None of the main parties have yet made any serious challenge to the issue that the global financial crisis has been a vehicle for people at the top of the financial services industry to enrich themselves to the tune of millions, before riding off to the sunset with a nice golden handshake payoff and hefty pension, and the general political consensus is that ordinary working people have to face up to reality and experience a serious cut in their living standards for years to come to pay for it.

Some of the political class have been very shrewd operators in shifting the burden of guilt away from reckless casino gamblers in the banking sector towards public sector workers....the public sector doesn't create wealth, its a drain on wealth etc. The joke is that whilst a lot of the time the concept of 'non jobs' in public sector management are cited as examples of waste, when the cuts come, it will be a lot of people in these 'non jobs' who are given the responsibility of making the cuts, so they will ensure the cuts come to those on lower incomes in the public services (ie the front line) whilst making sure that the management class in the public sector retains their privileged position.

The main issue I see in this election is that on the major issues there is no difference between - we have a choice of 3 liberal metropolitan (read London) biased social democratic parties.

Cut through the guff of things such as the Big Society and voting for your police chief (great - more politicisation of the police force just what we don't need) and the actual policies in all the major areas and there's no difference:
- Health care - all are committed to the current model and spending plans
- Education - all are committed to the comprehensive system and not having a system based on academic ability.
- Defence - All are committed to maintain the present commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan although none of them can explain why we are actually there and where the national interest is. (Not sure on the Lib Dems on this one - they campaigned on pulling out last time but haven't heard much on that this time around)
- Welfare - all are committed to maintaining the current structure and spending.
- EU - all are committed to it becoming a super state and Britain subsumed within it (otherwise one of them would advocate a friendly withdrawal.)
- Transport - no change to the current car centric policies

So if you cut through the PR sound bytes - there's basically no difference between them. But not in the way people seem to think they are all right wing or centre right etc - they're all liberal.

On that basis I see little point in voting Tory to get more of the same. The interesting thing is what will happen to the Tories if they lose. Maybe they will fracture and the likes of Cameron can join with Milliband and Clegg (as they have far more in common) and people like Frank Field can join with David Davis. I sometimes think the only thing holding the Labour party together is its hatred of the Tory party - if that went they'd probably realise there wasn't much holding them together.

Then we might actually have some real choices and an interesting debate rather than the current Public Relations battle.

PaulYouane is obviously the great PFI supporter with his explanation of its "benefits".
My point that the rival bid from the current public providers are inflated by a notional amount to make the private bid cheaper at the time, is a true one. If you believe that anybody but the private provider benefits from PFI, you are labouring under a great misapprehension. Government could have borrowed the money at much lower interest rates than private enterprise, and the public body ends up paying much more to that private provider than it would have done had it borrowed the money itself and carried out the project itself.
If you would like evidence of this I can send you some back copies of Private Eye to illustrate the point.

Liberal Democrat for me it seems with 58%. Labour and Green coming in at 46% each after that. Must have been the university fees question.

Ha ha ha! That is funny.

Stupid polls prove nothing. ha.

Yeah, I know. BNP came top on mine.

There's always good things in the Telegraph.

To expand on this, seeing as the Govt is the majority stakeholder in some of our "greater" financial institutions maybe they could insist that some of the housing development land that the banks so wisely provided money for and which is now worthless could be released for development by co-operatives of tradesmen in all areas.

This would get dead land off the books for a payment based on the built out value, it would get out of work skilled tradesmen back into work at a basic hourly rate subject to each one being responsible for a trainee/apprentice. The houses could be sold at material and labour cost plus 20% with the workers receving a bonus of 20% of the sales value outside of the cost of the external works. There's a huge amount of large and small housing sites just sat there on the banks books so there should be a steady flow of work for a few years - so why not be creative in a way that everyone could benefit?

The important thing is people vote. Voter apathy is the biggest risk of this election & that would leave the door open to the likes of Nick Griffin & his Nazi party to bring in their downright racist policies. It happened in local council elections last year & will happen again if people don't exercise the right people died winning for them.

I hate people who say "I'm not going to vote, it's a waste of time". If you don't want to vote bugger off & live in North Korea where you aren't allowed to & see how long you last moaning about the leadership of the country there.

Here hear!

Leaders Debate tonight. Should be interesting.

or as Richie Mathers said on twitter

"looking forward to seeing the 3 main dudes under pressure"

I've emailed into the show.

"Who's the hardest player you've played with & against, Gord'."

Hope it gets on air.

I wonder who will be blamed for the Volcanic ash.

Christ knows but it took a girl at work until probably 'arf three this afternoon to get her head around the fact that Volvic had nothing to do with it, she wouldn't let it go.

"They'll get proppa' sued."