The Calm Before The Repression.

A pensive peace trickles through the empty halls of Westminster. A whiff of hope emerging that time - the political cure-all - will allow the fog of apathy to hide the torrent of corrupted sewage and calm the ship of state and its demented crew. Time enough at least to let the rhetoric of 'reform' set in before it steers towards the harbour of establishment, where reform, democracy and the rights of citizens become once again euphemisms for repression.

Me! I hope the Telegraph has kept the worst till last. That the silence of a conspicuous number of the political elite is to a greater extent down to the glass house syndrome rather than a miraculous conversion to honest and competent representation. But however it turns out, I'm sure they'll be frantically working to present the miraculous version - pity they don't work so frantically and frankly on the job we pay them to do.

That apart, I've just had an election pamphlet for Labour dropped through my door.

It tells me Labour is winning the fight for Britains future. Pity it got us into the fight in the first place.

It goes on to inform me there are 8 Labour candidates for my region and lists their names. Nothing else, just their names and the fact they come under the umbrella of Labour; and I've to put my cross in the box next to Labour. Now that's just stupidly arrogant enough for Labour to lose any vote it may or may not have got from me.

I've scrawled - It's called democracy stupid - across it's 'Fair' frontage and will invest 30p to post it back to them. Who knows, there might be a future leader in the post room who hasn't been lobotomised.