Luke Akehurst's Blog

Yolande Beckles Website Appears

2009-10-27T15:06:00.007Z

The sadly missed Yolande Beckles is back in the spotlight! I've just been alerted to a brand new website under the pre-Christmas title Yo Ho Ho! It's Beckles Watch, where the eponymous author has published a lengthy essay recounting the infamous comings and goings of Yolande Beckles. Apparently she's now "bigging it up" in Beverley Hills, Los Angeles, with her kids attending Hollywood schools. News that will doubtless come as little comfort to the poor families in Hackney whose money she stole before she did a bunk across the pond. So, to find out more about Yolande Beckles, visit the new website Yo Ho Ho! It's Beckles Watch.

Expenses Scandal - Our Hackney MPs Are Squeaky Clean

2009-06-21T11:27:00.004+01:00

I've made no secret of the fact that, as a member of the ruling Labour Group on Hackney Council, I've never claimed any expenses. So I'm squeaky clean when it comes to the recent allegations of expenses induglence and fraud. And so are the two MPs for Hackney - the MP for Hackney South, Madge Hillside and the MP for Hackney North & Stokie, Diane Portillo. In my opinion, both of these women are a credit to the Labour Party and have been fine servants to the long-suffering population of Hackney, regardless of the fact that I think Madge is a creep and Diane is a looney lefty. But this is not time for disharmony - it's time to unite against the anti-working-class running dogs of capitalism who publish the Torygraph and are determined to smear our fine men and women into defeat at the next elections.

Miranda Portillo and Diane Grell

Miranda Hillside and Madge Grell

Being an MP inevitably involves significant expense on office services and staff, communications with the electorate, representing the constituency, etc. I'm sure that everyone will agree that the paltry combined sum of £258,222 incurred in parliamentary expenses last year by Hillside and Portillo represents excellent value for money to the voters of Hackney. After all, you'd be hard pressed to get a Borough Chief Executive for a sum like that. And it's hardly more than ten times the average income of a Hackney voter.

In typical style, the Tories and LibDems will have the knives out for our honest, hardworking representatives. So I'm going to pre-empt the smears by investigating their expenses myself. Over the coming days I'll be going through every one of their expenses since 2005 to prove that every penny spent by the taxpayer was well spent. So watch this space for proof that our Labour MPs are squeaky clean. Why don't you join me? Links to the expenses files can be found at the foot of this blog page.

Massive New Parliamentary Story Breaks - You Read It Here First

2009-06-18T23:43:00.003+01:00

Angry Mob Attacks Labour Councillors

2009-06-13T14:58:00.004+01:00

Back in July 2006 I first let slip that Linda and I have a small hide-away in Andalucia. In a subsequent blog post I feigned surprise at discovering that we were not alone in our dream holiday village: "You can imagine our surprise, therefore, when on our visit to Panaderia Borriquito this evening for suckling pig and chips and a bottle or two of Vino de Cómpeta we bumped into no fewer than four other Hackney Councillors and six former members of the Planning Subcommittee. What a coincidence!" I must confess that I let things go a little bit too far when I gloated about our summer retreat, referring to my readers as people who "...have to rot in Hackney on hot days amongst the zombies and the loonies."

I almost gave the game away that August when I wrote of an Enfield Tory Councillor: "What I must be careful not to mention is that the resigning councillor, Margaret Holt, has gone off to live in Spain. Ssshhhh...don't mention apartments in Cómpeta. The very thought that the Tory Party Brown Paper Envelope Ready Reckoner might contain the same entry as the Labour Party Brown Paper Envelope Ready Reckoner fills me with horror!" As people began to question the financial basis for our pied-à-terre, I was quick to explain that we were all completely innocent of any breaches of the rules: "I would like to make clear that, without exception, members of Hackney Council Labour Group are fine, upstanding members of the community. Not one of these persons has ever been involved in, or associated with, any offences including but not limited to property misdealings, cultural vandalism, misuse of land, abuse of grants, insobriety whilst on duty, misuse of assets, bribery, corruption, election fraud, misrepresentation, contract violation, issuing false claims, CV fraud, moonlighting, cheque fraud, nepotism or breaches of code of conduct. Nor are any associated in any way with any properties in the village of Cómpeta in Andalucia."

Linda and I sneaked off again for a quiet half-term in the Andalucian hammock last spring and again last summer. By this time we were convinced that everything had quietened down and questions about our presence in Cómpeta, along with the entirely coincidental presence of other members of Planning Subcommittees, had disappeared from the political agenda. This was a reasonable assumption, as it was still a year year before the Daily Telegraph was to spread its entirely false, muck-raking and vicious lies about Labour MPs and their allegedly fraudulent and otherwise excessive expenses claims. The Tories and LibDems were guilty as charged of course, but Labour MPs were framed for political purposes and were all entirely innocent of the trumped-up charges. Last month, mob rule became so prevelant that some wholly innocent victims were forced to "hand back" money that they didn't really owe.

Now I'm game for a laugh with the best of them. A little bit of innocent fiddling here and there is hardly the end of the world. And I understand how frustrated and angry many electors have become here in the UK at the alleged shenanigans of their elected representatives in Westminster. But nothing that Councillors and Planning Subcommittee members on holiday beanos in Spain have done could possibly have justified the dreadful events that have taken place in Cómpeta over the past week. No amount of alleged holiday home buying by allegedly loud-mouthed, arrogant and allegedly racist Brits who have allegedly acquired the keys to apartments in Cómpeta along with allegedly large sums of cash in allegedly brown envelopes can possibly justify the mob violence by local Spanish residents that has resulted in one man fighting for his life in hospital. That's one huge step beyond the pale.

D-DAY

2009-06-07T23:59:00.002+01:00

Let us today, on Election Results Day, 7th June 2009,
give thanks and remember the men and women who fought so bravely to create and maintain a political party to represent the ordinary working-class men and women of this great country.

********

Labour shall grow not old, as the parties that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
With the setting of the sun, and in the morning we will remember them.
Lest We Forget.

It's Curtains For Labour

2009-06-03T12:32:00.002+01:00

Political Crisis - Minister Steps Out

2009-05-21T08:36:00.003+01:00

Expenses Crisis - Minister Steps In

2009-05-11T10:19:00.002+01:00

Hospital Beds Crisis - Minister Steps In

2009-05-07T23:27:00.002+01:00

Al Qaeda Calls For A Fatwah Against Me

2009-03-17T15:42:00.005Z

Regular readers will know that I've been subject to a creepy internet hate campaign for the past eighteen years - since shortly after I started what has turned into The Labour Party's most popular and successful blog. For most of that time I've been able to laugh it off. After all, I'm pretty tough. And in any case, the spoof blog brought me loads of extra traffic which, to be honest, I didn't always deserve. Writing about Mikhail Gorbachev, Dave Osler and the Labour Party of Turkmenistan wasn't exactly going to get the readers flooding in.

But this week I have a horror story to tell - and it's important that I make it public, no matter how scared I might be to speak about it. That's why I called a press conference a week ago to announce that the man now acknowledged to have been the spoof blogger - international terrorist leader Osama Bin Harman - has called for a fatwah to be launched against me. Unfortunately, only The Hockney Pisspost turned up as everyone else was, for some inexplicable reason, focused on Sir Fred Goodwin's pension instead. But I was able to explain to The Pisspost in gory detail how I've feared for my family's safety ever since an image of my house marked out as a rifle target was posted by Osama Bin Nellist on his blog. As several readers have written to me reporting that they were totally unable to detect any trace of such a picture, I thought I'd better reproduce it here so that everyone can judge for themselves the extent to which ~~my campaign of self-publicity~~ this terrorist blogger has got out of control.

Things weren't so bad in the early days, when a lot of people were following the spoof blog and talking about it, and to be honest it was 90 per cent funny. It was written in an entertaining style, although I did find it unfair when councillors, who had deliberately not put themselves into the spotlight for any reason except their support for deceased paedophiles, were mentioned. I knew something serious was up when Osama Bin Hatton failed to update the site for some time. I now know that this was because I came very close to being able to reveal the secret blogger's identity as Osama Bin Healy. We saw someone in a hot air balloon taking photographs of our house through what appeared to be a telescopic sight, and months later I've been able to publish the photo.

So, where do I go now? Well, I may have to duck out of sight for a bit until they've caught Osama Bin Taafe, but I'm certainly not going to run away in the face of terrorist threats. Osama Bin Grant doesn't scare me. I'm planning to write a book about my fellow Councillor Charlize Patrick entitled "The Enchantress of Hackney" and you never know where that might lead. Sir Ahmed Luke Akehurst has quite a nice ring to it.

Nobless Oblige

2008-07-31T18:00:00.000+01:00

Waking The Brain Dead

2008-07-09T19:30:00.000+01:00

Serves my doppelgänger right for a) going off for a month's rest and b) leaving the brain dead to run the mortuary in the meantime.

Oh, dear. What a pig's a**e I seem to have made of things with no-one here to steer me in the right direction. I have nearly managed to blow out what little life was left in the decaying political corpse of the Labour Party with my slightly hard line positions on counter-terrorism, state control, suppression of dissent, removal of superfluous freedoms and support for the Fourth Reich expressed here previously.

I now feature on the front pages of the websites of both the Hackney Conservatives and Hackney Liberal Democrats - which, judging by the fact that both were similarly written in proper English, employing correct spelling and punctuation, were both ghost-written by the ex-Labour turncoat and number 1 candidate for extraordinary rendition to Guantanamo Bay, Meral Ece.

I'm braced for another exciting story in the Hackney Groveller.

The Game's Up

2008-06-02T15:00:00.002+01:00

Twenty-five months and 834 posts later, it's time to stop the charade.

I've done my best to disguise my identity all this time - pretending to be Jules Pipe, later Chris Evans, then a disaffected member of Hackney Labour Group and most recently Derek Hatton. I think I gave it a pretty damned good go.

To understand this blog, you need to go right back to the beginning and see why I set it up. Back in May 2006 we'd just celebrated a fantastic event. "Labour had an amazing victory in Hackney's council elections on 4 May - Jules Pipe re-elected as Mayor and 44 Labour councillors elected vs. 9 Tories, 3 Lib Dems and 1 Green", I wrote at the time. All I got for my troubles was a single comment - and that was referring me to someone else's blog. My second post wasn't much more successful, either. I set out my credentials in the world of political journalism by proudly publishing links to my writings in The Guardian and New Statesman - only to receive not one single comment.

By now I'd realised how pathetic my efforts were looking. Wanting to move up from boring Hackney to the bigger political stage, I wrote a lengthy analysis of the 2005 General Election results and, my hopes raised, sub-captioned it "Third time lucky". But it wasn't. Of my two respondents, one blamed the Tories for Labour's success and the other blamed the LibDems. Things were getting desperate and I knew that if I wasn't to suffer the same ignominy as a blogger that I'd experienced in my earlier attempts to become a Member of Parliament, I needed to do something. And it needed to be something radical.

That was the moment when, as a PR guru, I was struck by the metaphorical blinding light and this blog was born. It didn't work perfectly on day one because I still hadn't formulated the right approach at that stage. But once I started to synchronise the two publications, towards the end of June, the readers started to pour in. There's nothing like a good political scrap - and I gave my readers nothing like a good political scrap. I gave them war and, as with my heroine Maggie in the Falklands and my hero Tony in Iraq, it worked brilliantly. Best of all, I replaced the miserable, boring character of reality with the lovable, sexy Luke Akehurst that made readers simply beg me to uncross my legs.

I did occasionally get a bit carried away with myself, laying into the real me while pretending to be the fake Akehurst. With the benefit of hindsight I wouldn't have said so much about the local election vote rigging, paedophilia in Hackney Labour Group, dirty tricks campaigns, millions of pounds in wasted council tax, conspiracies against the PM, the destruction of Hackney's heritage, fake disabilities, corruption in the police, my apartment in Spain, back-stabbing on Hackney Council, John Prescott, cash for honours, bankruptcy, abuses on the Planning Committee, bookmakers, alcoholism, nepotism, Hazel Blears, cannabis, Boris Johnson or the Olympic Games. And nor would I have wasted my time writing blog posts about the little, irrelevant people of Hackney. But then hindsight is a wonderful thing.

