Poll: General election voting poll round 3

[Tunney]

Can't be bothered once you've put the boot into the Tories/given the impression they're worse than Labour, eh?

Well, you can't get much worse than 0.

I did have a Google. There's a lot of very boring PDFs that don't give any hard numbers unfortunately.

 

[thep02]

What a shame their economic policies are so horrifically authoritarian...

Agree, I'd love them to be a little less dogmatic or even stop keeping it real, be green but ease into it at a sensible rate of change rather than getting all Pol Pot about it and forcing themselves out of power forever on the sidelines.

 

[joeyjojo]

What a shame their economic policies are so horrifically authoritarian...

Authoritarian is usually applied to social policy. Do you mean the opposite of liberalism, i.e. fiscally left wing?

Agree, I'd love them to be a little less dogmatic or even stop keeping it real, be green but ease into it at a sensible rate of change rather than getting all Pol Pot about it and forcing themselves out of power forever on the sidelines.

Comparing to Pol Pot is going a bit far - they want to renationalise the NHS and railways, not impose agrarian socialism!

 

[PlacidCasual]

The Greens believe in wealth taxes, which is an attack on property rights. Property rights and rule of law are pretty fundemental parts of our progress to democracy, everyone goes on about universal suffrage but that was the outcome of our road to democracy no the start. In my mind wealth taxes are the thin end of the wedge to erosion of property rights, fiscally authoritarian isn't a bad description.

 

[estebanrey]

200K is around the cost of raising a child from pregnancy through to high school or university education. An immigrant saves all that expense.

Except when they come here and have children, in which case they have added to that expense.

 

[joeyjojo]

...fiscally authoritarian isn't a bad descrition.

Yes I see actually where Dolph was coming from when scanning this list from earlier (sorry catching up on thread!): http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=27912126&postcount=395

I can see that a lot of those are unpalatable. Would be nice if Terminal Boy had referenced the manifesto directly though to save me going and checking a few!

 

[scorza]

The Greens believe in wealth taxes, which is an attack on property rights. Property rights and rule of law are pretty fundemental parts of our progress to democracy, everyone goes on about universal suffrage but that was the outcome of our road to democracy no the start. In my mind wealth taxes are the thin end of the wedge to erosion of property rights, fiscally authoritarian isn't a bad descrition.

Property rights are a fundamental of capitalism, not democracy. The rule of law is unaffected. In my mind wealth taxes are an important part of the tax triangle, the other sides being income and consumption taxes. All civilised countries (including the USA!) have a mixed economy so the debate is not whether we should have capitalism or socialism, it's how much capitalism and how much socialism we should have. I say we can have a reasonable wealth tax while still remaining in the middle of that particular spectrum.

 

[D.P.]

Except when they come here and have children, in which case they have added to that expense.

Except that the average net contribution is positive so it doesn't matter if some have children.

 

[estebanrey]

The irony of the Greens is their policies actually have an adverse effect on the poor.

Replacing thing like JSA and Housing Benefit with their £70 a week "citizens' income" is less than they get now and also mean millionaires get the £70 so the poor are relatively worse off as well.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/27/green-party-citizens-income-policy-hits-poor

When the Guardian are ****ging them off, you know something's wrong!

Their policies on vehicle emissions and air travel would also make things like owning a car and going to Majorca out of reach for anyone outside the middle-classes.

"Environmental Taxes" disproportionately affect the poor and they want to increase them massively.

 

[D.P.]

Many European countries like France and Germany already have a wealth tax, it is hardly some extreme socialist mechanism but a tried and tested method of reducing the wealth divide.

 

[Danthus]

Some more Green Policies.

“a complete ban on cages for hens and rabbits”
“end the use of the whip in horse racing and conduct a full review of the sport”
“end the practice of grouse shooting”
“ensure UK taxpayers’ money is not used for bullfighting”
“ban the import of fur products”
“ensure that all schools, hospitals and other public buildings have solar panels by 2020″
“closure of all coal-fired power stations”
“make equality and diversity lessons mandatory in all schools”
“progressively introduce anonymised CVs”
“strengthen Travellers’ rights”
“cancelling student debt”
“revive the role of trade unions”
“phase in a 35 hours week”
“work for the abolition of the City of London Corporation”
“introduce a wealth tax of 2% on the top 1%”
“raise the additional top rate of income tax to 60%”
“increase corporation tax from 20% to 30%”
“introduce new taxes on the use of water”
“ensure that no company owns more than 20% of a media market”
“state funding of political parties”
“pursue a policy of defensive defence, which threatens no one”
“a ban on the production and sale of fois gras”

I agree with some of them.

