Brief bit of politicking

A General Election update from the perspective of LLFF:

• Monday - Labour released their manifesto. It has made no impact on me whatsoever. Any good ideas they discussed have washed over me because I don't understand why they haven't been doing them for the last 13 years. I still basically like Gordon Brown even though he sold all our gold for a £10bn loss, and I still basically don't like Labour because they took us into an illegal war and I'm a pacifist.
• Tuesday - Conservative manifesto launch. There's no doubt that the Tories' campaign has been, thus far, way smoother than Lab's. That said, David Cameron's glossy forehead and his public relations background is, of course, part of his problem. The gulf between what they're talking about and what will actually happen if they win is so laughable that it makes me sick. I can't believe we're still arguing about this irrelevant rise in National Insurance. What about the fact that they're raising the level for inheritance tax? How can they be seen as progressive while still looking after the richest?
• More than that, however, are their plans for privatising state education. I am simply gobsmacked that anyone believes this is a good plan - making something that should be fair and national be even more about profit and local advantage than it is already. The gaps between good and bad will only increase, the postcode lottery will just get worse. It makes me sick to the stomach. Why should the people have to sort their schools out?! Isn't that the job of government? This is literally absurd. The state education system needs massive investment. No surprise that today, over fifty headteachers attacked the Tory plans.
• Cameron says in The Times that he wants to "put the public in the driving seat". I don't want to be in the driving seat. We pay MPs' salaries so that they can spend every moment of their working week making informed decisions on our behalf. We give them a mandate to make those choices. We do not have time to gather the information. We have families, and we are going to Glastonbury. They should make the country great - and if they fail, we won't vote for them next time. How can this concept be appealing? As the LibDems wrote in a press release following the Conservative manifesto launch, "when the Tories say we're all in this together, what they really mean is you're on your own". (Peter Mandelson then published a press release an hour later making the same observation. Then the LibDems published another press release pointing out that Mandy had nicked their line.)
• Boris Johsnson has finally admitted that one of the key election proposals he pushed forward when he was elected as London Mayor - to run tubes an hour later on Fridays and Saturdays - has been shelved. Only a twunt trusts a Tory.
• Wednesday - the Liberal Democrats manifesto is launched, and finally someone is speaking sense, but they can't win the election and suddenly I find myself getting a bit frustrated. Raising the income tax threshold to £10,000, which results in a £700 annual tax cut for 'most people'. Mansion tax of 1% on properties worth more than £2 million. Class sizes cut to 20 pupils in primary schools; catch-up places for 160 students in every secondary school. Clever students from lowest-achieving schools guaranteed a university place. Scrap ID cards and many other excellent proposals on freedom - the LibDems are the only party making any sense on liberty. And fantastic proposals on the family, including shared allocation of maternity and paternity leave, 20 hours free childcare for every child from the age of 18 months.

Obviously the LibDems won't win, but their manifesto launch, and the words written within it, are the most compelling by a country mile. I simply cannot see how any reasonable person wouldn't want policies like these to become law - and I'm writing this as someone who stands to lose several thousand pounds per year if they won. The Times polls today say that the majority of the country want a hung parliament - and from the data I'm seeing, the gap between Tory and Lab is currently too small for an outright Tory win - the Tories need to win around 40% of the vote, with around a 10% gap between them and Labour, to secure a majority. At the moment, Tories are around 38% with Labour on around 31%. However, my friend at the BBC says that a lot of people are still (understandably) ashamed of being Tory, and that there will be a lot of secret right wingers who are keeping schtum now but who will vote Cameron on the day itself. We'll see. It's definitely tight. It's definitely exciting. And if I can mobilise one or two people to a) vote when they wouldn't have otherwise, b) vote LibDem or c) just be a little bit more liberal in their thinking, I'll be one happy politicised bunny.

OK. It wasn't that brief.