It’s just as well we are all on-line – we would have felled an entire rain forest over the last few days; picking over, examining, dissecting, debating, discussing, ridiculing, criticising, every last word and gesture of the parliamentary campaign candidates.

For what; for why?

Why do we laud Ben Butterworth for shouting out a question to the Prime Minister? “oooh he heckled the Prime Minister, that’ll rattle him” Will it? The Prime Minister could have turned round and offered Butterworth junior a free place in Eton if he had wanted to. He is under no obligation to keep his word if re-elected.

Sky, the BBC, and ITV are consuming millions in expenses trailing after the organ grinders – ‘will you cut NI?’ ‘He said he’d cut it just a bit’, ‘No he didn’t, he said he’d increase it just a bit’, ‘I heard him whisper to his wife that he’d keep it the same’ – for God’s sake, it doesn’t matter; they can promise to abolish NI altogether and then bring it back in as 90% of your wages if they want to – why are we listening to this nonsense?

So the Conservative Party has joined a European alliance that includes a Pole who once said something the gays object to – so what? It’s neither a reason to vote for them nor a reason not to vote for them, because once elected they could join an alliance with Genghis Khan if they want to and have the head of every banker on a pole outside Downing Street.

Nothing, nothing at all, that any of them say over the next few weeks will have any bearing whatsoever on how the country is governed after the election. There is neither law nor convention that says that they have to abide by their manifesto or election promises.

They would like you to believe that it matters; they will put millions of pounds and dominate the airwaves over the next few weeks persuading you that what they say they will do should affect your vote. It won’t, not a jot.

The only truth we have seen from this rotten parliament is the truth that was dragged painfully, reluctantly, redactedly, blinking and sputtering into the daylight, by Heather Brookes.

The MPs expenses. That is the only true manifesto we have seen. What is says is that they would all do as they were told, follow each other like sheep – or rather piglets – into the ‘economy’ as the Prime Minister has rather quaintly taken to describing that tranche of money extorted by force from the population, and demand first dip at it.

The disgraceful scandal of Glasgow politicians tells us that once they have had their fill, they will move aside and let their friends and relatives take a turn in the trough.

If anyone threatens to disturb this cosy relationship, they will shout and scream that they will remove our nurses, doctors and firemen as the price of an enforced diet on their part.

Those are the only truths we have heard in the campaign, and therefore the only vote you should be placing is one based on your personal knowledge of the independence of mind of a candidate.

Don’t vote for a ‘Party’, vote for a candidate. Don’t waste time asking them what they will do about National Insurance or the Gaza question – they won’t tell you the truth, and even if by mistake they do, they don’t have to keep their word.

Yesterday, Labour fired a candidate, Stuart MacLennan, for speaking his mind, for not toeing the party line – that is exactly the sort of candidate you should be seeking out; let’s hope he stands as an independent.

I no longer care much what any of their politics are; I just know that the country will be a healthier place if Parliament is filled with independent minded individuals that say what they are really thinking.

The election should be a referendum on how we want to take this country out of its massive debt. Its not. It’s a charade based on fairy tales, unenforceable fairy tales.

Fitch have just downgraded Greece’s debt rating from triple-B-plus to triple-B-minus; that wind will blow over the UK shortly, not least because the government raised taxes, and thus fuel prices, in order to shore up the economy and as a result, the real economy, the people who are out there making things, not counting the number of ticks on the social services annual return, struggled even harder to earn a living.

It is people like Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poor who will really be running this country once the election fever dies down, What we are seeing right now is an attempt to make Brown and Cameron look more important than they are.

1
Les Crompton April 10, 2010 at 11:20

Nail head hit……….

2
PT April 10, 2010 at 11:29

Keep at it, Anna, you and John Ward. If you reach enough people, maybe we’ll all make a difference. Then again, there is that human self-deception thing that makes us hear what we want to hear, and want to be told what we want to hear, and our rulers know and exploit that psychology when selling us their snake oil. The truth might interfere with their agenda, so we won’t be offered any of it.
Personally, in the absence of a public-spirited as opposed to self-serving candidate or party, I’d suggest we negate the usual claims of “apathy” after a low turnout, by turning up to vote, and writing “Disgust, NOT Apathy” across our ballot papers or, if preferred, “Not in MY name.”

3
Gloria Smudd April 10, 2010 at 11:29

I caught Alistair Darling bleating on about the Tories couldn’t afford to cut the NI increase. My solution? Print more money. It’s been done before..

4
Kowalski April 10, 2010 at 11:37

Yes, there’s only one manifesto that matters and it was written by a couple of migrants.

5
ThousandsOfMilesAway April 10, 2010 at 13:20

Yes the election is an irrelevance, but then so are the ratings agencies – Enron had AAA paper until 2 weeks before the doors closed, remember.

If you look at the open market CDS rates and the spread between government and corporate paper (hint: this has gone negative in the US, which is clearly normal – nothing to see here, move along) the UK and the US have already lost their ratings.

Regardless of who triumphs in the donkey derby, the real business will be going on in Ireland and Spain.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/bilderberg_found_217.html

6
wullie April 10, 2010 at 15:10

Why do these politicians retain their title of MP, why does broon still get called the PM. Correct me if I am wrong, I had presumed that parliament had been dissolved, surely they are all PPC,s, in other words just members of the public.

Is it not the case that the civil service is now in charge.

Also, I presume that they are not allowed to use any of the publicly funded facilities that the houses of parliament would normaly be available to them while they are elected members, no cars, no chauffeurs, no printers, phones, computers etc etc anything else you can think of that are financed by the public, their respective political parties should be picking up the tab for anything to do with them getting elected. They should not even have access to the houses pf parliament.

7
SadButMadLad April 11, 2010 at 12:52

The way this election is going we might be going back to how parliament was actually started – with everyone as an independent. Admitedly they were all landed gentry, but they didn’t belong to a political party. A parliament of independents is also harder to twist to the will of lobbyists as rather than convince one person in a party they have to convince everyone.