It all worked brilliantly well. My readership is at an all-time peak, with virtually everyone who's still in the Labour Party coming regularly to my blog for comfort. OK - I get slagged off a bit in the comments - but what the hell, that's just the price of fame. I wish I'd thought of Tourette's syndrome before Big Brother came up with the idea. Then I could say "Fuck off to the fucking lot of you", without having to put those damned asterisks in.

So - what's been achieved in those two years?

The Labour Party is at an all-time low in the opinion polls. We've replaced the most popular leader in our history with the most unpopular in our history. The Party is on the verge of bankruptcy and several major trades unions are threatening to pull the funding plug. The Tories run London, the ScotNats run Scotland and we're wiped off the map in Wales. Nobody wants to run for the NEC in case they are liable for the Party's debts, several prominent Party members have resigned after major scandals, Labour has no policies for the future and the Cabinet is such a hotbed of conspiracy it makes the Rome of Claudius look like a garden tea party with Rowan Williams.

But look on the bright side. I got a massive 66 comments on my real blog over the past two days alone - and that was a weekend when the richer Party members were out of the country for a break and the poorer ones were getting pissed on London Underground to celebrate the alcohol ban. I've achieved my goal. I'm the BBC face of Labour blogging and I'm becoming more famous, more successful and richer by the day. And, after all, that's what I set out to achieve.

So, from Miranda and me... that's all folks! See you back on my real blog.

Out, Damned Trot

2008-05-31T23:59:00.002+01:00

A funny thing happened as I drove up the A10 through Stoke Newington today. I suddenly realised that I don't actually possess a car. Up until that precise moment I simply couldn't understand why pedestrians were pointing and laughing at me and drivers behind were hooting.

Having taken the sensible approach and transferred from the right-hand side of the road onto the right-hand pavement by Brooke Road (for those not familiar with the territory, this part of Stoke Newington High Street is one-way heading north), I immediately crashed into a street stall outside Stoke Newington Post Office and sent leaflets and posters flying in all directions. The stall, I quickly discovered, was manned by The Socialist Party of England and Wales - formerly the Revolutionary Socialist League, formerly Militant Tendency, not to be confused with The Socialist Party of Great Britain, The Scottish Socialist Party, The Socialist Workers Party or a good bottle of Scotch, but closely related to The Socialist Party (Ireland) and The Socialist Party (Australia) and the only true standard bearer of The Fourth International (as opposed to the bourgeois traitors of the Reunified Fourth International).

Imagine my shock when, as I desperately set off down the road to avoid being stoned to death by a mob of Trots shouting "Kill the f***ing ginger class traitor", I recognised their ringleader as the bloke who we spotted taking pictures of our house just after we moved in. Yes - it was that bastard from my union and former Labour MP for Coventry South East - Dave Nellist. Admittedly he was now sporting a wig and a beard, but obviously this was the same man in disguise. Having never met Nellist before, I simply hadn't added one and one and realised who the photographer was. But now suddenly it all made sense. He had clearly come down from Coventry to my patch to take the piss, following the local elections in which, despite our "dirty tricks" campaign to unseat him, the bastard had increased his majority. I suppose the ginger toupé and moustache that so obviously didn't match the rest of the hair was part of the big in-joke.

For those unfamiliar with the Beatty Road inauguration saga, this revolting Trot stood outside some other house in my street for some time until I set him straight by publishing my actual address, at which point he re-appeared and took photos of my wife Linda in her dressing gown standing at the bay windows.

At the time we thought nothing of it, assuming the photographer was from FHM or Grazia and looking forward to receiving the cheque in the post and spending the money on some decent claret and caviar. It was only when the pictures appeared a couple of hours later on the spoof Luke Akehurst blog that we realised the evil intent behind this shocking invasion of privacy. I subsequently unmasked Andrew Richard Gos as the man responsible for the text that accompanied the spoof post. A nasty piece of work who owns a large shop named after himself in Sandringham Road and who infamously attacked a poor, helpless, disabled fellow Chatham Ward Councillor with a walking stick when she voted on Hackney's planning committee to demolish the entire borough and sell off all the land to property developers.

So that all explains why I had had trouble pinning down the politics of the spoof site: given its extreme right-wing views it clearly couldn't possibly be anyone genuinely a member of the Labour Party, yet it was also anti-LibDem (though not as much as me), anti-Tory, anti-Green and anti-SWP, written by someone exhibiting a taste for and knowledge of the good life that only comes with considerably more wealth than I earn as a PR Director. Clearly the work of someone with experience in the media, business and attending lavish dinners. Someone with a degree of knowledge of internal Labour matters that suggests he had been in the Labour Party at some stage, probably as an entrist. And someone who sounds desperate to re-enter the Labour Party and seek high office in it once more.

Now it all makes sense. I've been cloned by Derek Hatton. I almost feel proud.

They've Adopted My Strategy

2008-05-30T12:30:00.000+01:00

The latest YouGov poll shows that the Party is listening to me at last. By dropping in popularity to 23% against the Tories' 47% - the worst position since surveys began in 1943 and a depth not plumbed by Neil Kinnock or Michael Foot - we are positioning ourselves perfectly for an eventual situation where we will become more popular and the Tories less popular! My strategy has been adopted and I know it will work. Just wait and see.

It's Your Round

2008-05-29T20:18:00.002+01:00

I must apologise for my gratuitously flippant comments earlier about the Campaign For Labour Party Democracy and its manipulation of the Grassroots Alliance into making the decision to nominate the gorgeous, pouting blonde Blairite bombshell Ellie Reeves for membership of the NEC.

My off-the-hand comments were before I realised that this was step one of a cunning plan in which the other five nominees all stand down at the last minute - just before this happens.

What a clever bunch of people these lefties are. And I always thought they were stupid.

Last Post

2008-05-29T20:00:00.001+01:00

E J Thribb MP has been doing some research into exactly how bad the 1st May local elections when compared with previous Tory breakthrough years in 1968 and 1978 when Labour had been relatively strong in local government. And whether there are lessons to be learnt about minimising our losses in the future. He thinks definitely so and has asked me to post this:

"So, farewell then
Labour Party
Local election results in the future
Are not all doom and gloom
Because there will be
No-one left to be doom-laden and gloomy.
The mathematics is on our side
As we slowly fade away.
Therein lies the enigma.

Although the media commentary was not a million miles from the mark in depicting the 2008 local elections as a wipe-out for Labour, they were nowhere nearly as bad as our defeats in 1968 or 1978, which presaged Tory General Election victories. The reason for this was, of course, that we have now reached such a low point that there wasn't a huge amount to lose. In 2008 we started with only 2,699 of the 8,419 council seat total, with the Tories 199 seats ahead before the elections and 790 ahead after the final results were declared.

So our strategy for the future is obvious. With only 2,365 seats to lose now, we should do better and better in future when compared with the disasters of the '60s and '70s. Projecting ahead another 50 years, it looks likely that even in a particularly bad year we will lose almost no seats in the local elections. So these people on a council estate in Gosport commiserating this year's decimation of Labour by the LibDems will have absolutely nothing to worry about:

Sheep Nominate Pussycat

2008-05-28T19:50:00.002+01:00

I had a good laugh the other day at the miserable failure of Fran Griffith's CLP secretary to send her nomination in on time due to some pathetic excuse such as serious illness or death.

Now it appears that the Grassroots Alliance - or at least its main component the Campaign For Labour Party Democracy - has decided to urge its large flock of woolly minded supporters to use their sixth vote for the regal and attentive Blairite feline Ellie Reeves.

Not everyone on the left of the Party has greeted this decision with acclaim. Bernard Ingham look-alike, unreconstructed hippy, Grand Witch of Hebden and aptly named journalist Susan Press is distinctly unhappy. Oh dear!

I do hate it when Labour Party members take their pet issue and stir it up into an veritable farmyard of discontent inside an already-disintegrating Party.

Missing The Point

2008-05-27T10:20:00.001+01:00

According to today's Guardian, former Blair speechwriter Phil Collins thinks that the real problem the Government has is "that Labour's faith in central government draws from the deep, poisoned well of its Fabian tradition" and instead "the only hope for the party is to excavate its liberal treasure". I must be missing the point, as I don't understand a single word of his argument. Regular readers will, however, know that I'm a big fan of his and Linda and I have a lot of his earlier writing amongst our collection at home. Here's one about Labour voters that I particularly like. It's called "Against All Odds":

How can I just let you walk away, just let you leave without a trace?
When I stand here taking every breath with you
Ooh, you're the only one who really knew me at all.

How can you just walk away from me when all I can do is watch you leave'
'Cos we shared the laughter and the pain and even shared the tears.
You're the only one who really knew me at all.

So take a look at me now
Well, there's just an empty space
And there's nothing left here to remind me
Just the memory of your face.

Oh, take a look at me now
there's just an empty space
And you coming back to me is against the odds
And that's what I've got to face.

I wish I could just make you turn around
Turn around and see me cry.
There's so much I need to say to you
So many reasons why.
You're the only one who really knew me at all.

So take a look at me now
Well, there's just an empty space
And there's nothing left here to remind me
Just the memory of your face.

Now take a look at me now
'Cos there's just an empty space
But to wait for you is all I can do and that's what I've got to face.

Take a look at me now
'Cos I'll still be standing here
And you coming back to me is against all odds
It's the chance I've got to take.
Take a look at me now.

Self Liquidating Party

2008-05-27T10:01:00.003+01:00

Back in Stokie and pleased to be back in the fray. After all, there's only so much sun, sand and sangria a chap can take!

Tory bloggers like Iain Dale are being surprisingly restrained in their post-Crewe analysis, suggesting that Labour needs to effect the transition from Gordon Brown to a new leader in a cautious and measured way if the Labour Party is not to suffer badly at the next General Election. There are plenty of wind-up merchants out there, of course, and I did laugh especially loudly when I read the fantasy scenarios put about by non-aligned libertarian Guido, who argued that Labour will "lose catastrophically" and "the party could swing to the left after a general election to Cruddas or McDonnell - condemning them to decades of opposition."

Now I'm not complacent about the possibility of us losing badly. Obviously a political half-wit can see that we won't lose "catastrophically", but then Guido doesn't believe that either. Like my impersonator, he just likes to make fatuous arguments for the hell of it. Some people are simply PR mad!

I think there's a real risk of a left-wing putsch if we don't get our act together and the second part of Guido's prediction could definitely be possible, because both of the left-wing MPs he suggests as possible leaders are relatively safe even under a disaster scenario - Jon Cruddas has a majority of 7,605 votes (188th largest in parliament) and in any event is extremely popular amongst that section of the electorate most likely to desert Labour, while John McDonnell has a massive majority of 10,847 votes, making him the 87th safest MP in the House. Both of these contenders would require a swing far greater than occurred in Crewe in order to dislodge them - in the case of Cruddas nearly 50% and for McDonnell over 60%. The hard left know this, but I must confess that in their reactions so far I cannot detect any narrow sectarian reaction or attempt to get factional advantage from the Party's current troubles - they are just as horrified by the prospect of a Tory victory as I am, and know there will be no winners inside the Labour Party if we head into another long period in opposition.

It's clear what the Party needs to do right now. Gordon must reshuffle the Cabinet to get rid of the less successful and less popular faces and introduce some new blood.

Regular readers will know that the cabinet minister I'd like to see leading the regeneration of Party fortunes on behalf of Gordon is Hazel Blears, MP for Salford. But she came bottom of the poll in the recent Deputy Leadership contest and controversies such as Hope Hospital, Bangladeshi sweatshop workers and collapsing offices being a sign from above have effectively sealed her fate.

Current cabinet ministers I think Gordon should retain include John Hutton, Jack Straw, Ed Balls, John Denham, Andy Burnham and Geoff Hoon. And as candidates for promotion to the Cabinet I suggest ardent and unwavering loyalists Bill Rammell (Harlow), Claire Ward (Watford), Laura Moffatt (Crawley), Celia Barlow (Hove), Martin Linton (Battersea), Phyllis Starkey (Milton Keynes SW), plus Howard Stoate (Dartford) and Islington's Emily Thornberry (despite the email farrago!).

