Friday, May 04, 2012
Council Elections
As I start this the Scottish elections, counted under a transferable vote system are still some way off. However the bulk of the English results are in.
UKIP, as a fairly new party without any history in local government did not put up candidates across the board. Something the Tories in particular should be glad of since otherwise their abysmal showing would have been worse. The LibDem vote collapsed further - the only good news for them being that the Tory vote which had previously held up was now down as far as their's.
Obviously we mainly stood in our better areas so that 14% will not represent our national vote, or we would be half way to matching the Tories, but it is, by any standard, a spectacular result and confirms the polls showing us to be the 3rd party, ahead of the LibDems.
Obviously the legally "balanced" government broadcaster slanted everything as usual. They had the LabConDems swopping quips all night whereas the best UKIP got was, at 1.07 (an hour and a half in) 30 seconds from Paul Nuttall, handily not in the studio but linked in another, followed by 6 minutes of the approved parties discussing UKIP's threat, then another 40 seconds from Nuttall and back to the approved.
The BBC also allowed, without even hostile questioning, an extraordinary outburst from Baroness Warzi the Tory Party chair who suggested that the decline in BNPists standing was linked with the increase in UKIPers doing so.
I can speak from experience here because in the ward I stood in (Hillhead), where UKIP had not stood previously, there was no BNP candidate - but there was a former BNP member standing as Britannic. What is happening is that the BNP is splitting.
If Baroness Warzi does not know enough about British electoral politics to understand this she is clearly not competent to chair the Tories. If she does it is a deliberate, wholly corrupt, smear. Either way she owes a public apology. If she doesn't give one then the very least Cameron must do if he is not also wholly corrupt, is dissociate herself from her smear. I doubt we will see that because I think he will, once again, prove himself wholly corrupt.
Yesterday evening I spent some time outside the polling station telling all and sundry "UKIP the only party that wants to cut electricity bills, all the others intend to double them". None of the other parties actually denied it but Sandra White (pseudo-socialist SNP MSP) got a bit annoyed when I told her that I was against 1 million Scots households being in fuel poverty. She insisted she was too which, if true, is a remarkable turnaround and must, by definition, involve her publicly disagreeing with her party's policy of closing down 80% of our generating capacity and keeping the most expensive windmill bit.
It is simply impossible to honestly claim to be against high prices when you favour making costs as high as possible.
We had earlier crossed on the subject of nuclear when she said that the reason she didn't want nuclear was because it was impossible to bury waste - well ok it is possible but it stays radioactive forever. At this point a young student working for Labour proved he was nonetheless intelligent by pointing out that such waste has a short half life.
I will look forward to seeing if Sandra White does show the promised concern for ending fuel poverty, something which any "leftist" whose persona of caring about the poor is true, must certainly do. Every MSP certainly knows that the only sustainable (in the correct use of the term) way of cutting energy costs is producing it cheaper and that this can be done with nuclear, whereas windmills articifially inflate the cost.. There are even a few MSPs honest enough to say so.
Well, I didn't get elected, which doesn't exactly come as a surprise. I don't yet know what the votes were. Neither did the LibDem, who had previously been, so that makes us even.
UKIP, as a fairly new party without any history in local government did not put up candidates across the board. Something the Tories in particular should be glad of since otherwise their abysmal showing would have been worse. The LibDem vote collapsed further - the only good news for them being that the Tory vote which had previously held up was now down as far as their's.
The Eurosceptic party averaged about 14 per cent of the vote where its candidates were standing, mainly at the expense of the Conservatives.
The result is likely to be seen as an ultimatum to the Prime Minister that his party is alienating right wing voters and will increase calls for the Coalition to hold an EU referendum....
UKIP’s result is five points higher than a year ago
Obviously we mainly stood in our better areas so that 14% will not represent our national vote, or we would be half way to matching the Tories, but it is, by any standard, a spectacular result and confirms the polls showing us to be the 3rd party, ahead of the LibDems.
Obviously the legally "balanced" government broadcaster slanted everything as usual. They had the LabConDems swopping quips all night whereas the best UKIP got was, at 1.07 (an hour and a half in) 30 seconds from Paul Nuttall, handily not in the studio but linked in another, followed by 6 minutes of the approved parties discussing UKIP's threat, then another 40 seconds from Nuttall and back to the approved.
The BBC also allowed, without even hostile questioning, an extraordinary outburst from Baroness Warzi the Tory Party chair who suggested that the decline in BNPists standing was linked with the increase in UKIPers doing so.
I can speak from experience here because in the ward I stood in (Hillhead), where UKIP had not stood previously, there was no BNP candidate - but there was a former BNP member standing as Britannic. What is happening is that the BNP is splitting.
If Baroness Warzi does not know enough about British electoral politics to understand this she is clearly not competent to chair the Tories. If she does it is a deliberate, wholly corrupt, smear. Either way she owes a public apology. If she doesn't give one then the very least Cameron must do if he is not also wholly corrupt, is dissociate herself from her smear. I doubt we will see that because I think he will, once again, prove himself wholly corrupt.
Yesterday evening I spent some time outside the polling station telling all and sundry "UKIP the only party that wants to cut electricity bills, all the others intend to double them". None of the other parties actually denied it but Sandra White (pseudo-socialist SNP MSP) got a bit annoyed when I told her that I was against 1 million Scots households being in fuel poverty. She insisted she was too which, if true, is a remarkable turnaround and must, by definition, involve her publicly disagreeing with her party's policy of closing down 80% of our generating capacity and keeping the most expensive windmill bit.
It is simply impossible to honestly claim to be against high prices when you favour making costs as high as possible.
We had earlier crossed on the subject of nuclear when she said that the reason she didn't want nuclear was because it was impossible to bury waste - well ok it is possible but it stays radioactive forever. At this point a young student working for Labour proved he was nonetheless intelligent by pointing out that such waste has a short half life.
I will look forward to seeing if Sandra White does show the promised concern for ending fuel poverty, something which any "leftist" whose persona of caring about the poor is true, must certainly do. Every MSP certainly knows that the only sustainable (in the correct use of the term) way of cutting energy costs is producing it cheaper and that this can be done with nuclear, whereas windmills articifially inflate the cost.. There are even a few MSPs honest enough to say so.
Well, I didn't get elected, which doesn't exactly come as a surprise. I don't yet know what the votes were. Neither did the LibDem, who had previously been, so that makes us even.
Labels: BBC, British politics, UKIP
