The Election: That Key Word, Change

I wonder now whether there is a sufficient distance between the three major political to make voting for any of them worthwhile. After all, Labour has abandoned the unions and the strong stance it had on arms reduction when I became a Labour supporter in the early Eighties. It will support arms reduction, but only if America does it first. The Liberal Democrats support a degree of unilateral arms reduction but have a stance on unions that's no different, really, from the modern Labour Party's. And Labour, the Liberals and Conservatives will keep Britain in Afghanistan until the sky turns lime green and the rivers run with marmalade. We have "green" credentials tossed around by all the leaders in a kind of pathetic, insincere game of moral oneupmanship, but we know that when the fat is in the fire the environment will be sacrificed by the lot of them if it means keeping in with Business.

There is only one slight difference I can see between the so-called big three in 2010, and that's in how they think the nation should be taxed. Labour and the Liberals have a little bit more of a sentimental attachment to the idea of helping the needy. But that's really just a question of emphasis. The Tories are no more likely to allow people to start dying in large numbers on the streets than Labour or the Lib Dems are likely to feed up the Welfare State until it bursts and splatters us all with its revolting excess. So what's a voter to do if he or she wants the change the politicians all talk about but which none of them will deliver?

I've decided I'm voting Green. Everybody around me tells me my vote will be wasted if I do, but every vote for the mainstream parties is wasted when there is no substantial difference between them. So what difference does it make?

The point, it seems to me, is to stop trying to play a system that has compromise built in at its roots because it's always the important things that we wind up having to compromise to get our man into power.

More votes for a smaller party widens the debate, that's all. Real change occurs on the internet and in the streets and bars -- around firesides -- anywhere that people without a vested interest meet. It's been so from the start; I just forgot, the further away I drifted from those fine days in the Eighties when we cared, and got things done.