Politics

Through the first really warm days of the year the world seems to be spiralling down. And yet for us it has been a fantastic few days. Our garden continues to surprise me and soak up time without limit and provide a wonderful setting for family birthday parties. I ran up Cothlestone Hill at dawn [pictured]; and we discovered how amazing Lyme Regis 'go there, take my car' [apologies to Bill Bryson] where I not only swam but also got buried [also pictured].

The best day described by the retiring MP Chris Mullin in his diaries is not meeting Presidents or working with Prime Ministers but building a stone house with his daughters on the Shetland Islands - I'm nowhere near his league, but I agree that it is the small things, which are also the big things, which are so wonderful.

The murder of Eugene Terreblanche in South Africa raised questions yet again about race relations. Yet the responses of President Jacob Zuma, and even those of former members of the AWB and of the ANC youth league have all seemed so relatively rational and measured that, while only a fool would say that everything was well in SA or that race relations were good and easy, it once again gave me hope. Or perhaps it is just another reflection about how, in SA, the lack of armed uprising is counted as a peaceful resolution. The bar isn't always set high and the country doesn't always clear it; although there are also times when the country can still not only reach for but also achieve the skies.

Meanwhile the Westminster soap opera [of which I am a somewhat guilty fan] has finally moved to another stumbling high [aka a general election]. The politicans are, on the whole being as tedious as ever. I was astonished when I heard that the Tories had complained that in the Channel 4 Chancellors Debate Vince Cable got more applause than George Osborne. It didn't seem to appear to to them that Cable gave a better performance and was/is the only senior MP to even begin to predict the banking crisis.

But what I have found so profoundly depressing have been the vox pops with voters saying that:
A] they won't vote
B] all politicians are useless [espenses has just been the icing on the cake]
C] the big problem is with immigration.
Why cannot we see that voting is hugely important, sacred even, a right for which so many have fought and died and which we must not dismiss. Why can we not see that, quite apart from our Christian connection with our 'neighbour' this country was and is formed by and enriched by immigration going back many, many centuries.

We had our revolutions so very much earlier than almost any other country [why, I am still trying to discern], on so many domocratic stakes we are so far ahead of the curve. Yet you get away from the liberal intelligensia and there is still this huge alienation and sense of fear, anger and distrust - it's just as stong in the country as in the cities. And I have no idea about how to respond, and neither, it seems, does anyone else.

This will be the first General Election for fifteen years in which I will not have organised a hustings. It's also the first time that a BNP candidate has stood in the constituency in which I am living. Neither Labour not the Tories will appear with the BNP candidate, and no one wants to fall foul of the Electoral Commission and risk having to pay for the event [which is what happens if you don't invite one of the candidates]. Once again, democracy suffers at the hands of extremeism.

Pray for us.