Calm down Tory dears, calm down

 Bring back the days of the Tory military men whose regimental motto was always calmness under fire.Their successors have developed an un Tory propensity to panic  under fire and run round in small circles when the going gets rough.Like now

The concerted attacks on Nicola Sturgeon and the shock horror claims that she'll rule the world and insist that the national anthem be replaced by Scotland the Brave played only on bagpipes typify the trend.

So does the exhumation of John Major from the museum of Tory History in Peterborough to warn that coalition with the SNP will ruin the country in a way coalition with the Lib Dems failed to do over the last five years

The scaremongering only goes to show that Cameron is running scared. Rightly so because none of the shots the wizard of Oz had placed in his letter have worked so far. Demonisation of Ed Miliband singularly failed to take on and Ed has grown in stature  as a serious leader unlike Dave.Then the warnings of disaster from a Labour government failed too because it wasn't possible to envisage a bigger disaster than the mess the Tories have created by five years of austerity.

Finally no one believed the bundle of special offers and tax cuts  with which the Tories tried to hide the fact that they also plan huge cuts in social security. So there we are. Nothing left in the box  except scattergunning  and even bigger handouts of the type they've been telling us for five years are impossible. A nation waits, struggling to stay awake.

There seems little doubt that the Tories are winning the air war of advertising, Facebook propaganda , posters and media scares because they have more money than Labour . But there's also little doubt that Labour is winning the ground war with more canvassing and door to door campaigning by devoted teams of party workers. 

My problem is that I doubt the effectiveness of both. Adverts, particularly those in the press cost a lot and yield little result. Canvassing particularly by paid students is notoriously unreliable. Not only are canvassers likely to return a whole household as voting the way one person at the door is but both canvassers and canvassed lie "we'll be with you"is the usual excuse and meaningless . This election there's also the addition al risk that grumblers, who are more numerous now than ever are returned as UKIPers and LibDems are ashamed to admit their perversion

So don't believe canvas returns. The margin of error on opinion polls is around 2% .That on canvas returns must be 30%. Remember that as the major parties shrink and lose members so do their roots in society atrophy and so too do they become more fanatical and less normal. At this rate they'll soon be getting the same reaction on the door step as the Mormons