Te Radar: Contemplating the ultimate sacrifice...

To be honest, there is very little that I would sacrifice a testicle for.

However, should I find that hallowed object of my desire for which I would willingly plop my dowry upon the altar of sacrifice, I would content myself with the fact that I could disguise my disfigurement with a neuticle.

Neuticles? They are plastic faux balls, replacements for castrated animals designed, apparently, so that the hapless critters don't realise that they have lost something precious to them.

The true beauty of the neuticle, though, is that someone somewhere thought of the idea and decided to design, test, and market them, so people everywhere could buy them in the forlorn hope that their animal eunuchs wouldn't realise they had been fixed.

As far as inappropriate euphemisms go, being fixed has always been one that has stuck out like the proverbial dog's appendages (now replaced by said neuticles).

No doubt the first people told of the inventor's dream scheme must have exclaimed, "You're nuts!"

To which the inventor no doubt would have replied, "Exactly. My nuts will make me a fortune. They're a veritable geld-mine."

I do have to wonder if there were any other names for the product bandied about; manbles perhaps, or testicools, or even ballocks.

In many ways there is no better election metaphor than the humble neuticle, for, like neuticles, election promises are a deceptive fix.

Many people claim that it is actually we, the unsuspecting citizenry, who are the unwitting recipients of political neuticles.

The only difference is who spayed us.

Has the procedure already been performed upon us by a socialist regime intent on social engineering to render us malleably duped duplicates?

Or is the real threat from the Tories' puritanical adherence to the almighty dollar and their desire to replace our innate culture with the neuticles of foreign cultural imperialism and thus convert us into cultureless clones?

Regardless, it is often difficult to tell whether many politicians have been neutered or are simply incompetent.

What many forget is that the real hands grasping the organ of power will not have been emasculated on Monday, regardless of whether there is a regime change, as the technocrats and bureaucrats shuffle back to their stations.

While everyone has a defining moment from this election campaign, mine occurred while accompanying a candidate I was filming for a documentary as he and his dutiful wife trudged from door to door in his electorate attempting to woo the people.

On the lawn of one residence, an elderly man stood and stared at him as he said, "I am your local candidate." Silence. "In the election." Silence. "You do know there's an election coming up?"

"Eh?" said the citizen.

Afterwards I asked The Candidate how he felt given his party's low polling. He replied that he paid scant regard to polls as it would be in the loneliness of the polling booth on Saturday that people would make their decisions.

I just hope we choose not to emasculate ourselves.