With the exception of Trident replacement, on which Stoate wavered and Thornberry voted against, all of these MPs represent the kind of sensible, centrist political position within the Labour Party to which I subscribe. With a team like that, we'll have absolutely nothing to worry about after the next General Election. Based on the swing in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, the entire Cabinet will be wiped out, leaving Gordon, with the 26th largest majority in the House, free to get on with the important business of running the country.

Taking The Piss

2008-05-25T23:55:00.000+01:00

I don't mind a bit of internet mickey-taking at my expense, but when the fake Luke Akehurst seizes the opportunity to visit little old Stalinist CLP members while I'm away in Andalucía and have rows with them while pretending to be me, then things are going a bit too far. As soon as word reached the village I borrowed a horse from the barman and trotted off to the comisaría de policías to ask them to go round to Aden Grove and arrest the bastard. Unfortunately, the phone lines weren't very good so I'm not sure that they understood what I was saying. I do hope Bert and Greta are OK and they weren't taken to Stoke Newington police station by mistake. Their voluntary contribution of hours and hours of work over the years has kept our CLP functioning through thick and thin and it would be a shame to have them nicked for no good reason.

As I Was Walking Past La Asunción...

2008-05-25T11:00:00.002+01:00

...I felt an overwhelming desire to enter the church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción and confess my sins. As someone who was brought up as an atheist but attended a Methodist school, I'm not used to having these "Tony Blair" moments.

It was quite the strangest feeling I've experienced since that helicopter ride back in July 2006 when Andrew Neill flew me and his team to Brussels for a special election campaign edition of 'This Week'. It could be an attack of guilt, stored up over many years of spinning ridiculous political lines and trying to get rich while pretending to be on the side of the poor.

In fact I'm feeling more than a bit guilty writing this post on the Crewe & Nantwich by-election from here in Rafael's internet café on the Calle San Antonio, just down the hill from my apartment in sunny Cómpeta. The main reason for my guilt is that I told Linda I was going on a nature walk in the hills this morning, as before we flew out I'd promised my darling wife that it would be a mercifully politics, internet and email free holiday in Andalucía, booked as recuperation from the London elections before anyone knew these would be followed by a parliamentary by-election.

I didn't want to say anything about the trip when I popped in to publish a quick post on Friday night, because it gets my doppelgänger over-excited. But he seems to have found out anyway and deserted his inoperative web server to travel down to Britain's water sports capital of St. Ives for a spot of surfing with his anarchist swimming friends, plus the usual stupid fake blogging aimed at making me look like a complete twat. Mind you, no-one will believe him this time, because he's claiming to have gone away on Thursday only to come home again right at the start of the Bank Holiday long weekend. D'oh!

What I don't feel remotely guilty about is having deserted the sad and exceedingly dim members of the Crewe and Nantwich CLP on Thursday, leaving them to pound the streets of Crewe to suffer the abuse of the electorate armed only with the campaign lines spun out by their local PR team. I mean to say, anyone stupid enough to put up a third-generation political dynasty candidate who owns a landed estate and is listed in Burke's Peerage and then attack the Tory opponent as a "toff" deserves everything they get. Even I couldn't have managed to spin that one successfully!

Don't get me wrong, of course. I'm 100% in favour of personal attack campaigning - it works and you need to give voters reasons not to vote for your opponents, as well as reasons to vote for you. The world of politics is littered with failed candidates who told the truth. And anyone who knows me knows I believe that attack campaigning should be no-holds-barred. After all, I was one of the pioneers of dirty-tricks spin a decade or so ago, in the days when I plotted to smear LibDem candidates, tried to shaft Ken Livingstone and was known as the Labour Rent Boy.

Where we made a mistake in Crewe was in not complementing our dirty tricks campaign by playing up Labour's strengths. In the case of Moyra Dunwoody, we allowed the campaign stunt of trying to make her look like the ordinary poor, single mother next-door to take centre stage - the political equivalent to playing the gentry, not the ball.

This made it look like we didn't have much to say about policy, when in fact Moyra had a lot of good ideas about local regeneration. As someone who has recently acquired several acres of exquisite National Park land adjacent to her existing estate with a view to development and regeneration, she is well qualified to advise Crewe residents on their back extensions and dormer windows.

The real reason for the swing against us was that the electorate simply didn't understand the massive benefits that New Labour has brought to them. This wasn't an election decided by the local tactics, it was decided by the national strategic picture. We should have focused much more on Gordon's £2.7bn "slump-busting" give-away. In fact I'd go further. Ordinary people are being screwed economically at the moment. Anyone trying to renew a mortgage at the end of its term is facing a huge hike in interest rates and the necessities of life like groceries and fuel are shooting up in price. In these circumstances I think we were lucky to have got away with pounding the streets of Crewe without getting stoned (mind you, there's less chance of that since Jacqui's Class B re-classification).

What the dour grumpy old Scotsman needs to do is to stop droning on about how good he is at steering the economic ship, and about trusting Labour to steer the ship through troubled waters. The trust will come back when actions we start taking actually make people's material conditions better. In short, we need to step up the level of bribes. Alistair Darling should have a list put together of all the mortgage holders (including myself) whose current agreements are about to terminate, get some PR consultants to analyse the data and work out which ones are floating voters and make sure that they are "helped" financially. In the case of my (about to be former) mortgage lender Northern Rock, the Government actually now owns the bank. So it wouldn't take a genius down at The Treasury to pull some levers imaginatively to help the home-owners concerned by offering them affordable mortgage repayments (nudge-nudge, wink-wink). Mind you, it might take someone a bit smarter than Alistair Darling... but then what a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by having the Chancellor take the blame for Crewe and Nantwich and be replaced!

I haven't been reading much here - the views are far too spectacular for staying indoors. I've just been sitting on the balcony sun-lounger gazing down on the village and thinking what a wonderful place Cómpeta is. So much nicer than that awful place Crewe with its hordes of ingrates. And so much nicer than Hackney, with its chavs, its gangs and its bloody cyclists, swimmers and spoof bloggers. After holidays like this, I don't know why I ever bother to come home.

I've Discovered Who The Fake Luke Akehurst Is

2008-05-23T19:20:00.003+01:00

If it looks like a connection, feels like a connection and smells like a connection, it's probably a connection.

The fake Luke Akehurst hasn't published for over a week. At the time of writing this, his last post was "New Blog", published at 12:52pm on Thursday 15th May. And the swimming terrorists of Not The Clissold Leisure Centre - the despicable anti-Council anarchist website - have been offline for the same period of time.

A coincidence?

Not for them of us what went to public school. In the immortal words of Hackney's own Gina Yashere... I don't think so!

Where Is Everyone?

2008-05-22T13:45:00.000+01:00

Having been away for a day or so in Pembrokeshire and Cheshire and recently returned to Stokie, I seem to have lost the Labour Party. I've been phoning people, looking at their blogs and websites and sending text messages but... absolutely nothing!

Even my spoofster seems to have disappeared. I know we were in financial difficulty and the polls weren't looking too good for us, but surely that's no excuse for doing a runner. If anyone has seen the Labour Party recently and has information as to its whereabouts, could you ask them to contact me please at Flat 1, 8 Beatty Road, London, N16 8EB.

Back From Fighting The Toffs

2008-05-21T11:40:00.002+01:00

Gosh, I'm knackered. I've pulled muscles I didn't even know I had. Don't let anyone tell you that landed gentry just sit around all day doing nothing, like the characters in The Royle Family. Just the walking alone was enough to shag out someone more used to popping round to Stoke Newington High Street for a quick take-away.

The gardens weren't 1½ acres as I'd been led to believe - Moyra had acquired another 4½ acres or so to enlarge the estate ready for an ambitious redevelopment project (wow, was she spitting teeth over the fall in property prices and, worse still, blaming it on Alistair Darling!). And then there was the horse riding, which has given me such painful rashes you-know-where that I can hardly walk.

Apart from the aches and pains, I thought we had a pretty good day all in all. Lots of people shouting: "Down with the toff!" and "Hereditary candidate, sod off!".

So I was more than a bit disappointed to see the betting odds when I got home. Even the bookmakers are in cahoots with the Tories against us now. I expect Rupert Murdoch has paid them to quote false odds. Just wait for tomorrow - I'm sure Labour is going to win.

All Hands To The Septic Tank Pumps

2008-05-19T10:45:00.001+01:00

I'm putting out a call for local party activists to come and help with the Crewe and Nantwich by-election campaign. As you know, it's vital that we keep control of this seat at a time when the media is whipping up a campaign of lies and vitriol against the Labour Party, the Prime Minister and our candidate Moyra Tamsin Dunwoody-Kneafsey. We're all meeting up at Moyra's place as early as possible tomorrow morning to organise the canvassing, sort out the leaflets and posters and allocate streets to canvassing teams. It's dead easy to get there from London, as shown on the map below, although a four-wheel drive vehicle would be helpful for negotiating the final part of the route down to the estate:

Once you get to Haverfordwest, follow the A40 up into the Pembrokeshire National Park until you come to Wolfscastle, turn right and make your way across the scenic countryside to Cwarre Dduon, which is well signposted:

For those arriving by private helicopter, you'll recognise the place from the following aerial photograph and you can land anywhere near the mansion that looks sensible, as there's about 1.5 acres of back garden (although do try to avoid disturbing the neighbouring farmers' sheep and cattle):

There are plenty of horses available to take everyone across country into Crewe and Nantwich. We'll be dressed in a smart red and yellow livery to distinguish us from the rabble of Tories and LibDem saboteurs who'll be in jeans, teeshirts and trainers. Afterwards, we've all been invited to head back to the estate for tea and tiffin and - if the weather holds up - we might be able to get a bit of shooting in. There's plenty of wild rabbit at this time of year and we might even be able to bag some larger game if we're lucky.

I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow and in the meantime, don't forget our by-election campaign slogan:

TALLY HO TO STOP THE TORY TOFFS!!!

When The Levy Broke

2008-05-15T22:00:00.004+01:00

Regular readers will know only too well that I've never been totally comfortable with the role of Michael 'Abe' Levy in the Labour Party. I've worried about his sex life, I've had nightmares about him and I've agonised about his gongs. I've even imagined him incarcerated in a small safe.

When Lord Cashpoint published his memoirs last month, like most people I got a nasty case of the 'TB-GBs'. I didn't much care for Abe's revelation that Tony thought Gordon was a liar, a hopeless leader and incapable of defeating Macaroon. Nor did I like his assertions that Gordon knew all about the cash for honours business and the secret loans, despite the PM having denied this strenuously, outside and inside the House. But most of all I was unhappy about Levy's references to Carole Caplin's "increasingly long massages" of Tony Blair. Now that's just unnecessary, malicious sexual tittle-tattle.

So I was delighted to read Abe's wonderful piece in Totally Jewish this morning. It describes so eloquently and poignantly how Abe recently embarked on a pilgrimage to revisit his roots - down the now unrecognisable Ridley Road, past the now-defunct Shacklewell Lane synagogue, along by the long since failed and demolished Hackney Downs School and up Murder Mile to the Lea Bridge Road. As Abe says in his interview, these locations "were a powerful reminder to me that however 'poor' most people in Hackney were - and no matter how much worse life became for many of them - I enjoyed a privileged upbringing and eventually became extraordinarily rich."

Ah, how touching. I was really moved. Linda cried when I read it out loud. "Why can't you make serious gelt, like Abe?", she wept.

New Nasties

2008-05-15T15:30:00.005+01:00

My friend Gertrude Dunwinning asked me to post a link to this morning's Guardian blog post from John Harris. "Why are they saying this about us?", she demanded to know. "Why has the Guardian suddenly become so right-wing?"

Moyra Tamsin Dunwoody-Kneafsey
(Hereditary Rule & Register All Immigrants)

The article refers to our perfectly reasonable tactic of dressing up in top hat and tails to stalk the Crewe & Nantwich candidate, "Tory Boy" Timpson. After all, he does come from a rich property-owning family - unlike anyone in the Labour Party.

