A Place to Stand

     This is to prove some ideas I have about the fall of the Conservative Party in Scotland (and thus of the apparent fall in support for market freedom so long as there was no other credible free market party here).

   At the start of this Scotland gave the Tories just over 50% of the vote, more than Labour has ever achieved. By comparison Wales was always dodgy ground for them and in fact if you bear in nmind that neither main party hopes to get above 40% of the UK vote now a Tory drop of 4% from 30% to 26% there proportionately counts as a gain - certainly so compared to Labour.

    The first Tory drop here is from 50% to just under 40% over the 15 years between 1955 and 1970. That loss is serious. It covers the period of the Conservative councillors, who used to fight under the name Progressives (a title the left now claim so I assume they think it is attractive) largely dropped that name and became Conservative. This was the end of a particularly Scottish, anti-socialist, political institution which didn't suit the vision of Tory "modernisers" of the time and which incidentally suited the Unionist vote - basically the group of, mainly protestant Liberals who at the end of the 19thC or later, split from them over Irish home rule. They were willing to work with the Tories but were never really were comfortable being them. The protestant unionist vote was a group Tory "modernisers" were embarrassed to have supporting them. Even so, while losing 12% of the vote is a bad fall, remember that this was the period when the SNP first won Hamilton and became something more than a fringe and when the Liberals were rising from the edge of non-existence to 7.5% in 1970 so probably half of this drop can be put down to these factors.

     The 36 years from late 1974 to 2010 shows a drop from 24% to 17%. Again bad but not a disaster, at least as counts the amount of change. There was a UK wide drop up to 2005 of 4% (though they recovered elsewhere in 2010 - Gordon Brown was not as unpopular here  as elsewhere). There was a greater fall here during Thatcher's 2nd and 3rd elections but it was certainly not the "electoral poison" she is claimed to have been. I think some of that can be blamed on their opposition to devolution and some (though the better than UK recovery in 1992 suggests not much) to the coal industry being bigger here.

       The real disaster in Scottish Conservative voting was from 1970 to late 1974. A 4 year period that saw them fall from 38% to 24%. 37% of their voters gone. Now that is the definition of electoral disaster.

      So what was the cause of this. I am going to say it was Ted Heath's selling out of the fishing industry to join the EU. The EU's common fisheries policy, that the fish belonged to the whole EU not the countries in whose waters they were, was cynically cobbled together hours before negotiations with would be new members started. Heath and his supporters made it absolutely clear that they were willing to sell out our industry. It was, after all, an industry concentrated in far away Scotland, in small towns and villages where the metropolitan media never go. In his calculation of the political balance of power these people, their livelihoods and homes were expendable to achieve Heath's dream of membership of the EEC.

      Since fishing was a largely a small business, with captains owning their ships, it was not unionised. These towns and villages, didn't have the support of massive union power (much more massive then than now) and their PR and machines and flying picket thugs. Their fate has barely stirred the surface of the UK political and media class. While media pundits still lament how Thatcher destroyed mining communities (she didn't, economics did) they are simply ignorant of how Heath, quite deliberately and with no economic justification at all, murdered (murder being deliberate planned killing) Scottish fishing communities. But it stirred Scotland into considering that not only were we being ignored by London (we always knew that and being ignored by Westminster is not so bad) but that we were actively expendable and betrayable.

      It may be 40 years on and the party may, or may claim to be, offering us the chance to leave, but the Scottish Tories deserve every single lost vote.

      But the SNP don't deserve any better. The Tories may have murdered the industry but the self styled "Scottish National Party" have kept on mutilating the body. Nobody, not even the LibDems, are more enthusiastic for us staying in the EU. Nobody, certainly not the present Tories, are as keen to pay our membership of the EU in Scotland's fish. Though it is certain the terms of membership of a their "independent" Scotland would involve far more than what the EU already have from Britain. The SNP know the people of Scotland would never support another such sell out - that is why this most unpatriotic of parties has said it would not allow us a vote on rejoining the EU.

       Yet the fishing fields are still there. A fair proportion of the fish are too, despite EU overfishing and they should recover if there were a few years of only the current UK landings taking place. If there were the political will to do so.

       What the people of Scotland, and particularly the coastal fishing regions, need is a genuinely patriotic Scottish party (Scottish and British patriotism being entirely compatible) putting forward a Scottish programme which would include quitting the EU and allowing the British fishing industry to be as good as ever. Or better.

      

    Maurice Saatchi has produced for the Centre For Policy Studies (and implicitly for the Tory Party) a proposal to abolish Corporation Tax for all but the 10% of largest companies and also abolish Capital Gains Tax for the same people. Saying

"The Policy outlined in this document will:
 abolish Corporation Tax for 90% of UK companies
 reduce the deficit faster than predicted by the OBR 
 expand employment faster than predicted by the OBR
 increase competition and challenge Cartel Capitalism
 let millions of people grow tall. 
These millions of individuals will enjoy:
 the opportunity to say “I am the captain of my ship”
 more money
 more freedom
 the first step on The Road from Serfdom.
The nation as a whole will benefit from:
 a change in culture as big as “Own your own Home” in the 1980s
 greater economic growth and lower unemployment than forecast by the OBR
 more competitive market places
 more freedom and independence from Big Government and Big Companies."
 

   I have been pushing for CT cuts since before I started this blog in 2004. Basically following the example of Ireland where they cut CT, in a series of steps to 12.5%, and reduced regulation, particularly on housebuilding and achieved a 7% average growth rate.

    So what do I think of Saatchi's slightly different proposal? It is an improvement. His is costed at £10.5 bn. Mine of cutting all CT by slightly more than half would cost just over a billion more. Not much difference. However by concentrating it all on smaller companies he gets some advantages - smaller companies provide more employment growth; smaller companies tend to be more innovative, until they grow into bigger companies; smaller companies have more difficulty borrowing so profits are more important for expansion.

