WE should stop this foolish idea of holding two important elections on the same day.

The reason is simple. The elections to Buckinghamshire Council Council are now seen by many people as something tagged on to the main event, just another box to tick when you're inside the voting booth.

If the general election has been summed up by apathy, the county elections haven't even registered on the don't care scale.

Candidates canvassing have said that nobody seems to have shown any strong views about the way the county council has been run when they have knocked on doors.

This experience, which has been reported across the parties, puzzles me.

For the last four years we have had hundreds of letters, many very strongly worded, stating a view on how the council has acted.

If there was one issue that angered people more than any other it was the council's decision to introduce positive parking in Wycombe.

Yet our post has also been full of many other letters on schools, social services, councillors' expenses, and countless planning decisions.

That's why it seems so strange that when the electorate get their one chance in four years to make their views known on the county council they seem to suddenly go quiet.

Is it that council bosses have really being doing such a perfect job?

I'm sure Tory leader of the council David Shakespeare would like to think so but the reason for the sudden sound of silence lies elsewhere.

Voters just don't seem to be able to digest a national and local election at the same time. Much of the reason is to do with personalities dominating politics rather than issues.

Blair, Hague and Kennedy, are just more interesting to most of us than Shakespeare, Appleyard and Chapple.

That's a great pity because the issues that affect our everyday lives such as roads, schools and social services have more to do with County Hall than Whitehall. The media, including us, musn't go without blame for focusing too much on the national picture.

The argument for having both elections on the same day is that you will get a higher turnout for the 'less interesting' one.

But what it ends up doing is encouraging people just to vote on party lines. It's an easy option just to tick the box of the party you want to win nationally, if you don't know or don't care about who runs Buckinghamshire.

We may get a smaller turnout by having a separate county council election but we will have a more intelligent one who may have given some thought to why they are voting.