Team Scotland Beat the Libs up in the UK-Good News

David Cameron said the Coalition has vital issues ahead on welfare reform, improving schools and dealing with Labour’s terrible economic legacy.

This is some really good news coming out of the UK! I am sharing here with my readers from Libertarian Republican:

The Deputy Prime Minister responds to news that voters have decisively rejected the Liberal Democrats' project of electoral reform.

Several cross-currents in the just conducted elections in the United Kingdom. The Scottish National Party has won a majority in the local parliament. There is now a real prospect for the scheduling of a referendum regarding independence.

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Along with the loss of the referendum on AV, the Lib Dems suffered huge losses all throughout the country. The success of the party, in the last national parliamentary election, can now be seen as a personal triumph for its leader, but not part of a movement to a new orientation of the electorate. This centrist party finds itself, again, in a struggle for meaning in a voting system that call forth two major parties.

If anything, the Conservatives find themselves in an even stronger position with regard to local councils throughout England, following this election. Given the increasingly clear choice between a Labour Party that acts as though Tony Blair had never re-defined it, and a Conservative Party that embraces the growing diversity of the place, a clear majority of the voters of England are going with the center-right alternative.

 

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Alex Salmond on the SNP’s unprecedented victory after it took a majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament election.

UK: Coldest December since records began

Global What?!

(Mail Online) Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.

And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.

The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910.

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Jane’s Give a Short Synopsis of the UK’s “Bulking Up”

JANES

The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has revealed to Jane’s full details of the 19 defence programmes being reconsidered by the government.

The total value of projects under review – those which were approved by the Treasury between 1 January 2010 and the general election in May – is about GBP14.5 billion (USD21.6 billion), Jane’s has learnt.

The major defence procurements under review include the A400M military transport aircraft programme (valued by the MoD at GBP3.29 billion); the Airseeker programme, which is intended to replace the Nimrod R.1 airborne signals intelligence and electronic intelligence capability (GBP1.4 billion); and the Search and Rescue Helicopter (SAR-H) private finance initiative procurement (GBP4.7 billion), which the Treasury suspended in mid-June.

The most high-profile deal to come under review will be the Future Rapid Effect System – Specialist Vehicles (FRES-SV) armoured vehicle development and demonstration contract, valued by the MoD at GBP1.44 billion. General Dynamics UK was selected as the preferred bidder in March. This is the lead-in contract for FRES-SV: a programme worth up to GBP9 billion overall.