Author: dseimer1234

*Authored by Cody5200*

Merely days ago the Nature Revolution movement delivered the following ultimatum to parliament.

“To save our planet, we demand that the following policies are immediately enacted:

• Net Zero to be met by 2025
• An immediate ban on diesel cars
• Only two flights per person a year.
• An Environmental Citizens Assembly that will hold the government to account on matters of the environment.
• The end of nuclear energy and the removal of nuclear weaponry in the United Kingdom by 2030.”

The sheer absurdity of these proposals becomes clear the moment one is to examine the statistics behind them. As the latest round of arrests shows there are potentially thousands willing to go along with them and carry out acts of violence. The shadow cabinet included.

The seemingly most insane of the proposals is Net-Zero by 2025. 25 years earlier than most scientific recommendations. The proposal would force us to axe 20% of our emissions every year. The Blair government’s 20% pledge shows us that such a feat is not within the realm of reality. Even if such a reduction was achievable the costs of it would far outweigh any benefits. The scale of emission reductions required would equal the emissions of the entire business sector.

There are 39 million registered vehicles in Britain as of the writing of this article, about 10% of them are electric. Were the government to ban every single fossil-fuel vehicle this instant about 35 million vehicles would have to be replaced overnight. To put this number in perspective all manufacturers in the United Kingdom roughly 1.3 million passenger vehicles a year. To replace even a fraction of these automobiles one would have to import millions of vehicles, spiking CO2 emissions and exacerbating the climate crisis. More harrowingly though even the combined US and EU car production would be insufficient to replace these vehicles, especially not if hybrid and low-emission cars were to be banned as per the original demand.

If not cars then what? One might be inclined to ask. Our public transit and rail networks cannot tackle the quadrupling of passengers overnight even with billions being thrown at them. While flights would be restricted to 2 flights per person per year so any hope of commuting by air is nothing more than a pipe dream. Millions of people would suddenly find themselves confined to their towns and villages as our delicate transport network would face paralysis never before seen.

Most worryingly of all the phaseout of nuclear power and fossil fuels would leave Britain with at best a third of its current electricity generation, thus forcing authorities to ration electricity in a manner eerily reminiscent of the Three Day Week. Except that this time it would take years if not decades to overhaul the power grid to the NR’s liking.

All the while Britain’s enemies would have an incredibly easy time subverting our interests as the NR’s demands see the vast majority of MoD vehicles mothballed or scrapped including most combat vessels and Trident.

The drop in quality of life brought about by the fulfillment of this dictate would be an apocalypse of its own. Millions of people including children would go without food as the draconian restrictions would shrink the food supply to unsustainable levels. Electricity would become a prized commodity or perhaps even a thing of the past. Ailments once curable would become the new grim reaper as the NHS would lack the funds and medication required. Any semblance of civil rights and freedom would have to be crushed by an Orwellian state to impose this sort of misery upon us.

All in all the policy peddled by the Nature Revolution movement would at the least be as bad as the climate change they are trying to protect and at worst would force biblical amounts of chaos and destruction upon the United Kingdom and yet we have seen elected politicians at least partly embrace these destructive policies…

*This article was written by the Events team and published on request*

The Co-Leader of the Green Party HKNorman was fined £1500 and ordered to clean up Winston Churchill’s statue after being found Guilty of Vandalism during yesterday’s Nature Revolution protests.

Following their arrest yesterday, HKNorman pleaded Not Guilty at the City of London Magistrates Court to the charge of vandalism. 

The prosecution produced mobile phone footage that was uploaded to social media website Twitter showing HKNorman graffiting the statue of Winston Churchill before being grabbed by two members of the Met Police and swiftly being arrested.

HKNorman’s defence stated that the evidence was not clear enough to show it was the Co-Leader of the Green Party committing the offence. 

The Judge found that HKNorman was guilty of vandalism and handed £1500 fine plus an order to clean the statue or pay the additional costs. He expressed his disappointment in the former MP stating “A leader of a political party should hold themselves with dignity and decorum.”

