Any Scottish constitution should liberate us, not enslave us

New ThinkScotland article on the danger of us waking up with a collectivist constitution. Please put any comments there.
UKIP Policy Proposal #1
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   I have written on ThinkScotland before about the purpose of constitutions. I incline to the view that a constitution is necessary primarily to say what the limits on government power are.

   As Heinlein put it "Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom - if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting - but I would be frightened if you took less than a year....

But in writing your constitution let me invite attention to the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative" Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do."

   The SNP and the Scottish political establishment seem to consider the opposite. That a constitution should exist to give the power to the state and indeed duty to do ever more, and to remove the possibility of us objecting. This is the precise opposite of the principles on which Anglo-Saxon politics have worked since at least Magna Carta. 

   This is what that SNP's blockbuster promises (Page 353) :

European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), would be embedded in the written constitution.

Beyond those there are certain provisions that the present Scottish Government will propose for consideration by the constitutional convention:

 ■■ equality of opportunity and entitlement to live free  of discrimination and prejudice
 ■■ entitlement to public services and to a standard of living that, as a minimum, secures dignity and self-respect and provides the opportunity for people to realise their full potential both as individuals and as members of wider society
 ■■ protection of the environment and the sustainable use of Scotland’s natural resources to embed Scotland’s commitment to sustainable development and tackling climate change
 ■■ a ban on nuclear weapons being based in Scotland
 ■■ controls on the use of military force and a role for an independent Scottish Parliament in approving and monitoring its use
 ■■ the existence and status of local government
 ■■ rights in relation to healthcare, welfare and pensions
 ■■ children’s rights
 ■■ rights concerning other social and economic matters,  such as the right to education and a Youth Guarantee  on employment, education or training

   Now most of those sound nice, except the ECHR of which we have actual experience and we know how it means enforced votes for prisoners and interpretations of words which are both unusual and have extended government control of ordinary people, usually in the false name of "minority rights".

   Lets look at what they mean, and sometimes what they could well mean if interpreted enthusiastically by a European court that works as it has.

* Equality sounds good but it means the state has a constitutional duty to interfere in our lives any time somebody complains. Does that mean people being sued if results don't produce the "right" number of women or minorities - it does in the USA where their Constitution has been "reinterpreted" to find such a right even though it isn't written.

A few days ago an independent EU candidate was arrested for reading out a Churchill speech about Islam (don't worry you didn't miss it - its only news on the BBC when people get arrested in Russian churches for insulting Christianity - free speech arrests in Britain don't count). However at least in the current Britain this guy will have an opportunity of a trial. Under the SNP's constitution he could make no defence.

* This is even worse. What income, lower than the national average ensures "self-respect"?  In which case this is gives the state a right and duty to ensure absolute income equality - not even Mao managed that.

* This makes the catastrophic global warming lie and the SNP's promise of "100% renewable by 2020" the rigorously enforced, unshakable law. To call this economic suicide is greatly understating.

* I'm a bit agnostic about a separate Scotland having nuclear weapons so not to worried about this "leftist" shibboleth.

* Any independent state has this in some form. This is just a token blow against NATO. A separate Scotland would be silly to go to war with anybody anyway.

* Local government will "exist". what does that mean or guarantee?

* If the Scots £ fails to keep parity with the UK one, these rights would become impossible to maintain at parity with UK values. that would mean Holyrood would have no lawful alternative to increasing taxes or printing money. Both are obviously economic suicide but any lawful alternative is excluded.

* Current practice suggests this means the "every kid has a social worker with power over them" legislation and probably an extension of it. Scotland already has twice as many kids per capita in council "care" - the results of which consistently mean that when they grow up they are at the wrong end of any measure of human failure. "Children's rights" in this instance do not mean any rights for children but merely the right of social workers to build bureaucratic empires on their bodies.

* A catch-all. everything will be forbidden except where it is mandatory and subsidised.

      Elsewhere, just for political correctness, they promise that a requirement to give 0.7% of gdp, rising to a world beating 1% annually, will be another of these constitutional requirements "which alterith not". Though, as I wrote here previously, the evidence is that "aid" money is almost entirely wasted. Another example, like windmillery that the SNP's "nationalist pride" consists of being proud to be able to show eurocrats and the international apparatchiksthey can have the state remove the absolute maximum of wealth from the Scots people and nothing else. This has had virtually no discussion and unless I miss my guess, will be no more popular here than the Godfrey Bloom
incident proved it wasn't down south. But as with the scots media generally, the issue doesn't even get aired.

