Whyever is it that the important and interesting topic of POLITICS rarely gets an airing on this forum ?
Surely a frank, civilised discussion about the political issues of the day would only be to the benefit of the forum and would be no more of a digression from long distance walks than some of the other topics on here.

In other times it could be a lively discussion but currently it would be hard to find many people with different views on our MPs, but I guess that "if it is in their rules" they can claim whatever they want even if it is illegal for the rest of us.

We elect politicians to do our thinking for us because we are too lazy to think for ourselves. The only time we get to know what "they" are doing is when the media tells us what to think and what to say.

The reason that the UK is always in such a mess is because "politics" is something that comes up every 12 to 18 years or so, and at other times is totally ignored.

A bit like going hypocritically to church three times in our lives for births, deaths or marriages, staring at the Christian Bible not knowing what it means, or listening dumbly to the piped-in hymns because we don’t know the words or how to sing.

At other times "politics" is forgotten about, unless we have a few pints under our belts and are trying to drunkenly appear "intellectual”.

Once, every now and then, we stop and think….by heck…this place is a mess! What are they going to do about it….there should be a law about it!

Well, we have left them in….and left them to their own devises. We have only ourselves to blame.

Being from the colonies, we've heard lots of Bush bashing at the B&B fryups and at pubs. Being a Democrat, I was just fine with it but some fellow Americans got really pissed off if the bashing got too rough. To be fair, we also heard lots of Blair bashing.

I think you'll find that there will be a lot of people over here saying how you got it right the last time with Obama! People in the UK have a natural affinity with the American people - but that doesn't mean we will agree with you when you elect dangerous lunatics.

Yes, I remember the eighties with dread - a dangerous lunatic across the pond and Thatcher over here, I often wasn't sure who was worse, not, in the interests of political balance, that I'm suggesting that Obama and Brown are without fault.

Good Lord. Let's be fair about it. GWB was a go-fer, not a statesman, who found himself charming. He had the makings of a great donut chef; afterall, he was the first US President to serve bangers and burgers at a Presidential banquet. Blair was his happy energetic poodle-boy---or lap-dog.

To pinch a line from Timothy Spall out of Auf Wiedersehen Pet...
"thats democracy, everybody gets what nobody wants"
Could be right!

Blair was very eloquent when he visited the USA and, with his command of the Kings English, helped Bush sell the War on Terror to the USA. I loved to watch Blair perform on Prime Minister's Questions. I stopped listening when Brown came to power. I was waiting for Cameron but maybe I'll be waiting for a long time.

Hmmm - Cameron is doing his best to be elected on the "best of the worst" ticket - saying next to nothing about policies and anticipating that the Labour Party will have defeated itself by the election. Things are looking tough for the ordinary people in this country whoever gets elected - but it'll be toughest under the Conservatives. At the end of the day - they will look after their own as they always have done.