TONY Blair is getting advice from all sides on whether to hold the election soon (May 3 is much touted). With columnists of all persuasions badgering the Prime Minister, the last thing he needs is advice from this column. So here goes.

There are many ways of looking at this issue, though it is best not do so while standing in a field near livestock.

Tony Blair can do his calculations in Downing Street, which is unlikely to become a foot and mouth exclusion zone. And no, you won't be getting any foot in mouth asides here, because that one has already gone stale from being left out in the open for too long.

So let's indulge for a moment in a spot of pro and con ping-pong and bash the issue ball about a bit.

Ping! There are many good reasons why Tony Blair should choose to still hold the election on what is said to be his favourite date. As far as anyone can tell, foot and mouth disease is not spread by television and radio, it does not attach itself to newsprint, and, for the modern-minded, it is one virus you can't get over the Internet.

Nowadays, elections are fought on the airwaves and with much use of good printer's ink. Holding an election during the foot and mouth crisis will make virtually no difference, because most electioneering is done at a distance - and, anyway, most the of voters live in cities, towns and suburbs, well away from the pestilential countryside.

So those who fear that holding the election could worsen the foot and mouth crisis are mostly looking back to an enshrouded past where elections were won or lost on the doorstep. Either that or they are William Hague, who fears he will lose horribly and is therefore cashing in on understandable rural angst.

So the practical, political reasons for postponing the election are slight. Opposing this - pong! - is the moral dimension. Is it right to go chasing after office when the countryside is in mourning and the stench of burning livestock fills the air?

Taste and tact aside, it might not seem entirely ethical to go for a second term in such times. Or to put it in spin-speak: Tony won't look good surrounded by dead cows. After all, dead cows are unseemly, not at all modern, and just not New Labour one tiny bit.

So does he go or does he wait? Prime Ministers who dither have in the past been shown the door of Number Ten. Jim Callaghan kept voters waiting in 1978, and was then sunk by the Winter Of Discontent. As his indecision ushered in 18 years of Tory rule, it was a costly miscalculation. And holding back now gives the impression abroad that poor benighted Britain can't even run an election.

Having to make such decisions falls to Prime Ministers and not to mere mortal columnists, and thank heavens for that.

For what it's worth, I'd say: Go for it, Tony. But I'd have my fingers firmly crossed if I were you.

FOLLOWING my meanderings last week on all the Julian Coles in the world, an e-mail arrives from my namesake at Ohio State University, observing: "I also have never met another Julian Cole, and am in fact surprized that there are other Julian Coles."

But nothing surprises (English spelling) my fellow columnist Bryan Marlowe, who e-mails the information that there are 28 people called Julian Cole in the UK, six without middle names.

"There is," he tells me, "only one Bryan spelt with y Marlowe. Some might think that's more than enough."

The 28 of us couldn't possibly comment.

How does Bryan know this?

Oh, I don't know. Something to do with postcodes and having too much time on his hands.

Only kidding, one and only.