In which I find agreement with the Guardian!

I’m pretty sure that, if it has not already happened, some blogger or other is winding up the words, spewing a diatribe of despair at the fact that a performing dog got a bigger audience than the collective genius of Cameron, Brown and Clegg! Surely this says everything you need to know about our politics – the public really don’t care, they really don’t!

So let me be the first to say: “whoopee!!!” Well done Britain for getting your priorities right, for realising that a fine piece of low-brow entertainment (in this case a dancing dog) is far more worthy of our time and attention than three politicians pitching for votes. We can see politicians preening and pontificating every day of the year but we know that the auditions for “Britain’s Got Talent” are the only place where we can see tap-dancing leprechauns, cutely singing kiddies and, of course, that performing dog.

And it does seem that others share my view! In the Guardian for heaven’s sake!

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Gordon: you've had your photo op - now make sure these men can vote

The revelation that British troops serving in Afghanistan are unlikely to be able to vote in the forthcoming General Election represents an appalling failure on behalf of this Labour Government. When they changed the law in 2001 requiring annual registration (and also opening up postal voting to scandal and abuse) over 100,000 serving soldiers, airmen and sailors dropped off the register.

This needs sorting. But this suggests it won't:

A recent strawpoll on the British Army Rumour Service, an unofficial military website, found that 57% of those canvassed planned to vote Tory, compared with 7% who said they would back Labour.

After all Mr Brown won't be wanting 50,000 or so Tory votes from service men and women now, would he?

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For Sale: One Liberal Democrat Party (slightly soiled) - further product details

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It's a while now since Nick Clegg put his Party up for sale to the highest bidder. Today his dancing partner - St Vince of Twickers - added further impetus to the sale by saying that he'd like a nice cushy ministers job with a car, a fancy house and everything.

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Voting fraud - for heaven's sake don't over react!

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A stray humped cow points out that the Government’s latest wheeze to deal with “voting fraud” is – how do we say – obviously sub-optimal (that’s bureaucratic for really, really stupid). This is quite correct – as is the lack of confidence we have in any bureaucracy to keep records secure, to prevent misuse or to even get them accurate.

But – I hear the great cry – we have to do something to stop voting fraud. It undermines our democracy. It means we get the wrong results. It’s exploding. Action must be taken or we’re all doomed!

So let me explain:

*Voting fraud is rare. That’s right, it’s rare – it doesn’t happen very much. It isn’t really a problem

*There are not organised (doubtless hooded and secretive) gangs farming votes so as to get favoured and corrupt politicians into power. We already have these – without the hoods – they’re called political parties

*Most voting deception is preventable through effective polling station vigilance. The decline of telling by political parties makes abuse more easy, of course

*Registration is pretty accurate (more accurate that the census) and good administration is all that’s required to minimise abuse

When I trained as a party agent nearly 30 years ago we learnt the laws on fraud, personation and other electoral abuse. But in our practice we hardly ever – in my case, never – encountered real examples.

So what changed, you ask? Quite simply the Government – desperate to increase turn-out (for not good reason, in my view) allowed anyone to get a postal vote just by signing a form. We created a system where abuse was easy and, to all intents and purposes, undetectable. Today, because the Labour Party can’t admit to being wrong (and may, some naughty people suggest, be the main beneficiary of postal vote abuse) we have to put up with pointless, expensive, 'big brother' solutions to poll “security”.

Might I suggest we just go back to the system we had prior to 1997? That seemed to work pretty well.

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