The floater voter's guide to good government

Not made up your mind yet for this May 6th? Unsure whether to stick with the Devil you know, the Labour party? Rooting for the new and recently improved (as of last Thursday) Lib Dems? Want a bit of RESPECT in your life and a regular bus service to ferry George Galloway and co around with loudspeakers? Or is bigotism the dish of the day in your household with the BNP? Considering a vote for bush with the Greens? Or a crack at the indie record with UKIP?

So many parties, so little time! With just over a week 'til you cast your eye over the hundreds of leaflets pouring from your letterbox, it's no easy feat trying to make your mind up while you hold back the canvassers counting on your vote.

So TTG will make it easy for you. Here's the best policies of the lot.



Businesses

• Want to Work For Yourself but worried about being crippled by tax costs? This party pledges to Cut Corporation Tax rates; the main rate from 28p to 25p and the small companies' rate from 22p to 20p.
  
• All new businesses won't have to pay Employers' National Insurance either in their first year.
  

Community

• Moving from the big state, to the big society

• Ability to come together to address local issues if your local council isn't doing its job e.g. including enabling parents to open new schools, letting neighbours take over local amenities like parks and libraries that are under threat, giving the public greater control of the planning system, and enabling residents to hold the police to account in neighbourhood beat meetings

• 16 year olds can sign up to a volunteer programme to pick up skills, meet people and improve their communities

• Additional English classes so language is no longer a barrier in society; teach our children the history of this nation and celebrate St George

Cleaning up politics

• Reform our system by reducing number of MPs

• the right to recall misbehaving members and sorting out any differences over boundaries and constituency sizes

• Cap on donations to all parties to put sleaze to bed; also new rules on lobbying

• English MPs will have right to vote on English issues

• Want a bill put through for consideration? This party will allow you to submit legislation and referenda requests

• Council tax too high? Veto any excessive rises with this party

• Councillors will have to reveal all their spending and contracts online
  

Climate change

• Making it easy to go green with over £6k for each household for energy improvements

• Keeping a check that we have plenty of supplies of electric and water so government can cope in a national crisis

• Cut Government's carbon footprint by 10 per cent within just one year. On your bike, MPs!

• Communities who run on renewable energy will be rewarded greatly by keeping their business rates they generate for six years.
  

• Creation of cleaner nuclear power stations

Crime

• No more red tape; fewer forms to fill out and more bobbies on the beat to fight crime just as they were trained to.

Culture, media and sport

• An independent BBC -yes, really!
  

• Scrap of the 'phone tax'

• Superfast broadband nationwide by 2017 - silver surfers to be on the rise

• Olympics to inspire a nationwide competition in schools to encourage kids into sport

Defence

• Our Boys serving in Afghanistan will receive bigger bonuses

• Give serving soldiers the right to vote

• Defence reviews to make sure your money is being spent in the right places and is used effectively

Economy

• Stop the planned National Insurance rate increase for everyone earning under £35k
  

• Begin work of tackling our deficit and not by brushing it under the carpet.
  

• 9 out of 10 first time buyers will not have to pay Stamp Duty

• Inheritance Tax only for millionaires

• Marriage will be recognised in the tax system

• Crackdown on bankers' bonuses

Environment

• Prepare Britain properly to face floods with better defences and only necessary building in flood-prone areas

• Maintaining green belts and the introduction of nationwide tree planting

Europe

• Maintaining of membership of the EU; working with European countries to face global poverty and global warming
• A UK Sovereignty Bill to keep our authority over United Kingdom's laws of the land
  

Family

• Recognise civil partnerships and marriage in the tax system

• Flexible parental leave so men can be stay-at-home daddies
  

• Support pensioners by protecting things like the winter fuel payment, free bus passes and free TV licences
• Free nursery care for pre-school children

• Greater access rights for the extended family and grandparents
  

Farming

• Shoppers will know if they're buying British with better labelling

• Farmers will get a fairer deal with the selection of an independent supermarket ombudsman to ensure fair competition for consumers and farmers

• Serve up farmers' food in our schools and hospitals.

