As we approach the UK General Election in May, there seems to be a growing feeling of “why should I bother to vote, as they are all the same”. So it occurs to me that a lot of our decision making is based on a number of headline facts, rather than a detailed analysis of the parties’ manifestos.
But frankly who wants to trawl through the pages of all these manifestos to find out whether a party really stands up for the things you find important in life? Currently there are 12 parties with representation in the house of common, and many more that would like seats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom
So what’s the fix? How about a standardised manifesto created by a public panel? We certainly don’t need any input from the political parties needed here, otherwise we’d have years of debate over the content! Then these manifestos would have to be approved by the Plain English campaign, so that we didn’t get the usual political evasiveness? We could then compare the things that bothered us most on a proper like for like basis.
Strikes me as an eminently sensible solution…..