FORGIVE the usual rant, but absolutely nothing is the same as it was before I metamorphosed into Victor Meldrew. I get visual and audio evidence of that every day of the week, and cannot be the only one who spends time tut-tutting at the way Britain in general, and Bolton in particular, is hurtling, unchecked, towards the abyss.

Those depressing thoughts were swirling around in my head as the first party political policy document dropped through my mail box. That was just ten days before polling day. Now there are only six. Candidates in the local elections seem unusually relaxed in their campaigns to persuade the electorate to vote for them. Maybe they have decided it's not worth the effort, as only a relatively small percentage of the population turns out. And anyway, it is usually party diehards who bother to vote and nothing would persuade them to change course.

I can relate to that as my late dad, a proud Socialist, would rather have been boiled in oil than vote Tory. He spent much of his newly-wedded years waiting for someone to die, literally, so he could get a job driving buses. It was in the early 1930s, when he was one of the great mass of unemployed, living on handouts from friends and relatives and existing on a staple diet of, in the main, bread and jam, or bread and dripping. He never flew the red flag outside our house but, on the rare occasions politics were ever discussed, it was clear he carried mental scars from the jobless early days of his marriage to my mum.

There was always evidence of the way my parents were going to vote come election time, either by way of a Labour poster in the window, or a polite, but curt, dismissal of anyone who came canvassing for other Parties. In time they didn't bother to call. Whoever's job it was to collate information must have had a significant Labour marker against our houses, first in Plodder Lane, then Central Avenue, both Farnworth. My dad has been dead for many years but I am certain even his loyalty would have been stretched to breaking point by the current mob.

Personal visits by candidates and their support staff seem to have all but disappeared these days. I believe it is called "door stepping". Anyway, I haven't been "door-stepped" for yonks and feel deprived. Verbal jousting is one of the few pleasures left to the Victor Meldrews of this world.

The last time I came first to face with a party political activist wasn't on my doorstep at all. It was in a pub and, after attempting to duck a number of "bouncers" I threw his way during fifteen or so heated minutes, the poor sod abandoned his drink and wandered off into the night. Rumour has it he didn't reappear until after the election.

See what I mean. Nothing is the same. We don't get "door-stepped" any more, and are denied the opportunity to give some political "Johnny-come-lately" the benefit of our wisdom. I don't believe it, as Victor would say.