Aaah, electioneering in the springtime...

Spring has finally arrived, thank goodness, and everyone is turning over a new leaf (no pun intended). I, for example, have finally started cycling to work again. Rory Bremner on Newsnight last night commented, "People are starting to see things again that they haven't seen for months - blossom, warm weather, their local MP..."

And it's true! Brown finally got round to announcing that the General Election would be on the date that everyone was expecting, and suddenly canvassers have sprung up from the ground like new season's buds! The clusters of people going door-to-door of an evening are not Jehovah's Witnesses, but canvassers checking you're going to go out and vote ... so strange to think we used to do that ourselves. Not any more. I don't even have any idea how I'm going to vote.

But MPs have certainly been unpopular around the UK in the last few months, as the result of the huge and ever-worsening scandal over expenses claims. People have been very angry about it, so I don't envy the canvassers the reception they're getting on the doorstep. 120 MPs are standing down at these elections, and many of the new candidates are campaigning as Independents, as the confidence has gone out of party politics.

We went out on Sunday - had a walk down to Abbeville Road to buy cheese in the deli, and stopped for a drink at the pub, sitting outside, slightly over-optimistically since the temperature was pretty low and breezy - and had great fun watching some Tories being harangued by a little old lady they had had the naïvety to stop and campaign to. Haranguing is definitely the word, though we were too far away to hear what she was saying, but there was something almost violent about the gestures her arms were making, while the poses of the two blue-rosetted Tories somewhat shrinking and defensive... And it went on for a good long while.

The worst thing about it is the endless media coverage. I am not sure I can cope with watching the news or listening to the radio over the next month! I am fast tiring of Michael Crick's sleazily arrogant style in his Newsnight reports from the campaigning front line. Although The Vote Now Show will be funny... political satire, that's what we need.

It's all so petty and pointless, but they're trying to make it out like it's something as important as the election of the President of the United States! There's a TV debate between the three party leaders tomorrow night, the first of three, which I am sure K will be tempted to watch, but I'll be tucked up reading in bed. Our new local Labour candidate is being 'marketed' as if he were the new Obama, and there is endless talk of 'Change' in the hope that this will catch fire in an Obama-esque way, whereas everyone is just so tired of same old, same old, so change is just good and appealing because it's different.

Well, only 3 more weeks of all this to go...