federal) and in the (Federal) Senate and still get notional ‘over representation’ say of the National Party ( a rural, conservative party that can go all agrarian socialist when the weather gets tough i.e. drought or flood). In Tasmania we have the Hare-Clark system of 5 members per electorate ( was 7 until 25 years or so ago) and preferential voting. That is due to them being concentrated in rural seats. SNP pretty much concentrated in Scotland with compelling local appeal.
Perhaps the Brits should dump the unelected House of Lords altogether or take it over to PR.
ALl that said I think the result is pretty clear and if they had preferential voting I think it would be downright emphatic. UKIP second preferences would have flowed to the Conservatives as would some Lib Dems. A 37% primary vote in Oz is a solid start if you get preference flows.
As a recipient of ‘proportional representation’ down here in South Africa, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be! You do NOT have an MP, you have a party member who HAS to vote the way the party says – no room for conscience. And as far as making up coalitions goes – anyone seen what Israel has just had to go through to get a government?
The other, related problem with the party system is that it is an adversarial system not unlike a court of law – you are basically on one side or the other depending on which party you are in. Thus if no party has a clear majority then no work gets done in Westminster. If the party system were abolished and voting was on the merit of proposals insted of on ‘us and them’ tactics, then proportional representation would also be feasible.
peoples memories are so Short 🙂
At the 2010 election, had it have been conducted under a ‘Fair’ system, it would have seen representation by the BNP who at the time were on a roll.
As with the Majority of factoids opined by UKIP, they work well in isolation 🙂
Respectfully: In both UK and US elections “Members of the House” represent a “District” or “Constituency”. “Proportionate” to the individual District is what is accomplished. The issue is can London rule without the consent of the rest of the country? An aggressively ‘English” party would emerge to effectively enslave Scotland, Wales and NI. No system can do everything well.
The US has used this system since 1788. Several pre-independence “Colonies” used this system.Seems to work here even though there are often calls for “change”. Frankly, change usually means someone wants to rule others or avoid being ruled by others.
The point here is that the “Tories” may follow Science rather than Theology regarding climate and allow coal plants and cheap power. I say “Bravo!” to that.
Well it seems to me that the “stiff upper lip” Brits basically gave up at the end of WW-II (and tossed out Churchill); not unlike Obama did when he first got into the oval office.
But for Dame Thatcher, they haven’t had the stomach for being any kind of leader in world affairs.
Maybe, that lip is stiffening again. It’s a welcome sign anyway.
g
+1 on the first part of your comment, but unfortunately the UK is far from having a stiff upper lip anymore. I’d like to see us more like the French – agree to the EU rules, watch the Brits implement the rules and then say with a Gallic shrug “Non, pas pour nous vous remercions beaucoup”
No matter how hard you try, you just can’t believe something to be true that isn’t. You can fudge the climate numbers all you want, but sooner or later reality will come out and bite you on your butt.
Glad to see the general population of at least one western nation is finally starting to realize how much they are paying for what has to be one of the biggest scams in history.
Now I’m beginning to understand a bit more about British politics. It seems to me that the only reason the previous government supported bone-headed ‘green’ policies was because they had to form a coalition. Now that the Conservatives are free, they don’t have to compromise.
Am I right?
No. They all are true Greens.
The Tories have people like Letwin and Debben who are very influential and look down on even Greenpeace as soft on green issues. Cameron put a wind turbine on his roof (not just solar panels).
The Tory manifesto had more pages of environment policies than did the Labour Party.
They have not retracted their aim to be the greenest Government ever.
And there are other reasons why tax breaks for North Sea oil might be cut too.
The wind turbine you speak of was dismantled and was not on No.,10 the PM’s official residence. It was awfully small, and placed on the wrong angle and position and in 2007. The House of Lords is elected nowadays, rather than it was an automatic entry if one was a peer. The Tories got in because they are smarter than most, and also the promise of a referendum of Yes or No regarding the EU and employment of foreigners. If one is an Australian, New Zealander, Canadian one does not have any more rights to work than a Poles. Before Ozzies were welcomed, now one parent has to be born in UK. Or one has substantial financial assets. I’m OK, but my youngest son’s dad is Ozzie, and he was born in 1980, So in 1983, they extended this to mothers who were British citizens. Anyway too bloody cold there for me, and too many racial riots. Cheers.
Yep, in theory! The Lim-Dems were as gree as gree can be because they are just wishy-washy!
That was their fig-leaf, so only time will tell; but don’t get your hopes up.
Not quite, Karim
In 2008 the then Labour Government passed the Climate Change Act. This binds all future UK Governments to reducing CO2 emissions by 80%, before 2050. This is now enacted in UK law and the new Government is bound by it.
When the act was originally passed in 2008, only 5 members (out of 650) voted against it. The act was introduced by Ed Miliband, who later became leader of the Labour Party. He has also resigned today following the shock election win by the Conservative Party.
So, because of this infamous Act, the Conservatives are not free to do anything sensible and, besides, they had previously promised ‘to be the greenest Government ever’.
Any act made by parliament can be unmade by parliament. Spain passed an act that cancelled contracts with solar electricity providers and hung them out to dry. Extreme Green madness is not a one way street.
Those that oppose the nonsense of CAGW are NOT against the rational protection of the environment. What they are opposed to is irresponsible taxes and legislation to support a theory begun by a 19th century crackpot and later picked up by Ozone Layer man..
+1
Watermelons love “bound by law” when it suits them. They forget “Repeal it”
@ Crispin…that is true that Spain reneged on their subsidy agreements, but what choice did their bankrupt government have?
The Act can be repealed. http://repealtheact.org.uk/climate-change-act
Parliament means, in the mouth of a lawyer (though the word has often a different sense in conversation) The King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons: these three bodies acting together may be aptly described as the “King in Parliament”, and constitute Parliament. The principle of Parliamentary sovereignty mean neither more nor less than this, namely that Parliament thus defined has, under the English constitution, the right to make or unmake any law whatever: and, further, that no person or body is recognised by the law of England as having a right to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament.
—A.V. Dicey Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885)
The doctrine of parliamentary supremacy may be summarised in three points:
Parliament can make laws concerning anything.
No Parliament can bind a future parliament (that is, it cannot pass a law that cannot be changed or reversed by a future Parliament).
A valid Act of Parliament cannot be questioned by the court. Parliament is the supreme lawmaker.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty
I would assume that, with a majority, they are free to do the sensible thing and rescind the Act.
“Watermelons love “bound by law” when it suits them.”
Unless the laws in question inconvenience them, in which case they are to be flouted. Often with complete impunity, when anyone else would be in court, were ‘climate change’ not the stock excuse.
Not so, Karim.
The Ca Moron fellow came to be Tory leader and prime minister pledging to be the Greenest party in history. And within weeks he had:
Changed the party logo to a stupid green tree.
Put a wind turbine on his roof.
Hugged some huskies in Norway.
Pledged more wind turbines than Denmark.
However, he is a Ca Moron by name and Ca Moron by nature. Having never worked, never been hungry, and never studied anything outside politics, the results of his first descisions were fairly predictable.
The stupid tree was and it widely hated.
The turbine produced enough energy to power an iPod – on a good day.
The turbine annoyed the f…. out of his neighbours, who forced him to take it down.
