Just out of curiosity is anyone on this forum even considering voting for the hard of joined up thinking party?

The only criteria that makes sense to me is that the right to vote has been hard fought for, so people should. Fine if you don't but you really can't complain if things are not to your liking when the election is over.

I'm looking forward to seeing the high standard of apathy being improved upon this election and the country will be "governed" by a camel type government.

I look forward to a hanged parliament.

The vast majority of voters vote for a party rather than for an individual. Whilst I want my MP to have a degree of independence I wouldnt want an MP who relies on the support of the party to gain election and then completely ignores the party's manifesto once elected.

Thats what I would like to turn on its head - you can still have the political party's with their manifesto's (or sales leaflets as I prefer) but your MP should be free to speak out and to vote according to his/her constituency guidance - maybe it would even involve more in communicating with their MP ?

Just to give two examples I have this morning listened to IDS refuse to discuss where his proposed £10bn worth of welfare cuts are going to be applied in the next term, he even denied that he had any targets in mind and insisted that nothing would be decided or announced until AFTER the elections, this was followed by Lucy Powell (Labour) stating that they would not have a budget to work with until "they had seen the books", in other words both of the major party's in this election are not being honest in their sales pitches and are expecting us to believe that they won't make any decisions on any project or expenditure until they form a government - despite this they are all making sweeping promises of what they will do in order to win your vote, in fact ONLY to win your vote, we all know what happens to policies when a hung parliament looms, they are the first thing to go in the shredder.

Can you honestly say that you'd prefer a system of sales pitches of vague promises versus a person who will actually represent the constituency in which you and they both live ?

It's always going to be hard to get large scale electoral backing for a minor party to grow. The first past the post electoral system is heavily weighted to the 2 main parties.

That said I expect UKIP to get an handful of seats on about 10% of the vote with reasonable numbers of second places in a few Northern Labour seats. I expect them to have a bigger impact longer term.

Did see Lucy Powell interview on Daily Politics this morning? Very cringe-worthy. She just couldn't come up with a credible plan for deficit reduction. I can only assume under Labour we as a country will continue to run a deficit till the IMF are called in.

For me, the economy is the most important factor in my decision making process and the Conservatives are by far the most competent.

Lucy Powell MP was on Sunday Politics today and argued that Labour have a three pronged way of clearing the deficit.

1. 'Fair taxes' - whatever that means. She did admit that one tax rise was to re-introduce the 50p tax rate which best estimates state would bring in £2BN

2. Cuts. She was vague about this and only mentioned a few things, winter fuel allowance, ministerial salaries and capping child benefit at 1% rises. Any savings from these would be minuscule.

3. Higher Wages etc. Then there was some general chatter about ensuring people are paid more to increase the tax take. The usual sound bites about zero hours contracts were trotted out. But she said they would not be abolished.

Then at the end she admitted that there would be more borrowing to the tune of £30BN to fund investment.

I just don't see how Labour have a credible plan to deal with the deficit and the economy.

You should have been watching an hour earlier when IDS was interviewed live by Andrew Marr, he too had no apparent idea of how he would save his targeted £12bn in benefits savings, or at least that was the party line that he had to toe - you could see where his tongue was bleeding from all the biting he was having to do while Marr kept insisting that he must at least have some idea of where the target would be achieved.

Basically in the first Sunday of the election campaign (even though it doesn't start until tomorrow) both the Tories and Labour have refused to give any detail on ANY policy, this is like buying a car and all that the dealer will say is "Its a blue one".

I can sympathise that they don't want to actually go into great detail about [iactual[/i cuts. By its very nature will upset some group of voters which you don't want to do before an election.

But I have more confidence that a conservative government will actually make the necessary cuts and take the difficult decisions rather than Labour who will say they will cut now but when it comes to it and they have the power, they will back out and borrowing and the deficit will spiral.

Neither party will come clean on their deficit reduction plans, they never do.

As at the last election, Labour has the most realistic target for reducing the deficit, the Tories' target is unrealistic. However the Tories are more likely to hit Labour's target than are Labour. Labour cannot achieve its target simply through taxing the rich. Eventually they will have to come up with some cuts that will hurt. But it will take at least two years of internal wrangling and bitter opposition within the party before they can actually start to implement them.

Quite simply there is no debt! There is an intangible concept that people really get upset about but to date the "money " hasn't been seen, just numbers in computers and on prices of paper. To keep people " happy " there are paper and metal representations of Pounds sterling, Euro's and Dollars etc, but to date no one has ever seen them.
A bit like these deity things people chunter on about.
Capitalism and double entry book keeping, the greates ponzi scheme, perpetrated by the human race.

Something for nothing, magic really

Well it looks like I'll be voting for Left Unity - the only anti-austerity party standing in my area.