After the bombshell that I voted for a member of the Conservative party, lets just see if I can summarise a few things.

Let me be upfront about something though - the issues I highlight below are issues I probably ignored when casting my vote. I could not overlook that the current incumbent voted for the Iraq war.

Past Record

While David Cameron keeps bleeting on about 13 years of Labour waste, he is simply wrong and relying on people to not remember things from what 1997 was like.

In 1997 the police force was lacking officers, schools were lacking teachers and standards. The NHS was lacking doctors and nurses. Neither of these are currently the problem. The Police have officers, schools have teachers, the NHS is well staffed.

The quality of state schools has also improved to a point where only 20% or less passing 5 A-C GCSE's is no longer acceptable.

Secondly, there are more higher education places and while Labour may not have achieved its goal of 50% of students going onto university, it is close.

The unemployment at the time was similar to or greater than it is now. There was no "new deal" to help young people and there was no minimum wage. If the Tories get in, the minimum wage is not protected.

I can sort of remember people back in those days being paid £2 per hour and it was not pretty. The minimum wage is a big and massive achievement of the labour party and it has benefited many many people on the not rich end of the scale.

The IRA was a major problem and there were far right racists planting nail bombs. Pleasant times.

The Big Issues

A few of the major plot points that people should consider.

The Economy

Here, for future stability it is hands down in Labour's hand and its strength.

Yes they have made mistakes, but that is expected and things are not as bad as they can be.

More, the few policies that the Conservative party have offered in this regard in the past have been wrong and consistently wrong. A spoof election poster got it right when it had someone put the following phrase to David Cameron: "We got every major decision in the past two years wrong. Vote Conservatite".

The Lib Dems here are an outsider. They have a few interesting ideas: They propose to raise the minimum tax free wage allowance up to £10,000 which will be good to people on low wages.

Labour wins here.

Security

Lets get right off the bat here by saying that I firmly believe that if Labopur had not won the 2005 General Elections, the terrorist attacks of July 2005 would not have taken place.

Before the elections there was widespread anger at the government over the Iraq war. However, there was dialog and the mainstream Muslim view that the British community in general was against the war and angry with the government etc did hold sway.

However the lunatic fringe stopped listening when the election results told them the opposite.

More, the anti terror legislation that had been drafted before and since seems to be mostly targetting Muslims and unfairly so, so that is another blot against the current government.

Thirdly the Prevent strategy has alienated many in the Muslim community and lost much good will because of its assumption that Muslims would not do the right thing if they came across information of public safety. It is also seen by many as encouraging spying and suspicion within the Muslim community.

So Labour loses here. The Lib Dems win since they were consistently against the war in Iraq.

The Tories flip flopped and tried to choose the popular stance of the time.

The Lib Dem stance on nukes however is naive - pandoras box has opened and nuclear power/weapons cannot be eradicated simply by wishing so. The future will likely have more states with nuclear weapons so its policy of abandoning nuclear weapons is wrong and bad for the country IMO.

Immigration

The line that Britain is full up is wrong and damaging to this country.

Britain needs immgration. It also needs an ever expanding population. It is not full up and if there is no way to increase the size of the population paying tax the only option is to increase taxes.

This will become increasingly important as the average of people hereincreases due to past baby booms or otehr factos such as increased health.

So the Conservatives policy here is totally stupid and they fail to mention how the majority of immigration would ne be affected by their policies.

Labours are the status quo mostly, but even there they are causing problems - especially eg for chefs in indian takeaways where there is a shortage problem.

The Lib Dems have an amnesty policy for people here longer than ten years and it may be a good thing, but it may also make more people risk coming here.

Supporting small local businesses

Not going to mention all three here - just the conservatives. In the BBC debate David Cameron mentioned how he would like 25% of a governments supplied to be purchased from small local businesses in order to support the local economy.

Now that is not a problem in itself, but going with the 6 billion of extra efficiency savings that he is proposing, it seems to be showing a lack of clarity - if the small local businesses were good value for money, they would be used currently. It is because the government is not able to get the best deals out of them that they may not be used.

So the conservatives need to choose - do they want to prop up local businesses by paying more for products or do they want to cut government spending by trying to pay less from them by getting better deals through maybe bigger suppliers who can give greater discounts?

Electoral Reform

I am independent on this issue and think all three proposals are not the best:

The Conservative proposals of 10% less people will mean less representation for the people.

The Labour proposal of cutting the House of lords' size may be good, but having the peers all elected means they can be threatened by the party wip into towing the parties line or having the party's support withdrawn at the next election.

The Lib Dems in the most naive IMO - Using a football example, it wants the premier league to be decided not on the number of victories, but by goal difference.

More because the people voted in may not be geographically linked to a specific location, there will be LESS accountability and parties will be able to parachute in people into different locations, get the people they want to be elected instead of what the people want.

Look at how for instance Luciana Berger is having trouble after being parachuted in to to stand for the Liverpool Wavertree seat. This will not be a problem under the Proportional representation system and may even become the Norm.

Palestine

David Cameron is a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel and a self confessed zionist.

If Gordon Brown stands down for Labour, a leading politician with many chances of taking over is the foriegn secretary David Milliband, member of the labour Friends of Israel.

The Lib Dems on the other hand have been in favour of stopping all sales of arms to israel.

Who should I vote for?

I am assuming first of all you have not been seduced by the dark side or the morons that go "voting is haraam" or shirk or something. Moving on...

You can see the voting record of the current incumbent on They Work For You and be aware that there have been some boundary changes so your new constituency (and thus MP) may be different from your last one.

Also if you can find out, try to see what other affiliationsyour candidates have - in order to for instance not make the gaffe that MPAC did campaigning against a Labour MP who was aLabour Friend of Israel only to later find out the main opposition was a Lib Dem candidate who was a member of the Lib Dems Friends of Israel...

So be smart. Be inquisitive. Be useful.