The Monday Morning Blog - Brown will survive tonight

Having predicted for two years that Brown will survive to the general election, I did have a wobble last week when Blears self-destructed. All is back to normal now in the sense that Brown is on the rocks but secure in his hold as Labour leader.

The problem for the Labour rebels is that they have no candidate to challenge Brown. And even if they did, they would have to get over the hurdles which have been placed in the way in the rulebook which were specifically designed to prevent leadership challenges. It is also clear from the past week that the Rebel Alliance is a disorganized bunch who have failed to attract big names from the cabinet. With Darling, Milliband and Johnson staying loyal, Brown is safe.

What also holds it together for Brown is MAD - mutually assured destruction. Were Labour to dump Brown now, the demand for a general election would be all-consuming. And do you think Labour would want a general election in the current climate? Their one and only option is to hold on to the bitter end in the hope that the expenses scandal can be sorted and there is an upturn in the economy. Even then, there is no guarantee of improved Labour prospects. The economy recovered under John Major in the mid 1990s but the Conservatives went down to heavy defeat in 1997.

So whether Labour love him or loath him, they are stuck with Brown.
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Fiona re-elected in North East

I was at the Gateshead count where we got just under 9000 votes to Labour's 13,000. UKIP were 3rd and the Tories 4th. I got home and waited nervously for the North East result to be declared.

Our fear was that Fiona Hall could lose out to the UKIP surge. Fiona only just won her seat last time round from Labour. Once the picture of Labour collapse was clear, we knew Labour were not the risk this time. As it turned out, Fiona was re-elected with a comfortableish majority. UKIP did surge butt not by enough. Delighted to see her back in.

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Houdini Brown strikes again

Watching the news this afternoon is like watching a drama unfold. As it was, when I got back from the verification this morning, I watched the news of the reshuffle and then fell asleep for three hours. I woke up to a back-to-the-future world in which Brown was still PM and Labour were still at war with themselves.

Nevertheless, Brown appears to have seen off the rebellion. The suicide bombers of Blears and Purnell have been nothing but duds. Caroline Flint has failed to spark a rebellion. And she looks absurb anyway following her gushing praise of Brown less than 24 hours earlier. Now, she simply looks like she has thrown her toys out of the pram following a strop caused by not being offered a cabinet post.

Meanwhile, the Cabinet has a ring of something from the nineteenth century. All those Lords. Seems as though Labour have run out of talent in the Commons.

So Houdini Brown escapes again and the spineless jellies of the Labour party are stuck with the person they know is so very wrong for the post of PM. Not that the opposition want him gone before the general election. Time, I guess, to say thank you to all those jellies for their spinelessness.

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All previous predictions are off

Gordon Brown will continue as Labour leader until the general election. That is the prediction I have been making for the past year or so, ever since the rumblings of discontent began within Labour ranks about Brown. The resignation of Blears could well be the final nail in the coffin of that prediction. The Jacqui Smith announcement yesterday was something Brown could survive with a reshuffle. Now I am not so sure. It appears Blears has deliberately attempted to undermine Brown. What a strange time we are living in. I have never known anything like this before.
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More focus deliveries

I am currently walking to Lobley Hill from my village in Sunniside to deliver 500 focuses. It also gives me the chance to check out some casework issues and check on wild food sources on the way! Then I have to get back home to write my final focus for this election campaign.
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The Monday Morning Blog - move over Darling

It's day 23,456,936 of the MPs expenses scandal (or at least it feels like it!) and the spotlight is on Chancellor Alistair Darling. His sin, according to the Daily Telegraph, was to claim on two homes at the same time. Effectively, he claimed in advance for the service charge on his flat and shortly afterwards was appointed Chancellor with a posh address in the exclusive and sought after suburb of Downing St. I understand from the BBC this morning he has paid back the sum in question.

Meanwhile, it was revealed that Mr Darling appeared to have been living previously at no fixed abode - or rather, had switched his 2nd home 4 times in 4 years. What a pity he is presiding over increasing housing shortages and a slump in new house building for everyone else. But at least he's okay (until Brown decides to rid himself of Darling and appoints his chum Ed Balls in his place.)

The sacking of Darling as Chancellor is not that far fetched. Vince Cable has called for it! And if past precedent is anything to go by, Labour will ignore Vince's call, and then a while later will adopt it as their own idea.

No train journey to London this morning for me. No experience of National Excess's cancelled trains. No crawling out of bed at an uncivilised hour of the morning. This week I am at home to help in the Euro elections on my home patch.

Printing on a Sunday evening

I am in the office in Whickham printing my next Focus newsletter for Sunniside. And I can see as I look from the window a beautiful red sunset over the Derwent Valley. A gloriously sunny weekend which has resulted in my back being slightly burnt - I took my shirt off for an hour yesterday whilst on the allotment. Bit of a mistake.

I am waiting for Neil Bradbury, our Blaydon candidate, to arrive at the office. He has just produced a Focus for one of the towns in the constituency so will need to use the printing machine after me.

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What's coming up this weekend

I am sitting on the train heading home at the moment with my blackberry buzzing every few minutes. People are responding to a message I posted up an hour or so ago on Facebook about myself. You have to be a Facebook friend to know what it is. I'm leaving the announcement on the blog for a short while but let's just say that it means quite a big change for me, I am looking forward to it and it is something I have been planning for years.

Anyway, with that tantalising glimpse into my future now done, let's look at what's coming up this weekend. Tomorrow morning I will be at the Sunniside Methodist Chapel Fayre. My trips there always result in considerable purchases of strawberry plants and cakes. I see no reason why tomorrow will be any different.

Then I'm writing and delivering more focuses as well as spending a bit of time on the allotment. I have an entire bed to dig over. I'm thinking of putting in our old Ford Escort under the scrappage scheme to get a new rotovator!

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Why does McDonalds pay this Labour MP £2500 a day for "advice"

We have just had a snippet of what is to come shortly when MPs are required to publish their earnings and time spent on second jobs. Labour were the keenest advocates of this requirement, possibly thinking that it was part time Tories who would provide the most interesting copy for the media.

Alas for the hardened socialist brethren, it appears that one of their own is amongst the first to have his other earnings dragged out of the closet. And horror of horrors, the MP is on the payroll of the great symbol of capitalism, McDonalds.

Little Doug Henderson, the largely unknown Labour MP for Newcastle North, earns £25,000 for ten days work a year "advising" McDonalds. In case you have eaten too many Big Macs and are feeling somewhat mentally incapacitated as a result, that's £2500 for each day worked. What a whopper! (Okay wrong company!) There was I thinking it was only failed bank executives who clocked up salaries on that scale.

Quite why McDonalds think Little Big MacHenderson has anything to offer in the way of "advice" is beyond me. He didn't exactly cover himself in glory when Northern Rock (based in his constituency) went belly up. His advice to the government was to ignore Vince Cable's call to nationalise the failed company.

Anyway, I hope McDonalds feel they get their money's worth. After all, they have to sell an awful lot of big macs to pay for his advice. As for the money, I bet he's loving it.

It's not the first time I have seen this giant of capitalism cuddling up to crusty old socialism. I've visited Yalta a couple of times in the last few years. (It's in the Crimea in the Ukraine.) The Lenin statues are all still in place but the city's McDonalds on the promenade sits right next door to a Lenin statue. I bet he's turning in his grave (or in his Moscow mausoleum)!
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Labour MP's tax claims collapse overnight

This may just be an unbelievable coincidence! Last night I blogged that the Labour MP for Durham City, Roberta Blackman-Woods, was claiming that households were saving an "average" of £200 a month due to the VAT cut. I calculated this would mean a family would need to spend £8,000 on VAT rated goods a month.

I made a return visit to her website where she made the claim this morning and found an overnight rewriting of the offending article. Alas, the fantastic claims for the VAT savings have collapsed as quickly as Labour's credibility. Now she is claiming a mere £200 a year saving.

Her press release however is well worth a read. It is a good lesson in how to write the most puerile drivel going: http://www.24ten.co.uk/news/news_detail.asp?aID=599

This Labour MP thinks the average family spends over £8000 a month

Roberta Blackman-Woods is the barely known Labour MP for Durham City where she is defending a majority of around 3,000 over the Lib Dems. Hopefully, she will be one of those swept out at the general election when a bit of serious sweeping-out-of-the-contents-of-the-political-stable action by the electorate will reduce Labour's ranks to a rump.

She is a mega-super-loyalist backer of the Labour government, always voting for the whip. Her latest claim however is a real eyebrow raiser. According to her, the average family is benefitting to the tune of £200 a month from the VAT cut.

To achieve that sort of saving, the "average family" will have to spend in the region of £8,000 a month on VAT rated goods.

Not even MPs spending their full 2nd homes allowance will come close that that figure! This one really does take the biscuit (VAT zero rated of course!)

I'm sure Roberta Deadman-Walking's constituents will be interested to know how much she thinks they all have to spend.

Weekend round up

It is Tuesday but it is the start of the working week. Nevertheless, there is no "Monday (or Tuesday) Morning Blog" this week. It's half term, the political stories are all about expenses and that has been done to death on this blog (though I guess we will return to it at some point) and I used my main bit of material on Sunday for what would otherwise be the Monday blog post.

So, instead, here's my roundup of the last couple of day. On Sunday I got my hands dirty on the allotment battling with the fantastic crop of weeds that insists on growing the moment my back is turned. Removing them is a vast but delicate operation that results in a gigantic compost heap and sore knees. We also went on a foraging expedition - well, a walk to Sunniside Park, looking for beech and sloes to pick in the autumn. We found what we were looking for.

