My Random Blogs

It's reassuring to know that, despite being around for so long, the Rolling Stones can still rock out rather well. What's more, the liner notes (to the standard edition at least) have the words for each song - a feature that seems to be increasingly rare these days, in fact an important feature for those of us who like to attempt to sing along.
Anyway, weighing in at 16 tracks, this album is a hefty 64 minutes or so long, value for money in this age of increasing numbers of half-hour "lite" albums.
But how does it play? It's reassuringly "Stones" in style - none of the tracks jump out at you for their original sound, but that doesn't stop it being good. I'm somewhat torn on the scoring of this - It's good enough for 4/5, easily, but...somehow, not quite peaking high enough for the full 5/5. If you're not a fan of the Stones, you probably won't be swayed in any way by this offering. But for those of us that like the classic sound that is the epitome of rock 'n' roll, it's a great album. 4/5

Underwhelming. That's the best way to describe this offering. In a similar way to Kasabian, it begins promisingly enough, but it never quite manages to really grab you and make you listen. You really have to make an effort to actually listen to the whole album through, and even then it's pretty forgettable.
The first track, Like Eating Glass, raises hopes of this being a Foo Fighters-alike sound, only to dash them when the singing starts.
It's a less clubby sound than Kasabian, and more poppy instead. This is more down-to-earth rock, but it seems to be somewhat hookless. They do sound similar to the Kaiser Chiefs, unfortunately I don't have Employment to compare the two albums fully. It doesn't matter a great deal, though. It's worth a listen if you're a fan of this style - slightly-frayed-around-the-edges-pop-rock - but otherwise, stay away, unless you don't mind being disappointed.
2/5

Weighing in at 13 tracks (at over 53 minutes) this is a more-hefty-than-average album. It's not without its share of catchy tune, either - from the raw sound of Club Foot, through the more tuneful Processed Beats and Reason Is Treason, to the clublike sound of L.S.F (Lost Souls Forever)
Each of the tracks feature at least a few electronic synth sounds mixed in with the more standard rock sound. It's an interesting mix, giving the album a kind of club sound - which I guess would make this "club rock" music. Though for select clubs only. The tracks certainly don't all have thumping bass lines or fast paces. The vocals on all of the tracks are kind of radio-raw, but not as raw enough to make it sound like punk. I find it overall vaguely reminiscent of Ocean Colour Scene, with synth sounds thrown in on top, that doesn't really do it justice though. Maybe more like a lighter version of Pitchshifter - in fact the main riff on Running Battle made me think of Pitchshifter's Hidden Agenda straight away. Certainly, check it out if you like light rock.
It won't set the world on fire, but it is pretty catchy nevertheless. 3/5

"20 songs on 2 CDs
One loud.
One not so loud."
so says the sticker on the front of the CD case. What it amounts to is one CD (CD1) of standard Foo Fighters fayre, and one (CD2) of acoustic, somewhat quieter fayre. CD1 follows the style of their previous outing One By One. It features Dave Grohl's kinda gravelly, and definitely loud, vocals. The tracks on this CD are all reasonably heavy, my favourite probably being the title In Your Honor (yeah I know, American spelling cos the Foos are American), with Best Of You a close second. Much like One By One, the tracks all bounce along at quite a pace - and they all make you want to sing along.
The second CD is a bit of a departure from their standard style. The acoustic guitar in place of electric gives the second CD a more subdued sound, and Dave Grohl sings more than he shouts. The pace of the second CD is also somewhat slower than the first. Overall, it makes for a more refined feel, and it's none the worse for it. The opening track, Still, is a good introduction to this side of the Foos - my favourite track from CD2, though, is What If I Do?. It will certainly be interesting to see how far they take this refined sound - perhaps a fully acoustic album next? At the least, it shows they aren't content with just sticking with the same sound all the time. One By One was a difficult album to follow, but the Foo Fighters have managed pretty well. 4/5

Different. Well, different to my normal listening material. The truth is, there might be alot of music out there that sounds like this. However, I suspect there aren't many groups around making this kind of music, compared to during the eighties. Vaguely similar to Echo And The Bunnymen, it sounds...kind of poppy, though generally heavier than Echo & The Bunnymen. And yet, in all honesty I've not heard all that many top-40 songs sounding like this. This is better, thankfully.
That's it - I've decided on the best way to to describe this style - it's music to paint to. Quite slow in general, but not usually actually depressing, the irony is this stuff is probably more "emo" than emo. At any rate, it's probably more musical.
If it came to a show down between these guys and Echo & The Bunnymen, on the strength of what I've heard so far, I'd go for Echo & The Bunnymen - in my opinion, they are the better band. But if you want something similar-to-yet-not-the-same-as Echo & The Bunnymen, this would be a good start. Just don't expect it to be quite as good as them. This is actually a double-sided CD/DVD (CD on one side, DVD on the other). It includes the video for the track Song In Space (pics of the band interspersed with some footage from a rocket launching), the entire album in surround sound and stereo, and portable music files. I haven't checked out the portable music files yet, but having the album available in surround is an interesting extra - unfortunately, I can't make use of it at present. 3/5

Even if you haven't heard of the band, the chances are you've heard some of one of their songs - Apple used the rather catchy Walkie Talkie Man on their iPod ads not long ago.
I rather liked that track, so (again) I decide to risk the full album (also going on the strength of the user reviews on Amazon). What you get is 12 tracks of suprisingly punky tunes, plus the video for Walkie Talkie Man (more about this later) and a second video of similar length on the making of the Walkie Talkie Man video.
And right now, Amazon seem to have gone crazy, pricing the album at 2.96 (shurely shome mistake?). Anyway, the Walkie Talkie Man video is satisfyingly different - set in a world of yarn. It won't set the world alight, but at least it shows some creativity (and I like it). The "making of" just shows how they did some of the bits, like the yarn drum kit. It's a nice little diversion from the album proper.
The Steriogram sound is "suprisingly" punky because it's not as poppy as the likes of Blink 182 et al, but considering that Apple used one of their tunes in an ad, I'd hesitate to call them "true" punk. Their sound isn't quite that raw, either.
At the standard Amazon album price of ~£9, I could only really recommend it for fans of rock, and I'd give it 3.5/5. But at the insanely low price of £2.96, you'd be a fool not to snap it up, if only to get the video to go with the full track used in the Apple ad.

