I prefer full memoirs to diaries. The diaries are excellent historical documents, and Tony Benn's are more extensive than anybodys, but I find memoirs more readable and they put things in better context. I found Alastair Campbells diaries a bit hard reading as well.

Another good book to mention is David Owen's memoirs, I've always rated him. I thought if we went for an elected President to replace the Queen's constitutional powers, it would be a good idea to have an older experienced politician with an element of international stature, and Owen would be the type of bloke I'd have in mind as President.

The Lord Patten of Barnes (Chris Patten). The best prime minister (in recent times) we never had. Surely a candidate for President also?

Yes, Patten would definitely be in that category. It would be good to have a London Mayor style election with the parties endorsing a candidate and some maybe standing as independents. As it would just be the Queen's consitutional powers it wouldn't really be a job for a current politician, more a former one with status (please NOT Blair)

Chris Patten was a good politician, intelligent and had a good public image. Major said in his book that he had him lined up to replace Lamont as Chancellor after the 92 election but him losing his seat squandered it. Another good potential Tory candidate for a President would be Ian Lang, quite a low profile politician but a good One Nation Tory.

Not sure who would be suitable figures from the Labour side. It's hard to find respected former Labour ministers.

I bet Paddy Ashdown would fancy being President as well actually.

Shirley Williams?

Have you read biographies of the big 19th figures? Gladstone, Disraeli etc? A world away from today's politicians.

That's an arguable point, but to put the two issues together in the manifesto smacks of populism to me (or even opportunism).

Do you have evidence for your claim?

There is plenty for it Graham as you well know. If you don't type "disproportionate crime rates race" into Google. It's not a argument I think you would seek to defend.

I mean are you really going to counter the assertion that "Gun crime is more prolific amongst young black men then young white men" ?

rlGoogled and found thisrl

Yes, more black and Asian people are stopped and searched.

PS Can we not let this thread get derailed into the racism thread.

Let's leave it there then. The stop/search stats can either be seen as self fulfilling or reasonably and necessary policing measures in line with crime stats.

Just rest assured you are most likely (based on empirical evidence) to be blown up on a plane/train/major city by a muslim.

Tory manifesto tomorrow...

it will read,

'What ever Labours' is, only slightly better and we came up with it first'

For those who like a good read with a political slant, read The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist by Robert Tressle. If you don't understand the "workers" struggle after reading that, you never will.

Having re-read my initial post I realise that the point I was trying to make was in no way clear.

What I meant say was that Labours investment in building schools has been a huge lost opportunity to provide hope for a lot of children who have been through the education system in the 13 years that Labour have been in power and it's for these reasons.

I agree that school buildings themselves were in desperate need of rebuilding but what has happened is this. The schools (as well as hospitals and other Gov't funded buildings were all built using the Private Finance Initiative - PFi). A disaster as a policy and one created by the Tories, Labour railed against it in opposition but when in power put their full weight behind it because it is off balance sheet.

There are huge problems with PFi. It is more costly to create a building using PFI than it could be if a Gov't built it themselves, the Gov't doesn't own the building once complete and any (and I mean any) changes to the building itself has to be done at a price determined by the owners so the taxpayer gets ripped off whenever this is needed. The major thing about PFi is that the building is paid for "on tick" and the NHS and local authorities are legally bound to make the payments for the 25/30 year period in question which will eat into fronline service provision as the Gov't reduces its available investment in education and health to reduce its debt.

The thing is, even accepting that PFi was the way forward, Labour didn't have the brains to work out how to squeeze the most from the investment and I refer to the complete absence of a policy in training up youngsters leaving school by way of apprenticeships and learning a trade on these massive PFi schemes - instead labour from Europe was shipped in to do the work instead. This means that not only has a large amount of the money paid in wages disappeared out of the UK economy a vast swathe of young 'uns who could have been taught a valuable skill over the last 8 years or so have been denied the opportunity - an opportunity to offer something of value to householders etc now that this big ticket capital work work has essentially dried up. Youngsters who could have been trained through have nothing they can offer tradewise and are either on the dole, doing service roles or being shoved through the HE network (Blairs 50% into education) on courses of little value to employers while being saddled with the cost of tuition fees for god knows how long.

Spending money is easy when it's the taxpayers - the skill is in turning the penny as many times as possible while you're doing it and Labour have hideously let this country down on that count.