“You let yourself and your party down by committing such a childish act in a protest which was meant to be about the environment.

“I hope you will learn from this and that you will think twice before committing such an act again.”

Labour Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment Kate Kawhena was also arrested during the protest and released on bail during the evening. In a comment, the Met Police confirmed this was the case and that she is being investigated for aggravated assault.

Results here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YuhAprH2LPdPeOD_D0sycxIy9trzYtuu6xbX_udfpCQ/edit

Blurple is set to hold 56 seats after all results are announced tomorrow night, according to the Telegraph-Yougov exit poll.

The projections, conducted jointly between the two organisations, predicts the Conservatives to drop 4 to 33, the LPUK to gain 8 to 23, Labour to fall 2 to 22, Lib Dems to gain 5 to 15 with the smaller parties of TPM, DRF and PUP getting 3, 3 and 1 respectively.

The big story of the poll is the unprecedented surge in seats for the Libertarians, who make one of the largest single term seat gains for a party in recent memory. The LPUK are set to take a large number of list seats, as well as gaining both North East constituencies from the Conservatives, Gloucs+ Wilts and Bedfordshire+Hertfordshire from the Lib Dems with Clydeside and Leeds+Wakefield from Labour. 

The Conservatives will be quite happy with the projected results, as the party loses just 4 from pre-election and 1 from the last election results, having gained three during the term from their unofficial merger with the NUP. Following 6 months of significant attacks, and a period where their place at the top of British politics looked under significant threat, they emerge with well over 30 seats. The projections see then gaining the constituency seats of West Yorkshire, Dorset, Cornwall+Devon and London West, while losing Northumbria and Tyne+Wear.

A disastrous end of term mixed with a disastrous campaign sees Labour in third place, with the party’s path to power now appearing to be entirely cut off. This election will feel like a huge missed opportunity for the party, who just 2 months ago were leading the polls and looking like a party with serious governmental ambitions. ARTBs leadership is likely to come under question following this result, as the party faces a struggle to even take up OO. The party is not set to make any constituency gains this election, with Clydeside, Hampshire South, Dorset, Leeds and Glamorgan all being lost, with even their Leader ARTB’s seat of Merseyside being classed as a “tossup, leaning Lab”.

The Lib Dems very active campaigning has worked according to the poll, as the party makes a gain 5 seats to 15. All of their gains come from list seats, as the party is actually set to lose 3 constituencies while gaining just 2, Yorkshire North and Glamorgan+Gwent.

It’s a disappointing poll for the three smaller parties, with the DRF and TPM losing seats and the PUP failing to make some of their expected gains. The DRF fall from 8 seats to 3, holding 2 London lists as well as a Northern Irish seat. The TPM’s seat share is halved to 3 as well, with the party taking lists in SE England, SW England and the Northwest. The PUPs strategy of significant focus on the East of England doesn’t appear to have paid off, with the party only taking 1 seat, a list in that area. The party’s decision to endorse TPM on the South West list was a poor one, as they look set to miss out on a list seat there.

7 seats are classified as “toss ups” under our projections. They have been assigned to the party most likely to win them, however these seats are likely to be very close contests. Among them are Cumbria and Lancashire North, where the Foreign Secretary InfernoPlato faces a stiff challenge from LPUK Housing Spokesperson RMSteve, and Merseyside, where the Labour Leader ARichTeaBiscuit and the LPUK’s model-elleeit are competing in a highly competitive race.

Under these results, the only potential coalitions with a majority are Blurple with 56 or a BroadRight coalition of CON-LPUK-LD with 71 seats. Either coalition would have significant and safe majorities. Another potential alliance, the return of CleggCo, is just short of a majority with 48 seats, and could also be an attractive prospect. For the Left, a LibLab coalition would have 37, barely ahead of the Tories on their own, while a BroadLeft of LAB-TPM-DRF-PUP is not a viable government as they have just 29 seats.

