In the ethnic minorities document it is, as you may have guessed by now, almost all re-hashing policies already mentioned in previous documents. The extra stuff covers immigration - though I'm not sure it really covers it enough. If this is it as far as the Lib Dem's ideas on immigration go, well, it's hardly attention-grabbing stuff.

And that's it. Overall, there's not as much detail as the Conservatives give, and to be honest the Lib Dems seem rather short on ideas. The vague promises to "cut red tape" aren't nearly so solid as the Conservatives' specific plans showing exactly which bits of red tape they'd cut. There's also a distinct lack of figures as far as savings go, in fact the only solid one I can think of offhand is their plan to replace council tax with local income tax, that would apparently save about £300 million thanks to abolishing the need for regular revaluations of properties. Also, along with the scattered promises to cut red tape, are a significant number of ideas that sound very much like they'd add to the red tape. As in, what they take away with one hand they give right back with the other. When it comes to red tape, this is as bad as giving with one hand what they take right back with the other. It's just a juggling of government bodies and public money that ends up making little real difference to you and I.

But by far the biggest problem the Liberal Democrats have is in not making themselves heard. It's been noted by those three political comedians (and by that, I mean they make fun of Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats) Bremner, Bird and Fortune that the Lib Dem's big strategy seems to be to let Labour and the Conservatives rip each other apart in a frenzied bid to win the most votes, whilst they sit back and hope the other two show themselves up enough to ruin their credibility in favour of the Liberal Democrats. Of course, this also means the Lib Dems spend very little time actually telling the voters what their policies are. Sure, you can find them on their site but, just like the other two, it takes a lot of reading through useless fluff and items that don't interest you in order to find things that do.

I think the Liberal Democrats will improve their standing in government still further than in the last general election, but I think it unlikely they'll get the majority, and to be honest, while I probably disagree with more of the policies of Labour or the Conservatives, I view the Liberal Democrats as being too weak to really do a good job. I could also see them ending up doing things too similarly to Labour if they were to win power.