The huskies were so happy at being hugged, they neglected to protect some UK students who were eaten by a polar bear.
The wind turbines do not work and are hugely unpopular and expensive.
In other words, the small degree of common sense that Ca Moron is now exhibiting has been beaten into him by bitter experience, and did not come through education, rationality or natural common sense.
R
http://theboar.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/tory-logo.jpg
I … can’t …. even! That’s WONDERFUL! Hahaha!
Silver Ralph,
The fat-faced one has an ‘A’ Level [age-18 school-leaving qualification] in – Art.
[Well, per Wikipedia, the omniscient pluperfect source, that even I can edit – a couple of weeks or so ago.]
I think he has been playing green – although his father-in-law has a turbine stud-farm on his land!
Let’s see.
Auto – rather pleased that the fat-faced one can now govern without Ed Davey having to come to Cabinet meetings . . . .
Most times education from real life trumps pedantic knowledge. Having it beaten into him is a good thing.
>>Having it beaten into him is a good thing.
Yeah, but it took 5 years and £250 billion of our money, for Ca Moron to realise that he was wrong on all points. I would rather have had an intelligent and rational politician, who could have save the £250 billion and solved our power generation problem 5 years ago.
R
Cum arf it, matee. He’s a bleedin’ politician! Maybe after a while in office he realised that all the alarmist doctrines were a load of shite!.
It’s about damn time.
Once again we see that the only poll that matters is the one on election day.
And the one on leaving the EU.
And then the one on breaking up England and Scotland.
And then the one on Northern Ireland’s fate…
And then the civil war restarts.
This was the worst possible result for the UK.
…best for Scotland
“[i]This was the worst possible result for the UK.[/i]”
No, this is much better for the country and could have been so much better. Now the government can get on with the job without being pulled this way and that way by their political opponents aka ‘coalition partners’ that they had to do a deal with.
Thank goodness they are now free to do what they want. I genuinely hope that Fracking goes back on the agenda without the Lib-dems contaminating any debate with the dubious claims made by the anti frackers.
No. I can’t think of a good outcome but Labour having anything to do with Government would be worse than what we’ve ended up with.
Mr Green Genes
May 8, 2015 at 12:09 pm
That is the only Plus from todays episode.
“And then the civil war restarts.”
Rubbish. Historically the wars have always been when Scotland or Wales has been illegally occupied by England. Likewise Ireland, where the dispute is over the Northern section which England doesn’t really have any right to.
Likewise, if the EU doesn’t stop dictating crazy regulations to member states there may eventually be civil unrest.
+1.
Being a resident of the U.S., my only source of information was the predictions from pollsters, and I was (pleasantly) surprised to read the headlines this morning.
This is probably rhetorical, but why is it that pollsters seem to consistently err on the side of liberalism? I read one pollster said people being polled responded one way but then voted another, but this doesn’t pass the common sense test for me. Either the pollsters are lying, have horribly inaccurate polling methods, or have adopted climate modelling techniques.
Because progressives / Liberal / Labor are “loud and proud” and love yelling their opinions at strangers; while conservatives tend to quiet thought and privacy so walk on by. Not all, but enough to skew results.
Polling and market research etc. are really difficult. People will make up any kind of crap they think will sound smart or virtuous. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect It’s complicated. For sure you should always take any kind of poll or market research with a grain of salt.
Three recent elections turned out quite differently than the pollsters thought they would: Britain, Alberta, Israel. In fact, the polls will skew the outcome of elections by discouraging some voters and spurring on others.
Whenever you are tempted to believe anything said by a talking head on television just remember that they, almost universally, can’t predict anything better than chance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_E._Tetlock
You omitted a further possibility: the ballot box is rigged.
If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.
–Unknown, but usually attributed to Mark Twain. Apparently Emma Goldman said something similar.
Stevan Makarevich
You mistakenly suggest
No. The polls were accurate and their indications of national shares of the vote on the day prior to polling day nearly match the actual national shares of the votes cast on polling day.
The pollsters predicted that no Party would obtain a governing majority. A Party must win at least 326 seats to obtain a governing majority. But the Conservative Party did obtain a governing majority.
The results and shares of votes in the General Election are:
◾ The Conservative 331, Labour 232, the Lib Dems 8, the SNP 56, Plaid Cymru 3, UKIP 1, the Greens 1 and others 19.
◾The Conservatives got a 37% share of the national vote, Labour 31%, UKIP 13%, the Lib Dems 8%, the SNP 5%, the Green Party 4% and Plaid Cymru 1%.
The problem for the pollsters was that the national shares of the vote were not the same as the shares of the vote in different regions. And a seat is won by a Party obtaining the largest share of the vote in a constituency.
The effect of this problem is most clear in Scotland.
The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) won 5% of the national vote but won 56 seats because that 5% was all in the 59 Scottish constituencies and, therefore, it amounted to more than 50% of the share of the vote in most of those 59 constituencies.
The Conservative Party had very few seats in Scotland so the Labour Party lost almost all of the seats gained by the SNP. Hence, the SNP gains increased the difference between the numbers of seats won by the Conservative and Labour Parties.
The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) won more than twice the share of the national vote of the SNP, but that larger share was spread over all the UK. Hence, UKIP won only one seat.
But that UKIP share of the vote provided the Conservative Party with a governing majority. The Labour and Conservative Parties each had similar national share of the vote but in most of England the swing to UKIP was greater for Labour than for the Conservative Party with the result that the Conservatives gained relative share of the vote and won most seats.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) lost share of the vote everywhere and, thus, lost over 40 seats. But that Lib Dem loss of its share of votes seems to have benefited both the Conservatives and Labour to provide no net effect.
The swing to UKIP did not occur in the North East (NE) of England nor in Wales. In the NE, Labour increased its majorities. In Wales Plaid Cymru retained 3 seats with 1% of the national vote while the Conservatives and Labour made gains from Lib Dem losses, but these gains cancelled each other.
The Green Party’s 1% of the national vote enabled it to retain its one seat.
In summation,
◾ the Conservative and Labour Parties did have similar national shares of the vote (37% and 31%, respectively) predicted by the opinion polls to within margins of error,
and
◾ the larger Conservative share would have provided more seats than Labour obtained,
but
◾ the distributions of the SNP and UKIP shares of the vote provided the Conservative Party with sufficient additional seats for the Conservative Party to have a governing majority.
Richard
People in the UK are constantly pummelled with the idea (principally by the overmighty BBC, the world masters at feining impartiality while promoting a left-wing values) that being left-wing is proof of personal virtue and voting Conservative or UKIP is shameful, which is bound to influence what they say to strangers who ask prying questions.
I found it highly ironic that the politicians being interviewed were complaining bitterly that the voters had lied to them. For a change #sarc.
commie bob
QUOTE
Whenever you are tempted to believe anything said by a talking head on television just remember that they, almost universally, can’t predict anything better than chance.
END QUOTE
Let me help.
MY QUOTE
Whenever you are tempted to believe anything said by a talking head on television just remember that they, almost universally, can’t predict anything better than chance or the Met Office.
END QUOTE
Now, that didn’t hurt too much – did it?
Auto
I have little idea of what the Liberal Democrats stand for, but I know what the Greens stand for, and I think they deserved nothing less than annihilation.