And yesterday, we went along to the Northumberland County Show. Photos for this will follow some time this week. Back at the house I uploaded the video that I have sold to a publisher to their ftp site. A 3 minute video, high resolution, took up nearly a gig of memory space even when zipped. Quite how my old, creaking home pc coped I'm not sure but it took over 4 hours to upload to the site!
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Off to the Northumberland County Show

This takes me back to the time nearly 20 years ago when I was candidate in Hexham. We are off to the Northumberland County show to look at tractors, sheep and chickens and generally have a good time. We are not looking to buy a duck house as a second home and we won't be buying horse manure (we use cattle manure on our allotment!) We are simply going there enjoy ourselves and get more ideas as we move towards self-sufficiency.

We left the car at home and are on the bus to Newcastle now. We then get the train out to the Tyne Valley. So in respect of getting up early to catch a train, it's just like any other Monday morning!

The first time we went to the show, it took us half an hour to get out of the car park. Since the show is next door to Corbridge train station, it would be madness (and more environmentally damaging) to drive. And our clapped out Ford Escort would have to complete with all those Range Rovers for a parking space. So let the train take the strain.
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Who said real politics is suspended?

Yesterday morning I headed down to Whickham village centre to help run a street stall with colleagues. We were collecting signatures on petitions opposing new parking charges plans for the village and proposals to take away some of our flower beds. In essence, it is the sort of thing that local politics is all about. But given the general climate about politicians at the moment, we gathered with a sense of trepidation. Just how were people going to respond to us?

Were people going to be angry, treat us with a "plague on all your houses" approach or be interested in what the petitions were about. As we started to gather signatures, I noticed we were all defensively making jokes to constituents about signing cheques for 2nd homes, clearing moats and buying manure and duck houses. People laughed and then talked about the issues on which we were collecting signatures. Very quickly, we discovered people were interested in local concerns and our battles for better facilities. And whilst people are hopping mad about some of the unforgivable expenses stories, for them, it was business as usual for local politics.

We now have 500 signatures on the petition opposing the new parking charges plan.

Afterwards, I went down to the village of Ryton where the Hirings (the annual fair) was on. I met up with more of my colleagues were doing a roaring trade in tombola tickets on the Lib Dem stall. Local politics, local campaigning, local fund raising, all still happening. Here in Gateshead at least, normal activities continue, despite the best efforts of Expensesgate to get in the way.

Visit Gateshead!

Another of my videos. This one is to encourage tourists to come to Gateshead. (I hope my appearance does not put people off!)

A patchy Conservative recovery

The most interesting point about the Chopwell and Rowlands Gill by-election in Gateshead last week was the big fall in the Conservative vote and share. It falls into a pattern of by-elections and to some extent local elections that has been in place for some time. The Conservative recovery in recent years has been patchy. It has been strong in some areas. In other areas it has simply not happened at all. The Labour heartlands used to have a strong Conservative vote. There were plenty of people who could be termed "working class Tories". And there have always been "middle class" areas within the Labour heartlands where in the past the Conservatives had significant traction. The Conservative appeal in so many Labour heartlands has now gone. The implosion of the Conservative organisation in the 80s and especially the 90s in Labour heartlands has, other than on occasioanly islands, been so extensive that there are no grassroots left to grown when the political sun shines for the Conservatives.

In by-election after by-election in wards in Labour heartlands, the Conservatives are more often than not coming behind the BNP in 4th place. In Chopwell and Rowlands Gill they were saved from humiliation of 4th place simply because there were only 3 parties standing. Nevertheless, the Conservative share was down 8%. It should be remembered that when Rowlands Gill was a ward in its own right 30 years ago, it returned Conservative councillors. It is a prosperous town which is exactly the sort of area where the Conservatives would normally be expected to do well. Last week they barely registered at all with the voters.

It was the same in my ward last year. Whickham South was Conservative until 1986. In the byelection in July, their vote was tiny. In a byelection in Salford yesterday, they came 4th. In a recent byelection in Hartlepool they came 5th. There is a clear pattern developing of the Conservatives being an irrelevant fringe party in some areas.

There are some exceptions. North Tyneside and Sunderland for example. But cross the border from those councils and the Conservatives are back in a desert.

Back in the 90s, Labour's then recovery was marked by the election of Labour councillors in areas where few had dreamed of Labour ever being elected. I always remember the shock people experienced when Labour councillors were elected in Isle of Wight. The equivalent Tory recovery is much more patchy. There are some in the Conservatives who think the general election is in the bag for them. They should not be so easy however with their confidence. They need to gain 130 seats to scrape in with a minimal majority. That is going to be a major challenge.
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Alan Beith as speaker

Alan Beith has put his hat in the ring to be the new speaker. Alan is superbly qualified for the post, not the least because he is respected across the parties. So I wish him well and if he is successful, I know he will do a good job.

The small drawback is that the speaker goes from being a party politician to being above politics. The effect of that will be that we lose our only Lib Dem MP is the region.
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And the oscar nomination for the best video shot on an island few have heard of is.....

I got a message tonight as I was sitting in Cowley St working on a Focus. It was from a major publiching company. They want to buy one of my videos! The price on offer is not going to make me rich but it's not to be sniffed at! It was shot on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean 18 months ago. All about how the islanders make salt from sea water! The only drawback is that I need to edit a high resolution version. That shouldn't take too long. I'll do it this weekend in between delivering Focuses and planting cabbages!

So, to the senior Labour councillor in Gateshead (the mayor!) who was talking to me at the Whickham Fayre on Saturday, and who poked fun at my videos - in a nice way of course - I have only one thing to say: keep watching my videos!
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The Monday morning blog: equity release for MPs - all within the rules of course

I was late to bed on Saturday evening, and just before I decided to call it a day, I caught the news on Sky that Fraser Kemp and David Clelland were the next features of the Telegraph's rolling campaign to out the more interesting details of MP expenses.

Having suggested to colleagues for a few weeks that the expenses of one MP in particular would make interesting reading, I ended up receiving a string of phone calls on Sunday morning, some of them before I was fully awake and out of bed, congratulating me on my prediction and urging me to get a copy of the Sunday Telegraph. So off I went to Sunniside Chapel Stores, via the allotment to open the greenhouse window, and bought a copy of the Telegraph for the first time in my life. And for good measure, I bought a copy of our regional newspaper, the Sunday Sun, which was featuring David Clelland, MP for Tyne Bridge (which is mainly in Gateshead) on the front page.

I am not going into detail at this point about Mr Clelland's expenses other than to outline them. He bought out his then partner's share of their jointly owned flat in London, allowing her to realise a substantial capital gain. Mr Clelland paid for this gain by increasing the mortgage on the flat and then passing the increased costs on to the Fees Office. I presume that Brenda paid capital gains tax on the substantial gains she made on this investment in the "booming" London property market, as Mr Clelland described it. Shortly afterwards, Brenda became Mrs Clelland.

Well, what an interesting equity release scheme for MPs! And of course, it's on expenses. I hope Mrs Clelland invested the money wisely.

Meanwhile, Fraser Kemp must have been three sheets to the wind when he bought 16 sheets for his one bedroom flat in London, all on expenses. It is mind boggling to think of what he needed so many sheets for. The quantity outstripped the requirements of a modest bed and breakfast establishment or a hospital ward! No doubt he turned as white as a sheet when he was exposed.

And finally to mortgages. Having gone through the reverse of equity release last year by paying off a chunk of our mortgage on our house, it is definitely a day to remember! (For us it was made more memorable when our bank temporarily went AWOL with our cash.) MPs Chaytor and Morley must have been on interest only or endowment mortgages (the figures for interest payment claims were just too high for a repayment mortgage that was about to be paid off). To pay off an interest only or endowment mortgage, the mortgagee has to hand over the money for the outstanding loan. Interest of £800 a month (which was what was claimed by Morley) equated back then to a mortgage in the region of £150,000. I can't imagine any circumstances in which a person will forget about having written out a cheque or carrying out a bank transfer for such a huge sum of money. So I find their explanation that it was all a mistake and they hadn't been aware that they had paid off their mortgages a bit hard to swallow.

No doubt, I will be returning to MP mortgage arrangements and equity release in the not too distant future.

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Things to do instead of watching Eurovision

1)write a Focus newsletter

2)have a nice long hot bath

3)catch up on the latest depressing news about MPs' expenses

4)All the above.

I'm opting for 4. I like multi-tasking.

Not a National Express rant

There is a possibility that National Express may have to give up the East Coast franchise. The idea has been doing the rounds for some weeks. It appears clear that, as the bid for the franchise was made during the Brown boom years, they have offered too much. Now that we are in the Brown bust years, the projections of revenue and passenger numbers are simply not enough to provide the income to pay the £1.4 billion they are required to pay over the next few years.. The franchise is going belly up.

The East Coast is the only profitable line on the rail network. Far from operating on a subsidy, it operates, or at least it did, at a profit. Companies bidding to operate the route, did so by offering a premium. On all other routes, train companies offered to run the trains on the least subsidy. The East Coast in effect was paying the subsidy for elsewhere on the rail network.

Now National Express is struggling. They have been caught out by the economy going belly up, having successfully bid for the route just as the credit crunch was kicking in. Just as Northern Rock was sinking into a sea of debt, National Express was sailing out onto the sea of train travel from its normal port of All-Things-Bus-And-Coach.

