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I was convinced Tony Blair was teasing, getting the other parties excited and then putting the election off for a year. My excuse for being caught off guard is that I was still mourning the loss of a major world figure - namely Christopher Eccleston abandoning the role of Dr Who.

Some cartoonists are intensely political animals. They rage against politicians and are determined that their spindly drawings will change the world. It never works. Politicians enjoy the attention and the more you attack them the more they want to buy the original artwork. This is why so many cartoonists take to drink in their later years . I’m afraid I’m more a political legume than animal. My usual idea of political activism is defacing the candidate's photos in their election literature. But this election is going to be different. I've been lured by the promise of fame and glory into keeping an election weblog. This is a considerable blow - I was planning to hide the radio and unplug the tv for the next month but now I’m going to have to pay attention.

I began last night and at first it sounded promising; I caught the newsreader saying "we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness". At last, the Conservatives were making a clean start by atoning for the Thatcher years. But no, it turned out to be advance details of the royal wedding service.

Time for some insightful political analysis. Locally, it looks like being the battle of the Tims. So far, in my view, Tim Farron is winning. He’s first off the printer’s block with a glossy leaflet full of pictures showing him annoying a broad range of locals. Three days in and Tim Collins’s cheery face has yet to thrust itself through my letterbox.

Turning to the Tim-o-Meter, Tim Farron is again in the lead: The last LibDem newsletter mentions his name 42 times, whereas Tim Collins’s newsletter only managed to drop TC’s name a paltry 34 times.

In the interest of balance, I have to tell you that there are two other parties campaigning locally but neither candidate is called Tim.

Parliament is dissolved today. This means that of of this morning there are no MPs, only prospective Members of Parliament. They’re all out of work and looking for a job. They are wannabe MPs.

After ‘Yes Minister’ first aired on BBC1, it has been clear that the country is really being run by the Civil Service and that all Parliament contributes is a lot of unnecessary noise and bickering. Of course, the Civil Service doesn’t do everything: the Bank of England and stock exchange run the economy, schools and hospitals are run by teachers and doctors, and our foreign policy is contracted out to the White House.

So whilst these redundant MPs are desperate to get back to Westminster, we’ve got them where we want them. They’ll promising us anything, from cleaner hospitals and more policemen to tax cuts and fewer immigrants. In other words, they want to buy our vote.

But it seems to me they’re taking a very oblique route to do it. I’m a firm believer in being direct about such things. So I would like to announce that the candidate who pays most into my Swiss bank account (account number CUC/408632/K00) by May 5th will get my vote. A simple idea but direct and honest.

Some people might be appalled by this notion and say it’s like selling my soul. But it isn’t, I can assure you. I’ve already done that at www.wewantyoursoul.com.

The Cumbria Tourist Board has launched a website (www.electionfreezone.co.uk) and campaign declaring that the Lake District is an election free zone. Eric Robson, who is leading the campaign, is quoted as saying, “The chances of coming across a politician searching for votes on the fells are to say the least remote.”

You don’t have to go on the fells to not find candidates, you also fail to find most of them at sea level. Only one of the four has been visible so far around South Lakes.

Admittedly, no one really expects Labour to get in round here, where most people can trace their ancestors back to generations of locals brought up in the Home Counties. The Labour candidate is probably a bit of a token effort, just to show willing. I haven’t seen much evidence of the UKIP candidate, either. Perhaps he is too busy campaigning for Sedbergh to leave Cumbria and return to Yorkshire.

But nine days into the campaign and there are very few signs of Tim Collins, the Conservative candidate.

No campaign literature through my door, no posters round the village, no campaign bus.

This morning I conducted a rigourous scientific survey (i.e. walked down to the shops). Within a few hundred metres I had spotted two brightly-coloured LibDem signs, proclaiming that Tim Farron was winning here. Here, in both cases, being the supporters’ respective front gardens. No banners or signs for the other Tim. Does his publicity only come out at night?

So let’s consult the Tim-o-Meter, on the basis that anything Peter Snow can do, I can do cheaper.

Feeding in the latest statistics, we can see that Tim F is registering a strong two point lead, with Tim C hardly even registering on the graph. This must be deeply worrying for the Conservatives. Much lower and you’ll only be able to see his hairline and no one will know who it is.