Health

• Increase spending on the NHS every year

• Give patients the right to choose their doctor or hospital

• Free dental checks for five year olds and more people to have an NHS dentist

• People first, not targets; Ensure best new drugs are free on the NHS where possible

Housing

• Abolish HIPs which make selling homes more difficult

• More part-own schemes to make it cheaper to go on the housing ladder

• Right to Move schemes to allow tenants in social housing to exchange homes in other areas

• Building of more family homes with gardens and parking
  

Immigration

• An annual cap on workers coming overseas (outside EU) with needed skills jumping in front of the queue

• Border police to actually POLICE our borders and keep a check on who comes in and out

• English test for people coming in to this country from outside the EU
  

Jobs

• 200,000 apprenticeships for teens to kickstart their careers

• Allow unemployed young people to go on the Work Programme to help them find work after just six months

• Mentors to help people volunteer and loans for would-be entrepreneurs to start a business

• Anyone who is offered a job that they can do and refuses it will have their benefits cut

Justice

• Prisoners will have to earn their release through education and rehabilitation

• Scrap ID cards

• DNA doesn't belong to government and this party plans to only store DNA belonging to offenders

• No early release - Increase prison spaces instead
  

Pensioners

• Home protection scheme to stop older people being forced to sell their homes to fit the bill for residential care

• Two year council tax freeze

Schools

• Discipline to return to the classroom; head teachers can search pupils, give them detention and exclude unruly pupils

• Teachers will have to get top grades to train
  

• Creation of independently run schools by local communities, faith groups and charities

Universities

• A bonus for paying back student loan early

• 10,000 extra places at university

• extra 100,000 college places
  

• Community Learning Fund to help adults in new careers

Did you agree with any or most of the policies* above?

If so, congratulations, you share the same ideas to get this country moving in the right direction. Voting Conservative would be the best option for you if you want any of the above as they are all Tory ideas.

Conservatives: A deal too good to miss

* The policies above all feature on the Conservatives 'What we stand for' page This is not an extensive list but just TTG's fave and all-rounded policies which can and will work for you.

The Laboural Democrats offer as much change as a 99p store. Get more for your money with a Tory government

There's a reason why there's a smile on Gordon's face lately - Nick Clegg put it there.

His polished performance and promises of change (excerpt from St David Cameron's gospel) have gone down well with the public and Brown couldn't be happier.

Brown wants Britain to be hung, drawn and quartered. For him, he can at last have a scapegoat of his very own to pass the parcel of responsilibity on to when the riverbanks burst or birds get a cold. Bringing in the very best of the shadows of the shadows ad lib would also give him the chance to oust his rivals like the Milibros. Also with a boost for Clegg, there will be more recruits to their Lib-Lab harem. A strong, cross-party fortification to keep the Tories out of their House. And to keep common sense away from waging power in the country. United, Labour's ally, the Lib Dems, can help to push the Tories firmly back into the Opposition ditches.

For years, Lib Dems and Labour have coincided peacefully in their respective habitats - sharing their votes to stop the Tories from getting a piece. TTG's mum bore witness to their tactics when a rosy-dozy canvasser came to her door. 'Can I count on your vote'? 'Certainly not!'
'Will you be voting for the Liberal Democrats because that is a vote for us too'. Evidently with the bright brain TTG's mam has on her shoulders, she caused the woman to shriek as she revealed her penchant for the Tory way of doing things. She never did come back to the TTG household. This story, however small, shows that this brotherhood is right at the roots of these two parties who stick together through thick and thin. They are essentially joined at the hip - their policies are one. The Father, the Son and the Liberal spirit. That's Labour's liturgy.

Publicly, they are at odds but behind closed doors, the two are all in this together to keep one or both in power in a pact to keep the Tories out. They probably don't chill with a beer to watch the game together or go out on the tiles to boogie on a Saturday night. They're aquaintances.
The two parties are staffed with similar political species. Hypocrisy and envy pump through their veins while their heads are filled with a socialist utopia ideal and dreams where reality never darkens their presence. They both believe a money tree really exists (China, you say?) and that handing over British passports like shop loyalty cards can only be a good thing.


There is no change with a party who works with Labour. The Conservatives have CHANGED, for good. It's no ploy, or PR stunt. We are progressive and have responded to the desperate cries of a public calling for something other than what we've got now.


If you want something different, different politics, different approach, different values, beliefs and creeds, then look no further than the Conservatives.


Vote for the Conservatives and you're voting for that change.

David Cameron's not too hot, not too cold - he's just right

The public aren't blessed with Goldilocks' ability to give each of the parties' policies a spin before she settled for one set but the first Leaders Debate was meant to come close to that experience.

As assumed, the night was yet another episode of Westenders with the characters exchanging blows and jeers in the name of a debate. While Nick Clegg nodded and shook his head ferociously, whining like a scorned child, to Cameron's right, Brown stood grinning like the Cheshire cat as salt was thrown into his public record wounds. Cameron was a piggy in the middle, a gooseberry as the love-hate relationship between Nick and Gordon became more apparent. It seemed that the two men were having their first jitters as Nick furrowed his brow and denied any backroom action between the two. Clown to the left of him, joker on the side, David Cameron was stuck in the middle attempting to give justice to the word debate. He was calm, collected, listened for instruction and was respectable to his counterparts as they spoke.