Written by RMSteve, Baron of Amesbury

Over the last couple of days, we have seen many advertisements and newspaper articles coming from the Conservative Party that lambaste their opponents for various policies. Attacks on opposition party members on taxes, on defence, and other aspects. With all of this, the Tories have launched a boisterous offense against the other parties, especially the major parties such as the Libertarian Party UK and the Labour Party; however, one must ask how successful the Conservative government in the last term has been.

    Let’s begin with their most expensive pet project. Ambercare is the nationwide childcare program installed by the Tory government, which, in its original design, would have cost the taxpayers around £55 billion to get off the ground and implement across the United Kingdom. The Conservatives did not cost this figure and had a massive blackhole in their budget, they then proceeded to stick cotton wool in their ears when voting on a motion based on official OECD figures. After realising that Ambercare even by their massive underestimate was unaffordable they decided to change tack and cut funding to this programme. The Tories themselves realised their position was untenable.

The Tories voted to increase taxes on the people of this country despite having promised that only the wealthy would pay for Ambercare. The reality is that working people paid in income tax, VAT and sin taxes. In the Blurple government they were for a tax freeze and then after the election against. Now they say they want a tax freeze but who on earth should believe them?
The Tories attack Labour on the economy but teamed up with them to raise VAT meaning the average household will be worse off by £359. They are no longer the party of low taxes and low spending that they were under Thatcher. After assaulting working families with tax rises, they have the gall to think the British public should be grateful for their tax freeze, they are promising not to make you even worse off than they have. What we need is a LPUK government to reverse this and some knock off pledge from opportunists who haven’t even bothered to cost it. Under the Conservatives the deficit will rise over 5 years as we forgo tax revenue they did not account for and their one-off revenue streams run out. It seems like they have given up on fiscal responsibility.

The Conservative Party have constantly voted no on legislation that would have protected the people of the United Kingdom, their freedoms, and individuality, voted no on policies that expanded devolved nations’ authority to rule on various matters, and voted no to the rest of the Parliament holding their government to account. The Tories opposed the increased presence of judicial review to oversee the process of application by law enforcement for search and arrest warrants. They opposed a bill that would ensure police were unable to use DNA evidence that was involuntarily given to them, thus securing the right of privacy to the people. They even opposed a bill that would devolve justice and policing affairs to the Welsh government through referendum. Finally, they have attempted to cover up their erroneous practices and misdemeanours. They voted no to a motion in Parliament that contained economic data and numbers from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to avoid scrutiny from institutions. They were recently found out to have members disguised as an online fact-check organization who used their reputation to constantly support the Tory government even in their most error-ridden statements. Once found out, Parliament tabled a motion to condemn the government for such practices, to which they voted no to.

In conclusion, the Conservative Party aggressively denigrates their opponents through mocking campaign posters and sniping speeches; however, they themselves are not angels and have failed Britain time after time, attempted to shut down others from passing legislation beneficial to the British people, and have consistently covered up their mistakes and misdemeanours and attempted to circumvent parliamentary and national scrutiny. The Tories should look to clear the rot from their internal institutions before they attempt to go on the offensive.

Written by RMSteve, Baron of Amesbury

It has been two days since the release of all of the manifestos of all the parties participating in the 14th General Election for the Parliament of the United Kingdom and already comments have started arriving from people on all sides either praising or lambasting the various election plans. One of the most heavily ridiculed was the Labour Party’s manifesto, which saw terrible policies, shoddy textual styles, and inaccuracies. As they’ve done in the past, Labour has focused their assault plan on business; however, this time, it’s the small businesses being targeted.