     I am afraid the statists have stolen a considerable march on this issue. ALL the discussion I have seen of constitutions has been by "leftists" within the political elite. This is a flat repudiation of the entire liberal Enlightenment tradition which was once, correctly, the glory and much of the reason for success of Scotland.

     Even if we vote No we may expect these to be raised as part of the "new powers" that Westminster has shown some inclination to give. That would be new powers purely for those in charge not for us.

     The paper is also imprecise about how this constitution would be set up. "One of the first and most fundamental tasks of the parliament will be to establish the process for preparing Scotland's first written constitution".  Others may be included but, certainly as long as one party has  majority, I assume it will be limited to those and such as those. As a member of UKIP (the street fascist attack on us having been publicly supported by Salmond & having been 100% censored by the BBC state owned  broadcaster from speaking in the referendum "debate") I am not anticipating even being asked what sort of constitution I would like. Even if, as polling on the upcoming EU election suggests possible, we replace the Tories as Scotland's 3rd party this May.

    Presumably between the independence vote and the adoption of the constitution Holyrood would vote through some Articles of Association (as the USA did) which would turn out to reflect what the SNP want anyway. The example there is Blair's evisceration of the Lords on the promise it was only provisional till they worked out how to create an effective second chamber - for which we are still waiting.

   Noticeably absent from the Scotland's Future guide is any mention of us getting a referendum on our constitution. That looks like stitch up. This is the same political class that boasts that the, after our pseudo0independence, Scots people will not be subjected to the worry of a referendum on our membership of the EU as the poor benighted English will.

   Free market proponents of separation generally say that after it happened Scotland would be forced into the real world. The lunacies of our current leaders would not be maintained. That without the safety net of Westminster the Scottish people would vote, sharply, for the sort of traditional liberalism that is working worldwide. The problem is that constitutions are designed to keep particular values in place.

   To remove the duty of ensuring we have the world's most expensive electricity and highest taxes would require junking the brand new document - probably requiring at least a 2/3rds majority and a lot of time. Meanwhile we would be stuck with an economy with all the freedom, charm and success of North Korea.

    Perhaps I should join the "debate" and say what sort of constitution I would go for to maximise freedom and growth. Any bets that I could come up with a constitution limiting government interference and maximising freedom and economic growth that would both represent "traditional Scottish values" (going back to the Enlightenment) rather better than windmill subsidies do, and would, after any genuine uncensored "debate" would get more voting support from the Scottish people than the SNP's selection of collectivist shibboleths would.

EU Election Day - 7 Out Of 10 Scots support UKIP Policies But The BBC Keep Lying

   This morning I did my stint outside Hillhead Primary. When I turned up I was the only person there. One voter accused me of being a racist & shortly came back with a bundle of anti-UKIP posters. In due course he was replaced by a woman, whom I assume he had phoned up. She confirmed she was an SWP member so while this is rudeness and loudmouthism it clearly does not represent general opinion (see under). Later she was joined by a Green however it was amazing to see that, during one of the 2 periods of greatest voting activity, none of the serious parties had any presence. Labour used to have an organisation that could swamp any event in Glasgow. This suggests that the hollowing out of political parties has gone further than they will admit and I suspect that official membership figures (which show UKIP still marginally smaller than the LDs) depend on them still listing bas members people who left, or died a decade ago.

     Voting has been slow.

    I initially set up outside the polling station door rather than outside the school gate, we and the other parties had done during all the last elections. When I moved to the gate for higher visibility I left my trolley of posters and leaflets. In due course the SWP woman complained to the officials that this was inside the grounds. I said I was perfectly willing to move if that was the decision but pointed out that this was contrary to previous practice and wished for their assurance that the rule would be maintained and apply to everyone. I got that assurance and we will see.
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Seven out of ten Scots 'back Ukip policy on immigration'

 

Magnus Gardham

Political Editor

Wednesday 21 May 2014

UKIP policies to curb immigration, cut overseas aid and crack down on benefits claimants are backed by a majority of Scots, a surprise new poll suggests, despite the repeated failure of Nigel Farage's anti-EU party to make a breakthrough north of the Border.

