Who should form the next Government?

ME!!!

With a bit of luck its a foregone conclusion. Only maybe it will be Boris........?

Any comments on Cameron's speech? I though there was a lot of good ideas in there, many of which have been discussed at length on this forum. If that's Conservative party policy, then I find that very encouraging. If he could just get TEQs in there... maybe incentives to grow hemp for housing... Anyone like to make a case for Labour:bigsmile.

And look at the Conservative (and Labour) voting record in Europe. They've consistently stood against any practical green actions, either citing 'red tape' or 'reducing unneccessary spending'. The Tories always have been and always will be the party of big business, big profits and bugger the workers, the environment and anything else that gets in the way. As for Labour, they've lost their way very badly - their integrity of purpose has been gone for a couple of decades or more. As Caroline Lucas said, if you want a green government, then vote for a Green Party.

The only green the local tories know round here is the backgound to what they're pointing their 12 bores at.

Next Government? It will have to be a coalition National Government formed in the emergency when the lights go out.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jun/21/greenpolitics.transport

Paul Kingsnorth imagines that many readers will be writing letters to the editor with a long list of why the Tories "would be a horrible disaster for Britain" (My instinct is to pan him. But maybe he really is green, June 18). Actually, I can go one better than that, and demonstrate that they are already a disaster in Europe.

A number of key votes on the environment took place this week in the European parliament - and the voting patterns of the Conservatives are instructive.

For example, while David Cameron waxed lyrical in his "green speech" about the importance of emissions performance standards for new power stations, his MEPs in Strasbourg have just refused to support a Green amendment to a new directive on the internal market in electricity which would have introduced precisely this measure in the EU. For the record, Labour MEPs also opposed it.

Earlier in the week, on the waste directive, Tory MEPs not only supported the "reclassification" of incineration as energy recovery, they also abandoned waste stabilisation and reduction targets. Furthermore, on the water framework directive, they voted against measures to strengthen the protection against hazardous chemicals in water.

My list could continue, but my point is this: if Kingsnorth is unable to differentiate between Tories and Labour on the environment, that doesn't mean that the Tories are turning green: it means that both Tories and Labour are equally grey. As ever, if you want Green policies, the most effective way to get them is to vote for Green party politicians.
Dr Caroline Lucas MEP
Green, South East England

well, the jaw-waggling Gordon Brown, who lives just three miles from here, incidentally, needs to be shown the door.

His policies of completely failing to 'fix the roof while the sun shines' has been gross negligence, in my mind.

The current economic climate may have been unforeseeable, but that is why you prepare yourself for these eventualities, rather than racking up more and more debt, or at the least, failing to clear the debt you have.

Well said joe.e. We need to vote with our hearts more and less with what we read and hear in the press.

A colleague of mine was in the European Commission a couple of weeks ago and a Tory MEP was speaking about how climate change was incorrect and did not exist. I thought considering the Tories are badging themselves as the Green Party - this was interesting. I also note with utter astonishment that this week in the European Parliament the Tories have voted against energy efficiency targets put forward by the greens. Green they certainly are not.

As joe.e said, if you want green policies in government, vote for the Green Party.

While I think you should vote for what you believe, and agree that a big turn out for the greens would push these issues up to the mainstream parties, I do understand why people are scared ( not really the right word) to vote green at a general election. What I can't understand is at local level why the greens don't do better? People are only voting for local residents and I always vote green locally in an attempt to acutally get some green issues sorted locally but they never seem to do well round our way. Literally getting just a couple of hundread votes, this I find harder to understand.

How about a coalition of The Green Party, Greenpeace, Oxfam, War on Want, Water Aid and Save the Children backed up by a team of non political experts in their field to help with running the economy, education, crime, health etc?

As Billy Connolly once said "The very desire to be an MP should ban you from ever being one".

Damn, I think we are so disillusioned with them all that we really don't care. It is a foregone conclusion that it will be the convervatives that get in but they seem to have spent some of their political capital already as well.

