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There is no wasted vote. Say 5% vote Green and they get one seat. Then 5% vote SNP but they get 50. 15% vote UKIP and they get maybe three. The calls for electoral reform will become a cacophony that even Lab/Con cannot ignore. Well, hopefully.

Balls is a cretin, but no worse than George Osborne, who I wouldn't trust to manage a piggy lank. I think Miliband's all right, though. But then you're not voting for individuals: you're voting for a local representative, who'll also likely be whipped into voting for policy in a party's manifesto.

On personal taxes, I always find them a bit of a red herring. My taxes could go down under a Tory government, but as a self-employed person, I'd sooner the NHS exists. Otherwise I'll be paying less tax but end up with a second mortgage-sized hole in my bank account every month as a US system takes hold. Also, higher taxes for the more wealthy can be used to take people who have less out of the system entirely. Trickle down is bullshit, but the reverse has a net boost to the economy has many more people suddenly find themselves with the means to pay for things.

As for Clegg, I like him on telly (he was great both times on the Last Leg), but he can get fucked for his scaremongering over the SNP, and his recent arguments that a Labour minority government would not be legitimate if it had fewer seats than the Conservatives. He bloody well knows the way the UK parliament works, and it has NOTHING to do with seat count if you don't have a majority—it's about the confidence of the house. Hell, his own party's history found that out last century.

I would say that the Liberal Democrat manifesto was broadly very good, and far stronger than Labour's. But we don't get to see that party because of Orange Bookers taking over. Still, had we got what we voted for last time round, Lab/Lib would have been viable and interesting. Alas.

Right, so that's similar to Green policy on rethinking banking, but it still doesn't address my query to you about how this would work with localism. Say this thinking was practiced in Council A. Are Council A's people and institutions expiated to fund local medical care in its entirety? How would this be remotely balanced, given the gulf between regions of the UK regarding income, amount/size of local business/institutions? How would you foresee buying power from local institutions working for medical care, compared to a fully nationwide service?

1. Vote tactically for the next best option.
2. Consider a 'vote swap', such as this one for Labour/Green: http://voteswap.org
3. Spoil your ballot.

Social money would allow all healthcare (including dentistry, prescriptions, opticians, etc.) to be free. That's what social money does - it works for society and not, as is currently the case with private money, the other way around.

I have literally no idea what you're talking about now. What specifically do you mean by 'social money'? Are you talking about local taxation that is then spent specifically on local healthcare? If that's the case and you end up with a ton of little fiefdoms, you lose the economy of scale that makes the NHS work. At best, you end up with a system colossally more expensive to people (via NI or direct payments) than what we have now.

"funded by locally created, social money?"

The NHS works and is affordable primarily because of economies of scale. How would your system be funded, so healthcare is effectively free at the point of use? (And if it isn't, you're back to a US-style system where people are bankrupted because they have a heart attack or break some limbs.)

We need bigger nationalised systems, not smaller and fragmented ones, but the politics and accountability needs to be more local.

It should be a sheet of paper, folded in half, with the word "sorry" written on it. But we've already heard we're getting garbage like Inferno in amongst otherwise largely good stuff, so Miller's in the mix regardless.

Purely on the basis of the single issue of the NHS, this election is a massive deal. Either the NHS will survive or it won't. If it doesn't, the future will almost certainly be a US-style system that means you'll be fucked if you don't have insurance. That alone is reason enough to vote tomorrow.

Print subs arrive on various days—sometimes Saturday, and sometimes later. The digital on-sale date is designed to match the shop sale date, which is a Wednesday. I suspect mailed issues arrive earlier primarily to ensure that they show up on or before the day they'd be on sale in stores.

Get out your glue & scissors and you too could make a COMPLETE Judge Dredd Cursed Earth with the missing stories...

How on earth did you get those extra pages to stay in place?

No party's manifesto bears the slightest relation to what they'd actually do if given power.

Have you read them all? I have, from cover to cover. I'd say all of them this time round are a broad reflection of what a party will do if it found itself in power with no limitations. The snag is when that doesn't happen, which means, for example, the SNP won't get its way on all its policies, even if takes every Scottish seat, and the surprisingly impressive Liberal Democrat manifesto will see its major policies ignored but minor ones potentially creep in, if the party ends up in coalition again. (There is of course a certain amount of Bullshit Button required while reading manifestos, not least with Tory cheerleading about the NHS, and indeed UKIP doing the same.)

If you disagree, it'd be interesting to know why and in what areas.

I've not read the Scottish UKIP manifesto, but have read the standard one. It's not as mental as I expected. Still, anyone voting for that party is either someone I don't want to ever meet or someone who really doesn't know what it stands for (which is mostly an extreme form of the Conservative Party, with the odd exception here and there).

I'm enjoying most of the Prog, but it's frustrating to see Sláine once again bogged down in lethargic pacing and flashbacks. (ABC Warriors too often has the same issue of recycling.) I really enjoyed the last run, so I'm hoping this one picks up again.

Is there anywhere I can buy this? Don't think my local comic book store got it in :-(.

For future reference, Disposable Heroes are great if you don't have a local store that does FCBD. They charge 99p per item for postage, but that's it. (And my three comics today showed up in a sturdy cardboard box that puts the Mega Collection deliveries to shame.) Their 2015 page is now blank, but I guess you could always give them a call to see if any 2000 ADs are still in stock. (And, of course, grab something else if anything takes your fancy, to make it worth their while.)

The whole point of devolving to regions rather than England as a whole is to try to avoid a national government becoming so powerful that it rivals the UK government

Not really. The point of devolving to regions is so said regions can make adjustments to policy that directly benefit the people who live there, depending on local economies and other factors. What works for Manchester doesn't necessarily work for Truro.