UKIP policies to curb immigration, cut overseas aid and crack down on benefits claimants are backed by a majority of Scots, a surprise new poll suggests, despite the repeated failure of Nigel Farage's anti-EU party to make a breakthrough north of the Border.

 

Custom byline text: 

Magnus Gardham Political Editor

The survey shows nearly seven out of 10 Scots back stricter immigration controls, a key pledge in Ukip's manifesto for tomorrow's European elections.
Just over half want international aid budgets to be cut, while six out of 10 people say benefits should only be available to those who have lived in the UK for at least five years.

 
This Herald article was pointed out to me. Bear in mind that the Herald hate us, having run a campaign against us and even censored readers letters to exclude us so that figure cannot be an overestimate.

Yet the "balanced the law says so" BBC and the rest of the media have been running an unrelenting campaign of smears and lies against us in a manner no honestly impartial or democratic media could.

And we may expect them to continue lying and censoring to "educate the public" to accept only what Scotland's monolithic political elite want them to get. 

As an example of deliberate lying the BBC chose to report on a series of newspaper articles all alleged to be against UKIP. Peter Hitchens, who wrote one of them pointed out that his actually supported UKIP strongly, albeit with a couple of caveats which was all the BBC reported. The BBC have acknowledged their untruth and intend to apologise publicly.
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EVENING UPDATE

Just back from manning the polling station from 6 to 10. Some things worth mentioning.

1 - Yet again there was nobody from any of the main parties. The Greens had someone up till 8 but that was it. I remember, back when I was a LibDem, the Labour party owned Glasgow and when, for any election, they could overman anywhere & the other parties put up a coverage most tomes and places. Now they all leave a major poling station unsupported all day. There may be something tactical to this since it is a less important election to them than us, but even at its worst they should be using it as a training exercise for next year. It can only mean the collapse in membership of these 4 parties is massive.

2 - The attack - that is overstating it but I was accosted, in a veryin your face manner, by a young woman & 3 male friends for having that morning responded in kind to a verbal attack by her friend & her. Her friend being Green councillor Martha Wardrop. Allegedly, from her experience in such things, she knew that the law did not allow me to respond so. I invited her to make a  complaint to the counting officer and they went off to do so. When they came back they had clearly been told that there were no special rules requiring UKIP members to defer to even such exalted persons as Green councillors because she lost the heid and tore down a poster I had. I wouldn't have responded even had there not been 4 of them and as attacks go it was hardly serious. Still.

I reported it to the counting officer just for the record but that was it. I would like to make it clear that these people were completely different from the Green guy handing out leaflets when I got there and the girl who replaced him - both of them were not merely civil but pleasant. However it does show that when we scratch the surface of politics, particularly on the far "left" there are quite a lot of people for whom the principles of democracy and even free speech are quite alien.

[A couple of days ago a UKIP group was barracked in Shettleston, by the SWP (including one who explained the locals didn't want us, in an American accent) and the police had to lift some]

3 -The "racism" lie. I did meet a fair number of people who said "no way and vehemently denounced UKIP as "racist". They had 3 things in common - they could not provide any evidence for it and  didn't care - they were, without exception, white (it is a heavily Asian area and they politely took leaflets and one family made it clear they had voted for us, and probably wouldn't have if I hadn't been present and the other parties absent - they were, insofar as it is possible to tell, middle class.

Few of them were willing to say they liked the EU and didn't want a referendum or give any other coherent reason for, under no circumstances, even listening to what we said, so the "racism" lie has clearly hurt us. The BBC liars have a lot to answer for, having clearly subverted a democratic election. If a little pressure from the Sun "wot won it" was enough to swing 2-3%, as both sides claim, the censorship, slanting smearing and direct lying by the state owned broadcaster, reaching far more people and with a far stronger emotional effect, should have cost us 20-30% of the vote.

Not saying we won't win, just saying that without a totalitarian media monopoly UKIP would sweep the board. I don't think this could be easily denied even by those who don't want us to do so, indeed that Herald poll mentioned above suggests I am understating & we would get something close to 70% even in Scotland with "balanced" broadcasters.

