The BBC's Giles Dilnot catches up with the candidates for Oldham East and Saddleworth

Comments

[john parkes]

It was astonishing to hear the Labour candidate say that the activities of the coalition government will "affect (adversely, one presumes) our children`s lives". This hypocritical stance seems to have forced from her memory the dire financial circumstances in which we now find ourselves and the debt that our grandchildren will have to pay off; all of which have arisen from the mismanagement of the last Labour administrations of Blair and Brown. But memories for fact are short; tribal loyalties are never far below the surface, so Labour might win here. The Lib Dems will suffer because Clegg, the bringer of `new politics` is now a debased currency. The well-fed looking Conservative will need a win of prodigious proportions (for which he looks well-suited) to overthrow his opposition here. And the UKIP candidate looks to be an irrelevance. All he has to offer seems to be a negative approach to the other contestants. Do Oldham and Saddleworth really want no better than this?