If your incumbent is Conservative or Lib Dem you place more stock in what they do locally then how they vote on issues such as the bedroom tax and privatising the NHS?



Do you not think the fact he may have organised a bus pass for a pensioner pales into insignificance if he voted for the Bedrooms tax for example?



Why wouldn't an MP from a different party be equally effective locally but vote in parliament more in tune with your general views on wider issues?



In my area we have Tory MP. He came out in support of us when we campaigned against the local Tory council imposing transportation costs for disabled children to school post 16.



It still went ahead and if I were a cynic I'd say he knew it would and so could indulge in a bit of populism at zero cost to his parties position locally. Why would I say that? Well because I looked at his voting record in parliament and he has not once rebelled against or even spoken against any socially regressive legislation imposed by the government.



And that shows you are not voting for a local councillor but an MP.



An MP whose votes in parliament will affect you more than anything they do on a local level. Even in the unlikely event he votes against a government of his party because the policy would be bad locally it won't make a jot of difference because his will be the party of government and it will therefore have the majority to overrule his wishes. I am sure it will look good locally just as my MP's actions looked good but that is all it would be. Window dressing.



As I said you are not voting for a local councillor but an MP and if you want to make a reasoned judgement about who to vote for and not one based on tribal party loyalty then look at their voting record in the House and what the party he belongs to stands for.



If you do that and he is a Tory or Lib Dem I honestly can't see how you could vote for them if you have one iota of social conscience given what has happened to the disabled and disadvantage over the past five years regardless of what he has done locally.

Well that's my point, people are too lazy, myself included. It's not easy to interpret what each party is going for in terms of their approach to the big policies this time, none of the parties are going into any real depth about them. Try it out, ask a couple of people who they are voting for, then ask them why, most won't know. Most people who aren't too lazy are too busy, which supports my point. A huge percentage of those voting won't really know why or understand what they are voting for on each key issue. The parties at the moment are doing very little to get their policies across to the people, fuelling the switch off most people have around politics. People care about policies but are not being given anything to get engaged by. Huge sums are spent on branding, marketing and PR and I'd bet most people haven't a clue what is going on.

We've had the discussion before and I know you are passionate about the party political system that currently exists so I sort of expected your post





The incumbent that we have has proved his worth in working for local and national issues, in fact he was one of two MP's (the other was a Labour MP) who on the second to last day of parliament saw a bill of theirs passed into law (pub fair/market rents) which is by any reckoning a national concern and not bad at all for a back bench proposal.



Anyway, the Labrador puppy in this house has just eaten the Labour candidates newsletter this morning so I still don't know what his name is

I'm pro fracking firstly for selfish reasons. I work for a company that would benefit massively from fracking. Indeed we are in the middle of a project that will see us ship liquid ethane from the states because it's much cheaper than using North Sea gas.



The plant I used to work on shut down last year because we couldn't compete with the U.S., China etc. Their production costs are tiny compared to ours. Unless someone finds a cheaper and more sustainable fuel source, industry will continue to die in this country.



Is it the perfect solution? Probably not, there are certainly risks involved, but there's always a safe way of doing things. You hear horror stories in America, but their standards are pretty slack to say the least, and much of it is scaremongering anyway.

What I am passionate about is people voting from an informed position (hence my other reply to this thread) as to what is likely to happen if they vote for a particular party (because that is what you really are voting for) should that party gain power because despite whatever pet single issue registers with some people, you can damn well guarantee they will be affected a lot more by what any government does in power over many other issues.



I am pretty sure for those that follow politics think Charles Walker, the chairman of the procedure committee who rebelled against the governments attempt to change rules for voting for the Speaker on the last day seems a bit if a hero for voting against the government and for his speech but if you look at his voting record he has supported every nasty policy going. Hope he loses his seat!



You really are not voting for your MP but for a party and that parties policies on many issues so whatever good your MP has done on the one issue you mentioned if he is Tory or Lib dem he needs to be removed!

I agree most people don't see past the headlines which is basically what you are saying but my point is you personally clearly have the brains to do it.

You don't think there is a link between those two then such that unless our standards were equally slack we still could not complete?

California has always been the state known for its earthquakes, San Andreas fault, etc. Now its Oklahoma. In 2014 there were c. 300 times more 3.0+ magnitude 'quakes there than in 2008. They happen to inject waste water from fracking deep below the aquifers. Now imagine that in a tiny area, heavily faulted area like the NW of England.

There is probably an element of that, we might not be able to produce shale gas quite as cheaply as other countries and do it safely at the same time, but it would give us a fighting chance.



