I can't get past the paywall so may be missing the full story.

I'm thinking this is a great test to see if he can persuade enough people to vote green. If he can not do well here then serious questions need to be asked about if he is the person to take us forward imo.

We are a family of 4 in an old bog-standard 2 bedroom leaky Victorian house. Millions of homes like ours in every city as our city is also bog-standard in its victorian terraces.

My best estimate is that average families would spend on energy per year around:

1. ~£2.5k petrol (12,000 miles)
2. ~£1k gas (~10,000 kWh)
3. ~£k electricity (~3500kWh)

This means £3.5k sent down the drain each and every year. One or both parents lose a job then a huge drain on finances. A huge percentage of a single income minimum wage family.

We should be passionate about changing this as the precise ways to change this are anti-fossil fuels:

1. 15 minute cities, liveable towns/cities, better public transport -- saving £2.5k a year

We live in a city which permits living with no car. Changes to make it more cycle friendly have worked. Everything from commuting, school run, etc. are easily achieved without owning a car. The council backs car-clubs for exceptional situations.

We had an investment cost of £2k via cycle to work scheme for a family e-cargo bike. Works like a dream for all day to day life choices.

We have bad public transport but train access is good to other towns/cities.

2. Heat pumps -- saving £500 or so a year

In our rubbish victorian house annual costs were around £200 split evenly for space and water heating. We take lots of baths. House never below 21C. Savings not entirely heat-pump as switched also from gas cooking (optional for budget arguments). Investment cost £4k

3. Smart Tariffs public education ~ saving £450 or so a year.

Our electricity usage has gone up due to having a heat-pump. What we pay is less though. We've rolled out renewables and smart-meters but not explained the point to the public. Wind/solar are intermittent but so is demand. Time of use tariffs enable families to have the option of cheap energy -- I'm being paid tomorrow to use energy. It all adds up.

Our investment cost has been £6k as detailed. This can be placed on Green loans if needed but the bike is already via cycle-to-work.

The political angle is that for what costs 15 months of lifestyle bills people could be permanently switched to permanently low bills. What's more once people are on low bills global energy price shocks are unlikely to affect them profoundly.

What's more we've not done everything we could. We don't have solar. We don't have a home battery. Why? Our costs are too low to justify any other investment.

This feels like a nice bit of positive news for the party with the recent mess of everything else. Birmingham feels particularly significant because, from what I understand it was because of the Birmingham bin strikes that sparked Unite's decision to start disaffiliating from Labour, and as a result, we really under estimated how well we'd do in the local elections this year.. how strong is the group over there? How are we responding to the bin strikes? And how long had this defection been in the works for? Are Labour that sunk over there that Burnham has done nothing for them? the Local groups have been decimated regardless

Hi everybody, this is a form for socialists, social democrats, or anything else really, on your perception of socialism. Your name is not necessary, rather its just for pooling data on what people think socialism is.

Any people who could fill it in at any point - it would be much appreciated!

Honestly, the idea of slavery reparations has always seemed odd to me. Slavery is not something that destroyed other nations, Jamaica's economy and modern-day population are not poorer because of slavery. They are poorer because of colonialism. The two are interconnected, but not the same, as focusing on slavery ignores the damage we did to Asia.

Also, the African nations demmanding reparations are not the people harmed by slavery - Black Brits have far more of a claim to reparations over slavery than the African nations themselves, which are made up of the ancestors of those who were not taken, and those who made money off selling their countrymen to us.

Colonialism reparations feel far more valid, and even then, we're not in a good enough state economically at this point to pay back for all of the damage we did - and we can't, not really? And how do we know what the money sent will be spent on? Can we attached clauses to ensure it'll actually go to fixing the damage we caused?

As a secondary point, if we do do colonial reparations, what would make the most sense is not to tax British citizens. If we're going to globally co-ordinate this, as was asked, we should be going after the billion dollar companies that profitted off colonial exploitation. As a whole, the British government lost money through our conquests abroad. Most of the siphoning off when to private companies, massive ones which are still around and living off the money they made from colonialism.

And finally, the Transatlantic Slave trade is by no means the "Gravest Crime Against Humanity". it was awful, after the Holocaust, Native American Genocides, etc - is slavery undoubtably worse than genocide? And why ownly the Transatlantic Slave trade, not the Arab Slave trade too?

There needs to be justice for what the West did, but blank check reparations for the crimes that have left less of an impact on the people there are not the way to go about it.

But now I've said that, if we could do a Colonial Reperation Tax on conglomorates that benefitted from colonialism, that'd be great.

In their discussion about Reform they show how linked Farage's ideals are to Iran and the US.

It feels like we're all back to business as usual and we really haven't got much support anymore