With the very real risk that Premier Ewart Brown will add this editorial to his dossier of evidence that this newspaper is biased towards the United Bermuda Party, it must be said that at first glance the Opposition's "mini-platform" contains a lot of good ideas.

There is not space here, and there will be plenty of time in the next six weeks to examine the policy proposals of both parties, but overall, the UBP seem to have touched on most of the major issues confronting Bermuda and Bermudians and have come up with some good solutions for many of them.

It should also be said that, based on the Throne Speech and the UBP's Agenda for Change, that there is not a huge amount of difference between the parties on many problems, which again suggests that the Westminster system's tendency to exaggerate differences may get in the way of making real progress.

A case in point is the Bermuda College. The Progressive Labour Party in its Throne Speech promised free tuition to all students. The UBP takes a slightly more nuanced view, suggesting that the tuition should be granted to those students who maintained a B average and a 95 percent attendance rate in high school, meaning the students have something to aim for and will have earned their "scholarship".

No doubt the PLP can argue that the opportunity to recover from problems in high school should be offered a second chance.

That's a real policy question and worth debating. With honest and frank discussion, the two parties can come to a compromise that keeps the best of both ideas. How refreshing that would be.

The UBP's most radical idea, first aired in this year's Budget debate, concerns the abolition of payroll tax for those earning less than $42,000 a year.

The idea has some merit. Payroll tax, and the revenues derived from it, has risen steeply in recent years, and is a burden for both employees and employers. Putting the money in the pockets of lower paid workers would help them with everything from rent to child care, to even getting a start towards a first home.

The PLP's recent big idea along the same lines is it's geared to income housing policy in which public housing rents are capped at 25 percent of household income, along with a potential further ten percent "forced saving" towards a mortgage.

Both policies recognise that families at the bottom of the economic spectrum are having trouble making ends meet and these policies do something to help.

It can be argued that the PLP's albeit more limited proposal is more paternalistic than the UBP's.

Both run the risk of encouraging people to keep their incomes low so as to benefit from the assistance, but it is likely that those who wish to get a better all round life would overcome that.

The question, of course, is how the UBP's ideas, and the other spending proposals it makes is what they would cost overall, and how they would be either paid for or recouped.

Shadow Finance Minister Patricia Gordon Pamplin explained in the Budget debate that most of it would be paid for through more prudent public spending, and she seemed then to have done her sums.