So glad to hear that the world can't get enough of the mayoral election [1], but I for one am finding the whole scene tremendously depressing:

It's a cold little night in Bethnal Green, and yours truly and about 20 other people - mostly OAPs, it appears - are sitting in a near-empty hall in Oxford House on Derbyshire street, readying ourselves for a London assembly candidates [2]' hustings.

The OAPs and I are peering stagewards. There, various remnants of the tattered Left sit - three City and East London assembly consitutency candidates, and one mayoral hopeful in the form of Lindsey German - all set to convince we of the apathetic mainstream to get off our useless behinds and vote, etc.

I'm not convinced that tonight is going to be the night, tbh. We're already 15 minutes past kickoff, and there's still - well, almost nobody in the audience. Those who are present are either running for office themselves (Weavers ward Left List council candidate Shamsun Murshid is there with a couple of supporters), or part of the small, ever-present bunch of batty-looking Greens that you inevitably find at these meetings - the wild-haired, ranting, cardiganed diehards from which Sian Berry is such a carefully-constructed and buffed departure.

A little old lady with huge white hair and a majestically deep and twee voice (I can't be the only one who looks round for Malcolm Rifkind on the regular occasions when she speaks) keeps booming out 'where are all the people? Where is everyone?' Thus the Left continues the uprising. I slump in my seat. I wonder if Lindsey would be up for a joint.

It's all a bit of a pity, really: this could have been a useful evening. Organised by the Tower Hamlets arm of Keep Our NHS Public, this hustings was meant to give Bethnal Greeners a chance to share their concerns about privatisation in the NHS with mayoral and assembly candidates.

Certainly, people in Bethnal Green have cause for concern about the privatising of healthcare on the local front: this is, after all, the exact neck of the woods where private firm Atos recently took over St Paul's Way medical centre [3], despite vehement opposition from local residents and GPs. (Bids from local GP practices for the same contract were rejected, needless to say. One can only conclude that Atos undercut those bids by grossly misrepresenting the real cost of decent GP services, and are thus all set to provide the UK's cheapest and nastiest healthcare - surely no small achievement. The Tower Hamlets GP Forum even went as far as passing a vote of no confidence in the PCT as a result of the Atos circus. Perhaps we can ask Mayor Boris to try the Atos clinic for us when he finally books the much-needed vasectomy).

Anyway - it's a nice, meaty topic, even if a little off-piste in terms of London mayoral politics. Three London assembly candidates have seen the point, anyway: we have Heather Finlay for the Greens, Rajonuddin Jalal for the Lib Dems, and Michael Gavan (the admirable union activist who was recently sacked by Newham council for his union work) representing the arse-end of the Respect experiment that is now known at the Left List. We also, as noted, have Lindsey German.

Neither Labour nor the Tories have managed to send a representative to this meeting: as we speak, Ken and Boris are parked at top table before a full house somewhere out Canning Town way, squeezing out the tears as a young black girl describes how she felt when her brother was murdered [4]. Probably better to be here than watching Ken and Boris, and trying not to barf.

But enough of that: to the matter at hand. The assembly hopefuls who've bothered to front this evening might be on a hiding to nothing, publicity-wise, but they probably deserve a little reporting.

If only a little: the Green's Heather Finlay tells us that she believes there is a bow to be drawn between the GLA and the NHS, mostly via the Strategic Health Authority. Certainly, she says, as assembly members, the Greens would pursue a vigorous anti-privatisation agenda.

'The US spends twice what we do on healthcare and has no better outcomes... now we have the so-called internal market in the NHS, and American and French firms (Atos is French) being brought in to run the NHS...think about hospital-accquired infections... market forces are determining how hospitals are cleaned... when will the government realise that this internal market hasn't worked...' etc, etc.

Rajonuddin Jalal is up next, and faithfully delivers the hall of the usual, lovably non-committal, Lib Dem dither: 'The mayor of the GLA does not have a lot of power in health, but there is a connection... [the number of people] needing health and social care services is rising... we have an ageing population, the issues of healthy eating and healthy living have to be tackled... I used to be a Tower Hamlets councillor and I understand local needs and aspirations...' blah blah blah...

He does eventually roll round to one concrete - albeit dated, and spectacularly failed - policy idea: the introduction of elected health boards.

Alas, the finer points of this platform are lost in the commotion caused by two aged latercomers helping each other up the creaking stairs and noisily arranging each other and their bags in seats up the back. Tis probably best: nobody sane wants to hear about elected health boards in too much detail. I worked for an area health board once, and it (the board) was an unmitigated shambles of halfwit local politicians, cronies, lobby groups, private companies on the make, and an enormous overpaid and underworked bureaucracy (I was part of that bureaucracy. Short hours and excellent money - it was one of the best jobs I've had).

Lindsey German is up soon after: those of us who have been here a thousand times before ready ourselves for another inspired, entirely irrelevant, revolutionary spiel:

'We are really at a turning point here, and while it is absolutely true that the issue of the health service isn't the mayor's responsibility, London government should have some control over the health service... when you look at what is going on... there has to be an alternative left...'

I half-raise my hand to ask Lindsey for news of Respect and the alternative left that the SWP has spent the last five years fragging, but remember I'll never make it home in time for Alan Sugar if we kick off on that one. I decide to let the alternative left lie.

I think I've heard enough, anyway: time to go home and get wrecked. Let us leave the last word to the member of the sparse audience who makes the only pertinent point of the evening: he says he wants to know why nobody listens to the Left.

After all, he says (rightly): the Left talks such sense on topics like health - so why doesn't anybody want to hear it? It's an interesting, if often-discussed, question. Or it was. I've more or less given up asking it.

Can't wait for the next local hustings. Anybody want to come along? Anybody?