WE are coming to that awful time – the one I detest. I am referring to the build-up to a General Election.

Our television screens and newspapers will be chock full of posturing politicians, polls and puerile polemics. The party in power will be strutting about claiming they have a vision for the future, leaving one wondering why they have left it until now, and those seeking to replace them will be promising all sorts of things, the majority of which will never materialize.

I was too young to register the immediate post-war General Election but I was a father with a young family in 1979. Let us be quite frank about it, like them or not, those two general elections were the only ones to herald a real sea change – Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.

Before that you have to go back to Asquith and more particularly Lloyd George and his young ally Winston Churchill for the People’s Budget of 1909.

For all the pontificating, all the remaining post-war governments just muddled along, making very little difference but contributing to an evolvement into a fairer society which contains almost as much abuse as the previously ‘unfair’ society.

They had different slogans, made various promises, but it all merges into one large mélange during which we became multi-cultural (although I never saw or heard of such a move appearing on any election manifesto) witnessed the unions rise and fall and some of the best and worst aspects of nationalisation muted.

All indications suggest our school leavers are generally less informed than wass the case 30 years ago. Our prisons are full, violent criminals are released earlier as a result; the excesses of yob-culture seem to be everywhere, yet we are informed that we are living in a safer society and the only failure is the failure to get that fact across to us, the people who have to walk the ‘safe’ streets.

In the meantime, the cost of interpreters takes a disproportionate toll on the budget of the National Health system and, no matter to which version you listen, it is hard nevertheless to escape the conclusion that as a country we are skint.

We discover that being an MP has been even more lucrative that we suspected and that despite overseeing catastrophic failure on a scale hitherto unmatched since the Great Depression, the banks see fit to use the proceeds of taxpayer’s money to pay themselves bonuses.

Everyone else is at the trough, apart from us poor souls who have to fund their excesses.

Can we see a Thatcher or an Attlee in our midst? No I suspect it will be more of the same and I think, apart from a few diehards and a number of young activists who really believe change is possible, much will remain the same.

In the meantime we have a procession from one side telling us their view is the best and the other side is lying or distorted or has a hidden agenda. Then we have the other side saying the exact same thing about their opponents.

Is it possible someone is right, telling the truth or has the vision?

Can any side really be 100 per cent wrong, without a single commendable policy? Of course not, but try to get a politician to admit that. They are not into truth but spin, slant and angle.

Hypocrisy reigns. This week we have a man who was twice forced to resign uinder a cloud from the Cabinet only to come back a Lord, having the gall to query how another man who lived in Belize, can become a Lord. I thought you were honoured for an achievement so what have either of those achieved?

The plain fact is that the public at large has become wary of politicians promises, cynical about the prospects and does not have much faith in the ability of any of the main contestants.

Me, I just feel it should be the turn of the other lot, to see if they can do any better and for us to determine if they areend up just as incompetent.

But now we have to face the salesmen, selling their cheap and flawed wares, trying to ridicule the rival merchandise in a manner that can only pander to the lowest common denominator.

I do not intend to ridicule Labour by citing this example for if the boot were on the other foot, as it often is, I would find it equally puerile. A couple of years back, approaching Watford’s mayoral elections, a letter writer in The Watford Observer contended that the currect Lib-dem ensemble was running up debts and it was time to turn back to the fiscal soundness of the previous Labour leadership.

Not surprisingly, the following week, this argument was repudiated, pointing out that the Labour administration, far from being fiscally sound,had been soundly rapped over the knuckles for creating the biggest financial loss in the council’s history.

Back came the original writer, contending that the Lib-Dem supporter clearly did not have any policies to trumpet because he spent his time rubbishing the previous Labour regime instead.

It is that sort of schoolroom yab-boo-sucks followed by same-to-you-with-brass-knobs-on repartee we have to suffer for the next few months.