When you hear journalists saying there are 80 or 76 pledges over the coming days, that just isn't right. There are eight pages with the same image of over a quarter of the union flag and sixteen pages featuring the quote-unquote chapter headings which all begin with "our plan" followed by some fatuous phrase like "for a secure, dynamic and growing economy" and "to get more people into work and build a fairer welfare system".
The cover is giving me the itch as well. Back in 2010, I was so irritated by the placement of the words on the manifesto I wrote a whole blog post about just that. Here we are again. Apart from using the colour scheme of the Republic of Montenegro pre-2004 for the lead lines, the structure of the cover feels off. The traffic arrows should be further up the page with the title underneath and with the year on a new line and an ampersand wouldn't have gone a miss.
Anyway, let's get to the "substance".
The BBC
BBC is used four times in the manifesto in two paragraphs. This document is much harder to read than the LibDem manifesto (only using bullet points when it feels like it) so I'll just copy and paste the text as is here for ease:
The use of "support" is pretty ambiguous here. Does that mean you're going to have the foreign office fund the BBC World Service again? Off topic, but "expand the use of the English language worldwide" is pretty colonialist.
The BBC already does that, some would say to a fault. When they say "diversity of thought" what they really mean is "more people who agree with us". The next sentence is a threat in that regard. Notice they don't talk about the BBC in anything other than "messaging" terms - nothing about it as a part of the UK's cultural ecosystem.
By the way, the very next paragraph says:
Global Emissions
The phrase "net zero" is used ten times during the manifesto (which is ten more than the 2015 manifesto) but here's the headline.
No notes here. Baseline what they should be doing. The moratorium on fracking is welcome even if it isn't an outright ban.
They're going to reduce carbon emissions by ... building more gas power stations. 'sake.
Libraries
Two library mentions.
How about increasing the funding to councils so that they can keep some of these things running themselves?
Saying that they want to "protect national heritage - including statues, monuments and memorials" sounds good, but with the culture war as a backdrop is probably missing the phrase "of slave owners and our favourite Nazis". The public realm is filled with sculpture which is in need of repair and upkeep but there's no direct mention of that. But I'm off topic, largely because there's nothing specific about how they're going to "support" libraries here.
Film Industry
Ho boy.
Whilst it's nice that Liverpool and Glasgow have become the Vancouver and Toronto of the UK, it's still incredibly difficult for British films to be made and shown unless it's with the help of international backers or a dozen hedge funds.
Gender Equality
Nothing new, just "look at what we've already done". The singling out of an AIDS medicine in this section is weird and almost suggests they still think of it as a "gay plague". Trans rights are about as you'd expect. They also can't say directly that they hate trans people and think they're weird so we have these three quite lengthy paragraph about how they're otherwise going to demonise them instead without using the word "trans" once:
They say "an increasing number of children have started questioning their gender". Nope - this has always been the case it's just that now medical innovation has made transitioning a safer possibility and society has changed so that they can talk about how they feel without being ostracized as much (which is something you're working to change). The following paragraph conflates conversion therapy with transitioning and I just want to get away from this.
Democracy
The exact opposite of the LibDems and doing as much as possible to disenfranchise voters. Under 16s are old enough to work full time, have an NI number and join the army as well as apply for a passport but they're not allowed to vote for their own rights to do these things or not.
Sundries
By "quarters" they must mean neighbourhoods like the "Georgian quarter" or "the knowledge quarter". No idea why these three cities in particular. Perhaps the development in our Chinatown might finally be completed.
Despite this, I will not be voting for the Conservative and Unionist Party.
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