Shat On By Tories, Shovelled Up By Labour

A week and a bit into the election campaign, and the apathy is dripping off the walls like multi-cultural sweat in a municipal sauna. Although, as some smarty-pants pointed out on the Daily Politics yesterday, it's more like antipathy: not so much that we can't be arsed, just that we loathe all the parties equally, which just makes it so difficult to choose between them! Oh, aren't we all just like Davina consulting her invisible and dead mum over delicious hair colours! So let's have a look a the options so far:

Labour Labia Red: I dunno. Really, I dunno. I gave up listening to Labour when they gave up using coherent arguments in favour of listing irrelevant achievements made ten years ago. The only thing I can say of their campaign so far is that Gordon is still smiling a lot, which is still faintly disturbing, like being 14 seeing your normally dour and suited teachers out in Tescos dressed in jeans and the same vintage band t-shirt as you. Oh, and as pointed out by the insane lunatic Napoleon on WWM, their manifesto artwork has the distinct whiff of Fallout 3 to it. And aligning yourself in the minds of voters with a dystopian future where an oppressive regime keeps most citizens locked underground and a few wingnuts worship an unexploded nuclear bomb... Well, actually, it might just work. Let's face it, at least it might wake us from our hate-filled stupor, as we run around collecting bobbleheads just in case. (Very niche gamer joke there. Sorry)

It doesn't matter, really. They're not going to win, it seems, and even if they do, I doubt they will get back into power, the scales will fall from their eyes and they will glow with a righteous serenity, knowing that they finally, finally, have the solution to the world's ills. Five more years of muddling along firing out white papers at a rate of ten a minute, more like. Tchuh.

Conservative Blue-di-blue-di-blue: Slippery, slimy, virile salesman Cameron and his merry bunch of punchable-faced hoo-hah boys stalking middle England like serpents smugly displaying their newfound limbs and opposable thumbs. It is strange, because although I am into equal rights and loving the minorities and vegan lesbian weaving theatre groups paid for by the GLC and all that jazz, like most...well, nice, tolerant people, I'm small-c conservative in a lot of ways. But all Tories, without exception, make my skin crawl. They all seem to have a veneer of privilege which means if I ever did get close enough to wrap my hands around their necks, I would not get any purchase, and just spin round and round them like a hula-hoop.

A bad image.

Anyway, the Tories have said that once they're in power, we can decide what goes on! Yes, us! Anything we want! It's all down to us now. Local control for local people. An example: local referendums on any rise in council tax. Hooray! Because of course, people will make a considered decision when it comes to matters of local government budgeting. There's no chance at all that they'll see the words "tax rise" and instantly go "Well, we're having none of that." And equally no chance that the resultant expense of having the bloody referendum in the first place will tank an already struggling council. No sireeee bobster.

No, Tories. Here's how government works: you have all the experts and stuff, we are idiots. You make big decisions about policies we will never have anything above a basic level of comprehension of, we complain about it because we are idiots. Are you really just telling us whatever we want to hear so that you'll win? You do realise, my Tory friends, that once you're in, you'll have to run the country? Sometimes it seems like that's been forgotten.

It might be worth pointing out at this juncture that I know next to nothing. Carrying on...

Lovely Daisy Lib Dem Yellow: Poor old Lib Demmers. They come up with a credible-sounding manifesto, they were actually right quite a lot during the last few parliaments, they've got the avuncular charm of Vince Cable who everyone loves and dishy Evan Harris, friend of the scientists, and Nick Clegg who seems inoffensive enough, and all anyone can ask them is "So, all this policy nonsense. You're never going to win, so why bother?" Now, it would be fabulous if Nick Clegg on Newsnight had suddenly slumped in his seat, burst into loud, shuddering sobs, decried the whole process of parliamentary democracy and announced he was going to move to the Orkneys and raise angora goats, then not give the wool to anyone. But that's sadly not going to happen. But Nick Clegg could score a few million points in tonight's leaders' debate.

Talking of which...

It's imminent. And I will pay every single one of you £10 if it's not exactly the same as your average PMQs. The chances of Clegg accidentally speaking Russian, or Cameron weeing down his leg, or Brown's eye popping out, are slim. Enjoy anyway, my hearties. And I may well be back with terrible analysis tomorrow.

But probably not. Sorry, Sulky Blogger Personification.