...and just hope that it's not one of those which has some kind of direct link to landfill.

I've voted. Huhne, Campbell, Hughes in that order. And I'll tell you why.

When Charles resigned, I felt I wanted to have a say not just in the outcome of any election, but in trying to make sure the person or people I really wanted for leader put him or herself forward. Especially as, at the time, there were stories that everyone was going to rally around Ming and not even hold a contest.

So I had a choice of 61 MPs and I chose to write to one, Chris Huhne. And thankfully he took my advice...:) Ignored any deals he had done. Saw that he had the right qualities to give it a good go, and stood. So I've been there for him all along. Had it not been Chris, I would have supported John Hemming, or written to try to get someone like Nick Clegg to stand instead.

You see, I think there is a malaise in British parliamentary politics which, regardless of how well intentioned they may be, people who have been stuck in that Westminster place for some time have become inured to somehow. They may be fiery campaigners with great records in opposition and so on but it's always on someone else's terms.

A couple of years ago I saw that nice Mr Oborne on a Newsnight being agreed with by some Labour and Tory MPs that British politics had lost its sense of ideological battle. That because of the total and utter victory of monetarism and free marketeering in the seventies and eighties that nobody any longer dared to challenge as the pre-eminent economic order parties were reduced to competing for the national equivalent of the PFI contract for deckchair management aboard the Titanic and that nobody was up on the bridge debating whether to steer away from the ice-bergs.

These ice-bergs are ever present, and none of the existing parties really has an answer for most of them - the pensions crisis, the rise of China and India, global poverty, systemic debt, how to pay for public services fairly, how to put the planet first without screwing up our economic prosperity. And so for me it's a case of "Out with the old and in with Chris Huhne". For Chris, as an economist who at least sponsors plurality of economic debate, is prepared to listen to counter-intuitive possibilities, is the only person of the three I believe who stands a chance of promoting this real underpinning radical shake-up this whole country needs and to help people understand a possible different system.

And so, despite my abiding admiration for Simon, perhaps especially after what he's been put or put himself through these past weeks, my instinctive sympathy with the message he spreads about looking after the poorest and keeping hold of the mechanisms that allow us to do that - NHS, state education and the like, my second and third preferences are really based on the fact that I don't really want either Ming or Simon as leader, and I'm guessing that with Ming, if Chris doesn't win, we will get another chance to select a newer face in a few years time, long before we would if it were Simon that beats Chris.

So no positive messages for either Ming or Simon there. I just think there is a gaping opportunity to break free from the poverty of contemporary British political discourse and carve out a brand new politics, in a brand new economic landscape, that stands a chance of beating these pressing problems which, if we carry on as now will consume all our resources and not move us ahead. That opportunity is particularly open in the immediate future, but no doubt by the time we are a year or so beyond another general election, they will still be pressing and there will be still an opportunity to repent our folly and choose a new broom.