lupestripe's lair

I think Labour are always going to take more heat as the incumbent. You can look at the LibDem and Tory manifestos and think "hmm, well that's not a very good idea" or "yes, that sounds reasonable", but there's nothing to measure them against. With Labour, any manifesto promise will immediately be judged against the previous 13 years, so even if it contains lots of generally sensible policies, the response is always going to lean towards "so what were you doing for the previous 13 years?". Couple that with Brown's lack of popularity, Labour seeming to be the worst expense offenders and any manner of other issues, and you can see why they get more flak. There are always going to be media agendas - the Guardian and Torygraph will always be in opposite camps, but the tabloids will go with whoever has the most popularity, as their only real agenda is "sell more papers". Don't forget they were all heavily pro-Blair in 1997. Also consider "the media" is far more decentralised these days, as it's no longer just the papers. The tabloids are fighting for a decreasing market, what with blogs and aggregation, so they're more likely to go with popular opinion to sell papers.

People may think otherwise, but I'm far from a rabid Tory. I know who I won't be voting for, that's for sure, but there are still some issues that I'm undecided on. I'm ideologically opposed to Big Government, surveillance, entitlement culture and the nanny state, so recent Tory noises regarding "Big Society" sit quite well with me, as they're very similar to the Open Source model, but there are still little issues I'm not sure about. The LibDems have a real trump card in Vince Cable, but will he come into play? Interesting stuff.