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IN 2010 THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY SOUGHT VOTES WITH A LIE



But Westminster has seen to it that there is no 'OFPOL', and parties have no existence in law.

Under that aegis, politics has developed lying profession, so what value can there possibly be in 'debate'?

Surely Miliband would welcome the opportunity to be the sole anti-govt voice.

Would it have been too much to add to add a very very simple question to the voting referendum in May?

Q Would you prefer 4 year or 5 year fixed term parliaments?

The debates themselves are a sad indicment on our society. Those whose mind is made up by watching the debates will have done so far more on personality and soundbites than anything else. Its also an absolutely shocking case of bias in favour of Labour, Tory and LibDems.

What stood out for me in the last election was how the debates lowered the level of the discussion down way below the lowest common denominator to the level of populist demagoguery. Of course this is what the two dominant parties want because they know that the majority of their voters have been brainwashed by birth and class conditioning into being hard-wired voters for one or other, in pretty much equal measure. The last thing either of them want is for people to suddenly start to think about the issues of the day for themselves.

Frich. Does that word mean anything to anyone? Well, to those who rely on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ for their news get this,



I know that you are shocked that you didn't hear this on ´óÏó´«Ã½ (Unite Union/TUC) News but I think we should have been told the good news that our austerity measures are just enough to stop the £125,000,000 going up to £200,000,000 PER DAY... that being the interest we could now be paying on the borrowings of our government.

Caroline Quentin in India for ITV informed us of the thing the Chinese Army and the Indian railway network have in common. Care to guess what that might be?

The answer, according to Caroline, is that they are the only two organizations on the face of this earth that employ more people than the NHS of the UK!

Hopefully Fitch won't hear me when I say they are totally wrong, and that within half a century the UK, or whatever is left of it once the various parts of it that will be allowed to vote to bail out have done so, will be reduced to the status of a third world country.

But hey, now we have a new military adventure to distract us from our inevitable demise. Who am I to cast a shadow over our Blair-conditioned eager anticipation of a new conflict?

Smeagol,

These are the same ratings agencies who are trying to reassert their power over us after singularily failing to predict any aspect of the global financial crisis. I wouldnt rely on them for anything and its bad news that like the banks they are able to try and pretend it had nothing to do with them and everything is back to normal.

All our main political parties had their own ever so slightyl different versions of austerity. Labours plan would lead us to have around £90bn of extra debt by 2015, compared to Tories, look at this in the light of projected £1300m from Office Of Budget Responsibility. Thats around an extra £4bn of interest a year or £10m a day. Given our current predicament, I hate to say this, but small beer. (I've based this on OBR data and report and Labours 50% reduction of structural deficit over 4 years versus Tory version of remove over 5 years - assumes £100bn of current deficit is structural).

This country needs far far more and better financial education so that whatever our political persuasions we can properly understand and challenge the economic policies that are put in front of us.

I can't see much of a problem myself, it will just be a case of '..I don't agree with Nick, unless of course, I need a coalition partner...'. Which will be pretty inevitable with all those spoiled AV ballot papers. Who needs a manifesto? Perhaps a pine forest will be saved.

Do we really need these increasing cat and mouse manipulations?

Politicians, of all Parties, in all devolved governments increasingly say what they will do - yet rarely do what they say....

.... yes, an ancient platitude - but that doesn't make it wrong - or less wise.

That's a shame. When the third and final debate took place at that shrine to Joseph Chamberlain's tariff reform, I don't remember the option of having Duncan Smith and Lord Freud being let loose on the welfare state, let alone the NHS reforms, being discussed. Nor do I remember the debate being about whether Canada in the 1990s was a better model for our current economic situation than Japan in the 1990s. We could have had a debate on why Canada in the 1990s was not a good model for Canada in the 1990s. Still.

Does Newsnight wish to discuss this from March 18 2011 Paul Krugman blog? Does the ´óÏó´«Ã½ want to understand?

"The economy is in a liquidity trap when even a zero nominal interest rate isn’t enough to restore full employment. That’s it.
There are, however, some consequences of that situation. One of them is that increased borrowing by the government — or by anyone else — does not push up interest rates.
And that’s the sense in which the low level of interest rates now, lower than rates before the big deficits began, is evidence that the theory of the liquidity trap applies.
Really, this isn’t hard; you can read the words, or, if you’re a trained economist, work through the formal models. It’s only confusing if you really, really don’t want to understand."

We can now see, like the conversion of Smeagol into Gollum, that power is the most addictive and corrupting influences on human thought and behaviour. Forget heroin, cocaine, and cannabis, power addiction kills more people daily than anything else, tsunamis included.

We need to consult scientists in the relevant fields to come up with a system of government that can protect people like Blair, Brown, and now Cameron from the overwhelming catecholamine driven surge a leader feels when he or she sends military power into action.

We need to continue to slash our public expenditure even if unemployment rises towards 5 million. If the government is paying the wages, sadly whatever the job, if the government pays the wage, we are only deepening the hole we have to climb out of.

HOWEVER the reduction in government expenditure, if we can only hold our nerve, offers the possibility of TAX CUTS which represent our only hope of becoming competitive with the rest of the world in terms of our labour costs.

I am still verging on suicidally pessimistic about the land that I love. Today when I heard the shadow foreign secretary congratulate the government for achieving the now fly zone, for a second I felt a tiny scintilla of optimism.

What we really need is a government of national unity with all our parties represented under the leadership of the party that won the most votes, to guide our country through a short window of time that will crucially prevent our decline and fall into third world status.

But Mr Crick, as you so rightly pointed out in a recent blog, Mr Clegg is unlikely to contest the next election as LibDem leader! If Tim Farron becomes leader in early 2015 - which I agree is now highly likely - then he will be eager to use the Leader's debate both to raise his profile as the new LibDem leader and to put clear yellow water between him and David Cameron...