CHESTER WRITER'S BLOG: Questions, Questions!!

Even though it would be quite easy to become highly despondent with the state of the UK's national politics, considering that the three same old political parties have made such a royal cock-up of our country during the past fifty years or so, it still comes down to the same old question about what we voters should do, when it comes to voting in elections? Do we settle for one of the three usual suspects, those mainstream parties who have already proved, time and time again that they couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery? Do we just abstain from the entire electoral process; and simply pretend that whichever party gains power would probably have won anyway, with or without our participation? Or do we think "nuts to it" and let the outsiders have a go at running the country, based on the premise that they couldn't do much worse than the usual bunch of charlatans.

It's a tough choice anyway you look at it. We can have Cameron and his motley crew, either with or without his dastardly sidekicks the Lib Dems, who are currently celebrating the departure from our shores of Abu Qatada, the radical cleric who has helped make a mockery of our judicial system over the past decade, at a cost of £ 2 million to the British taxpayer. Even though Cameron and his hapless Home Secretary, Theresa May, would have us believe that they were entirely responsible for his eventual deportation to Jordan, it is perhaps worth recalling that it was the illegal immigrant himself who chose not to fight the latest efforts to deport him, thus resulting in his final departure, so Mr Cameron's claim for credit is somewhat misplaced in that particular instance.

The question is, would I want to vote for a political party which is in the process of selling off the NHS, the Royal Mail; and that has made tens of thousands of public sector workers redundant, thereby crippling our already struggling economy even further? Do I want to vote for a party that puts an already redundant 19th century railway system ahead of our national defence, or a party that leaves our country without a working aircraft carrier, let alone the aircraft to use it, assuming that the Queen Elizabeth class carriers ever appear in the near future? Would I consider voting for a political party that could even countenance the historic fracturing of the British Union, by allowing one of its most important components, Scotland and its native peoples, to finally take their leave of us? Do I consider David Cameron to be worthy of the honour bestowed on him, to lead and to represent our great country on the international stage; and to defend the rights and privileges that the British people have fought and died for over hundreds of years?

The very fact that Cameron has been outwitted, out-thought and out-manoeuvred every time he has crossed swords with foreign adversaries should tell us all we need to know about this particular Tory leader's complete inability to defend our country's national interests. When is a veto not a veto? When it's wielded by David Cameron! Another question then! Would I trust our current Prime Minister to defend British interests in any future renegotiation with Europe? Do I believe that Cameron will live up to his promise of a British referendum on Europe in 2017, assuming of course that he's re-elected in 2015? Do I think George Osborne is in any way qualified to be this country's Chancellor of the Exchequer? Has our economy benefited from George Osborne's policies; or has he simply made a bad situation even worse? Given that most Conservative minister's are millionaires already, do they really give a "monkeys" about what happens to the country anyway?

Although along with most people I tend to regard the Lib Dems as largely irrelevant, given that they have chosen to share government with their Conservative allies, it seems only fair to question their ability to administer the running of our country. After all, do I want to vote for a party that originally promised to abolish Student Fees, only to actually triple them once they got into office? Would I choose to vote for a party which has been in the vanguard of the almost wholesale sell-off of health services, whilst at the same time making little effort to ensure ongoing patient safety at the hands of the new entirely for-profit healthcare operators? Do I want to give my vote to a party which would quite happily hand even greater powers to the un-elected bureaucrats in Brussels, making our own national parliament even more powerless than it currently is? Finally, do I want to vote for a party which is in thrall to the greedy environmental lobby, which would have every citizen of the UK pay hundreds of pounds in energy levies, in order that our natural landscapes can be defaced by the ugliness and inefficiency of the super tall wind turbines, most of which are built and owned by foreign corporations?

