But that's enough ranting, I didn't mean to go on that long. I've probably already lost many initially-interested people who disagree. But anyway, if you're still reading, well done! I'd give you a cookie, but that's not possible, so instead, let's take a look at the party manifestos as they currently are. Well, I can't at the minute, at least for the Liberal Democrats - their homepage won't even load! - and this is on a broadband connection. I can only assume that they're busy uploading their policies so people who bother to look them up can actually see what their plans are, should they by some miracle win the election.
On to Labour. Their catchphrase appears to be "forward, not back." Hmm, I'm sure I recognize that from somewhere. Ah yeah, it was an episode of that great cartoon institution, The Simpsons. One of the Halloween specials featured a story where two aliens, Kodos and Kang, abducted Clinton and Bush during the early days of their campaigns for the presidency, then took their places with the intent of enslaving the human race. Their idea was, that whichever candidate won, it would be one of the aliens, so the result would be the same. The writers may not have realised just how clever they were being when they wrote that story...

OK, looking at Labour's policy documents as of Wednesday 6th April, 2005, I'll start with education. They state that, "This is our objective: every child to have tailored support to tackle their weaknesses and develop strengths." There's a very brief elaboration suggesting a couple of (general) ways in which this could happen. And it's an admirable aim, unfortunately, it's also a wholly unrealistic one at present. Think about it. They're talking about each and every child having an individually-tailored education programme especially to fit their own needs. The only way to truly accomplish that would be to have one teacher per pupil. That just isn't going to happen anytime soon, and to be honest, it's a bit of a poorly-thought-out aim. It suggest that pupils who struggle may not be pushed. That's assuming there's even a reasonable level of consistency achieved with such an idea - the chances are, however, you'll get a wide disparity over what children of similar or even identical ability are expected to do depending on where in the country they are. What would be a slightly better idea, would be to develop an extensive programme of parent responsiblity education, giving as much support to parents as possible, to encourage them to have a real hand in their kids' educational development. I can just about remember, my parents helped both myself and my sister with reading, school work, etc. Both of them worked, but they managed to make the time for us anyway. I am eternally grateful to them for it, and I suspect if more parents could be persuaded to do a similar thing, we'd have less problems getting education up to scratch. I also notice the distinct lack of any mention of school meals, specifically the quality of school meals, in this document. So much for Blair's answer to the issues raise by Jamie Oliver recently.