There were a couple of Manifesto launches today to round off all the runners and riders - well okay, not all of them. Do you really want me to pluck out my own eyeballs as I read the BNP Manifesto?
First up, the SNP. Like Plaid Cymru, the SNP Manifesto feels more like a holding statement in preparation for next year's Scottish Elections rather than a real manifesto.
Their environmental commitments are in red, my comments are in black:
Our aim is to increase low carbon employment in Scotland by 60,000 by 2020
demanding the release of the Fossil Fuel Levy money so it can be used to deliver £200 million new investment in renewables
This is an update on the old "It's Scotland's Oil" argument. It now runs along the lines of "It's Scotland's Oil but the climate is changing so rather than giving us the oil back to do with as we please, just give us the revenues to invest in wind turbines and we'll pretend that it's actually you and not us who is polluting the world". Or something like that.
ending the discriminatory transmission charging regime – a system that sees Scottish generators paying far more to connect to the grid than companies elsewhere in the UK
This is a long-standing bugbear of most people north of the border, not just the SNP, but unfortunately Labour in Westminster seem unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
Scotland must be part of the first phase of the proposed UK High Speed Rail Network
With independence, we can remove the obscenity of nuclear weapons from Scotland's shores
We propose a Scottish Centre for Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution, to promote peaceful alternatives to armed conflict [around the world]
(except on Old Firm matchdays)
We believe the offshore taxation regime should also support the development of Carbon Capture and Storage
I may be reading too much into that, but my first thought was that they would like to give oil companies tax breaks if they pumped CO2 into the used North Sea oilfields. Can anyone correct me?
And, er, that's it. like I said, it reads more as a holding statement than a proper manifesto.
(And can I just say, the formatting was awful! Every other manifesto has been a simple cut-and-paste job, but with the SNP one I gave up and ended up typing in what I wanted to highlight.)
This is a long-standing bugbear of most people north of the border, not just the SNP, but unfortunately Labour in Westminster seem unwilling or unable to do anything about it.
Scotland must be part of the first phase of the proposed UK High Speed Rail Network
With independence, we can remove the obscenity of nuclear weapons from Scotland's shores
We propose a Scottish Centre for Reconciliation and Conflict Resolution, to promote peaceful alternatives to armed conflict [around the world]
(except on Old Firm matchdays)
We believe the offshore taxation regime should also support the development of Carbon Capture and Storage
I may be reading too much into that, but my first thought was that they would like to give oil companies tax breaks if they pumped CO2 into the used North Sea oilfields. Can anyone correct me?
And, er, that's it. like I said, it reads more as a holding statement than a proper manifesto.
(And can I just say, the formatting was awful! Every other manifesto has been a simple cut-and-paste job, but with the SNP one I gave up and ended up typing in what I wanted to highlight.)
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