Bigger Boys!
**taps nose**

I know what you're saying.  It's almost school playground mentality where the popular kids get jealous when the new kid steals the attention.

I actually think some of Nick Clegg's policies are positively frightening.

This is one of my major issues with "modern politics" Pretty soon there will be no individual styles left. One daren't stray from the straight and narrow that is Tory/Labour nowadays. We will never see broad churches with the likes of Foot, Benn, Powell, and Widdecombe again.

... or Prescott.

I agree GJ.  Foot was a true Labour politician with the rights of the working man as his motivation.  Benn was a very sincere man and I am told by someone who met him, a lovely lovely man.  Powell was cruelly misrepresented when he was trying to give a warning about this country which he loved.  And dear Ann Widdecombe who is a very able politician was, I believe, held back because she was not 'cute'.  My opinion only of course.

Prescott?  Ahem, tiptoes quietly out of thread.

Yes.... they were both what  I consider true Labour politicians......Labour politicians who were there to serve the people, not to feather their own nests or bolster their own ego's.

Clegg's popularity has perturbed the others a bit.
So they now feel the need to bring him down a peg or two.
The trouble with that is that it can easily backfire and make 'the others' appear rather churlish, thus providing Clegg with even more fans.
I have voted Liberal all my life and I see no particular reason to change now.
I am not entrenched - I would change if I felt the need.

Ditto Brisket.... I always voted Labour until the last 8 years...... and if we ever get anything like a Labour party again I will probably go back to them, but no way can I bring myself to vote for Brown and the so called  New Labour ....

The Liberal party here spend most of their time scare-mongering by being very liberal with the truth of anything and the rest of their time wasting our hard earned on grandiose schemes which usually don't work. I would vote for them when hell freezes over now.

You gov poll says Cameron won the debate tonight.....

By much?  I didn't feel there was an outright winner, unlike last week.

no Spider.... and next poll (comres , I think)gave it to Clegg. It really is going to be one nail biting election night...

i dont trust him
his forehead is bigger than camerons and thats a good enough reason not to vote him

Same here, Baz. But the Tories could offer me a million quid, free beer for life, a private jet and an executive box at Villa Park, and I still wouldn't vote for them.

Omit the last two and I may be interested.

Cheap tart
Seriously - NO inducement on earth could make me vote for that lot.

do we need polls to tell us who win these so called debates.  I would think it's up to individual interpretation as to who won.

but he has a lot less chins, and looks like he's eaten a lot less pies than Cameron,
that's always a good sign.

LOL. Demantoid....... well I agree about the box at Villa Park..... but would not turn  down the other 3.... In fact,  shallow person that I am.......if Gordon was to me offer me that I MIGHT even stop and re-think my vote..Right, I've thought..... I'll take the jet and the million.... and then move abroad

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nic.../one_good_smear.html

This link seems to suggest that it was a smear campaign afterall in relation to the telegraph's blazing attack on Clegg yesterday, practically accusing him of theft.  One wonders who could have been the mastermind of the unfounded attack.  Mandleson seems to think it was the Tories, and as the article was in the telegraph that would make sense.

It just goes to show though, as if we needed reminding, the media are not impartial, they too are politically driven.  Don't rely on them for the TRUTH.

Apparently so! I just popped into the paper shop on my way back. It's fairly obvious that the journalists, and I use the term lightly, on the Sun, Mail, and Express have been watching a different set of debates to our good selves.

And above all, if history has taught us anything, then for heaven's sake do not rely on Peter Mandelson to tell anyone the truth about anything.  The bare-faced cheek of the master of smears and spin accusing anyone of smears is risible.

chances are, those titles were printed before the debate took place.

Anyone looking at the combined front pages over the last couple of days would assume that Clegg not only is foreign, but also a Nazi and a thief. I'm not Peter Mandelson but that goes down as pretty disgusting smearage in my book.

In recent years I have come to tolerate Ann Leslie - even respected some of her statements.
But did you see her on Question Time last night?
She hates the Liberals.  She was positively shaking with anger.
She resorted to cheap schoolyard abuse.
Her behaviour in itself displayed some concern (and shock) with the popularity of the Liberals. It's shaken a few people!

I also noticed her appalling, patronising attitude towards Elfyn Llwyd of Plaid, a member of the Assembly in Cardiff.
"Cardiff?" she snorted, as if she was talking about outer Siberia. Harridan..

At the very begining I thought that she had been having a little drinky-poo. I'm just very glad that Haig is no longer leader, if he was then I'm sure the Tories would be home and dry and weighing their votes in megatons.

Shouldn't this be about the future of our country and not about reds against blues like a football match?

There are many factors involved in that sort of terminology. If by that you mean a Tory government who squeeze the lower socio-economic groups by reversing the current spending on sure-start, education, and health, whilst giving more cash to the likes of me so that I may retain my current lifestyle and middle class tax breaks, then the answer is No.

Isn't that just the sort of thing that was being talked about last night on the TV debate, throw enough lies about and hope to frighten people.  David Cameron made it quite plain that it was his intention to keep everything in place like that, and of course he has made it abundantly clear that the NHS is ring-fenced.  I don't want more spin, smears and lies I want a fresh take on everything and a real change.  You know that if GB remains in power after this election we are in all sorts of trouble with the IMF and there is a real possibility of endangering our economic rating.  We are now at 62% of debt against GDP totally smashing Brown's own much-vaunted golden rule.  The golden rule is that the budget must balance over the economic cycle, and the sustainability rule says debt should not exceed 40 per cent of GDP.

I think we can take it for granted that in broad political terms David Cameron won't change a thing. We will still be heading along in that laissez faire market economy direction as we have done since 1979.
The difference between the two is how they will make us pay for all our money given to the bankers who rode off into the sunset with our money before. Cameron will obviously try to cut down on public spending and other things which affect the majority, whilst allowing his rich mates to trouser more cash. One assumes that Brown will try to get more cash from the people who caused all this economic mess.
But you can safely assume, and why Lal has not done a sweep on this I will never know, that at some point Cameron will say, "Labour has left us in a bigger mess than we thought, and we can't cope!"  I've been trying to get a price on this from Ladbrokes.

Well so far,I've had a labour canvaser at my door(they get my vote) A scummy BNP leaflet,which I ripped to bits and shoved in the re-cycle bin and A Lib Democrat leaflet.That's it.
No sign of the Tories round here,they are a lost cause.

Oh yes. I noticed at one point last night on the big debate, Cameron scolded Clegg and told him to stop trying to 'point score' but Cameron, at times, was clearly doing that very thing himself.

Obviously these debates have raised Cleggs profile/ popularity, and the others now feel the need to take him down a peg or two.

2 points GJ, first of all the much hated Margaret Thatcher won for us a rebate from Europe.  Worth about £6 billion if I remember rightly.  Much appreciated, or not, since GB has now given it up in return for what? Nothing.  Secondly even though we are not in the Euro guess what yes GB has admitted that we will have to bear part of the burden for bailing Greece out.  Incidentally if you want to look up what the difference in deficit between Greece and ourselves is, I found out this morning and it is frighteningly close.

I think that once his profile rose it opened up analysis of the LibDems policies and quite frankly they are carp. Mebbees if he'd stood at the back and said nothing he would have been OK.

You have me at a disadvantage Squiggle. I have no idea of the facts. I know that we are a better bet for the money than Greece though.
It does make you realise that I/You/we had no idea of the value of money. 6 billion seemed to be such a lot, then we found out they had wasted 9 billion on that London's olympics. Now they speak of trillions.

That's simply not true:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_rebate