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Great stuff, Craig.
I know you’ve swung behind the Lib Dems.
Tell me: should I vote Green or Lib Dem?
My constituency is not a target seat for either party. My inclination is to back the Greens. Whaddyareckon? And why?
Keep on bloggin’.
Ed
Thanks Craig,
Your Comments and analysis compulsive reading. You honest reporting cuts out the chaff and deceit of the MSM and are I know people in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia who are regular readers.
Ed,
look at the opinion polls for your constituency and vote tactically – it’s the only plan that makes sense under our stupid voting system. Vote for whoever stands the best chance of displacing a warmonger.
I’d probably vote Green if we had a proportional representation system.
Clark,
Our local incumbent “warmonger” is Labour. The only realistic challenger in this constituency is Conservative.
So there is no-one to vote for “tactically” in terms of determining the winner of this parliamentary seat.
The only “tactical voting” I can engage in here is to add one vote to the national share of the vote of one the parties who will not win this seat.
Ed,
I’m lucky in having an easy choice; the LibDem candidate is the only viable opposition to the Tory incumbent.
In your position I’d look at my Labour MP’s voting record – some of them do oppose the wars – and consider if s/he’s a good MP.
If it’s a marginal seat, I’d still consider voting Labour (possibly with much disgust – see above!), just to try to keep any possible Tory majority as slim as possible – a hung parliament will give the smaller parties more power, and it would be bad if your constituency went Tory.
If the seat is safe Labour, I’d probably vote LibDem, because an increased LibDem vote would increase LibDem chances if a hung parliament led to an early second election.
I loathe our voting system, with all the second-guessing it requires of me. I wish my vote could just follow my feelings.
Ed
If there is no tactical significance, then it is a question of your own priorities. My own view is that the Lib Dem policies like road pricing, VAT on new houses, no nuclear energy are sufficiently green and they have a better developed wider agenda. But it is your vote!
But Craig,
it’s not “our” vote! If we vote how we honestly feel, the system sweeps it under the rug and discounts it utterly! Aaagh!
Craig, What’s the problem with nuclear?
I know we had Chernobyl but France is 80% nuclear power.
I did the maths on wind turbine cost/benefit earlier – it is simply not commercially viable not now nor in the forseeable. Currently it is unbelievably heavily subsidised by us.
Anyone noticed, how their energy bills have escalalted recently and wondered why?
Of course it’s my vote, dear Craig Murray
But I’m starving – I’d kill for a curry.
So send me a pint and a sag aloo
And I’ll vote the way that you tell me to.
scousebilly
nuclear is the most expensive of all, if you include waste processing and storage and plant decommissioning costs. It has only ever been made to look viable by excluding these costs or transferring them to the taxpayer.
My previous comment helps me understand someone like Eddie better. Rather than feel as frustrated as I do, he supports Labour, and then bludgeons his feelings to fit. Hence his distortion of the Iraqi death toll etc. – he HAS to believe!
The energy problem has not been solved – by any party. Our consumerist society wastes more than it uses, and two thirds of the world is yet to reach for our consumption levels.
Usage reduction, deep geothermal and desert solar is my bet; the Earth itself is a huge, stable and well sheilded nuclear reactor. But it’s a global problem, I suspect it can’t be solved at a national level – roll on the New World Order!
As to pricing, Craig warned us about Gazprom ages ago.
Other Ed,
Before the election was called my plan was to vote Green if there was a Green candidate (in a safe Tory constituency), Lib Dem if not. It looks like there’s no Green candidate so the answer’s easy but if there was it now would be a more difficult decision than it was before the recent Lib Dem upsurge.
I’d suggest that if the Lib Dems have a realistic chance of knocking the second of the war-parties into third place then that’s got to be worth something. Otherwise, pick depending on your policy preferences.
EdD
Welcome to honesty
Dave Davies MP (not the rock musician)
WHY THE TORIES CAN’T BE TRUSTED ON CIVIL LIBERTIES
I have a lot of respect for Dave Davies after his campaign against ID cards, the 42 day detention bill and the Labour governments outsourcing of torture.
Davies, we learn’t from WebCameron never got the full support of his Conservative colleagues on these issues and I personally believe he resigned because of that lack of support. In fact many supporters wrote on WebCameron saying, ‘this resignation is quite extraordinary and without precedent that I can think of in British politics.’
It has come to something when it takes the lone bravery of one man and the house of Lords to protect civil liberties in this country.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said: “The Conservatives are a long way from being defenders of liberty.”
David Davis lonely stand only highlights the big questions that still remain over whether the Conservatives really are committed to protecting our freedom.
Dave Davies resignation was I believe – a direct result of CFI pressure – AND DAVID CAMERON CAVED IN TO THEIR DEMANDS!!
BE CAREFUL VOTERS – BE VERY CAREFUL.
Craig,
Thank you for your reply regarding nuclear energy costs.
I don’t know where you got your information. I go by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s very detailed and “neutral” research:
http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/Cost_Generation_Commentary.pdf
The first graph completely contradicts your “received wisdom” (?).
Even, for non-phycisists who actually “believe” CO2 is dangerous, nuclear is “clean”. Offshore wind is btw far and away the most expensive, and least reliable.
