General Election - June 8th

During the final days of the General Election Campaign, do you remember Jeremy Corbyn promising to wipe-out student debt? Many young voters do and is precisely why 18-24 year olds voted for Labour in such large numbers, they're the ones Corbyn would help with fivers plucked from his Magic Money Tree.

Actually he'll need a forest of Magic Money Trees to fulfil that pledge as his Shadow Education Secretary, Angela Rayner, told Andrew Marr this morning that this particular policy will cost the country £100 Billion and it was therefore being dropped until such times as money could be found to pay for it.

Ha! Not even a month has gone by and already Labour is reneging on its election pledges! I am surprised that it appears to have forgotten what happened when the Lib Dems abandoned a similar policy - their presence in Parliament was decimated!

Don't be surprised, Ms Rayner, if the Corbynistas now demand your deselection for this and after you rather foolishly contradicted your leader on TV today:

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Full marks for being bravely honest but the Naughty Step for you!

Nothing contrary to the manifesto pledge there Mark its the torys that are backpeddling now

I didn't use the words "manifesto pledge", but rather "election pledge" which is what it was, but hey, you're the ones who'll have to explain to all those students that you wouldn't be able to afford to scrap their tuition fees and re-introduce maintenance grants. Care to guess how many seats that's cost you? 30? 40? 50?

The very rich & Expats is were we may start

Abolish tuition fees and watch tax revenues grow as our workforce becomes more skilled and develop the nation's wealth.

The divorce bill with the EU could be £100 billion.

Trident costs a few billion annually.

A lot of the younger voters are seriously wondering what the point of Trident is - especially considering we will only use it if America let's/demands it.

Let's ask Theresa for another election - then we can find out. 8 point lead at present according to Yougov. Oops, forgot you stopped doing opinion polls last month.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4678266/May-quit-says-chief-Davis-ally.html

Theresa May proves she does, indeed, have a sense of humour

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...he-has-no-regrets-about-calling-snap-election

That was then ... this is now. The Electoral Commission is reportedly investigating what it describes as "troubling evidence" of "election day illegality" where electors have voted twice. The Commission says it has received 38 complaints from MPs and over one thousand from members of the public.

These three 'sample' constituencies may be illustrative of the problem:

• Canterbury: This seat has been safe Tory for 99 years and its MP had a majority of almost ten thousand in 2015. Labour won the seat by 187 on a turnout of 72.7%. Canterbury has a student population of 40,000.
• Sheffield Hallam: Nick Clegg was ousted by Jared O'Mara (Labour) and locally tuition fees were blamed for this Lib Dem loss; turnout was 77.8% . This seat has a student population of 34,000.
• Lincoln: Tory majority of 1400+ became Labour majority of 1500+ on a turnout of 66.6%. First time student voting a major factor locally. Student population of 18,000.

Former Tory MP Karl McCartney, who lost his Lincoln seat to Labour last month, said: "We have screenshots of students on Facebook saying that they voted twice. Potentially, this was a factor in my defeat. Of the 3,200 who registered to vote in the last 24 hours, 500 were already registered."

The Electoral Commission called for ministers to look at introducing a system to allow voters to check if they are already registered and to consider whether to adopt automatic registration schemes similar to the one used in Australia.

Sir John Holmes, chair of the Electoral Commission, said: “The size of the registered electorate for the general election demonstrates the UK’s strong tradition of democratic engagement, and reflects the hard work of all concerned.

“However, if we are to keep pace with modern habits and practice in a digital world, the electoral registration system must continue to evolve, and consider innovative solutions such as direct or automatic enrolment processes.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ms-of-people-voting-twice-at-general-election

Im in favour of compulsory participation as well even if thats a void vote

The renewal of Trident is thought to be £100 billion to my preference would be to convert the submarine builders over to make renewable energy tidal barriers and wind and solar before its to late to limit a climate Change disaster which is a much more pressing issue than you would think from the debate

I agree, but I suspect we are already too late. Some data I heard on a recent science podcast suggested that even if we were to bring our CO2 production levels to an impossible 0 (i.e. We stop breathing) levels then it would still take decades to clear the system.

It will but theres a great deal of difference between 2-3 degrees of warming and 5-6

https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007209057/six-degrees

I was frustrated by Trump's speech on pulling out of the Paris agreement. He spoke about a 0.2 degree rise as if it was insignificant.

The one thing that he, and other world leaders, fail to recognise is that global warming had a significant impact on Syria.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs...2fcffba1-58132d06-cf2f-4e31-a696-f4f2aa0cdd9a

Not only Syria Whats Europe going to do when 250 million refugees turn up we are ok we have 3 patrol boats

Let's see .... French people-traffickers are already charging small fortunes to put "refugees" into small, unsafe boats and casting them adrift in the Channel.

Merkel has decreed and Brussels sits on its hands leaving Greece and Italy to deal with the problem - the two countries of the EU least financially able to do so. In fact things are so bad that Austria is threatening to close its border with Italy and France pretty much has. No wonder Italy is giving serious consideration to issuing 200,000 Visas this year alone to migrants crossing from Africa as they can then move freely out of Italy and into other EU countries - a move that has been heavily criticised by those of the EU cocktail set in Brussels (of course it has!).

It will probably get busy in Malta eventually

Malta has already accepted as many as it can absorb. Has Britain?