If your incumbent is Conservative or Lib Dem you place more stock in what they do locally then how they vote on issues such as the bedroom tax and privatising the NHS?

Do you not think the fact he may have organised a bus pass for a pensioner pales into insignificance if he voted for the Bedrooms tax for example?

Why wouldn't an MP from a different party be equally effective locally but vote in parliament more in tune with your general views on wider issues?

In my area we have Tory MP. He came out in support of us when we campaigned against the local Tory council imposing transportation costs for disabled children to school post 16.

It still went ahead and if I were a cynic I'd say he knew it would and so could indulge in a bit of populism at zero cost to his parties position locally. Why would I say that? Well because I looked at his voting record in parliament and he has not once rebelled against or even spoken against any socially regressive legislation imposed by the government.

And that shows you are not voting for a local councillor but an MP.

An MP whose votes in parliament will affect you more than anything they do on a local level. Even in the unlikely event he votes against a government of his party because the policy would be bad locally it won't make a jot of difference because his will be the party of government and it will therefore have the majority to overrule his wishes. I am sure it will look good locally just as my MP's actions looked good but that is all it would be. Window dressing.

As I said you are not voting for a local councillor but an MP and if you want to make a reasoned judgement about who to vote for and not one based on tribal party loyalty then look at their voting record in the House and what the party he belongs to stands for.

If you do that and he is a Tory or Lib Dem I honestly can't see how you could vote for them if you have one iota of social conscience given what has happened to the disabled and disadvantage over the past five years regardless of what he has done locally.

Well that's my point, people are too lazy, myself included. It's not easy to interpret what each party is going for in terms of their approach to the big policies this time, none of the parties are going into any real depth about them. Try it out, ask a couple of people who they are voting for, then ask them why, most won't know. Most people who aren't too lazy are too busy, which supports my point. A huge percentage of those voting won't really know why or understand what they are voting for on each key issue. The parties at the moment are doing very little to get their policies across to the people, fuelling the switch off most people have around politics. People care about policies but are not being given anything to get engaged by. Huge sums are spent on branding, marketing and PR and I'd bet most people haven't a clue what is going on.

We've had the discussion before and I know you are passionate about the party political system that currently exists so I sort of expected your post

The incumbent that we have has proved his worth in working for local and national issues, in fact he was one of two MP's (the other was a Labour MP) who on the second to last day of parliament saw a bill of theirs passed into law (pub fair/market rents) which is by any reckoning a national concern and not bad at all for a back bench proposal.

Anyway, the Labrador puppy in this house has just eaten the Labour candidates newsletter this morning so I still don't know what his name is

I'm pro fracking firstly for selfish reasons. I work for a company that would benefit massively from fracking. Indeed we are in the middle of a project that will see us ship liquid ethane from the states because it's much cheaper than using North Sea gas.

The plant I used to work on shut down last year because we couldn't compete with the U.S., China etc. Their production costs are tiny compared to ours. Unless someone finds a cheaper and more sustainable fuel source, industry will continue to die in this country.

Is it the perfect solution? Probably not, there are certainly risks involved, but there's always a safe way of doing things. You hear horror stories in America, but their standards are pretty slack to say the least, and much of it is scaremongering anyway.

I agree most people don't see past the headlines which is basically what you are saying but my point is you personally clearly have the brains to do it.

You don't think there is a link between those two then such that unless our standards were equally slack we still could not complete?

California has always been the state known for its earthquakes, San Andreas fault, etc. Now its Oklahoma. In 2014 there were c. 300 times more 3.0+ magnitude 'quakes there than in 2008. They happen to inject waste water from fracking deep below the aquifers. Now imagine that in a tiny area, heavily faulted area like the NW of England.

There is probably an element of that, we might not be able to produce shale gas quite as cheaply as other countries and do it safely at the same time, but it would give us a fighting chance.

Again, the company I work for are spending £300m to facilitate ethane being shipped over from the U.S. They reckon it will have paid for itself in a handful of years. Partly because it's more plentiful and allows us to run at higher rates, but mainly because it is massively cheaper.

The other argument is that energy has to come from somewhere, as things stand we are going to be relying on other countries. The other solution is nuclear power, but for obvious reasons people are opposed to that too.

That is certainly the current situation, and probably will be for a long time to come as it suits ALL in parliament to not have to be quite so accountable to their tens of thousands of constituents - there will be MP's in the Commons who have never had to justify anything to anyone as they have never stepped out of line of the whips or even worse they are almost guaranteed their seat renewal because their constituents would vote for the party whatever they stood for or did or didn't do.

I heard a comment on Radio 5 yesterday which actually struck a chord and from memory went something like "A lot of LibDem MPs are elected because they are popular within their constituency", or something like that, after one commentator had predicted that they would lose almost all of their seats.

Personally I am not voting for any party (and I haven't clicked the poll) because all you are reading and hearing at the moment is the shopfront dressing, the double glazing salesman spiel, you hear what they think you want to hear and you'll never find out what they are going to do until they get into power - Labour's shyness at discussing how they will make savings using the "we'll decide when we see the books" bollax, and the Tory reluctance to name which Departments they will save £12bn in stating that they haven't decided yet is pure salesmanship and examples of hiding the truth for fear of losing.

Vote tory: Get more and more vicious austerity

Vote Labour: get more austerity at a slightly slower pace

Vote LimpDem: get yourself to a shrink as quick as you can

Vote UPRIK: get fooked

So when Rachel Reeves says she'll be tougher than the Tories on welfare claimants or Debbie Abrahams proudly tweeting that "Ed Miliband vows to wield the axe on public services..." then voting for that shower is somehow seen, by the terminally thick, as having a social conscience? .

You're in the same boat as cod'ead, save us all some time reading your bitter, ill informed ramblings and just write "WAAAAHHHHH...Tories"

"No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin." - Aneurin Bevan


and you do not have the intellectual honesty to understand why he made that statement and how relevant it still is today.

He made that statement because he, like so many who came after him, think they're somehow morally superior, when all along they're just been a bunch of hypocritical oafs who hoped no one would notice, but we did.

Notice what?

You're a strangely aggressive person.