Why have Simon Hughes and Ed Millipede not come clean on this?
P.S. further to you excellent posts on the volcanic ash debacle, here is a rather good expose of computer modelling.
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/62827,news-comment,news-politics,computer-modelling-fraud-at-the-heart-of-science-climate-change-eyjafjallajokull
The first comment regarding the role of Jerome “PNS” (say it quicly) Ravetz is a germane as it is revealing.
“Craig, What’s the problem with nuclear?”
“I know we had Chernobyl but France is 80% nuclear power.”
http://tinyurl.com/2v33eoj
Keep up the good work.
Thanks, George but irrelevant,
Let’s see what people who know their technology have to say:
“‘Nuclear’ has had the Cold War (and other) imperatives of plutonium producton for weaponisation, severely influencing reactor design.
These are ‘Defence’ costs, not ‘Energy’ costs.
Due to this design imperative, requirements for very expensive pressure containment vessels and extensive plant size, have added fantastic levels of construction costs.
Due to this design imperative, the associated waste from plutonium production has been extremely high and can also be considered ‘Defence’ costs.
The French reprocessing facilities for example, are highly complex, and extremely expensive as a result.
We will have a massive ongoing cost penalty, from building French nuclear power stations. We should say ‘Non, merci!’
Just because this is how things ‘are’ doesn’t mean this how things ‘have to be’.
Nuclear can be very cheap, very small, very clean, very low half-life waste, very safe, very unattractive to terrorists, and very portable. It can also with designs such as the LFTR Thorium fuelled reactor, reprocess existing long term waste, into useful and valuable products with a short half life, the longest of which, would be 300 years, as opposed to up to thousands of years.
At current pricing, a Thorium power plant should produce electricity for a real cost of less than 2p per unit. With most of the reprocessing carried out in the reactor itself, with chemical separation, and anything that needs further reprocessing, can just stay in the liquid fluoride until it has been processed.
Some of the nastiest byproducts even having a half life as low as 6 hours and 9 hours before making themselves ‘useful’.
With such a reactor already having been run reliably and safely for years, so safe, it was possible to just ‘turn it off’ on a Friday and ‘turn it back on’ on Monday morning, getting such a reactor through present day pre-production development, would be quite fast and relatively inexpensive.
A small plant can easily fit on the back of a lorry. Power the lorry with electric drive motors, and the plant can even power itself to where it needs to go.
Such a reactor would make an ideal ship propulsion unit power source. If it sank, no problem.
The realistic and practical solutions are there, but some people simply don’t want solutions, because it’s problems that serve their agenda, not solutions.
(N.b. George Dutton).
Let’s get a pre-production LFTR Thorium Reactor built, shall we?
The initial design work would cost far less than the Government spent on its BS pre-Christmas, pre-Copenhagen, propaganda campaign.
£56 million of Public Money that cost, didn’t it? What price were the backhanders from the advertising and media Agencies?
And if you think LFTR is fantasy:
India’s thorium reactor…
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/08/indias-thorium-nuclear-reactor-and.html
This is real technology at work, you know.
What do you think, Craig?
The realistic and practical solutions are there, but some people simply don’t want solutions, because it’s problems that serve their agenda, not solutions.
(N.b. ScouseBilly).
http://tinyurl.com/lv4tof
ScouseBilly
A persopnal question, if you don’t mind: do you seriously believe what those “nuclear industry” publications print?
Works both ways.
http://tinyurl.com/28fcb79
ScouseBilly,
this is only the second time I have heard of the Thorium Pebble Bed reactors. You know your stuff, do you? I thought they sounded too good to be true, but I’ll read up on them now. Got any good links please? And what objections / problems are there?
Clark. I know a little having read a long article a few months ago. I felt the same way: this is remarkable, can it be true?
A mate of mine gave me the latest info. hence I put his views in quotes and the Indian program link came from someone else.
That’s the beauty of the internet/blogosphere. There’s a lot of resource at the end of a few keystrokes but there’s a lot of disinfo too.
I do my best to be selective and read as much as possible. I could have quoted nuclear industry sources on costs but anticipated perfectly reasonable questions of bias.
I didn’t bookmark the paper I read but will try and find it for you.
George Dutton,
the thorium reactors that ScouseBilly mentioned are very different from the big power stations that we’re familiar with; I think they should be assessed in their own right, though as I said above, I don’t know much about them yet.
ScouseBilly,
old nuclear has given us terrible problems; you can’t blame George Dutton for being suspicious. Post us a selection of links.
Oops, posts crossed… I’ll look forward to that paper.
ScouseBilly
As you said “Chernobyl”.
Says it all.
Clark, lol, I will do my best. I do have top go out and see a mate but will do some serious searching later tonight.
I will post any papers that I think are credible and informative.
Till then, YNWA
Oh, George, come on, give new tech a chance. I used to feel the same about nuclear but have been persuaded differently by those who are at the coal-face if you’ll forgive the metaphor 😉
ScouseBilly,
as far as anthropogenic climate change is concerned, I think we should apply the precautionary principle for now. If CO2 is a problem it is best to limit emissions before it is too late, especially considering ocean acidification.
Clark, I really must go but we can have a conversation on AGW at a later date.