Or I’d have to go to the trouble of cancelling them.
I took the decision some years ago that buying a daily dose of such politically slanted views was a waste of my money and time. I’m a swing voter. I dislike the Conservatives’ tendency to slash state schooling and the NHS when they’re in power, presumably because many of their most ardent followers can – and do – afford to go privately. But I, like many others, bitterly resent the fact that this country was dragged into an illegal war with Iraq under Labour, all because Blair wanted to continue his ‘special relationship’ with that walking disaster, George W. I recall that the Liberal Democrats were the only party at the time who stood up and said that Parliament had no business plunging the country into war without a proper mandate.
Like millions of others, I watched the televised debate last week – and was unexpectedly impressed with Nick Clegg. However today in the national press, I see that he’s become the target of a series of attacks that range from the trivially venomous to plainly unpleasant . And – according to David McKie of the Guardian – my brand of ‘shop-around politics does not worry that much about substance’. Apparently, ‘It wasn’t the substance of Lib Dem programme that made people warm to Clegg last week. It was personality, as expressed in looking direct at the camera and in easy, flexible, body language…’
How DARE he dismiss thousands like me in such arrogant terms! Nick Clegg was the only one who stood there with a fully costed financial package showing how the Lib Dems were going to get us out of this fiscal black hole.
What he didn’t do, was shake his head and dolefully tell me that if I didn’t vote back/in the Labour/Conservatives, life was going to get Very Unpleasant. I have become mightily sick and tired of the fearmongering that both the two main parties offer up in the absence of any real vision. A political version of Hillaire Belloc’s warning:
And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.
Maybe I like Nick Clegg because he has been speaking to us as if we were adults, capable of making informed decisions.
Despite the fact I will probably only judge the candidates on their body language and how many times they smile at me according to The Guardian, I’m going to watch the debate again tonight. Cameron and Brown will need to put on a FAR better performance if they are going to regain my support. I don’t want to hear Brown’s defensive drone, or Cameron’s constant dreary attacks on Labour.
Meantime, I’m not the only one who feels the national papers have overdone the attacks on Nick Clegg – a series of tweets have appeared on Twitter with the theme #NickCleggsfault. The one that started it? Just stubbed my toe #nickcleggsfault – by @chickyog and since then, over 24,000 people have joined in the fun…
