Less than a week to go, and the nation is greeting a great moment of democratic destiny - its chance to go to the European and local polls on 10 June - with a monumental, almighty shrug of the shoulders. Are we discussing Europe, immigration, or - a mad idea! - the country we just invaded (or the one we invaded before that)? No; election coverage has been dominated by Robert Kilroy-Silk and Joan Collins. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you know our politics is in the gutter when all we do is look at faded stars.

A few days ago I was speaking to a smart single mum on a long train journey. She could deliver an eloquent five-minute lecture on how the Working Families' Tax Credit had changed her life. She marched against the war a year ago. She believed the minimum wage should be increased. She had views and lots of them; she was not apathetic. But when I asked her who she was planning to vote for in the Euro-elections, she said, "Nobody. They're all the same." Really? From the BNP to the Respect coalition?

....He speaks of his country's destruction with an odd lightness of tone. His description of the "cultural genocide" ripping through Tibet is punctuated by random giggles. He claps his hands as he describes how more than two million of his people have been murdered, starved or exiled by the Chinese tyranny. Is this a nervous tick?

For the first few years of occupation, the Dalai Lama tried to cut a deal with the Chinese authorities, but their savagery and contempt for the Tibetan people only grew. He finally fled across the border into India - and has never returned. I swallow hard and realise that we have reached 1959 - the point in the Dalai Lama's life story when he is no longer a blameless victim and his judgements can begin to be questioned.

There are three main criticisms of the Dalai Lama....

Ali Orhan is laughing. We're sitting in the caff in the Docklands Asda – no expenses spared here at Attitude! – and he is chuckling the most terrible, melancholic chuckle I have ever heard.

He is describing a day eighteen years ago when he picked up his parents at Heathrow airport. He was 21 years old, and they were returning from their annual holiday to Turkey. Ali knew he was gay – he had always known – but his sexuality wasn't flickering across his mind that that summer day, as he stood waiting in the arrivals lounge. He saw them waddling towards him with their suitcases and a strange woman. He waved. He had bought his mother a bunch of flowers. His parents had brought something for him too: a wife.

You can catch a great TV double-bill this Saturday night. First up there's Black Eye for the White Guy, in which a gang of black people teach a hapless white guy how to acquire a sense of rhythm and greater sexual proficiency. It's followed by How Jewish Are You?, in which viewers will be quizzed about how cunning, persuasive and good with money they are.

Wait, there's something wrong here. Those shows would - quite rightly - be howled off the screen as peddling obnoxious stereotypes. Yet both Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and How Gay Are You? have been lauded as examples of how laid-back and accepting our society has become towards gay people.