No geek
is an island

Via Norfolk Blogger comes the news that Tony Benn’s granddaughter Emily has been selected by Labour to be their parliamentary candidate in East Worthing and Shoreham.

As I’ve noted before, my dad’s second cousin is married to Hilary Benn’s second cousin, so I guess I should add the latest political Benn to the diagram:

You’ll be relieved to hear that I, at least, have no plans to become a Labour MP.

Iain Dale’s Guide to Political Blogging in the UK (snappy title there, Iain) is out today, so Iain has posted up on his blog the top 100 Liberal Democrat blogs as voted for by a panel of LibDem bloggers - including this one. (Last year’s list was drawn up by Iain himself.)

No geek is an island is down one from 2006, at 13 - not bad given the relative sparsity of posts this year. Millennium Dome, Elephant leaps 70 places up to number 7, and Jonathan Calder, perennial runner-up in the party’s Blog of the Year Awards, takes a well-deserved first place.

The full list is here. (Via.)

I’m in Brighton for party conference, finally with a chance to blog. Been very busy putting videos online, running training sessions and, last night, at the Blog of the Year Awards. Congratulations to all the winners, and hello to the bloggers I met for the first time.

This morning, I had phone calls with a couple of people from the BBC about the awards, giving them background information about the awards, talking them through who won, and putting them in touch with Blogger of the Year James Graham.

There’s a maxim when dealing with journalists: always assume you’re on the record. As such, when I found myself unexpectedly quoted on the BBC website, it was a pleasant surprise. Reading back what I said, though, I do think I could perhaps have been a little more erudite when praising James - so let’s assume “slag off” was me being “spikey“…

Anyway, here is a lovely photo of myself and the winners, courtesy Alex Folkes/Fishnik.com.

Excellent news from Whitefoot ward in Lewisham where there was a council by-election today. Having been to help several times and having delivered goodness knows how many leaflets, I’m very pleased to report that Pete Pattisson has been elected as the newest Liberal Democrat councillor in the borough.

Labour will be very disappointed to have lost yet another by-election in Lewisham, especially having lost out to the Lib Dems last week in the Crystal Palace by-election, a ward that forms part of the new Lewisham West and Penge seat.

Well done to the team in Whitefoot!

Update: Here are the numbers.

So the Saatchi and Saatchi agency has been recruited to look after Labour’s advertising for the general election. Whenever that might be. <cough>

Here’s their pitch:

What the BBC story doesn’t tell you*, is that they were previously turned down by the Liberal Democrats after this proposal:

For some reason, the Tories - despite the success of Labour Isn’t Working in 1979 - also turned them down. Can’t imagine why:

*because (let’s be clear for legal purposes) I’ve made it up

A novel way to get young people to church is being tried out with a special service at St Paul’s in (Lib Dem) Grangetown, Cardiff. The church was used as a location for Paul Cornell’s Doctor Who episode Father’s Day a few year’s ago, and the series is its means to entice fans in, as icWales reports:

Fr Dean Atkins, youth officer with the Diocese of Llandaff and one of the organisers of the service, said: “The figure of Doctor Who is somebody who comes to save the world, almost a Messiah figure.

“In the series there are lots of references to salvation and the doctor being almost immortal. We are using the figure of Doctor Who as a parable of Christ.

“The language used in the series lends itself to exploring the Christian faith.”
[…]
Parish priest Fr Ben Andrews said: “I love the series, and it has such a great following that we couldn’t resist doing something for young people on a Doctor Who theme.

Full story here. I hope you appreciate my restraint in titling this post, when Rise of the Congregation, The Sound of Hymns, Army of Holy Ghosts or Pew Earth were all out there.