GidleyWatch

GidleyWatch. A name to strike a chill in the heart of the Member of Parliament for Romsey. I mentioned it to Mark, which has earned me an honorary membership of Fans of Paul Keetch (although I'm not quite sure how much of an honour that is).

The website in question comes from the BlogYourMP inspired stable of unofficial MP blogs, and, despite its name, is pretty appreciative of its subject. It swings between serious stuff (e.g., press cuttings and reporting of Sandra Gidley MP's activities in the Commons) to more humorous entries. This precis is based on a handful of posts as it's a fairly new site, so who knows how it will continue.

I wonder whether the handful of MPs who have unofficial blogs have seen them, and what they think. There's no doubting that politicians like media attention, and there's only one thing worse than being written about...

My figure in three figures

I've just been on the weighing machine at the Co-op. It helpfully displayed my mass in both imperial and metric, and as it did so the kilogram total flickered from 99 to 100. I was mortified. I've been trying (OK, not very hard) to lose weight, and 99kg was the absolute upper limit I'd set myself.

I have been much more active recently, what with the elections and moving house, but my work has become increasingly sedentary. When I first started working at the Library, I was active all day. After a year or so, my job changed and I was only active in the mornings, with a desk job in the afternoons. Currently I'm on secondment from my previously active morning job to a project (which is stimulating and I've learnt a great deal from) that is mostly computer-based.

My new strategy (which differs little from my old strategy) is to do more exercise. Now I live on the top floor, I'll do more stair-climbing. Additionally:

• Walk to and from work and to and from the city centre without catching a bus.
  
• Buy an umbrella to facilitate the above when raining.
  
• Spontaneously go for walks around the block. (This should also help boost my CNPS score*.)
  
• Try to limit myself to one lunch a day
  
• Drink less coke and more water. Although the litre bottle of coke in front of me needs finishing first.
  
• Get out delivering more political literature.

I'll check back in a week or two and see how much I've lost...

*Like Job I held firm in adversity and was rewarded with a 25 after weeks of waiting. Albeit minutes after the CNPS gods taunted me with a 26 and a 27.

...and then two come along at once

It was most inconsiderate of Mr Tony Blair to call the Hodge Hill by-election and the Leicester South by-election for July 15th. I'm otherwise engaged every weekend until then, so now I'm going to have to ration my dwindling annual leave to take time off work.

This weekend, for example, I'm moving house. I've done this far too many times over the last seven years and I absolutely loathe it. It's not just packing a whole life into a few boxes and the relentless cleaning, but the unreasonably deducted deposits and the numerous organisations to inform of the new address. A whole new set of routines, new shops, new bus timetables...

On the plus side, I do get a trip to IKEA out of it.

CNPS woe

Nearly two weeks without seeing a 25, and it was going so well. Most dispiriting.

Calling occupants of interplanetary craft

Hurrah! I have made it into the top 10% of SETI@home users. Although I'm still in joint 460,011th place.

If you haven't already got it, download and install the SETI@home software to join in. This runs in the background of your computer, analysing data from radio telescopes for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

BBTV and CCTV

As Richard Allan vents his spleen about hooliganism, does the Big Brother brawl prove that CCTV doesn't deter violent anti-social behaviour?

And it seems not a moment too soon

So Labour's quarter of a century dominating Leeds is over. Labour took 40 seats, LibDems 26, Conservatives 24, Morley Borough Independents 6, and Greens 3. No one party has a majority, but the LibDems could feasibly run in coalition with the Conservatives and the Greens (and Labour, if they'd be prepared to swallow their pride). In Wetherby, I got 1,026 votes - I'm pleased to say it's a personal best in any election, and represented a 1.1% swing from the Tories to the LibDems.

The first past the post electoral system for once worked in the LibDems' favour. It hindered the Tories but still let Labour get 40% of the seats on much less of the vote. I still believe strongly in following the example of Scotland and introducing STV for local council elections.

There were some curious other results, particularly in the way tickets were split and voters mixed and matched the parties for which they voted. While I can't pretend to know every voters' reasons, it's possible to spot trends. In one ward, for example, where one Tory candidate polled noticeably less than his colleagues, it is, sadly, safe to assume that his Arabic-sounding name put off a few hundred voters.

In Headingley, a former Labour seat (albeit after boundary changes), Labour fell below the Greens. The LibDems made more progress in Kirkstall, but Labour, running scared and making an effort for once, managed to hold on. My friend Kath, the only local council candidate in Leeds standing for "Respect - The Unity Coalition (George Galloway)", succeeded in pushing the Tories into fourth in her ward.

Congratulations to everyone who was elected last week. Particular mentions go to Penny Ewens, who stormed home in Hyde Park and Woodhouse, and No geek is an island reader David Morton who topped the poll in Headingley.

Full results by ward are on the Leeds City Council website.

And then there were eleven

Michelle's and Emma's triumphant return to the house this evening was top telly. It was obvious immediately that Victor and Jason were horrified. Jason has now taken Victor to one side and confessed that his "game plan" is in tatters.

While I shan't go as far as to claim some pseudish credibility from "studying the psychology of it", it is educational watching how the different personalities react as the situations become more extreme.