    He also has the advantage of being able to run it through an economic model. Lets take advantage of that.

    The conclusion is that this £10.5 bn cut would increase growth by about 0.8%, though not in the first year because the investment has to work through. That means that by the end of a 5 year Parliament that growth would have replaced all that tax cut. Saatchi says that this 0.8% estimate is "conservative" and I agree. Indeed that is 1 of 3 reasons I believe the position is much better than he offers:

1 - Irish growth was 7% - 4.5% better than ours. Even if we assume more than half was due  to the regulatory cuts (not the common feeling but probably true) and that, because Ireland is so much smaller than us, having lower taxes opened them up to proportionately more investment than us we still come out with the growth potential being around twice the 0.8% given. Also Irish growth did not take a year to take off and this is reasonable if investors see an improved investment opportunity - they will not wait, but start investing immediately, if they can.

2 - Increased national debt is only a problem in relation to the size of the economy. If we have growth of an extra 0.8% in the economy, debt can increase the same without making payment more difficult. Indeed if the size of government is unaltered there is actually proportionately more uncommitted money in the economy, though this is only a marginal effect.

Our current national debt is £1.4 trillion so 0.8% is £11.2 bn, just slightly above initial and maximum borrowing.

3 - If you have a growing economy you need to increase the money supply to keep prices stable. Money in UK circulation is rather larger than 1 year's gdp. In fact it was £2,200 bn in 2010 - presumably about £2,400 bn now. So an extra unexpected 0.8% growth means we can and should print £19 billion extra.
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   This is not estimating conservatively but it is the realistic best estimate and if we don't do it there is no reason to believe reality will be conservative either.

    So clearly we should go with this asap.

   I would go further - promise that the take on CT and other business taxes will not be allowed to rise - if the economy grows, as it will, increasing the tax take, we will raise the level at which CT comes in (and when it is fully abolished, business rated and other such taxes). This means investors can look forward to a stable profitable investment, which is all they need.
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    But I would like to see this as merely the start.

    The formula for economic growth is:     Economic Freedom + Cheap Energy

    Low business tax is only part, the smaller part, of economic freedom. The greater part is not having parasitic state regulation. At least tax money goes back into the economy, albeit in less efficient ways and excluding the cost of government taxing and returning it. Wealth destroyed by regulation, for example 98% of the cost of electricity, is gone forever.

   So we should should cut regulations wherever possible. As a minor effect that also cuts government spending a bit - it costs government all of 1/20th, to regulate, of what it costs the productive economy to be regulated.

75% of housing cost is regulatory - 34% X 75% = 25.5%
(I assume this includes heating it)

The EU regulations come to another 5%
(assuming the cost is equally borne by the people as by the government sector which is an optimistic assumption)

Remaining portion of income that goes to the value of what we actually choose

100% - 25.5% - 5% =69.5%

That 69.5% is, in turn reduced proportionately by all the other factors. Take off commercial building costs (est 2.5%), electricity charges through the rest of the economy (est 2%),accountancy (7.5%), child care (est 2.5%), assorted other (est 10%)

Total 24.5%

Therefore percentage of income we nominally get to spend which we actually get in our pockets & spent on the product not the surrounding regulation

69.5% X (100% - 24.5% = 52.5%

  
     But if the regulatory part of economic freedom costs us more than the tax part the other side of the equation, cheap energy has even more potential. Roger Helmer has written of the advantages of letting decisions on electricity be made on economic not ideological grounds.

    The correlation between growth in energy use and in gdp is undisputable.


        It has been calculated and indeed is undisputed that app 98% of the cost of producing electricity here is governmental parasitism. 

       Nuclear is currently 40% of the average cost of our power basket.
China is building at 0.27 our costs.
Because China is building in three years and us in ten we have seven years foregone income while paying interest – assuming the normal 10% return that is 1.10^7 = 1.95
Assume China is not entirely without state parasitism – say 10% 
VAT and carbon levies 20%
How much could cost be reduced if it was allowed to mass produce reactors - three fold seems a conservative estimate.

60% X 0.27 X 1/1.95 X 90% X 1/1.20% X 1/3 = 0.0208 or 2.08% of current costs.
97.92% parasitism.
       Major reductions, not quite as major, could be done by allowing the market to produce shale gas. Any reduction on electricity costs, not just one as major as this, if the laws of supply and  demand work, would produce a many fold increase in energy use and therefore a many fold increase in gdp.

       Indeed I have previously proposed a 24 point programme to the world's fastest growth, which includes my original CT cutting proposal, and it would work. Theoretically we might expect most of the proposals to increase growth by about an average of 2% a year, Some more, some less.

       In practice we might be limited to a bit above the 20% growth Guandong province in China managed for years. Certainly the theoretical maximum, if we make growth our "Number one priority" (Scottish labour leader Jack McConnell promising at 2 elections - he knew what people want even if he lied about giving it) cannot be lower than the actually achieved maximum.

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      Saatchi's proposal is a very good one, well thought out and verified. It is a small fraction of our potential.

       

British spaceport in 5 years (coastal region possibly in Scotland) I privately understand Lossiemouth is the Scottish option. Campbelltown airport is actually pretty advanced but the flightpath from the US to Glasgow airports crosses it.
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Scottish secession will result in between 20,000 and 40,000 jobs moving to England, providing "huge boost" to City of London, says Centre for Economics and Business Research
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Balloon windmills -  I'm not convinced but they have at least the possibility of working which is more than current windmills do.
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Jerry Pournelle - As of course I always have. Interplanetary colonization is not easy. When NASA studied self-replicating systems in Space in 1980 it was concluded that technology was not up to closing the loop: we could not build real self-replicating systems with the current technology. When the report was presented to the Administrator, I pointed out that we did have the technology to build one kind of self-replicating system: a Moon Colony. It would have a replication time of about 18 years. The Administrator asked “Why would anyone want to live on the Moon”, which sparked the L-5 Society study on lunar colonists that demonstrated there was no shortage of well educated adventurous couples who would undertake to go live on the Moon. But that was back in the days of great space enthusiasm.

