No Needles in the Haystack

I spent much of yesterday at Lakeside Shopping Centre, I've not been there for a few years and I realise I'm not who they are trying to attract. After spending a hour in a coffee shop reading a book, I decided to have an explore. Within a couple of minutes I was left wondering why do we need so many clothes shops and why do people spend so much time and energy in them ?

I went in search of book shops, in the past I would have sought out a "record shop" but those days are gone especially in centres like Lakeside. I walked into WH Smiths and found the book I was looking for and not at the price I wanted to pay. My second task was to find copies of the manifestos of the main political parties. After much media coverage you'd expect that shops would want to stock them!

Neither Smiths nor Waterstones had them on display. Later in the day I discovered that all the main parties had their manifestos available to download online in PDF format. On one level its good to know that the public can read them without destroying trees, but I sense that's not the whole story. If style is going to win out over substance, then you have to deny the public the substance in the first place.

The news story is that the Lib Dems have received a boost in the polls as a result of Nick Clegg's performance on Thursday evening. Should we be concerned that people are prepared to change their voting intention based on "one performance".