What exactly are the UKIP policies?

[petergriffin]

No business case!

No, no business case at all for high speed rail links between a city of 8 million people and a city of 2.5 million people, not at all. Do you know, my family live in an area close to Birmingham that's going to be affected by HS2 where most people are NOT opposing it because it just adds to Birmingham's ability to attract businesses and people who want to commute to London; in other words, it brings money into an area where lots of people need jobs.

So can we take it that UKIP's policy is to hamper the economic growth of the Midlands?

How do you know this is bringing business to Brum and not vice versa?

What would probably happen is that it will make easier for Brummies to commute to London, earn a bit more money, spend that money on real estate, making the area more expensive but less productive.

Everybody knows it's the airport hubs that make an area productive, not railway infrastructure.

The Tories don't genuinely want to make the WM more competitive because that area is Labour through and through.

[Mich the Tester]

How do you know this is bringing business to Brum and not vice versa?

What would probably happen is that it will make easier for Brummies to commute to London, earn a bit more money, spend that money on real estate, making the area more expensive but less productive.

Everybody knows it's the airport hubs that make an area productive, not railway infrastructure.

The Tories don't genuinely want to make the WM more competitive because that area is Labour through and through.

1; people who commute to London spend tuliploads of money on houses built by midlanders and shops run by midlanders

2; Birmigham has an airport, but there's a bit more ambition around than that

3; nonsense, while the city is largely labour, the countryside around it is largely tory

But no, nobody KNOWS it'll bring business to Birmingham; that's the nature of writing busines cases. What we do know is that if you don't build it it certainly won't bring business to Birmingham.

[sasguru]

UKIP policy is simple:
Stop the world I want to get off!

[Mich the Tester]

UKIP policy is simple:
Stop the world I want to get off!

I think in the case of HS2, it's actually 'the tories, labour and lib dems all support this, so we can look different and interesting by opposing it'. It's like a hundred teenagers all sticking rings through their noses at the same time to all look 'different' en masse.

[hyperD]

UKIP policy is simple:
I want a slice of that power

FTFY.

They're no different from the rest of the political elite, except that the rest don't want them or don't like them, as can be seen by the media attention they're getting.

I'd vote for them or the Raving Monster Loony Party or Independent just because I could never, ever vote for those LibLabCon parasites ever again, because you'd be getting more of the same: bigger state.

I met my local RMLP rep and he was a sound guy - quite a character. I'd vote him in just to see the smiles wiped off the faces of those pious, self-entitled, authoritarian little tulips.

[Mich the Tester]

FTFY.

They're no different from the rest of the political elite, except that the rest don't want them or don't like them, as can be seen by the media attention they're getting.

I'd vote for them or the Raving Monster Loony Party or Independent just because I could never, ever vote for those LibLabCon parasites ever again, because you'd be getting more of the same: bigger state.

I met my local RMLP rep and he was a sound guy - quite a character. I'd vote him in just to see the smiles wiped off the faces of those pious, self-entitled, authoritarian little tulips.

Yes, but that's because RMLP are essentially moderate libertarians who don't take themselves as seriously as the Ayn Rand believers. They're a lot more sane than they pretend to be and a lot more sane than UKIP.

[Zero Liability]

As someone who has read and likes Ayn Rand (and who goes further than that), who are the "Ayn Rand believers" are you pejoratively referring to? There is nothing like a libertarian political party in this country, sadly. Not that that Rand is even who most libertarians would claim to take their principles from, these days.

With regard to HS2, I was not aware a business case consists in stating hypothetical benefits and leaving it there. What of the costs, particularly the opportunity costs of the project? Nobody knows" doesn't sound like a business case, at all, it sounds like an experiment to be conducted using other people's money.

[darmstadt]

Nobody knows" doesn't sound like a business case, at all, it sounds like an experiment to be conducted using other people's money.

Isn't government and taxation just that though?

[Zero Liability]

I wouldn't disagree.