The UKIP should do better next time. If Monckton is a typical UKIP candidate, I think they’d do a superb job at managing their country.
Greens had 1 MP. They still have 1 MP.
UKIP had 2 MPs. They now have 1 MP. And no leader.
Despite receiving the 3rd highest vote nationally. Please educate some of us with sane electoral rules how exactly that happens.
But gathered about 3.5 million votes.
How did the total votes for each Party across the country compare? UKIP may not have had votes concentrated in areas to pick up seats, but they garnered far, far more votes than the Greens. They now have a very large political bloc. Other political parties will have to pander to their positions if they hope to peel off some of those votes in the future elections.
Phil: the UK (like the US) has a “first past the post” (FPTP) electoral system, in which the candidate with the highest vote in a single-member district (“constituency”, in British) wins the seat. Thus, results in terms of seats in the Commons may not reflect the overall vote; as jtom implies, a party that is second everywhere will win no seats, whilst a party that is first in a given constituency, but gets no votes elsewhere, will nonetheless win that constituency’s seat.
Here’s the breakdown of the votes cast/seat won:
SNP 26,444
CON 34,342
LAB 40,232
GRN 121,216
LD 289,262
UKIP 3,767,137
In short, they stand for Political Correctness in all its forms. Including mindless Greenery.
To be pedantic, the LDs weren’t ‘decimated’ ie losing 1 in 10 of their number; they were virtually annihilated.
I am delighted to read your correction over the meaning of decimate. I’m glad that I trawled throgh the comments in order to check that someone had not beaten me to it. I salute you Sir!
Yes, you would think that people would know the meaning of the word by now!
Rick,
Why do you think ‘decimate’ means to destroy 10%?
No linguist agrees with you and neither does the English-speaking world as a whole.
Your choice of “pedantic” to describe your comment is very apt, since it means excessively preoccupied with insignificant detail while vaunting one’s own academic prowess.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decimate?r=75&src=ref&ch=dic
“The earliest English sense of decimate is “to select by lot and execute every tenth soldier of (a unit).” The extended sense “destroy a great number or proportion of” developed in the 19th century: Cholera decimated the urban population.Because the etymological sense of one-tenth remains to some extent, decimate is not ordinarily used with exact fractions or percentages: Drought has destroyed(not decimated) nearly 80 percent of the cattle.”
The UKIP should do better next time. If Monckton is a typical UKIP candidate, I think they’d do a superb job at managing their country.
__________________________________
Errr, not quite. Monckton may be a clever very fellow in some respects, but he is also a commited fundamentalist left-footer. And that does not go down well in UK politics.
So UKIP sent him to Scotland, where the 17th century wars of religion are still being fought every weekend on the football terraces – the very worst place to send him. The result was a predictable disaster that wrecked the entire Scottish UKIP party.
This is the problem with being a leader in politics. It is not all about intelligence and vision, one needs to be a consummate diplomat too. And not everyone can blend the two roles sufficiently well. I hope Farage comes back, because he was good at it.
R
‘a fundamentalist left footer’? Well, of course, you can get away with making offensive comments like that about Catholics because the Catholic Church is the last thing left about which people are allowed to be offensive. But as we heard at Mass today, Christ warned that his followers would be hated by the world because the world prefers to live in darkness and rejects the light. And the more offensive people are towards us the more we know that the Church is being loyal to Christ.
Incidentally, I know that Jim Murphy, leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, didn’t exactly do very well on Thursday but I don’t think that it had anything to do with him being a Catholic. Scottish people are, on the whole, more tolerant than you give them credit for.
I wonder how the Conservatives will deal with CAGW from the pole position? With so much downward pressure…will they tow the line? I’m thinking they’ll support CAGW
CAGW = Continuously Attenuating Global Warming?
I don’t know if they’ll tow it, but they may toe it.
I think they should tow the line – right back to 0% CO2 reduction by 2016 😉
Well, the losers can now go off and infect the UN like Tim Wirth did.
The first thing the new UK government must do is to cancel the ludicrous Swansea Tidal Lagoon which will cost over £1billion and only produce on average less than 60 MW of electricity. A nearby gas-fired power station cost about the same to construct and produces 2000MW.
Knuts
That is amazing. And when a wandering walrus gets stuck in the hole? When a big storm comes will the damage by 500m? I think tidal power is really cool and prefer it to gas plants, but it has to run all the time – i.e. holding pond pairs with continuous flow. It would be pointless to build Swansea TL and then have to put up a 60 MW gas fired plant right next to it to cover the gaps.
As Christopher Booker pointed out, the company who wants to build this nonsense gave their energy predictions in kilowatt hours per year, which is bizarre. Of course, the reason is obvious: it gives a nice big number that sounds impressive. Booker pointed out that it’s equivalent to about 57 MW. I checked his calculation and he’s perfectly correct. A billion pounds for 57 MW is about as mad as it gets. Oh yes, and it doesn’t even work when the tide is turning.
I hope that a proper Conservative government will start to “cut the green crap”, as Cameron supposedly said some time ago. Our current climate change/energy policies are completely barking mad. I hope the new energy secretary will start to bring this madness to an end. But I’m not holding my breath. Until sanity returnes, and the Conservatives promise to scrap the Climate Change Act, I’ll continue to vote UKIP.
Ed Davey lost his seat. Unless I misheard, his number of votes was tiny. Perhaps there is justice after all….
Chris
Well there were enough green idiots in the Conservative Party as it was, the Lib Dumbs merely added a degree (no) pun intended of lunacy. Now they are gone we can live in hope.
Of course, where I live in Scotland, the rise of the Scottish Nannying Puritans (SNP) means that the worship of those spinning crucifixes will continue until we are all burning peat again to try to keep warm.
“Spinning crucifixes”
+1
Why is eliminating the wind farms a good thing? Just asking.
Why? Perhaps because they do not satisfy any of their objectives – except to enrich already wealthy men.
They are horribly expensive compared to other types of generating plants, do not provide a steady, reliable supply of power, create irritating noises to those living nearby, are an eyesore, and kill lots of birds and bats.
The question is, who on earth thought wind farms were a good idea?
jtom The answer is: environmentalists!
fossilsage May 8, 2015 at 7:26 am
Some so-called environmentalists support the whirligigs, but who do you think is pointing at the dead birds and bats, if not environmentalists?
Steve P
May 8, 2015 at 7:46 am
err NO-ONE ? Steve
jtom
who on earth thought wind farms were a good idea?
Well, hmmmm – folk who make bird-choppers – windmills; and watermelons, the control the populace, control the population, power-crazed trendies.
If you think you recognise recently defenestrated UK Secretaries of State, I humbly suggest that you might, possibly, be in error.
Auto.
Steve P – “who do you think is pointing at the dead birds and bats, if not environmentalists?“.
That is such a good question. Yes, of course they are environmentalists, not Environmentalists.
Because they have a negative return on energy invested and money invested and CO2 invested. As they are advertised as not having any of these three problems, they are yet another sign of the manifest cheating that underlies Big Green.
@LarryR
The death of many birds, especially raptors.
