Me-ow

And here I thought the local council elections were going to be deadly dull and boring.

Nope. The mayor's wife has had a few things to say that do not cast her in a good light. Abusing the volunteers of your rivals, in public, does not win you friends and makes you - yet again - a laughing stock. Nor has the mayor, for that matter, pressed his cause:

"However Shoalhaven Mayor Greg Watson said he “didn’t see anything”.

“I wasn’t aware of what happened, if anything happened at all,” Cr Watson said.

He said allegations of abuse “sounds like a political stunt”.

“It’s of no interest to me personally.” (South Coast Register, 10.9.08)

His wife verbally abuses people and it's of no interest to him? It's witnessed by a number of people and yet he describes it as a political stunt? His political group is also in trouble with the Department of Local Government for distributing false advertising information - which his wife approved. He's also accused of threatening legal action against a community newspaper, accused the local paper South Coast Register of bias against his political party and used an emergency siren as a precursor to a patently false advertisement. And that's just in the last week.

It might be a small area, but I also noted the nastiness creeping into the American presidential campaign. You'd have to be brain dead not to get the inference when Mr Obama spoke about "put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig". Anyone who heard Ms Palin's joke the previous week would see Mr Obama's comment as insulting and sexist. Is this a mis-step? And why is slamming the critics of the comment when he repeated it? He could have used a number of other metaphors. I think he should fire his speech writer. It was neither witty nor clever.

It's like a Miss World competition; Mr Obama wants world peace by talking people to death, and Mr McLain's going for Miss Congeniality with his charming affability. I had no idea a Presidential campaign was about popularity.

Where are the policies? The solutions? The progressive ideas? Where are the genuine efforts to solve problems without taking a swipe at the other side? A true candidate would have these, and not worry about the small, inconsequential and, eventually, irrelevant stuff like who looks prettier together.

After this weekend, I'm over politics. It's too much like cats fight in a sack.