Small prize offered

I've decided to offer a small prize for anyone who can think of an election more baffling than this. One week's campaigning gone already and the commentators are all busily analysing the result as if it's all over. No real policy unveiled yet but lots of statements on what the Parties won't do - the Tories making their ritual pre election promise not to raise VAT which they always raise after winning, while Miliband has said he won't increase National Insurance as he should.

Threats abound : Tories say Labour will crash the economy, Labour  says the Tories will slash welfare to the bone but no one talks about the real threats; that we can't pay our way in the world and productivity is pathetic. It seems that they're all so fixated on the bad times ahead  that not one of them dares offer what the people really want: which is  a large dose of hope  rather than the short sharp dollops of pension pot spending which is all they're going to get.

Here's a gaping hole which the Tory press is rushing to fill by a vitriolic camping of distortion and abuse of Labour's policies and people, Labour by a cost of living crisis and the LibDems and UKIP by denouncing both main parties for their failures on just about everything.

It's deeply frustrating to see everyone fratching, fighting shouting and distorting, the ship's log filled with shite and the officers trading insults while the ship of state heads for the rocks and the smell from the bilges becomes asphyxiating.

++++++++++++++++

There is, at last some serious thinking going on even if most of it is now too late to influence  the escapist election .Look at Michael Meacher's new collection of essays "What the Three Main Parties are not telling you: A radical way out of Stagnation and Inequality"Here are first rate ( but gloomy) analyses by John Mills, Michael Burke and Meacher himself. It'll fill you with angry frustration that so little of it is raised or even understood by any of the parties in this escapist election where irresponsibility rules and truth can't be mentioned for fear of frightening.

Sent from my iP