The death of bats, by which their lungs explode when encountering in the vicinity of turbines.( Bats, do not, I repeat, do not have to hit a blade to be killed, their lungs explode from pressure released from turbines)
The death of acres of food producing farm land.
The death of the rural population who can not tolerate the LFN emitted from turbines.
The death of freedom to be able to live healthy/ peacefully in a rural setting for many reasons.
The list goes on and on and on.
They could save and invest a boat load of money if they slashed the budgets of East Anglia University and the BBC. And at this juncture of solar costs, they could still allow more sensible solar at less government involvement if they bother to look.
Conservatives/Republicans in the USA should see this and run on the platform of undoing Obama’s EPA damage in the 2016 elections.
They’d get pummeled by the media. I think it’s going to take a few years of “necessarily skyrocket” to gather enough attention to be effective. Joe the Plumber can say I told you so, still nobody will listen.
Yep, the US conservatives are always under estimating the power the dems have over our media and pop-culture. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but this is one I whole heartedly buy into.
A clear rejection of watermelon politics. We must make all political leaders take notice. GK
In the words of a great (past) PM (on another subject, I know – and here, MCourtney, cover your eyes 🙂 )
Aargghh!!!!
Seriously, the Yanks ought to be more worried about this.
The slow end of the UK was just endorsed. That loses the US a powerful friend in the EU, an ally on the UN security council and a home to economic institutions that balance the East.
A conservative majority is a disaster for the UK.
You’ll rue thus day.
A bit OTT, MCourtney, surely. When you consider, in a sober light, that the alternative to a Tory government was the two Eds controlling the state purse, and the great probability of a repeat of the Brown terrors.
The Global Economic crash didn’t start in the UK.
And Brown swung the last referendum on destroying the Union.
Cameron can’t do that.
MCourtney
I suspect you must follow the politics of your father. 🙂
A Conservative majority was beyond our wildest dreams, the destruction of the green lib dems a huge bonus , the dismemberment of the labour party a great relief and Ed Balls losing his seat the cherry on an enjoyable cake. All the Opposition parties seem to believe there is some giant money tree they can shake whenever they need funding for their pet projects..
Without the Lib Dems dragging them down the Conservatives will hopefully return to basic principles, one of which is the re-establishment of strong armed forces that can deal with some of the worrying threats currently facing all of us.
tonyb
tony b, if you want “re-establishment of strong armed forces” then you may be backing the wrong horse.
They aren’t cheap. They aren’t ring-fenced. And they aren’t going to be afforded with the higher level of cuts the Tories are planning. I know that interest rates are low right now so it’s time to invest but the Tories don’t believe in Government expenditure.
And where would you barrack these forces with a view to Sturgeon’s next attempt to breakaway? The country has other priorities. We are far weaker today than yesterday.
I have to admit, I find you a strange cove, MCourtney. You write so many good things about the GW scam and demonstrate such with some extremely healthily sceptic points in your comments. But when it comes to politics you show that you have no scepticism. It’s as if, Left = good; Right = bad, with no possibility of magnanimity.
Would that be the govt with a 4 letter agency working hand in glove with our NSA to spy on all of us?…
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/05/07/nsa-watching/
but they say it is for our own good….
MCourtney said;
‘They aren’t ring-fenced. And they aren’t going to be afforded with the higher level of cuts the Tories are planning.’
Cuts? Don’t you mean a slow down in the rate of the increase? A bit like sea level rise and temperatures 🙂
tonyb
M Courtney, we need MORE cuts. We are still borrowing way too much.
http://www.debtbombshell.com/
I’m a Ukipper myself, but happy to see the Tories in. Labour would have been terrible for this country. We can now let the PEOPLE decide if they want in or out of the EU. Labour (and I suspect you) don’t want democracy (allowing the people to decide). Says it all, really.
I can concede that some Tory policies are good. The Northern Powerhouse idea is a good one, for instance.
But the idea that the UK is going bankrupt so we can’t invest in infrastructure, despite lending rates being so favourable at the moment – it’s just an excuse to reduce the welfare state. Nasty Party (as May said) making life Nasty brutal and short.
And the use of fear of Scotland to boost the Tory vote in England will have bad repercussions.
The end of the UK will be great for England. If England became independent now long term economic performance would be so much better that within a few decades England alone would probably have a larger economy than a continuing UK would with the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish millstones around England’s neck.
But that is all irrelevant anyway. The UK/England has less than 1% of the world population and must forget about being a global power and refocus on making life better for its own people. (It should actually have done so seventy years ago.)
The US should look to India as its key ally in the future.
M Courtney
May 8, 2015 at 7:41 am
Brown caused the crash in the UK by rescinding all bank controls
Stephen Richards
No! Thatcher caused the crash in the UK by her deliberate policy of switching the UK economic base from a diverse manufacturing sector to what she called “services” by which she meant financial services.
‘All eggs in one basket’ is risky. A hole in the basket would eventually occur.
A generation passed before the basket obtained a hole when banking was 40% of the UK economy and there were knock-on effects of a banking crisis in the USA.
Richard
M Courtney
QUOTE
And the use of fear of Scotland to boost the Tory vote in England will have bad repercussions.
END QUOTE
Unhappily, I agree.
I am glad we have a Tory government [although I suspect Ca Moron – aka the fat-face one – may not be very close to the centre of gravity of the 2015 Parliamentary Tory Party].
I would like to say I dreamt of better strategies – but that would be a dream.
There very likely will be bad repercussions . . .
Auto
About Scotland and the tory vote : My understanding is that the Scottish devolution vote would have been a clear “Yes” if the vote had been held in England. It was the Scots who voted to stay. David Cameron set up the referendum and let it take its course – a true democrat. I see the UK election result as a vote for democracy and sanity over authoritarianism and ideology. It will be interesting to see how Scotland fares over the next 5 years – I suspect that they will do pretty well.
M Courtney: Don’t fret too much. We have been through these votes enough times in Canada and Quebec is still here. Heck, they had separatists in the Province and in the Federal Government, and though there were a couple of close votes, they are still with us. I have heard many comparisons between our issues in Canada and those between the UK and Scotland. Scotland voted to stay (like Quebec). But they have representation in Parliament. Not necessarily a bad thing. But politics don’t always translate across the pond I suppose. “It is what it is.”
https://www.facebook.com/TheMasterShift/photos/a.132528563557104.29488.123685654441395/549171375226152/?type=1
Cameron is still essentially green and his energy policy utterly insane. Nevertheless, let’s be thankful for the removal of at least some idiots from the UK government.
He could still make better green energy decisions that make sense using basic low bidder and cost comparison methods. The cost per watt is falling rapidly in some areas of renewable energy but not others. Common sense is needed and concern for taxpayers, not Obama’s “We don’t pick winners” stupidity and corruption with insiders.
Well, he did promise during this election campaign to repeal the 2008 Climate Change Act if he won a majority. We’ll have to see whether he keeps this promise…
Dreadnought
In what secret meeting did Camoron make that promise and how do you know of it?
Richard
Good God, I missed that one entirely as well – good for you Dreadnought: http://www.thegwpf.com/tories-place-energy-policy-at-heart-of-manifesto/
This should be followed closely. First session he said. Let’s see.
Umm. Dreadnought – did you manage to see the date on the original article? I missed it as well the first time. Turns out it was from April 1st. So embarrassed right now.