With future passenger figures evaporating, the talk is of their renegotiating or abandoning the franchise. Contrary to what you may think, I am not keen that National Express lose the franchise. I want them to run trains and a good rail service. I want them to stop cancelling the 7.40am on a Monday morning. But the idea that the trains will improve by yet another demoralising change in the franchise is not a view to which I subscribe. That said, I haven't a clue how to solve the problem on paying for and running the railways. State ownership saw the railways normally at the rear end of government investment plans. It meant having a rail system owned and operated by a body that was more interested in putting money into something else. Remember, Beeching was a government appointment and a government act of transport vandalism. So calling for nationalisation may get some people turned on and excited, but they have not yet demonstrated any evidence that the government's buying up of all railway operators will in any way benefit the rail system.

That said, the ownership of the infrastructure by the government is a sensible option. The collapse of Network Rail demonstrated that and there is an interesting comparison with the roads. Both are owned by the state but both are used by private operators.

Which still does not bring me to a solution to the East Coast franchise. Any ideas?

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New Blaydon Blogger

Neil Bradbury, our new candidate for Blaydon, has set up his own blog at http://neilbradbury.blogspot.com/. So pay him a visit and, no doubt, some of you may even want to respond to what he writes!

Chopwell and Rowlands Gill byelection result

Result just through in Chopwell and Rowlands Gill:

Lib Dem 898
Lab 1221
Con 177

Labour usually get in with a majority of 800-1000 so it is down heavily. If you look at my last post, it is in line with that.

The Tory vote however has been more than halved. Admittedly it was over two decades ago but the Tories used to be strong in Rowlands Gill. Now they barely register.
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A prediction for Chopwell and Rowlands Gill byelection

Chopwell and Rowlands Gill byelection in Gateshead today. This is normally a rock solid Labour ward. The Chopwell area has been represented by Labour since the First Eorld War. But Labour is going through a decidely bad patch and the question is, what effect will this have in CRG. The canvass has been encouraging but I like to believe these things when they happen. My feeling is that there will be a low turnout and Labour will hold on, though with a rather slimmed down majority compared to the supersized one they normally have. We will know in about 4 hours.

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Rhubarb!

No, not a comment on the latest revelations of MPs' expenses! It's my first crop from the allotment this year. A large quantity of rhubarb. That should make Cowley St happen. I use colleagues to market test my jam and they love rhubarb and ginger. Normally they can't get enough of the stuff. Well, supplies will soon be replenished!

More about the mad, mad world of Labour

I forgot to mention the following in my blog post this morning about Labour's mad attack on us in a safe seat they are defending in a byelection in Gateshead. A quick recap - Labour spent the weekend putting out leaflets attacking our candidate and foolishly (for Labour) focusing all their efforts on attempting to rebut our campaign. The result is that the entire campaign is now being fought on our agenda which contains a whole string of negatives on Labour. It is a classic on how to boost an opponent and undermine your own candidate!

Anyway, the bit I forgot to include this morning was about one of the photos in one of our Focus newsletters. It was of our candidate outside a boarded up shop in the ward. We are campaigning for the area to be regenerated. Labour however claim the shop there has been open for business for the past two years. They allege that the photo therefore had to be taken over 2 years ago.

It was actually taken one month ago! This incredible Labour gaffe leaves me wondering how much the councillor, who made the attack., knows his ward.

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Labour hit the panic button in by-election

Chopwell and Rowlands Gill in Gateshead is arguably one of Labour's safest wards in the country. Chopwell itself has been represented by Labour since the end of the 1st World War without interruption. A by-election is taking place in the ward and the contest will be held on Thursday.

The other two Labour councillors in the ward are John Hamilton and Mick McNestry. These are two individuals for whom I normally have a bit of time, though given the letters they have put out over the weekend, I suspect the sand is running out in the hour glass on that one, unless I happen to want a bit of time spent on being entertained by political court jesters!.

Yes, we have a classic example of Labour hitting the panic button and suddenly they have made all our issues about their own party, their candidate and their MP into top election issues for their own campaign. It's one of those situations you pray for. You produce your own literature with all your key campaign messages, all of which are damaging to Labour and you think, wouldn't it be fantastic if Labour fought their campaign trying to defend their own negatives and fail to get onto their own positives. Welcome to the mad, mad world of Labour in Chopwell and Rowlands Gill!

The letters they circulated over the weekend defended their decision to select a candidate from outside the ward. They also admit what we have been saying - that their candidate is a "reject" from another ward, having failed in a previous election.

They also have a go at "local lad Ray" - repeating the positive description we have used on him in our own literature! (Our candidate is called Ray Callender and is the only candidate who lives in the ward.)

In the leaflet we put out two weekends ago, we pointed out that the Labour MP for the area, Dave Anderson, had voted with the government on the Gurkhas - backing the government policy to kick many of them out of Britain. "This is quite simply untrue," they claim. Really!? In which case there needs to be an urgent police investigation for the real Mr Anderson must be kidnapped and an imposter put in his place who voted against the Gurkhas!

Labour also defend Mr Anderson's record on Post Offices - maybe it was another imposter who voted to continue closing them! But thanks Labour for focusing attention on a Labour negative.

So Mick and John, many, many thanks for the letters you put out over the weekend. Copies are on their way now to our HQ as examples of counter-productive panic attacks by opponents. If you are needing help to get your letters delivered, give us a call. I'm sure we can give a hand to get them out! They should be worth quite a few votes - to the Lib Dems of course!

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The Monday Morning Blog: how many Tory MPs does it take to change 25 light bulbs?

To which the answer is none. They get someone in to do it for them and then charge it to the taxpayer.

And talking of tax, all those Labour demands that there should be a clampdown on tax avoidance by the rich seem rather hollow now. Leather clad Hilary Blears, dressed for the part of Meatloaf's Eddie in the Rocky Horror Picture Show yesterday may have oozed sympathy for the voters who :"hate" all this, but her posturing simply made matters worse. She made a profit on the sale of her London flat of £45,000, almost twice the average annual wage, and then paid no tax on it, having previously soaked the taxpayer for the cost of the place. I wonder what her struggling constituents made of that.

So, for good measure, here are my proposals for reforming the 2nd homes allowance:

1)No entitlement for London MPs.

2)The constituency home (or within reasonable distance of the constituency) should be regarded as the main home, so the London home is all that is accepted for the allowance.

3)Reduce the level of allowance from the current level of £24,000.

4)Taper the amount an MP can receive. The costs of owning a second home in London go down over time (I can speak from experience) so once the start up costs are met, there is no justification for the continued high payments.

5)No entitlement to 2nd homes allowance for anyone with grace and favour accommodation.

And finally:

6)No entitlement to claim for furniture and electricals. After all, what is to stop them leaching back to the main home? MPs can easily afford to furnish 2 homes on what they earn.
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Give Margaret Moran MP enough rope to hang herself...and she'll claim it on expenses!

I didn't know whether to pity Labour MP Margaret Moran for her incredible stupidity in agreeing to be interviewed about her equally incredible expenses claims or to be angry that she has got away with such an incredible scam. She was certainly on the take today - she took the rope, lots of it, and well and truely hung herself on the BBC. We await the receipts to see if she charged the taxpayer for the rope.

Meanwhile, tourism minister Barbara Folly is hardly an advert for holidays in the UK. The streets are too unsafe for her to venture out of her ironclad, taxpayer funded fortress in Soho. For the cost of her security system we could have paid for half a police officer.

New candidate for Blaydon

Just finished the selection meeting for Blaydon. We have chosen Neil Bradbury as our new candidate. He is currently one of our Euro candidates and is a councillor in Prudhoe in the neighbouring constituency.
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Hustings, allotment and video-making - it must be the weekend coming up

Sitting on the train to Newcastle, I've just had a look at my list of things to do this weekend. Tomorrow morning is the hustings meeting for the Blaydon selection. I've been canvassed by two of the candidates, missed a third who called when I was out, missed a 4th who phoned when I was out and have heard nothing from the fifth. Tomorrow morning we shall know. One of the two candidates who called in person came down to meet up on the allotment! That's dedication! However, I want to see how they perform tomorrow before I take a final decision.

None of the candidates however will be able to do anything other than agree to take large quantities of leaflets for delivery in the Chopwell and Rowlands Gill by-election. The leaflets will be handed out before the speeches. We anticipate getting lots and lots of them delivered this way!

I've also been lined up to do a few photos of historic buildings this weekend. And I have 2 videos to finish filming and editing. Weekends wouldn't be weekends however without work on the allotment. We have a load of courgettes and gherkins to plant and rhubarb to pick.

And finally, on Sunday evening, I have a meeting about a venture with which someone is hoping for our involvement. More about this another time if it gets off the ground.
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David Cameron and the non-election in Newcastle

Does anyone get those David Cameron emails? I do! And I was quietly amused by the one that arrived tonight.

It talks about the local elections and taking the local election message to various named places, including Newcastle. Alas, this reference to my Tyneside neighbours overlooks the fact that there are no local elections in Newcastle this year!

There are also no Conservative councillors in Newcastle and they have no winnable seats.

Not the best flying start to your election campaign, is it David.?
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Weapon of Woolas Destruction

Well, I've seen nothing like it before and it reads more like a plot for a tv drama rather than real life. But Joanna Lumley was not acting today when she confronted and flattened Phil Woolas.

Not even John Major's government got kicked about like that. I'm sure it was a sobering experience for Woolas.
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An amusing incident I must pass on

A colleague of mine in the Lib Dem group in Gateshead passed this on to me and I was rather amused by it. I will not mention names or locations but here goes.

My colleague was delivering some Focus leaflets recently, one of which went through the door of the Labour councllor for the ward where my colleague was delivering. Inside Focus was a story about a local issue we were taking up. Moments after the Focus went through the door, the Labour councillor was running after my colleague demanding to know why Focus didn't mention anything about what he, the Labour councillor, was doing about the issue in question! He seemed most upset that he wasn't mentioned. (We weren't aware he had done anything about the issue and it did appear to have been left unsolved for some time.)

