Carnival time for democracy

Parties will do anything to attract attention

While the rest of us are rolling Easter eggs, the politicians are rolling out their campaign machines, writes BBC Scotland's political correspondent John Knox.

Decorated cars, tables with floating balloons, handsome students in bright T-shirts, anything to attract attention.

Party activists are putting up posters, pushing leaflets through letter boxes, manning stalls in the shopping centres. This is carnival time for democracy.

The third week of the campaign has somehow been brighter than the first two.

The shadow of war has lifted. The bright lights of the London politicians have shone here.

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Michael Howard, Michael Ancram, Charles Kennedy all made the journey north.

'Two futures'

And our own lamp-lighters, and their sooty assistants, seemed more relaxed.

The Prime Minister came to Scotland on Tuesday to welcome the troops home from the Gulf at RAF Leuchars.

But he also took time to put on his Labour Party armour and issue a warning against voting Scottish National Party.

He told an audience at the Burrell Collection in Glasgow they faced the end of Britain.

"You face a choice between two futures... between devolution and divorce."

His visit was followed the next day by Gordon Brown's.

The chancellor claimed the Scottish economy was flourishing.

The chancellor claimed the Scottish economy was flourishing.

It had created 50,000 jobs in the last year.

Unemployment was down to 6.2%.

More people, 2.3 million, were now in employment than at any time for 40 years.

His Conservative shadow, Michael Howard, had to point out that business investment is falling and productivity is going down.

The SNP leader John Swinney added that 300,000 jobs had been lost in Scotland over the last four years.

Charles Kennedy, in Inverness to campaign for better rural transport including the abolition of tolls on the Skye Bridge, said he wanted to "sup with a long spoon" when it came to the Chancellor's figures.

Tax concessions

Jobs in manufacturing were haemorrhaging.

It was a theme given to him by the Trade Union Congress, meeting all week in Inverness.

The unions said manufacturing industry was being dismantled "brick by brick". It shrunk by 13% last year.

The chancellor countered by saying there were now 27,000 apprenticeships compared to just 4,000 when Labour came to power.

And in Aberdeen he announced details of the 135 enterprise areas he is setting up in Scotland under his budget tax concessions.

The other theme of the week has been youth crime.

The Liberal Democrats parted company with Labour, their coalition partners, and said putting the parents of persistent offenders in jail was unworkable and counterproductive.

The Tories want to cut violence in the classroom

The SNP said they preferred to fine parents or require them to make reparations.

The Tories called for head teachers to be given the power to exclude disruptive pupils from the normal classroom.

It was the week when negative campaigning made its first appearance on the hustings.

Labour ran a threatening party election broadcast on Monday night pointing out the costs of "divorce" from the United Kingdom.

The SNP hit back with a shocking broadcast on Tuesday in which an elderly man is seen slowly dying while on an NHS waiting list.

Even the Greens came as close as they will ever sail to negative campaigning.

Highest bidder

They paraded four grey men on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, complete with grey masks, saying if the four main parties don't turn a lot more green we will need a second planet to survive beyond the year 2050.

The Socialists have been steadily campaigning all week.

First they appeared at the STUC in Inverness fighting against the government's private finance initiative for building schools and hospitals.

They then took the struggle to Glasgow to put their case for a local service tax.

The newly formed People's Alliance opened its manifesto to reveal a plan to sell off the new Holyrood building to the highest bidder.

John Swinney: Winning the poster war

There were other plans... to cut the number of MSPs to 56, cut income tax by 3p in the pound and make every law subject to approval by referendum.

The SNP won the prize this week for funny posters.

They both featured Jack McConnell.

One had him smiling uncertainly from the face of an alarm clock, with the words : "Time's up Jack".

The other had him holding up a begging bowl to London "Please sir, can I have some more."

An opinion poll in the Herald on Thursday brought a flurry of excitement for Labour when it suggested that the party was enjoying the so-called "Baghdad bounce".

The System Three poll, taken just after the fall of Baghdad, put Labour on 39% support, compared to 26% for the SNP, 13% for the Conservatives and 12% for the Liberal Democrats.

Green agenda

It drove all the parties to more frantic campaigning... even on Good Friday.

The Liberal Democrats launched a five point plan to cut hospital waiting times.

The Conservatives announced plans to spend more money re-aligning roads at accident blackspots.

The SNP returned to the issue of crime, with another series of billboards.

And Jack McConnell went to a recycling plant in Lanarkshire to illustrate Labour's green agenda.

Let's hope one thing the politicians do this weekend is roll a few Easter eggs, just to prove they are like the rest of us, ridiculous roosters.