With a little inspiration from Peter Black, I’ve made it into the Yorkshire Evening Post on the subject of the LibDem/Con/Green administration now running Leeds City Council:

It is worrying that several of your correspondents seem unable to accept the results of the local elections (although some of them appear to have neglected to mention that they are Labour councillors who lost their seats, which may be one explanation).

The first-past-the-post electoral system used for council elections had for years given Labour a dominance over Leeds far above its true support amongst voters. Even now, Labour’s share of seats is greater than its share of the vote.

The new administration can rightly claim to be the first council leadership in many years to truly have the support of the people of Leeds. Rather than sniping before a single policy decision has been taken, we should give them the chance to prove that pluralist politics can deliver for the city. The signs so far are positive.

I’ve somehow managed to break the screen on my laptop. I think I may have stood on it (accidentally), which, for an all too obvious reason, was a bad idea.

I’m not au fait with the ins and outs of laptop repair, but I’m assuming I’ll be able to get it fixed. How much it will cost is another matter…

And on a completely unrelated note, I’m now the Chair of the LDYS Conference Committee. Yay me. (Unfortunately, my predecessor was – well, is – very knowledgeable, organised and hard-working, which is quite something to live up to.)

Update: Having had a quote, I’ve decided it would be probably be gratuitiously profligate to get the screen repaired. Although there is damage, most of the screen is still usable and at a high resolution there is more than enough space on the desktop.

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…

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