The good thing about the Moon as a place to study problems of space colonization is that is is only a few days away for physical transportation, and only a few seconds away for communications. We don’t need great theorists on the Moon: we need craftsmen. The best heart surgeon in the world is available by high definition television; a skillful surgeon can do her work under the direction of the best.

Before we start trying to build self replicating colonies elsewhere we should learn to build them on the Moon – and they might well be both physically and economically successful.
As to getting to Mars, it has been decades since I ran the Human Factors Lab at Boeing and did serious professional study of such matters, but I have kept in touch, and I don’t believe we know how to get humans to Mars alive, much less maintain them there. I do know that if we have a Lunar Colony first, we’ll have a lot more confidence in Mars operations.
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From Steve Sailer, I've not seen it reported elsewhere - The Dutch leftist legal professional who murdered in cold blood Pym Fortuyn, the candidate for prime minister on an immigration restriction platform, is out of prison after only 12 years. The assassin is usually identified as an "animal rights activist" to imply he was some kind of fringe wacko, but his testimony at his trial put him squarely in the mainstream of elite opinion on immigration in seeing Fortuyn's desire to stop Muslim immigration as beyond the pale. Indeed, the initial response of European Establishment figures in May 2002 was largely that Fortuyn had it coming.
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Typical - Despite clear evidence that the pro-Kiev radicals set Odessa’s House of Trade Unions ablaze on Friday killing dozens, the mainstream media is being ambiguous about the causes of the tragedy.
On Friday, Ukraine’s eastern town of Odessa saw brutal street battles between pro-autonomy activists and nationalist radicals which left 46 people dead. The majority of the victims died in the Trade Unions House that was set on fire by pro-Kiev radicals.

Very carefully worded commentary on the tragedy in Odessa came from the mainstream Western media, as if they were trying to avoid assigning the blame to those who actually set the building on fire. Their coverage of the event was heavily reliant on statements from Kiev that blamed the violence on pro-autonomy activists, as well as witness accounts given by the nationalist Right Sector members.
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Spiked on why the propaganda war on UKIP failed - basically because it was OTT and obviously lies (however I cannot say it entirely failed - there are some people who actually believe that if the entire state owned media, state regulated broadcasters and state funded by advertising newspapers make smoke they can't be entirely lying about a fire.)
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Mike Haseler's list of Scottish blogs
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"Age Reversal is no longer science fiction" by blood replacement. Not sure they have the full answer but they do have something.
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DIY cruise missile
 

  There is an interesting discussion going on former member Mike Haseler's blog about UKIP in Scotland. Scottish chair Misty Thackeray has a long post and I have replied. This is something that needs to be decided. It would be better in a less public forum but that has not taken place.

http://scotip.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/ukip-anti-democratic/comment-page-1/#comment-87

   I have also written a letter to 30 papers supporting David Coburn's gentle taking of the piss out of the SNP over their Borg-like lack of dissent or even internal debate(which has caused our Fat Controller to lose the heid), but will give them a chance to publish first. David is setting a good example/

                            2010                             %                                   Now                        %
Conservative       27,590                         53.9                               17,431                     45
UKIP                    1,954                           3.8                                10.028                     25.9
Labour                11,438                         22.3                                 6,842                      17.7
Bagley/Hospital                                                                              1,891                        4.9
Green                                                                                              1,057                        2.7
LibDem               10,246                         20.0                                1,004                        2.6
Ors combined                                                                                    454                        1.2

==============================================

      I find this a very interesting result. I wish I knew how the polling by stations had gone because then I would be making more than an educated guess which votes went from whom to whom (but then if I did I would probably have to keep it quiet out of party loyalty).

The LibDem vote collapsed losing 90% by numbers or 7/8ths by proportion (proportion is the more important - there is nothing unusual about by elections having lower turnouts because the national media isn't hammering home that there is an election today). This is way below any fall to the party's "minimum core vote" (usually assumed about half of it). The LibDem fall closely parallels UKIP's rise but I think it would be unwise to assume we picked up more than a minority of their votes. Probably most of the Green and hospital campaign votes were ex-LDs but that still means more than half went elsewhere. This article on Conservative Home suggests that a lot of them went Tory to keep us out, as did a lot of Labour ones. The BBC Radio 5 reporter also said "I met a number of Labour voters who said they are voting Tory to keep UKIP out" which is quite remarkable.

       Nonetheless, however they went this is a catastrophic result for the LDs. After a couple of weeks of "4 party politics" we may be back to a 3 party system without the LDs. Any result remotely of this order would put ALL the LDs out of Parliament. I suspect the lost LD votes split 4 ways to Tories, Labour, UKIP & the others.

A disaster  for Labour too. A 4.6% fall in their proportion is not going to get Miliband the PMship. He must expect, as the party not in government, to be polling better, during any by election, where people feel free to protest, than he will at the general election. This happens to every party. Labour won this seat in 1997 and have placed 2nd at other times. To be knocked into 3rd place is about as bad as it could be. I suspect Labour's missing 4.6% (if, say, 1/4 of the LDs went to them they would have picked up about 4.3% and thus lost 8.9%). That some of their members voted for Tory to keep out UKIP and others UKIP to beat the Tories does not suggest any enthusiasm whatsoever for his party.

       UKIP. Well we didn't take it but overthrowing a 16,000 majority when your previous vote was 2,000 isn't as easy as it sounds ;-)  We didn't come as close as we expected and that is important. We mainly lost because the Tory vote held up. Had 4,000 more of them (only 1/7th of their previous vote) voted UKIP we would have won.

       Roger Helmer had written of the enthusiasm he found on the doorstep - sometimes people are polite when they haven't yet made up their minds. The other thing is that there was a decent turnout for 2 independents (though not for the last 5). That means that though the contempt for the traditional parties is overwhelming, UKIP has not yet sealed the deal.