Of course, things could change. There is still time for other candidates to register. Perhaps we need some Alternative Tims. A Monster Raving Loony Tim would certainly get my vote.

Another day another manifesto is launched. Actually two; today it’s the turn of the LibDems and Veritas.

Whilst Labour and the Conservatives were unveiling their manifestos, earlier in the week, Charles Kennedy unveiled a baby. This probably contains less drivel than the other parties’ efforts.

Like the Conservatives, Veritas seem to be majoring on the immigration issue. Given that arguably only the Scots, Welsh and Cornish can claim to be the original inhabitants of mainland Britain, I think we’re all on dodgy ground here.

A lot of immigrants - asylum seekers in particular - show immense courage and initiative in getting into Britain. I’d have thought this is precisely the sort of people we want. We should let them in and throw out some of the more useless natives instead. (That’s me deported, for a start.)

The comedian Jeremy Hardy suggested that the best way of sorting the immigration problem would be to organise it like the London marathon. Everybody has to leave Britain and line up in Eastern Europe. Those of us who manage to get back into the country are allowed to stay.

Back to the subject of Veritas. At their press conference, the Varnished One said “Veritas (is) Latin for ‘truth’ (and) would avoid the old parties' ‘lies and spin’.”

Excellent. A party devoted to stopping us falling under European domination, has named itself using a word from the language imposed on us the last time we were under European domination.

A friend of mine recently admitted that he’s voted all his life, but this time he doesn’t think he’s going to. He can’t see it will make any difference. After all, he said, New Labour is the best Conservative Party this country has had for years.

There seems to be a real groundswell of apathy in the country at the moment. I’d be quite concerned if I could be bothered to get worked up about it. But it’s a real issue for some people, especially younger voters. A friend’s 18-year old daughter says she’s fed up that there is no Green candidate locally. She feels disenfranchised so she won’t be making use of her first opportunity to vote. And the broadcaster, Darius Howe, hasn’t voted for years, being disenchanted by the whole idea of parliamentary democracy. He gives his reasons in a programme broadcast Saturday (Make Me! at 9.30am on Radio 4).

The TV pundits claim that more people are likely to vote for a reality TV show than a political party. Clearly this shows the way forward. I’m not in altogether in favour of a Big Brother-style contest: The prospect of seeing our prospective parliamentary candidates staggering around the Big Brother House in their dressing gowns isn't an appealing one. Maybe something a little more upmarket, such as Strictly Come Canvassing. It would be introduced by Graham Norton (which would be a change from David Dimbleby) and the candidate with the best moves and most sequins wins.

Incidentally, after my concern about the number of Conservative posters the other day, I noticed that there is a whole crop of them along the A591 between Windermere and Kendal. This stretch of road is now quite festive. There are bright yellow LibDem signs on one side of the road and deep blue Conservative signs on the other. I did get a bit confused by the white signs for the Car Boot Party until I realised they were advertising an event at Queen Katherine’s School.

Tomorrow is the deadline for candidates who wish to declare their intention to run for Parliament. I’m disappointed we only have four candidates locally. With this in mind, I have decided to launch my own political party. I realise that, under the circumstances, this is a radical move; I’m deeply suspicious of politicians, I have no experience as a television chat show host and I don’t own a sun bed. But it’s no longer permissible to sit on the sidelines making snide comments. It’s time to get involved.

Owing to indolence, we’re still in the process of forming policies, have yet to write a manifesto and the campaign strategy is non-existent. But this should be viewed as a positive thing. Instead of the top-down approach of the traditional political parties, we will give the ordinary member the opportunity to influence our strategy. This is an important part of our ethos. We don’t have a party slogan yet so if you have any suggestions, post your feedback below and I’ll make sure the party spin doctors receive them. (Actually, ‘spin’ is a misnomer, they’re slowly-rotating doctors.).

But we do have a website (www.apathyparty.co.uk) which over the coming days will outline something or other and give our criteria for membership. You never know, you may be a member already.

Polls can’t be relied on. We get this every election; when the final votes are in, pundits start asking why the polls got it so wrong. (The last US presidential election is a good example.) Yet when the next election rolls round, the pundits are at it again, polling left right and centre and pouring endlessly over the nuances.