What the Election Leaflets Say

    I got 4 election leaflets through the door. Obviously the UKIP one was perfect in every way. As for the others:

Labour  "We have no limit on our ambition for Scotland and we want no Scot to have a limit on their's"  and "Labour will build a moral economy where the national wealth is used for the benefit of all" and promises growth with "a rising standard of living". Who can be against any of that except that if equality of outcome is enforced to ensure nobody has a below average income, then nobody can have the ambition to have a higher than average one and if we have that much state control of economic outcomes we can't have the free market incentives needed for growth. So this is just cynically promising everything to everybody, knowing it is impossible. We have to make choices. I think we should choose growth because that maximises the benefit for everybody. Labour are perfectly entitled to say they prefer total equality to being better off but it is dishonest to treat us like children and promise to maximise both.

      Of course they support the EU but the only reason they can come up with for doing so is that we benefit from the British, partial, rebate!

       And they promise more foreign "aid" and to be "global leaders in tackling climate change" which is dishonestly portrayed as making money rather than destroying it.

Tories
 List a number of things they have done for us. Including to have cut Labour's deficit by 1/3rd, omitting that they promised to end it in this parliament. But most interestingly is "We've taken all the action we can under the current EU agreements to fix our immigration system". They promised at the last election to cut immigration to "10s not hundreds of thousands" which is actually a tougher promise than UKIP's to reduce it to 50,000. Of course they broke it and immigration is still well above 200,000 but the EU regulations were in place when they made the promise. This is thus a public admission that their promise was a deliberate lie - that it was  always impossible to carry out their promise while in the EU.

Greens
. It is all about nationalisation, forcing us to eat "local food", and "creating thousands of jobs in green industries" (this is a cynical lie as they know perfectly well that each subsidised "green" destroys 3.7 real jobs).

     In an accompanying "newspaper" they attack the SNP for pouring insufficient billions into windmill subsidy and define the catstrophic global warming we are supposed to be experiencing as "the defining issue of our age". On that we agree. Catastrophic warming is not happening, indeed there has been no warming, of any sort, for 19 years - it is a totalitarian lie designed to give the political elite more power and more of our money (as they all provably know or it would not be necessary to suppress discussion). It does indeed define all the parties promoting this lie.

     Sorry I didn't get anything from the SNP and LibDems.

EU Election Hustings

   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.
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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.
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        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. 

UKIP 35% Labour 24% Tory 20% Green 7% LD 6% Overall

Comres has now released yet another poll for The Independent on Sunday on the European elections voting intention. --- These figures are weighted against voting intention – those highly likely to actually go out and vote.


     Still not doing so well in Scotland where we are neck and neck with the Tories

Dalgety Bay Report "Leaked"

  Newspaper letter sent out a few days ago. That the entirely false Dalgety Bay radiation scare is promoted by SEPA and the BBC, is scandalous. The rest of the media are not willing to allow serious reporting of the facts either:

Sir,

       Once again we see the Dalgety Bay scare story being hawked around by the most scaremongering, and least reliable, parts of the media (that would be the BBC & Guardian). 

 

       The facts are that not only is there zero evidence of any harm whatsoever.

   

      Worse SEPA (nor indeed anybody else) have even attempted to deny that the very maximum radium that could have been put on that site 65 years ago was 0.25 grams, one quarter of what is there naturally and 36 billion times less than the 9 tonnes of uranium and thorium in a normal square mile of soil)

 

      Which is why SEPA have known but kept silent that the radiation at Dalgety Bay, all perfectly natural, is over 1/3rd lower than found, equally naturally, in any Aberdeen street.

 

      Rather worse that, though SEPA have publicly claimed to have found "the daughter elements of radium" as part of their collection of rocks there is only 1 such element, Radon gas, which, being an unreactive gas, could not possibly be a rock.

 

      This scare may have provided years of gainful employment to government "environmental officers" but it has cost the taxpayer many millions of £s and by planning blight, cost homeowners in Dalgety Bay at least as much. All for a scare which any honest scientist knows to be false.

 

      If it were not the Ruhr, over which a thousand times as many, with miniscule amounts of radium containing paints, were destroyed, would have been uninhabited ever since.