Under their tax system section, Labour states that they would be introducing a new corporate tax on family-owned businesses of 17.5% of their revenue. They claim that they understand the nature of family-owned businesses and are making taxes less than the amount ordinary corporations have to face, but that does nothing at all to help the plight of small businesses and their owners. Already suffering from the massive burdens of the various taxes imposed by governments in the past as well as mortgages, rental costs, insurance, and other fees, the Labour Party is added another boulder on the back of the common people through “corporate” tax, despite the fact that many of the businesses they are targeting do not have the money, the manpower, or the capacity to be labeled as “corporations”. Governments have failed to demarcate a specific threshold for the separation of small businesses from large corporations, and Labour is attempting to implement that to tax people, not billionaires, but ordinary, common people, for 17.5% of their revenue when they are already struggling to pay the electricity and water bills, struggling to pay for life, automobile, and property insurance, struggling to pay for mortgages and rents, struggling to feed for their families and educate their children. 

On top of this, Labour also announced in their manifesto that they would be seeking to raise the minimum wage across the country to £12 per hour as well as expansion of paid holiday and compensation for holiday time not taken. On the surface, this seems like a very good policy, one that promotes the welfare of the employees and lower class of the United Kingdom. However, a large corporation with millions and even billions of pounds of net worth and billions of dollars of revenue a day can easily afford to pay for these increases and expansions; the middle class and small business owners, instead, are being whipped for this. Family-owned businesses that make only hundreds or, at the very most, a couple of thousand of pounds a year can hardly be able to pay for the additional increases in salary and compensation for vacation. Furthermore, the task of determining the minimum wage has long been in the hands of This is the Labour Party just piling on burden after burden upon the backs of the common folk and the small businesses of the United Kingdom.

Governments in the past, both Labour and Conservative, but especially Labour, have focused on restraining businesses and holding them accountable, to varying degrees, but this Labour manifesto displays a frightening new front on their warpath: the small business. Small businesses are absolutely essential to the health of local economies and, thus, the economy of the United Kingdom as a whole. They are the bones that, when combined, give structure to a vibrant and successful nationwide economy. Breaking the bones breaks the body, and if Labour rises, they will shatter the bones and make the economy collapse, causing irreparable damage to our economic strength and our viability as a legitimate foreign trading partner. This is just one of the follies of the Labour Party’s manifesto but this is, to me and to many people, the most dangerous and terrifying aspect of their policies.

Labour candidate for West London Vincendt appears to have poured fuel on the fire of a recent campaign statement, where the candidate said that Labour would increase NHS spending by “200 billion”.

While originally assumed by most that this was a misstatement, and that the candidate intended to say “to 200 billion”, a new comment from the West London Candidate has put some doubt to that theory.

Vincendt, in a response to LPUK Deputy Leader Seimer1234, said “Akko told me to do it”, in reference to Vincendts 200 billion pledge. While unclear if this is yet another misstatement from the candidate facing the Home Secretary, it is yet another example of a party failing to get their campaign message organised.

A “fully-costed manifesto” has been one of the phrases of the election so far, with the Conservatives and Libertarians making their costings a campaign centre-piece. However, the Tories have come under pressure from their Libertarian counterparts over an apparent budgetary “black hole”.

The gap in public finances under the Conservatives appears to come from so-called “one-off” revenue sources such as the sale of rolling stock, to pay for projects such as the 11 billion pound increase for MoD spending. Assuming the government continues to spend 2.5% past the first year of this one off revenue, it will cause the UK to go into a deficit.

Another problem outlined by Libertarian Leader Friedmanite19 comes from the income tax freeze proposed under the Tory Economic platform. This would cut government revenue by a sum of £9.57billion by 2024-25, as the Conservatives are not clear about adjusting the income thresholds for “fiscal drag”, when inflation increases the income of the public meaning they pay a higher rate of taxation. If they intend to raise the thresholds with inflation, it could cost even more.

LPUK Leader Friedmanite19 addressed the press on this issue in a statement yesterday morning, saying “as things stand their plan is far from credible and their numbers do not add up”. He also said he “hopes the Conservatives can outline how they wish to actually fund these pledges”

The overall cost of the budget mistakes from the Tories manifesto is unclear, due to a lack of answers from the Conservatives surrounding the length of time the country will receive revenue from the privatisation of the water sector. However, what is clear is that under the current Conservative plans, the country would be facing a not insignificant deficit.

