Wes Tender

Agreed that it is pathetic, but largely it comes down to whether people have the determination to vote regardless of weather or minor inconvenience. What that points to is apathy, which is understandable, given the state of British politics. But many have found another way of avoiding going to the Polling Stations and used postal ballots. There have been allegations that some of these have fallen foul of illegal vote-rigging and personally, I would have it that the only people who could use the postal votes would be those who were going to be unavoidably away from their local area, rather than some of those who just couldn't be arsed to go and vote in person. But surely what is worse about this election, is the shallowness of it all. Because of the TV debates, featuring essentially just the party leaders, people are making up their minds on which way to vote based on those individuals, rather than the policies of the parties. Is the apathy worse, or is the shallowness? But then the majority of us vote for a party rather than an individual anyway, regardless of how good that individual candidate might be. How shallow is that? Wouldn't it be Utopia if there weren't any parties and in every constituency the electorate voted for the person they considered to be best qualified to represent the interests of them and their local area?

Whereas people who vote Labour are self-gratification experts and those who vote Lib/Dem are self-abusers.

Don't you think that's wasteful? Why pay benefits and and these Child Trust awards to people who don't need them? Surely the most ardent class warriors would despise children from wealthy families being awarded benefits for their children when they do not need them. Personally, I'd rather have them targeted to those in need and the less money that was given to those who do not need it, the more there would be for those in genuine need. As for that child's trust £250 voucher, most of those which were invested with the trust fund managers this past couple of years are worth quite a bit less than the original £250 at the moment.

Not there since earlier on this morning.

There are two possible analogies, but naturally you sought only to see the one that you favoured. The second analogy is that Brown's bacon is saved by a Lib/Lab pact, which proves to be just as much a lame duck government as the last one and then eventually they are forced into another election. The public, having learned the lesson again that Lib/Lab is even more useless than just Brown's Labour by itself, then votes in Cameron.

Yes. We got Markus Liebherr. Brilliant, wasn't it?

Result? Did I misunderstand the election process? Is the make-up of the next government determined by the opinion polls? If it's all been decided already, then there's no point in me going to cast my vote then? Or did I read it wrong? So there's an option on the ballot papers "none of the above" and if sufficient numbers vote that way, Cameron will be elected PM. Ah, that makes more sense.

I'll take it down tomorrow.

I don't claim to know it all. But I'll fight my corner and call it how I see it. I called Thorpe- Le- Saint those things because his opening post declared that the Mirror had "revealed the truth" behind a potential future Conservative Government. Do you believe that the article was the truth, when it could only be conjecture?

Well, that's OK if you accept that the oil is Scotland's and that it has been Scottish companies who paid the original costs of exploration and drilling. I know that Salmond likes to claim this, but it is always contested. So the North Sea gas is English on that basis? Whatever the situation is regarding oil or gas, I'm still perfectly happy for England to either have its own Parliament, or to get out of the Union.

You make a valid enough point. But my concern was along the lines that Conservatives (and some Lib/Dem seats, have much larger electorates (being rural areas often) than many traditional Labour seats, that tend to be the big cities with several seats within that city boundary.

What a hypocrite. I got a letter through my door (well, a printed letter, mimicking his handwriting). It was addressed Dear Neighbour, even though his address is a few miles away. After blowing his own trumpet about what a good chap he is and how he helps little old ladies cross the road, he gets down to the nitty gritty. "Everyone can see that the Labour Government has let us down. We need a big change in Britain. Here in Eastleigh, we can't vote out the Labour Government because there is no Labour MP to defeat. Labour is already in a poor third place. But we can elect a hard working local champion to be our voice in Parliament and to deliver real reform. The choice here is between the Conservative candidate and me. Many people have told me that they don't like the nasty and negative campaigns the other parties are fighting. Politics has a bad name already and that type of campaigning doesn't help at all." This is the man that stood as one of the three candidates for leader of the Lib/Dems. "Here in Eastleigh we can't vote out the Labour Government" No, you can't. We are just one constituency out of 646, Chris. So what does he suggest as the best option to oust Labour from Government? Vote for the party that historically comes third nationally, instead of the one that has the best chance of securing the victory. This is the equivalent of those voters wanting to get rid of Huhne, voting Labour. Then he completely fails to see the irony of the usual statement put out in their local literature in this constituency. Alongside a bar chart showing the results at the last election with Labour on 23% or whatever it was, they state, "Labour cannot win here". This is a two horse race between us and the Conservatives. Now, Chris, take a deep breath and think for a moment. What would you say if looking at the big picture of the entire UK and scanning the various polls recently published, the Conservatives declared, "This is a two horse race between us and Labour. The Lib/Dems cannot win this election" Perhaps I ought to tell Clegg that Huhne thinks that they have no chance whatsoever of winning this election and asking him what he thinks their chances are. Do you see the inconsistency, Chris? And when those people spoke at their disgust at the nasty and negative campaigns, it went right over your head that some of them might have meant yours.

It wasn't an alternative point of view. It was a fabrication. Calling somebody naive or gullible isn't name-calling. It is an expression of opinion. People only read the Sun for page three and other titillating stuff. Nobody takes their news any more seriously than they do the Mirror's. Both are the journalistic equivalent of comics.