We should attack him for being a "toff", despite the fact that the family has spent a large proportion of its wealth, in typical Quaker style, supporting abused, neglected and vulnerable children in the community. I mean, we can't get all sentimental about that sort of thing now, can we? And we did give back the money we stole from the poorest electors.

Eddie Timpson
(Children's Rights)

Whereas I don't mind putting the class war boot in, I am a bit queasy about the CLP playing the race card against the establish Polish community. Apparently we've been suggesting that, unlike our good selves, the Tories might oppose "making foreign nationals carry an ID card". That doesn't seem quite right to me. Nor did Labour campaigning openly as the party with the hereditary candidate, under the slogan: "Tamsin Dunwoody will always stand up for you and your family, she's a Dunwoody after all."

Mind you, I do like Harris's final sentence: "...right now, the Tories really are sounding more progressive than Labour, and that way lies not just electoral defeat, but the prospect of complete wipe-out." He did mean a wipe-out of the Tories, didn't he?

NEC Nominations

2008-05-15T11:20:00.001+01:00

Someone emailed me this last night. I don't find it the remotest bit funny.

Yesterday's Announcement

2008-05-14T21:10:00.002+01:00

Well done to the PM and Chancellor for doing the right thing on the 10p rate compensation - and making sure the solution also benefits hard-pressed basic rate taxpayers suffering from the credit crunch and food and fuel prices.

To hell with the massive chorus of ribaldry coming from those who believe it was the desperate act of a desperate man cornered. I'm sure that decision will reflect itself in Labourhome's Grassroots Survey very shortly, lifting Gordon and Alistair off the bottom of the league table. What a great idea league tables were, by the way. I wonder who introduced them into the public sector?

I can't help wishing that the tax giveaway had been done on April 14th and not May 14th, as we would thereby have bought ourselves a Labour Mayor of London and a few hundred Labour councillors and saved many thousands of people from being forced to vote for enduring Tory cuts and ineptitude at their local town halls. Well done to Frank Field - a man I've long admired - both for his dogged pursuit of this issue and for his public apology yesterday which has hopefully drawn a line under the less-than-edifying exchange of insults over the weekend. I've written to Ruth and asked her to arrange his excommunication at the earliest possible opportunity.

I was delighted to see Tamsin Dunwoody resolutely refusing to answer the thrice-asked question: "Is Gordon an asset or a liability?". "The Prime Minister is the Prime Minister - unanimously elected to lead the Party - I'm here to win the by-election and that's what I'm concentrating on." That's the way to fight off the bullies, Tamsin. Good on yer girl!

I think we are now in with a shout in Crewe - I haven't been able to get up there because after my brief affair with Captain Mortimer Linda threatened to leave me if I spent any more time on the stump with strange women. However, friends who have say the canvassing even before yesterday's announcement indicated it was competitive but still winnable. And with the bookmakers only offering as low as 1/7 or 1/8 on the Conservatives, that looks almost as achievable a goal as Ken beating Boris here in London.

Talk To The Hand...

2008-05-13T12:35:00.000+01:00

...'cos the face sure ain't listening.

How dare the millionaire left-wing Labour Party fantasist Neal Lawson claim the moral high ground and demand in The Independent that Gordon should step down and return to The Treasury?

How dare he claim in The Guardian that the local elections saw the final collapse of the New Labour project?

How dare he fill the columns of The Spectator blog this morning under the banner Brown loses his Compass?

Ed Balls is right - it's all the fault of Darling and Field and they'll have to go, along with Lawson. Once we've thrown them out of the Party, we can get back to listening.

As long, of course, as it's not listening to Cherie.

This Poll

2008-05-09T13:00:00.001+01:00

Yes, the one published by Rupert Murdoch just before he finally jumps ship and declares the full support of his empire for the Conservatives. The one showing the Tories 26% ahead of Labour, with the Tories on 49% and Labour on 23% - the lowest rating for the Labour Party since Ramsay MacDonald. Things wouldn't be so bad if the poll didn't show that these figures depend on the charisma of Gordon Brown as Leader - with even worse results predicted under the leadership of prospective successors Ed Balls, David Miliband, Jack Straw, Harriet Harman, Andy Burnham, Alan Johnson and James Purnell - as well as Tony Blair on a comeback tour.

Electoral Calculus projects a Tory majority of 56 if a General Election were to take place tomorrow, based on local opinion poll results and electoral boundary changes. I don't want to publish the analysis of the May 1st results I've seen, because I don't want to be responsible for a number of Labour MPs defending majorities in excess of 15,000 jumping off Big Ben. But here goes anyway - the following Labour MPs would be pretty much guaranteed to lose their seats based on last week's results:

Nick Ainger, Janet Anderson, Ian Austin, Gordon Banks, Celia Barlow, Roger Berry, Bob Blizzard, David Borrow, Ben Bradshaw, Russell Brown, Karen Buck, Colin Burgon, Alan Campbell, Martin Caton, Ian Cawsey, Ben Chapman, David Chaytor, Charles Clarke, Vernon Coaker, Rosie Cooper, David Crausby, Mary Creagh, Jon Cruddas, Ann Cryer, Jim Cunningham, Claire Curtis-Thomas, Janet Dean, Parmjit Dhanda, Andrew Dismore, David Drew, Clive Efford, Jim Fitzpatrick, Paul Flynn, Barbara Follett, Michael Foster, Michael Foster, Ian Gibson, Linda Gilroy, Patrick Hall, Mike Hall, Fabian Hamilton, Sylvia Heal, Phil Hope, Kelvin Hopkins, Lindsay Hoyle, Joan Humble, John Hutton, Brian Jenkins, Sally Keeble, Ann Keen, Ruth Kelly, Sadiq Khan, David Kidney, Jim Knight, David Lepper, Tom Levitt, Martin Linton, Andrew Mackinlay, Shahid Malik, Judy Mallaber, John Mann, Robert Marris, Eric Martlew, Christine McCafferty, Sarah McCarthy-Fry, James McGovern, Shona McIsaac, Tony McNulty, Gillian Merron, Andrew Miller, Laura Moffatt, Chris Mole, Margaret Moran, Julie Morgan, Kali Mountford, Doug Naysmith, Dan Norris, Mike O'Brien, Bill Olner, Albert Owen, Nick Palmer, Ian Pearson, James Plaskitt, Greg Pope, Gordon Prentice, Gwyn Prosser, Bill Rammell, Jamie Reed, Andy Reed, Linda Riordan, Chris Ruane, Christine Russell, Martin Salter, Jonathan Shaw, Marsha Singh, Andrew Slaughter, Angela Smith, Geraldine Smith, Andrew Smith, Jacqui Smith, John Smith, Anna Snelgrove, Helen Southworth, Phyllis Starkey, Howard Stoate, Gisela Stuart, David Taylor, Dari Taylor, Gareth Thomas, Emily Thornberry, Mark Todd, Paul Truswell, Desmond Turner, Lynda Waltho, Claire Ward, Betty Williams, Michael Wills, Mike Wood, Tony Wright, David Wright.

Still, it's not all bad news. The list may include four Cabinet Ministers, but it also includes Jon Cruddas.

So where now? Is the New Labour Project finished, as claimed by Seumas Milne in The Guardian, Rishabh Bhandari in The Times of India, Steve Richards in the Independent and many other Labour-hating journalists. Or is Peter Mandelson in The Daily Telegraph right when he tells Gordon that he's not New Labour enough? I think you know where I stand on this. I just hope the Labour MPs above will see sense and be prepared to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

Dog Tags

2008-05-08T22:35:00.002+01:00

I'm not a great fan of tags - the online equivalent of chain letters - but other kids didn't often invite me to take part in playground games when I was at school, so I'm really quite chuffed.

I've been asked to tell you six random things about me by the former Labour MP for Reading East, Jane Griffiths. I hope that I don't get into trouble for responding to her request as the former GCHQ linguist is currently on the run from HM Customs and Revenue and Reading County Court, having done a bunk to Latvia rather than appear in the dock to face bankruptcy charges. She now claims to be working for "a European institute in Strasbourg". I can't imagine what that could be, but I suspect she may be getting advice on avoiding prosecution from Peter Mandelson.

At risk of being associated with controversial, deselected, conservative, bankrupt, absconding Labour MPs, here goes:

I like pork scratchings (can you tell?);
I came 42nd in the Kent Schools three-legged cross-country egg & spoon race in 1984;
my second toe is longer than my big toe (this is called Morton's toe and is the main reason why I can't run fast);
my favourite computer game is Resident Evil 4 (I always play the Mayor, badly);
I have an A grade in Religious Studies O Level (not bad for an atheist and very useful for when Augustus is old enough to need a decent secondary school);
my favourite holiday destination is Cómpeta in Andalucia, a village extremely popular with former members of planning committees for some reason, and where I have an apartment overlooking the sea.

Meanwhile, Crudas supporter Will Parbury has instructed me to:

Pick up the nearest book
Open to page 123
Find the fifth sentence
Post the next three sentences
Tag five people and acknowledge who tagged you

The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli, (published 1515)

P.123, fifth sentence:

"A prince, therefore, ought always to take counsel, but only when he wishes and not when others wish; he ought rather to discourage every one from offering advice unless he asks it; but, however, he ought to be a constant inquirer, and afterwards a patient listener concerning the things of which he inquired; also, on learning that any one, on any consideration, has not told him the truth, he should let his anger be felt."

Next three sentences:

"And if there are some who think that a prince who conveys an impression of his wisdom is not so through his own ability, but through the good advisers that he has around him, beyond doubt they are deceived, because this is an axiom which never fails: that a prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice, unless by chance he has yielded his affairs entirely to one person who happens to be a very prudent man. In this case indeed he may be well governed, but it would not be for long, because such a governor would in a short time take away his state from him. But if a prince who is not experienced should take counsel from more than one he will never get united counsels, nor will he know how to unite them."

I'm tagging:

Paul Anderson
Dave Osler
Susan Press
Kerron Cross
Luke Young
and, because I can't count up to five correctly,
Alix Mortimer

I'm Back - And No, I Haven't Destroyed My Political Career

2008-05-08T21:00:00.003+01:00

Wow, I needed that! After the difficulties of last Thursday and Friday, I was desperate to get away from it all, so Linda and I headed off to our apartment in Andalucia for a few days, leaving Augustus with his grandmother for a change. The sun, sea and sangria were fantastic, although I must admit that I missed Hackney weather, London Fields lido and a pint of John Smith's. Mind you, it would have been even more enjoyable if I hadn't been forced to wear a balaclava all week - but such is the price of fame. With all those planning committee officers wandering around the village and sunning themselves on neighbouring balconies, I had to keep covered up to avoid being recognised. It's a good job we didn't have time to venture further, as I've been fancying a trip to Burma for some time. But the place has been devastated by a cyclone named after one of my Councillors, which is strange because she's not at all windy or wet.

For those who were on Mars last week and don't know about my media career launch, here are clips of me leading the Election Night blogging team, with Iain the ugly Tory and Alix the tasty LibDem playing minor roles in the background. Have I destroyed my own political career, as suggested by Emily Maitlis? I don't think so! Her helpful suggestion: "do let us help you", accompanied by sniggering from Dimbleby, fellow bloggers and members of the camera crew was just a sign of their jealousy. I don't see anything funny about having had Ken Livingstone use my flat for essential bodily functions while out canvassing. After all, what alternative did he have given that we've closed down all the public conveniences? The fact that I spun the story so my place became the "campaign headquarters for the key Labour area of Hackney North" deserved better than the suggestion from Maitlis that I should install a blue plaque inscribed "Ken Livingstone pissed here".

I think I got it just about right, with such comments as "Labour morale seems to be holding up quite well", "I've been talking up some of the good results Labour's had" and my masterpiece of political prediction for the mayoral contest: "We've got to get into the count tomorrow and see exactly how the votes weigh up before we can predict that". I don't think the latter comment deserved Maitlis's comment about people smiling and not being able to get inside the mind of a blogger. There's nothing difficult about getting inside my mind, I can assure you! I summed it all up with my tour de force: "I think the New Labour brand isn't necessarily sullied... that actually the public like the combination of economic efficiency and tough-on-crime and social justice that New Labour stands for... it's just the 10p thing made them think we'd lost sight of the social justice element". So there you have it. We'll give you all your 10p back and Gordon will be swept back into office with a massive majority at the next General Election.