     I suspect, in particular, that the smear campaigns by the government media has hurt us. But it is a problem. If a significant number of actual LabConDem voters agree that "there is no difference between them" and decide they like that, we could have a problem. For that I believe we have to have a positive policy platform that will make the large majority of all parties make us their preferred alternative. We are likely to be the contender in most constituencies across the country (as the LDs used to be) and if we can persuade 3rd and 4th placing parties that we are much better than the probable winner we can sweep the country. If they unite to keep the previous winner in we won't - and British politics will lose all semblance of pluralistic democracy.


     But you can't complain about a 22.1% swing to you.

The Tories have reason for satisfaction. They won and not just by scraping in. Nonetheless an 8.9% swing against is hardly something to celebrate. This won't get Cameron his majority. This was the 44th safest tory seat so to have lost it would have been beyond catastrophic. Beyond that it looks very much like they did lose far more Tory votes than appears and filled them up with 4.3% from the LDs and 4.4% (half of 8.9%) from Labour. 8.7% of their votes are on loan and without them - that's 3.700. That didn't actually keep them in but it does explain why Nigel Farage expected it to be closer. And losing those votes (or actually not having them because they never did) would ensure electoral defeat.

    Another point here is that, at least according to Conservative Home, the Tories pulled out all the stops and ran a very heavy campaign. 150 MPs visiting. Cameron visiting 4 times - absolutely unprecedented for a sitting PM. And it worked. And Labour and the LDs, who both historically have reputations for being able to put feet on the ground, didn't come close to matching them. The old parties have hollowed themselves out because members have no actual influence on the party. I suspect this applies to the Tories too but they just pulled out every card they had. The article itself makes a point of the importance of members on the ground and I agree.

UPDATE
Nigel Farage discusses the result and points out that the Tories cannot put anything remotely like this level of effort into an constituency during the general election http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/480656/FARAGE-ON-FRIDAY-Ukip-boss-says-next-target-is-2015-general-election-Commons-breakthrough

   Dan Hannan reads the obituary for the Liberals on his blog today (though he uses it to punt the Tories, not UKIP, as its heir:

"The Lib Dems are finished – a squalid end for the heirs of the greatest party in history

What a miserable, tawdry end for a party with such noble antecedents. The Whig-Liberal movement was responsible for the finest developments in our history. It gave us parliamentary supremacy and religious toleration, meritocracy and a wider franchise, the equality of all citizens before the law and the supremacy of that law over monarch or minister. Not only did Whig principles elevate Britain above the run of nations; they created the United States of America.

Has this sublime tradition, the tradition of Edward Coke and John Hampden, of James Harrington and Algernon Sidney, of John Milton and John Locke, of Pitt the Elder and Edmund Burke, of Earl Grey and Viscount Palmerston, of Richard Cobden and John Bright – and, yes, of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson – truly found its quietus in the person of Nick Clegg? The thought is almost unbearable.

But the truth is that the Lib Dems had long since abandoned classical liberalism. Though the Homeric figures I have just cited would be astonished to see it, Whig-Liberal principles survive best in a goodly part of the Conservative Party.

The takeover happened slowly, through successive transfusions. The first occurred in the late nineteenth century, when traditional Palmerstonian Whigs, alarmed by the Liberal Party’s drift towards social democracy, sidled up to the Conservatives, formally amalgamating in 1912 (the “and Unionist” bit of my party’s official name dates from that merger). There was a second transfusion with the assimilation of some of the “coupon” Liberals following the First World War, and then a third with the absorption of the National Liberals during the 1950s and 1960s.

These transfusions left the surviving Liberals weak and anaemic, but still recognisably the heirs to Gladstone. Indeed, as their electoral prospects became poorer, they attracted unusually high-minded supporters: men and women who cared more about principle than office.

When did things go wrong? In 1988, when the Liberals merged with the Social Democratic Party. People sometimes think that the SDP was founded on some issue of principle: opposition to nationalisation, or to unilateral nuclear disarmament or some such. In fact, it was created because the Labour Party wanted to make incumbent MPs subject to reselection by party members. To be sure, there were some honourable Labour moderates, including David Owen himself, who had long agonised about his support for his party. But the mass of his followers were actuated by grubbier considerations: they didn’t want to lose their seats.

Suddenly, the high-minded Liberals were overwhelmed by a horde of petty, calculating careerists....

Pure liberalism will always struggle to secure an electoral majority. While some of its positions are popular – tax-cuts, welfare reform, Euroscepticism – others are not. I always tell libertarian students to focus on the big issues, such as the economy and education, rather than fighting losing battles on relatively minor questions such as drugs and pornography. As part of a wider conservative alliance, as under Thatcher or Reagan, classical liberalism can enjoy meaningful triumphs. On its own, it will only ever be a fringe movement.

As for the Lib Dems, they have long since ceased to be liberal in any meaningful sense. In recent years, they weren’t really anything at all. And, as King Lear observes, nothing will come of nothing. Thursday was the beginning of the end. Nothingness – annihilation – is coming."

   I put this comment:

 Was held in Townhead "Village Hall". This one was specifically about the reverendum (16 weeks to go). The total audience was about 35, which is poor, though no schoolkids. On the panel were

- Patrick Harvie, Green leader (* coincidentally on during the April edition previously described, and also previously described by me as "a permanent fixture on the BBC")
- James  Dornan, SNP

V

- Annabelle Goldie, Tory and previously party leader
- Jim Murphy, Labour (impressive - he has mastered sincerity and displays it as effectively as he did the spot of blood in the middle of his white shirt after the Clutha bar tragedy)

4 questions during which I was able to answer twice as was Robert Malyn, Glasgow branch chair.