I got onto these guys thanks to just one track - the majestic Under The Killing Moon, as played on the opening scene of the original cut of Donnie Darko.
That masterpiece of - what to call this style? I suppose "pop-folk" covers it best, but mere pidgeon-holing is inadequate here - doesn't actually make an appearance on this album. But, 17 other tunes do appear here. Well, strictly speaking, there are 12 tracks, plus alternate versions of five of them. That's no excuse not to buy it though, at the measly price of £6.97 at Amazon. For a piece of pop history, that's peanuts (and while you're at it, get the remastered version of Ocean Rain, too).
Somehow, the tracks manage to be quite upbeat, yet still feel somewhat sedate. It's not so much music to dance to - it's more music to listen to. I find the music of Echo And The Bunnymen tends to encourage self reflection, and this can certainly be said of this album. There is a kind of '80s feel to it all, but it doesn't detract from it at all - and it's certainly more individual than alot of stuff that came out of that era.
I don't think it's easy to sum up this album - the best way to do it justice is to listen to it. I took a risk when I got this but, for me, it's paid off. Perhaps you should too.

...i've been to a dark place, but am now well on the mend.

I'm going to try going without alcohol for 6 months, and take it from there. Meanwhile, here's a little poem i knocked up yesterday (and tweaked today =+)
If i'm lucky, one person will read it and have it help them.

...but I'm back writing again!
Advertising. One of those necessary evils of the modern world - actually, it's been around, in one form or another, for a long while. But as far as I'm aware, never anywhere near so prolific as it is now.
There's advertising I'll put up with, because I know, somehow, that it's needed. I don't know the details, I don't care, and the chances are I'll ignore it.
But online, we seem to have a greater concentration of advertising companies willing to do "whatever it takes" to get hits for their clients. Maybe I'm wrong on this, and it's just because I'm far more used to the online world than the "outside" world, so online I spot stuff like this more. My job definitely helps - more on this later.
There are plenty of ways to fight back - many of them free, I should add - the main thing is raising awareness of the situation. The average PC user is likely entirely oblivious to the problem. The success of "rogue diallers" and so on proves this.
So let's start with a brief explanation of the methods. Even being brief, I'm afraid this may take awhile, and I certainly won't cover every possible method. I will be crossing over a bit into other territory - namely, the different forms of viruses (I mean, virii =+) - these days, the vast majority of diallers are considered virii by anti-virus programs. There are also some particularly nasty ad delivery programs that are considered virii, as they use some virus methods to spread themselves, etc.
Adware, broadly speaking, is any piece of software specifically designed to "deliver" adverts to a PC. Not to be confused with adaware, which is software that helps you to find and delete adware from your PC.
Adware can take many, many, many different forms. I'm going to include diallers for two reasons - firstly, they generally are distributed in the same style as adware and secondly, they are at least as big a problem, despite regularly making the news. Oh, and their effects, if successful, are worse than adware.
So then, diallers. What is a dialler? a dialler is a very small piece of software, often under 1MB. Currently, diallers only work if you have one of those "old skool" voice modems - a modem that uses the phone line. This doesn't include ISDN or ADSL modems, which work somewhat differently. Now, voice modems are effectively a telephone that is controlled by your PC. Diallers take full advantage of this - the idea is that they have settings for your voice modem, that make it dial a different number to your usual interent provider's number. It probably seemed a good idea at the time - a good way to allow private bulletin boards to stay alive, for example. Of course, it wasn't long before the scamsters moved in. What you'll find these days, is that diallers point to premium-rate numbers. ULTRA premium-rate numbers, often in some tiny European country you've never heard of until now. You find them being offered, usually, as services to allow you to download cracks, warez, music, games, and porn. Let's just assume for a minute that peer to peer networking doesn't exist, there's no such thing as Bittorrent et al, and you don't feel like learning how to use mIRC. Do you actually think using a diallup connection to a premium rate number is going to be a more economic option for getting software than just going out and buying a legal copy? that's assuming any of these diallers really provide the service they claim. I have no idea how many actually do, if any, but if I had to guess I'd say that very close to 0% are for real.
Now, if you have a PC with a voice modem that you use, by far the simplest way to protect against diallers is to unplug the phone line when you're not online. How easy is that? if the phone line's not plugged in, there's no physical connection that the dialler can make. You could have every single dialler hiding away on your PC, and it won't rack up any huge phone call bills for you. However, this isn't full protection - plenty of diallers mess with your internet explorer connection properties, or simply add their own as your default.
So, as ever, prevention is better than cure. At the end of this article, I'll be giving links for free to download, adware-free, tried-and-tested adware-busting programs.
Next up, we have the kids' stuff. Yeah, many of these advertisers are as evil as the real-world bastards. They target kids, only here, it's not so much because of their control over their parents' wallets, but more because the kids aren't going to have a chance in hell of udnerstanding any of the over-complicated escher-esque mazes claimed as "license agreements"even if they were to bother reading them through. Which they aren't. They want free games, free smilies, screensavers, and so on. They're not going to read several pages of legal mumbo-jumbo they don't care about. So they click "I agree" or "OK" and bam, you have a whole load of adware dumped unceremoniously all over your PC. The advetising agencies aren't stupid; that's exactly why they use this tactic. They get their clients loads of hits from these PCs where the kids have downloaded "free" stuff. They know the chances of these people actually being interested in the adverts they show is slimmer than a supermodel, but they don't care, as long as they get paid for the hits. Which they evidently do, as there's so many of the feckers.
In a similar style, we have toolbars/taskbars. Now, to be fair, some toolbars/taskbars aren't really adware. But more often than not, there's no real reason to get them anyway. They don't actually do anything you can't already do.
Finally, we have the hijackers. These guys are real nasty. Some give you warning, some are just a form of virus. They all try to take over your internet start page (the page that loads by default), your search page, and so on. To give you an idea of what's possible, there's a Windows 98 variant of, I think it's CoolWebSearch, that's a real bugger to get rid of, that hijacks your start page, and also watches for certain keywords, which if you type in with internet explorer open, it will then redirect you to one of several of its pages.
So what hope in hell do you have if you want to fight back? well, you may not be able to go and hack their websites, and you may not be able to walk into their offices and smack their owners with a 2x4, but you can protect your PC.
Programs that I heartily recommed:
Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition (they have a pay-for business version too)

Spybot - Search & Destroy

Antivir Personal Edition - Yeah, a good, free antivirus program!

For those of you feeling a little more adventurous, also get
HijackThis
There are some other useful programs there, but HijackThis is the most useful. You will probably need to go to a forum or two for help though.

There's one other free defence - use of the "hosts" file. This allows you to fully block any web domains you want
see this site for more info
Later this week, I shall be doing a piece on using a local proxy program for greater defence of your PC.

