IT was encouraging to see how enthusiastic the 18-year-olds we spoke to this week at The Chase and John Masefield High School were about taking their first opportunity to vote in a General Election next Thursday, so they should be.

There are many good reasons to vote, not least that so many of our own fathers and grandfathers died defending our right to do so. This is the time when Editors write worthily of the reasons why you should turn out to vote, but after the most boring election campaign in living memory, you could hardly blame people if they didn't bother.

Faced with an unpopular Government and increasing fears of an economic downturn, the opposition parties have lacked the courage to propose a genuinely radical alternative. More of the same whoever wins next week is hardly a rallying cry to voters.

This has also been the most staged-managed election ever. At least four years ago we had William Hague on his soap box and John Prescott punching the voters! Now all the meetings take place in front of invited audience with strategically placed supporters behind the speakers for the benefit of the cameras. Do they think we are stupid?

Because of the targeting of marginal constituencies, all the parties have been 'talking' to a handful of swing voters, hence the dominance of narrow issues like asylum.

Until politicians once again start talking to the whole nation they should hardly be surprised when half of them don't turn out to vote. Wherever my cross goes on Thursday, it will be placed with little enthusiasm.