This is why Reform wants to stop Net Zero even though it’s a totally achievable and sensible goal: https://www.desmog.com/2026/04/30/r...ossil-fuel-interests-climate-science-deniers/ They will make money from it. Not because they think it’s bad. But because they can line their pockets.
This is the Trump way. Farage wants to model himself on Trump, including getting rid of free at point of use health care, i.e. the NHS.
No, it's Corbyn's Labour Party. And i think we'll have differing opinions on whether or not that's a good thing. Based on the local examples, competence and professionalism would surprise me. yes. My local ward is currently run by labour lifers too, it's called the Labour Party. And I really wish Barnum and Bailey would come and take their clowns back. The ones that left in disagreement at the direction of the part mostly seemed to have gone to Nigel Farage's Slush Fund Ltd.
At least Zac Polanski knows how to actually talk to the media, all Corbyn ever managed was disdain and scorn every time a camera or microphone was pointed at him. I'm never going to actually vote for the Greens, because I fundamentally disagree with their unscientific policy platforms.
Their active promotion of pseudoscientific **** like homeopathy, their irrational aversion to nuclear power, or their nimby torpedoing of solar installations? or something else...
This is where I come unstuck. Obvs not UKIP - they're a bit toooo overtly right to be the shock to the system that I think we need, plus they also fall under RF's Tinkerbell policy. I think the red and blue teams have had their crack at it and failed, so there seems no point in continuing with either of those for the minute. I agree with a lot of what I can remember the Greens saying, but I also agree they're a bit cake bake committee. Lib Dems I don't know enough about, but my assumption is that they at least have a modicum of experience of sitting in the big boys' chairs, even if it was on someone's knee. Reform say the right things but you have to look a bit deeper to find true intent. I do wonder if they're the wake-up vote, but I'm not heading down that road just yet. So I'm none the wiser, is the summary line at the moment! See below comment. I wrote this over a number of sessions and whilst doing other stuff. I'll see what comes through the door in terms of policies over the next few days (I'm sure there will be more...) and post it as and when. One thing that did occur to me in the feverish thoughts of my morning is that in twenty years' time when x party is in power, they might look back at this thread and start rounding us up based on our views. Maybe I saw that on TV or something... What would be a good idea is if we said to these people "Guys, you're going to be taxed £x%/whatever, here are the choices into which you can pay said tax" rather than just acting like an African dictatorship, rinsing the rich (read: UN) and "losing it somewhere in the system". If I had a billion squids and was obliged to pay ten million shrimps, but I could choose to pay for the NHS, potholes or education vs wot x leader/party in charge at the moment thinks, based on where their mates work/what companies they own that dish out PPE (for example), then I'd probably be okay with that. I'd know it was going to good use. THIS bizarrely seems to be the most hilarious thing yet. "But why are these guys in office, FFS?!" "Yellow polka dots, mate. Give us yer tax bucks" Right. If this is true, then that's pretty much the only excuse I need. That's one off the list. (Can someone double confirm? Then I'm done. I'm easy like that) Sure enough, it may get tough, if it doesn't kill ya. Put the daylight in your eyes.
Can confirm. Reform want to line their pockets by copying Trump. Pro-oil. Privatise all healthcare. Funnel money to them.
Lib Dems and Labour are the only parties with not dissimilar ideas to Greens, except without the tree-hugging homeopathy and irrational hatred of nuclear power (which is stupid). Also ModSquid, the elections are for your local council, not parliament members. So at a local level they aren’t going to be doing nearly as much to push forward whole-party agendas. Local councils are planning permission, libraries, local school provisions, social care in your county, council tax, etc.
Here in Wales, we're doing it differently this year. Each of our 16 brand-new constituencies has 6 seats up for grabs by proportional representation.
This is good to know - cheers dude . In that case, most of the cack getting shoved through my door is somewhat irrelevant. For example, Reform are not going to scrap Net Zero in my town over one weekend. I'll have to look at/ask who of the others is going to do what locally.
Yep, basically. Reform are pushing the 'whole party' bit because they want to position it as 'sticking it to Labour' and 'haha we're going to beat Labour in the real Election' because they got a few county council wins. Some of the policies WILL trickle down of course. They will try to block new solar projects, won't adopt renewables policies even if they save money, they'll still prioritise programs they want at a local level etc. But because that's the most visible level of policy and politicking, they're going to try to pick people-pleasers with a nod to the parliament-level policies. They won't go against them, but it'll be watered down into things we notice and make us think they aren't so bad. But they are still money-grubbing facists. Assuming the council elections do that whole trickle-down representative voting, where you vote for your first, second, third choices, you can vote for basically everyone except Reform, UKIP, BNP. Your vote to will go to SOMEONE who will be better than those self-serving facist pricks. Check your local candidates' policies, check the track record of the incumbent and see if they are doing **** you support and want, and go from there. Where I used to live was a Tory lock-in, until the last set of council elections when it went Labour. But the Tory dude was a long term scumbag, literally a cheat and a liar - he cheated on his wife with his office manager and lied about it. No-one cared, they just kept voting him in.
It’s PR-ish… It’s better than previous systems, it is proportional, and it’s way better than first past the post. But out of all the possible voting systems that were proposed, they chose the one that would be the most difficult to grasp in terms of public communication & understanding. From what I understand, the mathematical principles behind it are extremely sound, and it produces results that are a fair reflection of the distribution of votes. But that’s the problem: it’s way more complex and difficult to understand or predict the outcomes.
