Knocking the opposition

When I worked for my living, part of my job was to talk to the potential contractors about the equipment that they were offering and to try and evaluate which would be the best for our needs providing both reliability and value for money.
In talking to the various companies, I found that one in particular, with whom we had regular dealings, tended to prefer to "knock" the their main competitor's products and always tried to avoid telling you too much about their own. As an engineer I wanted hard facts to make a decision and I usually managed to get them; I ignored what was said about the competitors and formed my own judgement both from personal experience and discussing the matter with other customers where possible.

It seems to me that the coming General Election is much the same. Two of the main competitors prefer to "knock" their opponents rather than provide hard facts about their own offerings, whilst the third can tell us what we want, but seems to have misunderstood the overall problem as to how to provide it.

When working, I could force potential contractors to give me the hard details; In politics, unfortunately I cannot!

Even now, I heartedly dislike anyone who wastes time "rubbishing" his competitors, which is why I will be supporting UKIP, who at least meet the main requirement in my personal "specification"