ET Barnham, the circus promoter, once said that “There was one-born-every- minute” and “Never give a sucker an even break”.

The Guardian, and too many of its readers and people in this country, are still laboring under the delusion that something can be had for nothing.

Dr Alf wonders whether Ed Miliband will take the public in. Sadly, Miliband has succeeded already and he is not remotely American looking nor sounding but I do see shades of the “New Nixon ” campaign, minus the 2 o’clock shadow.

People claim to want a better funded NHS, with all the drugs available that are needed. They seem unable to grasp that Miliband by promising to cap drug company profits by 5% will ensure that the flow of new life saving drugs will dry up.

Why?

Because it costs £1.5 million gbp to get a new drug tested via clinical trials, marketed, developed and ready for use and approval in this country. Capping the profits will stem the flow but, of course, Miliband is to be trusted.

People forget with the NHS that the number of managers rose by 225% under Tony Blair in a Government where Miliband and Balls were an integral part and they forget too that NHS productivity fell under the Wanless Review commissioned by Gordon Brown and after the injection of £7 billion gbp without reform.

People think that debts can be magiced away with a stroke of a pen and that the rich are going to bail them out.

Do they seriously think that someone like Sir Philip Green, who has created thousands of jobs is going to carry on doing that if he has to pay the same rates of tax as someone who creates no jobs on PAYE?

Miliband’s proposition is that he and others like him should do so.

Clearly this will not happen and the nett result of any such attempt will be a flight of capital and job creating people.

The Guardian newspaper group which supports Miliband does not have a single person in its senior management and board who is not Oxbridge educated, and highly privileged and the Guardian Media Group is expert at the very tax avoidance that Miliband says he is committed to stopping.

Yet we hear from him that he is “ready” to lead this country.

He says he is against zero hours contracts yet many of the overpaid local authority apparatchiks, who support him use these regularly for their own staff.

People need to understand that there is “no free lunch” and then look hard at this man who surprised his own mother and brother by his ruthlessness and who is economically illiterate.

They should then choose the least worst alternative, which is the Conservatives, possibly in coalition with two other parties.

John Gelmini