Despite the campaigning so far in this election, most of the polls this week show no signs of the voters shifting. On the other hand, a minority of them do. Why the disparity? Some pollsters say it’s down to sample size, others claim it’s methodology or the inappropriate use of statistics or Saturn being in transit with Scorpio. I don’t think it’s any of those. I think the answer is simple; people lie.

If I’m stopped on the street by someone claiming to be from OyGov or similar, wanting to interrogate me about my voting preferences, I’m certainly not going to bare my innermost political soul. I have things to do, places to be, I don’t have time to give considered responses to a lot of philosophically challenging questions. Besides, it’s much more fun to make things up.

Giving misleading answers to pollsters is a Good Thing to do. As Brits, we’re far too easily cowed by official-looking individuals with clipboards. Next time you’re confronted, fight back and lie (telling them to get lost is nowhere near as satisfying). Not only that but by randomly skewing the polls, we keep the broadcast journalists fully employed debating the results. With all the threats of job cuts at the BBC, lying is a the only kind and socially responsible action to take.

They say a week is a long time in politics. This is complete nonsense. It’s same for politicians as everyone else; 7 days, 168 hours, 10,080 minutes and 604,800 seconds. Like all adult humans, a politician breathes around 14 times a minute (slightly more when engaged in activity, such as making a speech, slightly less when asleep during an opponent’s speech). His or her average lung capacity is 5.5 litres (slightly more for him, less for her), which means that during a week a politician will exhale approximately 776,160 litres of hot air.

This is a massive contribution to global warming and an indication of how lightly politicians of all parties seem to be taking environmental issues. I’m also bothered that the front line candidates are hurtling about the country in trains, planes and helicopters to deliver their speeches, further adding to climate change. Have they not heard of television and radio?

Perhaps there is an alternative. If we rounded up 33 candidates, in a week we’d have enough hot air to inflate one of Richard Branson’s round the world hot air balloons. This would be much more environmentally friendly.

Climate change doesn’t seem to figure much in any of the campaigns for the three main parties. It’s probably because to address the issue they’d have to advocate the unpalatable, e.g. a reduction in consumer lifestyles or building more nuclear power stations. Yes, I know there are renewables but we’d have to cover the west country in wind farms to match the output of one nuclear power station. I have friends down there and they won’t stand for it. An engineering friend of mine proposed that instead of wind farms we could have hamsters running round wheels to generate electricity. Unfortunately, a few minutes with a calculator demonstrated that it would be more energy efficient to actually burn the hamsters. This would not play at all well with the electorate.

Esperanto was created to be the international language which everyone could use. It never caught on and nowadays more people speak Klingon. The only true international language is politics, which seems to generate the same fascinating doublespeak in cultures around the globe. Our own politicians are no exception to this, so as a service to readers, here is a brief guide to How To Speak Politics:

“I’m sure you will agree” - I’m sure you won’t
“Let me be perfectly clear” - I’m about to confuse the issue
“I’m glad to asked me that” - I have a prepared response which enables me to avoid this question
“I want to speak to the ordinary person in the street” - I met one once in 1987
“People are concerned” - Daily Mail readers are concerned
“Mr Blair is meeting the public” - Tony has decided to patronise some women and small children
“Mr Howard has gone walkabout” - it’s amazing how good these sun bloc creams are, he can go out in daylight now
“Mr Kennedy is meeting voters” - the LibDem election bus has broken down again
“Are you thinking what we’re thinking?” - we know where you live
“Britain Forward not Back” - I have an Election Slogan Generator program on my PC
“The Real Alternative” - the real alternative to voting for a party which is likely to form a government
“Our party is a broad church” - we haven’t yet weeded out all the trouble makers
“And I’m sure you’ll agree with me on this” - we are the Borg, resistance is futile

I’m sure we’ll encounter more of these as the campaign progresses. Meanwhile, anyone with similar examples, should post to the blog forum below.

There has been a disappointing lack of lies and empty promises from the politicians so far in this campaign. They keep saying things like “I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep.” This is outrageous. Have these people no sense of heritage? We want a return to traditional electioneering, when politicians would promise anything to get into power. We need to start a Campaign for Real Politics. Something along the lines of the following.

Immigration: We promise to keep out all foreigners who aren’t coming here to spend money in the tourist season. If the country gets too full, we will forcibly emigrate everyone over the age of 65.

