The coming election will once again demonstrate the futility of voting for the Labour Party in an effort to persuade them to reduce the cost of living and reduce taxation. They are hell bent on taxation of the worst kind.

Mega Projects of appalling complexity that are going to be the largest and most fruitless waste of money since the building of the Pyramids. High levels of public spending have been poured into new systems and technologies that have no hope of improving the performance of hospitals or schools.

The simple expedient of improving the school lunch and attending to the contracts surrounding the supply of the midday meal will probably have more impact than all the Academies proposed by the Tony Blaire.

As for the Grey Vote, countless examples of simple incompetent management or even fraud in the administration of Pension Funds have been ignored, no prosecutions and no investigations. The DTI and the FSA are so intimidated by the more effective lawyers that the insurance groups can put forward no recovery is possible.

Would the conservatives be any better, Heseltine admitted the Conservatives missed the importance of education and permitted the civil servants at the Department of Education to get on with it, they became so powerful they are now the untouchables.

Will they be capable of changing the system, Portillo thinks not!

Anxious to appease

With the general election expected next year Labour is anxious to appease pensioners, who form a formidable proportion of the electorate.

There are 11m people in the UK over the age of 54 - either receiving the pension or due to do so in the near future.

Not only to they represent a third of the electorate, they are one of the groups most likely to vote in elections. In some of Britain's most marginal seats they account for 41% of voters.