So it's nice to know that Labour councillors actually want to be mentioned in Focuses and also appear not to have thought of putting a newsletter of their own out in that area to explain what they do.

However, I am pleased to inform readers that tonight I wrote another Focus leaflet which does mention a Labour member and goes into a few details about what he has done recently. Gordon does, after all, provide us with some good copy for inclusion in Focus.
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Health campaigning MP turns chocoholic!

Sharon Hodgson, the Comedy World's very own infiltrator into the world of politics, has just performed her latest comedy turn. So what has this Labour MP for Gateshead East and Washington West been doing as her latest entry in the Political Comedy Awards? She is demanding lots and lots of chocolate be added to food served up in schools. The specific demand is for chocolate on flapjacks that are served up for kids. So, in questions to Schools Minister Jim Knight in the Commons last week, far from raising something important, Sharon Hodgson opts to be the Chocoholics' pin up with an absurb question to the minister about chocolate no longer being permitted on biscuits in school.

The chocolate topping has gone because standards of nutrition of food served in schools have been tightened. Recent attempts by the government to tackle the obesity timebomb however have themselves been backed by Chocolate-Adoring Sharon. So you would have thought she would have been all in favour of leaving off the chocolate. Maybe healthy eating was just a passing fad for her, something to be nibbled when she felt hungry for a bit of media coverage, but otherwise wasn't part of her normal political diet. She is, after all, the person who demanded cheap cola, popcorn and sweets for kids in an early day motion recently though she then went on to demand "healthy" school meals are served up for kids.

Consistency is not something to be associated easily with Ms Hodgson. She is as useful to politics and the people she represents as a chocolate fireguard is to a list of useful household appliances!
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The Tuesday morning blog: no, no, never, abolutely loyal, no way will I stand etc

The next stage of the Labour self-destruct process has begun. Or so it would seem. When Cabinet members have to tour tv studios on a bank holiday Monday to tell everyone they think the PM is wonderful, only person for the job, he walks on water, he is the only person who can lead Labour through difficult times, etc etc, then you know the rot has well and truely set in and the decline is terminal. Like a house suffering from dry rot, the structure is dangerous and costly to put right. Demolition is a better option.

I don't know whether to sympathise with the Lady Harriet or to laugh at her (possibly both). Her protestations that she doesn't want the leadership and will "never" want to be leader do not stand well beside what has clearly been a period of positioning by her. Nevertheless, she is almost certainly being completely honest when she says she does not want to be leader at the moment. After all, the chances of a heavy defeat for Labour are growing by the day, regardless of who leads them. Why grab the poison chalice now? Let Brown take the party to defeat then take on the role. It also avoids carrying the ignominy of being the PM with the shortest period in office.

So, Brown, as I have said on numerous occasions last year when Labour MPs messed about thinking they should dump him, is in post til the general election. After that, Labour will be reintroducing their very own style of bloodsport in which we are all spectators, assuming of course they are heavily defeated and go into opposition.

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Even the ultra-loyalist Blears turns on Brown

Okay, so she is a Blairite, but Hazel Blears has a reputation for being a Labour loyalist come-what-may. She always had a chirpie, rather irritating, often reality-free response to every Labour setback. So if she is making critical comment, the rot in the Labour party must be so far advanced that it is almost impossible to reverse in time to save them from a poor general election result.

I still hold to the view that it will be difficult for the Conservatives to emerge after the general electio with a majority. Labour in self-destruct mode will however hasten their own demise.
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The Eagle has landed

Back from annual council meeting in Gateshead. The new mayor has been appointed. He is John Eagle, member for Bridges ward in central Gateshead. He was described as "one of the longest serving members of the council" by his proposer who pointed out he had been elected in 1998. Given that I was first elected in 1987, what does that make me? Part of the fixtures and fittings or a permanent feature of the Gateshead political landscape, like a granite mountain, gradually being eroded away over time!? Strangely, I am still one of the youngest members on the authority after 22 years.

Anyway John. Good luck in the year ahead.

Backing the Gurkhas then stabbing them in the back

On my blog yesterday I praised the Labour MPs who rebelled against the government on the Gurkhas. A number of Labour MPs also openly abstained. Those abstaining were still standing out against the government. They did it knowing they could contribute to the defeat of the government, though it doesn't quite have the pulling power of a vote against Brown and his festering government.

That brings me to the Labour MPs who backed the Gurkhas in an early day motion that attacked the government for aiming to kickthe Gurkhas out of Britain. It also called for the rules to be rewritten to allow them to stay. It is reasonable to think that any Labour MP signing this motion would either vote against the government or at least abstain. No Labour MP calling on the government to scrap its rules to kick out the Gurkhas could possibly vote against a motion in Parliament calling for precisely that, could they? No one could be that two faced and hypcritical, could they? No one could be that eager to please two completely opposing sides by opting for both diametrically opposite points of view at the same time? Or could they? Could a Labour MP really sink to that level of complete and utter hypocrisy? Read on to find out.

Yes, you guessed it. At least one Labour MP was on hypocrite heat, drooling about how dreadful was his government and demanding a rethink on the Gurkhas by putting his signature to a pro-Gurkha early day motion only for him the very next day to vote the opposite and back the government's policy of booting most Gurkhas out of Britain.

David Anderson, Labour MP for Blaydon, hang your head in shame.

I don't know if there are other Labour MPs who have wallowed in the trough of hypocrisy like Mr Anderson. I didn't check. But if there are, they deserve the hard time that people should rightly give them.

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Labour - losing on the moral low ground

To go for a vote and lose on the moral high ground is one thing. To press for a vote and lose on the moral low ground is unforgivable. Well done to the Labour Gurkha rebels. Shame on the rest of Labour.
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The video - Nick Clegg leads rally welcoming Gurkha Commons vote

Just back from Parliament where I filmed Nick Clegg's speech to the Gurkhas after the historic Commons vote. Here's the video.

Labour oversteps the boundary (again)

The other day I brought you news of an impromptu redrawing of the boundaries of constituencies in Gateshead when Labour MP for Blaydon Dave Anderson MP announced that the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was somehow in his constituency (it's actually some distance from it!)

Now I can bring you another story of Labour not knowing where the boundary is. Chopwell and Rowlands Gill ward in Gateshead is in the west of the borough, bordering Derwentside. It is currently undergoing a byelection. And where does Labour deliver their byelection leaflets? In Derwentside, over the border not just from the ward but from Gateshead Council!

It gives a new meaning to all those Labour soundbites that they were "delivering for Britain." Keep it up guys!

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Weekend round up

Where is the rain when you need it? For the past month, ever since we fitted water butts on the allotment, we have had next to no rain. The result is we have had to bring water over from the house, some of it recycled grey water, but the rest from the mains. Pouring water suitable to drink ourselves all over the ground is a bad use of a resource and is unsustainable environmentally. So collecting rain water is a sensible option when you need large quantities of it to pour all over your plants. No rain falling is a bit of a pain so whilst wishing for rain may be a bit of a minority interest, the fact it did rain on Saturday was met with a significant degree of relief by us!

Talking of the allotment, I was canvassed by one of the candidates for the Blaydon Lib Dem selection, whilst down on the allotment yesterday afternoon. He phoned when he found we were not at home. Since it was just a 2 minute walk, I invited him down. I am keenly waiting for the other 4 candidates to knock on the gate of the allotment as well!

Saturday was spent at the Northern Region conference where the guest speaker was Party President Ros Scott. She and husband Mark had endured National Express to get to the North East. I was there mainly to do photos. I will post up a few soon.

I am now on the train to London. Someone recently posted a comment asking me if I ever have anything positive to say about National Express. These things are of course all relative so here is my relatively positive comment about National Express: what a joy - National Express has not cancelled my train. How jolly good of them!

Anyway, wake me up when we get to Kings Cross. And if I don't fall asleep (unlikely) I have a book on keeping chickens to read.
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The Monday Morning Blog: between a Northern Rock and a hard place

I was rather struck by the lead story in the Journal this morning. It was about Northern Rock. There is a suggestion doing the rounds that the government will sell it off by the end of the year, possibly to Sandander or Virgin. The explanation was that the sale may be needed as the government's finances are in such a dire state.

Whilst I don't think the possibility of a sale can be ruled out, I think the chances are rather distant. Northern Rock is still a loss maker and still owes the government quite a few billion quid. The current state of the markets means that financial shares are not fetching a great deal. Any sale will generate few returns and make only a marginal impression on government debt. The situation may be different in a few years' time. Financial shares hopefully will have recovered and privatising the bank will make sense at that point.

What strikes me as interesting is that Newcastle Central MP Jim Cousins was quoted in the Journal as wanting assurances the sale will not go ahead. Mr Cousins, however, was one of the leading critics of the Lib Dems for proposing nationalisation of the Rock back in 2007. The Labour party in the North East back then where unanimous in their belief that a government buy-out of the bank would lead to the end of civilisation and the death of all first born. Now they are concerned that the same outcome will occur if the bank is sold off. It's a funny old world.

Mind you, a sale to another company has to be resisted. If there is one thing we should learn from the recent banking crisis it is that the banks as individual organisations are too large, remote and, given the chance, irresponsible. Merging more of them just perpetuates the problem. It's one of the main reasons why Lloyds should not have been able to take over Halifax. Northern Rock is downsizing, hence the ability to pay off over half the company's debt to the Bank of England. When it is in fit shape to return to the private sector, it will be smaller but leaner. And it should be independent and free standing.