But if live reaction polls are anything to go by, Cameron failed. Because his team of supporters didn't sit in a certain HQ, keen as mustard, clicking away to boost their leader's profile. The joke however was on Gordon as he stood, lies pouring from his mouth as he said he'd put more police on the streets (after being prompted by David), that our troops were well equipped, that "net inward migration" was being cut.(maybe that's the long suffering Brits who left for a life in Marbella!) If anyone now can still after seeing this spectacle, cross the box for Gordon, TTG would worry for their fitness to even vote. After 13 years of doing nothing, he has the courage to insist he's up for electoral reform - when it suits him. The party have called for a radical shake-up of politics when they were in short trousers, back in the days of them in Opposition. Yet they now say they'll do something about it, after 13 years of having the opportunity to do so.

Does this not tell you something about Labour? Can you trust their word when they have given us promises again and again and not delivered them?

On the opposite side of the coin, we have Clegg who has plenty of policies (some good, mostly bad) but none have any legs to them. They are not acheiveable. Even David Cameron himself said he'd love to give the public the ability to earn £10,000 before being taxed but he can't promise it because he knows he can't deliver it. Nick's class size idea is fantastic because it's true that kids perform better when there's more attention from their teachers. There are big class sizes not because of the schools, but because there are more children than there are seats. If we didn't have the demand and pressure of so many children to educate, then we could do this but we can't. Build more schools and independent ones which don't have class quotas with the Conservatives and you can achieve this.

Then there's Clegg's big idea of immigration: allow employers to recruit from Europe or elsewhere if they need a certain skill (perfectly acceptable) but they can only have freedom to work and roam in one region. TTG knows that Clegg has spent most of his life abroad sunning it up in Brussels and the like but has he noticed that it takes only 12 hours to get across one side of the country to another. What happens if a skilled doctor got a job in the North but lost it and couldn't find work in that region but there was an opening in London? Would he say that she can't work down South and would instead have to have no job? This barmy policy of the liberal army is hardly liberal.


We have a happy medium in David Cameron. He's not a preachy, screechy sancitmonious finger pointing politician like Gordon's friend, Nick and he's not a bolshy, cold, compassionless hardline man of politics willing to keep himself in a job at all costs like Gordon.

Do you want promises that are too overstretching and unachievable under the Lib Dems?

Or no promises at all, with Labour?

Or do you want the middle ground - the best of both worlds?

Cameron is the porridge that isn't too hot, the chair that isn't too big and the bed that is not too hard.

For a real choice, real policies, what you see is what you get with David Cameron.

Today marks the end of our Phoney Election War ... now the real fight begins

Brown has finally declared war. After months of speculation and bitter heated poster sabotage and blow exchanges, the tired, worn-out son of a preacher finally revealed the date when the election explosions begin - MAY 6TH 2010.

Now is the time our army of activists reach out to the public for their support, to take up arms of literature and equip ourselves with pledges as we hit the war-torn streets.

We have no time to lose, Tory troops. Time is of the essence. Our objective? To back Britain at all costs and to put Britain back firmly under the democratic control of the Conservatives.

As we march out our commanders to the borough battle fronts, we must bring out our policy reserves to assist us in this campaign to oust out this rebel force which for too long has seized our assets, our state and strangled our future in its socialist grip.

Rebel group, Labour, will use guerilla and dirty tactics but we must not lose sight of our goal. We fight to the death of Labour control, and rule.


Our country needs you to back our Chief in Command, David Cameron, this May 6th.

Do you want the bad news? Brown's going nowhere

Wonder why the election hasn't been called yet? And why there's no pressure on Brown to do so? Apparently Brown has uncovered a loop hole where he can postpone the election in the event of a war or time of economic strife. Despite Labour's calls that the recession is over, the figures tell otherwise and despite our continental neighbours pulling out of the red, the truth is that we are still heavily stuck in a recession rut.

With the polls putting Labour and Conservative neck-in-neck and the Lib Dems not far behind, Gordon Brown can put the argument forward to the Queen that the country is too unstable to have an election where the outcome is likely to result in a weak administration and/or hung parliament.

It is thought that he can therefore push the election date back to six months, even as late as October. It makes TTG's blood boil - all that door knocking in snow, sleet and rain to discover that it won't be happening after all. It is disgraceful and TTG hopes her readers will support her campaign to put pressure on the government not to cave in to this ridiculous loophole. It is the action of a dying administration determined to hang on at all costs. A sad day for British democracy.

Get Labour out now!

*UPDATE - This is of course an April Fool's but knowing Brown, it's not totally detached from reality.