Post Election Greens

Still no government.

We are meant to hear today from the three independents that have been holding the country to ransom. As in, they said that they would deliver their final decision today. So I wanted to write this before I find out what way they go, then I can see how well I went.

I think that they will back Socialism.

These are my reasons:

1. Costings.
The Conservatives' costings were savaged by the Civil Service. Despite lots of experienced commentators reminding people that the government bureaucrats are not very good with numbers the majority of journalists still believe that 'Treasury' are somehow sacrosanct. Despite Treasury using a fallible interest rate projection, despite Treasury applying current government policy to the Conservatives' budget to warp it. And despite the Socialists' 43 billion dollar broadband project not being included in their costings. The independents still made lots of comments about the Conservatives being fiscally irresponsible. Yet after adjusting for all of the smoke the Conservatives will deliver nearly a billion in surplus versus the Socialists delivering more than four billion in deficit annually. In short the independents are economically naive.

2. Politics.
The independents come from seats that the Conservatives will contest and may take from them, so any alliance would be fraught with danger. The Socialists will never get those seats and so they will welcome the independents and value them, their alliance would be far more secure.

3. Personalities.
The three independents are all renegades from the minor party in the Conservative Coalition. They have severe issues with the Nationals' leadership; they will never sit well together.

4. Politics 2.
The independents have all made quite a lot of leftist sounding policy statements; therefore it seems more likely for them to side with the left. An alliance of Agrarian Socialism, Environmental Socialism, and Union Socialism.

In the meantime, they have been holding the country to ransom, to ensure that both sides of politics would agree to a range of demands prior to their making a decision. That is to say; they laid out a list of demands, and demanded both sides to affirm these, then they would decide which side they would support.

One of the 'Environmental' Socialists, as opposed to the Agrarian Socialists, and I put 'Environmental' in single quotes because he is a member of the Greens and they are red not green in this country, demanded a hospital as the price for his support. The Conservatives offered him one billion dollars, the Socialists offered him one quarter of a billion, with ongoing funding - which is to say a billion dollars but with a schedule. He then went public with both offers and condemned the Conservative offer as irresponsible.

The Agrarian Socialists also published the Conservatives' offers and costings. Which the Conservatives had only given them on the understanding that the content of the negotiations remain confidential.

So complete under-handedness and untrustworthiness on the left.
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