I sat listening to the three speakers who were lecturing us in the so-called debate, which at times was more like listening to arguments in a bar. I would have liked to have heard one of the speakers use the word ‘We’, at least once, but no one did. We are, after all, voting for a party, not a person. Anyone who has worked in a large organization would understand that decisions have to be made all the way down the line, or nothing would be done, and the major decisions are taken in committee. From time to time one does find a genius who can carry large projects forward almost unaided, but I don’t think that this is the case now.

I found Gordon Brown obsequious, rather like a butler who had dropped the entrée. Clegg obviously knew that his only chance of rising in status was to be involved in a hung parliament. Cameron seems to have drawn his horns in a little, and rather than going into too much detail, was bent on undermining the other two. The electorate understands that going into a new parliament, is a little like moving house, and it’s difficult to budget until you’ve lived in it for a while. I found the proposals of how the future economy was going to be handled, so much pie-in-the-sky. There is no way that they will be able to sort things out for the first six months, and by that time things will have changed radically, because, geographically we are an island. In every other way we are just part of the world economy, and the effects the changes in the world structure is having on that economy.

We used to vote on tribal lines, but the days of cities being a collection of small villages, where whole families lived their whole lives, generation on generation, with politicians fed politics with their mother’s milk have all gone. Now our families are scattered across the Globe, and our politicians are mainly graduates in Political Science, rather than a mixture of trade union officials, landed gentry and people from industry. Am I wrong in thinking there is not enough experience and knowledge of the needs, preferences, worries and objections of the man in the street, in Parliament? The dichotomy of the lack of public transport increasing both road traffic and Co2 emission, is a case in point, one could list many

Brown has been weeping on our shoulder, about something the man in the street knew from the outset, that he had made a cock-up of his resolution of the failure of the banking system, where almost everyone is losing financially and many are losing their jobs So why in heaven is Cameron making such a play on the opinion of the bank directors, that the conservative policies are the ones to vote for. I should have thought the bankers’ opinions would have been the most unreliable. I think it says more about Cameron than the policies.

Similarly, the heads of some of the big conglomerate were also quoted as approving the Tory policies. These people live virtually on another planet, they are millionaires, and if they were ever impecunious, it was so long ago, they have forgotten what it meant in so many ways. What these miniscule selections think has no bearing on the needs of the majority of the electorate, and worse still, the fact that they were introduced at all by the Tories is a worry for the future, should they be voted in.

By the same token, who persuaded Brown that it was to his and the party’s benefit to come clean, if indeed that was the case, at such a late date? To me it has all the sticky imprint of one or more spin-doctors all over it.

Off and on, over the last few years, even as far back as Blair’s infamous deceit. I have been advocating the value of a hung Parliament for several reasons. Firstly, one person should not be permitted to shove through legislation because of his rank; secondly the effect of the opinions and propositions of the unselected spin-doctors would be watered down, if not eradicated. Thirdly, decisions would be arrived at resulting from more input and less pressure. The Iraq invasion would not have been so precipitate and the outcome ignored, losing so may lives on both sides, if there had been more input, rather than a quasi-dictatorship approach.

I remember when the Conservative Government was not overwhelmingly in favour of Northern Ireland being part of the UK. Yet some of our current leading Unionist politicians are cosey-ing up to them now, for some reason, when one might conjecture that the Tories are needing a few more seats in Westminster, to feel secure.

Well, to some extent, but not to the rate in the good old days. For a start the dictation programme I used to use, has gone ‘walk-about, and I am a slow typist. In addition my Sophie has now to be cared for in a Care Home, with all the changes that implies.

On a more amusing note, I have seen behavioural patterns of a family of sparrows evincing territorial protection in an amusing way, and to annoying proportions. My car was parked outside the sitting-room window when I was distracted by what I thought was a bird trapped in the car, fluttering to find a way out. I was concerned on two counts for the bird, obviously, but because apparently I had left a window open overnight.

On closer examination I found the bird was fluttering manically on the driver’s wing mirror, and later on both wing mirrors. The bird had mistaken its own image for an invader and was busy firing faeces with great force at the image, to the point where the mirrors were almost totally covered. The whole of the bird’s family later joined, presumably, on Dad’s instructions. Years ago I was similarly perturbed when a bird repeatedly crashed into a window. The RSPB later told me the bird was attacking its own image.