The solution to the BBC and EAU (CRU) is simple enough. Tell them that they must lead by example and give them a single grant each to convert their entire operations/campuses/facilities to 100% renewables and disconnect them from the grid. All you need do at that point is sit back and wait…
Tom G
They would generate far fewer errors, once off-grid. I call that a plus.
I’m confused.
No wonder we just started our own country.
How’s that working out for you?
We’ve got three ex leaders we could let them have, half price. Two on the left and one on the right so a leader for every taste.
tonyb
I’ve got internet access, obviously.
Good-bye Ed Davey, I will not be able to use this rhyme again, – OK maybe once more for old times sake
We can’t keep on attacking Ed Davey,
It’s not his fault, at the end of the day;
He has children at school, takes holidays abroad,
And he has a mortgage to pay.
He’s one hundred and thirty seven thousand good reasons
To deceive us with political lies.
Well paid to make a fool of himself,
As the truth he tries to disguise.
If someone would pay me that money
To put the fear of God into you,
Then surely I’d become a believer,
I would be at the front of the queue.
A government car, an apartment in town,
To name but a few of his perks.
He needs to keep repeating the mantra,
That’s just how the system works.
A government priest in the new religion,
Sold his soul for a pocket of gold;
Now desperate to hang on to his lifestyle,
As the real truth begins to unfold.
The plight of Ed Davey is so common,
It has such a familiar ring;
Bought and paid for by a political agenda,
A puppet on the end of a string.
Read more : http://wp.me/P3KQlH-mw
You missed a verse about when Jeremey Paxman asked him if there was evidence for man-made climate change. His answer – “Of course, Sir John Beddington told me there’s some”. Tough to get that to rhyme, I know.
@philincalifornia
“Of course, Sir John, who sounded glum,
Told me that once he’d heard of some.”
Now, a rhyme for orange … 😉
You might have to explain that one to me, but I’ll have a go anyway:
Oranges and melons, said the bells of St. Clements
The funeral’s this morning, as the new day is dawning
RhymeAfterRhyme
I think you should develop your theme of “climate séance” further. That is a good picture you have.
Climate Séance-ists
Climate Séance-ology
Real Climate Séance
Skeptical Séance
Rather rich pickings I suspect.
The Libdems weren’t wiped out due to their Green policies as the Green Party increased its share of the vote significantly. They were actually wiped out in considerable part because they had prior to 2010 targeted voters who thought the Labour Party was too right wing and then they went into Coalition with the Tories. They told students that they would abolish tuition fees and then promptly increased them in Coalition. Finally, to work with Tories is a death knell for votes in Scotland currently, so they got wiped out on the mainland there too.
The Green stuff was really unimportant. Labour ex-leader Ed Miliband was the person who drove through the Climate Change Act when in Government and the Labour Party barely lost seats outside Scotland (where they were wiped out) despite supporting green energy.
I know this site is all about climate science, but you won’t do yourselves good making claims about Libdems which simply don’t stand up to scrutiny…….
Yes, the Tories have been displaying their green side in the past, but they are career politicians. They can see what direction the country has moved. Right up to the day of the voting, polls were giving Liberals the hope and belief that the voters still tilted toward green policies, and may want to be greener. They were wrong.
So now Cameron and his party will follow the age-old way of political leadership: find out which way the people are going and get out in front. I suspect green is gone from the UK until and unless there is a huge environmental disaster.
Not a chance, sadly. We are nowhere near out of the woods of green fundamentalism. Over 80% of the vote went to parties which support green orthodoxy (I include the organisation trading as the “Conservative” Party), and green fundamentalism still dominates the BBC (more powerful than every other media organisation in the UK put together), schools and universities, and the virtually the whole of the public sector.
Those of you who are thinking this election result was even in part to do with rejection of green energy policies are deluding themselves. The LibDems were smashed because their core support didn’t like them playing second fiddle to David Cameron in the Coalition government. And a lot of folks voted Labour because they couldn’t stand the idea of a second term for Cameron, and a lot more folks voted Conservative because they suddenly realised that if they didn’t, the unthinkable embarrassment of a Miliband premiership would become reality. The other parties got squeezed, including the only really sceptical Party- UKIP.
Nothing to do with Climate Change or anything like that.
True. Very true.
But also there was the Tory fear-mongering about ‘Scots under the Bed’ coming to rule over the poor weak English if Miliband won. That rejection of the centuries old partnership was a big factor.
And it will have a big impact going forwards.
mcourtney – how strange you are. Obviously intelligent and able to put together cogent arguments on GW nonsense.
But on the damage the two Ed’s would have done to Britain you seem to have a blind spot. The SNP flood was inevitable regardless of votes in England. Scots have become mad Socialist and nothing the UK can do will alter that.😄
And like all Socialists they look towards others to fund their lifestyle. The other in this case is Westminster.
And the Green party’s total rejection means nothing to you? I think these results clearly reject any AGW climate politics. Politicians will respond accordingly if they don’t want more of the same. GK
They got their highest ever share of the vote.
With all parties (except one) being as Green as Green can be they didn’t have a lot of space to fill.
Is this site censoring my comments?
I don’t know.
But they aren’t censoring mine and I’m way out there by the biases of this site.
So I doubt it.
The problem is, the government will be replaced by . . . government.
Quite so.
You can vote for Punch, or you can vote for Judy, or the dog, or the baby, or … but at the end of the day the same evil b#st#rd’s got his hands up the #rses of #ll of them.
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes” – Disraeli
Lets not get too excited : “not the beginning of the end , but maybe the end of the beginning”
Someone was bound to say it.
“It will be alright in the end; and if it isn’t alright, it’s not the end.”
I’m half Scottish and half French, which, if you take the average, makes me English.
I am an Irish, German, French, Viking mix, so that makes me English too… I guess!
(The Viking and some of the German come via Mum, who was born in England from N. E. of London… though Dad was an Irish German bit of French Yank… and I’m an American Mutt…)
E M Smith
That’s a really meaningless average. Just like an average global temperature and average sea level rise. 🙂
tonyb
Ummm … that was the joke.
Max
Uuuummm, yes I know which is why I made the climate connection for those that may not have done.
tonyb
The ‘auld alliance’ is still working then.
Contrary to what people think, the English did not conquer the French on Sept. 13, 1759, at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. And the French didn’t surrender, either. As a matter of fact, it was a Scot
– Brigadier-General James Murray – who accepted the capitulation of French forces five days after the battlefield death of General James Wolfe, and it was a Scot – Major Jean-Baptiste-Nicolas-Roch de Ramezay – who capitulated. De Ramezay was a Ramsay, a clan that traced its Scottish ancestry back to Norman origins in the 12th century. Looking strictly at the battle that made Wolfe famous, a Scot won it and a Scot lost it. For good measure, it took place on a field named for Abraham Martin, an early settler known as The Scot.
We in Aus have just had our “Socialist” Media (channels 2 and 10) give us some rubbish about the coalition not supporting Climate Change. That’s what we voted them in for isn’t it? Now if only the Senate could get their act together, it would be a lot more productive on this end of the world! Not a word about David Cameron winning in the U.K. though. Happy Trails everyone.