However bad things may have been for Labour on the night, they could have been worse. We could have had Portaloo on our side, endorsing our mayoral candidate:

That cheered me up no end. I'm looking forward to Brillo's comments on the next episode of This Week.

I'm On Holiday

2008-05-04T23:25:00.000+01:00

Oh, f**k it. It's Bank Holiday weekend and after last week's humiliation I simply cannot get round to writing anything without feeling sick. I expect my doppelgänger will manage to be his usual perky self (as opposed to his usual pinky self - couldn't resist a little Iain Dale joke there) and write endless columns of mindless rubbish.

If I know him - and I ought to by now - he'll post about how the whole Party except for me is going down the wrong path, how Labour will never get back into power until Compass is squashed, how some Cabinet Ministers are grinning through gritted teeth and others plotting a coup and how the election really wasn't as bad as people are making out. He might even write something about the NEC, the Australian Labor Party or what Boris will do about Ken's Venezuelan oil deal. And one thing's for sure. He's bound to generate endless f**king lists of constituencies where the vote held up or swung Labour's way in places nobody has ever heard of. As for me - I'm enjoying the sun while it's here. You never know what might happen if Gordon Brown goes outside and looks upwards.

Second "Intellectual Giant" And Gay Porn Film Director Elected

2008-05-03T22:00:00.002+01:00

Last July I published an incisive article about a couple I described at the time as "two intellectual giants of the [London Mayoral] election contest - Boffmeister of the Fourth Estate and Boris "Buffoon" Johnson, or "Pride" and "Prejudice" as they are popularly known."

I went on to say: "As far as the latter is concerned, I only need to emphasise the extent to which the Old Etonian MP for leafy Henley and former member of the Bullingdon Club ("The Bullies") will really understand the problems facing Hackney and other inner city boroughs.

Boffmeister, editor-in-chief of Dalston's rag mag [EastEight], tree-planter (carbon offsets for his magazine waste paper!) and constant harpie attacker of Hackney Council from the left (eh? - is that right, Linda?) may know a bit more about Hackney, but he's just as easy to ridicule. Boffie is a man whose personal vote is such that he lost Hornsey and Wood Green to Labour in the 1992 General Election with a stunning 3.8% drop in the Tory vote, at a time when Labour nationally increased its vote by only 3.6%. And, of course, we gave him a good stuffing last May."

Obviously two total morons, but ones whom Labour could easily deal with and neutralise politically.

So yesterday one became London Mayor and the other was elected to the Greater London Assembly, at the head of the Conservative top-up list.

Boffmeister of the GLA

Boffmeister joins an interesting group of no fewer than 11 openly gay, lesbian and bisexual GLA members, none of whom will appeal greatly to the BNP, whose leader Nick Griffin recently wrote: "The word gay means happy, we have no problem with being happy. Some unfortunate people suffer from homosexuality so we will just have to tolerate them. If I was one I would be ashamed and would remain celibate." Speaking of the the summer gay pride parades he said: "I call it gay shame, a freak show, revolting. I know it's politically incorrect, but that's what we are." Which must have sounded very comforting to the former homoerotic film director and newly-elected BNP representative on the GLA, Richard Barnbrook, one of the 11 openly GLB members of the assembly. La-di-dah.

It's All The Fault Of The Bastard I Supported

2008-05-03T11:25:00.001+01:00

I'm very proud today. Ken Livingstone's speech just now was dignified, appropriate and set entirely the right tone. He will go down in history alongside great oratory in death. "Kiss me, Hardy. Thank God I have done my duty." "I'm just going outside. I may not be back for some time." "I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace." "Et tu, Brute?"

On the other hand, it was all the snivelling nasal bastard's own fault. If only he'd listened to people like me and engaged the Labour election machine earlier, he would have won. But Red Ken remains Red Ken. Just like John Kerry and Al Gore he refused to reach out to voters in the centre ground and stuck to his entrenched Trotskyite policies - such as supporting the Olympics, deploying more police, attacking striking London Underground workers, urging non-union workers to scab, defended Ian Blair over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, privatising the East London Line and developing close relations with City bankers, fund managers and multinational conglomerates.

If only Ken had the sense to adopt our strategy of "triangulation", I'm sure he would have won comfortably. He should have reached out to potential BNP voters, white van men and suburban dwellers in general instead of wasting time on his natural supporters. Trades unionists, poor people and the underclass (if they can be bothered to get out of bed) will vote for us anyway, so sod them.

And he should not have been photographed standing next to men with Middle Eastern appearances and bushy black beards, or recorded telling journalists that Hitler was a good chap.

Bill Shankly got it right - to win you need to triangulate. I'm not exactly sure what it means, but if it was good enough for Tony Blair and for the great Liverpool side of the 1980s, it's good enough for me. Just wait until I get the job of General Secretary of the Party. There'll be triangles everywhere, just you wait and see. We can't afford prawn sandwiches any more, but there'll be plenty of Dairylea cheese spread.

Second Votes May Just Swing It

2008-05-02T21:51:00.001+01:00

Be prepared for the unexpected when it comes to transfer votes. Brian Paddick just admitted on BBC London that he had given his second preference to Lindsey German, om the grounds that she's the only genuinely non-homophobic candidate on the ballot form apart from himself. Maybe Ken will get loads of transfers from the BNP on the grounds that he's the candidate most likely to open the borders to lots of good-looking female immigrants for their London leader to send photos of his privates to and shag afterwards.

Latest From The Clown

2008-05-02T20:00:00.001+01:00

Fresh back from the count at Ally Pally to read this latest piece of witicism from the anarcho-fascist Paul Staines, obviously typed into his computer with the left hand while his right one was busy celebrating the Tory victory and decision by his countryman Paddy Power to pay out on Boris win bets.

POSITION VACANT

Our client, a large scale public sector operator, is seeking a new head of operations. Candidates must be able to deal sensitively with an under pressure CEO in a highly stressful environment and willing to be on-call 24-hours a day.

The enterprise is heavily indebted with declining revenue and critical solvency issues that make it an exciting opportunity in the growing area of sub-prime credit risk. The ideal candidate will be expected to personally underwrite any credit risk. Facing increasing competitive threats which have eroded market share from first to third place, the ideal candidate will be able to enthuse a demoralised and disappointed workforce. Job may require occasional liason with law enforcement officers.

The job is suitable for someone with experience of turning around failing organisations. Pay is limited, based in London.

Interested parties should contact Mr G. Brown, Listening Leader of the Labour Party, C/O Downing Street, London SW1.

Well, Staines, the last laugh is on you. My application (typed with both hands) is already in the post. I have all the necessary qualifications for the job and it's just the sort of opportunity I've been waiting for. I can't wait to get started.

My feelings are best summed up in the words of our Mediterranean island sister organisation (apologies for the fact that they can now afford a microphone but they're still saving up to buy a camcorder):

Off To Pray For A Miracle

2008-05-02T13:10:00.001+01:00

I won't be blogging after this post as I am dragging myself along to Alexandra Palace for the final stages of the London count. Before that though I will be having lunch at the Geffrye Museum cafe with Augustus Akehurst and two other under-3s, which will remind me what life in the Labour Cabinet could have been like had I become an MP and progressed from there.

I'm not praying for Ken to win, of course. That would be a miracle. No, I'm praying that the results for the North East constituency sufficiently obfuscate the Hackney vote that no-one notices any inconsistencies between today's count and the 2002 and 2006 local election results. The last thing we want in Hackney is for some smart arse from a university in Vilnius to write reports breaking down the vote and claiming that it shows irreconcilable discrepancies with the Borough local election results and asking how that could possibly be the case.

The Only Way Is Up - Way Up

2008-05-02T09:13:00.002+01:00

The last time Labour did this badly in the local elections, the Beatles were top of the charts, Flower Power was all the rage and I wasn't born. Now, 40 years on, these bloody former hippies are all voting Tory. What the hell is going on?

Still, I'm sure we'll learn the lessons. All we need to do is listen more carefully and make sure that our successes are properly communicated to the electorate. So, starting tomorrow it's more focus groups and more PR consultants.

Whoopie! The only way is up. A long, long way up.

Election Night Live Blog

2008-05-02T00:14:00.022+01:00

02:33 - Sod it - I've had enough. Everybody else is getting pissed and I'm not going to sit here any longer. I'm off for a good night's sleep before the London count and Ken's triumph tomorrow.

02:22 - At least we don't get the knives out for our candidates before their victories have even been declared. Michael Portillo a few minutes ago: "Of course Boris is a particularly unreliable person. How on earth he's going to run a city like London I just don't know".

02:19 - Oh dear, Kelvin McKenzie didn't win Weybridge. What a shame!

02:12 - I seem to be blogging all on my own here. I think Emily has side-tracked Iain to play with his crotch again.

02:10 - Great news - Labour gains 3 seats and the Greens 1 to take Liverpool from LibDem control to NOC. You know what I think about NOC. It's what I blamed for all the chaos in Hackney a few years ago. But I'm sure it'll be different in Liverpool. Although I can't for the life of me think why.

01:53 - I think there may be some quite unpleasant news coming from the sheep-shaggers fairly soon. That'll please Anne Robinson. I know she loves the place.

01:52 - Now they're taking the piss. I can absolutely assure everyone that Labour will not come third in projected share of the vote.

01:50 - The Tories have seized control of Bury, with 26 seats to our 16.

01:45 - Great news - Labour have nearly won control of Oxford, the council that we controlled after 17 of the 22 elections since 1979.

01:36 - Maitlis is lowering the tone to new depths. She's just asked Lynne Featherstonehaugh (that's Fanshaw to you and me) whether Clegg is expecting his percentage in the polls to reach the same number as his female conquests. By the way, Iain's right about one thing. Clegg has disappeared completely. I wonder if he's raising the bar on his poll target.

01:29 - At least Labour isn't losing any seats in the north.

01:26 - I've had this brilliant idea. Everything that Gordon touches turns to s**t, so I'm going to put it about that everywhere Cameron goes turns into a Labour triumph. I wonder if anyone out there is stupid enough to believe me?

01:25 - Clearly Emily has been leaning a bit too firmly on Iain's crotch. Now he's suggesting that Miss Maitlis might like to engage in some woman-on-woman action with the actress Clemency. And it's only half past one.

01:22 - Tomorrow's Financial Times, under the banner "Smashed In The Ballots" is predicting that Gordon Brown will take a serious step to the left, dismissing the remnants of Blair's New Labour team and trying to project a more Old Labour image.

01:20 - I'm sure it won't be as bad as they are predicting. I mean to say - Labour 24%, Tories 44% - that's ridiculous!

01:03 - With about half of the votes counted in the "key wards", the figures against Labour's disastrous all-time-low in 2004 show Labour down another 2% and the Tories up 7%. Oh well, at least we're bound to do better next time. "The only way is up..."

01:01 - I'm pissed off that Emily has been playing with Iain's crotch, but hasn't been anywhere near me.

12:55 - We've lost Hull, Hartlepool and Harlow. I'm getting very worried about places beginning with "H". But things are fine in Hackney. Mostly because we're not going to the polls today.

12:46 - The Tories have taken Southampton in a shock result. John Denham is looking distinctly worried.

12:40 - I just heard that we lost Nuneaton in something approaching a wipeout.

12:24 - I know we lost Blaenau Gwent to the Independents (ex-Labour), but surely not the Council....?

12:14 - We're being massacred in Birmingham. I blame Jasper Carrot myself. Maybe he'll be Boris's appointee as BME advisor.

I've been looking over Iain Dale's shoulder and just realised how to do this election blog. I had been beginning to wonder how I would manage with hundreds of different posts - but he's shown me how to do the whole thing with one post. Simple for Dale, but not quite so easy for me. So here we go.

Chorley, Surely?

