How Do I Vote?

It's only a week and a day before we have to vote in the General Election 2010. Who do I vote for? I am less than impressed with all the parties involved and at root I don't believe any of them have a clue how they are going to get the debt under control. Now that Greece is heading for the final curtain - which may collapse the whole Euro currency, we have reason to be afraid that the debt problem is likely to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Instinctively, I would prefer Gordon Brown as PM but we are told that he is prone to wild temper outbreaks and is impossible to work with. But most of the rest of his cabinet are pretty useless and untrustworthy. Look at them - Mandelson, Miliband [David], Balls, Johnson et al - with Alistair Campbell manouevering in the background. Dave [call me Dave] Cameron oozes wealth and privilege and is surrounded by a clique of Old Etonians - all very rich. And Nick Clegg is even richer and totally soaked into the European Union - which to him is some earthly Nirvana. And his amnesty for illegals is totally unacceptable.

I was reading one of Jeremy Clarkson's pieces from a past edition of the Sunday Times in which he praises one Tony Benn. I do not think of Clarkson as a Benn lover but he points to some of the achievements of Benn's period as a minister. He was the man who pushed and pushed to get Concorde built. Financially it was a disaster but what a wonderful feat of modern engineering - which even the Americans have praised. It was Tony Benn who dragged the hovercraft onto the world stage and made it into a working serious machine. Tony Benn helped create ICI - not a bad yardstick for successful British companies until it was wrecked by accountants. Then as postmaster general, Tony Benn got the Post Office tower built - another engineering achievement. Now Tony Benn has become a national treasure but we ought not to forget these achievements of his time as a government minister. What will we remember the present collection of minister for? Now, everything is decided on a money basis - I suppose this is not surprising from a government that has cosied up to the City for 13 years. Lord Adonis has come out with proposals for a new high speed railway system. They should get on with it - as I have said before. Find Brunel and make sure that it is built entirely by British engineers and manufacturers. That will do more than any fiscal juggling to revive the manufacturing economy so shamefully wrecked by Thatcher and Blair - they sound like a music hall turn - and in some ways they were. Let us do something worthwhile rather than tinker with the accounts. Do what Canada has done and cut government spending. Most of the so called "waste" is bureaucracy and paper shifting. The amount of documentation needed nowadays to get anything done is quite staggering.

Now, how do I vote??????

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