First off, let's get one thing out the way: I am a fan of the books, most definitely. I've read the first four, and also the Dirk Gently Omnibus. Douglas Adams was a genius, God rest his soul.
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this film though. I've skim-read reviews, but I've tried to resist the lure of spoilers, even though I wasn't sure if I'd go see it or not. Well, now I did.
The major problem with this film is that, even though the book is nowhere near as thick as, say, any of the Lord Of The Rings books, Douglas managed to fit in a hell of a lot of detail. A proper film version would be nearer LOTR-length, but I'm aware that whilst a trilogy of fantasy films of epic length may not be too difficult to sell especially given the success of the LOTR books, if you were to say "I'm gonna make a trilogy of epic comedy films" I'm pretty sure you'd get laughed all the way back to whatever bar you'd just stumbled out of.
Given the restriction in length, they have managed to pack in the vital-to-the-storyline parts. I think - it's been a little while since I read the books, I'll have to read them again at some point - and whilst there are plenty of "incidental" little bits of humour that have been dropped, one or two have also been added.
The dialogue is somewhat cut down. I think the Vogons and the bit with the custom planets are probably the most well-done parts of this film, they have the best "feel", they're most reminiscent of the book. I was somewhat disappointed with the rendition of the Heart Of Gold, I think they were trying to be a little too clever there and...it doesn't quite work. I have to admit, one reason I like the film's vision of the Vogons is because they're a little reminiscent of the aliens from Peter Jackson's masterpiece of comedy-horror-gorefest, Bad Taste.
I was surprised at how often much of the audience actually laughed out loud, but I quickly realised most of them have probably not read the books, in which case, you're likely to enjoy this film rather more.
I just hope the next one is better. I can see that the potential is there, it just seems almost as if...they were aiming lower than the books to begin with. As if it went something like "We won't make it as good as the books so let's not even try to, just take the easiest and most important bits and work on them"

Labour won again (sigh) but at least their majority was much reduced. Damn, I should've put a bet on, I just knew that'd be the outcome. To be honest, I suspect Blair knew perfectly well he wasn't going to get such a high majority as before, but was still likely to win. Whilst there's no denying there have been...issues since the last general election, all in all things haven't really deterioated. As has been said in the past, "Better the Devil you know, than the Devil you don't"
The party I have settled on, the Green Party, managed to make small gains again.
I fel obliged to point out, in the unlikely event anyone this applies to is actually reading this, far from the "single issue" image their name suggests, the Greens have policies for all areas, like the three major parties. They are single issue, but only in that the environment is their primary concern. To me, this makes sense, as the environment is all around is, it's what we live in. May as well try and look after it, eh?

It's happening already. In fact, it started happening about a week or so ago; I'm losing interest in the upcoming UK general election. Don't get me wrong, I'm gonna vote, but I'm already tired of the peurile excuse for politics that seems to be the order of the day. Name-calling, empty rhetoric, outright lies, indecipherable management speak, and small-minded focus on selfish issues seem to be the arsenal of choice for our politicians.
That's also why I'm probably gonna vote green. Out of all the parties with candidates here in England, they seem to be the only ones actually possibly seriously giving any thought to much further in the future than the next general election. And I was as suprised as anyone to find, on reading their manifesto, that whilst they do have a "green" slant, they are about as far from a single-issue party as the "big three". In fact, the one thing I believe may have helped their party political broadcast (which by dint of luck I saw earlier this evening) would be to mention that the environment is the world we live in, and everything we do affects it, so maybe it's time we started taking a little more care in what we do. Of course, there'll always be people that value money above the environment, or that have some religious-based reasoning that leads them to think humans are somehow meant to do whatever the fuck we please.
But I'm not one of them, and to try and start the argument over greenhouse gases and climate change is incredibly short-sighted. Let's just pretend, for the sake of less arguments, that climate change and greenhouse gases are non-existent. That still leaves the issues of widespread pollution, which is damaging even if "only" locally, deforestation - in particular in central and south america, and also Borneo, where in recent years several entirely new species have been discovered - and poaching, which is helping a great deal in pushing numerous endangered species ever closer to extinction. There are species in existence today with fewer than 100 breeding pairs. Not through natural selection or acts of God (or other deities), but through the work of humans.
Of course, the one of these issues that you and I, average people, can have a pretty much immediate effect on is pollution. If you live in England, you may well have seen those ads about conserving energy, the "One person..." ones. if you find yourself slipping into that "But I am just one person, I can't change anything" mindset, it's worth remembering that as one person among a group of people working together, you actually can make a difference.
I'm not kidding myself here, I'm well aware there're plenty of people who have always voted labour will vote labour this time, and will always vote labour until the day they die. Ditto for the conservatives, and yeah, even the liberal democrats. These same people would probably swear black and blue that the people they vote for care about them, just because some of their views happen to coincide. It's laughable really, when you think about it. For example, you wouldn't pick some random customer of the same bank you use, and say "Wow, this guy's my best mate, he must be, he uses the same bank as me...". At least if I vote greens, I can say "Well, they may ultimately have the same selfish aims, but at least in caring about the environment they are, indirectly, caring about everyone"
They might turn out to be as bad as all the rest, if they actually got into power, but that's a whole other issue, that could be tackled "if and when" as they say.
You also might find Channel 4's Factcheck section interesting. Though a commercial concern as opposed to the public nature of the BBC, they seem to manage to be pretty fair and balanced. And for those of you with Sky, I don't mean a Fox News "fair and balanced", I mean a real "fair and balanced".
Find C4's Factcheck here complete with previous weeks' fact checks archived for your reading pleasure

The Green Party are a small political party when compared to the likes of labour, the conservatives or even the liberal democrats. But they have perhaps a bigger public profile than the lesser-known small parties such as the communist party of britain. More importantly, they have a more complete manifesto on their website, a manifesto to rival those of the "big three".

The first section is on the economy. Almost straight away, the introduction shows their overall approach shining through. They say that they argue that use of natural resources must be sustainable. They also claim to have a political programme for the next hundred years, a bold claim, and certainly setting them apart from the standard political party appraoch of "let's plan for our first 4 years and that's it".
On tax - that behemoth of an issue - they aren't afraid to tell their plans in plain English, rather than dressing it in fancy language. For the first five years (2005-2010) they plan to introduce more tax bands, so higher earners pay higher marginal rates of tax. The actual figures they give are 50% on earnings over £50000/year and 60% on earnings over £100000. They'd also reform Corporation Tax so that companies with higher profits than £1.5million/year pay 40% tax. They want to change inheritance tax so that it's levied by wealth of the inheritor (sp?) rather than the bequeather, and they plan to abolish National Insurance, the money instead coming from the changed tax rates. They also want to introduce Land Value Tax systems that are based on the rental value of land, thus taxing the owners of the land (apparently as happens in some US cities, so they say). This would eventually replace council tax and business rates, although they haven't finalised these plans as they call them pilot schemes (credit for their hoensty there).
These are interesting plans, and I suspect they're unlikely to win many voters in those higher earner ranks. People become notoriously protective of their earnings once they reach those higher salaries, no matter what they thought before. Then again, at least they're not simply pandering to peoples' greed.
They also plan to replace VAT with eco-taxes, the idea behind eco-taxes being that the tax is based on the natural resources used and the pollution produced whilst creating a product, and associated with the use/consumption of that product. The idea is to "redistribute" the burden of such tax according to the environmental impact of producing and consuming products, and although they claim this system would not have as high an administrative cost as the current system of VAT, there's no explanation of how or why this is the case.
They want to promote economic localisation, and some of the general ideas here sound reasonable enough (promotion of local credit unions, local exchange schemes, even development of local currencies) but I do not know nearly anough about economics to comment on the claim that the current system of world trade is based on "an out-dated model of 'comparative advantage', a now discredited theory that Greens argue bears no relation to the current reality of trade" although I have to agree with their observations that the current system "puts power at the hands of unaccountable transnational corporations at the expense of elected national governments".
There's some general stuff about protecting workers' rights (including the right to take industrial action) and altering the measure of economic prosperity from GDP to other, more relevant measures. Well, they sound more relevant but, yet again, my knowledge of economics is such that I cannot make an informed comment as to the validity of their claims, all I can tell you is they suggest the use of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) or the New Economics Foundation's Measure of Domestic Progress (MDP).

