Of Sage and Armadillos

Labour's six pledges, announced at The Sage conference centre, in Gateshead this week-end are designed to promote a ''feel good factor''.

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The Sage known locally as 'The armadillo' because of the distinctive shape of the building - in contrast to the performance of Labour's senior politicians who all performed very predictably this week-end.

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There were no specifics and no detail. No numbers of Police to be recruited and no details of how hospital waiting lists are to be cut.

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The Election co-ordinator, North East MP Alan Milburn, denied that the pledges were vague pointing out to Chris Lloyd the political edited of The Northern Echo that each pledge was backed up a set of concrete commitments drawn from departmental five -year plans.

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What is both interesting and inevitable is that the issue of EU membership, or any obvious reference has been airbrushed out off the agenda.

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The theme to Labour's campaign is in effect that people will all feel better with another four years under a Labour government.

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Mr Blair may well not as he repeated many times at the 'Spring conference' be ''taking victory for granted'', however what the PM can take for granted that the Conservative Leader is short on quality advise. Saturday's documentary on Michael Howard provided ample evidence of the fundermental flaw in the Tory campaign; a lack of fresh ideas.

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Police were left looking very red faced when a 'Fathers 4 Justice' campaigner broke through the vast Police security cordon and climbed onto the top of the Tyne Bridge. For pure cheek the 'Fathers 4 Justice' deserve the prize of the soudbite of the week-end their spokesman said:

'' The Police spent £3m on security and it took a man in a £30 fancy dress costume to breach it''.

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Oh well, it can only get better - simply because it can not possibly get much worse.