Shattered

I've been back in Leeds a few days but I'm still exhausted - hence the lack of posting. Had a great time in the London. Worked for two days solid on the elections, then acted as a counting agent at the Bexley & Bromley GLA count. It was interesting seeing the automated counting machines in operation. They work incredibly fast, and have the benefit over full electronic voting that there is always the possiblity of a manual count if things go wrong or a result is disputed. A good result for the LibDems: Duncan Borrowman moved up from third to second, while Labour dropped to forth. Plus, we contributed a significant chunk of votes to Simon Hughes's mayoral total. Overall, we managed to pick up an extra GLA seat, which both the Tory and Labour GLA groups lost their leaders.

While at the count in London, I got word that Labour had lost control of Leeds. I didn't get to see the figures until Sunday - more on them to follow.

Friday night was Liberty Night, a top notch party to celebrate the end of the elections. I met Charles Kennedy for the first time, he having returned from a flying visit to our new headline gain of Newcastle. He was in fine form and made a very positive speech. I also had the chance to commiserate Simon, who seemed in fine form despite having worked incredibly long days in the run up to the election.

Spent most of Saturday recovering, then popped over to Ealing for a very nice barbecue before going out in London. Then on Sunday back to Leeds and almost straight out again for the European Parliament election count for Yorkshire & the Humber - carried out by hand, the old-fashioned way. As the Leeds ballot papers were counted, results trickled in from across the region, flashed up on big screens. The candidates, agents and assorted psephs dashed forward to see who had won where, and to try to predict the overall result. We correctly worked out that it would be two Conservative, two Labour, one LibDem, one swivel-eyed loon. Diana Wallis was re-elected, moving from fifth place out of seven to third of sixth - a good result for us. The English Democrats candidate, in his speech, derided the proposed regional assemblies as "another layer of bureaucracy" - an interesting argument from a party who's principal policy is an English Parliament.

The best news of the night was the election of Fiona Hall in the North East and (as I discovered on Monday morning) the election of Saj Karim in the North West, taking us to 12 MEPs. While UKIP squeezed into third place on the popular vote, third was mainly at the expensive of the Tories and Labour. Fingers crossed for UKIP standing in some Con/LD marginals at the next General Election.

Off to Button Moon (Be Back Soon)

I'm popping to London to help Simon Hughes, Sarah Ludford, Jonathan Fryer and Duncan Borrowman get elected. Back next week!

Meanwhile, over the pond

There are a few too many unnamed sources in it, but if even half of this article is true, it's pretty terrifying.

I think I need a Kerry 2004 button to put in my sidebar.

Top 10 UKIP Targets

As more and more clapped out old Tories reveal the swivel of their eyes, I've decided to help the UKIP strategists (well, Max Clifford) by knocking up this list of the great and the loon who they could try to persuade to defect. The higher up the list, the bigger the news story.

10. Teresa Gorman
    
9. Ian Paisley
   
8. Lord Archer
   
7. Iain Duncan Smith
   
6. Lord Lucan
   
5. Nick Griffin
   
4. Ronald Reagan
   
3. Neville Chamberlain
   
2. Oliver Cromwell
   
1. Margaret Thatcher

(And if they can get the first seven on board, raising the top three from the dead should prove no problem.)

(Update: Make that the top four.)

Kilroy goes bananas

So disgraced former Tory MP Jonathan Aitken is backing the swivel-eyed loons of the UK Independence Party. He joins disgraced former Tory MP Piers Merchant, standing on the party's list in the North West, and disgraced former BBC presenter and former Labour MP Robert Kilroy-Silk. The party's leader, Roger Knapman, is a former Tory minister. They claim to be "the people against the politicians", but they seem rather more like "the washed-up politicians against the mainstream politicians".

Kilroy was at his most irritating on UKIP's Party Election Broadcast the other night. He sadly had to resort to complaining about the EU's rules about the bendiness of bananas as a reason for leaving. Yet despite the harbingers of doom in the right wing press telling us that the EU would change the shape of our bananas and cucumbers, would prevent our sausages being called sausages, and would ban smoky bacon crisps, Kilroy may have noticed that we still have pretty normal cucumbers, our sausages are still called sausages, and we can still eat smoky bacon crisps. And as for bananas, all that was introduced was a unified system for classifying the fruit for sale. Which would of course be just as necessary if we were in a free trade arrangement with the EU from outside, which is what UKIP purport to desire.

I want our MEPs to sort out the bizarre system of expenses and renumeration that undermines the European Parliament, and to end the nonsense of shifting the whole operation to Strasbourg every few weeks. But electing UKIP MEPs won't achieve that: it's in their interest, as a party that hates the EU, to reinforce rather than resolve the EU's problems. It's in everyone else's interest for the EU to become an efficient, well-run organisation. While I will enjoy seeing the Tories (and the BNP) suffer in the European elections as their voters switch to the UKIP, I doubt that any elected UKIP MEPs will perform a constructive role in the European Parliament. Lucky we'll have plenty of LibDem MEPs to do that then.

It could be an episode of Coupling

The rising number of bloggers increases the chance of two bloggers going on a date. It's natural they would then blog about it, so we now have the pleasure of a romantic trip to Hell's Kitchen, courtesy of both Richard and Emma.

Drenched

Popped out for a relaxing walk this afternoon and I'm now absolutely soaked. It's pouring with rain at the moment. It was drizzly a couple of days ago here and bright and sunny yesterday. Thoroughly inconsistent weather.

Saw a few Tory poster boards and some LibDem ones. No sign of anyone wanting to be seen promoting Labour around here. I was also relieved to spot a 21, which had seemed elusive.