2008-05-02T00:06:00.003+01:00

The spoof Akehurst has learnt to impersonate me brilliantly, highlighting many of my weaknesses with stunning accuracy. However, making an incorrect declaration in his very first blog post of the evening is definitely taking the piss. Even I can get this one right:

Chorley - Euxton North
Con 908 Lab 745 Debra Platt (Conservative) takes the seat from Danny Gee (Labour)

'Lo

2008-05-01T22:58:00.000+01:00

I feel like I should offer a formal "hello" to both of the new readers who have found their way to my blog, despite the BBC website having posted a link to my spoofster. Typical Trots!

Welcome, and please feel free to post in the comments section if you have any misery you want to rub into me about tonight's results, or if you think I've written something less daft than usual.

Good luck to any Labour candidates and activists still sober enough to wait up for the results tonight. Great news to start with - we've held Sunderland. It's some place up north where they build warships, so that's great news for my clients in the defence industry!

A Lunch Outing In Stokie

2008-05-01T20:30:00.003+01:00

This snap, kindly taken by my local blogging friend Dave Spart, shows me with my heroes Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and my life-long friends Ken Livingstone and Jennette Arnold from the GLA, together with Diane Portillo from the BBC, The Voice and Coutts Bank.

Along with a few local nonentities and a bunch of children, we were setting out from my flat in Beatty Road this afternoon to engage in positive campaigning - handing out a few hundred "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" leaflets in Stoke Newington High Street before piling into our CLP sponsor's restaurant for a delicious lunch (with fries and shakes). I asked for some foie on the side, but apparently they don't do it.

Welcome To My BBC Election Night Audience

2008-05-01T08:00:00.008+01:00

To those of you visiting my blog for the first time after seeing me on BBC Election Night 2008 with David Dimbleby, Emily Maitlis, Iain Dale and Alix Mortimer - welcome. I must confess that I was a bit confused at first, but now they've explained to me that I'm supposed to be discussing the election results. The Representation of the People Act 2000 means I'm severely limited in the topics on which I can offer wise comment, which doesn't really impact on me much as that's my normal condition. Still - it never stopped me opening my mouth before.

Try to be sympathetic, as I'm going to be having a very uncomfortable night. All over England and Wales there's going to be bad news for the New Labour Project, to which I'm totally committed except during occasional and inexplicable fits of pseudo-left-wing insanity. And even worse, it looks distinctly possible that my conversion from rabid Ken-hater to leading canvasser for the same Mr. Livingstone may have contributed to his downfall. I do hope he doesn't blame Gordon and me publicly afterwards.

Who am I? I'm "Luke The Nuke" - ex-public schoolboy, now Public Affairs Director of one of the world's most powerful PR conglomerates. Supporter of Israel, nuclear power stations and Trident replacement and a consultant to international armaments manufacturers and UK Government outsourcing companies. And a serial runner-up at parliamentary elections. Just the sort of chap who forms the bedrock of today's Labour Party (in partnership with the Greens).

It's because I'm Labour's face of failure that I've been selected to take part in the programme on this day when my record is expected to be especially relevant to the election results. To find out more about my absurd politics and beliefs, look in the sidebar of this blog. You'll easily recognise me on TV - I'm the really good looking ginger-haired one wedged in-between the porcine Tory blogger and the two women who know something about politics. That's me, on the left (hahaha!)

Don't be fooled by this idiot, who has been going round impersonating me ever since we had an unbelievably good result in the 2006 local elections in Hackney and I started up a blog to crow about it. You can easily tell that he's a fraudster - just read his blog and look for any clues that he might be a socialist, genuinely concerned for the working class and dispossessed. Bloody hell. Robert Tressell would have had something to say about him, alright!

Happy May Day, everyone. Workers of the world, unite - you have nothing to lose but your fixed-rate mortgages.

A Few Wolf-Whistles

2008-04-30T19:40:00.004+01:00

I know I can be a bit dim at times, but midway through a gruelling afternoon down at the BBC Election Night studio in Millbank it suddenly dawned on me. Maybe, just maybe, I wasn't invited to take part in the BBC's election broadcasts because of my handsome face, my informed punditry or my political connections.

David Dimbleby gave it away when, as I first entered the studios, he said loudly: "Blimey, you've managed to find someone to represent Labour". Of course it was only for the late night number-crunching bit of the programme, with a few comments about how much I fancy the LibDem blogger thrown in for good measure. The main Labour representative would be a lot more important than me, of course.

It got worse. Dimbleby rocked back in his chair and laughed as he informed us all that Tessa Jowell would be representing the Government on the night as no serving Cabinet Minister was prepared to be humiliated as the results came in. Still, she's a Minister of sorts even if a demoted one, and more importantly the Minister for London and the Olympics. This will prove extremely useful as the London count is not taking place until Friday and hence on Thursday night she can plead ignorance in response to almost all questions likely to be asked, explaining that they don't come within her brief.

The bad news was not so much that Tessa couldn't be arsed to turn up for rehearsals, as that someone was needed to stand in for her. And guess who got the job? God, it was humiliating. I simply didn't believe Dimbleby when he clacked on about Dustin Hoffman and method acting and how important it was for me to get fully into character for the part. And the wolf-whistles from the camera crew!

What really put me off, though, was when David Dimbleby told me I was "feisty". I really think he fancied me.

I'm going to finish this post with a few predictions:

Reading council is the only one in the south east of England outside London controlled by us, so it's vital that we keep control of it. We'll lose it. Listen out for the bugler blowing "The Last Post" as Reading completes Labour southern retreat.

The West Midlands will see a massive increase in the Labour vote and we'll gain seats. We should have no trouble keeping control of Wolverhampton after Wolves moved to within two points of the promotion zone on the back of a 3-0 thumping of Cardiff.

The LibDems will lose control of Liverpool, after Nick Clegg spent the day there. There'll be better news for Liverpudlians, though, as Liverpool will thrash Chelsea later tonight to reach the Champions League final.

Labour will perform well everywhere in the north where sheep can be found, especially in the Pennine boroughs.

The Tories will spend a lot of time arguing about exactly how many fractions of a % above 45% they have edged.

We won't win enough of the north to make the map look like a true north-south divide exists.

We're f***ed in Wales. Strange, really, as they have lots of sheep there.

I shan't say anything more about Ken vs Boris because I'm still hopeful of a place in the Big Tent.

If you are Labour and reading this, you shouldn't be! Go and watch the Champions League semi-final instead. Have a few beers. Pretend all this isn't really happening!

Oh S**t, Why Did I Open My Big Stupid Mouth?

2008-04-29T21:31:00.001+01:00

Just 6 months ago I was all fired up over Gordon's Big Tent. Oh, how times change. If only I'd seen then what I see now.

When I declared for Ken in January, I had absolutely no idea that four months later it would be Boris erecting the big tent and I would be excluded because of my rabid support for Mr. Livingstone. Even more ironic given that I can't stand the man (Ken, this is, not Boris).

Now the Mayoral election is all over bar the counting, with Ken's odds lengthening all the time and Boris 5-2 on to win, the Buffoon has been dishing out places in his big tent to all sorts of people.

First to accept a post was the MP for Vauxhall, Kate Hoey, who'll be Mayor's advisor on sports and the Olympics.

Slightly more reticent to come forward in advance of the official result (for fairly obvious reasons) is Brian Paddick, the LibDem Mayoral candidate widely tipped to become Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

Just think what I could have been offered if I'd had the sense to keep my trap shut. Mayor's advisor on ginger rights? City Hall restaurant manager? Boris's personal political blogging consultant? All jobs with salaries in excess of £100,000 a year and with massive expenses. Even better than being an MP. Oh, s**t!

Oh Come On - It's Not My Fault!

2008-04-29T07:55:00.003+01:00

I've had some very unnecessary comments since I announced that I'd be popping into City Hall on Thursday night.

The "erection night" and "pinky & perky" comments I can take, although I don't find them at all funny. But the suggestion that I've acquired "the Gordon touch" after being re-elected unopposed as Chief Whip for the 7th successive year is deeply offensive. I can assure all my readers that the flooding of City Hall has absolutely no connection whatever with my planned visit there.

After consulting with Labour colleagues in Whitehall, I can also confirm that there will be no outbreaks of ugly and painful sores, the North sea will continue to comprise salt water, no rivers of blood are expected despite Channel4 documentaries on Enoch Powell, temperatures will be normal for the season, there will be no widespread power cuts, the river Euphrates will continue to flow despite the US "surge", London will remain united and no hailstorms are anticipated. In addition, numbers of flies, frogs, lice and locusts are expected to remain substantially unchanged.

Breaking news...

The cat is out of the bag. It looks like all will be well for the trip to City Hall, after all. My well-known jaundiced view of LibDems had already been seriously challenged by the prospect of a date with the posh Alix Mortimer. I was quite taken aback when I saw the whole nine yards and - although I was pooped and a bit three sheets to the wind last night - I could really fancy making some headway there, son of a gun! But when I heard that Captain Mortimer (as she is known on the high seas) is planning to sail her ship, the SS. Dubrovnik, into City Hall for the election night broadcasts I was totally blown overboard.

Wow! Am I up for that? The weather's looking a bit rough and it may be cold enough on Thursday night to freeze the balls of off a brass monkey, but I'm planning to dismantle my inhibitions, overhaul my rig, get a crew cut and forge ahead. With a bit of good luck and a windfall in the offing, I'll batten down the hatches, splice her mainbrace and have a field day, even if there is no room to swing a cat down there. I hope Linda doesn't find out, because if she does there'll be the devil to pay. My water-logged skylarking intentions will go by the board, the wife and I will be at loggerheads, I'll be between the devil and the deep blue sea and at the bitter end I'll have to pipe down, dismantle my plans, scuttle the evening and toe the line. And that would be a mutinous shame, by and large.

A Night On The Tiles

2008-04-28T13:45:00.001+01:00

Alix Mortimer and Emily Maitlis

Unlike most politicos who will be at the election counts on Thursday night, I've got the night off as we count during the London Mayoral election during the day on Friday. So, don't tell Linda, but I've arranged a double date for the evening with my mate Iain and a couple of gorgeous women - 29-year-old brunette freelance writer and researcher Alix for me and 37-year-old blonde TV presenter for Iain (well, he is a lot older than me, after all). Apparently, Emily has to show her face at work, so we'll all have to turn up there later on. Obviously Iain and I are just the dates, so we're not expected to appear in front of camera, but you never know what might happen with the Beeb.

In fact, I can just see it now:

Introducing Luke and Iain - the BBC's handsome, intelligent and witty political pundits - who will guide you through the evening by:

acting as an alternative results service while David Dimbleby pops out for a quick snorter;
describing what's going on a round the country - atmosphere at the counts, rumours, gossip, colour - they'll make it all up!
talking about the reaction to what they're writing on their blogs - except of course for the hundreds of rude comments!
drawing attention to eye-catching political blogs (except LibDem ones).

Two strikingly handsome men

If anyone has any thoughts about where we could take Alix and Emily for the evening for a good time - not too far from City Hall because that's where we need to be later in the night - do drop me a message at lukeakehurst@email.com. The same applies if you have any good gossip you think should get wider attention via our blogs.

The Mayoral Election In Hackney - A Tight Battle Between Our Little Fiefdom And The Tory Majority

2008-04-27T19:27:00.000+01:00

Another day, another ward, another canvassing session. This time it was that bit of the massive, run-down Woodberry Down Estate that's in Brownswood Ward. I had to go to this tiny little bit of the estate, of course, because it's Labour-controlled. Even so, I felt very nervous, with loads of people telling me to f**k off.

We made 120 contacts of which 44 identified themselves as Labour votes and the remainder said they would vote against Labour or not vote at all. That's not bad, I suppose, compared with the vast majority of the Woodberry Down Estate which falls inside the Tory-controlled New River Ward, from where Boris will be getting quite a few votes next week.

