04/16/2010: "Election - 1st leader's debate"

despite the spin doctors hotline to the producer, the supposedly unknown questions to come (of which gordon brown changed his notes in between each question, apparently in order!), it turned out to be not as bad as i thought it would be.

i dont like this type of event at all - in fact i dont like any stage managed type of event - i prefer to have the public question the leaders and mps on the streets, in full view of the general public.

i detest spin in all its forms, from the brown "tea party" and the "unexpected meeting the people" right where he has labour activists giving out leaflets only an hour before his "surprise" visit... i dont mind when its obviously party workers, but when these people are portrayed as "the people" or "the public" i find it misleading.

cameron:
i found it odd that he didnt go for brown more - or at all - where was the pressure on brown?
its okays putting across the manifesto, dropping in some conversations to back it up, where was the passion?
here was a bloke whose fingers are all over a recession of such huge proportions that none of my living family have ever seen the like before and my grand kids will be paying it off with higher taxes and fewer services, yet not a hit in sight from the other two?

brown:
he did okays, about even with cameron i thought, disgusting with his comments about using sport as a way to give kids something to do - brown sold off all the playing fields/tennis courts, that these same children used to have access to for free!
stating that it was labour and himself that introduced cancer screening, before going on to quote a patient, was a bit of a cheek.
i wasnt expecting him to shine like a beacon, but i was hoping the other two would force some information out of him, but as he didnt attack nick clegg at all, clegg didnt throw much back.
liars always slip up, if you hit them enough times on the same issue, brown's claims to be "working hard to achieve [insert ideal scenario here]" without giving any information is becoming a joke.
didnt drop the ball, but didnt improve his rating

clegg:
on the face of it cleggy did well, but then again vince did well in his debate also, not a lot of detail was given nor asked for.
a lot of general statements - which on closer inspection has been torn apart at the seems - constant references to "the other two parties" became boring and predictable.
i was surprised by the lack of attacks by gordon brown though, i dont think hell get such an easy ride in the next two debates.

after the debate:
question time was a disgrace - john seargant was hopeless, constantly banging on about how nothing brown has done in the past is his fault and calling the public and commentators foolish for suggesting it to be the case, showed him for what he is, out of touch.
michael grove was on for the conservatives, along with ukip and the libdems.
constant attacks from the audience (impartial bbc?) members of the panel queued up to fire shots at the conservatives.

the most revealing facts came to light on andrew neil's this week show
libdems have been making hay, regarding the quote that they would scrap the trident replacement saving billions which could fund their tax giveaway and be used to cut borrowing - not so it would appear on closer inspection!
the scrapping of trident would not bring any money into the treasury until 2016 - the cut in borrowing is needed in the next five years, ie, upto 2015 - so would do nothing to put money in the pot for anything.
this combined with the Ł17 billion of missing money from their calculations already established by economists, results in a greater than Ł30 billion missing in funding their plans!
when asked on this week, can they reveal how the Ł30 billion funding gap can be closed - the libdem lady said "no" then proceeded to talk about long term savings that could be made - even quoting cutting trident again as a saving in the next parliament!

the one big stumbling block for me with the libdems, is their european policy.

all their manifesto calculations are based on the population, being the size it is now.
libdem european policy is an open door policy!
andrew neil's show revealed that the libdems have forgot to mention that they would have an amnesty for all asylum seekers, allowing them to stay in the UK
what about those here illegally?
what about those from outside the eu, that are resident in a european union country for 6 months then get a european passport, allowing them to walk into britain, live here, work here, use all our services for housing, education, health, police, etc?
they wont want to come here alone, so they would bring their families here as well.

libdem costings are way off without the trident savings, including them would be crazy as the savings wouldnt come into play until after the next election in 6 years time, and to base their calculations on the population now?
when we know there are vast numbers of asylum seekers here both illegally and legally, plus their open door policy from european countries would put a huge drain on our services, rewsulting in more taxpayer money being required.

and finally...... PR
lots of talk of this being the way forward.... not a chance!

mp buys a duck house/porn film on their expenses - if PR is our voting system, we would never be able to get rid of them!
each party names its number 1, number 2 etc.
the percentage of the vote to each party would allow them to select X numbers of mps based on their declared list (for example - gordon brown = number 1, ed balls = number 2, etc etc.)
just 1% of the national vote and we would have gordon brown returned into office, etc.

1st past the post may not be ideal, but it gives us more chance of kicking out the mp than any PR set up would allow.... many systems and ways of doing things have been "modernised" under blair/brown over last 13 years... theres not many of them that have worked to the benefit of the people, and most if not all, have cost the taxpayer more money than the set up that existed already!