Public Fuel and Power Act of 2014 (Final vote)

[bore]

Aye

[bore]

Changing my vote to Nay, not because I don't want to nationalise energy (I do, for the simple reason that's it's in the public interest to have a reliable supply of energy, and it's a natural monopoly), but so we can do at least a little more work on this.

In particular, I don't understand what's wrong with nuclear, and given it's reliability I think it should be part of the mix, and I think we should probably have some idea of the cost.

EDIT: If I did that the bill will fail, so I'm changing my vote to AYE and echo senator Tyrion's call for a redraft.

[bore]

Here's the sort of thing this LINO is thinking

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I wanted to cut out a bit of bureaucracy, and also clarified the nationalization and the nuclear energy section.

[bore]

I think, as with education and healthcare I come at this from the different perspective of someone who's British.

In the UK, energy is a real problem with about 1 in 10 households suffering from fuel poverty. Anything that can be done to reduce that should be, including reducing costs.

With regard to things like nuclear energy, the plants are simply uneconomic for a private company to run, so they don't. Private firms don't want to run them absent massive subsidies, so either the government pays huge amounts to subsidize private profits or it pays huge amounts to run it itself.

The same is true for things like renewables. Ultimately, unless we want to use fossil fuels, we are forced to pay huge amounts out of the public purse, nationalisation or not.

Also, I can't believe that nationalisation would be that disastrous. Countries like France have nationalised energy without the sky falling in.

[bore]

Seeing as a redraft is clearly now DOA, and we're just voting on the bill as it is, i'm reluctantly (even if that causes simfan to lose it) going to have to change my vote to Nay. (If I still can, I've got no idea what's happening with votes being open or not)

Like Tyrion I regret voting for the bill initially, and this isn't an excuse, but it's very difficult to maintain an active debating presence for every bill. Sometimes, and I think this is true for every senator, you delegate debating the bill to other senators, and base your opinions on that. I voted largely off the fact that I support nationalisation of energy and that was a mistake.

It's worth pointing out, yet again, and hopefully in not an obnoxiously moderate hero way, that I really don't vote in lockstep with TNF (earlier upthread I was accused of being the senates 6th right winger ), and, like with tyrion the amount that I have to vote against fellow laborites distresses me.

[bore]

Nay.

Nay

Since when did Cassius get two votes

[bore]

Surely debate is over anyway because the bill failed?