Next up is "energy and climate change" or, more generally, the environment. The Greens' targets for reduction of carbon emissions are 20% by 2010, 50% by 2020, 85% by 2030, and then 90% will apparently be possible by 2050. I suspect, however, that even if they won a large majority at the next election, they'd have great difficulties in reaching these targets. Similar to the change in VAT on products, they want to replace the current system of VAT on energy to a new system of tax based on a fuel's carbon content. In this case though, the net result would be an increase in taxes, although they also want to protect low-income householders from the effects of higher fuel prices. If it really does the job, an admirable plan.
The Green Party also says they plan to have 40% of the UK's energy provided by renewable sources by 2020. Luckily, they haven't forgotten to mention bio-gas here, which may not be quite as clean as wind or solar power, but is more consistnet in the amount of power it can provide. There's another claim I'm unfortunately unable to verify; they say the DTI's (Department for Trade and Industry) own figures show that the cost per unit of nuclear energy production is comparable to off-shore wind and actually greater than on-shore wind power. Although they don't mention the many lapses in the security of the handling of nuclear material at our nuclear power plants, an issue which would surely help gain support for their plans to decomission nuclear plants as they reach the end of their life, and to not build any new plants.

Onto benefits. The Greens have an idea to replace benefits that surely won't be popular with many people: a "Citizen's Income" for everyone, regardless of whether you're in employment or even actively seeking it. This would replace a number of the benefits currently available, although not "specialist benefits" such as disability and incapacity benefits. They also want to introduce a "Citizen's Pension" - a basic, weekly pension. The idea of both of these, in general, is to do away with the need for means-testing. Yet another claim I'd like to be able to verify here, too; they say the Citizen's Pension could be afforded today within the current net expenditure on state pensions. Quite a claim.
They also want to replace child benefits with a reduced "Citizen's Income" that would be paid directly to the parents/guardians, and end the opt-out clause to that 48-working hour-week EU directive thingy, to allow parents more time to spend with their children.

Next, we have health and education. Some familiar plans here - re-introduction of free eye test and dental care under the NHS, abolition of the system of prescription charges (they claim they only raise around £400million/year and are particularly discriminatory towards mental illness sufferers), and they also want to increase NHS funding to "at least the pre-2004 EU average" of "around £90billion" a year. This would be paid for in the short term by the change in the income tax systems (and they're honest here, calling the increases increases). They also want to use some of the extra revenue raised by their changes to income tax, to increase spending on education. They don't seem to have many plans for education though, simply raising the teacher-pupil ratio, and replacing SATs with individual learning plans. There's no real detail on this though.

On transport, my personal opinion is the Greens' plans are the most sensible. Overall, their idea is to favour "public over private", i.e. peoples' needs rather than those of transport businesses. The order of importance would be: walking, cycling, trains, rail freight, trams and buses, road freight, private car. Their target is to reduce road traffic by 10% by 2010. They want to return the railways and tube system (including track and operations) to public ownership, by not renewing the private companies' contracts when they run out. They will extend schemes like congestion charging and road pricing where appropriate, and increase fuel duty and abolish the tax disc for cars, with the idea being to encourage a move to fuel-efficient vehicles. They also want to relate freight duty to vehicle size, axle load and pollution generation. They want to use some of the revenue raised to support research and development into more sustainable forms of transport.
Finally, they mention looknig at the current over-long food supply chains that rely heavily on things like air freight. I haven't gotten to the rural section of their manifesto yet, which is mentioned here, but I get the idea that they want to return us to a more localised system of supply, at least when it comes to food and similar produce. This, to me, is an application of commonsense to on a wide scale. Jamie Oliver's recent documentary on the sorry state of school dinners here in England helped to highlight, along with other, similar documentaries, the impact of all this unnatural food we currently rely on far too much. Cheap food, if it's disproportionately worse for you than more expensive food, is therefore not really a bargain. Especially if it sets you up with a much greater chance of health problems.

The section on the environment you would think, with the Green Party, just covers items already mentioned. To an extent this is true, but the idea of Zero Waste has not actually been explained in a previous section, so this is a useful read. They aim to by recycling 60% of domestic waste by 2010, which will probably be somewhat easier than their carbon emission reduction targets. We know about their other ideas to reduce pollution, they are covered in other sections. The bit on "protecting biodiversity and animal rights" sounds interesting, but is basically a mix of some ideas seen in other parties too. There's the "precautionary principle" when dealing with new technologies that may afford benefits, such as GM crops. They also don't agree with the WTO's extension of intellectual property rights into areas of natural resources "held in common" such as micro-organisms, traditional remedies, plants and seeds. They also want to reform the WTO's rules governing foodstuff imports, as they claim current rules restrict too much our ability to set standards for such imports.

In the "food and farming" section, the first thing to really catch my eye is their target of having 30% organic production by 2012. The extra time is to allow for the introduction of a 10-year plan to assist farmers in the move to organic production, such as helping to fund new farmers' markets and farm box schemes. They want to ban GM crops for now (until more research into their impact has been done) and tackle anti-competetive behaviour in supermarkets, by basically restricting the way supermarkets handle their food suppliers. Finally, they want to review the way the OFT (Office of Fair Trading) applies anti-monopoly laws to the purchase and expansion of convenience stores by larger supermarket chains.
So, watch out Morrisons, Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's! There isn't much specific mention of it here, but their plans covered in other areas of the manifesto will also have an impact on farming; specifically, the move towards localisation of food supply.