 

[D.P.]

The irony of the Greens is their policies actually have an adverse effect on the poor.

Replacing thing like JSA and Housing Benefit with their £70 a week "citizens' income" is less than they get now and also mean millionaires get the £70 so the poor are relatively worse off as well.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/27/green-party-citizens-income-policy-hits-poor

When the Guardian are ****ging them off, you know something's wrong!

Their policies on vehicle emissions and air travel would also make things like owning a car and going to Majorca out of reach for anyone outside the middle-classes.

"Environmental Taxes" disproportionately affect the poor and they want to increase them massively.

Except the benefits are not necessarily reduced to zero, the benefits can be reduced by £70 keeping things balanced.

 

[joeyjojo]

On top of that I'm trapped in a hellish rental market run by crooked agencies and millionaire landlords. In my ~7 years of private rents I've only had one landlord that owned less than 10 houses, abhorrent.

I can sympathise, renting is incredibly expensive and not helped by the unregulated letting market. Actually one of the Green's policies on this I really like is:

Reform the private rented sector by introducing a 'living rent' tenancy (including five-year fixed tenancy agreements), smart rent control that caps annual rent increases linked to the Consumer Price Index, security of tenancy and local not-for-profit letting agencies, and abolishing letting agents' fees and insurance-based deposit schemes.

(Page 44 of the manifesto)

My preferred outcome would actually be another Con/LD coalition, but with a bit more LD bit less Con. I'd say I'm socially liberal but economically 'right', unfortunately that doesn't really exist in the UK?

No it doesn't really. Lib Dem gets closest IMO.

Some more Green Policies.

I agree with some of them.

Can pigs fly??

 

[thep02]

Authoritarian is usually applied to social policy. Do you mean the opposite of liberalism, i.e. fiscally left wing?



Comparing to Pol Pot is going a bit far - they want to renationalise the NHS and railways, not impose agrarian socialism!

I know but I thought sod it it gets the point across and a bit of argumentum absurdum can raise a smile while doing it, no harm meant.

The Greens are my Arsenal of politics in as much that I have a soft spot for them and will watch when available but not when they're playing NUFC.

 

[estebanrey]

Many European countries like France and Germany already have a wealth tax, it is hardly some extreme socialist mechanism but a tried and tested method of reducing the wealth divide.

If you believe the 70% tax rates of France has been a success you need your head checking

 

[D.P.]

Some more Green Policies.



I agree with some of them.

Yep, I agree with a lot of them:
“ensure UK taxpayers’ money is not used for bullfighting” Yep
“ban the import of fur products” yep,

“ensure that all schools, hospitals and other public buildings have solar panels by 2020″ Not sure it need to apply to all such building bt a majority should have them. Solar is now at grid parity.

“closure of all coal-fired power stations” Yes, but slowly phased out. Clean coal power is more expensive to produce than wind, hydro, geothermal and very soon solar power.


“make equality and diversity lessons mandatory in all schools” yep

“phase in a 35 hours week”, absolutely

“introduce a wealth tax of 2% on the top 1%” definitely, this is already done in other European countries.

“introduce new taxes on the use of water”, yep water is taxed in most countries.


“ensure that no company owns more than 20% of a media market”
Hard to do but would be nice to have.

“state funding of political parties” Yep, stop rich business plowing money into political campaigns to help them save taxes or whatever.

“pursue a policy of defensive defense, which threatens no one”, ye. the empire days are over, we can save a lot of lives and a lot of money.



Then there are lots of polciies I am neither here nor there about,
“a ban on the production and sale of fois gras”
yeah, fois gras is cruel and unnecessary

 

[D.P.]

If you believe the 70% tax rates of France have been a success you need your head checking

Where did I say that?


That is an income tax, i am not talking about income tax but wealth tax.
In 2007 France collected 4Billion euros from the use of its wealth tax

 

[estebanrey]

Except the benefits are not necessarily reduced to zero, the benefits can be reduced by £70 keeping things balanced.

But that isn't what the Greens are proposing. I'm not arguing against the principle of a citizens' income, I'm pointing out the Greens implementation would make the poor poorer.

 

[joeyjojo]

I know but I thought sod it it gets the point across and a bit of argumentum absurdum can raise a smile while doing it, no harm meant.

The Greens are my Arsenal of politics in as much that I have a soft spot for them and will watch when available but not when they're playing NUFC.

No offence taken

 

[D.P.]

But that isn't what the Greens are proposing. I'm not arguing against the principle of a citizens' income, I'm pointing out the Greens implementation would make the poor poorer.

No, your interpretation of the Green policy would, but you don't understand their policy.