I agree .
Indeed nothing has been successfully addressed from Immigration, NHS, education, crime , lack of public services inc health, potholes
back tracking on global warming, strikes. housing.
The list is endless
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I will vote for anyone who doesn’t put the green nonsense before the needs of the constituents in my local elections, and I will spoil my paper in the general elections, stating…‘None of the above’ They are all a bunch of tossers!
That’s the only decent thing Rishi has done in my opinion.
Until we get proportional representation, there’s not much point in me voting.
I always do vote for the MP who I think will best represent me and my values but they never get voted in because the undemocratic FPTP system leaves no representation for people who do not support one of the two major parties.
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It doesn’t matter, a spoiled vote is a voter’s opinion as is the donkey vote. No one can complain about the outcome with 100% participation
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No point in me voting either, ours is a safe Tory seat
We call ourselves a democracy but under our two party system and without proportional representation, voters who don’t support the major parties or who live in an area where one party has an unshakeable majority are essentially disenfranchised
I can’t change anything by voting
And I can see how the frustration of that can lead to disenchantment with our “democracy” , people not turning out to vote and turning to other methods, like protests, campaigns, breaking the law and subversive or violent groups to get their voice heard
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The Sandybacks are revolting. 
That is the great thing about preferential voting (it’s not proportional voting), you can encourage people to put the sitting member last. I always do in my safe Labor seat, it hasn’t made any difference yet but I live in hope.
Only marginal seats get any attention (ie money) from pollies.
It has nothing to do with being decent , it’s a simple matter of the Infrastructure isn’t in place .
Causing Rishi Sunak to delay a ban on petrol and diesel cars by five years.
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Spot on Maree, the police can only deal with so much, politicians are deaf and dumb to the real world.
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Yes I know Ripple. Nothing is as it seems.
Here’s the problem for the Government…
Some of us plebs have acquired far more wealth than is good for us. We all have cars, use far more energy than the previous governments have allowed for and we love gadgets…
So how does the gov’t make us regress without appearing bossy or controlling?
They tell us that we are destroying the planet, that we are putting our kids and grandkids future in peril. That the suffering of people in far off lands due to extreme weather events is all our fault for being wasteful and polluting. The extinction of animals and marine life is a result of peoples greed and opulence…
And faced with a barrage of statistics about the melting ice caps, extreme temperatures and other climate nonsense that we can neither prove or disprove, we accept the world wide con, hook, line, and sinker…After all, who doesn’t want the best for out offspring in the future, but the fact is, by believing this crap, you are limiting your kids future…
Hi
There is no such thing as a safe seat, as the Government are finding out.
My Conservative MP has won the last 5 Elections and he is not safe.
Ideally I would vote Labour as that is the Party most likely to win his seat.
I cannot however because the Local Labour Party has deselected the Labour Candidate, a very hard working and intelligent Doctor and have voted in one of their own, a Hard Left local Councillor.
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Nonsense and crap aren’t terms l would use when discussing global warming, the consensus of scientific opinion is in agreement…it’s happening.
You can stick your head in the sand if you must.
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It’s you who have stuck your head in the sand Ripple, and got taken in by all the misinformation and dubious facts put out by the media, especially the BBC.
Do some research and open your eyes for Gods sake…
Well it’s lucky most thinking people science and decision makers don’t support your point of view…
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Where did this belief that it is Governments which initiated the concern about climate change come from?
It is Wrong!
I can clearly remember when concerns and discussions about climate change and environmental pollution began to capture public interest - it was 30 or 40 years ago.
It certainly was not Governments who were raising the issues - in fact, it was quite the opposite! It was scientists who were noticing the problems and raising these issues.
The Government was trying to ignore them. When the groundswell of opinion became too strong to ignore, they started by just tinkering round the edges, to make it look like they were sorting it out.
Look at how long it took them to do something about lead in petrol, even though the damage it caused to health was known about for 100 years before adding lead to petrol was finally banned.
I remember about 30 years ago, when scientists were regularly raising concerns about pollution and the detrimental effects on health, the environment and climate change.
There was so much discussion and complaints that the Government were not doing enough to slow down the rate of pollution from human activity and industry.
As for lecturing people not to believe what they read and to go and do their own research - how do you know they haven’t?
Thirty years ago, I didn’t know who or what to believe about these contentious and complex issues, so I decided I would have to get to grips with the basics before I could understand the arguments being put forward, both “for” and “against” in scientific debates on climate change and other hot topics regarding pollution in the environment.
I enrolled with Open University and began with a year’s basic foundation course covering all the scientific disciplines, then continued with a 4 year course of study in bio-chemistry.
Part of my degree course covered various modules designed to study the effects from burning fossil fuels, studies on nuclear energy, detailed studies regarding vehicle emissions from different types of fuels, pollution from chemicals used in agriculture and the whole complex topic of climate change.
It certainly taught me to weed out facts and research-based theories from fiction, ignorant assumptions, hyperbole and biased nonsense when reading media articles, website blogs and forum posts!
I sometimes read stuff written by people who’ve swallowed info from other online bloggers, without actually checking the research quoted or studying the topic in detail themselves - yet they feel qualified to think they know better than the majority of the world’s scientists - and they say I’m a gullible sheep and should go and do my own research!
It makes me smile - maybe they are the ones who are being hoodwinked and taking the bait, hook line and sinker! 
Anyway, this thread is supposed to be about the results of the recent by-elections, so let’s not de-rail it into yet another debate on climate change - there’s been threads on that topic already - and you can’t cite Green policies as the only reason the Tories lost the recent by-elections and so many Voters did not turn out to vote.
What about lack of trust over Partygate, obvious splits and ideological differences and in-fighting within the Tory Party, so that they can’t even appoint a Party Leader they can all support, as evidenced by such a quick turnaround of PMs in recent years!
That’s a few possible reasons for Tory voters to have lost faith and I’m sure others could come up with a few more!
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Alistair Strathern used to be our councillor back in East London. I never knew he’d moved out. Think I may have met him briefly, probably when I once attended their ward meeting.
Never say never Maree, the two elections this week were in safe Tory seats.
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Hi
Simply put, we humans cannot change the solar system and save the planet from the next Ice Age or World Heating due to the cycles of the Sun.
What we can do is stop contributing the speed with which these occur.
The War on the Motorist as it is now called, is a Political Statement designed to influence the next Election.
Net Zero is a joke unless we get the infrastructure in place.
Firstly, we need to Insulate our homes much better, new homes can be easily made more energy efficient by better insulation, existing homes are the biggest problem and Government Cuts have seriously reduced the numbers of homes being upgraded since 2012.
There is no point claiming that we cannot afford it and what we need is more Tax Cuts instead.
Much better for us is to spend the money on home insulation which reduces pollution and saves energy costs, so we are all better off.
There is no point in banning petrol or diesel vehicles until we have got the Infrastructure in place to provide either electric or hydrogen powered cars.
We have wind farms standing idle waiting for years to be connected to the national grid, we have millions fewer charging points than we need.
We can a lot from others who are much better at things like this than we are.
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will they be able to fix the NHS once they are in full control???