I would like to see a new party offering transparent policies and promising democratic reform sweep accross the country, in fact I would chip in for the £500 it costs to register a new party. We need PR for this country to regain any political control as the parties are too in the pockets of big business/lobbiests... if the rose tinted glasses prevent you seeing it here then just look to the US for a more brazen example of how well the two party process works.

Governments are unaccountable in this country as they are virtual elected dictatorships for their 4-5 years, and before people say that they are elected to act on our behalf... well actuall with the winning party getting 40% of the 36% that bothered to vote that is hardly a glowing endorsment and the fact that they don't adhear to their manifesto promises for which they are actually elected.

I doubt that it will really matter in future who is in power once the Lisbon treaty comes into force. whether it is constitutionally legal or not, no one can really appeal against it as the appeal process is controlled by the politico'sthat want it to go through.

To give Labour a chance - here's a fairly recent speech that the Prime Minister made on climate change. However - a lot of the policies he "announced" were existing programmes of work. E.g. the EEC/CERT obligation for energy suppliers. It's a bit like announing a new idea "to tax employees earnings at source".

http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page13791.asp

You'll also note that he's covered some of the same ground as David Cameron. Mainly I think becuase there are overarching EU policies that will need to be implemented, so they don't actually have a choice

I haven't yet checked the other parties policies - but right now I'd be more inclined to vote blue to get green , not red.

The big problem I have is my local MP is tory, and he won't sign the EDM to get aviation and shipping added to the climate change bill. Now I'm not a conspiracy theroist, but only 6 Tory MP's have signed it whilst 61 Lib Dems and over 120 Labour MP's have signed it. Is this a typical sign of the tories saying one thing, but acting in a different manner? Those figures suggest the tory whip has influenced their wish to add their names to this list - other than a few principled MPs. Are they on a promise to big business like BA/P&O etc?

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34898

I actually wrote to my MP on this issue and got a 2 page letter back (but still a poor poor excuse) back - saying it should be left to the climate change committee. However this isn't the case. This would require further legislation to introduce at a later date.

I dont think they need to worry about the 80% target other than it would make a good political signal - but I personally feel it may compromise internation negotiations where we could agree to go to 80% if others will come too.

Friends of the Earth have a campaign running to put pressure on MP's to sign if you'd like to check your own MP.

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/commitee_stage_10133.html

Simon.

Did Brown go to Saudi Arabia asking for more oil production so that we could cut our CO2 emissions?

A quote from Cameron's speech:-

"The era of cheap oil is well and truly over. So whether we need to cut our carbon or not - which we do. Whether you believe in climate change or not - which you should. For the sake of our future prosperity and our current cost of living, we must wean ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels and go green."

Takes balls that Joe... I think he was standing up when he said it as well

Re Germany and its Greens, its got more to do with the fact that voting for the Greens in Germany contributes to getting you a Green MP because they have PR. Last time the Greens in Germany got 51 seats but only one of them was a constituency seat, the rest were off the party list to balance up the seats with the votes (I think they polled about 8%). If 8% of the population of the UK voted Green we might get no Green MPs or maybe one in Brighton. It's no wonder people don't bother. The system needs changing but carefully (we don't want to end up like the Italians, a fine of example of a well governed European state....).

If you vote tactically and the party you voted for wins, unless the candidate won by a majority of one then your vote still didn't achieve anything. Tactical voting is a psychological prop, to help the ego to ignore its insignificance. Your one vote never changes anything because you're one in sixty million, and in almost any democracy more than half end up living under a government they didn't vote for. As Churchill said, it's the worst possible system, apart from all the others. An election isn't just about who wins, it's about giving all parties some idea of what the country thinks, so that they can chase the votes in the next one.
As for Cameron, he certainly does have balls, considering what the MP's and members of his party actually think about green issues. And as for me, never mind Global Warming, it would take Infernal Cooling to make me vote Tory.