The Conservative Manifesto. I am not quite sure what to make of this. I would have expected a much more robust approach to cutting the deficit, reducing the size and scope of government and re-invigorating industry to provide local employment and improve the balance of payments. The Tories will argue that it is there in […]
Labour’s Manifesto I am not sure what effect, if any, manifestos have on campaigns at the time. They are often quoted later if the winning party fails to fulfil its promises when in Government. We have three manifestos out this week for the main parties. Labour was first today. There is nothing in this which […]
Resilience It is difficult to grasp the scope of the disaster which has befallen the Poles with the loss not only of their President, but also so many of their key leaders from the military, Church and business. The fact that they were on their way to honour the memory of an earlier elite gives […]
Polls The latest for the Sun shows the Tory lead falling by three points. At the same time respondents mostly thought the Tories were running the best campaign and Cameron was best at getting his message across. Essentially the polls are bouncing around the same two or three points up one moment for the Tories, down the […]
Organ Donation Apparently there has been another blunder when organs have been removed without prior authorisation of the patient or permission form the family. I do not go with this. There seems to be confusion between the body and the person. When someone dies the person is no longer there. Where they are or whether is a […]
Married Couples Whether the latest Tory tax break for married couples will attract other than their core voters is open to question. On the wider point I do think it is unfortunate, when there are such huge cuts causing a really noticeable diminution in public services and significant numbers of public sector job losses, waiting […]
Netanyahu Cancels Once again the Israeli Prime Minister is at odds with the rest of the world. He was supposed to go to Washington to attend a conference on Nuclear security. Israel pretends it is not a nuclear power, but it is with more than 150 warheads, according to ex. U.S. President Jimmy Carter. It […]
National Insurance In the great scheme of eliminating the deficit, which is so frightening in terms of the austerity required that politicians can only bring themselves to talk of halving it or reducing it, the reduction planned by the Tories in the proposed NI hike is small beer. Yet it has become a great set […]
Prague The signing of the nuclear warhead reduction treaty by the two Presidents of Russia and the U.S. is a very welcome step. There remains an issue about missile defence and I strongly support the developing NATO view that any such shield should have Russia as a participating partner who is also protected by it. […]
The Elephant in the Room Very interesting polls today, if you look at the figures in two ways. The first way is literally. The Tory lead has narrowed slightly on average. Although they have seized control of their campaign and thus are making the running overall with their NI tax cut, this is not reflected […]