My banner's bigger than yours....

Spotted on the way to Brockwell Park earlier - a huuuge banner in support of Chris Nicholson, the local Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for our area. (We also spotted him - walking up Brixton Hill with a similarly over-scale rosette pinned on his jacket) This is the biggest banner I've seen, and I must say there are quite a lot of orange posters up around here - considerably more than there are for Labour. Their candidate is young - he's got a whole career in politics ahead of him, maybe he'll even be Prime Minister one day - so he can afford to lose this election. The Tories don't even get a look in around here, which is rather satisfying. Though for all the momentum that has built behind the Lib Dems after Nick Clegg's charismatic performances at the leadership debates, I fear that we will still see David Cameron in No.10.

Still, I have decided to vote Liberal Democrat for the first time in my life - basically as the only available option, and because our voting system is so utterly ludicrous, that a party with a third of the national vote doesn't win a third of the available parliamentary seats. The current hope is that the Lib Dems attain enough of the vote that we get a hung parliament, and they initiate voting reform, ie they introduce proportional representation. Of course it is not in the interests of either the two big parties to initiate a fairer voting system, because the current system advantages them disproportionately. But why are they then surprised that we're all disillusioned with party politics? It's because our votes don't carry the weight they should.

I'm obviously not the only one. Today The Guardian has unprecedentedly declared its support for the Liberal Democrats - see their excellent editorial here.

We also have local elections on the same day. There I will vote the traditional Green. Can't vote Labour any more.