TWELVE signs that, despite your best endeavours, you are firmly caught up in the intricacies of the general election campaign:
1. Noticing an increase in your Twitter feed in candidates tweeting pictures of visits to local groups, your reaction when they say they had a 'fantastic' time is a caustic 'Yeah, Right.'
2. You take the view that no-one sane will ever read the party manifestos from cover to cover, and thus that lots of trees have given their lives for nothing. It's been, oh, five years since you last felt this way.
3. You then express the conviction that parties would be better off simply tweeting the manifesto highlights and leaving it at that. More jobs, a stronger economy. Etcetera.
4. Your attention is caught by the Conservatives' assertion, seemingly made with a straight face, that they are the 'party of working people', after decades of what might reasonably have been taken to be evidence to the contrary.
5. You then have the worrying thought that maybe they're onto something. Reviving right-to-buy and promising that people on minimum wage won't pay income tax under a Tory government? Sounds interesting.
6. David Cameron's promise that he will offer you security at every stage of your life also awakens something deep inside you.
7. You feel utterly conflicted when you suddenly remember that Labour has traditionally been the party of the workers.
8. By way of compensation, you object to Ed Miliband getting a kicking from the right-wing papers, to the point where not even a relatively meaningless episode from his private life is safe.
9. You feel free to discuss the subtleties of tactical voting with your taxi driver, rather than asking him what time his shift finishes, which is what you usually do.
10. Not even the fact that you're merely parroting what you read about tactical voting that morning can stop you.
11. You feel insulted when no candidate knocks on your door, solicits your opinion on the big issues, asks if he can rely on your support and gently enquires if you'd like a lift to the polling station on May 7. Don't these people know there's an election on?
12. You solemnly promise that you will pay careful attention to the next edition of Question Time and digest the answers, and not simply switch off after 20 minutes and retire to bed with a whisky and soda. Which is what you usually do.
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It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
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We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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