So its happened; the manifestos have been announced. Those promises stating what the political parties will and won’t do ‘when’ they’re elected to power. Right. So the Green manifesto is not worth the trees that had to be destroyed in order to produce paper upon which to write the thing as they will never get to power, nor have any influence over those who do. So why do they bother? Why waste all those resources? How Green is that??

And manifestos are in a way ‘sacred’ in that once written they are pretty much there forever to either be adhered to or they’ll become the biggest rod ever to be beaten with. Like Nick Clegg and the abolition of tuition fees. Nick went into government and promptly the fees went up. Oh dear.

But that in fact set an unholy precedent. The only excuse for breaking a manifesto promise. And its fairly new in Britain. That ‘we are in a coalition government and therefore it wasn’t us; it was them’. And as we look pretty much set to have more coalition governments, whilst we have such uninspiring political leaders all sharing the same dreary goals, we better get used to such excuses. ‘Ahhhh, WE did want to stick to that promise but THEY wouldn’t agree to it’.

David Cameron and various of his many health ministers (there was an epidemic among them early in the last government) stood outside numerous hospitals stating how the Emergency Wards would never close. Then 3 weeks later 14 of them closed down. ‘Making the NHS better’. Ok, Dave, whatever you say.

Miliband once again stated that he will reinstate the 50% band for income tax and ‘keep it forever’. Like herpes. Only for wunderkind Chukka Umanna to then state that they’ll only keep it for a short while, then drop it. Well that’s not very Old Labour. Not very Ed.

I’m still struggling with Miliband’s division between ‘the rich’ and ‘the workers’. In his mind two mutually exclusive groups. No-one rich ever works, obviously. They got rich by… errr… by… well not by working, that’s for sure. You don’t get rich by hard work. And workers are all poor, in contrast.

Whereas the reality is that everyone works to better their lives and possibly those of others. And the harder you work, often, the ‘richer’ you become. So at what point does gain through hard, honest endeavour make you rich enough to become a Miliband hate-figure?

Big debate tonight. Dimbleby with all the leaders from all the parties. Except David Cameron who won’t play. Not because he’s scared. But because he’s too something else.

Happy thursday

A xxxx