PRESENTED by Sue MacGregor, a Radio 4 programme, The Reunion, brought together figures who masterminded the general election campaign that swept Margaret Thatcher to power in 1979.

A point made with some satisfaction was that the manifesto contained scarcely any policy. This was considered perfect fodder for the voters, who of course, while not gobbling it up, didn't spit it out either. This illustrates why we regard ourselves as a sophisticated electorate.

One of Maggie's team (I didn't catch who) had been asked by the pro-Tory Daily Mail to identify "Twenty Labour Lies'' that it could "nail". The list he presented in person to party leaders for their approval included the claim that the Tories intended to double VAT. As soon he saw their faces he knew he had boobed.

Very few of us, of course, now have much faith in our democracy. The turn-out at general elections has wilted to the point where we might be forced into the polling booths on pain of a hefty fine, or perhaps imprisonment. The Reunion, in which deceiving the voters was taken for granted, demonstrated why.

'Animal rights activists''. The phrase often carries - or is given - overtones of "terrorists". But the AR campaigners whose pressure, entirely peaceful, led to the swift abandonment of shipments of live sheep from Berwick deserve our thanks.

I've quoted before, and here do so again, the concluding verses of a poem in which WH Davies, best-known for the lines, "What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare'', describes his experience on taking a job for 50s (£2.50) on a ship carrying 1,800 sheep.

The first night we were out at sea

Those sheep were quiet in their mind;

The second night they cried with fear -

They smelt no pasture in the wind.

They sniffed, poor things, for their green fields,

They cried so loud I could not sleep:

For fifty thousand shillings down

I would not sail again with sheep.

Good to see Bishop Auckland further celebrating its link with Stan Laurel by erecting a blue plaque on the home of Stan's sister, where he spent holidays and Christmases. My grandad loved Laurel and Hardy. Staying with us recently, our two young grand-daughters were in fits of laughter at a Laurel and Hardy "short" on TV.

They are the fifth generation to have found Laurel and Hardy funny. Comical walk apart, has Charlie Chaplin every raised a smile? And Laurel and Hardy's humour is not all slapstick.

From the same short that amused our grand-daughters - Going Bye-Bye, made in 1934 - my wife picked up a remark with which she has already belaboured me several times. Olly to Stan, spoken with great deliberation: "I'm glad to see that at last you are using my brains.''