1 - "Who should we believe when the figures the Yes and No camps produce are so far apart."  Obviously everybody said me, what else can they? However Harvie somewhat weakened my question to him by getting in his admission first. Dornan had said their growth figures were credible. Harvie then said it wasn't about growth or economic success but equality, greenery etc. When I got chosen I pointed out that Harvie had said in a TV debate that "nobody should vote for independence on the grounds that it would produce growth, indeed that he didn't expect any growth" and that Nicola Sturgeon, on stage with him, hadn't disagreed. Would these 2 lie to tell us which it was, since it is difficult to accept their position until we know what it is.

Brian then took several other questions and in the shuffle mine went unanswered, which is answer enough.

2 - "Can Scotland be viable without oil" - Murphy wisely answered that of course we would be viable, just poorer. Harvie said we must stop burning oil because of "catastrophic" warming.

I put up my hand and got called & said "As a supporter of UKIP I do not believe in the catastrophic warming Mr Harvie warns us of. This is supported by the fact that there has been no warming at all, let alone catastrophic warming since 1998. However, be that as it may, because of the shale gas revolution, we must expect oil prices to fall. There is as much shale available in Britain as to match our oil. One thing we can be sure of is that if the SNP or Greens had been in power when north sea oil was found it would still be in the ground. Again nobody answered it.

Robert also stated from personal experience of living in Ireland in 1990s and 2000s during the boom, that Ireland generally since Independence in 1922 has been an economic basket case and various public services e.g. health service, Public Service TV, and Transport Infrastructure roads / rail etc were pretty poor in comparison to the UK in General and Scotland in particular.

3 - "What about the pulling of cinema ads" - a light hearted bit in which people said which films they didn't like. I wanted to point out that this may show the people to be less interested in the referendum than the political classes and it would be dreadful if the vote, either way, went 51:49 on a 40% turnout. I wasn't asked.

4 - "Do we need Trident in a post cold war world" - Quite a lot of sensible points were made on all sides, mainly on the principle of keeping it. I didn't try too hard because I really don't know what the proper answer is. If I had been taken I would have said something about it being a token on both sides since there is no possibility of Britain actually using our nukes except as part of a general NATO action.

Robert got to point out the incongruity of those wanting to cancel our nukes on financial grounds while we give foreign aid to those investing in their own ones (ie Pakistan). 

  3 Interesting news items about UKIP

- Lord Tebbit's blog on the Telegraph points out:

"There were some odd features of the poll, particularly the puzzle of who was really funding the "An Independence From Europe Party" whose title put it at the top of the long ballot paper which had Ukip at the bottom. Clearly the organisers and funders could have had no hope whatsoever that it would gain enough votes to elect an MEP, so what was their motive? I can only assume it was to catch out voters intending to support Ukip and lure them into precipitately putting a cross against its name before finding Ukip right at the foot of the page. One way or another it secured 1.49 per cent of the vote and if one adds even half of that to Ukip's score it makes Mr Farage's lead even more impressive."

I commented - Thanks for pointing out that 1.49% the spoilers took from the UKIP vote - something the BBC media have been silent on. Bearing in mind that the difference between UKIP getting no Westminster seats, at least if we don't target, which we will, and winning an overall majority of Westminster seats is only 10% (25% to 35%) that is a major effect.

Running this through Electoral Calculus we get

Conservative 210 seats, Labour 278 seats, LD 20 seats, UKIP 113 seats

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- The BBC have just been reporting a ridiculous claim by the Yes campaign that, because they will achieve a marginally higher growth rate than currently, after 17 years we will all be better off. This is to counter an opinion from No that it will cost us over £2 bn to do the organisational changes of setting up new departments in every branch of government now run centrally. Yes's counter was to say it would cost £200 million. Bearing in mind that the enormously simpler job of raising or cutting Scotland's income tax alone by up to 3p has long been agreed on both sides, to cost £40-£45 million the idea that hundreds of changes of a similar order could be for £200 is ludicrous and even No's figure seems optimistic.

   Which didn't stop the BBC repeatedly saying the truth must be half way between each figures.

    This also induced me to send them this email. While it has not been answered it is now undeniable that a "balanced" BBC would have to give, at least, matching airtime and matching support for this:

"The Yes campaign's assessment of us being £1000 better off in 17 years depends entirely on the SNP being able to promise a slightly higher growth rate. That is simply an evidence free assertion. If they achieve an economic collapse we will be poorer.

  "There is no substitute for victory" according to General Douglas MacArthur and UKIP don't need a substitute.

   We came a clear 1st in the UK election:

   "UKIP won 27.5% of the vote and had 24 MEPs elected. Labour, on 25.4%, has narrowly beat the Tories into third place while the Lib Dems lost all but one of their seats and came sixth behind the Greens."

    So we may expect to see the Tories cease demanding free marketeers support them for fear of "splitting" the vote, indeed in theory they should start telling their supporters to vote UKIP everywhere where they came 3rd and while I don't expect them too, the voters are smart enough to work that out for themselves.

     While it was not the 100% wipe out for the LibDems some had predicted it is close enough - they were beaten by the Greens.

     Eurosceptic parties also did well across the continent.

    The Scottish vote is also a victory:

"The SNP won 386,193 votes on the night - almost 29% - with Labour coming second, on 346,377 votes (25.9%).

In third place was the Conservatives, with 230,569 votes (17.2%), followed by UKIP on 139,687 (10.4%).....

The Scottish Greens hailed their "best ever result", after winning 107,805 votes (8%), while the Liberal Democrats got a total of 95,076 votes (7%)."

   That is very bad for the SNP, particularly with the referendum coming up. It looks like a lot of SNP who would be Tories elsewhere decided to vote unionist. It is good for the Tories who were well ahead of us, though UKIP thrashed them elsewhere - I suspect this is not so much an increase in approval for them as a decrease elsewhere.

    Though we got our seat and are now the 4th party in Scotland, it was by a very thin margin. I strongly suspect that the votes going to the Tories not us (& more) was entirely because of the disgusting, dishonest and wholly corrupt campaign run by the BBC to call us "racist".