This op-ed was written by BigTrev-98, LPUK MP for South Yorkshire.

So I would personally align and extol myself with the virtues of liberalism. The freedom of choice, to decide what you consume, where and when, the freedom of speech, to say as you wish provided you are not doing so to incite or inspire fundamentalism, and economic freedom, where you are unperturbed by statism and are free to prosper as you wish, all of these values close to my heart and all of these values I wear proudly. 

I believe there is a place in my party, the Libertarian Party UK, for such a socially progressive, economically erudite identity. Indeed, we pride ourselves as a party just as much on the things we disagree with one another on, as we do the things we agree on fairly squarely. Active debate with respect is something that our political discourse sorely needs, and I firmly believe that a liberalised stance to such discourse is the only way to deliver it. I do believe that other parties could carry this cross equally to the LPUK, although not as effectively.

Perhaps the most natural beacon for such a move outside our own ranks is the Liberal Democrats. They are led by a social libertarian, /u/CountBrandenburg, they have a strong record for strong progressive social values and fiscal responsibility, and they are very much of the predilection that it is not wise to push and cajole your members to the very edge, much as some other parties of the past, who deemed themselves as liberal, may have done. However, I believe that such an opportunity has fallen amiss, for one simple fact: every other party in the political arena today has fallen foul of the sickening attack of paternalism on the freedoms we ought to enjoy. 

I do not believe that anyone in our political walk of life deems addiction to be a non-issue, indeed, well-funded programmes to tackle addiction and to facilitate rehabilitation (in the case of alcohol, recreational drug or gambling dependency) are welcomed by this writer. We do have a moral obligation to ensure that the tools are there for people to confront and defeat their demons. The objection I have on this matter is that paternalistic tendencies rely on the fact that one size fits all: if one person is an addict, another surely will be too. So the perceived vice is stigmatised and moralised out of the realm of public acceptability. 

My own view perhaps lies in the middle of this. By all means, we should provide the means for individuals to conquer their addictions wherever possible, but not everyone who has a drink, lights up or places a bet is an addict, and they deserve the freedom of choice, carefully balanced by the current state of public information filmography where consumers are well aware of the dangers. The current status quo appears to be hinging on a near-puritanical destruction of such perceived vices, yet it is far too wet, far too slick around the ears, to openly vouch for that.

Instead we get a lashing of the milquetoast. “Don’t worry, gambling addicts, we’ll stick a built in ‘NO BETTING’ timer on our app that you can activate or deactivate yourself at will! That will totally lead to you tackling your demons and won’t instead just draw you back into a vicious cycle by which we can deem your actions ungodly and relentlessly purge the source of your addiction to teach others not to enjoy themselves with fallacies which others take to obvious excesses!” This does nothing to handle addiction, its merely a faux-platitude which adds lashings of ginger beer and egg and cress sandwiches to an already watery picnic of “vice management”. 

I therefore think it is time to firmly grip the crux of liberal paternalism, and to wring the lies out of it. Freedom of choice, but only if you make the right choice. Freedom of speech, but only if you advocate for consumption of the right substances and don’t succumb to recreational wrongthink. Economic freedom, but god forbid you dare to spend your money on a prospective vice, for we’ll tax you up to the eyeballs!

Frankly, this is beyond the buzzword of the nanny state – it’s a “get back in your box, grandad” state. Anyone who dares to disagree is an old fuddy-duddy who wants smoke-filled bingo halls and casual racism and to give a barmaid a good slap on the behind for good measure. This isn’t the case at all – we know that the past was no halcyon era for those who consumed such substances recreationally with no want or weal of the prospective dangers, and came to see excess as a saddening way of life, as evidenced by the sad demise of Messrs George Harrison and Best. 

