Yes, they are all warm cuddly visions (including the Conservatives). The manifestos are also full of motherhood and apple pie. And no one could really expect any different - a manifesto that was realistic wouldn't sell very much ("We shall initiate one or two flagship policies, but then get buffetted by events for five years"). But why does Sturgeon want to do anything to keep the Tories out of Westminster? Why does Milliband believe that throwing money at everything is the answer? What do any of them intend to do about rail capacity? Etc Etc. A proper debate - which would last all of the time until the election - would have them covering each area and putting forward the pros and cons. Instead we have a game show, the only purpose of which seemed to have been to allow the fanboys to claim their "leader" won.
I somewhat see what you mean - and yes, manifestos will be optimistic. (Although I feel very confident that Miliband does
not believe that 'throwing money at everything' is the answer.)
However I think you're being a little over-cynical. I watched both the 7-leader and the 5-leader debates, and feel I learned a lot from them, especially about the views of the smaller parties. Yes, of course, the politicians are always trying to come across in a good light get their party's soundbites out, which can stifle the discussion somewhat, but from what I can see that will happen just as much no matter what the context is - whether it's a debate or a one-on-one interview or a written document like a manifesto, so a debate isn't particularly worse in that regard. And you get to see and directly contrast different points of view contrasted. A good example last night was Trident, where you had Miliband and Farage both making well-reasoned arguments for replacing it, and the others making equally well-reasoned arguments for not replacing it. (On the other hand, after what I thought was a very good first hour of debate, the final 20 minutes did seem to descend into point-scoring and avoiding answering questions all round, at which point the debate became a lot less interesting. But I've seen that happen in one-on-one interviews far too many times too).
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Factually, UKIP supporters are predominantly male, aged over 50, white, retired and only educated to GCSE (or equivalent) or below.
All very true, and as far as I can see there's nothing remotely wrong with being male, aged over 50, white and retired, and nothing particularly wrong with being educated only to GCSE level. But that's nothing like your comment that I objected to. ('
white old men who think that the world should have stopped in 1956 and that anyone who disagrees is a commie pinko gay')
The only subjective thing in what I said was "whingey", and I'll let others decide if a party whose main policy is "send the buggers back" is whingey or not.
Well, '
white old men who think that the world should have stopped in 1956 and that anyone who disagrees is a commie pinko gay.' is not subjective. But it's also very clearly not complimentary, and is likely to be verifiably false (other perhaps than of a tiny minority of UKIP supporters).
Besides, as far as I'm aware, 'send the buggers back' is not current UKIP policy (I don't think it has ever been, but I may be mistaken on that). UKIP policy is (roughly speaking) to make it massively harder for new arrivals to come to the UK - which in my view is wrong for all sorts of reasons, but it's not remotely the same thing as sending back people who are already legally resident in the UK.
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Just because it doesn't accord with Labour's version of the truth doesn't make it fiction. Miliband has been whining on about "the nasty Tories" to anyone who will listen since Fallon pointed out what he did to his brother.
1. Miliband's
response to Fallon's comments was:
EdMiliband said:
Michael Fallon is a decent man. But today I think he's demeaned himself and he's demeaned his office. And look, national security is too important to play politics with. I'll never compromise our national security...
If you think that is 'whining' then you must have a very different idea of what 'whining' means than most people do. It looks to me like a very measured response to an attack that clearly required a response.
2. Offhand I can't recall Miliband using the phrase 'nasty Tories'. My experience is that a lot of people in the Labour Party do think the Conservative Party is somewhat 'nasty', but that isn't so much to do with personal attacks as to do with a perception (which I share, and I'm fairly sure Miliband shares) that too often the Conservatives act in a vindictive manner towards poorer and vulnerable people, and pursue policies that unnecessarily harm those people. Merely expressing that point of view (which Miliband has done many times) hardly amounts to 'whining'.
Maybe because both Miliband and Balls were at various times part of Brown's treasury team.
That has some relevance, but rather limited because - well, I can think of many times when I've been in a team and disagreed with decisions made by that team, but in the end at some point if you're part of an organization you often need to go along with the organization decides (maybe after privately expressing your concerns) because otherwise the result would be anarchy and nothing would ever get done. For all we know, it's possible that Miliband and Balls may well have disagreed with some things that Brown decided on, but team responsibility prevented them saying so publically.
Besides, it was 5 years ago that they were on the treasury team, and 5 years is easily long enough for people to change their opinions.
And because Labour still don't think they did anything wrong, which means they would just be doomed to make the same mistake.
Really? Given that Ed Miliband has stated on several occasions (most recently, several times in yesterday's tv debate) that the last Labour Government got some things wrong, and that he's changed Labour policy in some areas, I'd have to suggest that you are factually mistaken in your assumption there. (Besides, I'm a member of the Labour Party. I have lots of contact with other members, so I know from personal experience that most Labour members think the last Labour Government did loads of things wrong and want the next Labour Government (assuming there is one) to do many things differently. It would be almost inconceivable for that that point of view not to have filtered up to the Labour leadership).