     In theory, and law, now that we have just over 1/3rd of the vote of the SNP the BBC will be obliged to give 1/3rd as much airtime to UKIP members as to Salmond, Sturgeon and co. In practice you would have to believe we live in a free democracy to expect that law to be enforced. However we can expect an almost infinite amount more coverage (ie some) and even some making up for 2 decades of censorship.

    10.4% in an EU election suggests a somewhat lower Holyrood vote, though, since Holyrood is under a PR system, not the squeezing out that happens in Westminster elections. To be a major party at Holyrood we have to have positive Scottish policies to put forward. I am convinced that the Scottish people only need some serious policy alternatives to the present "left of the UK Labour party consensus" that all 5 Holyrood parties share. I hope to keep on suggesting some.

    The Greens beating the LDs is also a humiliation for them, though it was achieved more by the latter increasing their vote - another sign more of dissatisfaction with the main party alternatives, I think, than approval of the Green enthusiasm for recession, blackouts and pensioner freezing.

    Bishop Hill reports the victory and wonders how much being opposed to the catastrophic warmong fraud helped. The comments give a useful balance of answers to that question.

   My opinion is that the voters recognise the connection between warming, windmillery and rising electricity prices and are not fooled. However they do not yet recognise the close connection between rising energy prices and recession - and that it is our job to make that clear.

   They also do recognise the discrepancy between the catastrophic warming we were promised being an obvious lie and the consequent fact that the parties pushing it (& state media) are obviously corrupt liars. This tends to reduce confidence in them. It will be interesting to see how, with UKIP having an increased entitlement to coverage on state media, they continue to censor us from climate "debate" as demanded by their Head of the Censorship Department. 

      Other polls have similar though not quite as bad for Labour, result.
YouGov/Sun – CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 14%
Populus – CON 35%, LAB 36%, LDEM 8%, UKIP 13%
Ashcroft – CON 34%, LAB 32%, LDEM 9%, UKIP 15%
ICM/Guardian – CON 33%, LAB 31%, LDEM 13%, UKIP 15%


       One might think, looking at UKIP's 15% that should be worrying but I am very pleased with this.

       Labour's vote is falling. As the economy "recovers" (still only half world average growth despite it being fuelled by an artificial house cost boom) and equally, as we get nearer the fateful moment of an election, where being against the government really could put the other rascals in, we can only expect the Labour vote to fall.

      At 31% Labour cannot reasonably be expected to produce a majority.  Their policy seems to have been to hope for 35% and thus over 50% of seats but at 31% almost any parlay of votes leaves them in a minority.

       Because of our corrupt electoral system the Tories won't either. Indeed on the shares in the chart Labour will be the larger party - Tories 284, Labour 307, LDs 31, UKIP nil according to Electoral Calculus

      On the face of it that looks bad for UKIP. But -

    It spikes the Tories greatest, argument against us. Indeed the only one they have been using. The "if you vote UKIP you will put in Labour" one. Labour aren't going to be in. The people, including their core voters, have recognised how crap they are.

    For my lifetime  few people have voted Labour because they want Labour but because they fear getting the Tories. Equally, probably more than equally, few vote Tory because they like their policies but because the fear Labour's.

    Now the Tories don't have to fear Labour - and I am quite certain that even most Tory party activists would rather have UKIP's policies than their own party's (mass immigration, EU membership & gay marriage).

   And Labour voters are also free - to vote against a party who have nothing but contempt for their voters, and secretly promoted mass immigration to replace them.

    We are very close to a tipping point. Suppose UKIP picked up 6% from each of these parties.

    We get Tories 200, Labour 223, LibDems 12 UKIP 186 MPs

    Now this takes no account for targeting of winnable seats which UKIP is doing for the first time so almost certainly understates the UKIP and LibDim votes but you get the picture.

     Another regular factor in elections has been a swing to the LDs during the campaign because they got little TV coverage at other times, but they could not be denied coverage during actual election campaigns. This, obviously, applies in spades to UKIP.

    History also shows that Tory voters have less tribal loyalty to their party than Labour which is why elections against a Tory government have generally been more successful for the LDs than ones against Labour. Disaffected Labour just stayed home.

    And the EU elections

    So a 6% reduction for each of these parties - to UKIP seems not merely possible but quite likely.

    Lets have a bit of fun and try 7% on 36% of the vote: Conservative 127, Labour 172, LD 7, UKIP 316 MPs - 10 short of a technical majority but easily able to negotiate one with Ulster if nobody else.
 

    I am gratified, not to say astonished, that the Scotsman have published a letter from me today. 2 days running is unprecedented.

    This is from Roger Helmer's blog. He had highlighted a Labour MP reusing the "UKIP racist" smear. I said that when there are no arguments of fact against us, such smears become the only option so we must expect more. Also the tactics we should use - don't just defend our record, counterattack:

The Labour Party, with the assistance of Tories & LibDems & the BBC propagandists, were responsible for, quite deliberately, imposing NATO “police” in Kosovo who engaged in genocide, ethnic cleansing and the dissection of thousands of living human beings to steal their body organs – all selected on racial grounds.

UKIP has never been involved in any racist obscenity 1,000th as evil as what the MPs of these parties and so unless Mr Gapes can produce irrefutable evidence, he cannot, unless he is as dishonest as he is a murdering racist pro-Nazi, ever make the claim he has about UKIP being in any slightest way remotely as racist as the approved parties.

Of course he is precisely that dishonest, and since he remains a Labour MP, that party is proven to be so too.

When they make such claims we should not simply deny it – when you are stuck denying something in politics you have half way lost, this is not fair but it is tactics – we should counter attack demanding that the speaker either produces evidence of anything remotely matching the racist atrocities they have been responsible for or apologise.

   This is in line with what I have, for many years, been saying about their Yugoslav atrocities.