The result of the election, in my view, was the best that could have happened. We have a promise of a referendum on the EU and a government that doesn’t spend other peoples money trying to solve problems of its own making. Policies will not now be compromised by the LibDems and I will guess that the green agenda will be dumped and we can start being self-sufficient with fracking.
Regarding that cartoon showing Ed “lemming” Davey. Everyone “knows” lemmings will follow each other of cliffs- it comes from an old “Walt Disney” nature film “White Wilderness”. I later found out that the myth was nonsensical- those making the movie jazzed it up by PUSHING those lemmings- they didn’t go voluntarily. Needless to say, my opinion of the morality of those working at Disney studios dropped several notches after discovering this.
I saw a sign somewhere. It said:
“Why is it that the only people who know how to govern the country are too busy either driving taxis or cutting hair?”
The other personalities woke up and saw stupid eroding the country around them and under their feet and those of the their family.
As a Brit, this was SUCH great news to hear this morning – it’s the best thing that could have happened for the UK, short of a UKIP landslide. Just look at all the spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed lunatics who have been slung out on their ear – Ed Davey, Ed Balls, Ed Milipede, Calamity Clegg, Vince Cable, Douglas Alexander, Danny Alexander, etc.
AND let’s not forget, David Cameron made a pledge during his election campaign that if the Conservatives won a majority – which they have – they would repeal the appalling Death Act (aka the 2008 Climate Change Act). He’s broken promises before, so we’ll have to see – but there is hope that this utter codswallop will finally be killed off…
David Cameron made no such pledge! The report was an April 1st wind up on the website Energy Matters. See http://euanmearns.com/tories-place-energy-policy-at-heart-of-manifesto/
Camoron once gave a “cast iron guarantee” to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. He failed to deliver. He won’t deliver now, none of his promises will become reality. To me, he is a preposterous liar.
Btw: Nigel Farage said he would resign if …. “if” happened and he resigned. But he never said he wouldn’t stand again…
Watch the pea…
Mr. Cameron said: on-shore wind farms. There are BIG plans to install wind turbines on the sea.
There are BIG interests in the “green energy” promotion – and who benefits from them? City, big energy companies. Shall they stop using this beautiful business opportunity tomorrow? As long as the Climate Act is in operation – I see no reason for them to do this.
Has anyone said during the campaign – it is time for Nuclear & Gas? For shale and tight oil? For abandoning the Climate Act? And UK is still in EU, and there is 20/20 policy, as I remember, and just recently there was a new decision about the price of CO2.
So, let’s no delude ourselves.
One of the first Political Parties in the world to embrace the Global Warming propaganda under their most revered former leader, Margaret Thatcher. Don’t expect any wavering of the faithful any time soon. Dissenting Conservatives will still be silenced on this issue.
Informed Conservatives rejected AGW long ago…
just as did Lady Margaret Thatcher:
“In 2003, towards the end of her last book, Statecraft, in a passage headed “Hot Air and Global Warming”, she issued what amounts to an almost complete recantation of her earlier views. ***
… she questioned the main scientific assumptions used to drive the scare, … . She mocked Al Gore and the futility of “costly and economically damaging” schemes to reduce CO2 emissions. *** She recognised how distortions of the science had been used to mask an anti-capitalist, Left-wing political agenda which posed a serious threat to the progress and prosperity of mankind.”
{Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7823477/Was-Margaret-Thatcher-the-first-climate-sceptic.html }
Janice Moore
Yes, Thatcher did renounce AGW when it had fulfilled its usefulness to her. But that was AFTER she had created the AGW-scare for reasons of personal political self-interest, and AFTER the scare had taken on a life of its own. Please read this explanation of what she did and why.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is not exonerated because of recantation after the damage became uncontrollable.
Richard
PS Starting the AGW scare was among the least damaging of Thatcher’s policies.
Mods
My reply to Janice Moore is in the ‘bin’ because of a name in its link. Please retrieve it.
Richard
That’s one Conservative who last served in office nearly 25 years ago. Do you have any more recent examples?
Ed Davey getting the boot was the best news I’ve heard today 😉
Gotta love Josh’s version of events too, lol!
Patrick
Please explain what – if any – relevance there is of your reply to my comment.
Richard
Sorry, this response to Patrick is in the wrong place.
Richard
Such a relief. I’m not a Tory (I voted for those extreme right-wingers UKIP!) but this has to be better than I had hoped. I walk through a student housing area every day near my workplace, and almost every window displays a Vote Green Party banner. So depressing, the low quality of thinking churned out by our universities, and yet now my faith in commonsense is revived just slightly. Of course the Tories can’t be trusted as far as you can throw them (Cameron is suddenly anti-windfarm subsidies after years of being so pro-Green, f*****g charlatan) and they still believe in Keynesian economics like the Lefties, borrowing, printing, manufacturing false booms which inevitably bust, but still this good. Er, I think. I need a drink.
David, UK
You need more than a drink if you think Camoron intends to withdraw windfarm subsidies. His father-in-law owns a windfarm company.
Richard
When has any pollie not had self interests at heart? I am sure Milliband has some “interests” in green energy too!
Patrick
Please explain what – if any – relevance there is of your reply to my comment.
Richard
PS This is a repeat of my comment at May 8, 2015 at 10:49 pm but hopefully in the right place this time.
Richard
On a point of accuracy, I think you’ll find that he doesn’t own the company but leases the land to the company who operates the wind farm. If you think about it, that’s the better way to make money – all the upside from the rent without any of the downside of maintenance of the equipment etc.
By the way, I see that your neck of the woods is as blue as mine – every seat in Wiltshire is Tory as, from the look of the map, is also the case for Cornwall. In my constituency (Devizes) it wouldn’t matter who I voted for as the Tory gets well over 50% of the vote (but not mine haha).
Still, the most enjoyable moment of the whole election for me was seeing Ed Balls get everything he deserved. Schadenfreude can be a good thing under certain circumstances.
Mr Green Genes
I take your point of “accuracy” and thank you for it because it strengthens my admittedly succinct comment.
And, Yes, with the exception of one seat in Exeter (that has remained red) all of Devon and Cornwall has turned blue.
Within the memories of all electors, the peninsula was mostly LibDem with some Labour seats in Exeter and Plymouth.
Richard
His father in-law has interestes. That should be enough for you to chew on!
One of your finest uses of color and shading, too. Excellent!
Ed ‘The Weasel’ Davey losing his seat was the best result of the night!
Now maybe Labour will ‘get rid of the green crap’ and they may get a few votes back next time.
This is almost unbelievable, as it is such great news!!!
Were AGW, green energy and energy reliability even primary concerns in this election?
Not according to this survey: https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3447/Economy-immigration-and-healthcare-are-Britons-top-three-issues-deciding-general-election-vote.aspx
It is great that Ed Davey lost his seat, but David Cameron is a kool-aid drinker himself and his father-in-law is a wind farm profiteer, so the UK is far from escaping the lunacy.
Funny how the pollsters miss in the same way in the US as in the UK skewed toward the libs in multiple cases leading up to the election.
Resourceguy
Actually, the polls were not skewed. Please see my above post.
Richard
Okay, but why would polling orgs knowingly do it the wrong way by design.
Resourceguy
You ask me
They did it the wrong way but you are assuming they “knowingly do it the wrong way by design”.
