I have never voted Lib Dem but.....

[TDiddy]

1. Something satisfying of supporting a group who probably joined up never expecting to win and be in Govt.
   
   2)Stick it to Uncle Rupert (Murdoch)!!

[compo]

er what about 3) their policies - do you know what they are?!

[vesela]

TDiddy, are you on the RATM etc. facebook page?

compo, I'm sure he's capable of looking them up!

[animula]

I, too, wish this had all come a bit earlier - and there could have been a broad Coalition against Voldemort.

And (1) is, indeed, pretty satisfying.

[TDiddy]

Yes, and I am not scared by their humanity in the slightest.

[TDiddy]

vesela - what is RATM ?

PMSL at Voldemort, animula

[TDiddy]

Cameron is a nice and decent guy but I am more scared by a party that is expressly there to serve 30pc of the population (including my type incidentally) than a coalition of any two main parties. So I am getting cross that the main media thread is about the risks of coalition! Britain will be so much a nicer place when we wake up to NC as PM with one of the other two serving him...

[animula]

Have realised that you are recruiting for The Order of The Phoenix, Tdiddy!!!!!

(Voldemort is Policywonk's. Sadly cannot claim it as my own.)

[TDiddy]

4)Clegg and Cable see like the strongest PM/Chancellor pair of the three?

[vesela]

TDiddy - We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!

it's a fantastic site - a lot of link-sharing, people going there with policy questions that their friends have asked and getting answers from 6 people in about 3 minutes. You can see people honing their policy knowledge day by day. Also sharing info on rebuttals, how/where to help on the ground etc.

It's usually very fast-moving - it has 160,000 members (someone described the main wall as like a motorway) but may be less so today because people are out delivering etc.

It's not an official Lib Dem site (was set up by a guy called Ben Stockman who then contacted Jon Morter who did the original RATM facebook thing) but there are a lot of LD members on there (lots more have since joined anyway) and occasionally candidates.

[TDiddy]

Thanks Vesela _ i HATE facebook and was planning my Facebook Funeral this weekend...I may have to hang on a bit more for Nick

[vesela]

Facebook funeral I wasn't particularly keen on it either, but when it's something I'm actually interested in as opposed to virtual farms and throwing stuff (also when I realised you could hide some people's status updates!) it's a lot better.

[atlantis]

Trouble with voting for a party that itself (let alone anyone else ) didn't think could be elected into government is that they never really costed their manifesto promises and only used them to gain some seats so if they did take power couldn't afford them anyway.

And, I love the way you are all assuming it would be a lib/lab pack instead of a lib/con pack especially as clegg ruled out working with Brown and on paxman last night Brown rules out working with Clegg.

The country will not take kindly to another unelected labour prime minister in office and Nick wont get the job.

[MadameCastafiore]

Lets hope they change their policy re joining the euro before we go out voting for them - have you seen what it has done to Spain and Portugal with Greece going down the pan at a rate of knots.

This is the sort of thing I hate - people voting for parties for spurious reasons - not because they have any idea how their policies will affect us all. You may as well rip up your polling card if you are going to go out and vote for someone who looks like a good bet because they never thought they could get in. Before the debate the Lib Dems could say what they wanted - roll out any old crap about what they would do knowing full well they weren;t going to get a chance to do it so could promise us the moon - now thwy are getting a bit nervous thinking they are going to actually come up with some policies that they can actually afford.

[TDiddy]

I don't think anyone will be joining the Euro. Besides the pound could be in more trouble than the Euro in the medium term!

I vote LibDem then they are free to coalesce with Labour or Tories to prursue their policies. I haven't made any assumptions.

Brown is finished as PM.

[atlantis]

"I don't think anyone will be joining the Euro."

But the point is if Cable had been chancellor in the last parliament then he would have joined the euro and we would now be greece.

It's all well and good them now saying they would only join when the time is right, but that doesn't mean this senario wont happen again once we are joined is there?

[vesela]

MadameCastafiore, it's a bit patronising to suggest people aren't capable of looking up Lib Dem policies, isn't it?

and the Conservatives' costings are where???

The Lib Dems have been costing their policies for a while now. There's a debate to be had about some areas, specifically the amount of revenue from clamping down on tax avoidance (which forms only a small part of the total revenue in the costs) but the debate would be better if the other parties came up with some figures themselves!

[mountainmonkey]

But their policy is to have a referendum on the Euro- if enough people feel the way you do about it(and I'd imagine looking at the current situation they do) then we wouldn't join.

Agree that you shouldn't vote for a party without taking a serious look at their policies but most people are too lazy to do this and so just vote for one of the same two depending who's pissed them off the least. Or people end up voting for parties like the BNP because they don't bother to look at the smallprint.

[vesela]

plus, Lib Dem policy on joining the euro is - not without a referendum. NOT WITHOUT A REFERENDUM. It's too big a step to take without one.

[jackstarbright]

"Trouble with voting for a party that itself (let alone anyone else ) didn't think could be elected into government is that they never really costed their manifesto promises and only used them to gain some seats so if they did take power couldn't afford them anyway."

I voted LibDem in the last two general elections for both local and tactical voting reasons.

I am surprised to find that the reality of Clegg as PM or Cable as chancellor has totally put me off voting for them this time!!

[MadameCastafiore]

No it is not patronising given the reasons in the OP for voting Lib Dems.

[atlantis]

"The Lib Dems have been costing their policies for a while now. "

But they really haven't have they, they seem to think trident will save them 100billion, when it's been show the real saving of trident is closer to 20billion, so 20 billion minus what they will replace it with ( and lets not forget that labour went for the cheapest option so ? ) take off the replacement cost 18 billion perhaps?, out of that they need to pay for taking tax up to 10,000 for everyone and they are in deficit already !

No saving there then.

Then they want to allow all those very nice illegals to stay ( 2.5 mil of them including their relatives )the prospect of the paperwork trail and getting it sorted alone would run up a hefty sum without the burden these people would put on the infrastructure, so another couple of billion there....

[TDiddy]

atlantis - following your reasoning, if DC was PM we would have invaded Iraq, allowed the free market to reign, not rescue the banks and allow a depression.

[atlantis]

"But their policy is to have a referendum on the Euro- "

Yes and Labour were going to give us a referendum on the constitution/ treaty, did that happen? Errr, no.

I'm sure NC will speak very nicely to Markel and get her to change the colour on the euro note then claim it's not the same euro so we don't need a referendum.

[vesela]

but the OP says later they did read up on policies (and isn't scared by their humanity!)

How do we know that people read up on Conservative/Labour policies, anyway? (OK, with Labour you can just see the results, but they may have some different ways of doing things up their sleeves that they haven't tried in the last 13 years )

[vesela]

atlantis, but that's Labour for you.

Re. illegals - what about the tax they'd pay in the legal economy?