Piffle and tosh
It's troublesome, in truth, to focus entirely upon the even although the contest is now formally under way and sundry politicians have hit the ground running, to borrow the phrase customarily deployed by parties seeking to demonstrate their sense of avid determination.
For why? My eye keeps wandering towards the screens showing continuing financial crisis: in particular the .
I know the answer, of course: that a period of instability is the very moment when the democratic process must be sustained.
Surely, the financial climate will add further gravity to what was already a serious contest. One hopes for an absence of piffle and tosh.
As Gordon Brown's new cabinet met in London, Labour could do little other than acknowledge that it faces a huge fight in Glenrothes.
It is defending a majority of more than 10,000 - but that mattered little in Glasgow East.
Political triggers
Plus, of course, the SNP holds the Holyrood version of the Glenrothes seat.
The prospect that defeat in Glenrothes might finish off the PM seems to have receded. Not because anything has changed in Glenrothes but because things have changed inside Labour.
Few expect a challenge to Mr Brown, given the economic climate, whatever political triggers are made available by the electorate.
Still, defeat in Glenrothes would scarcely shore up Gordon Brown's position. Victory, on the other hand . . . hence the expectation in some quarters that Mr Brown might just find time in his schedule to pop over the constituency border from his own Kirkcaldy seat to campaign, albeit briefly, in Glenrothes.
I'm 
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