I made one small alteration. The points you make are fair enough, but they don't take account of how the economy would be changed without the Scottish, Welsh and Irish. Unless I'm mistaken, they are nett beneficiaries of revenue that goes towards their economies, whereas we English are nett contributors. If that premise is correct, then that would mean that taxation in England could be reduced and/or public services, health care spending could increase. With decent provision for these things, improvements to the transport infrastructure, more police on the beat, more nurses and teachers, more disposable income for the man in the street, there would be less inclination towards changes of government if the public were satisfied that things were being well run. I grant you that there might be pressure to reform the voting system, but I'd support it if the main item on the agenda was Parliamentary independence for England. The system needs changing now anyway, as it takes far more votes to elect a Conservative MP than it does a Labour one.

Well, if you believe what that rag has fabricated, what would you call yourself? You say further down that you will happily eat humble pie if you are proved wrong, but that infers that the article is not the gospel truth and that it might not come to pass, doesn't it? If somebody is prepared to vote on the basis of something written in a red top, where the article is written on behalf of one party attempting to smear their main rival and where there is no factual basis for it, then what would you call them? Naive and gullible seems to hit the mark pretty well.

I think that there is a lot to be said for the Union as an entity, with trade agreements between the four nations, much as the Common Market was to have been. Other matters such as defence could be shared too. Perhaps there could be a Union Parliament with much fewer MPs and a separate English Paliament dealing solely with the economy, laws and affairs of England. And the laws set by the English Parliament and the economic policy, tax raising measures, etc, should prevail over those imposed by the European Courts. That should be negotiated with Europe and if they don't like it, we should have a referendum on leaving.

OK, if you're going to be obtuse. If the Tories get in, there will have been a change. If you had been a bit more Liberal in your interpretation, I wouldn't have been Labouring under this misapprehension. What's in a name? The pratt Clegg was rabbiting on again this morning about them being the new party and that was the difference between them and the old parties. OK, Nick, we got the message, that NEW = better, different, washes whiter, OLD = tired, a spent force, unchanging, etc. He must think that we were all born yesterday. We weren't and we see through you, Nick.

A very good point. Time to either disallow the Scottish, Welsh and the Irish to vote in our Parliament over English matters, or to disband their Parliaments and assemblies. We should give them the choice as to which it is to be, just to be more fair to them than the West Lothian question has been to us. The Scottish Mafia in particular has been extremely influential poking their Scottish noses into English affairs, with the following MPs and PMs since 1997 Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, George Robertson, Helen Liddell, Donald Dewar, Lord Irvine, David Clark, Gavin Strang, John Reid, Lord Falconer and Ian McCartney. The Libs / Lib/Dems, favour Scottish or Welsh as their party leaders, with Lloyd-George, David Steel, Kennedy, Menzies-Campbell, Jo Grimond. Even Englishman Jeremy Thorpe had a Scott connection. I find it hard to think of many Scots and Welsh in positions of influence in the Conservative Party. Cameron and Alec Douglas-Home, but who else? As you say, not only would the English be much better off without the Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh, but there would be a continuous Conservative majority without the 99 Welsh and Scots MPs, the majority of whom represent Labour constituencies.

I challenged you first and it is you who believe this crap, not me. Gordon Brown is a liar, attempting to scaremonger the electorate into saving his sorry arse, aided and abetted by virtually the only rag that hasn't abandoned Labour. Planet Zog is going to collide with Earth tomorrow. You read it here first. I challenge you to disprove it.

I reiterate. What concrete proof do you have of these figures? I venture to suggest that there is no evidence whatsoever, so it is a total fabrication and one that you are gullible enough to swallow. Thankfully, enough of the electorate are savvy enough not to believe everything they hear and vote on their own understanding or experiences of what the real situation might be.

Ah, diddums. Margaret Thatcher took away your school milk, an event that apparently ranks in your mind as far more serious than getting back the Falklands, taming the over-powerful unions, getting the economy back to a healthy state, etc. Your parents and grandparents say that it was a horrid time to be alive, but I think the opposite. You see, not everybody thinks the same way. My quality of life was better then than now, without a doubt.

Kudos? What Kudos do they gain, this red top rag, for printing garbage? Or did you mean that they gain kudos in the stakes for being amongst the best examples of a comic masquerading as a newspaper? And you, who are so obviously one of Labour's class warriors, lapped it up, even accepting that because it was published in that rag, it must be the truth. If you weren't so naive and gullible, you'd realise that it is the increasingly desperate scare tactics of the bust flush that is the Labour party, struggling to convince the electorate that they have the answers to the problems that they themselves created. What a shame that this rag is mostly read by Labour supporters anyway, so the Mirror is pushing on an open door with them. I very much doubt that their readership includes many teachers, nurses and policemen, as mostly they have more intelligence than to read that chip paper wrapper.

Your sleep deprivation has affected your powers of reasoning. Labour are the current party in power. With me so far? So if the Conservatives are elected, the electorate would have voted for a change of government, wouldn't they?

Did the OP mention burgers? I seem to recall that was you on the second post. He wanted a main for about £15, which is what you could pay at the White Star. I haven't been there myself, but two rosettes should mean pretty good food. And there are many other dining choices in Oxford Street too.

I agree with Nick.