Well it’s election time once again and all the parties have put out their manifestos.
Before we go any further please remember that I have not read them. I did go on the Conservative manifesto page the other day to see if I could get hold of a copy and I could very easily download it but being older and not really a computer wiz, I would rather read a printed version. As such, I stopped there and didnt look at the other parties sites to see if I could order a copy. I know I will be able to download it but that wasn’t what I wanted.
So all I have seen about the manifestos is what I have read online, in the papers or seen on the TV or radio and they only tend to go on about the attention grabbing stuff. It doesnt really matter though as I got the gist of all of them.
The problem I have with manifestos is that party leaders will say things to get elected. That’s the entire nature of manifestos – what can we promise people so that they will vote for us and put us in power. We must not lie but how far can we bend what we are saying so that we get the vote. And in any case we dont nessessarily have to do it afterwards. We can just say its an aspiration, or that’s what we would like to do when the country can afford it, or we wrote it on the back of a fag packet and have lost it so we cannot do it now because we cannot remember the detail.
This is where elections fall down. Manifesto pledges can easily be dropped or forgotten about once in power. Its time we made the manifesto pledges made during elections legally binding so that once made, they have to happen, say within 12-24 months after getting in to power. That would perhaps make leaders of parties make more sensible choices, fully costed out and so on. And it would be no good disposing of the leader afterwards. Its a party commitment so we, as the party in power, have to do it. If it isn’t in place within 24 months maximum then someone, the Queen perhaps, should call another election and dissolve parliament.
Pigs might fly as well or course but I can but hope.
lifesapileofshite 
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