But that isn’t the alternative you are presented with now – we have public health campaigns, we have methods to tackle addiction should people seek that help, all we need now is to give those who can partake in the management of vices safely and securely the opportunity to do so without stigma or unnecessary reproach. I deeply fear that the bulk of political parties that the electorate put their faith in have irretrievably lost sight of that message.

*Written by Maroiogog, Labour Shadow NI Secretary*

Recently the Conservative Government submitted a bill with the intent to devolve control over Corporation Tax rates to the Executive.

This has been something that me and the then Executive discussed and were planning on doing back when I was Secretary at the end of the Sunrise Government. It is something that almost all parties running in the recent Stormont elections had in their manifesto, and likewise with the last Westminster election. It is indeed a move that is widely backed amongst the political spectrum by many, myself included.

What I am here to criticize is not the idea present in the bill but rather the circumstances surrounding its introduction.

Just this evening  (at the time of writing) we got the news that there will be an Executive. This bill was submitted a few days ago, after the first rounds of talks between Parties to form an Executive had fallen through and the Northern Ireland Secretary’s mediation had been requested.

The first glaring issue is that nobody in the North was informed, or talked to about the bill.

The Devolution of Corporation tax is not something that can just be done through a bill, but there also needs to be related discussion regarding how funding arrangements for the Executive will vary as a result of the measure. A whole set of details need to be agreed upon so that the Northern Irish institutions are well aware of how they can use their power upon the corporation tax. For example, who will collect the revenue from the tax and what effects would a change to its rate have on the block grant are the two most glaring examples of things which ought to be clarified in advance of the submission of any proposal.

The reason so many parties support the move to Devolve Corporation tax is so that the Executive can use it to make Northern Ireland a more attractive place to do business. It is obvious to anyone that it cannot do it if doesn’t know the practical aspects related to the implementation, making the whole thing useless.

There is also another dilemma, the fact that trying to alter a Devolution settlement without the consent of either the people or their representatives set an awful precedent, especially given the complicated history of Northern Ireland. Devolution shouldn’t be something where there can exist a sort of “implied consent”, even in a situation like this where the stance of any Executive may seem obvious the step of asking should always be taken. Setting the precedent of avoiding this step now may lead to unwanted consequences later, it should be avoided.

But the lack of contacting relevant people by the Government was staggering. The Northern Irish Secretary informed that the bill was submitted without his knowledge. It is particularly telling about how this Government is run when cabinet members aren’t informed about the submission of bills relevant to their briefs. It seems as though those at the top do not understand why there is a cabinet spot dedicated to Northern Ireland and have yet to understand what their job is. This is of course very saddening for all those who, like me, believe a productive working relationship between any devolved Governments and Westminster to be key. I would urge the Prime Minister to get a grip of the internal workings of his own Cabinet, and ensure proper scrutiny is given to potential bills.

The Tories withdrew the bill earlier today, a save on the goal line if you will. Although they realized their mistakes eventually we must ask ourselves, can we trust a Government which acts like this to work in the best interest of Devolution and of Northern Ireland. A Government that with one hand sends their Secretary so try and find a solution to the Executive crisis and with the other submits a bill behind his back without proper scrutiny of any of the parties it would affect should ask itself questions surrounding its own work ethic and procedures.

*This Letter was organised by the Times newspaper group.*

To the Conservative Press Office,

We, the undersigned press organizations, are expressing concern about the abrupt removal of jgm0228 from the Government Press Office.

The maintenance of free and open journalism requires politicians to be accountable to the general public. The ability for press organizations to question politicians must be maintained.

As a result, the actions taken by the government pose a risk to this principle. The government claimed that journalists who ask questions and write articles would be provided with the ability to access the press room. By removing those who meet that burden, there is a significant risk that the message is sent that those who write stories that inconvenience those in power will face punishment.

We therefore ask that an apology be given, a reinstatement of press permissions be issued, and a promise be made that journalists in the government press room will be treated with the respect they deserve.

Signed,

The Times

The Telegraph

The Independent

Model Unfiltered

The Sun

The Scotsman