Again, the company I work for are spending £300m to facilitate ethane being shipped over from the U.S. They reckon it will have paid for itself in a handful of years. Partly because it's more plentiful and allows us to run at higher rates, but mainly because it is massively cheaper.



The other argument is that energy has to come from somewhere, as things stand we are going to be relying on other countries. The other solution is nuclear power, but for obvious reasons people are opposed to that too.

That is certainly the current situation, and probably will be for a long time to come as it suits ALL in parliament to not have to be quite so accountable to their tens of thousands of constituents - there will be MP's in the Commons who have never had to justify anything to anyone as they have never stepped out of line of the whips or even worse they are almost guaranteed their seat renewal because their constituents would vote for the party whatever they stood for or did or didn't do.



I heard a comment on Radio 5 yesterday which actually struck a chord and from memory went something like "A lot of LibDem MPs are elected because they are popular within their constituency", or something like that, after one commentator had predicted that they would lose almost all of their seats.



Personally I am not voting for any party (and I haven't clicked the poll) because all you are reading and hearing at the moment is the shopfront dressing, the double glazing salesman spiel, you hear what they think you want to hear and you'll never find out what they are going to do until they get into power - Labour's shyness at discussing how they will make savings using the "we'll decide when we see the books" bollax, and the Tory reluctance to name which Departments they will save £12bn in stating that they haven't decided yet is pure salesmanship and examples of hiding the truth for fear of losing.

Vote tory: Get more and more vicious austerity



Vote Labour: get more austerity at a slightly slower pace



Vote LimpDem: get yourself to a shrink as quick as you can



Vote UPRIK: get fooked

So when Rachel Reeves says she'll be tougher than the Tories on welfare claimants or Debbie Abrahams proudly tweeting that "Ed Miliband vows to wield the axe on public services..." then voting for that shower is somehow seen, by the terminally thick, as having a social conscience? .



You're in the same boat as cod'ead, save us all some time reading your bitter, ill informed ramblings and just write "WAAAAHHHHH...Tories"

"No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin." - Aneurin Bevan





and you do not have the intellectual honesty to understand why he made that statement and how relevant it still is today.

He made that statement because he, like so many who came after him, think they're somehow morally superior, when all along they're just been a bunch of hypocritical oafs who hoped no one would notice, but we did.

Notice what?



You're a strangely aggressive person.

I agree that a lot of people are pretty clueless as to what's going on, but completely disagree that the parties are doing little to communicate their policies. They aren't difficult to find, and over the next few weeks they'll be all over the media.



Almost every news website now has a 'politics for f'kin idiots' section which gives an easy outline of each party's pledges and policies. Politics in general and now the election are all over any decent news outlet. Unfortunately for British society, huge swathes of our population care more about their facebook feed, or which TOWIE 'star' is in a bikini this week, or what's happening in Corrie...etc...and there lies the core of the issue. Politics and politicians aren't, and never will be, 'cool'.



Too many people are too feckless and too lazy to educate themselves. There's no excuse for that but they can't then complain if they don't get the government they wanted, but the one they deserve.

Vote Green and get...a hyper version of Blair's outrageous open-door immigration/asylum seeker policy? Christ, even the most blinkered tree-hugger can see immigration needs to be controlled.



I genuinely cannot see why anyone with a brain would vote Green. They might be 'closest' to your beliefs, but you may as well vote Tory. Your Green vote is a dead vote.



That said, and even though it's indicative of their barmpot policies, a 35-hour working week does sound nice.

A question for the 'anyone but the Tories' mob: Why? What is it about the 2010-2015 government and prospective 2015 onward government you find so repulsive? Are you the legacy of family loyalty, do you think they've done a bad job, or are you simply hung up on the past and the Thatcher years - in which case I'd say grow up.



They took on a shattered economy and seem to have done as well, if not better, than most. There are issues of course, such as zero-hours, etc, but things are certainly turning around. My line of work depends in part on a positive corporate outlook and I know from my meetings with a number of huge multinationals all the way down to local SMEs that things are looking up, reflected in their spend and projections.



So, why do you hate the Tories, today, in 2015? Anyone banging on about Cameron being an Etonian will get the contempt they deserve.



p.s. I'm not particularly Tory. Neither am I Labour or anyone else right now (though I'm certainly not Green

). I'll make my mind up in due course. There are parts of at least 4 policies I agree with, but none stand out.

I would never vote Tory at General Election (unless they drastically changed their policies obviously) but I have done at local council elections.



