Today’s swing figure:

» 1.54% swing to the Conservatives «

A pretty terrible day for Mr Howard today, then. Three new polls out, and his swing is reduced to just one-and-a-half points, which would give Labour a majority of 142 – a third landslide for Mr Blair. I think some brainstorming is urgently needed in the Conservative camp.

Today’s polls: FT/MORI have things 40/32 in Labour’s favour, Indie/NOP are on 37/32, and Times/Populus – which two weeks ago had them almost level pegging – has it 40/31 to Labour. There’s not much to report on the Lib Dem front, with them holding pretty steady, at 21 in all three polls.

Let’s hope Mr Howard can turn things around, or we’ll be having another government with an uncomfortably large marjority.

They’ve sent me some ‘News from Conservatives.com’. Let’s see what it has to say.

Conservatives have announced a £1.7 billion tax cutting package aimed at tackling the nation’s pensions time-bomb, and at repairing the damage done to basic rate taxpayers by Mr Blair’s pensions tax.

A bit of Labour-bashing there, but at least they’re actually announcing a policy, too.

Under the plan, the Government will add £10 to every £100 a person saves towards their pension pot. The aim is to encourage people of all ages to put more money into their pensions.

And, obviously, this policy reward those rich people who have lots to save with more money than the poor who have less to save. So the rich literally get richer, whilst the poor… well… don’t benefit quite so much.

The scheme will mean that for a person on average earnings, the relief across a working lifetime could boost their pension by up to £500 a year. It is expected that around 10 million basic and starting rate taxpayers will benefit from the tax relief immediately.

But the ‘pensions timebomb’ is less than a working lifetime away. So it isn’t really going to kick in properly until long after we actually need this cash. So, all-in-all, it’s good protection for the next generation of pensioners, but the one’s clocking off for the last time right now are in the poop, and need help now.

Speaking to Conservatives.com about the announcement, Mr Howard said: “When I meet people they often say to me “too many politicians are interested in the short term – tomorrow and next week, rather than ten years time. Today, we’re announcing a detailed, carefully considered and fully costed proposal to repair the long term damage done by Mr Brown’s pension tax.”

People he meets on the street are announcing proposals now?! Oh no, I see, he’s not quite got a command of punctuation yet. I don’t know who exactly it is that Mr Howard is meeting on the street, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody say anything like that, in this consumerist buy-now-pay-later credit gobbling society.

He went on:

And on.

“Only by encouraging more people to save can we ease their anxieties about their long-term security and give our economy a brighter, better future.”

I’m not convinced that’s the only way to go about it. Compulsory saving would cut out the ‘encouraging’ middle man, and stop us ending up with penniless grannies who didn’t bother saving, who would end up getting support anyway, making the people who had bothered to save feel like muppets. But not Cookie Monster, because cookies are only a sometimes-food. Whereas these muppety feelings would be an always-annoyance.

The latest announcement is the second of the Conservative Party’s package of targeted tax cuts worth £4 billion.

I’m not entirely sure I call this a tax cut. It’s giving money away, not cutting tax. So that’s a little bit miselading.

Conservatives have already announced they will halve council tax for more than five million pensioners aged 65 or over in their first Budget.

But as the population shifts to have more people aged over 65, that’s going to mean that tax rates have to go up at some point to compensate. Once you give this kind of discount, you never get to repeal it, so this increases the burden of tax on the next generation, in order to reward the previous generation. A bad move. Far better would be to use this money to have a blanket reduction in Council Tax, which may only be relatively small, or to prevent council tax rises for a few years. Alternatively, you could of course swap to a local income tax, which (at least to me) seems like a far more sensible solution in the long run (though with its own inherent problems).

A third tax cutting announcement will be made later this week.

You are a little tease, Mr Howard, aren’t you… Are you trying to seduce me?

Conservatives believe that tackling the pensions crisis will be one of the key challenges facing the next Conservative government.

I don’t think I can disagreee with that.

Under Labour, the amount of money people save has fallen by more than a third.

But is that really Labour’s fault? Well, actually, I think it probably is, partially. They’ve helped to create the current economic climate, and so should take responsibility for the bad as well as the good. But that’s just my opinion.

Gordon Brown’s £5 billion a year raid on pension funds and the spread of means-testing have damaged pensions and savings.

I’m not sure they’ve actually damaged pensions and savings per se, but they’ve clearly damaged the image of them. Which, I guess, is effectively damaging the schemes in themselves. I’ll let them get away with that one.

Conservatives believe that the tax system should encourage people to save for the future – not penalise saving.

I don’t think any of the parties beleive differently to this, so the point is somewhat moot.

For me, the crucial difference between Labour’s (unsolicited) emails and the Conservatives’ (solicited) emails is that Labour’s have, thus far, been doing nothing but ridiculing the Tories. They have not used this, nor any of their other major campaign tools, to announce policies of their own. The Conservatives, on the other hand, have sent out this email to inform me of what they plan to do to improve pensions. Yes, there’s a little bit of Labour-bashing in there, and it’s not all necessarily warranted, but that isn’t the main thrust nor the main point of the email.

Which do we really want running the country? A party which rubbishes everyone else’s proposals whilst doing nothing about telling us its plans, or one (of two) that tries to come up with creative solutions to long-standing problems, and tells people about these? I know which I’d prefer, but at the end of the day, who you vote for is up to you, not me. But since you’re reading this, you’re clearly a voter of the highest calibre, and I’m sure you know what to do. What a wonderful personage you are!

Ros Taylor goes where countless others (even me), trying to work out exactly why it is that Mr Blair refuses to take part in a debate with the other two main party leaders.

