They erected the new lamposts a year ago. Today they fitted the lamps.

It's the warmest day of the year thus far, so I dress for summer in my sandals and political shirt .

My political shirt was given me by Judy. It  features the  faces of Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheyney and the bold motto: Asses of Evil

The polling station is set up in the Methodist Sunday School. There are two tellers on the door. One is a smiley bearded Pakistani and the other is a resident at  the home for elderly male misfits on Honeywell Lane. I imagine the Beardy guy is Labour. Is the misfit a Tory, then?  Perhaps he is. The Home for elederly male misfits has a flagpole from which they fly the cross of St George and other such  rags (including sometimes the flag of the State of California (?!))  even when there's  no World Cup looming.

The Labour candiate, Asaf Ali,  is sitting in the Sunday School . On the sofa, next to him, is a very old white guy. Is this Mr Wright, the independent?

Mr Wright hasn't put out any literature so I don't know what he's idependently standing for. If I knew I might vote for him on the principle that all the major parties are rubbish.

My Asses of Evil shirt amuses the girls who tick my name  off  the register and hand me my voting paper. Asaf Ali turns to the very old white guy and asks "Why isn't your face on that?"

I retire to the booth and scan the  paper. The British National Party are fielding a record number of candidates this year, but they're not fielding one in Alexandra Ward. hooray!

I vote...no it's a secret, I'm not telling, but it isn't for Tony Blair and it isn't for the Tories (I had a chip inserted in my brain when I was 15 which prevents me from ever voting Tory.)

There's a policeman sitting across the room from Asaf Ali and the very old white guy. He's there to make sure neither of them cheats.

Last time we held local elections in Blair's Britain there was massive fraud. 

I've performed  my democratic duty. When I turn back onto Belgrave Rd (at 11 o'clock on a bright summer's morning) the nice new lamps are lit.

Tony Blair gives a rousing speech about how he is going to pursue and harry foreign criminals out of the country. A few days later it emerges that large numbers of foreign criminals, slated for deportation, have been allowed out of prison and back into the community and the Home Office doesn't know where they are. Even worse, Home Secretary Charles Clarke has been aware of the situation for the best part of a year and is only now, after the media tumbled to the story, taking (frantic) steps to sort it out.

Embarrassing.

Almost simultaneously we learn that Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has been enjoying extra-marital rumpy-pumpy with his diary secretary. Remember the solemn memorial service (or whatever it was) for the Iraqi war dead at St. Paul's Cathedral? Immediately after, he and she hightailed it back to Prescott's grace and favour apartment over Admiralty Arch and went at it like little rabbits.

And the local elections are less than a week away.

If people weren't getting killed because of these clowns- and if they weren't hell-bent on curtailing our liberties- I might even feel sorry for them.

John Reid, the thuggish Minister for Defence (meaning Minister for War) has said that the Geneva Convention needs to be revised because it "hinders" British troops.

Yes, indeed; that's what the Geneva Convention is for, John; it's specifically designed to "hinder" the military.

I was thinking the Barbarian was at the gates. I was wrong. The Barbarian is through the gates and sitting in an office in Whitehall.

Mark Oaten, a politician none of us had heard of until the week before last (when he briefly stood as a candidate in the Lib-Dem leadership election) has been visiting a rent boy on a regular basis. The media quaintly describe this as an "affair". Oaten equally quaintly describes it as an "error of judgement".

Even quainter is Oaten's characterisation of himself as a "tough liberal". I wonder if this is the same thing as a "compassionate conservative"? I expect it is.

And that both are much the same thing as an "opportunist".

Blair lost a very important vote in the House of Commons yesterday- and lost it huge. Afterwards he gave petulant interviews. He's not used to having his sucker snatched away.

The ill-judged legislation that parliament rejected would have allowed the police to hold terror suspects for 90 days without charging them. It ammounted to the suspension of Habaeus Corpus- which has been the foundation stone of English liberty since the days of Bad King John.

It's the end. But Blair doesn't see it. He's holed in several places and leaking vital fluids and nobody loves him anymore. He's a goner. But will he step aside of his own free will? Of course not. They never do. Like every other dear leader from Churchill to John Major he will stay in office, flailing about impotently, in the hope of magical rescue, until someone is forced to step up, more in pity than in anger, and fire a silver bullet into his bonce.

Some politician was saying we've got the terminology wrong.

We shouldn't say "shoot to kill"; we should say "shoot to protect".

Of course, that makes all the difference.

Now lets think of a nice way of saying "innocent man with five bullets in his head."

The British Government commissioned a report on its drugs policies. The report concluded that the policies weren't working. The Government suppressed the report(it has now been leaked) and continued with the failing policies.

None of this is the least bit surprising.

Because to admit that the policies are failing and then to change them would involve re-educating the public, defying the right-wing press (and the government of the USA) and really that's too much like hard work- not to mention electorally risky. Better to bury the report and carry on as before.

It is far more important for Government to appear strong and effective than for it to be so.

BBC 4 treated us to extracts from the Goebbels diaries last night (splendidly read by Kenneth Branagh.) "Goering went out of his way to be kind to me. What a nice chap he is." This isn't so much the banality of evil as the Pooterishness of evil.

Venice is Goebbels' favourite city. He is shocked at the number of Jews in Berlin; they do so spoil the look of the place. He wanders out into the countryside during the siege of Berlin and finds it restful. Nothing that goes wrong is ever his fault. Hitler is above criticism.

Is this all there was to the man? Was he really so utterly without ideas, imagination, culture?

"Evil genius" is a contradiction in terms. The really wicked are never much more than crafty. Goebbels was a silly little man without the wherewithal to grasp the enormity of what he was doing.

A typical politician, in fact.

I think Blair will win. That's what the polls are all saying. People don't like him*, but they like Conservative leader Michael Howard even less. I was watching a programme last night where uncommitted voters were being monitored on their reactions to speeches by the party leaders. They found Blair persuasive (which he is, famously so) but almost all of them dismissed Howard as "negative". The Tory campaign has been all scare-mongering and Blair-bashing. I don't know how good the electorate's corporate memory is, but there must be quite a few of us who remember Howard's previous incarnation as one of the smarmiest, most cheaply populist ministers in the Thatcher and Major governments. There's a chance, a real chance, that this election will go down in history as the one that finally killed off the Conservative party.

Me? I won't vote Labour because of Iraq and there's no way I'm voting Conservative, which leaves me with the Liberal Democrats.  They don't have any chance of forming a government, but they might just beat the Conservatives into third place.

*A recent poll showed the British evenly divided: forty percent want Blair to encounter a speeding double-decker bus and forty percent want him stretched, scalded and quartered in the Tower of London (within a sampling margin of four percent).- Greg Palast

We are beasties, smart beasties, but still beasties.

We move in herds or packs. Herd Leader says "follow me into that valley because there's good moss to eat there," and we follow.

Even if past experience suggests that the moss will be scarce and the wolves plentiful.

And when Herd Leader says, "herd member X is unpleasing to me and needs to be driven out," we turn on herd member X and butt them in the ribs.

All of us together.

We disgust me sometimes.