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Hollinside Manor

My latest local news video for constituents, this one is about the repair work to Hollinside medieval, fortified manor house which is on English Heritage's At Risk list.

Labour need a war - after all, it worked for Thatcher

Gordon Brown, sitting in the Downing St bunker, contemplating the reception to his budget and attempting to generate a new image for his party as New, Old, Retro Labour, needs to look around to find the winning ticket for the next general election. As things stand at the moment, the prognostications are not looking good.

He needs something that will unite the country, drive the bad economic news out of the headlines and get the nation backing him. He needs a war! After all, it worked for Thatcher back in the early 80s. Down in the polls, recession biting and unemployment rising, the Argentinians gave her a hand up by invading a colony few people in the UK could place on a map. Since Brown is a bit of a Maggie fan, having had her round for tea at Downing St (whilst making sure the press were there to cover it), perhaps he could follow her example and have a war.

So, as luck would have it, Britain and the Argentinians are currently having a bit of a spat about where the boundary lies in the South Atlantic between Argentina and the Falklands. It's all about fishing rights and oil.

Brown would, no doubt, argue that a war would be a great boost to the economy (look at the 1930s!) The Conservatives could be painted as a "do nothing" party on the war. In typical new Labour style, they could have targets for shooting down enemy planes and capturing Argie soldiers. The war could be blamed on irresponsible bankers who lent rival fishing fleets unsustainable sums of capital to build new fishing fleets. And ministers could introduce a scrappage scheme for old British warships. They could argue the war will be over by Christmas and 2010 will see a year of strong growth in international relations.

Meanwhile Derek Draper could be drafted in to compile a dossier on the Argentinians with lots of unfounded smears on their leading fishing vessels (they can launch a fleet of trawlers in 45 minutes - and other stuff like that!)

Without a war, there ain't much left for Labour to give them hope of winning a general election. That's not to say they won't win, and it's certainly not saying the Conservatives will win. They do, after all, have to gain 130 seats and even with an 18% opinion poll lead, they are still a year away from the election and they still keep screwing up on the ground - two council byelection losses today for example, one to Lib Dems, one to Labour.

Mind you, last time Labour took the country to war, it was a disaster. So perhaps not such a good precedent after all!

National Express complaints rise by 22%

I couldn't let this go by without a comment. The Newcastle Journal recently carried an article informing readers that complaints about National Express "have soared", making it the 2nd most complained about train company in the country. (They were beaten by Virgin West Coast.) A spokesman for National Excess blamed "operational issues" - in other words they couldn't "operate" a Hornby trainset, never mind real trains.

It is however interesting to note that the term "complaint" is used in this context. I asked for a "complaints" form a couple of weeks ago when Nat Excess cancelled my train yet again (operational issues of course) and was given a "comments and compliments" form.

The Journal article quoted Dave Clelland, the Labour MP for Tyne Bridge. I did actually agree with what he said but he was an odd choice. Mr Clelland much prefers to fly to London. His sky high expenses bill shows that to be the case.

Anyway, as luck would have it, I am now on a National Excess train heading home to the North East. Because of a completely unnecessary strike on the Victoria Line (something to do with the way train doors open) I ended up going on a long detour around the tube. So when I got to Kings Cross, there was no time to get a sandwich. So a few minutes ago, I headed down to the train's buffet car and discovered they are out of everything except lager, tea and crisps. I decided not to have the lager. So, hungry as I am, I've had to phone home to ask David to make me some sandwiches which I can have when I get home, which won't be til about 2.30am. Oh joy.
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Did the earth move for you today?

Do you remember the Labour attack on the Lib Dems before the general election, claiming we had "uncosted" spending plans, and our "figures didn't add up"? Vince Cable was slammed for wanting to spend a few hundred thousand pounds on bee research, one of the "100 uncosted spending commitments" Labour dribbled and drooled about. The end of the world was predicted if such sums were spent. Now the same Labour party casually announces that they have put us one hundred thousand million zillion pounds in debt. Oh, and the end of the world must be near as well as they have also agreed to funding bee research.

Can anyone take these people seriously again?

The announcement of £175 billion of debt this year was earth shattering. This is of earthquake proportions.
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City Status for Gateshead

I was in the sandwich shop near Smith Square in Westminster when I got the call from the Journal a couple of hours ago. They wanted my views on Gateshead applying for city status. A great idea, I replied. Go for it. As a Gateshead lad, born and bred, wouldn't it be great to be on Gateshead City Council?

By the way, do you realise how difficult it is to do a media interview at the same time as ordering a sandwich? If I am quoted tomorrow, and the words, "Yes, I'll have onions with city status" appear, we will know that the two conversations got mixed up!

Now, back in the office and I am being buried under the weight of budget details. I need a mug of tea to revive me!

MP oversteps the boundary

I stumbled across this oral question from Labour MP Dave Anderson in the House of Commons to Health Secretary Alan Johnson on 24th March:


"Will the Secretary of State look into the situation where Newcastle hospitals have withdrawn from the joint partnership on laundry services with the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Gateshead in my constituency?"


The question was a reasonable one to ask. Newcastle have decided to ship their laundry 200 miles down the road to put it through the washing machine. From an environmental perspective, it doesn't make sense. The explanation to the reason for sending dirty linen such as distance probably lies with simple costs.

That however, is not the reason I raise this. I just thought I would point out to Mr Anderson that the Queen Elizabeth Hospital is not is his constituency. It is, infact, a modest distance to the boundary!

So, just to be helpful, I'm thinking of pointing out Mr Anderson's need for geography lessons in future copies of Focus!

Perhaps Mr Anderson was launching an invasion to save the poor people of Gateshead East from being represented by Labour MP Sharon Hodgson (though she has been dumped by the Gateshead Labour Party as candidate for the next general election). She altruism does you proud Dave!

Weekend round up

I spent surprisingly little time on the allotment over the weekend. A couple of hours weeding on Saturday and a visit to check all was well on Sunday. Looks as though we are heading for bumper rhubarb, onion and garlic crops. And everything planted in the new greenhouse is coming along in leaps and bounds. Otherwise, nothing new planted (but there's plenty coming up).

It was however something of a history weekend (history, not historic!) I did some research on various old buildings in the Whickham area. And yesterday, I had lunch with a couple of historian friends of mine in Tynemouth, Norman McCord and Frank Manders, hopefully getting them interested in some of the work I am preparing. Meanwhile, I filmed more of a video I am working on.

I am now on the train to London. It will be a short visit. I come back home on Wednesday for full council on Thursday.

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The Monday morning blog: when predictions go wrong

I guess we have all been there: made a prediction that turns out to be we'll off the mark. For example, back in September 2007 I predicted there would be an autumn election as there was no way the government would allow all that speculation to grow and they wouldn't be stupid enough to allow all the hype to run riot. I rather underestimated Labour's stupidity!

So the talk in the media this morning is of how far from reality were the Chancellor's predictions last November for the economy. Clearly the predictions suggesting boom times ahead are going to have to be revised by the Treasury. What gets me however is that last November, no one believed the predictions other than ministers. I remember listening to them in sheer disbelief. People without even a basic grounding in economics knew they were rubbish. Presumably the Chancellor will have to correct them on budget day on Wednesday. They will probably blame the "international situation."

Meanwhile, I will have to revise my analysis of the polls which I posted on this blog last week and which was written originally for Parliamentary Campaigner. The polls over the weekend have been dire for Labour and the smears issue seems to have damaged them, at least temporarily, far more than I expected. Interestingly, though the Tories have a strong opinion poll lead, their vote share has not improved from earlier this month. Their lead is based much more on Labour weakness than their own strength.

Whether or not this Labour weakness is carried over into the general election, which will presumably be in May next year, will only be known once that contest is held. Predictions for the outcome, however, need to be taken with a strong dose of caution. After all, we don't want to do a Darling.
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It's a miracle: National Express doesn't cancel my train

Whenever I book the 7.40am Newcastle train to London on a Monday morning, I always turn up at the station with a sense of trepidation. Will the service be cancelled? It often is. Today, I am pleased to report that the departure board indicates a minor miracle. The train is not only not cancelled but is alleged to be on time. Wow!
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Jacqui Smith's carbon footprint on MPs' expenses

The Sunday Times lists some of Jacqui Smith's expenses for housing her husband. We all know about the cost of the Smith family porn viewing habits (what they do in their own home is their own business - except when the taxpayer has to pick up the tab). What is included in the list however is a patio heater.

So at a time of rising fuel poverty when hundreds of thousands of people, especially the elderly, cannot afford to heat their homes, those very same people are having their taxes spent on heating the great outdoors on the patio of the Smith family. Not only are these heaters absolutely appalling for the environment, morally and socially it is absolutely wrong that such an item could be claimed as an expense.

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All that glistens isn't Gould

Before the Labour selection for Erith and Thamesmead was abandoned yesterday, I did look at the allegations against Georgia Gould and thought they were a bit thin. Basically, it looked like the whinging of people who thought their favoured local son should be given a nice cushie job which is about to be whisked away from underneath them by a better organised individual who has a well run campaign team behind her. The allegations of nepotism seem a bit far fetched. She has not been imposed on the constituency as a shortlist of one person. She has to run the gauntlet of a selection process in which the members vote to choose their new candidate. My suggestion to the other candidates would be (had the whole selection process not been halted) get out and engage the members.

