Renewable Energy Manifesto – Key Targets 2011

Overview

2. Commit to achieving new renewable energy targets set by the Low Carbon Revolution Policy Statement, by fully exploiting renewable energy technologies, including mature technologies such as onshore wind that are ready and waiting to be deployed.

Economic, Environmental and Social Contribution

1. Commit funds and support to develop Welsh ports.

2. Focus business support on renewables investment.

3. Standardise Welsh route-of-entry for skills training.

4. Work with industry to establish minimum requirements for community benefit funds.

Purpose: Outline of their policies and positions for the upcoming 2011 election.

Scottish Election Manifesto – Selected Examples

Civil Rights: work to end restrictions on free speech and vigorously defend the right to freedom of assembly. Will work to restore the integrity of government organisations in their handling and security of personal details and the data of individuals.

Housing: Take back under direct democratic control any public sector housing that has been disposed to housing corporations or housing associations.

Health: Ensure that the health service is controlled by the local authorities and run on a day-to-day basis by experienced medical staff rather than by target-obsessed managers.

Education: Advocates a degree of local influence over local education policy.

Crime and Policing: Opposes the installation of CCTV cameras in our communities and all aspects of the surveillance state.

Business: Wants to ensure the survival of the traditional trades and crafts that have been passed down through the centuries. The rural/urban divide in access to the latest technology must be bridged.

Transport: Recognise the need to deal with the fast-growing challenge of global oil depletion, by a long-term programme to improve the reach, frequency and attractiveness of public transport.

Foods and Farming: Create an Organic Foods Advisory body to accelerate the switch to organic methods of food production.

Creator: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1848Purpose: Promotes communism by highlighting the class struggle and the problems inherent in capitalism.

Manifesto

Aim

For the working class (proletariat) to start a revolution and overthrow the ruling class (bourgeoisie) with the aim to create a classless society.

Selected Quotes

“It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself.”

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

“The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletariat parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, the overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat”.
“…the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property”.

“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!”

Creator: Bertand Russell and Albert Einstein, issued in London, 9 July 1955.Purpose: End the use of nuclear weapons as our best chance of peace in the world.

Manifesto – Extract

In the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction, and to discuss a resolution in the spirit of the appended draft.

We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings, members of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and anti-Communism.
Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire.

…We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps; the question we have to ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all parties?
The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in a war with nuclear bombs.

…Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.

…There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

Resolution:

We invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution:
“In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.”

Creator: US President John F Kennedy, Speech delivered before a joint session of Congress, May 25, 1961.Purpose: To secure funding for significant US projects to boost the US economy, support democracy over communism, diminish the threat of nuclear weapons and land a man on the moon.

This opening selection sets the context for wanting to commit to landing a man on the moon.

“…These are extraordinary times. And we face an extraordinary challenge. Our strength as well as our convictions have imposed upon this nation the role of leader in freedom’s cause.
No role in history could be more difficult or more important. We stand for freedom.
That is our conviction for ourselves–that is our only commitment to others. No friend, no neutral and no adversary should think otherwise. We are not against any man–or any nation–or any system–except as it is hostile to freedom. Nor am I here to present a new military doctrine, bearing any one name or aimed at any one area. I am here to promote the freedom doctrine.”

Kennedy then identifies a number of significant programs including:

“…I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

Creator: Written in 1774, primarily by Thomas Jefferson.Purpose: For the US colonies to declare independence from Britain.

Manifesto

The famous sentence in this document is a general statement of human rights.
It also sets the context for the declaration of independence that followed:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and their pursuit of Happiness.

The middle section of the Declaration of Independence lists 27 reasons as to why they are seeking to create their own republic.
They’re directed at King George III, sovereign head of Britain.
They include:

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.
For imposing taxes on us without our Consent.
In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.

And, finally, the declaration…

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.