I thought that it would be timely to turn this week's column into an open letter to former reporter on the Penarth Times, John Humphreys, on behalf of all the candidates and volunteers of all parties who will shortly be walking the streets of Penarth asking for your vote. Dear John, When I wake to your voice in the morning it’s always a pleasure to recall your starting point as a reporter in Penarth - so I’m sending you a plea on behalf of all the candidates and volunteers who will shortly take part in the high-point of our democratic system, a general election. I recall the start of a previous election when you invited three ordinary members from different parties to offer advice to newcomers on canvassing. The first to respond said ‘wear a pair of stout gloves’. You reacted with surprise, but you could almost hear the voices of all canvassers up and down the country, shouting yes! in unison. That’s because we all share the knuckle-crunching experience of coping with an unbelievable variety of self closing letterboxes, positioned in an incredible variety of places on front doors, and the variety of dogs that lurk behind them, from angry and noisy to those who wait silently for the appearance of the leaflet and a juicy finger. My plea to you and your listeners is to remember that these are all volunteers. From different perspectives they are promoting the ideas of their own party for what they believe to be the public good. And my second plea is to spare us your usual introduction when the election is called roughly now that an election has been called they will all be out knocking doors¹ which makes it sound like an outbreak of some nasty disease. Actually volunteers from different parties will have been communicating with the electorate week by week over the past couple of years - it's just that the size of the electorate means that any individual only sees us very rarely. And shouldn’t we celebrate the efforts that go into persuading people to vote? As one lady well into her 80s said to me ‘Will I be voting for you? That's my business and I won't tell you’. But I will be voting - women only got the vote on the same terms as men in 1928 after fighting for it for years, so it's my duty as a citizen to use it. That's the right message isn't it - whether in the Penarth Times or on the Today programme. “Best wishes Alun”