Then there's the Labour Party, those supposed guardians of the poor, the downtrodden and the dispossessed, whose former leaders are now so despised and ridiculed by most of the British voting public that it beggars belief that they could realistically be considered fit for high political office ever again. Despite having replaced the highly unpopular Gordon Brown, with the fairly uninspiring Ed Miliband, some commentators choose to believe that the younger Miliband sibling has benefited directly from the toxicity of David Cameron's personal brand of Conservatism, to the extent that the two "Eds", Balls and Miliband, simply need to do very little, in order to find their way back into Downing Street come May 2015. That said however, why would a voter such as myself choose to vote for a party that virtually bankrupted the country during their last period of office? Why would I vote for a party that's lead by a man, who apart from never having held down a real job in the real world, owes his position almost entirely to the union block vote, rather than ordinary Labour Party members and elected MP's. Why would a person vote for a party that has singularly failed to apologise for their past failings; that would happily surrender more of our national sovereignty to the European Union, which allowed 4 million immigrants to swamp our country's labour markets, passed some of the most draconian surveillance laws in the entire world and virtually did away with our inalienable right to free speech?

Considered to be a deep and thoughtful leader, how confident could the country be that an elected Ed Miliband, as Prime Minister of the UK, would help guide Britain back from the precipice of disaster that he and our current crop of politicians have driven us to? Or would a Miliband government mean more personal and national debt, more EU interference in our national life, more legislation to curtail our civil liberties, more foreign immigrants to test the limits of our beleaguered jobs market, schools, hospitals, housing stocks and benefits system?

For those of us who would be uncomfortable with casting our vote for any of the three failed mainstream parties, the possibility exists to either absolve ourselves from the entire process, by not voting at all, or to freely give our vote to one of the other smaller parties, in the almost certain knowledge that our chosen candidates will be unsuccessful in a national ballot. The decision not to vote at all, although attractive to many British citizens, is perhaps the worst of all options, if only because it helps to perpetuate the failed political system that has helped to stifle our nation for the past half century. There is little doubt that both Conservative and Labour parties have directly benefited from people's indifference, to the extent that any number of council and parliamentary seats throughout the UK are filled by candidates who enjoy a minimum of public support, which in turn leads to a dangerous democratic deficit; and the potential for deliberate political manipulation by outside bodies. The fact that recent cases like Falkirk can arise at all should be a warning to us all that a true democracy is an extremely fragile thing and requires us all to safeguard it, if only by using our right to vote every chance we get. Millions of our ancestors have died for our right to enjoy the freedoms we hold most dear and it is an insult to their memories every time we choose to forego our duty to participate in an electoral ballot.

It's not for me as an individual to tell people how to vote, or who to vote for, after all that's down to every single person who has the legal right to do so. For me personally, it's all about the questions I want answered, such as which party is likely to put Britain and its people first and foremost? Which party will help end the nightmare of our European membership and restore true sovereignty to the UK? Which of the parties standing at the next national elections will seek to end the madness of unfettered inward migration, by imposing a points based immigration system that will see Britain attract the brightest and the best, not anyone with a sad tale to tell, or a European passport? Which of the parties standing for election will put Britain's deserving people before those in the rest of the world, especially those in nuclear armed third world countries, which prefer to buy guns and missiles, rather than food and education for their native populations? Which of the parties will use Britain's armed forces to protect our national and international interests, rather than concerning ourselves with bickering neighbours in faraway states, spilling our service personnel's blood over someone else's arguments? Which of the national parties will tear down the forests of wind turbines that blight our nation's landscape; and bring some sort of rationale to our country's energy industry? Which party will help make our politicians accountable to the public once again by introducing a recall system for our MP's and Councillors, so that those which break their oaths or the law of the land, can be sacked by their constituents? Which of the parties would make it possible for the people of Britain to hold referenda on highly important national issues, such as the reintroduction of the death penalty for high crimes, etc? Which of the parties standing for office want to make our emergency services more localised, more accountable to the people that they purport to serve? Which party is offering political representatives who are generally untarnished by the sleaze of recent years, who have lived and worked in the real world, rather than being university educated political appointees, whose closest experience of British life is the bus or train journey from home to university each day?