I've also voted Lib Dem at both general and local elections in the past, so whilst I am, in general a Labour voter I'm not rabidly so and have reservations over them at both local and national level.



Taking 2010-2015 in isolation, the reason I won't vote Tory and would back "anyone but Tories" is the fact I don't think they've handled the economy that well. It's been a very slow recovery and, importantly for me, the poor and vulnerable have been unfairly targeted by the Tory government. Ontop of that I'm very, very unhappy with the creeping privatisation of services from the NHS to police to prisons to justice to welfare etc. I know that some privatisation went on under Labour last time and I was unhappy about that too. It's not because it's more efficient or run better, it's just a way of absolving responsibility and reducing the quality of the service without actually admitting it.



All I can see happening if the Tories get back in again is more of that.

Where do I start? I suppose the first port of call is this bit of nonsense on your part. "They took on a shattered economy and seem to have done as well".



No they didn't. They took an economy growing at 2% when they took office and drove it into recession and the recovery, such as it is, has been nothing like it should have been as economies that tank typically rebound with strong growth and ours has been the worst ever recovery. Only today the productivity figures are the worst since world war 2 and that matters a great deal.



Low productivity = low wages as we are uncompetitive = lower standard of living = low tax receipts = longer to pay down the deficit.



They have missed every economic target they set. They have borrowed more in the last five years than Labour did in the previous 13, lost the AAA rating and have not rebalanced the economy as promised (another housing boom..).



How on earth do you conclude "they have done as well"?



However that is not why I will never vote for them. Economically illiterate they may be but the reason I won't vote for them is they are driven by an extreme right wing ideology which manifests itself in numerous ways.



The bedroom tax is one way. Workfare is another. Free labour for employers which drives wages down (which affects productivity...).



They also lie. "No increase in V.A.T" they said in 2010. They increased it. "No top down reorganisation of the NHS". They did just that. Yet here we are in 2015 with Cameron and Osborne saying "No increase in V.A.T". You believe them because????



One of THE biggest issues though is TTIP. If you don't know what that is Google it. As the Tories have it now if it is passed (its an EU wide free trade agreement with the USA) companies (USA companies) will be able to sue the government if they think government policy prevents them from making a profit (e.g. plain packaging for cigs). It will also lead to the inevitable full privatisation of the NHS.



Other countries in the EU have excluded their healthcare from it explicitly e.g. France. The Tories will not. I even wrote to my MP about this and he is a Tory so you can see I am not basing this on supposition but what he actually said. I got a long technical reply which said it was fantastic for trade and they weren't going to exclude the NHS. TTIP is NHS privatisation by the back door.



So there you go. Why not to vote Tory in one easy lesson.



What you may not know is I am the parent of an Autistic child who will soon turn 18 and be an adult and believe me if you think this is a long post as to why you would be insane to vote Tory, you want to be in my shoes in that regard. You'd probably consider assassination of each and every Tory MP rather than the ballot box (and lets not forget ,Cameron made a great play about his (now sadly deceased) disabled child in the last election...).

Just to pick up on this one point, "pledges and policies" will be forgotten on May 8th just as soon as it becomes clear if we have an outright winner or a coalition, even quicker if its a coalition (did we not learn anything from 2010).



I regard tonights seven party debate on ITV as being akin to inviting seven double glazing companies to come around to your house on the same evening and argue amongst each other pitching for your business while you sit on the settee and wonder why you did it.

I was one of the 2 million that voted for the Green Party at the 1989 EU election. They gained 15% of the vote but didnt win a seat. Despite that I regarded it as hugely significant vote. It demonstrated that quite a significant chunk of the electorate thought that environmental issues should be taken seriously.



It seems to me that much of the current support for the Green Party is coming from people who just want a more left wing alternative to Labour, and that environmental issues are a distinctly secondary consideration. That will provide the Green's with a short term boost, but ultimately I think it could be quite damaging for the party. It shouldnt be a party that only appeals to hard lefties.



Apparently the Brighton council, where the Greens have the most seats, has split into two factions. "Watermelons" - green on the outside and red on the inside, "Mangoes" - green on the outside yellow on the inside. It doesn't bode well for thieir future.

Labour. Hate Tories - they're scum.

By the way, the puppy has just ripped up ANOTHER communication from the Labour Party that was shoved through the door this morning, thats two in a week and he never touches any other mail - I'm beginning to think he has an opinion.

Lots of lefties, even hard ones are very serious about environmental issues. Think you'll find that it is the hard and soft righties who are the deniers.