Tax cuts: We promise to cut the taxes of everyone in the target income group of the people who vote for us. Anyone who owns an influential chunk of the British media will be tax exempt.

Education: We promise to employ huge numbers of new teachers and at the same time throw out all the troublesome ones who go on strike.

Hospital waiting lists: Everyone will be forced to see a doctor every seven days whether they are ill or not in order to keep the health of the nation in tip top condition.

Police: We will recruit thousands more police, especially among ethnic minorities and short people. We will also drop the recruitment age limit to twelve years old so policemen really will be getting younger.

Environment: We will wave a magic wand and dramatically decrease CO2 emissions whilst enabling everyone to have an increased standard of living, drive 4x4 cars and have cheap flights to wherever they want as often as possible. (The wand will, of course, be an environmentally-friendly one which only produces non-particulate fairy dust.)

Elections: All politicians will be encouraged to disagree at all times with everything their opponents say, using their own customised, unrealistic statistical surveys and, when all else fails, indulging in smears, name-calling and sulking.

Oh wait, they’re actually doing that last one. You see? The Campaign is working already.

Say what you like about traditional politicians but they do have a duty to be fair in their arguments. Okay, yes, they’ll slant the statistics to suit their arguments but in the main they are accountable for what they say and any massaging of data will be subtly done.

It’s not quite the same for single issue political parties and as a result their campaign literature is much more exciting. We’ve had some particularly good ones this election (though, sadly, there is no Veritas candidate to add to the gaiety of my letterbox; perhaps their tans can’t survive the Lake District weather).

First off, there’s UKIP, aka, the Reality Independence Party. I’m not altogether enamoured of the EU - although Brussels civil servants can speak more languages than ours, so that’s a good point in their favour - but I do feel debate on the subject gets stifled. UKIP don’t exactly help. They’re great at scaring us with how much we pay into Europe, not so hot on telling us what we get out of it. Their latest leaflet rages against EU controls on herbal medicines, without acknowledging that one of the reasons for this is that herbal drugs are, by and large, not tested as rigorously as commercial equivalents and some of them may be unsafe. UKIP are against being in the EU but at the same time unable to offer any realistic alternative, other than a generalised assumption that we will Get By with a combination of British Pluck, Grit and Determination.

I’ve also been entertained by the Windermere Action Force campaign leaflet. This talks about “Englands poorest economy” (grammatically-challenged school leavers may have something to do with it), smokers being criminalised and socially excluded (rise in asthma levels from passive smoking, anybody?) and - the real point of the campaign - the Fun Ban on Windermere. This translates as the 10mph speed limit on the lake (which in turn seems to translate into “Tourists Not Welcome”). I don’t intend to get involved with this but we did have an expensive, independent inquiry which arrived at the final speed limit. All the current government did was implement it (as oppose to the previous one which threw it out). It’s also intriguing that the campaign is concerned about young people not being able to afford homes in the area when the candidate lives in Yorkshire and has a small cottage in Windermere where he typically spends 70 days a year. Second homes are doing more to drive people out than anything else, I’d have thought, contributing to the rise in cost of previously-affordable housing and the decline in sustainable services in the area.

Anyway, my intention wasn’t to pick holes in individual campaigns (well, all right, it was) but to celebrate the richness and diversity of the political landscape. I still wish we had a Monster Raving Looney Party candidate locally but maybe they realise they can’t compete.

We’re at the end of the penultimate week of campaigning. Regular readers may recall that 50% of the serious candidates in South Lakeland are called Tim and we’ve been monitoring their progress on the Tim-o-Meter. This is like the BBC’s Swing-o-Meter but made of cardboard.

In order to reflect the volatility of the polls, I’ve modified the look of the Tim-o-Meter. I’ve incorporated a new statistical Gaussian distribution model and fitted a new elastic band. So what is it telling us?

After a quiet start to his campaign, when he was hardly visible, Tim Collins has come back with a rush of signs and leaflets. Conservative party posters now line many of our South Lakeland roads, the Tory torch-bearing arm rather giving the impression that there is an Olympic bid in progress. Some of these were torn down last week but fortunately democracy prevailed and the signs are up again.

