We really ARE all at sea

It is my profound conviction that you can put most if not all of the world's troubles down to sheer pig-ignorance.

This was brought home to me for the zillionth time when I watched (under extreme duress, because my partner said I should show an interest) the "debate" - or exchange of cliches - between Brown, Cameron and Clegg

But a good example of what we are up against is in the map, here, showing where CNN thinks Lisbon is. Some idiot there has arbitrarily towed one of my favourite cities into the middle of the Atlantic.

You would think an American news organisation would have some vague idea about the location of the city Christopher Columbus set sail from - but it seems not.

This reminded me of a long-ago conversation with the convivial Irish restaurateur Peter Langan, who told me the solution to the Northern Irish problem was to saw the province off, tow it into the middle of the Atlantic and turn it upside down.

Anyhow the great election gabfest I was forced to watch was even worse than I feared. The three bullshitters barely touched on the thing we are all going to suffer for over the next decade or so, which is the colossal debt Brown and Blair have run up. In fact all three of the candidates acted as if there was tons of lolly sloshing about to pay for their fancy promises. Barely a word about the greatest financial crisis of my lifetime.

Without quite being openly racist, the one thing they all seemed to agree about was that immigration is a bad thing. The facts - that immigrants generally do work locals won't and a big reason is Gordon Brown's insane tax structure which penalises people who might otherwise work - were barely touched upon.

Only one candidate mentioned that 80% of immigration comes from Europe, so there's sod all we can do about it. Nobody raised the question of whether we should be governed by an unelected bunch of Eurocrats; and no mention was made of the wholesale dishonesty in Westminster.

In the end, you were left deciding which of the three did the best impression of sincerity - as opposed to being sincere. I thought Clegg, but that's not the best way to pick the next prime minister.

Speaking of which, I promised two days ago to review the electoral guff that came though my letterbox. I fear you're all going to be a bit preoccupied next week over your least worst option, so I will do that after the results come out and you have all lost interest. Sorry, my timing is awful.

I will say one thing, though. The Lib Dem leaflet was by far the best, for a reason any knowledgeable marketer will recognise.

But that doesn't mean they are going to do as well as the polls suggest. I have a feeling voters might wonder whether people who have never been in government are right for the job. Then again, how could they do worse than the current set of crooks, bluffers and chancers? One reason, I suspect, why there is an exceptional number of don't knows in the polls is that we are all dismayed by the choices before us.