The Boys On The Streets

2008-04-26T22:45:00.001+01:00

Over on politicalbetting.com, failed LibDem parliamentary candidate Mike Smithson has predicted that Ken Livingstone is heading for a massive increase in his share of the first-round vote next Thursday, to a level beyond even that achieved when he first stormed into office in his purple bus in 2000. "So for every seven Londoners who gave Ken their first preferences in 2004, MORI found that eight would do so on Thursday", says Smithson. Well, not being someone who is easily impressed by the punditry of LibDems (although I'm much more favourably disposed to failed parliamentary candidates), I thought I'd take part in today's canvassing in Hackney North & Stokie instead.

A small group of 46 Labour activists (including Julian's mates Ronnie and Reggie plus some of their friends from South London, Hertfordshire, Essex and Kent) took a slow drive around Leabridge Ward, which has always returned three Labour Councillors. It's mainly but not exclusively social housing but low rise with a lot of buy-to-let leaseholders most of whom were out sunbathing in Springfield Park so we didn't have to listen to them bleating on about how the credit crunch was affecting their property portfolios and how Boris would sort it all out. The ethnic mix includes large Turkish, Kurdish and West African minorities, several thousand of whom are employed by Hackney Council.

Ronnie and Reggie invited people to step up to the darkened windows of their limos to report their voting intentions. The returns from the 279 electors canvassed were as follows:

Labour (including those unable to comprehend the question but understanding the right answer) - 261
I knew your mother, she had a heart of gold - 3
I'm not from round here, but I'll certainly vote now you've given me a ballot form - 14
Yes, I'd think seriously about changing my electricity supplier - 1

Now even allowing for over-enthusiastic canvassing, this suggests that Hackney will return a massive majority for Ken, even bigger than Julian's victory in the last Hackney Mayoral election when many of the supporters of other candidates inadvertently put their ballot forms into an elephant's arse rather than into the ballot box.

The betting markets are also looking better for Ken. Most bookies have his odds shortening, at a rate that suggests that he will become the punters' favourite by June 2012, easily in time for the Olympic Games. I'm a bit puzzled by Mike Smithson's personal gambling comment, though: "I've been waiting with a fist-full of cash ready to make some significant investments and the prices simply have not moved enough." Which, given that the odds against Ken are shortening, makes me wonder on who's nose he was planning to put his fist-full of cash. Unless he was planning to throw his money away on Brian Paddick, this can only mean that he was planning to back Boris as his odds lengthen. I wonder whether I should really pay serious attention to a LibDem who is desperate to put wads of wonga on a Tory victory?

Smiths And Morrissey Competition

2008-04-26T09:05:00.001+01:00

I've been rightly chastised for omitting Councillor Stauber from my earlier attempt at a mapping of Smiths And Morrissey tracks onto my Labour Group. As I explained in my apology, I was so busy looking at floor-crossers in Castle Point, I forgot the ones in Hackney - but that's because I always focus on parliament rather than on the local peasants. Well my wrist is well and truly smacked and I've decided to throw a competition open to those whose interest in the local riff-raff is greater than mine.

All you have to do is nominate suitable tracks either by the Smiths or Morrissey solo that you feel best describe your favourite local Labour Councillors. I've had my go - now it's your turn.

There are some great titles to choose from - Ambitious Outsiders, Barbarism Begins At Home, Best Friend On The Payroll, Break Up The Family, Certain People I Know, The Edges Are No Longer Parallel, Girl Least Likely To, Hairdresser On Fire, The Harsh Truth Of The Camera Eye, The Headmaster Ritual, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, I Keep Mine Hidden, I Started Something I Couldn't Finish, Interesting Drug, Never Had No One Ever, November Spawned A Monster, Nowhere Fast, Panic, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Rubber Ring, Shoplifters Of The World Unite, Sweet And Tender Hooligan, Work Is A Four Letter Word and You've Had Her, to name but a few.

Send your answers to lukeakehurst@email.com. Each suggestion must be accompanied by a clear explanation of why you think the song title is better suited to that particular Councillor than my own nomination. Deadline - Saturday May 17th. The winner will win a captioned and signed photo of themselves with the person they selected.

Now They're All At It

2008-04-25T11:00:00.002+01:00

If it wasn't bad enough for little, unimportant me being spoofed, now someone's at it with Harriet Harman.

I'm a bit gutless, myself, but Harriet is much tougher and she has moved immediately to have this ridiculous spoof closed down. Clicking on the link above will now get you nowhere, so it's lucky I took the above screen snapshot earlier. It's probably the same spoofster, because there are some strong connections between the two spoofs. Both make it seem as if their victims are politically unstable - veering madly between the opposing wings of our party. In my case it was from supporting Trident replacement and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon to campaigning for Ken Livingstone and supporting Frank Field and his 10p rebels. In Harriet's case it was the other way round - changing her firm commitment and ceaseless efforts for Labour in the local elections into campaign support for Boris The Buffoon.

Anyone with half a brain can see through these nonsense spoofs and recognise the real article. My politics are far more stable and rational than those of the spoofster, as evidenced by my postings here on my blog. And Harriet likewise shows a cheerful, positive and stable demeanour on her real blog, where just like me she has to waste time explaining what's what to idiots who confuse the real website with the fake one.

Panic On The Streets Of Hackney

2008-04-24T21:30:00.005+01:00

Hackney Council Labour Group in Smiths & Morrissey song titles:

No, It's Not Real

2008-04-24T08:30:00.001+01:00

Pay no attention to the false stories whipped up in the Tory media and aimed at damaging Labour's chances in the local elections. This is Eisenstein Appreciation Week and to commemorate the 60th anniversary of his death, various events are taking place across the country.

Teachers are putting on performances at schools across England and Wales and a special re-enactment of Sergei's first feature-length film is taking place at Grangemouth refinery.

Some 700 Maritime and Coastguard Agency staff are also putting on a performance of The Battleship Potemkin and they are expected to be joined later today by about 100,000 workers from the Department for Work and Pension, the Home Office, the Department for Transport, the Driving Standards Agency, and the Highways Agency, all angry over plans for pay rises to be capped below inflation according to the PCS union.

Employees of Metronet, the bankrupt engineering contractor of London Underground, decided not to participate in the celebrations after the Rail Maritime and Transport union said they had received the written assurances needed from TfL over job security. Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone told the media: "I've been a lifelong Eisenstein fan. But with the election coming up in a few days we need everyone in London to focus on their jobs and not engage in frivolities."

An extended two-day performance by Birmingham City Council workers got off to a bad start after more than three quarters of union members decided that they couldn't act. And MPs also abandoned their much-heralded and eagerly-awaited show scheduled for next Monday, after quite a few poor people were offered some forms to fill in to reclaim their additional income tax levies. But there was good news as GPs gathered for the annual conference of Local Medical Committees in Clydebank - a location ideal as a backdrop for The Battleship Potemkin - and threatened a massive re-enactment based around "the relentless and continuous erosion of the GP contract by tyrannical and greedy Health Service bosses".

Of Course It's Not A U-Turn!

2008-04-23T13:45:00.002+01:00

Never mind what the right-wing press and Trotskyite BBC say about Gordon. All he's done is to listen to the bona fide concerns of a few of his parliamentary colleagues and ask Alistair to make some minor adjustments to the budget in order to close a couple of relatively small but nonetheless irritating loopholes that would otherwise have resulted in one or two poorer people losing out in the Government's annual bonanza.

That's not a U-turn. Backing down over support for the ending of non-contributory pensions for Unite members at the Grangemouth oil refinery would be a U-turn. Demanding that his local petrol station in Kirkcaldy reverse its 25% petrol price rise in the face of a panic market would be a U-turn. Increasing the teachers' pay offer to more than the measly 7.05% over 3 years currently on offer would be a U-turn.

Reversing the decision to fly a red and white flag over 10 Downing Street to celebrate the martyrdom of a Turkish officer in the Roman army who refused to massacre Christians would be a U-turn. Not conspiring with others to force the PM's resignation and bring the country out of the misery of Tony Blair and into the sunshine of Gordon Brown would be a U-turn. No bloody chance. As Brillo observed on The Daily Politics today - the Laddie's Not For Turning!

Castle Point - I Could Have Been Rich And Famous By Now

2008-04-22T16:15:00.003+01:00

The most depressing news I've heard in the past few days is that Bob Spink is to join UKIP. Don't get me wrong, here. The defection of a nasty, bigoted, racist crawling little Tory to an even nastier, more bigoted and racist political party is not something that would normally bother me too much.

But just think what could have happened if the rat had decided to desert the ship three years earlier. The Castle Point 2005 General Election result would have been very different.

Spink would undoubtedly have kept a sizeable chunk of his personal vote, built up over many years. But around half would have gone to the Tory replacement candidate. Leaving the result something like this.

And then I would have been propping up the Commons bar with my mate Thicko, knocking back a glass or two of claret and looking forward to my accountant performing some creative work on my expenses. Meanwhile, Linda would have been attending to my constituency mail, with Augustus at City of London School carrying out research into education options, on a substantial fee-paid consultancy basis.

Oh, how it could have been if only...

No, I Haven't Been Hiding... Well, Just A Little Bit

2008-04-22T16:00:00.002+01:00

To be honest, the past few days have been nothing short of a nightmare. I'm sure my spoofster will have been posting away merrily, trying to make me look like Captain Smith commanding the Titanic on an Arctic Ocean weekend cruise, but you won't have been taken in by that sort of thing. Where to start? Oh dear.

Even where there was genuine good news, as with the peace and harmony between Gordon and Ken as they visited the Gurdwara Singh Sabha London East the previous weekend to celebrate Vaisakhi (New Year), the press chose to ignore it. Where was the report of Labour sharing the Sikh values of tolerance, equality, justice and treating people with fairness? Where were the reports of Gordon and Ken being presented with orange robes of honour and sacred books by the temple's President? Where were the warm and friendly quotes from our Prime Minister about the Mayor of London? - "Ken Livingstone has been a Mayor who has, with great innovation, great determination and great support right across London, invested more in policing and protecting the people of our community than any local authority or any local leader before him. As well as earning praise for increasing higher visibility policing, Mr Livingstone deserves credit for investments in transport and housing." What did we get instead? Well, we certainly didn't get any more full-page pictures of Gordon picking his nose - the appointment of former Brunswick PR CEO Stephen Carter as Principal Political Adviser on a £137,000 p.a. salary ensured no more embarrassing photos like those ones. No, we got this one.

This weekend didn't start much better. First there was the news that Wolverhampton South West Labour MP and cycling campaigner Rob Marris had been arrested and charged with criminal damage after celebrating the Party's achievement in reducing the crime figures by climbing over the bonnet of an illegally-parked car to board a bus. OK, maybe that was just an error of judgement. Maybe he didn't realise that his action could be unlawful. After all, he's not a judge or a barrister. Just a humble solicitor.

Then we had the motor-mouths. First up was John Wiseman, Labour PPC for Westmorland and Lonsdale, writing in LabourHome: "I seem to be in the middle of a nightmare at present. The BNP are standing all over my home constituency. Everyone seems depressed where I am standing for parliament. Gordon has decided to take money away from his core vote, PPS's are threatening to resign!! When are we going to wake up!!! There is hundreds of councillors who are going to lose their seats if Gordon doesn't listen. I am asking please Gordon for the last time wake up and smell the coffee and save the party as in rectify the tax change!!!" This was followed up by David Miliband airing the other side of the sheets in public across The News of the Screws with its "Get A Grip Gordon" headline and encouraging Stuart King, Labour PPC for Putney, Roehampton & Southfields to mouth it in support of John Wiseman. Why can't they all just shut up and stop tearinbg the Party apart in public. I mean, would you see me attacking the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in public? Calling him daft on my blog? Would I hell.

Most of the weekend was spent pondering the looming disaster otherwise known as the London Mayoral Election. Obviously I spent some time out canvassing - people would have noticed if I'd cried off altogether - but to be honest it made me so sick that I hid in a pub for a large part of Sunday rather than face the wrath of the electorate. I'd love to be able to tell you that across Hackney North & Stoke Newington there was uniformly strong support on both estates and owner-occupied streets and that it was easy to get people to put Ken Livingstone posters up in their windows. If I didn't think I might be sued by someone laughing so loud they split an internal organ, I'd report that some doddery old fart was so pleased to see the Labour Party come round that they rushed over and hugged me. It's not that I don't know how to spin the stories - it's more that they're becoming so unbelievable even I can't write them any more. I might as well tell you there's a house-price boom, or England is heading for World Cup victory.