   It produced a response from somebody who seems to be working fulltime as a troll on this site - never engaging in any sort of factual debate and simply using insults and assertions to support the LabConDem position (this is becoming common & I assume such people are government paid hacks). He denied that the ethnic cleansing of 350,000; the massacres; the sexual enslavement of children; or the dissections of living people had ever taken place. I, correctly if ungently, decribed this as the statement of a wholly corrupt, Nazi whore being pimped by the racist LabConDem parties who knew perfectly well that he was lying in the Nazi cause - that if he wasn't he wouyld be able to produce at least some evidence that these atrocities never happened.

   Naturally he didn't.

   However the thing worth putting this here is a statement from a completely unrelated commenter, Brian Jenkins, replying to Brian and confirming our government's atrocities. I think it is worth highlighting:

  "Brin Jenkins says:

  OK my apologies for being offline for the last few weeks.

  I can confirm that I have received no response, not only from Willie Rennie, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, but from ANY representative of the party to defend his claim, at the "Glasgow Skeptics" censored "debate" on separatism, that EU membership is economically beneficial.

  This empty chair seems appropriate.

      This article in which an African economist calls for an end of "aid" to Africa strikes home.

      For us in Scotland it is also of equal interest when we see that Scotland gets more money per head through the Barnet formula than the rest of the UK (by purest coincidence the excess we get matches fairly closely to the tax paid on what would be Scotland's share of the North Sea Oil.

   "Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid....

 A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign.

.....our politicians were overwhelmed with money, and they try to siphon off as much as possible. The late tyrant of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, cynically summed it up by saying: "The French government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it."

     Turning down money isn't exactly easy but the comparison between Emperor Bokassa and our own Fat Controller is fairly obvious as is the demand that ever more money be available for the special interest groups that our ruling cartel support. If the billions spent on windmills, qangos, anti-smoking officers and campaigns and on our NHS, which spends 25% more per head than in England but with worse health outcomes, normal Scots wouldn't notice either

     One way of doing that would be the SNP way of separation (though they expect a separate England would still want to pay for our windmills). Another and in my view better one, would be to allow the economy to grow (only the greens publicly admit they want recession but the actions of the others prove they do to) and cut income tax by at least 3p (what we subsidise windmills by). As Scotland grows to be the richest and lowest taxed part of Great Britain we would see accounts moving into balance.

  Was on Radio Scotland today 12-1.00pm.

It's actually called "Brian's Big Debate" but a debate is something where both sides of an argument get to speak, indeed get equal time to speak & the BBC don't do debates.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vd2yh   link

5 guests from Labour, SNP, Tory & from Unite (the government employees union that, at least officially, is the main funder of the totalitarian PR group HnH) & a comedian (all comedians are actively left wing political correctitudes according to the BBC - Jim Davidson, for example, isn't a popular comedian).

While UKIP are almost entirely censored from the state owned BBC we have had an effect - the Greens, who were virtually a permanent fixture are not so blatanly supported and since Cowdenbeath made us the 4th party, the LibDems seem to be missing too. How long till we beat theTories and approved political discussion is limited to 2 parties.

There were 4 questions,on 3 of which I got to speak. Having been in this audience several times before I guess i am getting how to get to speak. Put up your hand, HIGH AND KEEP IT UP EVEN, OR PARTICULALRY WHEN YOU ARE IGNORED AND KEEP SPEAKING.

Audience must have been a couple of hundred - the show was sponsored by the Glasgow Business Council and there were more business suits than normal (& no classes of schoolkids) but most of the questions came from a fairly small number of people, as normal.

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1 - About the Ukraine fighting - all panelists said the expected cliches. I was first to speak & said

"The western role in the Ukraining conflict isn't widely reported. The US assistant secretray of state, Victoria Nuland, was caught giving the Ukrainian rebel leaders their literal marching orders - you can find the tape online but it doesn't get much coverage in the approved media.

The reason she can do this is because "non-"governmental organisations, which are all funded by western governments, are supplying the rebels with $20 million a week and a significant amount of arms.

If somebody was to pay Rangers or Celtic supporters groups a $1 million democracy awareness raising grant to occupy George Square, George Square would be occupied.(laugh)


( At this point Brian said lets move on but I kept speaking and what i said went out) The only reason anybody in Ukraine wants to join the EU is because they could migrate. If the British people are not comfortable with 30 million Romanians and Bulgarians being able to come it unlikely they will be happier with 50 million Ukrainians."

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2 - Was about celebrity endorsements of the refereendum campaign (Bowie having just done so). Which gave the panel the opportunity to work Bowie song titles into their answers. put up my hand intending to say "Showbiz people say politics is showbiz for ugly people so I suppose that means showbiz is politics for shallow people so their endorsements aren't very important" which would have raised a laugh & makes the point that politics is important, but is hardly profound. I didn't keep my hand up and wasn't chosen to speak.

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3 - Should the SNP come up with a plan B for our currency. Brian poinred to me and said "that man at the back with his hand up", several rows behind me.

Shortly after he chose the person directly in front of me.

Then 2 places tomy left.

Then the one sitting on my right hand. Then me.

"You can't become a member of a club that doesn't want you. Doesn't matter if you think you qualify. I happen to think Osbornes 4 conditions for it wise for England to share liability with us are reasonable (these 4 conditions have barely got a media mention), but either way we can't if they won't let us. The SNP are just embarrassing themselves by not saying what their alternatives are.

Incidentally I disagree with the lady who said giving a Plan B (audience member 2 minutes before) would weaken the case for plan A. If you want to negotiate you need an alternative otherwise youn have nothing to negotiate with."

--------------------------------------------

4 - Asking if the panel would like to live on benefits. (near the end one of the panel said to the lady asking it "I've had dinner at your hoose, it was great" which suggests she was not simply a member of the public but an activist, and probably not living on benefits - the question is very of the unanswerable "have you stopped beating your wife" sort and indeed the lady near the end pointed out that it hadn't been answered)

Indeed I didn't answer it. I said

"A major cost to those in poverty is electricity. We have over 1 million Scots households in fuel poverty with avergage bills of nearly £1,500 but it is intended to raise this to £3,000 by 2020.