The LibDem posters were out in force from the start of the campaign, but the message is beginning to look a bit self-defeating: Tim Farron winning here - to which one is tempted to reply, “Oh that’s all right then, I don’t need to vote for him, I can stay at home”. This is reflected in a dramatic downturn in the graph.

Tim C has been drawing attention to himself on the national stage. Earlier this week, he was on Radio 4’s Today programme at 7.00 am. He was on terrific form, immediately accusing the BBC of “institutional left-wing bias”. I was frightfully impressed. I can’t even utter single syllable words at that time of the morning.

Meanwhile, Tim F’s trademark Election Battle Barbour has been visible locally in campaign literature and out on the streets. It’s owner appeared on a platform in Kendal with the Labour candidate to debate election issues. A surge in the graph for that.

So as you can see from the Gestalt Tim at the top of the graph, they’re pretty equal at the moment. It all looks set for a tremendously exciting last week of campaigning.

Only 48 hours to go and the political parties are beginning to focus on the need to get people out to vote. In other words, the apathy agenda has raised its head once more (though not far, obviously). The politicians need to be worried. Since its launch two weeks ago, over 50 million people have not bothered to visit the Apathy Party website (www.apathyparty.co.uk). This is a clear indication that things are heading the apathetic way and we could be in for a record non-turnout on Thursday.

Having conducted extensive research (i.e. looked at page 23 of this week’s Radio Times), it is clear that turnout has been plummeting during the last few elections. It was 71.4 percent in 1997 and down to 59.4 percent in 2001. Extrapolating wildly from those figures, we can see that on Thursday we will be down to a turnout of 49.4 percent. In other words, from 28.6 percent of the electorate voting for apathy in 1997, it has risen to 40.6 percent in the last election and we could be seeing an apathy landslide of 50.6 percent in 2005.

This is, of course, deeply worrying. If they get into power, it means the Apathy Party will have to actually do something, thereby immediately going against everything in its manifesto. This will lead inevitably to a vote of no confidence in parliament, the collapse of the Apathy government and will plunge the country back into another general election. Having gone through the last three weeks of electioneering, nobody wants this. There is only one way to avoid it. On Thursday, if you believe in an Apathetic Future, get out and vote.

It is the final day of campaigning. As election fever mounts and the current political debate nears its climax, here are a dozen deeply pertinent questions which urgently need addressing:

1. How many environmentalists are going to the Whinash windfarm inquiry by public transport?

4. When will the political parties address the real immigration issue, i.e. people coming into Cumbria from Yorkshire and buying holiday homes?

5. How many UKIP members does it take to change a lightbulb? (Answer: None. They prefer to remain in the dark ages.)

7. Labour maintains that voting LibDem will let in the Conservatives by the back door - will they open it using a key marginal or enter through the cat flap?

8. If the Conservatives fail to get into government, will they all get jobs as a hospital cleaners and border guards?

10. Politicians are very fond of telling us what the reality of the situation is ... but what is the unreality of it and is it nicer?

At last it is May 5th. An important day in the calendar. For a start, one of my auctions on eBay is ending this morning. Meanwhile, up and down and sideways across the country, people are voting for an estimated 3514 political candidates and 113 distinct parties (research courtesy of Keele University’s department of politics).

I voted before breakfast. As I went to the polling station, the locals were out in force, exercising their democratic right to buy a newspaper which will tell them how to vote. Once in the polling station, it was all reassuringly low tech. A pencil on a bit of string. Mind you, it’s pretty good for string manufacturers - the string in my booth was about 80 centimetres long and with an average of six booths for each of the 46,000 polling stations around the country, that’s just short of 221 kilometres of string (or 1104 furlongs for my UKIP readers).

After I had voted, I wondered if there was a more sophisticated way of doing it. Postal voting is getting a rough press so I think we can discount that. How about email? Given the amount of spam I get each day, I don’t think that would be too reliable either.

We could vote via a secure website but that too is fraught with danger. If you have ever ordered anything online you’ll know exactly what I mean. You click the ORDER NOW button and nothing happens, so you click again. Local mail order companies must spend inordinate amounts of time sorting out people who have inadvertently ordered 137 omelette pans. That would never do around here - we would end up with multiple Tims.