The section on Crime and Justice is short, but to the point. They want to introduce more restorative justice (seemingly a common theme in manifestos for this election), they have a number of ideas for crime reduction and helping to build strong local communities, such as ensuring universal access to youth facilities and increasing resources for caretakers, attendants and staff on estates, railway stations, parks and other public areas. They also oppose the national ID cards scheme, although they wish to spend the £3billion or so on other crime prevention measures. There's mention of "demarcating drug-taking as a health rather than a crime issue", which seems to imply they may go further than the liberal democrats on this issue. To be honest, this is the stance I believe to be the most sensible, although I won't go into that here as it require full focus for serious discussion.
They want to get tougher on gun crime, and support and improve local community policing, and finally tackle racial and hate crimes better than is currently the case.

In the section titled Democracy, it becomes apparent that the Greens are actually more similar to the liberal democrats than is at first apparent. Their Land Value Tax idea is similar to the lib dems' local income tax, and both of them support proportional representation for Westminster elections (i.e. national ones). They also want to reform the House of Lords into being a fully-elected body chosen by proportional representation. Finally, they oppose the current EU constitution and want to draw up our own consitution for the UK.

Finally,we have their section on peace, security and international interaction. First up is a big 'un: decomissioning our nuclear weapons and working towards arms reduction by 2010. Woah, the arms companies can't be fond of that one. But why should our public money go towards lining their coffers, eh? I know I'd rather have it spent on public services like the emergency services and the NHS, poverty reduction and public transport. Wouldn't you?
They also want to increase our aid spending to 1% of our GNI (Gross National Investment) and cancel the debt the poorest 52 countries owe us (I can see the sense in that, hell, it's not like they're gonna be able to pay up anytime in the forseeable future).
There's talk of wanting to reform the EU, the UN and the WTO, with some nice-sounding idea but sadly, once again, I suspect them to be for the most part unrealistic. However, on asylum and immigration they seem to have the best idea of the lot so far; they make the astoundingly "well duh" point, that the big three parties seem to have missed (by accident or design?), that public debate often confuses the issue of asylum with that of economic migration - make no mistake, there is a big difference in running for your life and running to make more money. They also point out that greater public understanding will go a long way towards a long-term, sustainable solution.

In all, despite some frankly unrealistic aims, the Green Party's manifesto strikes me as the most sensible and forward-thinking I've read, unfortunately that certainly doesn't equate to lots of votes. Their biggest problem is in not pushing their policies hard enough; they get in the news from time time, but I;m sure the average member of the British public associates The Green Party more with violent Animal Rights activists, and possibly the unrelated anarchists, than the common-sense policies indicated in their manifesto.
I think I'm swaying towards voting Green this year. At least then, my conscience will be a little clearer.

Their site can be found here

(I'm sticking to English parties as opposed to all UK parties as, living in England, it is primarily English parties that affect me)
Wow, blimey, where to start? I set about to briefly cover a few more England-based political parties in the run-up to our general election, but I wasn't aware of quite how many political parties we now have here. Of course, a number seem to have appeared after the last general election, so it's perhaps not surprising I haven't heard of them until now.
Anyway, suffice it to say, there are a great deal more parties in existence than are represented in the house of commons. I used the list at this site as a guide.
I'm not going to try and cover them all, indeed the link is a list of UK parties, so includes those exclusive to Scotland, Wales and Ireland as well as England. Here, I'm going to try and briefly cover a number of the smaller fry you are more likely to have heard about at least once in the past year. They're not necessarily going to be any more successful in this general election than the last, but they make themselves heard nonetheless.

First up, is Veritas. It's a well-known fact that the truthfulness of a politician is inversely proportional to how truthful he or she claims to be*, so you'll excuse me if I take Mr. Kilroy-Silk's claims with a pinch of salt, topped off with a mountain of salt.
Now, their manifesto makes for rather lighter reading than the "big three", and there's no library of support documents, or even really any details about how they'll actually achieve what they promise, how much it will cost (or save), and so on. Not forgetting Silk's hardly-concealed racism. Make no mistake, even if he's deluded himself into believing he's actually not racist, he is racist. I heard his little speech about cultures, and how and how some are better than others, and some are reprehensible. He seems fond of tarring people from certain parts of the world all with the same brush, then (poorly) disguising his racist views as views about "culture". If you've read that editorial piece he wrote for...the Daily Mail? you'll know what happens when he drops any attempt at hiding his racism. Apparently, all arabs are terrorists.
The Veritas website is woefully lacking in content. I can't help wondering if Silk is just too full of himself to realise no-one likes him. I mean, I remember seeing glimpses of his crapshow - sorry, chatshow - back before it was discovered just how much of a racist he is. He never really listened to people, and always came across as incredibly arrogant. Even more arrogant than is the standard for politicians these days. And coming from a semi-cynic like me, that's quite something.
The site
*this may actually be a lie. See what I did there? I'm trying to be a politician...

Next up, I was going to briefly cover another predominantly racist party - the British National Party. These guys are somewhat nastier than Veritas, with allegations over links to the National Front surfacing quite often. However, disappointingly, there's currently no "general election 2005" manifesto on their site. Don't worry, BNP lovers, there is a "Daily news update" hotline, on an 090 number, that charges £1/minute. Because, y'know, if you already have internet access, you're gonna want to pay again to get news...
OK that's a little harsh. But I was expecting to be able to go through a manifesto and point out the obvious racism disguised as other things. Guess I'll just have to be happy in the knowledge that they don't seem to have got their act together. I do recall some news item a day or two ago to do with Nick Griffin and a court case.
Mind you, as I type, several of the website's sections, including the "elections" bit and the "manifestos" bit, have gone AWOL (giving 404s) whilst the front page remains, so perhaps they're updating right now.
The site
(Well I just checked again before posting this article, the "elections" link now works but there's nothing new there, so they haven't updated it)

Then we have the Communist Party of Britain. Yeah I know, I laugh at those US guys, mostly republicans, that I see going off on one about communists and the communist threat to the US and commies and so on. I guess it just reminds me of Red Foreman from That 70s Show a little too much. Not forgetting, the Cold War ended like, more than 10 years ago. The USSR no longer exists, the main "bit" is Russia now, doing well on a system of capitalism (of sorts), complete with wealthy mobsters. But then, here we are, and England actually has its own Communist Party! However, if any republicans seriously consider this a threat of any sort, they oughta go check into rehab, cos someone must've been spiking their water.
Now, don't get me wrong, the Communist Party of Britian's manifesto (with a deal more detail than Veritas) has a large number of proposals that to me, as a left-leaning guy, sound attractive on paper. But, being the communist party, as you might expect, several them seem to go too far and/or are unrealistic in terms of how likely they are ever to be accepted by even a small majority. At this point, I can't help wondering if some of the moderate-to-high left-leaning parties that are fed up with Labour, would be better off teaming up and pooling resources, and consolidating their manifestos with the common aim of doing more damage to Labour's lead than they would when campaigning individually.
The communist party's manifesto does have a strong socialist leaning but, once again, little to no explanation of where funds will come from, and where they'll be going.
The site

I was going to cover both the Green Party and the Countryside Alliance in this article too, but it turns out I underestimated them both somewhat. Their details on manifestos/policies are at about the same level as the "big three" so they're deserving of a separate article each. Stay tuned!