 

Neil Craig

 

Ref - the theoretical maximum exposure http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/dalgety-bay-what-is-theoretical-maximum.html
a range of articles on the subject, none disputed by SEPA http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Dalgety%20Bay

20 Leftist Policies From UKIP (Certainly too radical for Labour)

1 - Not being ruled by an unelected elite in Brussels - or is Tony Benn a rightist? When Neil Kinnock took over the Labour party they were committed to leaving the EU without even a referendum. Since then his wife, himself and now his son have each been making about £200 K a year out of the EU and coincidentally Labour support staying in without even a referendum.

2 - Opposing unlimited immigration of unskilled workers which pushes down wage rates for the poorest - also a world class welfare system is obviously incompatible with allowing unlimited immigration from countries with average incomes of £350 a year. - in early 20thC America mass immigration was largely opposed by the trade unions, who feared the competition and supported by business owners who wanted cheap workers. Now Swedish trade unionists, following the race riots there largely unreported by our media, have launched a nationalist campaign, urging the government to impose restrictions on immigration in certain economic areas. The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO) complained that more than two thirds of work permits issued to people from non-Nordic countries were related to economic areas where there was already high domestic labour competition

3 - Popular right of referendums.

4 - Popular right to an EU referendum - rather like the Labour one in 1974.

5 - Being progressive as in actually supporting progress and not wanting to return to the middle ages - OK UKIP is not quite as enthusiastic for technological progress as Trotsky who said "technology, which takes nothing ‘on faith’, is actually able to cut down mountains and move them" & "that in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale" but clearly Trotsky would be far closer to UKIP than to today's "environmentally aware Trotskyites with their faith based global warming scare.

6 - Against rich people passing a law to increase the price of only the sort of drink poor people buy.

7 - Opposed to fuel poverty - the other parties are all creating ever more expensive electricity through demanding we subsidise technologically backward windmills. Particularly in Scotland where Holyrood voted unanimously for the world's most expensive Climate Change Act. This is why every single honest MSP has publicly admitted supporting more fuel poverty - but only every single honest one.

8 - UKIP is opposed to poverty generally ending it in the only way it can be done. Ending recession and growing fast which can only be done with cheap energy.

9 - UKIP has been against all the illegal wars, hospital bombings, ethnic cleansing, genocide, sexual enslavement of children and dissection of living people the LabConDems did in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya.

10 - Opposing corruption, from the EU where, for over 10 years no accountants have been willing to certify their accounts to the Forth bridge where £2 bn is going walkabout

11 - Opposed to a state enforced licence fee to pay for the BBC a corrupt and dishonest state propaganda organisation masquerading as news.

12 - "the practical purpose of politics is to keep the populace scared and eager to be led by frightening them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" - as Mencken said so UKIP aren't practical politicians but then neither can any idealists be, on left or right.

13 - Opposed to unearned subsidies for landowners with windmills.

14 - Human liberty and equality of opportunity - this is the equality the French revolutionaries supported. Equality of outcome is a quite different thing, ultimately requiring massive state bureaucracy and thus incompatible with liberty.

15 - An end to EU food tariffs which add 20% to our food bills and prevent 3rd world countries developing - the average cow in Europe gets £400 a year subsidy which is more than the average Senegalese lives on. What sort of "leftist" wants higher food prices - no before the Greens became "leftist".

16 - Proportional representation.

17 - Equality under the law irrespective of race. So called "positive discrimination" ie discrimination against white people, is still discrimination and therefore anathema to anybody of the real left.
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18 - Politics being open to all rather than just those who did PPE (the bluffer's degree) at Oxbridge and went either straight into politics (or sometimes via government regulated media) without having to meet any of the common people, let alone working with them.

19 - UKIP are opposed to giving the anti-progress Greens a veto over any sort of human progress.  They are the most literally conservative and indeed reactionary political movement in Europe since the Roman Empire was replaced by feudalism and many Greens clearly yearn for much of feudalism, as long as they are in charge. The "new left" embracing the Greens has been an act of intellectual bankruptcy.

20 - Affordable housing by cutting political parasitism and allowing modular building. Currently housebuilders spend more on lawyers than they do on bricks. What sort of "leftist" supports that.