Norwich North's 12 choices of mediocrity

Nominations closed yesterday and two more have joined the fray. Sadly, no Ian Gibson and with a frankly uninspiring line-up of careerist hacks, local eccentrics and attention seekers it looks like I'll be spoiling my vote by adding Ian's name to the ballot. Two mysteries for me from the nominations :

• what is a plasterer from the West Midlands (Peter Baggs) doing standing as an independent with no publicly advertised affiliations? Guess we will have to await his election address
• could the A Pond and M Pond who nominated and seconded Anne Fryatt (the NOTA candidate from Leeds) have any connection to scary April (Pond) the Lib Dem candidate?

Two weeks to go, and still no canvassers - normally I'd be pleased, but I was quite looking forward to a good argument. Young Chloe's campaign put a sealed personally addressed envelope through our door tonight - claiming her team had apparently 'called to see you today'. Odd that they didn't knock and their envelopes were enclosed in a leaflet for 'Norwich City Kebab & Pizza House' .... seems it is proving hard to even find leafleteers since one of their London contingent went down with swine flu.

Labour's campaign continues to wobble along with local party workers still mostly sitting on their hands. It looks like a totally London based campaign of photo-opportunities, and having seen the candidate in action, I'm beginning to think he was voted for by the local party as an ironic comment, an impression underlined by seeing who signed their nominations.

So, it looks like the Tory by default. With no real campaign to report, guess I'll just have to devote the rest of the campaign to spelling out why - however bad things seem - the Tories are the problem.