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There are training courses in this sort of thing but I never cease to be amazed bythe slightly idiosyncratic manner of some canvassing. Typical was a conversation this afternoon "I'll put him down as a yes because his daughter knows your son" Not quite sure that that is the best way to judge somehow.

Richard Ingrams' magazine The Oldie used to have (and may still have) a feature called "Still With Us". It contained articles about people you thought were dead but turned out not to be. Someone who falls into this category is Brian Mears, the chairman of Chelsea FC before Ken Bates. He is interviewed by Bryan Cooney in this piece from the Sunday Herald. I am posting it partly because I am a Chelsea fan and partly because Cooney is the first football writer in 29 years to teach me a new word. In 1976 Brian Glanville described the young Ray ...

Had been invited to speak to them following a visit by my opponent. Felt really sorry for the secretary as it is the practice to read out an account of the previous meeting and there had been a discussion about the Conservative candidates visit which had come as a surprise to some members of the club. It had been a tad controversial as the club try and steer clear of politics and religion

The verdict of the judge in the Birmingham vote-rigging trial was as damning as was expected. He has ordered that the election in two wards should be re-run following his finding that there was "widespread fraud" in six Birmingham council seats won last year by Labour. He accused the government of being not only complacent, but "in denial", about the failings of the system. He concluded that the evidence of electoral fraud he had heard would disgrace a banana republic. Judge Mawrey added, as part of his ruling, that "The systems to deal with fraud are not working well. ...

Even by the standards of Welsh politics today has been a bit of a rollercoaster. This morning the Western Mail devoted the best part of three pages to the news that Blaenau Gwent Labour AM, Peter Law, was to stand for Parliament as an independent. This action would cause Peter Law to be expelled from the Labour Party and leave Rhodri Morgan without a majority, the paper said. They speculated that it would allow the opposition parties to step in with a grand coalition to oust Labour from the fifth floor of Assembly House.By this evening all that had changed. ...

Harry's Place has a good posting on the right-wing populist campaign that the by-election victor Iain Wright appears to be running. One of his press releases runs: The Liberal Democrats’ crime plans would mean the killers of James Bulger could not have been brought to trial and would let young troublemakers run riot in Hartlepool knowing the courts could not touch them. And so on and on.

Unwilling to let Whittington take up all my blogging time, I have made a new posting to my anthology blog Serendib. It is an extract from My Name is Legion by A N Wilson. This is a gutsy novel about modern Britain and the tabloid press; the extract I have posted looks at the self-contradictory belief system of his Daily Legion, which owes more than a little to that of the Daily Mail. Having read it a couple of weeks ago, I now remember My Name as Legion as no more than a superior airport novel. But I ...

The sad but long expected news came from Rome on Saturday evening. John Paul II, the Polish Pontiff was dead. In some sense it was a relief that the so obvious sufferings of this extraordinary man were finally over. However as the news media began to make their review of the Pope's long pontificate I was struck by how vigorous and energetic his early years in office truly were. As someone who actively supported the anti-Soviet dissident groups in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980's, I have long known of his personal commitment to the cause of freedom, not ...

This story in the Telegraph very much reinforces what we are experiencing locally in Woodspring

The Lib Dems slogan for the general election campaign is The Real Alternative. From my campaigning and canvassing locally it is absolutely clear that people are looking for something different to the failed parties of the past. The election, which is expected to be announced tomorrow by the Prime Minister could be the most interest in a generation. There is a real possibility that only a few

Following the decision of the Commissioner to disqualify 6 Labour Councillors for Election Fraud John Hemming has issued the following statement: The Commissioner has made it clear that the current system is wide open to fraud. The Government can make a simple action through a Statutory Instrument so that we can identify where fraud affects the election results. This is to count the postal

No way, no bloody way. Lou and Andy have been voted the number one sketch of all time. Quite how this repetitive drivel beat the Parrot Sketch (John Cleese at his repressed anger best), the Mastermind sketch from The Two Ronnies (punch line after punch line) and Goodness Gracious Me's Going for an English (sharp and satirical about British society) I will never know. Nor was this the only entry

Still not sure what I think about the oilbar test painting thingy I did yesterday... I've got it pinned to my noticeboard and I keep glancing at it and I just don't know. Normally I either think "This is c**p" or "This is good"... ...relatively speaking... for me... although I think a fair few of my art problems are due to impatience. The longest piece I've ever done in conventional art media (I once did a very intricate silk painting) took 6 hours [working weekday evenings just before Easter]. Normally I take about an hour to two hours, and ...