"I agree with Nick"

Or, "Nick agrees with me" or, "Nick and I will agree". Brown will drag Clegg into a forced engagement, the annoucement will be today. Brown already seems to be going for the hung parliament coalition government with the Lib Dems - not exactly a confidence booster for his supporters!

The Debate - God, was it dull or what? Far too stage managed, Brown & Cameron in particular came across as if they were reading a series of press releases. I'm sure a large proportion of the no doubt huge tv audience last night will not be watching the next two instalments.

The Debatees - Clegg naturally came across as the more inspired and energetic of the three, and looked at ease with the cameras and the audience. His team will still be celebrating. Cameron looked like what he is - a privelleged public school boy who's never had to work in the real world. His thin everyman veneer is not in the least convincing, nor are his barely thought out policies. Brown came across as the over promoted micro manager that he is, but unlike Cameron, at least you know what to expect.

The Issues:

The Economy - The other, and far more pertinent soundbite from our beloved PM included the figure £6 billion pounds repeated mantra like as the amount Davy boy would instantly cull from public finances were the Tories to win, thus tipping us into another recession. This was the only time in my opinion that Brown scored a point, as Davy did not deny it and merely came back with the weak line that Brown would "continue to waste money". The old Tory idea that you can magically find billions from trimming waste is as misleading as it appears to be unachievable. Also, George Osborne comes across like he had never touched a calculator until Davy boy gave him the job of Shadow Chancellor. I wouldn't trust him with a Monopoly board. I bet he's got a degree in Modern Classics from Cambridge or somesuch - hang on, I'll just Wikipedia it to check - George Gideon Oliver Osborne (arf arf) has an upper second class degree in Modern History from Oxford. 'Nuff said.
Clegg and his party have to be admired for being the only one of the three to have actually costed their budgets, but therein lies the danger - could they live up to it? Their main idea of raising the tax threshold thereby giving £700 approx back to each average earner, to be mainly funded it appears by plugging loopholes in the tax system, is a flawed idea that would come back to haunt them should they ever get the chance to implement it. Much as I like Vince Cable, he is surely old enough to remember that the last time a left inclined administration attempted to "plug loopholes" which essentially means taxing the uber rich, said uber rich fled the country and took all their capital with them. Anybody recall what a dismal place Britain was in the mid to late 70s? Unfortunately in a capitalist system you need the capital and its owners to make it work. It's a shame as I thought Cable would have been above such petty vote winning tactics - oh well!
And, the Elephant In The Room that is the massive debt we are all burdened with was, of course, hardly mentioned!

Immigration - apparently Brown's popularity in a real time BBC poll took its biggest dip on this subject, as he waffled on about recently in the last two years introducing a points system, blah blah, and Cameron rightly pointed out that this is only after overseeing a huge unsustainable influx of migrants for the previous 10 years.
Cameron's idea is an arbitary cap, another of the Tories barely thought out "policies". What happens when the cap is reached and your local hospital needs a heart surgeon and their are none in the UK? Hmmm?
Clegg's idea is to restrict immigrants to working in defined geographical areas. Huh? I don't understand how that helps in any way. All three talked about immigration from non Euro zone countries almost exclusively, and as we all know, that ain't where the biggest problem is. I think it may have been Cameron who did briefly mention restricting migrants from NEW Euro zone countries - bit late now isn't it?

Defence - This is where Clegg got my attention, confirmimg that his party alone would not renew Trident, our outdated and wholly unnecessary nukes system, thus saving £100 billion (!), some of which would be spent on giving our existing armed forces up to date equipment. Indeed why do we need a nuclear deterrent in the post cold war age? The only way we will be hit by nuclear weapons is from a terrorist attack, and, god forbid, if that ever happened, exactly who are we going to fire missiles at? Surely it's plain common sense, not to mention a no-brainer economically to get rid of this last vestige of world power we foolishly cling to?
Being a long time anti nukes and anti war marcher, this gets my vote!

Political reform - They all want a reformed and electable House Of Lords, amazingly even Cameron! Again Brown came off worse when outlining his plans for reform and he got the inevitable repsonse from the others that you've already had 13 years to do it. Cameron also wants to decrease the number of MPs. This would mean that your local MP would be even more remote from the voter than they are now due to far bigger constituencies. For instance, who can name one of their Euro MPs? I know I cant.

Education & the NHS - Having recorded the debate I watched it after I got back from the pub, and coupled with the personal irrelevance of the first subject might explain why I dozed off in this and the NHS bit! Sorry. My view is all this so called choice nonsense is exactly that. Parents and patients surely want their nearest school or hospital to be up to the job, and do not want to have to travel miles to excercise a "choice" not of their making?

Overall Clegg won on points, Cameron looks like an actor, and Brown is, well Brown. I've took time off work to do this, so it's back to work for me!

Vote for The Rubbish Party - they like beer.