But that sort of thing doesn't enter the mindset of so many in the Labour party. Engaging with people is not a priority. I have seen too many examples of Labour being fundamentally hostile to engagement with people once they are elected. It's simply not part of their culture. So when someone comes along and disturbs their cosy quiet life and attempts to take from a favoured son (or daughter) an elected position they believe is theirs by right (whether that be an opposition candidate or an outsider within their own local ranks) they don't know how to react.

Labour has, of course, since self-destructed in Erith. Trust Labour to screw up. It seems they have a remarkable willingness to drag all their squabbles and infighting into the open. Were Labour to lose the next general election, they will be free to let all their internal tensions rip. And if you think there is plenty of blood on the walls now, just wait til they enter the killing fields after defeat.

As for Georgia Gould, she is probably feeling rather sore at the moment. Today could have been the first day of her election campaign. Instead, it is just another day of bloodletting..

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I suppose this is why Brown was elected unopposed

I assumed back in 2007 that Brown was returned unopposed because he was seen as the clear front runner and indeed a dead cert to get the Labour leadership. Why alienate the guy who was virtually certain to be PM? Recent events given an indication as to how he was able to achieve such a position.

It seems that the machine Brown built up around him whilst at the Treasury was what helped him to bludgeon his way to the top unopposed. Anyone who stood out as a potential rival was simply bumped off in the middle of the night by a briefing with the press. Instead of inspiring respect and admiration, he propagated fear and in some cases loathing.

The same machine followed him into Downing St, becoming a loyal Prime Ministerial Praetorian Guard or a Brownite secret political police with files and information on everyone, free to fill those same files with any innuendo, misrepresentation and unfounded rumour they could get their hands on. And when the time was right, the contents of those files, whether true or false, could be released to destroy opponents.

Brown didn't have to know about what was happening. He didn't need to. All he needed was a system that got rid of turbulent opponents. And whilst the medieval practice of hacking difficult archbishops to death may not find favour now, the hacking to death of others' political careers is what the Brown machine excels at.

There is a certain degree of rough and tumble in politics. What someone says and does in public office is fair game. The Brown cabal not only over stepped the mark however, they pole vaulted across it. Brown may try to blame out of control individuals - and I have seen the damage out of control individuals in the Labour party can do locally to their own party - but he created the machine and he must carry responsibility for it.

Derek Draper - always a Labour ticking timebomb waiting to go off - and Damien McBribe may well have been cast out into the wilderness by Labour but there is nothing to suggest the machine itself has been dismantled. Brown's inner sanctum may well be an old machine that pumps out lots of poisonous emissions, but he does not look set yet to introduce a scrappage scheme for it.
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Email newsletter just done

I suspect my email account at the Lib Dems nearly burnt a hole in the Cowley St server tonight. Firstly, my Gateshead colleague and regional Euro agent Frank Hindle wanted me to send a message out to everyone on my North East Democrat list. Then I sent out eFocus, my email newsletter to constituents which had additions only minutes before I hit the send button. So a four figure number of people who got emails from me this evening. Next week brings the North East Democrat (publication hopefully on Tuesday) and more eFocuses. What did we do before email?

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No BNP candidate in Chopwell and Rowlands Gill

I have just received notification of who isn't standing in the Chopwell and Rowlands Gill By-election, the ward next to mine in Gateshead. And the BNP are not standing. I know we are. I know Labour are (they are defending what is one of their afest seats in the area). Not sure about the Conservatives though I guess they will fly the flag. The BNP didn't stand here last year but they did in a previous contest. I guess they think western Gateshead is rather barren territory for them.

The byelection is on 14th May. It's all hands on deck now. With nominations closing today, I can blog a bit more about the contest. I have personally delivered 1000 leaflets in the ward over the past month or so. It tends to be done on Sunday afternoons when I enjoy a walk around Rowlands Gill watching the red kites swooping above me.

Meanwhile, my spies tell me that Labour aim to be out and about in Chopwell on Saturday morning.

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New facilities for councillors?

I was sent a survey yesterday by officers in the Civic Centre asking my opinion on facilities and accommodation for councillors in Gateshead Civic Centre. Was I satisfied with what we had? Were improvements needed?

Now is hardly the time to be considering investing in better accommodation for councillors. This should be at the bottom of the list of priorities. I wrote back:

Given the current financial circumstances, the demands on council resources and rising unemployment in the borough, I feel it would be very inappropriate at this stage to refurbish members' accommodation.

I'll keep you posted on whether or not my views have any impact.

Polls and by-elections analysis March - April

I wrote the following article for Parliamentary Campaigner but thoguht it useful to post it here as well. The analysis covers polls and council by-elections from 1st March to 9th April.

If Labour had hoped for a G20 'bounce', all they got was one very short lived blip. On 4th April YouGov put them at 34%, with a Conservative lead of 7%. Two days later, Labour were back down to 30%.

The range of shares of the vote from 1st March to 6th April are as follows:

Conservatives: 40-44% - but 7 out of the 11 polls put them on 41-42%
Labour: 28-34% - but 7 out of the 11 polls put them on 30-31%
Liberal Democrats: 14-20% - but 8 out of the 11 polls put them on 17-19%

In effect the polls have been steady for six weeks. Blips have happened but they were small. This means that the Conservatives, who need a 10% lead in the popular vote to win a majority, are only scraping along at the lower end of what they need to win. When the general election comes, that lead, enjoyed whilst Labour are suffering from the recession and a strong dose of midterm blues, is not large enough to give them the cushion they need to be assured of victory.

The Conservatives cannot afford any slip up in the General Election. They need to gain over 130 seats so with such a huge challenge, failure to capture any individual seat on their target list will make it all the more difficult to win with a majority.

Council by-elections

The Conservatives' performance in recent Council by-elections has not reflected their opinion poll performance. Whilst patchy, it nevertheless makes uncomfortable reading for David Cameron's party.

They were 4th in Manchester, Redcar and Cleveland and Dundee and 5th in St Helens.

In a seat in Camden they held til 2006, the Lib Dems saw their majority rise from a handful of votes to a 3 figure sum.

In Calderdale, they held on to the seat but their share droped from over half to just over a third.

They lost 3 seats: to Labour in Redditch and North Warwickshire and to the Lib Dems in Broadland (where the Lib Dem share increased by 50.4%)

In the 30 by-elections fought by the Conservatives from the start of March up to Easter, their vote went down in 20 (9 of them by over 10%)

In conclusion, whilst the polls are showing a Conservative lead, they are only at the fringes of the comfort zone. When faced with voting Conservative in real elections however, the Conservative performance fails to hold on to the gains made in local election votes that have come their way since the 2005 general election.

Marley Hill's missing banner

Sunniside History Society have been in touch with me to ask for my help in tracking down a missing Victorian miners' banner. Marley Hill is a small, former pit village just up the road from Sunniside where I live. As well as being the location of Dad's allotment (!), it was also the last, non coastal deep mine in the region, closing in 1984. It was also the last pit in the region to use pit ponies, and once the pit closed, the ponies went into retirement.

Members of the history society are concerned that the banner, which has enormous historical value to the former miners of the area and to the local community, has gone missing from the NUM Headquarters in Durham. Enquiries have so far failed to locate it.

If you know of its whereabouts or any information that could help us locate it, please get in touch with me on cllr.jwallace@gateshead.gov.uk.

Wandering around the sewage works

No, not a video about Downing St as someone suggested to me on Facebook the other day! This is me with my historian's hat on, wandering around the derelict sewage works that up to 60 years ago served one of the villages near to where I live. The plant is long forgotten but I rediscovered it again 3 weeks ago. I returned over Easter to filmed and photograph it.

Weekend round up: planting potatoes and investigating sewage works

Four days at home. Bliss! The time seemed to be split between the allotment, making videos, trying out new wild foods recipes and visiting local places of historical interest.

So, I am now the proud owner of 4 furrows of potatoes on the allotment. In total that's 20 metres of spuds growing. Following the disaster of our crop last year, this time we meticulously planned what we were doing. So hopefully, this year we will have potatoes galore.

Local historical sites of interest visited were the Tanfield Railway, the world's oldest steam railway, which happens to be within walking distance of my house. And yesterday, we walked down to some woodland near our village where, a couple of weeks ago, I discovered a large set of foundations. A bit of research and I discovered the building was the sewage works built by Chester le Street Rural District Council in the early twentieth century. Maps suggested the site was out of use by the early 1950s. Since I had come across no references to the site in any histories of the area, David and I decided to explore the site a bit further and took cameras and video with us.

A weekend wouldn't go but without my coming up with new recipes for wild foods. I produced two. The first was a wild leaf salad consisting of dandelion, wild parsley, bramble shoots and hawthorn leaves, with a dressing made of raspberry vinegar. Very nice! The second was a wild garlic loaf. That's in my bag now, heading to London, along with two fillets of smoked salmon. I was give a food smoking kit for Christmas and we tested it out last night on a couple of piece of cheap salmon. The results are encouraging.

No weekend can go by without a Focus delivery. I did two patches.

And finally, back to food. We did a full check on the contents of the freezer. Quite why we have frozen tarragon, best before 1999, is a point we can't answer. I made a note of all the contents, though the really old stuff we decided to put out for the birds or put in the compost bin. Now I have to plot a series of meals to get the food used up. After all, we'll need the space soon for our first crops (and the ice cream we are planning to make).

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The Monday morning blog on Tuesday - time for a Tory apology now

The Tories are demanding an apology from Gordon Brown over the Damian McBride affair. They are owed one but don't wait by the phone. As we all know, neither Brown nor Labour do apologies. I'm still waiting for an apology from Labour 17 years after they ran a pretty vile campaign against me in Hexham in the 1992 general election.

