Sounds like you should set up a party to reflect your views.

I think we should brace ourselves for some serious cuts in public spending: www.cityam.com/article/loss-uk-s ... e-sterling and, Cameron's response to the ratings downgrade: www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpoo ... -32891961/

I think we should brace ourselves for some serious cuts in public spending: www.cityam.com/article/loss-uk-s ... e-sterling and, Cameron's response to the ratings downgrade: www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpoo ... -32891961/

Your experience is remarkably similar to mine over almost the exact same period of time (I'm 50). I can't currently see myself voting for any of the three main parties and most of the fringe parties are either deeply unpleasant or pointless. Often both.

I'm going to have to find one somewhere though. I can't bring myself to abstain in a General Election.

In which case vote for a minority party whose key message is something you believe in (eg Green if you are concerned with the natural world / environment, UKIP if you are anti-EU, etc). Do not consider it a wasted vote.

I'm going to be voting Labour, probably. I have only ever voted Labour or Lib Dem, and the Lib Dems will never get another vote from me at any level.

I don't think Labour did too much wrong domestically during the Blair/Brown years, if you conveniently forget about the whole Iraq kerfuffle. The global financial collapse caught most people/governments with their pants down, and it'd have been just as severe for the people of this country under any colour of government. I do think the Labour party would have been far less inclined to use the disaster to drive through an unpleasant ideological agenda of raping the poor, though. So, on that basis alone, I'll probably vote for them.

They did nothing to halt the privatisation and deregulation agenda of the Conservative years, though. They did, as many have pointed out, effectively build the bridge that is now allowing the current government to dismantle the NHS.

They didn't start these processes, but they continued them.

So for instance, we now have the government intending to close down the A&E and maternity departments at a massive hospital like Lewisham – because three PFI hospitals in a different hospital trust area are in massive, massive financial trouble almost entirely because of PFI.

On a wider level, we have a mainstream political class that, if not ideologically wedded to neo-liberal extremism, is terrified of upsetting big business and the bulk of a media that supports the supranational corporatocracy and its agenda, and hysterically spreads lies and knee-jerking myth to back that up.

And thus, unfortunately, to larges swathes of the population that swallow this, hook, line and sinker.

Perhaps I ought to have started that sentence with, "Compared to the current government..."

I agree with your comments regarding the political class as a whole, but on balance, I still think Labour are the best of a bad bunch.

The touble is the more people who have the same view as yourself the more likely we are to get another Tory government. My Grandad was a local Labour councilor and one time Mayor in Hindley near Wigan and despite the area being a staunch Labour area he never took the Labour vote for granted. His view was that Tories always vote. There is a core of Tory support that always turns out and this in my opinion is true.

from what you have said I am pretty sure you don't believe the Labour party would continue the thinly disguised assault on the welfare state that has been undertaken under the guise of necessary austerity cuts. If we get another five years of the Tories, especially in a majority government the NHS will be well and truly a thing of the past.

Andy Burnham and his views on what he would do with the NHS is therefore in my view reason enough alone to vote Labour for anyone. The party is far from perfect and as has been pointed out "new labour" was as wedded to neocon politics as any of them but the alternative is even worse IMO.

With the first past the post system we have voting for fringe parties IS a wasted vote. We are stuck with a poor choice but I would have thought the blatant and deliberate dismantling of the welfare state undertaken by the Tories while the Lib Dems sit meekly by is enough to vote them out and the only way to do that us vote Labour.

I've likewise only ever voted Labour or LibDem. My problem is that Labour started the processes which have lead to ridiculous fees for higher education and creeping privatisation of the NHS. They lost my vote when they introduced student fees and they've done nothing since to incline me to reverse that decision. The LibDems are off the agenda for obvious reasons. At the moment I'm left with the Greens as the only palatable alternative and the last time I read one of their manifestos it was a joke.

Until I moved down here, I'd only ever voted Labour, even when living in Cottingham (staunch tory) but I soon realised that a Labour vote down here really is a wasted vote, so switched to LibDem. The incumbent has managed to scrape through at each of the last three elections and much as I hate the Quisling, bearded, fat bastad that is David Heath, the alternative to him would've been Rees-Mogg's sibling Anunziata and that was unthinkable. So come 2015, Heath will probably get my vote again.

I also imagine there will be increasing numbers in the nation who will vote ABC - Anyone But Cameron

Likewise in my constituency although we did once have a Labour MP, just for one term, other than that its been a Tory one for the whole of my life until the last two elections when we've had LibDem, at the moment he'll get my vote next time for two reasons, he keeps a Tory MP out, and he loves a beer and fights for small breweries and against large brewery tied leases.