When I said Scottish Greens were the first with a manifesto, I was ignoring UKIP who are not to be taken seriously and aren’t polling with any danger of getting near the parliament. Still I was curious and couldn’t resist. It’s more professional than you’d expect for a party in special measures (the Scottish UKIP people were some idiots in a pub who self destructed a while ago so that homophobic gay Vogon chap was given the job).
http://media.wix.com/ugd/64c3a1_410475867d7b4212937657b9b0835b4e.pdf
- It starts off with a few pages about why we should vote leave in a referendum which is unrelated to this election.
- Lowering income tax rates but no indication of what would be dropped from spending to replace them
- Lots of mention of reducing red tape, quangos and non-devolved remits, the usual stuff of politicians who want to talk about reducing spending without reducing services, not to be taken seriously
- reducing business rates although it doesn’t say how much by or how much they would have to cut in spending as a result
- irresponsible but populist (although I’m not sure popular) policies on allowing smoking rooms in pubs and raising the drink-driving limit
- Some waffle about immigration which has nothing to do with this election
- Some waffle about being against TTIP although only as it might apply to the NHS, it has nothing to do with this election and feels like they just pick it up as something unpopular and anti-EU. In reality of course the UK government is a main driver of TTIP and leaving the EU isn’t going to get us better trade deals (about which the public is generally very badly informed).
- I got bored here, it’s mostly populist stuff, much of it irrelevant and some just tory fodder like supporting shooting sports and reducing speed cameras, stopping wind farms, claiming land reform is a land grab and increasing CO2 emitions
Best ignored really unless you want to laugh. They’re polling about 3% so in no danger of getting in. The Lothians candidate is a person called Alan Melville mostly famous for spitting at people during the Independence referendum, ug.