Yet there is something missing from all this. The Tories themselves owe the Lib Dems an apology. For years their candidate in Watford conducted a campaign of criminal damage and smears against Lib Dems in the constituency. The candidate ended up being found guilty after a long running police investigation and a major court case. The candidate has since gone but there has not been a word of regret or apology from the Tories. Watford was, at the time, a target seat for the Tories. The chances are that the criminal behaviour of their former candidate has sealed the Tories' fate of coming 3rd in Watford.

So, David Cameron, despite repeated requests for an apology, nothing is forthcoming. It would appear that, like Gordon, you don't do apologies.
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What I was doing yesterday - the Tanfield Steam Railway

I went to the world's oldest steam railway, the Tanfield Railway, which also happens to be on the edge of my village of Sunniside in Gateshead yesterday. It was like a giant trainset for boys who haven't grown up! Great fun. Enjoy the video.

The Emily Thornberry television car crash

I have just watched Labour MP Emilly Thornberry being inverviewed about the Damian McBride affair on News 24. It was a car crash of a performance, claiming she couldn't care less about whether or not this civil servant Labour hack should be able to stay in his job. And she even tried to blame the whole mess on right wiing bloggers who, she claims, are much more keen on running smear campaigns against their opponents. Hardly makes it okay, does it?

Whilst I don't expect attempts at running smear campaigns to be an institutional decision within Labour, the fact that someone so senior and close to the centre of power has been caught red handed highlights the depths of despair to which Labour have sunk as they see their hopes of winning a general election outright slipping from their grasp. What it suggest is that the next election will not necessarily be a clean campaign.
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What possessed me to get this train?

I guess the answer to my own question is the availability of tickets. Normally I try to avoid getting the 10pm train out of Kings Cross to Newcastle. I have been quite successful at avoiding it for the past year or so. But not tonight. I guess there has been a rush of people to get tickets on the earlier trains due to the bank holiday tomorrow. The additional drawback with this service is that we all have to change at York. Literally, everyone on the train, including the crew, transfers across the plaform at York station, and then waits of the other train for about 25 minutes until it is scheduled to leave. For this frustrating activity, I am not going to blame National Express. GNER used to do the same thing.

I am not expecting to get home until about 2.30am. I have a weekend of allotment gardening and video making but tomorrow morning I am having a lie in!

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Early spring on the allotment

Just in case anyone is interested, here's the latest video about what I get up to on my allotment!

Red faces as Labour councillors forget words to Red Flag

Thursday 26th March saw the final meeting of Blyth Valley District Council. The decision to consign the authority to the history books had been controversial, but nevertheless, as the ruling Labour group gathered to rule for one last time, the tones of "Red Flag" started to pour from the lips of the "socialist" brethren.

Alas, this last act of defiance against the new Lib Dem run Northumberland Council (or was it against their own government? - both are viewed as the enemy by the departing brothers and sisters) turned out to be a bit of a disaster as so few of them knew the words!

Apparently many of the red hot socialists had to fill in their gaps in their knowledge of the lyrics by singing "la la la". No one had thought to download the words to this Socialist singalong favourite from the internet.

I guess they won’t be keeping the Red Flay flying there anymore.

2nd video with 100,000 viewings

Thought I'd post this video I filmed on the London Eye to celebrate its becoming my second on YouTube to reach 100,000 viewings. My top video, "Inside a former secret Soviet submarine base", is on 109,000 but London Eye is closing fast.

Weekend round up

Quite what possessed me to get the 7am train this morning to London is beyond me, but at least National Express has been kind enough to avoid cancelling the service. Whether or not they cancel the 7.40am, their favourite candidate for the chop, is something I don't know.

Anyway, seeds was the theme for my weekend. We must have planted thousands on the allotment. Peas, beans, chard, parsnips, courgettes, carrots, leeks, you name it, we probably planted it! And three videos made as well, about the allotment and wild food foraging and cooking.

Screw up of the weekend was to forget to go to the Saltwell Park Fair, despite its being in my diary. But at least I got my weekend allocation of focus newsletters delivered.

Anyway, we have just passed York. Next stop is Kings Cross. Wake me up when we arrive.

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The Monday Morning Blog: General Election Predictions

I haven't seen any polls over the weekend so I don't know if Brown has had a G20 bounce. My feeling is that, whilst it no doubt helps to restore some degree of success to Brown's image, the gathering itself was largely irrelevant to the day-to-day concerns of the majority of ordinary people. That is not to detract from what the conference achieved. Oiling the jammed up wheels of international trade will ultimately benefit all of us.

The resulting spring in the heals of Brown won't tempt him to go for an election this year. Whilst these may be famous last words, Brown knows that recovery and a feeling that the economy has turned a corner and things are improving are what Labour needs to stand any chance of winning an election. With the Chancellor already claiming that there will be no recovery this year, Labour's window of opportunity is now just a very narrow slit in an imposing wall.

So come the next election, what are the possible outcomes? Polls currently suggest a Conservative victory with a comfortable majority. Polls mid term however tend to do just that: show a lead for the opposition. I am not convinced however that the Conservatives have what it takes to win a majority next time round. To scrape in with a minimal majority, they need to gain 130 seats. That means there is virtually no room for any individal constituency cock ups. Every single seat on their hit list has to be won. The evidence suggests that that is going to be extremely difficult to achieve.

And look again at what the polls are showing. Look at the Conservative share of the vote. It is, with a small number of exceptions, in the low 40s. That compares poorly with the Labour performance under Blair in opposition in the 1990s (and Kinnock's Labour Party often had much higher ratings in 1991, only to lose the election a year later). The reality is that whilst Labour are unpopular, the Conservatives have not yet reached the critical mass of public support that will be strong enough to propel them into government in one leap. There is no public burning appetite for them like there was for Labour when Blair led them through the final years of the Major government.

Whilst it is fair to say that Cameron has successfully decontaminated the Conservative brand, there is as yet a failure to present an alternative vision other than "We are not Labour." That is not enough to ensure a groundswell of support sufficient to win an election.

As for Labour, the difference between winning comfortably, and losing a reasonably large number of seats is quite narrow. Labour's grip on power is precarious. Their share of the vote at the last election was 36%, the same as they got in 1979 when they lost the election badly to Thatcher. In 2005 Labour were saved by a voting system that looked on them favourably but which can equally give them an absolute pasting and keep them out of power, which it did in the 80s and early 90s.

Labour has three significant systemic weaknesses at the moment: their national organisation is in a mess with massive debts; their constituency organisation is shot to bits; their great selling point - that they are strong on the economy, abolished boom and bust and delivered prosperity - has gone up in smoke. All three of these are needed if they are to win a general election outright.

So predictions on the outcome, whenever the election is called? Sorry, no can do! The next election is probably going to be the most unpredictable for decades. What is predictable though is that the real battles will be fought out in individual constituencies, far more so than across the airwaves. And that could see seats going in all directions.

My advice however is that no one in politics should rely on their opponets to deliver election success for them. That is your job to do that for yourself.

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What's coming up this weekend

I am now on the train heading back to the North East. The weekend will be the usual mix of allotment, Focuses, campaigning and video making plus a hush hush meeting about which I ain't going to tell you anything. We also have to make a visit to B&Q. I don't know what for, I simply got the message from David that we need to go to buy something for the allotment.

Anyway, I need to shoot some video about our drive to self-sufficiency. Surprisingly, my videos about this are getting a healthy number of viewings on YouTube. There seems to be an 'appetite' for them! I never would have guessed so many people would be interested in how to make nettle tea or build a greenhouse! I also need to do some research for some history videos I'm planning though whether or not I'll fit that in is questionable.

I also need to make a start with Parliamentary Campaigner. Publication date is this Thursday so I'd better get a move on.

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The Brown G-string and the smile on his face

The G20 circus has now left town and Gordon has enjoyed himself. I hadn't seen him smile like that since he announced the abolition of the 10p rate and thought he'd got away with it. Pity for him that he has to stop hanging around with his fereign buddies and return to work with all those Labour ministers and MPs who have grown to despair of him.

Trade credits and the decision of the creditor nations such as China to pump a trillion dollars into the IMF is a significant step. No doubt Brown will claim it was all down to him. Perhaps he had some hand in the outcome, or perhaps it was going to happen anyway as world leaders could see the dire consequences of not oiling the wheels of international trade.

Action on tax havens was also welcome and on this, Sarkozy can probably claim more credit than Brown. After all, the latter has, since 1997, been the protector of offshore tax havens. Only recently has be realised he's been seen hanging around with the wrong kids on the financial block and has turned on them to create the impression he's been against them all along.

It appeared yesterday that Brown had pulled a rabbit out of the hat with the agreement. As is always the case with Brown however, wait for the headlines and euphoria to die down and then look again at the rabbit. Too often in the past, the white rabbit pulled out of the hat is little more than the victim of a spin doctoral roadkill which is already reeking and rotting. We shall need to see what the G20 agreement details are before we should make our final judgement.

It could be that Emperor Gordon is posing in his new clothes and until the euphoria has passed, no one can bring themselves to tell him all he is wearing to cover his embarrassment is his G-string.

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The barriers go up at National Express

No, they haven't seen me leading the Charge of the Light Brigade. It's much worse than that! Work is taking place at Kings Cross which looks as though it is to set up ticket barriers. So not only do we have the privilege of having our trains cancelled by National Express, we can add to that the privilege of being delayed at the station as hundreds of people, complete with bags galore, attempt to squeeze through the barriers. It will be chaos. So, are you up to the National Express steeplechase gold cup challenge? Get ready to enjoy the spectacle! As for those of us who will be competing on this obstacle course, have pity on us.

