Originally posted by Flipside
Well, as many of you know, the General Election for the UK is on May 5th, here is a brief summary of the current campaign techniques :-
Labour - Conservatives will do this, Conservatives will do that nyada nyada nyada....
Conservative - Labour are doing this, Labour are doing that, nyada nyada nyada...
Lib Dem - For the main part, don't seem to have realised theres an election coming, but at least are promoting their own policies instead of slagging off everyone elses, which at least doesn't suggest distraction techniques.
It's like choosing between Bill, Ben or Weed, and quite frankly, Weed sounds appealing about now....
Exactly my thoughts, really.....IMO the Lib Dems are the only ones actually trying to punt their own policies rather than rely upon a strategy of choosing the exact opposite of the opposing parties policies and justifying it by criticising the other parties policy.... Labour are fear-raising with terrorism, Id cards, Tories are fear raising over gypsies and immigrants.... the thought of those 2 parties - who are now getting closer and closer on the political spectrum anyways - being the prime contenders apalls me.
On one hand, there's Labour who IMO have done a piss poor job over their term in government (introduced tuition fees, spin, Iraq war arse-kissing, increasing authoritarianism).
On the other, there's the Tories. Beyond my dislike of their more xenophobic policies (including
not applying the human rights act to gypsies in particular, and also the attempts to subconsciously link asylum seekers/immigrants with crime via that policemans stabbing in an anti-terror op), there's the side issue that - barring a miraculous recovery - if elected they will have less than 10% of the Scottish and Welsh vote. Which, in turn, would mean my country (and Wales) will not only likely be minoritised in the House of Commons, but also that it could become a simple scapegoat for raising funds for (for example) solving English problems (there's already apparently a tacit strategy by the Tories to cut the money to the Scottish devolved parliament and use it to make English-support boosting funding pledges). I realise that's not an issue north of the border, but tis a big worry for me.
Anyways, there was a cartoon in the paper a while back that went pretty much as follows;
Labour; "We'll raise spending without raising taxes"
Voter; "That's impossible"
Conservatives; "We'll raise spending and cut taxes"
Voter; "That's impossible"
Lib dems; "We'll raise taxes to increase spending"
Voter; "Raise taxes? What were the other 2 saying again?"