The arms trade, and you, dear UK taxpayer, are paying to set up the deals:
British taxpayers are paying a secretive lobbying firm $10,000 (£6,354) a month to push American politicians to award contracts to British defence companies.
It’s official, the UK has blown its historical chance to bring its electoral system into the 21st century and make a better democracy.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have ensured the UK won’t get a referendum on whether people want proportional representation or not. The Liberal Democrats didn’t have the numbers. There will be a referendum on the Alternative Vote system but, while an improvement, it is not proportional representation.
Labour is now lying to their supporters that they didn’t have the numbers for a coalition. In fact they did, the smaller parties were offering their support to an alliance. Labour supporters who are gutted that the Conservatives are now in power should realise that it is entirely Labour’s fault that they are:
A [LibDem] spokesman said key members of the Labour team “gave every impression of wanting the process to fail” and the party had made “no attempt at all” to agree a common approach on issues like schools funding and tax reform.
“Certain key Labour cabinet ministers were determined to undermine any agreement by holding out on policy issues and suggesting that Labour would not deliver on proportional representation and might not marshal the votes to secure even the most modest form of electoral reform,” he said.
This isn’t a party interested in policy. They’re interested in unbridled power. Instead of compromising a little on policy with the Liberal Democrats they’d rather compromise completely and have a Conservative government.
As coalition talks continue in the UK both Labour and the Conservatives are proving themselves arrogant as usual.
The biggest barrier to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition is the Conservatives’ refusal to support a referendum on electoral reform, offering instead a toothless “all party committee of inquiry on political and electoral reform”; the Conservatives would rather retain an unfair voting system which disenfranchises not just a third of voters (about 10 million people) but also 16 million or so eligible voters who didn’t vote, most of whom probably don’t see the point in voting in a representative system that clearly isn’t even representative.
Meanwhile Labour is dashing its own chances of forming a coalition, which, along with the Liberal Democrats, would require the support of other smaller parties too. Alex Salmond of the Scottish National Party offered that support yesterday. Labour’s apparent response? Unbelievably to refuse it:
BBC News:
Scotland’s First Minister, SNP leader Alex Salmond, called on the Lib Dems to join a “progressive alliance” involving Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
However a Labour source dismissed that as “a desperate attempt by Alex Salmond to make himself look relevant after a terrible general election result”.
Statement from the Electoral Commission
Update: The Guardian has a map with a breakdown of all the problems that occurred around the country on polling day.
Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats are as much a part of the establishment as the rest of them but they get my vote (my first in a UK election) for pointing out the bleedin’ obvious:
Brown systematically blocked, and personally blocked, political reform. I think he is a desperate politician and I just do not believe him.
Brown and Labour, at heart, are authoritarians and deserve to be thrown on the dustheap. This is the best chance Britain has had for electoral reform in a very long time.
Next time maybe Britain will be able to vote in modern democracy under a modern system of proportional representation (not the ruse that Brown was touting, the alternative vote).
Sharp decline in public’s belief in climate threat, British poll reveals:
The proportion of adults who believe climate change is “definitely” a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%, in the latest survey by Ipsos Mori.
What I don’t understand is that we’ve been here so often before. Why do people listen to the propaganda of oil companies and the like over scientific evidence? How many times do you have to have the wool pulled over your eyes by propagandists denying that smoking causes cancer, denying that CFCs lead to ozone depletion, denying that certain pollutants cause acid rain or denying that climate change is manmade (or, originally, that it even existed)?
This is a great time to be born, a great time to be alive. This generation gets to completely change the world we live in. We have a chance here to reimagine every single thing we do. But, no, perhaps we’d rather go down with the ship and listen to rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro and yen from their investments in outdated industries.
Great piece by George Monbiot on the campaign to arrest Tony Blair:
Already the campaign has borne fruit. Outside the Chilcot inquiry a woman called Grace McCann, inspired by the website, tried to apprehend Mr Blair, before she was restrained and removed by the police. She qualifies for the first bounty: one quarter of the total pot at the time of her attempt. She has pledged to give the money to relevant charities. The fund will remain open until Blair is officially prosecuted, and we will keep paying out to those who follow Grace’s example.
You can donate here.
No Right Turn on Labour’s electoral reform announcement:
After a decade of broken promises, the UK’s Labour government is finally moving on electoral reform, announcing that they will pass a law before the election requiring a vote on the electoral system within two years. Of course, New Labour being New Labour it is being done for all the wrong reasons…
There have been a number of inquiries into the 2003 invasion of Iraq but as someone commenting on the European Tribune website put it, they
… are not intended to reach a finding that the public find credible, they exist to provide a smokescreen for a few years to cover the establishment for a few years in the hope everyone forgets about it.