I'm looking forward to a nice 4 year stint of public spending cuts, slashing of waste/beaurocracy, more involvement of the private sector in the provision of pubic services and general austerity.

For me some headline policies would be :-

1. Postponement/scale down of Trident programme
2. Elimination of/(means tested) child allowance
3. Elimination of/(means tested) winter fuel allowance
4. Clamp down on incapacity benefit work dodgers
5. Complete military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan
6. Reduction in breadth, increase in depth of NHS services to get it back to Aneurin Bevan's vision. (i.e gastric bands, fertility treatment, none health related cosmetic surgery etc).
7. Introduction of a fee to see a GP.
8. Increase in taxes on alcohol and fags.

They should bring in a policy to narrow the isles in supermarkets of high-fat produce to stop greedy fat ers going down them too often.


Fruit and Veg isle = wide as you like.

Also ban shop mobility scooters.. lethal those buggers are.. If they go faster than I can walk they should be done for speeding.

Saw some old fella in Boots clean out an isle of deodrant with his hooligan antics on Saturday.

No party could get elected with that as a policy. It'll happen anyway as the liabilities of the schemes grow too big to handle.

(EDIT: Just checked the figures. There are 7 million people employed in the public sector out of a total electorate of 46 million. 7 x 100/46 = 15% of the electorate).

Just pure Fat Tax for those without a medical condition would do me. I am of course, not joking.

Something really extreme like that is going to have to happen to meet the carbon reduction targets.

I agree with Wires71's manifesto. Trident, Eurofighter and the war in Afghanistan are immediate costs we can't afford.

I also think the taxation system needs to be reformed and made a more simple linear system. Overall yield is key, there's no point having a progressive taxation system where the top earners avoid it. A flat rate system looks competitive to investors but when loopholes are pulled out of it it pulls higher earners back in. I would like to see the emphasis of taxation shifted away from earned income and more onto inheritance/capital gains, plus put onto spending where you can hit alcohol/cigarettes and things that pollute. I would favour legalising some soft drugs and prostitution and bringing them into the taxation system. Aside from that I think you need to look at about 3p on the basic rate of income tax and VAT up to 20% while the deficit is so high.

I would also be willing to risk a bit of controversy and bring in a Poll Tax type system for local rates rather than Council Tax. One of the reasons Council Tax is so high is because so many people don't pay it, so those of us who do pay a high premium to cover for it. There is too much of a dependency culture where people want to live off public services whilst expecting others to foot the bill....share the burden across more shoulders and the bills will come down.

Public sector pensions need to be capped at about £30000, it is ludicrous that people can retire at 55 and get a £50000 or £60000 pension at the taxpayers expense. Its not the people actually providing public services who get these pensions either, its the managers who know how to work the public sector system and maximise their own personal gain.

I would freeze public sector pay for the full duration of the Parliament apart from the lowest grades and also essential workers like police, nurses, firemen etc. At any salary level above £26000 it has to be frozen completely for five years. Then I would change the inflation target for the Bank of England to 5%. We don't want inflation going out of control but a level of 5% would allow us to bring down wages in real terms and would also reduce the total value of government debt. New student loans would not be index linked at 0% in real terms, but would pay back about 4% above the rate of inflation.

could`nt of put it better....i wont be voting for any of these rogues..its not as if my life would change for the better..

Legalise, then put duty on cannabis/amphetimines.

Higher education tax increment instead of student loan. The debt puts working class kids off from going to University (disproportionately from middle class kids) whereas a, say, 1% incremental in income tax for those that have had post aged 18 education would hardly be noticeable over the long term. Bring into effect for all placements beginning Sept 2011.

Poll tax - I'm all for that being 'individual based' rather than 'size of house based'.

This thread is going to run and run and probably get a little bit "tetchy" ...........





Public sector pension holders need to give the rest of the country a contributions break of about 5 years while still making their own contributions - either that or work longer like the rest of the country.

The sad thing is that whoever wins this election will have won purely by default, on the basis that people's only reason for voting seems to be to stop the other guy from winning, rather than any actual POSITIVE policies.

The embarrassing thing for David Cameron is that this election is not yet a foregone conclusion for him, as he is taking on a government, that with 13 years in power, as simply run its natural course....Cameron should be an absolute shoe-in, similar to how Tony Blair was in 1997, where it was just a case of how big a landslide New Labour would acheive against John Major's demoralised bunch.

Yet Cameron is simply, in the eyes of many, unelectable.....His policies are non existent, and his cabinet in waiting is full of yes men, who are being deliberately cagey when faced with any awkward questions. Certainly, if the Tories have finally learnt one thing after 13 years in the shadows, it is that the only path back to power is the New Labour one, and that is one full of spin, gloss and lots of baby kissing.

As for Labour and Gordon Brown??....Well, even after a lifetime of voting for them, I find little inspiration to vote for them in a month's time. I believe they have done some good in their 13 years...Minimum wage, NI peace, and some fantastic investment in our schools being just some, but as I said earlier, I just feel they have run their natural shelf life, similar to the Tories in '97.

Sadly, I see little credible alternative....I actually could accept a period of Tory government if it had a half decent leader and promised some good for the country, but I fear that this present Tory bunch are a bunch of careerists, looking to look after their own, similar to Thatcher's nasty crew in the 80's.

As a prediction, I see Cameron sneaking home by 10-15 seats, in the lowest turnout on record...Brown will resign, and Alan Johnson will take over, caning Cameron on a weekly basis in PMQ's....

You are right the Tories have made an incredible job of not finishing Labour off. It would be like us going into the last 5 minutes of our Challenge Cup match against Featherstone, leading 12-10...people would be asking questions.

IMO if the Tories were going into this election with David Davis as leader and Ken Clarke as Shadow Chancellor they would have the election sewn up because even if they were being attacked by traditional Labour voters and Labour media, they would have the traditional Tory vote mobilised behind them and they'd have the City and business community onside as well. Cameron and Osborne's biggest problem isn't that their opponents are trying to paint them as out of touch Etonian Tory boys, its the fact that their own core support is so lukewarm towards them and the City isn't convinced. They have not had any coherent strategy or line of attack on Labour, they've been shifting their economic position from opposing Labour's interventionism during the recession and stressing the need for austerity measures, to saying that they would ring fence the NHS and increase spending on the military campaign in Afghanistan, then saying that Labour's 'efficiency savings' were a drop in the ocean, and now saying that those savings would finance reversing the 1% rise in NI. They now seem to have landed on this NI issue as being their main line of attack in the election campaign...but a 1% reverse is a minor policy detail not a headline campaigning point. They have not convinced anybody.

Cameron as well has made some embarrassing gaffes and looked out of his depth politically, when there was the story of Gordon Brown being alleged to be a bully, Cameron gave a news conference the next day saying "there has got to be a public inquiry on this"....which just made him look stupid because obviously there wasn't going to be a public inquiry and Cameron had to drop his call for an inquiry quietly else he'd look like nobody took any notice. Then when Stephen Byers and Geoff Hoon got stung into that cash for lobbying row, Cameron was at it again, demanding a public inquiry, again nobody took any notice.....these kind of elementary errors are embarassing and not something which a leader like David Davis, or in the past John Major, would have made.

who cares ? there all *******

Just remember, if you think its bad now under Labour, then it'll be worse under the Conservatives. Vote Lib Dem!