This 'ere, for whatever it's worth (but linked through from the page someone posted a minute ago about Reform's fossil fuel funding exposé) seems to suggest the UK is about to be.....Reformed.
Two things worth separating here, because I think they're getting tangled. The "let me choose what my tax pays for" idea is about trust in how money's spent. That's a real argument, but it'd have to apply to everyone or it's not a principle. I pay roughly 35% effective and nobody's offered me a menu — so why does the checkbox unlock at billionaire tier? If hypothecation is good, it's good for PAYE too. If it's not workable for PAYE (and it isn't really - government needs to fund things people don't individually want to fund, like prisons), then it's not workable for billionaires either. The wealth tax is aimed at something different: wealth and income are taxed very differently in the UK and the gap's widened a lot. The actual Greens proposal is 1% a year on assets over £10m, 2% over £1bn - not 0.1%. It applies to about 22,000 people, roughly 7 in every 10,000 taxpayers. UK billionaire wealth grew by about £35m a day last year. Number of UK billionaires went from 29 in 2010 to 171 now. That's the problem it's responding to. The PPE-and-mates point is real but it's a procurement and accountability problem -better contract transparency, proper oversight. It's not an argument against taxing wealth, it's an argument for fixing how government spends. Conflating the two ends up with "the state wastes money so the wealthiest people shouldn't have to fund it," which isn't where you want to land.
Totally fair points and well explained - I agree, certainly. Bummer though! So if I were to be a billionaire, is the only way top stop my wealth being eroded year after year via arbitrary tax, to ensure my investments are sound, at which point I'll be being taxed on income as well then? Side question - isn't this why inheritance tax came about many moons ago, to stop hand-me-down estates staying in the family forever without hard graft to maintain them? Sure I heard that somewhere... Also, I'm a bit cross now that the wealth in general seems to be going up and I'm not riding that wave.
Wealth in general is NOT going up. The ultra wealthy are just hoarding more of it by keeping wages down and spending money bribing politicians to make the system work in their favour. Check this: The world needs more millionaires and no billionaires.
If things keep going as they are, if things go as Reform want them to go, there’s going to be billionaires, soldiers, the handful of people needed to keep automated factories running, and the unemployed. Scientists and engineers will start to lose skills, stop developing new things, and then when things break, society regresses. There isn’t more money, just the ultra wealthy are scooping it all up. The purchasing power of a 1990 £1 is now around or under 50p. So not only do we have less money, the amount we do have doesn’t even go as far as it used to. But, don’t worry, it’s all okay because a billionaire can afford several luxury yachts, houses in every country or I dunno, privatise a chunk of Hawaii. This isn’t a cyberpunk sci-fi novel. This isn’t overplaying the facts. We are already wage slaves - actual slaves to the armies of billionaires because they have all the money - and unless the power is taken from the ultra wealthy we are totally ****ed. We have to vote, it’s the only power we have here. And we have to vote for the choices that bring power and choice for the common person and remove power and wealth from the billionaires. Before we can’t and someone like Trump doesn’t just SAY he might stay in power, they just will.
Admittedly I haven't examined Greens (or any of the parties) closely lately. Like a lot of folks in here, I'm just totally disenchanted and disengaged. The nuclear thing is a deal-breaker, though. If we don't get off fossil fuels ASAFP we are existentially screwed, that's just a basic fact. And while we'll probably always need a bit of coal or gas to fill the cracks in the grid, the cleanest, fastest way to squeeze most of it out is nuclear. It's been the only way for a while. Renewables are fantastic but they're only ever going to be a few patches in the quilt. The bulk has to be nuclear. I'm sure we all know this already, but it bears repeating - any party that says nuclear power is off the table is just not a viable political force for our needs, as a country or as a species. They're not in touch with reality. I say that with pain, because ecological and environmental priorities mean a lot to me. Another way to look at it, though, is to vote Green simply to show statistical support for their priorities. They'll never get in, but it signals to the viable parties what they need to be taking seriously. A friend of mine did this with the BNP back in the day - didn't actually want to see them win, knew they couldn't possibly, but was also sick of the major parties not taking immigration seriously and even outright refusing to discuss it due to political correctness being at its absolute high water mark. I hate to admit it but her reasoning worked - the unexpected success of the BNP (edit - and the grooming gangs scandal, mustn't forget that) forced major parties to finally discuss immigration and figure out ways to handle it better. So maybe voting Green is a way of forcing environmental issues more into the conversation.
Yup. Greens are right about billlionaire tax but as I said before, homeopathy, anti-nuclear-at-any-cost and unfunded campaigns mean they’re in cloud ****ing cuccoo land for a general election. Bearing in mind the point @boiled_elephant made, voting en masse for Greens and possibly Lib Dem as a second choice, will send a signal that it’s these issues people care about and the others need to be stronger on. We desperately need a SSR-W or similar nuclear power plant. https://www.moltexenergy.com/moltex...nsume-nuclear-waste-and-close-the-fuel-cycle/ It runs on the leftover fissile material from other nuclear plants, so it will massively reduce our own nuclear waste stockpile, and opens a secondary market for us to accept nuclear waste from other countries, with THEM paying US to take it away so they don’t have to store it, and then we can pop it in a reactor and cut it down to a fraction of the waste mass.
I'm not so sure we could vote ourselves out of this mess, voting doesn't seem to solve anything. But, save for a revolt it's pretty much our only recourse. I'm onboard with nuclear, and anything that gets rid of windmills have my blessing. Solar is fine too (we use solar ourselves) as long as its on rooftops and not on farmland. We need the farmland for farming
