What baffled me was the SNP advert (?) complaining bitterly that all that was going to be discussed effected England and they should be invited on as well. Why ?

If all that was going to be discussed effected England and they are the Scottish Nationalist Party who only effect Scotland what would be the point of having them on the debate. Sorry I just didn't understand where he was coming from.

I begrudging watched about 20 minutes and then turned it off because blue and red gushing about the armed services and how great they are made me feel sick.

Clegg did ok. But I still don't think anyone (by which I mean the majority of the country) takes him seriously. And he won't have done himself any favours with all that talk of Trident. We all know that Iran is the next target of Team America: World Police and how can we stop them without nukes.....

I might well agree with him on some things and realistically with the [LIFTED] system we have he's the only alternative to the other two that's even vaguely likely to get close. However, he has no presence and whilst this was the most interesting/compelling I've seen him - I still don't buy that partisan politics is the answer.

btw Check out http://www.voterpower.org.uk to see how much your vote is actually worth.

I don't think we should even be entertaining the possibility we should be involved. If the US wants to stroll into other countries and throw their weight about, let 'em. Leave us out next time. It's done us no favours in Iraq or Afghanistan.

We simply can't afford an independent nuclear deterrent. It's not that independent anyway. We're in a deep dark pit of debt, and throwing vast sums of money into a handful of missiles is not sensible by any measure, to my mind. Clegg rightly pointed out that the way we're waging wars has significantly changed since the fall of the Iron Curtain. What use has our "independent" nuclear submarine deterrent force been in Iraq and Afghanistan?

The vote power link says I basically have not power whatsoever. 'Ultra safe' is Labour here. Someone commented on this and I thought I'd share it with you....



....and no I haven't made any changes. The amazing spelling, random full stops and sentences that make no sense are all his own work.

I didn't watch the debate. I saw about 2 minutes of the highlights on the BBC news page and turned it off, for wanting to punch all three in the face. It's safe to say I'll be voting on the basis of policy (and empty rhetoric) if I do vote.. Despite my not being even remotely in the hippy brigade, I'm almost tempted to vote Green simply because Caroline Lucas seems to be the best party leader out there. Every time I've seen her on Question Time she's been very pragmatic indeed, which considering how die-hard some of her party must be I was always impressed by.

I think you missed my point Heather. I was being sarcastic.

Given the real power pulling the strings is targeting Iran next (for oil or whatever it is they want) Clegg has just screwed himself by saying he'd scrap Trident. That doesn't fall in line with the other nuclear powers, so not only will the powers that be not allow it, but a large proportion of the voters will see it as weakening the UK in relation to the US and Russia in a time when Asia is firmly on the up.

If it were up to me, we'd do a Costa Rica and scrap our military all together and spend the money on health and education. But that'll never happen, because people are too fearful of "terrorism".

Obama calls for total nuclear disarmament.

I suspect Clegg's trying to take a longer view.

The other option is the North Korea route, which is to have no standing army but a couple of nukes and a leader [LIFTED] crazy enough to use them.

It would probably work out cheaper for sure.

After last night, it's possible Cameron fits the bill.

Do we need nukes now, probably not. Will we need them in the future, who knows. The trouble is that you can't just magic them into existence quickly if you do need them.

France is keeping theirs. Why do we need them? We're part of NATO, in the shadow of the US. We've got to accept we're not a world power any more, and we don't need the bling to make out we are.

We. Cannot. Afford. It. As a country we're sh!t broke, but still trying to live beyond our means.

Thing is, if we're in that bad a place (and by golly we are), sorting out Social Security would net far more savings than not continuing with Trident would...

I thought it was interesting, but not much of a debate to be honest. Didn't really get in depth enough. Just claims counter-claims accusations of lying and no burden on anyone to back up what they were saying.

The elephant in the room seems to be the benefits system. When Nick Clegg touched on it, it was about the only negative on the wormy things and he was only talking about tax credits. I wish all the parties would discuss it, or at least sort it out. At the risk of sounding like a Daily Mail reader, we need to sort out an entire class of lazy, scrounging, work-shy people. Unfortunately they're worth around 8m votes so none of the parties dare discuss it.

Why not do both? In for a penny, in for a hundred billion pounds.

Sounds good to me.

With the whole 8m voters being the benefit people, out of interest, do we really expect that many of them to actually turn up and vote?