Let’s start a busy week with Stonehenge and the vandalism of environmental campaigners who sprayed the stones orange in order to raise awareness about the ongoing use of fossil fuels.

Campaigning of this kind is a curious beast. As marketing expert Ian Aitch wrote, the group ‘are not trying to win hearts and minds, or even your support … they are trying to bring attention to their cause.’

In terms of attention seeking, I guess the protest was successful.

In terms of shifting public opinion or policy, not so much.

Whether it’s dousing with paint or building a tunnel underneath, Stonehenge should really be left alone (on the latter, it is worth noting Keir Starmer refused to commit to the tunnel in a BBC interview on Monday).

Talking of spraying South Wiltshire orange, my letterbox has been filled in recent days by leaflets for the local Lib Dem candidate, Victoria Charleston. I’ve written previously how this is an unusual election, with a chance for a single progressive candidate to defeat the incumbent MP, John Glen.

The majority of the polls, together with the betting odds, still point to that being the Labour candidate, Matt Aldridge (for any Tories in, who I know like a flutter, Ladbrokes currently have Glen at 4/6, Aldridge at 11/8 and Charleston at 14-1).

So it’s a shame to see all the ‘Labour can’t win here’ leaflets, which can only split the anti-Conservative vote (Also in the anti-Tory camp is Green candidate, Barney Norris: Barney is a good friend, which is why I’ve said little about his candidature).

The candidate splitting the actual Conservative vote, Reform’s Julian Malins, has come out with two extraordinary statements this week. Malins told this paper that despite last year being the hottest since records began, ‘it is very possible that we are entering into a natural period of warmer weather … I do not believe that the warm period is man-made.’ Rather than worrying about rising temperatures, Malins suggests that these natural warm periods are followed by ‘periods of extreme cold’. So forget the sunscreen, best stock up on the snow shovels before they are gone.

I didn’t think that Malins could top denying climate change, but then at the election hustings in St Thomas’s Church on Sunday night, he came out in praise of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. Malins told the audience, ‘I have actually met Putin and had a ten-minute chat with him and he seemed very good. He is not the Austrian gentleman with a moustache come alive again.’ Wow. To say that at a venue less than a minute’s walk away from where Sergei Skripal and his daughter were found struggling for their lives and in a city where Dawn Sturgess lost hers, I thought was both extraordinary and reprehensible.

Looking at John Glen’s social media campaign, he appears one of the few Conservatives still confident of victory. Glen’s ongoing tour of the constituency sometimes reads less like a campaign and more of an extended mini break, with tweets about topping up the suntan here, or the latest in a succession of country pub lunches there (the Queen’s Head in Broad Chalke is apparently ‘excellent’, while the Horseshoe Inn in Ebbesbourne Wake does a ‘great ploughman’s’).

Whatever happens next Thursday, Glen is going to have a lot more time for lunch in the coming months. If he was re-elected as an opposition MP (Glen himself is talking about Labour supermajorities), how would that affect his representation of Salisbury? The first question is how much of this newfound time would be devoted to the constituency. Glen says he ‘take[s] the privilege of serving my constituency incredibly seriously’. I hope this means that if re-elected he will rule out taking any secondary paid jobs in order to fulfil his duties.

But is Salisbury voting for someone likely to be an opposition backbencher the best outcome for the constituency? I can’t find any specific research on the subject, but my sense is that Salisbury has done comparatively well for funding during Glen’s tenure as a minister. Having that insider voice, whether or not you agree with his politics, has had its benefits for us. But once outside of government, Glen’s influence is going to be curtailed. Is the smarter route for Salisbury to continue being represented by someone from the ruling party?

Whatever your reasons for voting, or whoever you decide to vote for, please do take the time to head for the polling station next week. Putting an ‘X’ in a box might not sound like much, but the privilege of a fair and free election is one people have fought and died for over the years – and still do. If you don’t turn out to vote, you can’t really complain about who ends up in charge.