No swingeing cuts in first year, says David Cameron

I remember a few years ago when I was having a discussion about this kind of thing with a friend. Like you've said HK, there's not enough long-term vision going on. Everything seems to be a ham-fisted short-cut "solution" to a complex problem.

Example 1:
Problem: Not enough doctors in the NHS.
Labour's solution: Make medical schools admit more students to do medicine.
Consequence: Lots of students reading medicine without the extra money or infrastructure to support it. Hence, more poor quailty medical education and less-knowledgable and less-experienced doctors. More competition for fewer jobs. More doctors emigrate elsewhere to find jobs.

Example 2:
Problem: Patients complaining about not being able to see a consultant in the outpatient clinic.
Labour's solution: Make a "subconsultant" grade, call it "junior consultant" and suddenly there's more consultants.
Consequence: Patients get seen by "consultants" with less knowledge and expertise than normal consultants. Errors can be made.
Real Issue: Patients education of why, if every patient saw a consultant, the waiting lists would be four times longer, at least!

Every Govt. wants to feel they're the ones who made the most positive changes in Britain, therefore stay in power for longer. But, as HK as mentioned, these changes are short-term, not long-term.

I want politicians to look beyond the next election.

Short-termism has done for this country. Where's the big planning, the dreams? We'd never come up with anything like the NHS nowadays - that took some vision, and the realisation the idea would outlive the people who came up with it.

Rather than thinking as far as the next election, why not set in motion ideas that might only come to fruition 10, 20 or 50 years down the line?