Rock, Meet Hard Place......

Well, all the party manifestos are out into the public domain, so time will be taken to read them and eventually come up with the party I would most likely vote for.

The first thing that strikes me is that the tax take is due to rise, whichever party you vote for.

Labour: 1p on income tax to piss more money onto the raging money-bonfire that is the NHS.

Tory: When you get old we'll claw back your hard-earned assets bar the last £100,000.

As for fiscal prudence (remember Gordon Brown... anyone?) that's all gone out of the window.

Labour want to nationalise everything so their union chums can hold the country to ransom again, but won't say how they fonud the multi-billillion pound buy-up. Except we all know they will have to borrow sqillions to do it all. Money our Grandchildren will be paying back. The borrowing rates will be interesting given the foundations of sand created by quantative easing (or increasing the money supply as it was called in the 70's). Cue rampant inflation.

The Tories want to be a bit more circumspect. They make noises that they won't piss money away, but in the end over the past 5 years the national debt has gone up despite cuts in spending. The problem being the institutional overspending and inefficiency in government spending. Without correcting the holes, the money bucket will never be full, no matter how much you pour into it.

On education, Labour want to scrap tuition fees. High on my priority list with a daughter in university...

The Tories want to bring back Grammar Schools. Despite failing my 11-plus I do see a place for Grammar Schools and streaming the most able. I've only ever seen Comprehensive schools supporting the least able. I see nothing wrong with skimming off the top 20 or 30% into Grammars, supplying special schools for those less able and having schools catering for the vast majority. We need high flyers and we need schools able to cater for those that can't learn.

So despite being an over-50 adult with a natural proclivity to vote Tory, do I vote Labour? I mean, at least they'll push the debt downstream...

I haven't mentioned the other parties. Liberals, UKIP and Greens. Despite all the airtime they get, they are pretty irrelevant in this election. Sorry UKIP!