I’ve got quite the collection now. One of them shows Anas Sarwar staring at something far off in the distance (could it be Keir?) Another shows John Swinney laughing (what’s so funny?) while another shows a SNP candidate in quirky colourful glasses (always a red flag – are you SNP or CBBC?). Then there’s the one with Nigel Farage on the front (yikes!) Interestingly, there’s been nothing from the Greens (how am I to know what Ross Greer is wrong about?) And in the end you wonder what difference it’ll make, all the pamphlets. Except that this time it might: 40% of us are still undecided.

If I was to choose the two or three themes that recur the most in the pamphlets, it would be the obvious ones: the NHS, cost of living and immigration, but I’m struck as well by the issues that have been largely avoided or deflected, especially the size and cost of government. So I thought it might be diverting to draw up a response to the flyers: policies that lots of voters like me might go for (and a few we definitely wouldn’t). “Voters like me” by the way means voters in what used to be called the centre of British politics (with, in my case, a list to the right in stormy weather). So here we are:

An alternative to university: You’ve got to be careful with this subject when you’re someone like me who benefited from free university education, but you can’t avoid the facts. More than 700,000 graduates are out of work and claiming benefits. Apprentices earn roughly double what graduates do at the start of their careers, and even when some graduates start earning more, they’re saddled with debt the apprentices don’t have. And of course there are key sectors like engineering and construction that can’t get the apprentices they need. And yet still the number of undergraduates increases and the number of apprentices........

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