Its called sarcasm

Funny you say that G, as that's exactly what I have been doing for a while and what I will probably continue to do up to the missus' birthday.........sorry, I mean Election day.

I'll openly admit I'm not into this politics malarky, and sometimes don't understand these pledges or what they mean, but I do enjoy the build up to election night and election night itself. I will be watching these live debates with the party leaders, as it should make for some interesting watching and hopefully it will help me learn a bit more about what each party is trying to acheive and how it will apparently help, or possibly hinder the common as muck folk like myself.

I'm not sure I will enjoy the debates. They will be a bit too yah boo I think. You never know, though.

Back in 1992, I went to a Douglas Hurd public meeting full of West Oxfordshire Tories. Crikey. A different world. So smug.

Brown does have some questions to answer though. It's one thing not being responsible for the global recession but its another leaving yourself overly vulnerable to the effects. One of the biggest mistakes from the banks, to government, to households, was the belief that economic cycles had been eliminated, and instead of having periods of growth and recession, it was possibly to have continuous "stable" growth.

Hence banks lent more, to riskier debtors, than they could cover, leaving them hopelessly exposed when the defaults came in. Government borrowed a lot of money, banking on the fact that continued growth would make it serviceable, which then meant when growth became recession, the level of borrowing was now a dangerously high proportion of GDP. Households remortgaged and pushed their borrowing to the limit, under the expectation that 1) their incomes were going to rise and 2) their house prices would rise and enable them to easily pay off the debt. When redundancies, pay freezes, and static/falling house prices came in then in came the repossessions, debt and misery.

What was needed was an acknowledgement across the board that there are always risks of a downturn or recession, and having a Chancellor constantly boasting about "abandoning the politics of boom and bust" encouraged this kind of behaviour.

re Black Weds, we weren't alone in what happened there either - Italy fell out at the same time we did, although they asked to return at a different level, and a year later the whole system of the ERM unravelled when France looked like falling out and they changed the rules so your currency could fluctuate within 15% of the original rate, which made a mockery of having the ERM anyway. With hindsight we did well out of the ERM, the 2 years we were in it helped us get on top of inflation better than we had ever done before, and its stayed quite low since. However we needed to get out in 92 as we couldn't come out of recession when we were having to keep pushing up interest rates to match the deutschmark. It was a political embarrasment for Major as his whole economic policy was based on ERM membership, but we probably went in at the right time and came out at the right time.

Who, you or Douglas?

There's going to be some awesome, Alan Partridge-esque soundbites from these debates. Don't they have to do 3 - one for Sky, ITV and BBC? I wonder if the Beeb will roll out Paxman.

The country set.

I got some dirty looks from the assembled tweed twin sets and Barbours when I asked him how the Tories could claim to be a tax-cutting party and yet have introduced the poll tax. His answer, of course, wiped the floor with me.

This is probably the most difficult choice for me since I first got the vote, many years ago.
I have always voted Labour, except for when Doug Hoyle first stood in Warrington, and I voted Lib/Dem as a protest against Hoyle being foisted on us.
I have no respect for Gordon Brown as I think he is a manipulator and wouldn't recognise the truth if it bit him.
I have no respect for Cameron who is akin to a snake oil salesman. All presentation and no substance.
I have no respect for Clegg who leads a party that can promise anything because they know they will never achieve an overall majority in parliament.
UKIP - I love listening to Nigel Farage for the humour, but can't take him seriously.
Greens - want us to go back to living off the land and walking everywhere
BNP - Thugs "R" Us and rent a mob.
So, I am in a quandary having followed and engaged in politics since I was about 13. I truly believe that everybody should vote, regardless of your political views.
I think that sums up what a lot of Labour supporters feel about this election, which wont make much difference in Warrington North, but will in the key marginals where this election, like all others, will be decided.
HELP!

Should people vote for their local candidate and what they can do for them locally, or should they vote for the party that they want to see in power at Westminster? These can often be 2 very different things.

As my friend said, "No matter who you vote for, the bloody government always get in anyway!"

If you live in Warrington North, it's fairly irrelevant as Helen Jones will win. If she doesn't, the Tories will have a landslide.

If you live in Warrington South, then voting Labour is important if you want a Labour Government.

With the first past the post system, I think you vote for the party you want in government, not the person you want to help you locally.

rlOECD says we're doing wellrl

Sadly, the people of North Warrington would vote in a shop dummy if it wore a red rosette.

Some fella from BBC Radio Leeds was saying similar about people in Wakefield and I see Wakefield is being targetted as one of the swing seats the Tories would need for a working majority.


EDIT: Sadly, the people of Folkestone would vote a donkey as long as it represented the Conservative party - as we have seen with Michael Howard MP.

Heard a vox pop from Folkestone this morning. In response to being asked what the key issue was, voter responded "All the foreigners in the school", to which her kid added "Yeah, they're taking over". Ah well.

substitute the red rosette for a blue one and that would show how the people of south warrington have been voting for years.

North East Leeds looks pretty close. It's been a big Lib Dem seat for the past decade or so with the influx of student voters. No doubt if either Labour or Tories can get in there, that will be a big bonus.