This election is all about two things: Brexit, yes, but also big money.
All the major parties are promising the moon on a stick. But it's important to remember that, even if there are huge increases in public spending, things start off in a tough place. It has been nine years of budget squeezes and cuts, and public services are strained.
Take accident and emergency departments, which are a good barometer of the health system's health: we have a target that says the number of patients waiting more than four hours to be dealt with must stay below 5 per cent. In our area? It's 13 per cent. The county's schools will still be down in funding on where they were in 2010.
That is really important because it means even when you hear the eye-watering sums being discussed, a lot of money will go into shoring up the finances of services to try to get them back to where they used to be. Repair work needs catching up on. And heads and hospital bosses will need to give good pay rises to some teachers to stop them quitting the profession.
The big point is: even if everyone is promising a lot of extra money, it might take a while before you can feel it on the ground. There's a lot of repairing the public sector that needs to happen before anyone can do anything new.
Chris Cook is the former public policy editor on BBC Newsnight, grew up in the area and is now an editor at Tortoise – a new slow news outlet which is trying to change the media. You can subscribe for £50 with the code CHRISCOOK50 at: www.tortoisemedia.com/friend