OK, so it's a little late. In the end, I was too tired last night to feel up to doing this, I felt it better to wait until I'd had a good night's sleep.
So here we go, the Liberal Democrats' manifesto for the upcoming general election. Now, on their webpage with links to all the manifesto documents, you're faced with a bewildering amount of links. Why? each file has a .pdf version and a Word document version, and some of the .pdf files have "reduced size" versions too. They get credit for providing for so many different computer setups, but the documents are mostly in some random order that makes no sense, making it kinda difficult to find the document you're after. A good idea, poorly implemented (makes me wonder if maybe that's a good summing-up of the lib dems as a whole).

I'm using the .pdf versions because...well, because I want to. First up is Education.
Typical intro, in fact at this point I'm thinking the parties all seem to use intros and fluffing-out as a way to put off potential readers more than anything. There's nothing groundbreaking, original or even particularly interesting to be found in this filler. It adds several pages to each document, and makes it harder to find the actual useful bits - the actual proposals and plans of the party. Do they not want us to know what they intend to do if they get voted in? probably not, cos then we'd realise there isn't a huge difference between them.
Anyway, so here, the lib dems' manifesto could almost be the conservatives. They want to scrap tuition fees and top-up fees for university students. OK, so it goes a little further than the conservatives, but if the conservatives could only do this through making some massive cuts to various areas of government, what makes the lib dems think they could do it without big cuts elsewhere?
They talk about cutting class sizes, although the only age ranges this is mentioned for is 5-7 and 7-11 year olds. At university level, they want students to have more choice in what modules they can take during their course. I'm more skeptical about this idea than I am of the same at secondary school level. Why? each university deals with a far larger amonut of students than each school. Considering that things don't go 100% smoothly as it is, I do not believe that any univeristy would be able to adequately handle the extra hassle associated with such increase of choice for students. Not without hiring loads more admin staff, at any rate.
They want to combine vocational and academic courses into the same assessment structure, to allow students at 14-17 years to mix-and-match those types of learning. It's a fair enough idea, but the problem comes when you have to decide what level of vocational work is equivalent to a specific level of academic work (or vice versa). Like with a number of the ideas in this document, there's plenty of blurb about what they want to do but very little about how they're going to go about it. In fact the main "how" given is with the extra revenue gained by increasing income tax for earnings over £100,000. The problem I have with that is, if you're going to increase such tax, why should you spend it on just one area of government?

Next up is Family. Currently, this doesn't really affect me, as most of it is actually about raising a family (i.e. children). There's a good deal of repetition of proposals already given in their education document. The home ownership section is interesting, particularly the sentence (and i quote) "We will also free up much more land for housing...". I wonder where this land will magically appear from? perhaps they'll pull it out of their arses. Or maybe, they'll let a load of green belt land be built on. Hmm.
They say they will scrap the council tax and replace it with a local income tax, which will be fairer. Although this will mean the rich pay more in absolute terms, if the same amonut of money is to be raised as through council tax.
Once again, the document is rather general, at least on points that interest me. For example, on the environment, they say they would "tackle climate change and cut pollution and congestion" but the only things they say they'd do would be to promote the use of public transport, encourage households to produce less waste and promote recycling. If that's all the ideas they have on this, it doesn't exactly give me confidence that they'll really do anything to help there. Don't they have any real ideas in this area? well, let's wait and see if there's a specific document on the environment...

OK, there's a little more detail in the "Urban and Suburban communities" document. Although, it's also a little confusing. In the previous one, there was a brief mention of getting a doorstep recyclable waste collection to 100% of homes by 2010. Yet here, it only says they will "move towards" kerbside recycling for everyone. Heh. Can you say "consistency"?.
There's a somewhat strange claim here, too. Under crime, they say the Acceptable Behaviour Contract - a development of the liberal democrats, no less - has been adopted by most councils as "the main tool for tackling anti-social behaviour among young people". Funny, we only hear about ASBOs in the news. I wish I could check up on this, but I suspect it to be nigh-on impossible to either prove or disprove, typical of such claims by political parties. Finally, they have some ideas that sound pretty similar to those of the conservatives, regarding community sentencing and its place in punishing criminals.

Next up is Young People. Rather stupidly, the first page (after the cover) has been processed in landscape instead of portrait format, but then put into the finished document in portrait format. So it's rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise. Nice and easy to read, like.
It doesn't matter much though, the actual proposals aren't until the second page. And there really isn't alot here, in fact they've done an admirable job - comparable to my days of writing coursework pieces at GCSE and A-level, in fact - of padding it out to fill even the one page of actual substance that it does. There's mention of their want to change our voting system to one of porportional representation. Although now they seem to be calling it the Single Transferable Vote. And they don't give details of what it entails. But the most interesting proposal in this document is that they want to allow 16 year olds to vote and stand for office. I'm not too sure I agree with this. I'm all for fairness and all, but I was 16 not all that long ago and I can remember only too well what it was like. I also get to see 16 and 17 year olds regularly as I work at a secondary school. I just don't think the average 16-year-old is in any position to make an even slightly informed vote. It's a case of "if you're gonna let them vote, you may as well let 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 year olds vote too".

Onto Law and Order. The first proposal to catch my eye is the scrapping of labour's ID card scheme. I know, the conservatives say they'll do this too, but it's reassuring to see both parties have realised the stupidity associated with such a scheme. Or, at least, have decided to follow the sway of popular opinion that is against it. For the record, as I mentioned when I went through the conservatives' manifesto, I am against the ID card scheme, as I view it as an unnecessary and essentially flawed idea; it would further restrict the law-abiding, whilst having little effect on the likes of terrorists who'll still find ways to circumvent it, and all at the expense of the law-abiding.
There's talk of more education for prisoners. This I like, as even if the statistics they give are a little skewed (4 out of 5 prisoners are functionally illiterate and over half of prisoners go on to re-offend after their release) it has been shown that if you give prisoners an education that can help them get a good job, and on the right side of the law, on release, they are a whole lot less likely to reoffend.
Their ideas for drugs are interesting. There's ideas for helping addicts to kick the habit, tougher treatment of career drug dealers, but legalisation of cannabis (both ownership and cultivation) for personal use and social supply. There's no definition of "social supply" given but I suspect it means if someone were to grow cannabis, and just share it with friends for cost, or free, as opposed to growing fields of the stuff to sell at a profit. It's not full-on legalisation, as career dealers would still be prosecuted, but the police would no longer have to spend any time and resources on catching personal users of the stuff. It's a good compromise, I think, unfortunately they don't seem to be making much of it, probably scared that labour and the conservatives would demonize such an idea and claim it's something it isn't. Nevermind eh?

