On to the next document. It's about health, but mostly focuses on waiting times. Mind you, I didn't really expect much detail from a health secretary nicknamed by Private Eye as John "Oh fuck, not health" Reid. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I have no experience of the health service so far, as I've been rather lucky up until now (and so have my friends and family). I did, however, manage to find a BBC article about "that quote" from John Reid, a little while back, when he claimed that smoknig was one of the few pleasures that poor people have left. Wow, how touching of him to consider the feelings of the lower classes like that! Article can be found here
Next up is crime. Specifially, this document deals with policing and violent crime. It all sounds reasonable, there're no outrageous claims that they'll eradicate violent crime if elected in again, but they seem to have the issues in mind at least. But, again, a couple of glaring omissions. First up is ID cards. Or rather, the complete lack of any mention of them whatsoever. Second thoughts? Or is the evil li'l bastard Charles Clarke (Ok i'm sorry, i mean real nice guy everyone likes, it's just I can't help thinking that nickname whenever I see his real name) hoping we'll all forget about the rather dodgy premise for a tracking system for the general public. Make no mistake, if such ID cards are introduced; firstly, we the taxpayer will pay whether we want to or not. And we'll pay a hugely inflated price to some incompetent private company. Probably with several anonymous shareholders that, if you could ever be bothered to track them down, would end up being cabinet members, or something. Second, and perhaps more importantly, any terrorists who actually wanted to circumvent/trick the system, would still find ways to do it. How can I be so sure? I won't go into details, but let's just say I take the world of computer security as an example. Basically put, if you can find a way to secure something, someone else will eventually find a way to unsecure it. This same pattern will happen if we get these stupid ID cards brought in.

Next is yet another document essentially about education, but also covering a few other child-related areas. Once again, there's nothing more I can comment on specifically, although here I must point out my frustration at the lack of detail on Labour's website. It's probably the same for all of the "big three" political parties, but I'm really pissed off that I can't find the specifics of, for example, the recent package to improve school dinners, announced by Ruth Kelly on the 30th March. Why the interest? Apart from having followed Jamie's campaign somewhat (despite managing to miss all of the episodes of the TV series), I also work in a school, where I can see firsthand the suspected effects of the much-reduced quality of food these days. Now, Private Eye, whilst it makes mistakes - along, it msut be noted, with all of the broadsheets and tabloids - it still more often than not gets its facts right. And a recent issue claims that much of what is in Ruth's announcement over improving school dinners, is more guff than substance, being just guidelines rather than solid rules, not to mention that the "trust" planned to be set up to monitor school meal quality will be heavily invested in by...you guessed it, the very same companies that currently make huge profits by providing school meals at a fraction of the cost (and, dare I say it, value) that they are paid. I understand business, but when it comes to feeding schoolchildren, your primary concern should be their welfare, not your profits. If that's a problem, maybe the government should go back to directly funding the school kitchens. There's been suggestions that this would be no more expensive than the current arrangements, but due to the lower profit margins of the direct suppliers of ingredients, the overall quality of food that could be provided would be higher. They might even be able to afford to pay the staff better as well in that case.