Stronger families? Lower taxation? Action on climate change?

In this month's ConservativeHome survey we seek your views on the future of Gordon Brown, David Davis and Caroline Spelman.  We also want to know what you'd most like the next Conservative Government to achieve:  Stronger families?  Lower taxation?  Action on climate change?

Click here to take survey.

Comments

[John Prendergast]

Global warming is not now happening and things may continue on the cold side of average until 2030. CO2 is the result of increased temperature, not the cause of it, CO2 rise has always lagged temperature rises, even in pre historic times.

The rise in CO2 is because warmer sea water cannot hold as much CO2 as colder sea water. Arctic melting is caused by a different phenomenon. under the Arctic sea is a huge volcanic crack several hundred s of KM long.

[Ben Stevenson]

I think "action of climate change" is too often assumed to be cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
I think it is much more important to adapt to changes, and help the poor adapt than to try and prevent changes happening. The UK is only responsible for 2% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, therefore climate change could happen whether we cut our emission levels or not.

[Old Hack]

I see the Shadow Cabinet get a month off.

Lets not forget about them next time. As policy development progresses we need to track performance.

[Editor]

Because it's quite a long list for 'marking' we've dropped shadow cabinet ratings to every other month, Old Hack.

They'll return in July...

[Toryboy]

Labour have failed working families in almost everyway. We need to see major progress crime, lower taxation, and help for suffering married couples. The conservatives have a unique oppotunity to re-capture the working class vote and show people that its the tories, not labour, that are the true home for the working class vote.

[Donald Burling]

It's no use making lower taxes our central promise as peopoe won't believe us. I believe we made that mistake in the last three General Elections.

[Freedom4All]

The one thing that I have missed is a call to reduce government spending. Why do Cameron/Osbourne continue to insist on meeting the NuLab spending commitments when they must know darn well the country simply cannot afford it?

On the one hand Cameron repeats that Brown spent in the time of plenty leaving the cupboard bare, so, if it is bare how can Cameron/Osbourne spend it?

Makes no sense to me.

David Davis is quite right to highlight the erosion of civil liberties perpetrated by this Stalinist regime called NuLab. More power to him, shame he didn't become leader.

Agree with you wholeheartedly Toryboy. Also agree with you John Prendergast, man-made warming is a bandwagon cooked up by a bunch of academics seeking large funding and supported by the politicos that failed with mainstream politics. Global surface temperatures have dropped more in the past 12 months than they rose in the previous 70 years. As recorded by all four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS). All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

[David Sergeant]

I really think the question of climate change has to be revisited. There seems a groundswell developing that suggests the issue is not as it was assumed even a year ago and it certainly seems to have lost some of its immediancy with the forseen delay before warming MAY continue. In particiular the costs may not be so affordable the way economics is working out.

I also suspect people are begining to accept that Labour's spending plans will only be affordable after tax increases (by us or them).

[ChrisD]

I did not rate lower taxes highly in this survey for the simple reason that, no matter how desirable at the moment, I just don't think an incoming Conservative government will be in a position to drop them with the precarious state of the public finances and a huge debt left by this Labour government.
These problems will not be fixed overnight, and that Tax Con taking from the poor to give to the middle classes has back fired and already become an expensive failure.

[haddock]

What the public would like is some straight talking, 'we will have it when we can afford it' would be a good slogan. Get rid of corruption, stop spending on frivolous projects like global warming, get some real engineers to develop energy plans instead of bunnyhuggers. Spell out the truth of the situation! The electorate is not stupid and you would do well to stop treating them as if they are. Thousands of windmills is a nonsense, any engineer will tell you so. Tell the pressure groups to piss off and shut up and you will be deafened by the cheers from ordinary people.
Shut down the immigration industry and you would be carried to parliament by cheering crowds, give them back their country and you could be the government for decades.

But you will fudge prevaricate and bluster looking for mealymouthed soundbites that will upset no one... and please no one.

[Ken Stevens]

At The Marketing Forum in September, Lord Nigel Lawson is scheduled to give a talk "A Cool Look at Global Warming"

I wonder if the title suggests the theme!

[Ken Stevens]

At The Marketing Forum in September, Lord Nigel Lawson is scheduled to give a talk "A Cool Look at Global Warming"

I wonder if the title suggests the theme!

[Ken Stevens]

Sorry for inadvertent double post. Lord Nigel is only talking once!

[Oscar Miller]

Of course there is another word for climate change - it used to be called the weather.

[Joe James Broughton]

I still have not come to a definite view on climate change, although at a guess the increases in Co2 could be too much for the earth to deal with naturally. I welcome objective information, as does the party.

Lord Lawson did have many achievements as Chancellor - before 1988. But we should take his forecasting skills with a very large pinch of salt. He was not good at balancing risks, and got a lot wrong at the end.

[Edward Huxley]

It doesn`t matter what we think about climate change or anything else. It will all be decided in Brussels. New EU president Sarkozy has got climate change and defence (i.e. control of our armed forces) in his list of priorities and since we are now committed to the Treaty there is nothing we can do about it.

[David Parker]

There is a great deal more to environmental issues than the so called climate change, even though a cycle of global cooling is a possibility which should certainly not be ignored. There is a common misconception that the EU is better suited to addressing environmental issues than individual nations working out their own solutions according to local circumstances. But, as in so many other areas,a "one size fits all" EU environmental policy can easily do more harm than good, as is already happening in the UK with the EU Waste Directive. The same will be true if the present or any future Government attempt to meet the totally unrealistic (in fact, impossible) EU renewable energy target.

It is therefore important that the Conservatives should have a clearly defined practical, balanced, costed and published environmental policy of their own,, which can be applied when the EU model fails, as it surely will. Cameron's previous attempts to woo the "Green" lobby are viewed by many, perhaps rightly, as naive and opportunistic.

[Derek W. Buxton]

Well said haddock, totally agree.
I also agree with David Parker, except that the EU won't fail, that is not allowed, and they make the rules, our politicians only pretend.