The environment is the next document. I already saw mentioned earlier, their ideas to make it easier and more attractive for homeowners to have green energy generators of their own to help power their house, and two-way electricity meters to allow surplus power produced to be sold back to the grid. This I view as A Good Idea. Things like wind turbines still have a way to go before the tiny versions suitable for home owners (they may look large but they're tiny compared to the huge ones used in wind farms) are a real investment money-wise. But they are an investment environment-wise. And combined with other ways of reducing pollution, they could go a long way towards reducing the damage we're doing to the environment.
They want to reform car taxing so that owners of less polluting vehicles pay less vehicle tax, and those with more polluting vehicles pay more tax. Fair enough on that. There's mention of the raiways; both the mess the conservatives left them in, and the little-to-no improvement that has come about under labour. I'm not sure if their suggestion to improve things would work, but they really ought to be making much more of an issue over this.
There's mention of improving energy efficiency, and making businesses more responsible for the environmental impact they have (and making improvements in that area). Much like the conservatives, they say they won't allow GM crops unless they know they're safe for the environment, and they want detailed labelling of food and easy traceability, to give greater power to the consumer.

Now for their business document. Once again, there's very little here, and it's all covering old ground; mention of the extra option they'll give to new mothers (paid for by the state rather than businesses), reduced business rates for small businesses, the (hoped-for) improvements in employee skills that some of their education ideas will bring. And...that's it, really.

In their health document, there's some interesting ideas. They want to scrap charges for eye and dental checks, and extend the range of long-term medical conditions that are exempted from rescription charges. They want to improve cleanliness in hospitals and put less importance on artificial waiting list targets - targets that focus only on some kinds of waiting lists, at the expense of others. Similar to a number of the conservatives' ideas.

I skimmed briefly through the document on disabilities. Almost the entire thing is just re-hashing proposals already made in previous documents. The two extras are the provision of government information (that in pamphlets and that on websites) in forms accessible to e.g. the visually impaired, and the improving of wheelchair access and so on to government buildings, to allow for greater participation in government by people with disabilities.
Admirable ideas, it remains to be seen how well they'd be implemented.

It's a similar situation with their document on older people. Again, just like the conservatives, they want to scrap arbitrary retirement ages and enforce age discrimination legislation. Once again, I must utter my reservations about such an idea. There are a good many jobs where being of an older age is, in almsot all cases, detrimental to the quality of work you can do, and sometimes a real barrier. Not simply because of your age, but due to other factors that are affected by your age. The problem is, I can see all to well, that what would happen in some such situations is that older people would still be allowed to do such jobs because the employer would fear having accusations of age discrimination brought against them. There's PC, and then there's too far. And once you go too far, it's difficult to get back to a reasonable place, and all too easy to slip and slide waaay down the slope.

The liberal democrats are the only one of the three main parties to have a specific document covering the parts of their manifesto that would benefit women. The way they're playing it up, you'd think it was the Victorian age, or something. Seriously though, there's very little in here that doesn't actually apply to more than just women. The biggest two things are the extra choice covering mothers' rights to work and pay, and the levelling of the pensions field that apparently, in its current state, favours men more than women, although this disparity is more to do with the state of the country several decades ago than the state of it as it is now. Not that I'm against the lib dems' proposal on pensions, I do think it a good idea.

In the ethnic minorities document it is, as you may have guessed by now, almost all re-hashing policies already mentioned in previous documents. The extra stuff covers immigration - though I'm not sure it really covers it enough. If this is it as far as the lib dems' ideas on immigration go, well, it's hardly attention-grabbing stuff.

And that's it. Overall, there's not as much detail as the conservatvies give, and to be honest the lib dems seem rather short on ideas. The vague promises to "cut red tape" aren't nearly so solid as the conservatives' specific plans showing exactly which bits of red tape they'd cut. There's also a distinct lack of figures as far as savings go, in fact the only solid one I can think of offhand is their plan to replace council tax with local income tax, that would apparently save about £300 million thanks to abolishing the need for regular revaluations of properties. Also, along with the scattered promises to cut red tape, are a significant number of ideas that sound very much like they'd add to the red tape. As in, what they take away with one hand they give right back with the other. When it comes to red tape, this is as bad as giving with one hand what they take right back with the other. It's just a juggling of government bodies and public money that ends up making little real difference to you and I.
But by far the biggest problem the liberal democrats have, is in not making themselves heard. It's been noted by those three political comedians (and by that, I mean they make fun of labour, the conservatives and the liberal democrats) Bremner, Bird and Fortune that the lib dem's big strategy seems to be to let labour and the conservatives rip each other apart in a frenzied bid to win the most votes, whilst they sit back and hope the other two show themselves up enough to ruin their credibility in favour of the liberal democrats. Of course, this also means the lib dems spend very little time actually telling the voters what their policies are. Sure, you can find them on their site but, just like the other two, it takes alot of reading through useless fluff and items that don't interest you, in order to find things that do.

I think the liberal democrats will improve their standing in government still further than in the last general election, but I think it unlikely they'll get the majority, and to be honest, while I probably disagree with more of the policies of labour or the conservatives, I view the liberal democrats as being too weak to really do a good job. I could also see them ending up doing things too similarly to labour, if they were to win power.

