Guest Posting: the view from Cincinnati, aged 16¾

Here by the fire, in my favourite chair, it is clear that life is going to be rather tougher for the British people over the coming years. Admittedly, with people to look after my every wish, to feed me tinned sardines in tomato sauce and, from time to time, roast chicken (with the skin on for preference) and gravy, that doesn't include me. I tend to leave my people to deal with the tough issues, like Afghanistan, the War on Terror and, to be honest, most things unrelated to fishing policy.

However, I was moved to comment on the whole 'Gordon Brown' thing. It seems to me that what the British people need is a cat-person as their Prime Minister, but that Gordon is a dog-person. Let me explain.

Dog-people, or people who associate themselves with dogs, tend to value loyalty above most other things. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that dogs have their place in society (outside, in their kennel, for preference), but life just isn't like that any more. Yes, loyalty is valuable, but not at the expense of either the individual or of original thinking. Dogs don't really think much. Oh yes, they do tricks. Fetching sticks, playing dead, all very impressive, I suppose. As a cat, I tend to wonder why, if you throw a stick, I am expected to retrieve it. Why, indeed, did you throw it in the first place? If you didn't want it, why did you have it anyway?

Cat-people tend to favour individuality. A cat will only bother you if it wants something - food, water, attention, to annoy you - and otherwise will disappear for hours at a time. You have to assume that it knows what it is doing, and trust it accordingly. For that reason, I encourage my people to vote Liberal Democrat, and I even visited my local polling station in June to ensure that they did. I sense that Nick Clegg would be a cat-person given the opportunity.

I accept that voters have a choice though, and that this David Cameron chap is an alternative. He's not really a dog-person or a cat-person, I suspect, more a gerbil-person. Looks cute, tends to be very successful in the short term, yet does surprisingly little. Not a runner, I suspect...