But there’s even more to recommend about this particular page, because of this lovely anecdote from ‘Vioce 1’:

“Hands up all those whose parents will be voting Labour on May 5?” he asked. Every hand went up except one.

“What’s wrong with that poor child’s arms?” the Minister asked the teacher, while gesturing at my pal’s immobile daughter.

“Nothing to do with her health care, is it?” he whispered in rising panic, as he envisaged his photo opp turning into another government NHS trap.

“No, there’s nothing wrong with her arms,” teacher confirmed.

“You didn’t raise your hand, my dear,” said the relieved Minister. “Which party would you vote for?”

“The Scottish Socialist Party.”

“And why would you vote for them?” he mocked.

“Well, my dad says none of you are worth voting for, but he says if he did vote that’s who he would vote for, so I’d be a Scottish Socialist, too.”

“Well,” said the Minister, “that’s no reason for you to vote for the SSP. You don’t always have to be like your parents. I mean, what if your mum and dad were thieves and vagabonds, you wouldn’t be a thief and a vagabond, too, would you?”

“No,” she agreed. “I’d be voting for you.”

I do love that kind of story.

Today’s swing figure:

» 2.51% swing to the Conservatives «

A good day for Labour today, with a couple of polls out to give the Conservative swing a bit of a battering. An ICM/Mirror/GMTV poll has things at 41/33 in Labour’s favour, while Telegraph/YouGov has it 36/33. YouGov have the LibDems on a fairly even upward course at the moment, currently at around 23, which is five points up on 2001 – far better than either of the two big parties are doing. And even though YouGov are the only pollsters to have them on a continuous up, every one of the most recent polls from the six big pollsters have them up on their 18% share of 2001.

Compare this to the Conservatives, who are only a couple of points up on 2001 at best, and Labour who, until today, had been down in every poll going. If the trend continues, the Lib Dems could easily win an extra ten seats, which is quite impressive for a party of their size.

At the moment, it looks like Labour are going to hold on to a three-figure majority, though. Which is not what I wanted. You know what’s needed. A ‘Simon Election Broadcast’. Cancel one of the PEBs, no-one’ll notice, and stick me on instead. That’ll sort it.

In order to at least make a passing attempt at fairness, I’ve been and deliberately signed up for the Lib Dem and Conservative email lists, so that I can deconstruct their emails as I have done in the past with Labour’s spam messages. Of course, they don’t really deserve it since their emails weren’t unsolicited, but I’m a little concerned that my election posts are turning into Labour-bashing central. So through this, I’m hopefully saving some for the other parties too.

The only problem now is if I actually agree with what the parties have to say. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Today’s swing figure:

» 2.87% swing to the Conservatives «

Somewhat ironically, after all of their campaigning, the Torygraph have done the biggest damage to the Conservatives’ projected swing today. The Sunday Times/YouGov poll has the parties virtually tied at 36/35, whereas the Telegraph/ICM has Labour with a commanding lead, at 40/30. The Sindie/Communicate poll (the formula has now been adjusted to take account of Communicate polls) has them on 40/34. Of course last time YouGov were most accurate, and it is unusual for these polls to be so different, especially when all three have been published on the same day.

The magic swing formula, as it should really become known, has them on 38/33 at the moment, which is somewhere in between all three (you know, just in case you’re no good at mental arithmetic), so it’s pretty difficult to call where the ball lies today. Obviously, I’m duty-bound to believe my formula above all else. But you can make up your own mind.

Not content with lying and being corrected, John Reid has now been caught by FactCheck telling lies that’s he’s already been told are lies:

Mr Reid devoted a sizeable part of Labour’s morning press conference on Saturday to explain how he thinks the Tories’ scheme of paying money towards private operations works and in the process repeated two claims already rejected by FactCheck.

And yet he has the audacity to attack the Conservatives over a single set of adverts placed in local papers which they have now admitted were misleading, apologised for, and promised not to publish again. And, actually, I didn’t find the Conservative ad so misleading, since it said quite clearly at the bottom of the page the hospital trusts which were included in the figures, but that’s another argument altogether.

The story here is that Mr Reid has told some lies repeatedly, then been corrected, and now has gone ahead and told them all over again, learning nothing from the fact that he’s lied in the first place. Or perhaps he was too lazy to bother coming up with any new lies, and so just recycled the same old untruths. Who could possibly want him to head up the health service?

Today’s swing figure:

» 2.76% swing to the Conservatives «

A tiny change today which is well within the margin of error… so there’s nothing in particular to read in to it!

I missed one earlier (though, actually, this is such a whopper it probably needs a post of its own anyway):

A family with two children pays no net tax until their earnings reach £21,000.

That sounds good. It’s from the Labour manifesto. But, as usual, it’s not even a half-truth. FactCheck have discovered that they’d have to pay £1234.04 in National Insurance.

Now, before some Blairite comes back with the claim that National Insurance is not a tax, let me remind them of Mr Blair’s own preface, to which I’ve added some bold:

We do not duck the tough choices – from independence for the Bank of England to the tax rise we made for the NHS, to the war in Iraq.

The ‘tax rise for the NHS’ was an increase in National Insurance rates. So the party leader thinks National Insurance is a tax.

So, without doubt, the first claim must, quite simply, be a lie. Has Labour not learned anything from the lies they told about Iraq?

Apparently they [the Liberal Democrats] want to declassify not just cannabis but crack and heroin.

So said John Reid on Sky News yesterday. Which would be fine, if it were true. But it’s another blatant Labour lie.

The Liberal Democrats do not want to even change the class of cannabis. Nor do they want to declassify heroine or crack cocaine. They do want to downgrade ecstasy from Class A to B. But, and I can’t stress this enough, they do not want to declassify any of the above. This is another case of Labour openly lying.