Some mistake surely?

Adrian Ramsay is the Green candidate for Norwich South not Norwich North…..

Cath Elliott @ 1

Oh dear, it demonstrates how familiar these folks are with their local area! The Green Party will, I trust, explain that the current air traffic stoppage is a test run for how life is going to be when they’re in power. I’m all for it, myself.

Trofim @ 2

Isn’t it more likely to demonstrate that Adrian, who refers to the constituency correctly as Norwich South throughout, did not write the headline?

One for the LibCon subs, I think.

Norwich North might be a bit of a stretch – the Greens finished behind UKIP in the by-election. Chalk one up to the subs I think, and read as ‘Norwich South’

Does Lib Con really have that many readers in Norwich South to give it two articles in a week? I mean Brighton Pavilion is a more likely target anyway- though if the polls stay as they are they won’t take any of them.

Now updated with correct name of constituency, sorry about that.

Might be an idea to correct the footer too.

For example, we propose a scheme to insulate every home in the country for free. Paid for by a windfall tax on the oil companies, we could save households around £150 per year on their fuel bills, create new jobs and reduce carbon emissions by insulating every home.

So it’s not free, then.

“we propose a scheme to insulate every home in the country for free. Paid for by a windfall tax on the oil companies”

Not only is it not free but, erm, just how are you going to tax “the oil companies”?

Yes, I know we can get at Shell (well, not sure about Shell, aren’t they Dutch now?) and BP….but how are you going to tax Exxon? Saudi Aramco? Statoil? Petrobras?

As far as I can see out of this list of roughly 180 companies only 5 or 6 are actually UK based and thus subject to UK corporation tax on their oil exploration and production activities.

And of those UK based oil companies you’ve got the likes of Tullow Oil….seriously, higher corporation tax on someone drilling in Uganda to pay for insulation here?

And before you start talking about refining and retailing of petorl….that doesn’t really make any money and hasn’t done for decades.

The best thing Green party voters could do is ensure a hung parliament, which would result in electoral reform, and give them representation in a reformed House of Commons. With the possible exception of Brighton Pavilion, all they are likely to be doing elsewhere is splitting the vote against Tory or Labour incumbents.

As for Tim @ 9, the way forward is to ensure companies (all of them) actually pay reasonable amounts in tax in the first place, rather than wriggling out of them by clever accounting practices.

“the way forward is to ensure companies (all of them) actually pay reasonable amounts in tax in the first place, rather than wriggling out of them by clever accounting practices.”

Sorry, but what are you talking about? We only get to levy corporation tax on companies that are eiother running factories or offices in the UK or which are in fact UK companies.

As i’ve pointed out, that’s perhaps 5 or 6 of the 180 oil companies. This is nothing at all to do with there being dodgy accounting or anything else. It’s just that if they don’t work here and aren’t based here we don’;t get to tax them,.

@11 Tim

I’m agreeing with you in as much as few oil companies are actually based in the UK. Those that are should pay the requisite taxes. My point was rather that instead of trying to impose “windfall” taxes, which are a great populist move for unpopular politicians to make, but not really justified, we should ensure that all companies actually pay a decent amount of tax on money they earn in the UK.

The subbing was my mistake – oops.

Tim W – he could be referring to UK companies anyway. And there’s still scope for a global agreement on better taxing oil companies.

Norwich South Resident here.

I got a letter from the greens today telling me that Lib Dem support has collapsed here since 2007 – why?

Richard@14 – My reckoning is that the Lib Dems had a small core vote but a large amount of support from floating voters in the more middle class wards (Town Close, Mancroft, Wensum and Nelson). The combination of the Lib Dem’s incompetence in City Hall (they left a massive back hold in the budget) plus the Green’s very impressive community activism allowed them to effectively take over what were once Lib Dem strongholds.

Personally I’m not entirely sure if the Greens will have the same success in the generals than they’ve had in the locals.

(Just for reference I’m a Norwich South Labour activist)

Yeah it does seem odd that people keep banging on about Norwich when Brighton (my hometown, incidentally) is the real possibility ..

@15 is correct – Norwich Sth is a fascinating constituency. Greens are very strong at city and council level, and despite coming fourth in last general election have been improving their share in every consecutive election since. Lib Dems are still majority on council but have been losing seats and have suffered high profile criticism for their budgeting. Long-time Labour incumbent MP (Charles Clarke) has been outspoken against Gordon Brown, which has won him support, but he’s recently come out in support of him again which might backfire. Conservatives are probably weakest here, but then you couldn’t rule them out…. possibly a genuine 4-way split!

The Greens in Norwich took part in a debate on race equality held there by Runnymede earlier this year:http://www.runnymedetrust.org/projects-and-publications/appg/parliamentary-blog.html

Charles Clarke, Cllr Antony Little – who Adrian is running against – and Norman Lamb also took part