WHAT A LOVELY WAY TO SPEND THE WEEKEND

All the way through the presidential election process which lasted over a year, my mate in the States kept me up to date with what was going on in the election. He sent me videos, reports and cuttings, and I was fascinated.... but of course I could turn on the radio or pick up a paper without having it rammed down my throat. Heaven help us, we can’t do that when it’s happening in our own country.... Even at the weekend, it’s business as usual.

So today the First Lord of the Treasury pretended he was a normal human and made an appearance with an Elvis impersonator. Right. Good idea. He then gave us a long story about what the Tories will do to the health service. Except the Tories won’t be running the health service; the SNP will be. So we are not interested. It was more relevant that he was seen, apparently smiling, with this singer blokey. (That is a smile, right?)

Dave pretended he was an ordinary person by going to his sister’s wedding. But he was only normal for half the day. The rest of the time he was telling us that Brown was “the prime minister nobody voted for”. He promised to change a system which allowed him to take over from Tony Blair in 2007, as indeed it had with John Major in 1990. Remember him Dave? That’s fair enough and it’s welcome but he added that a coalition government could also result in a prime minister who wasn’t voted for by the public.

“You should hold office because the people vote for you, not because your party has stitched up some deal”. Hoy Mr Cameron. No one votes for a Prime Minister in this union. We vote for the local MP, one of them will be the prime minister, the party decided who leads it, and technically the Queen decides whom she will send for. So you’re not going to be the president. You’ll be the prime minister (maybe). I hope you enjoyed the wedding.

Nick’s kids had been on holiday and got caught in Spain because of the flight problems, so he maybe was the one that came out closest to being a human being, by taking the day off to spend it with his family, thereby giving us a day free of his pronouncements as a bit of a bonus.

So, that’s what they were doing in England. In Scotland they were fighting about a wee tiny logo on a brilliant poster and Iain Gray saying that he didn’t know why Alex Salmond was “so desperate to get into an election where is not standing that he is willing to stoop to try and smear the Prime Minister of our country”.

Quite apart from the sickening sycophancy, wasn’t it Iain Gray who was standing on a platform only last week launching a manifesto for an election that HE’s not standing in? As so often when trying to work out the goings on in Labour’s hierarchy my only reaction is... DUH!

And then there’s the broadcast... I wonder why they didn’t ask me to be in it.