If ANY of the approved parties actuall cared about poverty they would be working to reduce prices...... (Brian said thank you we've got to move on and this time the microphone was removed. To be fair it was near the end of the programme. This meant I dodn't get the chance to say on air)....... but only UKIP want to reduce prices. Even ed Miliband, with his cynical and destructive promise of a short term freeze, is on record as saying he wants higher electricity prices. In fact we know that at least 90% of electricity prices are various sorts of government parasitism and all of these parties are actively trying to increase them."

--------------------------------

All in all as good as one can expect on a broadcaster that censors dissent as heavily as the BBC.

 With thanks to the Casuals United site who clearly don't like this attempt to manufacture dirt either.

  Nice to see that, despite the government caused recession there is still plenty of money about.

   This is a leaked letter from "Hope not Hate", whose funding is not entirely apparent though some of it seems to come from civil service unions, saying they will pay for dirt on UKIP. The government has denied directly funding them, which may be true, though the Lab/Nat/Con/Dems do openly support this smear campaign.



    I have clashed with HnH twice before

- once when Lord Monckton and I attended one of their meetings and by a mixture of smooth niceness and argumentativeness (I was argumentativeness) got them to concede, in front of the audience, that UKIP was not extremist and even that "it goes without saying" that HnH are much more seriously opposed to real fascism such as the attack on Nigel Farage. (Both HnH & the Farage attackers include members of the SWP).

- 2nd time when they, and a tame journalist on the London Evening Standard of all places, denounced me for not being enthusiastic about bombing Syria. Obviously neither the HnH site nor the Standard was prepared to allow my reply, that I do indeed not like bombing people and giving details about the Syrian war. That's journalistic integrity for you.

  The name is clearly political spin - all Hate, no Hope.
    

Mike Kane (Labour): 13,261  58%

John Bickley (UKIP): 4,301  18.5%

Reverend Daniel Critchlow (Conservatives): 3,479  15%

Mary Di Mauro (Lib Dem): 1,176  5%

Nigel Woodcock (Green Party): 748  3%

Eddy O'Sullivan (BNP): 708  3%

Captain Chaplington-Smythe (Monster Raving Loony): 288 1.2%

Turnout: 28%

   Obviously that is a remarkably good result for UKIP. It strongly suggests that across the North of England (and points north) UKIP are the opposition and the Tories the "splitters". Their entire propaganda against UKIP has been, not that there is anything they can criticise in our policies, but that we are slotting the anti-Labour vote. Presumably, not being a complete hypocrite, Mr Cameron will now advise those north of the Wash, not to split the vote and thus to vote UKIP apparently not.

   This is how Electoral Calculus had previously said this seat should go at a general election

10,412

17,988

9,106

3,245

40,752

Tory      Labour  LD    Others Total

     Actually that would not have made it a marginal for the Tories but at 7,500 difference, it is not a no-hoper either. At the beginning of the campaign Tories were ahead of UKIP
 
    The by election turnout was poor but then it normally is at by elections, particularly when the result is expected not to be close.

    It also looks like a good result for Labour (they got 58% when the equivalent in 2010 was 44%)  but there are 2 major reasons, one ethically dubious and the other worse, why this is not so.

   The ethically dubious one is that, as with almost all other  by elections recently, they went  for the shortest possible campaign (presumably also an influence for a low turnout). That means the voters don't get a true political debate, which is particularly damaging for UKIP since we are censored from the "legally balanced" BBC

   The worse one is that 40%, yes 40% of votes cast were by postal ballots (9,200). Even when they are carried out honestly postal ballots favour established political machines, who have the likes of our Fascist friend O'Hare from yesterday's post to set them up. At the best it also means that these votes were cast 3 days into the campaign.

   But most seriously, the words of the judge in the Birmingham Vote Fraud trial cannot be ignored particularly in present circumstances. He said that the evidence was "overwhelming", that " There are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been. Until there are, fraud will continue unabated", that "Frauds of this magnitude require a considerable degree of organisation and manpower, not to mention supervision and co-ordination. It would be unthinkable for them to be the work of a few hothead activists", & of Prescott's reforms which made fraud possible on this scale that this was "positive assistance to fraud "...... "Short of writing 'Steal Me' on the envelopes, it is hard to see what more could be done to ensure their coming into the wrong hands".

Richard Mawrey QC, sitting as an electoral commissioner in Birmingham, found evidence of fraud in last year's city council elections that would "disgrace a banana republic". The elections, where several Labour candidates bucked the trend to win, were dogged by claims of intimidation, bribery, "vote-buying', impersonation and even the creation of a "vote-forging factory".

       The Labour cabinet was subsequently widely described as having considered making the system more secure but decided against it because they would lose votes. The Tories and LibDems (later shown in Eastleigh) also have long established political machines and aren't all that much more interested in stopping fraud than Labour. Originally postal votes were only available to those who were provably incapacitated and there was no corruption problem.

     Postal votes will not be nearly as important during general elections because the political machines are spread much thinner and also because there will be a longer and genuine campaign. We cannot know exactly how many of these votes went to which parties. If all of them had been Labour their ballot box vote would have been 4,000, putting them just behind UKIP but, attractive though that is, I don't think it can be so. Labour won fair and square. But they cannot take much heart because had it been a general election, as it will soon, it would have been much closer. And had it been conducted as honestly as elections used to be, closer still.

====================
* For those Beeboids who prefer picking up politically incorrect phrases by UKIP members to broadcasting any actual discussion of real political issues I would point out that the description of our electoral system as "would disgrace a banana republic" was not mine but the judge's. 

Dealing with the First Minister's claims that Scotland can share sterling with the UK despite separation, Mr Osborne said that "people need to know that is not going to happen".