I see no reason for your assumption.
Assessing local shares of the vote would be much more work than the old way which assessed national share of the vote. And the ‘old way’ worked for elections before this one when the LibDems collapsed, the SNP had a landslide and there was large growth of UKIP support.
As I said to MikeB
But the pollsters had no reason to think they were measuring the wrong thing because in past elections the national vote share was a proxy for the local vote shares.
Richard
Yes, all the pollsters got it wrong…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11592840/Independent-inquiry-announced-into-what-went-wrong-with-election-polls.html
MikeB
Nothing went wrong with the polls. Claims that the polls were wrong are excuses for pollsters having polled the wrong thing.
The polls measured the wrong thing; i.e. national vote share.
National vote share does not indicate the local vote shares, but local vote shares determine seats won.
I again ask you to read my above post here which explains the matter.
Richard
MikeB
An assertion of “Shy Tories” who don’t exist does not explain an error of the polls that did not occur.
Richard
My condolences to the English Fabians. You have been misunderstood by those damn bastard voters.
It’s worse than Davey thought! He had a majority of 7,560 in 2010, the conservative who beat him this time has a majority of almost 3000!
Perhaps the wider public are more aware of the ‘climate change’ scam than we thought.
What an XLNT result. Sorry, maybe not for pro AGWs.
What’s a green libdem? can I find those at the garden center?
Maybe if you’re OK with one that’s past its sell-by date.
One policy decision Cameron made was to allow pensioners with private fund to send part of that fund into term deposits (TD) with gauratees of 1%-2% returns. Many 65 year olds and up placed millions of pounds into TD just before this election. If you look at the demographics I am sure you will find many 65 yera olds voted Conservative.
“with gauratees of 1%-2% returns. ”
Quite depressing isn’t it. Keynesian endtimes.
1% – 2% is better than nothing. Also raising the “tax free threshold” dropped many low wage earners out of the tax take.
And did anyone really expect any different result? New Royal baby, Prince Harry doing the rounds here in Aus and in New Zealand. The media have been spewing Royalist coverage for weeks and weeks. I am sick of it!
I expected the Fabians to win with UKIP and Tories splitting the conservative vote. I was rooting for a second Atlee! Atlee was so funny.
The three “Ed’s” losing their seats. Wonderfull, not that it matters much to me! Classic, and all too funny! Milliband will pay for his “Climate Change Act” agreement in years to come!
“Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor was the biggest scalp of the night, losing his Leeds seat to the Tories.”
Not being all that familiar with British political parties, I didn’t know that “Tory” was another name for the Conservative Party until I looked it up. I suppose it’s just as confusing for the British when a story uses the names “Republican” and “GOP” interchangeably.
The Tories have been blamed for all manner of economic destruction. While it is true Thatcher moved the economy from making stuff to making stuff up (Finance/Banking etc), which IMO was a bad move, putting all “eggs” in one basket she was not the doom monger she was made out to be. Wilson closed more coal mines than Thatcher. Wilson pulled milk from all schools apart from primary schools. Though “Thatcher Thatcher the milk snatcher” is all people recall. Thatcher is on record for creating the Hadley climate unit and her speach in 1989 about climate etc that lead to the formation of the IPCC. She was out to kill the coal industry (Arthur Skargill had a hand in that too), for political reasons, at that time and to kill the “Dirty man of Europe” lable given to the UK at that time.
Patrick
You say you are commenting from the antipodes.
God alone knows where you have obtained your disinformation. For example, you write
Numerically true but factually misleading.
Wilson operated the ‘Plan For Coal’ that was agreed by both the major political parties. The ‘Plan For Coal’ concentrated production in large mechanised mines that operated longwall faces and this made redundant many small mines in which miners dug coal with picks and shovels so the redundant mines were shut.
Thatcher ceased the ‘Plan For Coal’ and instituted the Ridley Plan for closure of the coal industry.
One normally assumes the sensible dictum of not assuming malice when incompetence is a possibility. However, in the case of Thatcher that dictum needs to be reversed, and that is why three decades after she left office many of the towns she devastated held street parties to celebrate her death .
Richard
All of the points I made are factually true and correct, not misleading in any way. And that information is freely available on the web these days.
BTW, I am originally from England, I just live in Australia now. I lived through the pre-Thatcher and post-Thatcher years. I recall the years leading up to the winter of discontent and how power workers held the country to randsom with rolling blackouts throughout the country. I also recall the miners strikes, another wonderful acheivement by Skargill, where miners on strike threw concrete posts off bridges killing innocent motorists. I remember the bad times before Thatcher and the good times after. She also had to contend with the rest of the EU calling the UK the “Dirty man of Europe”, the cause of acid rain (From coal power generation and coal powered manufacturing) and the destruction of forrests in the EU zone, later proven not to be the cause.
She did some good and some bad, but the UK would not be where it is today, with potential to outstrip Germany in GDP in a decade or so, without her. I don’t care much for politicians, but I certainly don’t jump for joy at the news of their deaths.
Patrick
You say
So, your best justification of your nonsense is that it is “freely available on the web”.
I was Vice President of the British Association of Colliery Management and we had to – and did – apply the Ridley Plan.
The idea that Thatcher’s ‘economic’ policies benefited the UK flies in the face of reality. Those policies were afforded by North Sea Oil revenues coming on stream, and they deliberately destroyed ~20% of the UK economy while making the UK so dependent on banking that a generation later the banking crisis provided another devastation of the UK.
I did not rejoice at Thatcher’s death but a generation after Thatcher left office her death was marked by street parties in some of the towns she devastated and Judi Garland singing “Dong dong, the witch is dead” rose to No.1 in the British hit parade.
You have gone to the far side of the Earth. We in the UK have to cope with the still damaging legacy of the Thatcher era.
Richard
Whatever your capacity was, the record is there for all to read, outside of internal knowledge/documents/meetings which you were exposed to. I know that may be a bitter taste for you, but the fact remains that most of the publically available information/history is freely available now. Wilson closed more mines than Thatcher. Wilson pulled more milk from schools than Thatcher. These are facts. I on’t care if it was Labour or Tory, they are facts. It’s like the Beaching report. Mostly implemented by Labour lead Govn’ts.
The UK would not be where it is today without her leadership!
Crickey, in media coverage about the UK elections…COMPLETELY ignores the Kinnock years! LOL…
North sea oil was discovered in the mid-1960’s matey, not after 1979! It was brought on-shore in the 70’s for refining in Scotland. Again BEFORE 1979. A much better/denser hydrocarbon source of energy that could be easily moved from one place to another than coal, ignoring the “dirty man of europe” calls. Thatcher was nowhere near it then. After 1979, sure, as any politician would, use that “wealth” to promote policy, and she did. Why not? And as I have said she made some bad choices, not making stuff (Mfg) to making stuff up (Banking etc) was a bad move proven, eventually, in 2008 and before. Tuff nugies if you don’t like historical fact!
What you ignore is that the economic reforms, though painful to many (Hey I was there), benefitted most people (In the end). Trouble is in the UK we now have morons like Cameron, Milliband etc, who are not interested in economic development, or democracy (UN Agenda 21), to the point that industry is being actively discouraged for lower CO2 emissions, leaving coal in the ground, importing woodchips from the US and building off-shore windmills.
