I went to the hustings run by the Glasgow Skeptics last night. Not nearly as exciting as last time but that's ok. Speakers were
Jamie Gardner for the Tories - fairly young and clearly thinks about and can discuss policies.
Cat Styler for Labour - intro speech concentrated on promising her party's police is "jobs, jobs, jobs" but reticent about saying how, except for more windmill subsidies (which she knows perfectly well destroy 3.7 jobs for every one created). Normal Labour bull.
David Coburn, UKIP - when, in the intro, he spoke about how disgraceful it is Scotland's education system is being allowed to fail, you could see he meant it.
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheik, SNP - she is good looking and projects well. She put the SNP case, which was really about independence capably.
Maggie Chapman, Green - none of the wit, or even understanding of what they are saying, that Patrick Harvie has.
George Lyon, LibDem - also made his speech on jobs; also named renewables subsidies alone, as the way to produce them; also knows this is a lie.
---------------------------------
With that many we did not get through many questions. One about CAGW which all the other parties agreed was the most dangerous problem facing humanity. David was conciliatory on the issue whereas I would have pointed out that there has been no warming since about 1995 and the whole thing is a fraud.
There was also discussion on nuclear power in which Labour, Tory and LibDem all said they now support nuclear. Since this was part of why I was expelled from the LDs that seems improbable and in fact what they all mean by "support" is that they won't absolutely ban it so long as the cost is increased 50 fold by government parasitism; it isn't going to be working till they are long out of office; and they still get to support windmills with vast amounts of cash, including profits of nuclear. David spoke in favour of current nuclear until we have fusion, which I suspect is a long time off.
And the EU & Scotland's membership where lines were drawn as expected. The Tory scored a hit saying that an separate Scotland would lose the UK share of the rebate and have to put VAT on books and newspapers and that he doubted even the SNP would deny that - and Tasmina kept silent.
And there was the inevitable one about UKIP's "racist" wanting limits on immigration, which gave an excuse for everybody to gang up, though the Tory said no other party would support unlimited immigration, to be immediately contradicted by the Green, who said her party does (I know they hate the British people but what does she think hundreds of millions of immigrants would do to the environment). In fact Mr Gardner was wrong and thinking about it overnight this is what I think should be the definitive UKIP answer:
UKIP's immigration policy is to limit it to 50,000 a year, which is the same as every British government until the Messiah of Socialism, Tony Blair took power. Anybody who says UKIP is racist must either be on record as saying every single British government up to Saint Tony's reign is racist or owe us a public apology. The Tories official promise at the last election was to cut immigration to "10s of thousands" which averages lower than our promise. The difference is that they knew at the time that this was a lie. As long as we are in the EU we cannot control immigration and all the parties know it, and promises to do so are false. If the difference between UKIP and all the other parties is that we mean our promises, I don't see that as something to apologise for.
I would also like the other parties to say what, if our 50,000 limit is "racist" what precise limit on immigration they, should the EU ever allow, they would want? At least the greens have the honesty to say they want unlimited immigration, though they do not explain how our NHS would hold up when 6,000 million people across the world would have the right to come and use it. Immigration is a serious issue and deserves honest answers.
------------------------------------------------------------
Then to the bar. I would like to acknowledge 2 things about the "Skeptics". Firstly that comparing this to the Brian's Big "Debate" hustings on Friday, in which everybody interrupted everybody and sounded like cats in a sack, this was conducted firmly and politely. Secondly I have suggested before that I believed the "Skeptics" were a government funded fakecharity - I don't now think this is so. I wish they were willing to allow the entry of scepticism about catastrophic global warming and think it is wrong to use the title and claim openmindedness while they won't even look at the evidence, but appear to have reached that, entirely wrong, decision without payment.
Finally I would like to mention something George Lyons said - that this was the largest EU election hustings he had attended. My estimate about 70.
Jamie Gardner for the Tories - fairly young and clearly thinks about and can discuss policies.
Cat Styler for Labour - intro speech concentrated on promising her party's police is "jobs, jobs, jobs" but reticent about saying how, except for more windmill subsidies (which she knows perfectly well destroy 3.7 jobs for every one created). Normal Labour bull.
David Coburn, UKIP - when, in the intro, he spoke about how disgraceful it is Scotland's education system is being allowed to fail, you could see he meant it.
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheik, SNP - she is good looking and projects well. She put the SNP case, which was really about independence capably.
Maggie Chapman, Green - none of the wit, or even understanding of what they are saying, that Patrick Harvie has.
George Lyon, LibDem - also made his speech on jobs; also named renewables subsidies alone, as the way to produce them; also knows this is a lie.
---------------------------------
With that many we did not get through many questions. One about CAGW which all the other parties agreed was the most dangerous problem facing humanity. David was conciliatory on the issue whereas I would have pointed out that there has been no warming since about 1995 and the whole thing is a fraud.
There was also discussion on nuclear power in which Labour, Tory and LibDem all said they now support nuclear. Since this was part of why I was expelled from the LDs that seems improbable and in fact what they all mean by "support" is that they won't absolutely ban it so long as the cost is increased 50 fold by government parasitism; it isn't going to be working till they are long out of office; and they still get to support windmills with vast amounts of cash, including profits of nuclear. David spoke in favour of current nuclear until we have fusion, which I suspect is a long time off.
And the EU & Scotland's membership where lines were drawn as expected. The Tory scored a hit saying that an separate Scotland would lose the UK share of the rebate and have to put VAT on books and newspapers and that he doubted even the SNP would deny that - and Tasmina kept silent.
And there was the inevitable one about UKIP's "racist" wanting limits on immigration, which gave an excuse for everybody to gang up, though the Tory said no other party would support unlimited immigration, to be immediately contradicted by the Green, who said her party does (I know they hate the British people but what does she think hundreds of millions of immigrants would do to the environment). In fact Mr Gardner was wrong and thinking about it overnight this is what I think should be the definitive UKIP answer:
UKIP's immigration policy is to limit it to 50,000 a year, which is the same as every British government until the Messiah of Socialism, Tony Blair took power. Anybody who says UKIP is racist must either be on record as saying every single British government up to Saint Tony's reign is racist or owe us a public apology. The Tories official promise at the last election was to cut immigration to "10s of thousands" which averages lower than our promise. The difference is that they knew at the time that this was a lie. As long as we are in the EU we cannot control immigration and all the parties know it, and promises to do so are false. If the difference between UKIP and all the other parties is that we mean our promises, I don't see that as something to apologise for.
I would also like the other parties to say what, if our 50,000 limit is "racist" what precise limit on immigration they, should the EU ever allow, they would want? At least the greens have the honesty to say they want unlimited immigration, though they do not explain how our NHS would hold up when 6,000 million people across the world would have the right to come and use it. Immigration is a serious issue and deserves honest answers.
------------------------------------------------------------
Then to the bar. I would like to acknowledge 2 things about the "Skeptics". Firstly that comparing this to the Brian's Big "Debate" hustings on Friday, in which everybody interrupted everybody and sounded like cats in a sack, this was conducted firmly and politely. Secondly I have suggested before that I believed the "Skeptics" were a government funded fakecharity - I don't now think this is so. I wish they were willing to allow the entry of scepticism about catastrophic global warming and think it is wrong to use the title and claim openmindedness while they won't even look at the evidence, but appear to have reached that, entirely wrong, decision without payment.
Finally I would like to mention something George Lyons said - that this was the largest EU election hustings he had attended. My estimate about 70.
No comments:
Post a Comment