The Great Debates

As the week has been so hectic, I'm afraid it's been a while since I last had the chance to update the blog.

Well, it all started with the first of the great debates. OK, I'm going to give Nick Clegg a bit of credit - after all, he did manage to go, within the space of a week, from being someone most people wouldn't recognize if they bumped into him to being the most popular party leader since Winston Churchill. So I do agree with Nick about one thing at least - you have a choice in this election other than Labour or the Conservatives.

We have quickly seen the well worn arguments of the "Vote Clegg, get Brown," variety. The point, of course, is that Labour and the Tories have a symbiotic love-hate relationship. They must make a great show of hating each other, for of course their raison d'etre is to keep the other out. In fact, of course, both are entirely happy with a system that allows them to make a "it's one or the other" argument, and any other vote is a "wasted vote." If you don't vote for one of the big two, you don't count and neither do your views. With all this, it's hardly surprising that around a third of the electorate didn't bother to vote at all in 2005. But it's not just about the big three either; we need to tell people that their vote counts whoever they choose.

What has been particularly amusing is seeing the reaction of the tabloid newspapers to the scandalous notion that the British public should have the right to decide the outcome of the election instead of them. I think that Nick has so far been accused of just about everything short of satanic ritual abuse, although that too may soon be coming.

And so to the other great debate. Well, I'm not talking about the second debate last night, which I didn't see (as I don't have Sky) and which the BBC spent about 20 minutes dissecting ad nauseam on the news. We had the first campaign hustings, courtesy of the York Older People's Forum, at the Friends' Meeting House on Monday, at which I think all the candidates acquitted themselves well; this includes Paul Abbott of UKIP who popped along and spoke several times from the audience. I think there are a number of issues that might crop up again in later hustings, but more of that later.