The Thatcher years laid the foundation of what is now the UK economy (Nissan, Formula 1, Honda etc etc etc). But now politicians, from all sides of the political divide, want to destroy that work. Ford (Transits, Southhapton) pulled out of the UK. Why? A major factor is energy policy, thanks to Milliband!
Prove my posts wrong matey, prove them wrong!
Patrick
I don’t need to prove your daft and ignorant assertions wrong. You need to try to justify your rewriting of history.
Richard
And you fail!
And not once have you refuted my posts. Not once!
Lets not talk about “natural” gas, from the north sea, eh? Tory, Thatcher? Heh…funny!
Why is there (Almost) no coal industry in the UK if your actions, as you state you had “direct influence” on “policy”, were not effective? I have an answer…and I am sure it does not match yours.
Patrick
It is bad enough that you snow this thread with your untrue and ridiculous assertions about history, but you go too far when you assert I said other than I did.
I did NOT say I “had “direct influence” on “policy””. Your claim that I said that is a lie.
On the contrary, I said
and
Thatcher also deliberately destroyed several other industries; i.e. steel, shipbuilding, etc.
Now stop bothering me with your nonsense that has become a nuisance.
Richard
Note my post included quotes. Significant that…
Thatcher DID NOT destroy shipbuilding. The industry inself did that all on it’s lonesome. While ship “builders” were on strike in the UK, like the car “makers”, countries like Korea were building ships, under cost and well within time frames. It’s one reason why ships are STILL built in Korea today! Are you suggesting Thatcher caused that? HAH!
BTW, if you can present evidence that my “snow” posts are untrue…go right ahead!
Patrick
Your objectionable and untrue post did NOT include “quotes”. It put quotation marks around words I did NOT provide and said they were mine.
Your lies are unacceptable. Apologise then slither back under your bridge.
Richard
“richardscourtney
May 10, 2015 at 4:57 am
Patrick
I don’t need to prove your daft and ignorant assertions wrong”
Why? Show me where my posts are wrong. Prove it! Where am I wrong?
“richardscourtney
May 9, 2015 at 10:44 pm
I was Vice President of the British Association of Colliery Management and we had to – and did – apply the Ridley Plan.”
???
Troll posting as Patrick
You demand that I show your silly falsehoods are wrong.
NO, troll, you are making the silly assertions so YOU need to provide some evidence for YOUR assertions.
You can start by trying to explain why you lied that you had quoted me as having said words that are the direct opposite of what I did say.
Richard
I think there be quotes in this there post…
“Patrick
May 10, 2015 at 6:31 am
Why is there (Almost) no coal industry in the UK if your actions, as you state you had “direct influence” on “policy”, were not effective? I have an answer…and I am sure it does not match yours.”
It was all Thatchers fault, right?
If you can show me where I “lied”, please do so. I will retract my statements and appologise.
Troll
There are no quotes in that post. There are words you have written and put quotation marks around.
Clearly, either you are a bot or an idiot. In either case, your insane posts have become too silly to warrant reply and I shall ignore any others.
Richard
And phulease, don’t lable me a troll because I hold a differing view to UK 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s history to you. That’s below the belt stuff!
Did I insult you? Did I call you a troll/idiot? Did I abuse you in some way with words?
Seeing Davey lose his seat was extremely satisfying. Ed Balls (Labour Shadow Chancellor and a man who makes a habit of issuing bouncing checks) losing his was a dream come true. What this will make of government policy as regards Global Warming remains to be seen.
There are still a lot of warmists in both the Tory party, my MP, Dan Poluter (Poulter really but I made a genuine mistake and liked it!), being a fine example. Warmists also infest the Civil Service, education, media, quangos and NGO’s. In fact, they say you’re never more than a few meters from a rat. Well, warmists are the same.
I hope the revitalised Tory party under Cameron will man up and deal with the crazy Green policies introduced by their former coalition partners, but their record in the testicular regeneration department isn’t great. We can but hope.
My favorite headline of the day was “Labour’s Balls Kicked!”
krb981
Your considered opinion (not all of which I agree) brings the thread back to serious consideration of the real and current issues. Thankyou.
Richard
True.
The simple question is, “Will the result of the GE make any difference to the government’s AGW obsession?”
The simple answer is “Not in any meaningful way.”
What you have now is the least worst option in regards to CAGW , but their remain plenty of Tories who have their snouts in the renewable subsides feed bucket , such has Gummer and even Cameron’s father in law , and other who are committed to the cause such has Cameron wife, while there is still plenty of positive PR in dressing up in green on the international stage .
Has for Davey, his been a dead man for sometime and so has probably been lining himself up a nice little number in some green NGO or renewable firm , where he can continue to offer little value for maximum tax payer cost.
So little change , any real change will have to wait until post Paris anyway , and Ed gone but unlikely to remain forgotten .
This remarkable turn of events is actually good news for sceptics. Of all the major parties, UKIP and the Conservatives are the most sceptical about climate change. Some senior Conservatives are sceptical e.g. Peter Lilley, Owen Paterson and Nigel Lwason. Even Boris Johnson (hopefully the next Prime minister) has made some slightly sceptical remarks. Mrs Thatcher used climate change in her fight against the miners, but in her later years she became sceptical.
Sadly Cameron is still completely deluded about climate change. But he did supposedly talk about the need to “cut the green crap”, so maybe there is hope.
Fingers crossed….
Chris
There’s one remarkable aspect of the election: all the opinion polls appeared to indicate both main parties were neck-and-neck, when in fact the Conservatives had a clear lead. There will be an investigation in order to find out how the polling companies got it so disastrously wrong.
A speaker on BBC news put forward an intriguing explanation. According to her, the companies using internet polling were showing equal votes for both parties and so were predicting a hung parliement, which was definitely the consensus. But a small number of companies who were using telephone polls were showing large Conservative leads over the past weeks and months. But here’s the crunch: because these companies were so far outside the consensus, they adjusted their data to ensure it fitted with the consensus.
Does this sound familiar?
Chris
Isn’t all this discussion of British politics taking us way off topic?
No, because as far as the issue of Global Warming is concerned, Politics IS the topic. The science may interest us, but it hasn’t been a seriously contested issue for quite a few years now
Chris Wright
I answered the points in your two post in my above posts that are here and here and here.
Richard
The basic problem here is beLIEf in government, not in beLIEf in AGW. Do you actually think this man will actually keep his promises? lol. As unthinkable as it may seem, abandoning beLIEf in government, no matter what form of government, will heal a lot of the wounds we are suffering.
If you would just look into the Electric Universe theory, you will see that so many things are very plausibly explained, and that it is very possible and necessary to abandon the “thoughts” provided to the general public about this and many other beLIEfs generated by the “scientific” community.
The election was an outright rejection of ‘Green’ … green politics… green technologies … green subsidies … green dogma … green alarmism!
How do you conclude that, given that “green” anything was not in the top 10 most important election issues on the minds of voters? : https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3447/Economy-immigration-and-healthcare-are-Britons-top-three-issues-deciding-general-election-vote.aspx
This British system of dolling out the MP seats is all news to this United States Of American.
No wonder we colonists couldn’t get any representation in Parliament.