At risk of sounding repetitive and annoying scary teacher further.... I am even more resolved to swing from voting Tory to voting LIB DEM on Thursday. Here's why:
It would benefit my family to vote TORY. My husband is a high earner in the city. But I am voting LIB DEM. This is not a protest vote but using a bit of savvy, some heart and raw frustration with the disproportion of wealth across the UK. If I vote Tory it's a narrow, selfish vote.
When CEOs of supermarkets and newspaper editors start using scare tactics, you know it's a desperate bid to protect the stranglehold our business leaders and media have over our politicians. To protect the power of big corporations.
I want a leadership with the courage to break up the monopolies that close down local shops, pubs, post offices and bus routes. But politicians are in the pockets of businessmen that pull the strings.
Their wives are not.
Businesspeople will put economy first and we have witnessed systematic failure in these corporations of huge proportions motivated by personal greed.
I do not want to be governed by leadership that fails to notice that according to UNICEF our kids are the unhappiest in Europe. How many are on anti depressants, take Class A drugs, self harm, have under-age sex, binge drink, over eat, under eat? The happiest nations in the world are often the poorest economically speaking.
Current economics is blind to the damage being done to our environment. By shopping in these supermarkets we as consumers are facilitating a depletion of resources that will deny our children fish, farmland and forests and we buy without thought from companies that pollute our world. Try buying British next supermarket shopping trip. See how little we now produce in the UK. But businessmen and politicians alike believe that saving the planet means destroying the economy. The same economy that is hanging in by a thread? They fear media backlash and they fear for their jobs.
We all need to look responsibly at the big picture, to be prepared to take the pain and to change our ways. To be unselfish in our vote. Mums are good at that. But we need to use our vote and vote with our head, hearts and a wish for a better future not based on monetary well being. Do we have the personal courage to be the change that we want from our politicians?
I want a political system strong enough to believe in us by allowing real democracy. Our electoral system is skewed in favour of two main parties. One has failed miserably to deliver in thirteen years. The other is trying bully tactics to scare us away from a party that offers the closest thing to electoral reform and a real democracy.
The LIB DEMS did not want IRAQ and have always had a strong environmental voice. Vince Cable has demonstrated sound economic judgment and forecast the banking fiasco well before the other two parties woke up to it. They want to offer us real democracy via proportional representation. If that means instability in economics bring it on...we are living with it daily and many world government do extremely well on a hung parliament.
Vince Cable will take my husband's bonus and distribute it fairly. That's the right thing to do. I trust and hope LIB DEMS will start again. I know they are not perfect but I have looked hard at all the manifestos and I like what I see. Not for me but for Britain as a whole. I will not waste my vote. I will vote for the LIB DEMS...and hope for a different future based on values that are not measured by the strength of the pound.
If you have strong conviction in voting Labour or Conservatives then I respect your beliefs. But many of us have sat on fences. If we don't vote we deserve more of the same. I want something different and better which is why after much soul searching...I'll be voting LIB DEM.
Anybody else swinging up there on the fence?