GLASGOW EAST BY-ELECTION SPECIAL REPORT: By Jane Godley

Westminster pot-lickers have been blocking up roads in their fancy cars and following the 62 bus route to Shettleston for weeks now. Glasgow East is up for grabs and the corduroy-clad and floral-frock brigade are out in force to make sure their point gets across to the uninterested and disenchanted people of my home town.

Shettleston and a sizable chunk of Glasgow's east end is steeped in unemployment, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, and its now famous shockingly low age expectancy (anything between 55 years and 60 years depending on which statistic you prefer) is making headlines.

The last thing the eastenders need is a bunch of smarmy-faced do-gooders promising recycling bins and much-needed jobs. What they actually need is a stronger police presence and more hands-on community workers who can walk the walk and who have talked the talk; people who have been through the hard times - local reformed characters who can help guide the wayward youths instead of patronising social workers who have to get two trains from their suburban semis to the gritty streets of shame.

Crime is rife, people are poor, the health service is swamped by methadone users and jobs are extremely thin on the ground. So much for 11 years of Labour rule. In 1997 Blair promised "things can only get better" and they never did. In fact, they got steadily worse, and Shettleston is waiting patiently on Labour's mealy-mouthed promises to come to fruition.

Community centres are wonderful, resourceful places, only if they are actually servicing the people who truly need the help. The kids should be flooding the places. If not, why not?

I was born and raised in Shettleston and stayed in the east end until 1994. My mother had been stabbed and attacked by her boyfriend in the tough streets of Shettleston back in the early 1980s and was eventually found dead in the River Clyde.

I am familiar with knife crime and murder. The first-hand experience made me desperate to raise my own child in relative safety. Despite my east end poverty-ridden roots, I opted to send our daughter Ashley to a fee-paying school in Glasgow's west end.

Working all the hours I could in a bar in the Calton area of the city, I managed to secure her a decent education with a penchant for higher aspirations. Yet my daughter Ashley is an east end girl through and through, and she is incredibly proud of her roots.

Not everyone in Glasgow's east has opportunities and the people there are not all rough and ready.

They now have wonderful swimming pools and even an amazing golf club up in the east end of Glasgow; the avid golfers have a five-year waiting list to enter. That is welcome news, as everyone assumes the only reason to carry a club in Shettleston would be to use it as a weapon.

Yet still there is more to be done, and Labour has left some areas in Glasgow East to decay even further. There may be some new affordable housing in the inner-city area, but the sheer lack of attention to its surrounding inhabitants is evident.

I am horrified when I go back to the old streets of my childhood; it actually looks dirtier, with prostitution and drug abuse on the rise.

Yet every time I see cameras and photo opportunities with the chosen candidates, they all seem to be standing near big brown stone mansions up in Sandyhills or in the nice houses in Tollcross. No politicians seem to be marching up and down Shettleston road and talking to the rough-and-ready folks I like to call relatives. And they should. They may learn something.

The east end of Glasgow has been a Labour stronghold for decades. There used to be a joke that if you put a monkey up as a candidate it would still get elected. Now is the time to see which political animal will take on the area.

The people of Shettleston and Glasgow's east are hardy, strong, wonderful folks They are not all steeped in bigotry, booze and bright white shellsuits. The area has decent schools with dedicated teachers. There are amazing hands-on community workers who are either underpaid or overworked, and they all deserve support.

The eastenders I know could teach some of those politicians a few lessons about interpersonal skills and, by the way things are looking, I think Labour is about to get a short, sharp shock of its own. Gordon Brown may be ignoring this by-election, and that might be his downfall.

Janey Godley, comedian, is at Edinburgh Fringe in Domestic Godley, Pleasance Dome, 7pm, July 30 to August 25