Parliament needs more politicians like him and Dennis Skinner. If nothing else, they make people’s ears prick up from the usual drone.
Anyone else reading the Conservative manifesto?
I’m marking it, I don’t know if that counts. 
Could you tell us the high points, and what rings true or false to you?
Dunno about the Manifesto itself but Cameron seems to have come over all American.
I’ve read what they’ve said on the future of financial sector regulation. They’re high level and have left themselves a lot of flexibility on that…
I’ve given it an initial skim, and need to give it a more thorough read-through.
I like the libertarian bent. Their repealing the Human Rights Act and introducing a Bill of Rights also sounds good. Their ideas on schools and police seem good in basis but poorly implemented.
Their headline figure of £6B debt reduction is misleading. Firstly it’s only about 1%. Secondly, it’s not an actual reduction: they’re still going to overspend, but underspend Labour by £6B.
There’s a lot of fluff. I’m not sure about their plans for teachers: does it really matter if a primary school teacher hasn’t got a good degree if they can teach? And I’d have liked to see something on protecting teachers - particularly male teachers.
Youth unemployment is quite prominent, but I didn’t spot anything on helping the middle-aged unemployed.
From here
Human Rights Act
The Human Rights Act 1998 gives further legal effect in the UK to the fundamental rights and freedoms contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. These rights not only impact matters of life and death, they also affect the rights you have in your everyday life: what you can say and do, your beliefs, your right to a fair trial and other similar basic entitlements.
Most rights have limits to ensure that they do not unfairly damage other people's rights. However, certain rights – such as the right not to be tortured – can never be limited by a court or anybody else.
You have the responsibility to respect other people's rights, and they must respect yours.
Your human rights are:
* the right to life
* freedom from torture and degrading treatment
* freedom from slavery and forced labour
* the right to liberty
* the right to a fair trial
* the right not to be punished for something that wasn't a crime when you did it
* the right to respect for private and family life
* freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and freedom to express your beliefs
* freedom of expression
* freedom of assembly and association
* the right to marry and to start a family
* the right not to be discriminated against in respect of these rights and freedoms
* the right to peaceful enjoyment of your property
* the right to an education
* the right to participate in free elections
* the right not to be subjected to the death penalty
If any of these rights and freedoms are breached, you have a right to an effective solution in law, even if the breach was by someone in authority, such as, for example, a police officer.
One can only wonder about the motives of a party that wishes to repeal such an Act.
What’s the difference between the Human Rights Act and a Bill of Rights? The original Bill of Rights was just an Act of Parliament (though the Lords, not the Commons, obviously).
I’m happy to leave it to our fellow forumers to decide for themselves.
It seems like pretty much all the parties are playing up a youth unemploment scheme of some kind - and hey, as an unemployed youth I can’t complain - but i’m concerned about their ideas, especially in comparison with other points. The promises are considerably more detailed, actually naming and talking about plans and schemes, but on the other hand, I really think this is just the youth bone they’re throwing us this time around. I think that’s the reason for them (or many other parties, for that matter) spending much time on middle-aged and elder employment issues - they’re just spending the one credit they need to on the youth, and not touching what’s certainly going to be an important issue for everyone else, too, with a ten-foot pole. Makes me wonder how accurate and likely their stated plans are, to be honest.
Part of the problem - per the Tories - is that Labour got the implementation wrong. So they’re going to fix it.
The Tories have yet to tell us.
In what sense does it “sound good”, then? 
For all you know it might say, “we reserve the right to fuck your firstborn daughters. Or sons.”
Well that sounds good. The HRA is an implementation in UK law of the European Convention on Human Rights (from the 1950s, drafted by a Briton). For the Tories to want to repeal it they must tell us what it is about the existing Act they object to.
It couldn’t possibly be to appease the Daily Mail axis - the “Euro Commissars Eat Our Swans By Diktat” crowd - could it?
Is there a website which aggregates British opinion polls like Pollingreport or Real Clear Politics in the US. I haven’t been following British politics closely in recent years but this election is quite interesting. In some ways it seems like the 1992 election in reverse. At that time the British public appeared sick of the ruling Conservatives and the economy was in poor shape but ultimately they didn’t trust Labour and the Tories won much more comfortably than the polls suggested. I wonder if Labour might similarly manage to squeak through again. Of course Major’s government was the living dead until Blair put it out of its misery in 1997 so this isn’t necessarily a reassuring analogy for Labour.
The other intriguing possibility is if the Lib Dems manage to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament which would transform British politics forever. What is likely to happen in that scenario? I would imagine they would be more likely to support Labour but would they require some kind of commitment on proportional representation. Is that even a serious possibility in British politics today? If it happened the Lib Dems could be virtual kingmakers indefinitely into the future like the Free Democratic Party in Germany.
Labour will probably win the election regardless of what happens between now and then, IMHO, or at least remain the largest party. The Tories need to pick up 116 seats out of 650, which would be the biggest swing since WWII.
The current HRA has been the cause of a number of travesties. For example, being unable to deport a group of Afghan hijackers.
Fleeing the Taleban, so they should have been deported back to the Taleban? It’s an edge case (obviously, what with the hijacking and all 
) but that case went through the full process of UK law, the Appeal Court rejecting government petitions. The courts did their job, upholding the law. Sullivan was scathing about the actions of Ministers. From this summary
Like I said, a hard case.
So, which of these rights would you like to be dismantled in order to punish a few malcontents - remember the court decision at the time was described by some of our less thoughtful commentators as a “Hijackers charter”! - I don’t know about you but I’m up to my knees in hijackers here!
Perhaps Dave should do a little more to explain why he wants to abolish rights. The HRA and the Courts were the only bulwark against ministerial abuse in this case, but Dave wants to get rid of that.
He doesn’t want to abolish them: he wants to abolish the Act and replace it with something he sees as more sensible. It’s an important difference. I just wish he’d give us details.