I did of course expect this work to be carried out. Last year National Express announced they were seeking planning permission to install barriers at Newcastle Central. I found out as The Journal phoned me for a comment. Writing blog posts about this bus turned train operator certainly helps to get me noticed, even if it hasn't led to the end of my train service being cancelled.

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Gain from Labour in Redcar and Cleveland

News has reached me of a gain from Labour in the Dormanstown byelection in Redcar and Cleveland yesterday. And yet again, the Conservatives trail in 4th place behind the BNP.

The result is:
Ken Lucas (Lib Dem) - 809
Marion Fairley (Lab)- 667
Lynn Payne (BNP) - 305
Barry Hughes-Mundy (Con) - 125

Labour have had quite a bad time of late in Redcar and Cleveland. looks as though things there for them are not getting any better.

The sky high bills of high flying David Clelland MP

Before I start, let me just make clear that I have no problem with an MP employing a spouse in his or her office, provided they are on the same terms and conditions as anyone else who would otherwise be considered for the post.

Okay, so, now that that is done, let's take a look at the high flying partnership of David Clelland, Labour MP for Tyne Bridge, and his wife, Brenda, also his secretary. Does the taxpayer really need to pick up the bill of £5298 for Mrs Clelland to make 29 journeys to London in a single year? And if that travel is necessary (as his secretary I appreciate there will be times when some of it is) does the taxpayer really need to fork out an overage of £183 each time she travels down to London?

Mr Clelland himself does not come cheaply. Whilst he tells others to be green, Mr Clelland prefers to jump onto the plane to wing it down to London. You and I picked up a bill of £9301 for his air tickets. He lives closer to Newcastle Central Station than Newcastle Airport so convenience can hardly be an explanation for Mr Clellands enjoyment of heaving his head in the clouds and his feet not on the ground.

Mr Clelland is not entirely engrossed with flying. He does at least sometimes let the train take the strain, notching up a bill for £6797 in a single year. And then there is the car mileage of £2303.

The grand cost of Mr and Mrs Clelland's travelling is an eye watering £23,699 a year. Or put it another way, that's more than the vast majority of his constituents earn in a year. (And his incompetent government is doing its best to relieve many of them of that earned income.)

To keep all this in balance, look at the MP in Blaydon, none other than Mr David Anderson, with whom I have had a number of run ins, as well as intelligence conversations on the train and tube when we bump into each other in London.

Mr Clelland can claim to have cheaper mileage than Mr Anderson. There again, Mr Anderson's constituency is far far larger than the compact, inner city Tyne Bridge seat of Mr Clelland whose mileage was only £54 cheaper.

Mr Clelland can also claim he is much cheaper on train fares. Mr Anderson notched up a bill of £9845. Big Dave however can easily claim to have greener credentials than Little Dave. Mr Anderson did slightly let the side down with air fares though, notching up a whopping bill of only £424.

Mrs Anderson herself made 3 trips to London, at a cost to the taxpayer over the year of £218. That's only £73 a journey (and cheaper than many of the train fares I often have to pay to get to London!) How come Mrs Anderson is so economical when Mrs Clelland comes at such a price?

The overall cost to the taxpayer of Mr and Mrs Anderson's travel is £12,844, just over half the cost of Mr and Mrs Clelland, which I think is reasonable financially and environmentally.

High flying Mr Clelland however at least needs to get his feet back on the ground and take the train a bit more. I also suggest he gets some how-to-travel-more-economically tips from his constituency neighbour.

Not having a good train day

I am not having a good train day. This morning National Excess cancelled my train. Tonight, I left the office relatively early for the first time in ages. Now I am stuck at Victoria with all my trains cancelled and no explanation as to what the problem is. I should have just stayed at my desk and done some work.
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Weekend round up - freezing car parks and sewage works

There are proposals by Gateshead Council to introduce parking charges in Whickham village centre. So on Saturday morning, in the rain, wind and cold, I was in the car park behind Whickham Library, carrying out a survey of residents about the plans. One hour of being frozen right through but a useful exercise nonetheless. It was nice to find that every constituent I spoke to recognised me! And quite a few mentioned our eFocus email newsletter. Glad to see it is as popular as ever.

I warmed myself up afterwards at the Blaydon constituency coffee morning (we had a stall selling jams) and the constituency exec meeting. With the weather brightening up in the afternoon, I headed out into local woodland to forage for wild food. It was there that I discovered a huge set of foundations of a derelict building. Next to an historic waggonway, I wondered if it had anything to do with that now defunct route. But the bricks and the structured seemed too recent. I was curious to know more. As an historian, I had not come across any previous discussion of houses or indeed any buildings at this particular location.

A search on the internet that evening eventually produced an answer. We found it on old ordnance survey maps from the 1920s. Turns out this was the location for the Chester le Street Urban District Council's sewage works. None of the local history sites makes any mention of this, despite its size and the historical importance of having the main waterway in the local villages cleaned of sewage. I have a feeling I'll be back to the site soon with tape measure, notebook and cameras!

Did you turn your lights off for Earth Hour on Saturday evening? We did. We had the front room lit by 8 t-lights.

Sunday was spent mainly on the allotment. I planted a tear-jerking quantity of onions - about 350. Meanwhile, in the greenhouse I was able to check out my carbon sink. Two weeks about I planted 21 acorns I gathered last year. It looks like they are starting to grow. Hopefully in a few years' time we will be looking for homes for a forest of oak trees (plus 40 sycamores growing in our garden in London.) The idea is that the trees will absorb our past carbon emissions.

And finally, there was the inevitable focus delivery, last night. 200 done in less than an hour.

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The Monday Morning Blog no. 2 - the Jacqui Smith blue movie cock up!

You couldn't make this stuff up! According to the Home Secretary, it was all just a terrible mistake, just one big cock up. Perhaps Jacquie Smith thought blue movies were Tory party political broadcasts. And let's face it, you have to be a bit of a sado-masocists to enjoy such televisual delights!. Mr Smith however has been subjected to humiliation and forced to make a submissive apology by his dominant partner. It's clear who has the whip hand in that relationship. And she is in charge of the police as well. Just think of the uniforms!

Putting aside the individual viewing habits of the Smith family for a moment, serious questions have to be asked about what the additional cost allowance can pay for. The house in Redditch is clearly the family home of the Smith family. "Two Homes" Secretary Mrs Smith claims her main home is her sister's house in London. Conveniently, that allows her to claim the running costs of her Redditch home on her allowance. And that means the taxpayer is footing the bill for her husband. Why the taxpayer should pick up his costs is beyond me. The Smiths may say that they are paying back the costs of his pay-to-view porn, but why the hell should the taxpayer pick up the cost of any of his tv viewing, blue or not?

I accept that there are additional costs incurred when someone is elected for a constituency outside London. There needs to be some reflection of this in how MPs are paid and recompensed, though MPs are already well paid. (And as a minister whose husband is her constituency secretary, the Smith household is on a significant 6 figure income.) Perhaps the solution is to scrap the allowance and make a change to the pay of MPs.

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The Monday Morning Blog no. 1 - National Express ghost trains

National Express have, yet again cancelled my train to London. They are of course, experts in providing timetables for train services to London without providing the trains to go with them. And as usual, my train did turn up on time at Newcastle Central. It was meant to be the 7.40am fast service to London. On arrival from Edinburgh at Newcastle, it is cancelled and converted to the 7.52am slow service. The excuse as usual is that there is a "set shortage at the depot". That's National Excess technobabble for not having enough trains. And as this regularly happens, it strikes me that there is a systematic failure of management in this company. They take the easy route to solving a problem: cancel a service rather than solve the shortage of trains that they clearly have. And if that basic point is beyond them, they could try redrawing the timetable to take into account their ability to deliver it with the trains they have, rather than running the ghost service they operate now.

I asked at the National Excess "information desk" why the 7.40am is so regularly cancelled but was given the usual opaque technobabble. However, I could "fill in a complaints form" if I felt strongly enough. "Yes please," I replied. When I read the form I was given, it was billed as a "Comments and Compliment" form. Clearly, "complaints" is a word unknown to National Excess! And frankly, I am only prepared to make compliments to train operators who actually bother to provide train services I have paid for.

But get this. The form states: "At National Express we try hard to provide an excellent level of service for our customers at all times. We are continually looking at ways to improve and welcome any feedback and suggestions you may have." My suggestion is simple: try running a train service rather than a cancellation service. I for one am fed up with your ghost train service.

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Nearly missing the train home/what's coming up

The Victoria Line was in a mess tonight. It took 30 min to get from Victoria to Kings Cross. I nearly missed the train. Fortunately I had built in enough time (just) to catch the train - I'm on it now,heading back to the North East.

Tomorrow I managed to double book myself. We have a fair in Crawcrook in the morning where I am running the jam stall (yes it really is a case of jam tomorrow!) But at the same time I am supposed to be doing a survey with constituents. So I will drop off David at Crawcrook, leave him to sell jam, then go off to do the survey, then go back to Crawcrook, then do the Blaydon constituency meeting, then head back home and spend the afternoon on the allotment. I've also got a video to make as well on cooking with wild foods - more wild garlic but possible nettle, dandilion and hawthorn.

And a weekend wouldn't go by without writing a Focus.

Talking of food as I was a moment ago, as I was late to Kings Cross, I didn't have time to get an M&S overpriced sandwich. I'll have to get one of National Express's overpriced ones instead. However, the trolley on the train has no veggie sandwiches. Seems as though I'll have to make a trip to the buffet car instead. Either that or break my environmental rule about not eating meat except on special occasions.
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