And so on to part 2. The conservative party. Well, they certainly have more info immediately available on their site. There's policy and consultation documents, as well as pamphlets and documents attacking labour, that go back to 2002. But, my aim is just to look at their policies for the upcoming general election. That still leaves quite a few more documents to look through than for labour.
First up is "action on deregulation". The front page of this states "We have 63 deregulation proposals to remove the burden of over 11000 pages of guidance & over 1300 distorting targets". Just on its own, if this is true, it's a promising start. Remember that "guidance" is not the same as law. Where the government's concerned, if it benefits their agenda not to follow guidance, then they don't. So why bother having all that guidance?. As for targets - well, "you can prove anything with statistics" and, make no mistake, whether or not its own targets have been met, the government will find ways to make themselves look good rather than bad, when it comes to targets. Targets also more often than not have no real value, being either far too limited to cover such a wide subject as they are intended to do so, or simply not being the best way to measure improvement (or lack thereof).
It goes on to list these proposals. It's interesting reading for sure, and unfortunately I don't know nearly as much as I'd like about many of the issues covered. Instead, I'll pick out a few that caught my eye:
There's two proposals relating to charities. One is to allow pubs to run charity bingo games without needing an expensive license, the other is to make it easier and cheaper for charities to benefit from fund raising raffles. These both strike me as small, yet significant proposals. It's nothing big, any extra abuse of trust that may happen as a result of such relaxing of rules would not raise alot of money for the scammer, and I suspect that charities would be happy to have it slightly easier to run such fund-raising events.
One of the DfT proposals relates to local transport plans and bus strategies. The text claims "these add little if anything to the quality of public transport, and are an unnecessary extra burden. We will scrap the requirement to prepare these plans". Now, I dunno where they did their research, but it can't have been all that thorough. I live in Nottingham, currently still going through a programme of public transport improvement. In the city and surrounding area, we have very good bus services. And they are noticeably better now than several years ago. We now have trams that, despite a poor start, have become well-used by commuters. And, of course, there're plans for several extra tram routes, now that it's been shown they have a part to play in the city's public transport system. I disagree with the conservatives' assertion about these plans, because if it doesn't stand true for this city, chances are, there are other cities around England that it doesn't stand true for.
Next up is food supplements - they say there's over 200 "nutrient sources" accepted as safe by the Food Standards Agency, but that are omitted from an EU directive, so may become illegal from August 2005. The conservatives want to opt-out of this. However, saying "the FSA says they're safe" is, to me, an inadequate reason. They don't explain the nature of these "nutrient sources". I suspect they're all sorts of chemicals used as additives in heavily processed food. Just because there's not been any in-depth study into the long-term effects of a particular man-made chemical on human health, doesn't make that chemical safe. I'm highly suspicious of this proposal, I suspect there to be more to it than there seems.
A number of business-and-tax-related proposals smack to me of pandering to those voters with a...higher level of wealth. I have nothing against people with more money than me, or I'd not have many friends at all. But I find it funny that already the conservative manifesto is beginning to give an overall impression that, to a degree, it's a case of making cuts to public services in order to benefit those people with a higher-than-average level of wealth. Granted, some of their proposals for cutting red tape sound actually pretty reasonable, and unlikely to have a negative impact on public services. But then again, there are a number of proposals that are suspicious, or downright blatantly favouring those with above-average wealth.

---

The second document is on the economy. Another of the "big issues" that seems to hang over every general election. What strikes me as funny about this document is the cover - it says "conservatives will deliver lower taxes and value for money" which you could take as meaning "lower taxes and lower value for money". Methinks a quick swap would've made all the difference.
Much of what's in this document is just covering ground already covered in the previous one, but in a little more detail, and fluffed up with more personal language. There's some more stuff about distancing ourselves from the EU. At the minute, whilst I'm not anti-Europe, from the stories I read, the EU appears to be the result of bringing together a group of corrupt politicians - an organisation of almost total corruption, if you will. Distancing ourselves from it for the time being may well be a good idea.
There's mentions of tax cuts, but no details at all, except on the specific council tax discounts for pensioners. This last one is fair enough, but on income tax cuts and the like, I'd be itnerested to see whether it'll be a case of cuts that favour the better off more than others, or vice versa, or cuts that benefit more or less equally.

Third up is about farming and rural communities. I'm intrigued by this area of their manifesto. I certainly don't agree with it all, but their labelling idea - legislation to reform food labelling so we consumers get clear information on the country of origin of the major ingredients, and whether it meets British standards, would certainly be good to see. Assuming British standards weren't subsequently lowered a great deal. There's an interesting bit on "energy crops" - those used to make bio fuels. The conservatives say they will introduce incentives to stimulate a bio fuels industry in England. The action on GM crops is a little more reassuring than labour's approach so far, too, assuming they do stick to this proposal. Basically, less jumping in head-first, which labour have done, and more caution.

Next up is somewhat of a surprise. It's a small document, but that's not the surprise - its subject is instead. Action on global poverty. Yeah, the conservatives mention aid and stuff.I find it strange there didn't seem to be any mention of this issue over at labour's site. Maybe Blair's waiting to see if the public bring it up as a big election issue.

I'll skip the fifth document, as it covers old people specifically. I've already mentioned one of their ideas in this area, one I have no objection against - the council tax discount (as well as matching labour's ideas of free TV licenses and winter fuel payments).

Sixth up is health. I'm only skim-reading this one, as I already know I agree with much of the conservatives' statements and suggestions to reduce the OTT beauracracy currently plaguing the NHS. Much of the public money currently being wasted on unnecessary red tape ends up lining the pockets of a few rich, well-connected people who make their money by taking it off the government, and then doing less than what they're paid for unless the government subsequently hands over much more money. But, I also know already that the conservatives' talk of giving people "more choice" works like this: using public money to help the more well-off to pay for private health care. Michael Howard himself effectively said as much on a televised debate ooh, a few weeks ago now. This is one idea I'm definitely not happy about.

Next up is crime. I have to say, much of the proposals in this area sound attractive. Paying special constables an annual allowance (to encourage more people to take it up). Shifting accountability to be far more local - allowing local decisions on areas of crime to focus on, etc. Tougher sentencing for repeat offenders, honest sentencing. A reform of community punishments.
I'm not keen on it all though. I suspect we do need more prisons, but I'm not sure I trust private companies to run them. That sounds like PFI to me, which more often than not seems to end up costing more than it would have done if simply kept under control of the government.
I'm not sure I agree with all their ideas for preventing youngsters from turning to crime, either. And whilst focusing on "drugs" there seems to be no mention of the part legal drugs play (namely alcohol), and the highly-processed food that we have seen appears to cause a detioration in kids' behaviour.

Last, but by no means least, is education. I'm intrigued already by one of the ideas in this document - a Club2School scheme, offering 2 hours after-school time in which children can, if they want, get involved in a sport. This will be funded by the National Lottery.
There's more of this "right to choose" crap. Filler, really. I'm also not sure how sound an idea it is to give everyone such choices - you may well end up with some schools, for example, being inundated whilst others have to close. Then you get overcrowding.
Their skills suggestions, they have a point there, but it's beginning to sound a little too much like labour's own suggestions for "education tailored to each individual child". I agree that there needs to be more allowances for the less academically-skilled pupils though.
The ideas for university fees (well, the scrapping thereof) and a different system of student loans is certainly promising. They ought to have tight laws in place to protect the students though, to ensure the loan providers, if they are private companies, can't suddenly fleece all the students and leave them deep in debt.

And that's about it. There's a document each on capital gains tax and inheritance tax, but these hold little interest to me, and I suspect they'll basically explain how the conservatives aim to cut both.
There's also an introduction to the manifesto, and a section on housing. Again, that is an area that is unlikely to affect me in my current position, and for awhile at that, so I'm leaving it be. It's also getting late now.