By the way, for anyone harbouring unkind suspicions I would like to point out that I wasn’t auctioning my vote on eBay. Nice idea but someone did it earlier in the campaign and got booted off the site.

“I haven’t voted yet. I’m going after work. I hope there isn’t a queue. If there’s a queue I’ll not bother, I’m not queueing just to vote.”

I overheard this little gem in a shop yesterday. Democracy inaction. I can’t understand it - this election has been really exciting. Maybe it’s doing the weblog but I haven’t felt so involved with an election since student days (I was a very sad student). I resolved to see it through to the end by attending the vote count at Kendal Leisure Centre. Bit of a late night, I thought, but I’ll be home by 2.00 a.m.

I arrive at 11.30 p.m., collect my pass and stroll into the main hall. The central area has been cleared to make room for 30 tables, arranged in a U-formation to accommodate the counting assistants. Around them stand officials and party workers from the Conservatives and LibDems. The UKIP candidate is cruising the tables, trying to spot one of his votes (“I’m sure I told the good lady wife to vote for me.”).

There are 92 polling stations around the constituency and the ballot boxes disgorge around 80,000 voting slips. The 60 counting assistants’ first job is to separate the Parliamentary and Council voting slips, sort out any spoilt papers and group them into votes cast. It seems to be taking a long time. I dig out the sketchbook and look for victims. (Some of the less actionable sketches are on my website at www.shelbourn.com)

Well past midnight. Hm, this could take longer than expected. I wander over to annoy Radio Cumbria’s Martin Lewes. He is carrying a very flash sound recorder. I show him my Anoraks Anonymous badge and we chat technology. He gets his own back by springing a live interview on me. In the background, the hard-working, dedicated Gazette news team is filing reports directly onto the Gazette website. A far cry from the old days when the only way readers got the results was to read the A2 poster fixed to the shop window.

2.00 a.m. and the returning officer calls for a break. Verification is over and the real count begins. The level of hubbub drops away, this is getting serious. I do a rude drawing of one of the candidates to cheer myself up. As the night goes on, it gets tense. The LibDems are looking upbeat. I hear one of them say into his mobile: “We’re on the upper side of Even Stephens at the minute.”

As they are counted, the slips are bundled into 50s and put into slots in metal trays (a bit like a bread tray). There are 2500 slips per tray. As they fill up, the trays are lined up on the stage. (This doesn’t take very long for the UKIP and Keep Windermere Dangerous candidates). The level of organisation is very impressive, though I’m not sure about the symbolism of the count supervisors using an empty ballot box as a rubbish bin.

3.50 a.m. and it is looking very tight. As the counting assistants finish, they all turn in their chairs to watch the drama unfolding on the stage. The journalists are corralled on the crash mats at one end of the hall. “It looks like Collins may just edge it,” says one. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do this, but being a discredited cartoonist rather than an accredited journalist, I beetle over to have a closer look. Shock. That isn’t an unfilled row of voting slips in one of Farron’s trays, it’s a partly-filled new tray. He’s ahead and it looks like less than 300 votes between them. The two Tims have arrived. Tim F is looking distinctly cheery, Tim C less so. He’s standing alone as his party workers flock elsewhere. A poignent moment.

4.00 a.m. and it’s so close a recount is announced. All the counters turn back to their tables. Some take a break. I overhear one say, “I’m never coming again”.

I get a text on my mobile from the outside world. Radio Cumbria says it’s a recount, who is winning? Tim, I text back unhelpfully.

4.30 a.m. One of the LibDem workers forgot to get a pass and isn’t allowed in the hall. She has to watch it from the stairs. I pass out occasional updates but I don’t think it’s calming her down.

4.45 a.m. “Can I have your attention please,” announces Adam Naylor, High Sherrif of Cumbria. The candidates line up. Tim C is looking glum. “As returning officer, I do hearby give notice that the results are as follows...”

Well, you know the rest. By 5.10 a.m., everyone is clearing up and going home. The Tims are being interviewed. The hall doors are opened, signalling our return to the real world. Is that daylight outside?

So that’s it. Election 2005 over. We’re still living in a Timocracy but one with a different shade of yellow. The general feeling in the hall is that Tim C was absent on national duties a little too much. But you knew that already - it was all predicted by the Tim-o-Meter way back on 13th April. It was the blog wot won it.

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