Still, I've got to have a go, I suppose. Wow - just look at the fantastic position Ken Livingstone is in based on the bookmakers' odds above. Only a week ago it was all gloom and doom, and admittedly it is still the case that Boris the Buffoon is odds on with every betting establishment between Lima and Svalbard. But the good news is that 7 out of 14 bookies have Ken's odds shortening and 6 others have him stabilised in the betting, with only 1 bookie showing Labour's odds drifting. Another ~~few months~~ nine days of this and we'll be home and dry.

Prezza's Sunday sick-bag revelations didn't help much. Not exactly a reason to be cheerful. The Sunday lunchtime image of Labour's most celebrated glutton, pugilist, lecher and foul-mouth puking up his foie gras, claret and stilton is hardly one that would make most people think "I must pop out on Thursday week and vote Labour". And with the working class vote turned off by the tabloids, we hardly needed Paul Staines to remind middle-class intellectuals like me that over-eating followed by vomiting was the favourite pastime of Julius Caesar, thereby raising the spectre of the ruthless and tyranical ambition of so many Labour MPs.

Rewarding Our Partners

2008-04-18T17:14:00.003+01:00

We've been so pleased with our new coalition partners, we thought we'd let them have some of the action for a change.

After all, it's not often the Greens are seen on the podium, what with minor accidents guillotining the ballot papers.

But we're so much more contrite these days and in yesterday's Suffolk County Council Stowmarket North and Stowupland Division by-election we thought it was time to do our funny little cycling/recycling friends a favour. Still, at least we beat those UKIP bastards.

The Word Is Getting Round About The Big Cheese

2008-04-16T22:35:00.005+01:00

Since my invitation-that-never-was to a fingers-free evening at Satchmo's, the word has been getting round. It looks like quite a few local hostelries would like the company of the Labour Chief Whip. And it's about bloody time too. I was getting really fed up with Julian getting all the foie gras, fromage and claret while I was left at home to look after Augustus and write inane blog posts about David Aaronovitch, Neil Kinnock and legal imprints. Here's my latest invite:

Dear Luke. The Old Ship would like to invite you to celebrate its transformation into an 'Urban Inn'. Sample some of our new, best of British menu and check out the contemporary and comfortable rooms at our launch event. Join us for canapés and drinks, and to find out how we can work together in the future.

That's my kind of thing. Canapés, drinks and finding out "how we can work together in the future". Know what I mean? Nudge-nudge, wink wink. I've written to ask if they are intending to lay on some lap dancing as part of their plans to become an "urban inn", but no reply yet.

Postscript - Just received this disappointing news:

Dear Luke,

There isn't any lapdancing planned, no. I noticed that you've put the invitation up on your blog, would you mind taking the invitation off, as otherwise half the bloody Councillors will turn up uninvited for the free food and wine - you know what they're like!

Looking forward to meeting you on the [sshhh! secret].

Kind regards
[Mr. X]

No problem - I've removed all the details so uninvited guests (especially certain people from Chatham and Kings Park wards) don't gatecrash and drink all the booze before I arrive.

Archant Drops Its Trousers

2008-04-15T18:05:00.002+01:00

Statement by Sir (nearly) Julian Pipeshaft, Mayor of Hackney:

I would like to congratulate the editors and staff of the Hackney Groveller and East London Massage Parlour News for refusing the initial adverts, and to congratulate the executives of the Archant newspaper group for their promptness in fully comprehending the consequences that pursuing their earlier course of action would have had for the company's finances. This decision is the best of both worlds - it allows Archant to appear to be backing down quite reasonably in response to local community pressure and makes me look like a decisive and radical campaigning leader just as I did at the end of the recent betting shop farago that I was originally responsible for creating.

The freedom of the press allows the media to choose what it does and does not publish and to take a particular editorial stance on an issue; the concept of freedom of speech cannot be used to claim that a newspaper must publish all material offered to it with the only criterion being legality.

Those out electioneering for the upcoming London mayoral election have invariably encountered disbelief or disgust when the issue is raised on the doorstep. The many messages of protest that I have seen from residents, and people's readiness to sign the petition organised by Labour councillors, are an endorsement of Archant's decision to align themselves with the views of the overwhelming majority of the local community.

On the other hand, residents I have polled have expressed considerable interest in seeing the photos of an unnamed Hackney Councillor in flagrante digitus down at Satchmo's lap dancing club and as part of my arrangement with Archant I shall be supplying said pictures shortly."

I Apologise To Linda Over "Digital Action" Comment

2008-04-15T17:15:00.001+01:00

Sometimes things just don't go right at all, as for our beloved PM at present. But it's been even worse for me today, due to a freak set of circumstances here in Stokie. It all began when I was invited to participate in this event:

I suppose it was my own fault, really. I should never have told Linda that I'd been invited out for a bit of digital action with Hannah. How was I to know that, in her capacity as a member of Hackney Council Planning SubCommittee, Linda had been actively involved in this:

It just didn't occur to me for one minute that Linda would fail to understand that digital means "encoding into 1s and 0s" and assume instead that it mean "using the fingers".

Satchmo's is just two streets south of our house, on Stoke Newington Road. I blame Sir (nearly) Julian Pipeshaft for the confusion. If he hadn't described the location as "Stoke Newington High Road" in his interview with The Groveller, Linda wouldn't have wandered miles up and down looking for the place and would consequently have been in a much better mood when she arrived home and I made my ill-judged comment.

Sorry, babes. I would never visit a place like that with Hannah, or anyone else for that matter. I've never been to a lap dancing club in my life and I have absolutely no idea what goes on in them. Except, of course, that you aren't allowed to use your fingers.

It Could Be Worse...

2008-04-15T16:00:00.001+01:00

Extracts from a letter by Comintern President Zinoviev to the British Communist Party, September 1924.

If You Advertise The BNP, Archant, We'll Nick Your Reporters

2008-04-15T15:45:00.001+01:00

Our local paper, the Hackney Groveller, is owned by newspaper group Archant. Across London, Archant seems to have agreed to run adverts from the BNP. I've sent the email below to Archant's CEO and Chairman:

Dear Mr Jewson and Mr Fry,

I am writing as Ward Councillor for the miserably depressing and run-down Chatham Ward in the London Borough of Hackney to express my shock and concern at reports that Archant are planning to allow the BNP to advertise in the Hackney Groveller.

Hackney is a borough with excellent race relations and community cohesion and although there was a National Front presence in the 1970s there has been no local far right presence in recent years. We are one of the most multi-cultural boroughs in London and the Groveller's readership must reflect this. Many Groveller readers from ethnic minority groups - and others who value Hackney's ethnic diversity - will be horrified to open their local paper and see an advert from a far right party. Others - pathetic poor white working class voters in my ward for whom Labour has done fuck all because we've always been able to rely on their votes - may be persuaded to vote fascist in order to try to improve their miserable little existences.

The BNP is not just another party that has an equal entitlement to advertise. The race hatred it peddles has been directly linked to increased violence and abuse against people from ethnic minority groups in areas where it is active, especially in wards like mine where there are a preponderance of stupid, disaffected peasants. The nature of the BNP's ideology and tactics have been extensively catalogued over the years - key members have convictions for race-related behaviour and criminal violence, and a history of promotion of neo-Nazi concepts such as holocaust denial, although this won't be a major concern to me as there isn't much of a Jewish population in my ward.

I have always been pleased that the Groveller has a policy of recognising the financial advantages of supporting Labour, but this should not extend to allowing a fascist party to have a platform through the same advertising that we pay large sums of money for. I am sure that the Groveller would subscribe to certain core beliefs such as support for democracy and opposition to racism that allowing the BNP to advertise would contradict. I am equally sure that you will reconsider our advertising budget with The Groveller and consider the effect that withdrawal would have on your little rag.

I do hope you will reconsider your decision to take their advert. Should you fail to do so, I cannot be held responsible if some of your key staff take matters into their own hands (for a small inducement) and desert your paper only to suddenly appear on the front of our alternative and vastly superior newspaper, the Hackney Toady.

Cllr Luke Akehurst
Chatham Ward (Labour)

Get Some Decent Photos, Guido

2008-04-15T13:25:00.003+01:00

The latest in an occasional series noting that right-wing bloggers know next to nothing about the internal politics of the Labour Party. Guido has a go at me, accusing me of speaking in the Trident replacement debate at last June's Compass conference at Central Hall Westminster (pretty much the worst slander you could ever throw at someone in my view).

If anyone is moronic enough to think that I took part in any such debate, sharing a platform with the despicable and traitorous members of Compass and CND, I'd damned well like to see the evidence.

Never hesitate to let a whacking good photo get in the way of the boring facts, though, Guido.
Er... is that right, Linda?

My Imprint... Again

2008-04-14T15:42:00.000+01:00

Just repeating this because I know you all liked it last time so I thought I'd show you it once again.

Please note, however, that neither Gordon Brown nor other members of The Labour Party is responsible for the content of this imprint, as none of them have ever laid hands on booty like this and most of them hate me anyway.

To the chap who emailed me earlier - no, it's not me tattooing the Member of Parliament for Salford. And to the other emailer - it's obviously not Linda. Are you mad?

What To Do When You Are 16% Behind

2008-04-13T23:41:00.001+01:00

This Week In Emmerdale

2008-04-11T20:15:00.001+01:00

Villagers headed back to the polls in Old Gore Ward in leafy Herefordshire yesterday, less than a year after sexy, bespectacled redhead Tessa McLean was elected to represent the ward on the district council.

The gorgeous, pouting Conservative caused a sensation last May by defeating John Edwards, stalwart independent and former council chairman. Having taken redundancy pay from her current job, the exciting new young member of the parish council decided to shove orf somewhere where the tax situation was more favourable, leaving her seat warm for incumbent and Mordiford Parish Council chairman Barry Durkin. Her suave, handsome replacement campaigned on rural issues, under the banner, "Herefordshire belongs to Herefordians". Independent Sellack resident, John Gartside, stood on a platform of ending what he called a "constipation of politics" in Herefordshire, while giving villagers a better deal. "There's a sense of uncertainty with everything at the moment and I want to be there when these decisions are made", he told the local newspaper, with an air of misplaced political confidence. Completing the line-up were unsuccessful Green candidate Adrian Worgan and equally unsuccessful but rurally named LibDem candidate, Jo Lane, whose party finished third last May and came third again yesterday. The LibDem candidate told journalists: "the credit crunch, global warming and the Chinese crackdown are major issues facing us all, but in this election the key issue will be the frequency of the bus service from Ledbury to Ross".

Meanwhile, over in Holmewood and Heath Ward, LibDem supporters were jubilant after inflicted a humiliating defeat on Labour - taking the NE Derbyshire District Council seat by a massive 26 votes. It was the first time Labour had lost the seat since it was created in 1381. Gorgeous, pouting, blonde-haired, victorious Liberal Democrat candidate Jan Robinson said (in a surprising Welsh accent): "Local people are fed up of being taken for granted just because Labour simply couldn't believe that they would vote for anyone else. We never even contested the seat in the last three elections in 1999, 2003 and 2007, so I'm glad we had a pop this time. I am honoured that local residents have put their trust in me. I've not only been elected to the District Council, I've won a bottle of champagne as well. I hope it doesn't go to my head. Bubbly is not something we can usually afford up here, so I'm not used to it.

Next week's exciting by-election takes place in Greendale Ward, Longsleddale District Council, Cumbria. The main candidates contesting the ward are Patrick Clifton, the downtrodden village postman (Labour) and Mrs Goggins, the capitalist post office owner (Conservative). Other candidates are: Julia Pottage (LibDem), Rebecca Hubbard (Green), Sam Waldron (BNP), The Reverend Peter Timms ("Greendale For The Greendaleans"), Ted Glen (Workers Marxist Revolutionary), Ajay Bains ("Greendale Out Of The EU, Bigger Subsidies For Railways").

Ken in Amnesia, Boris In Short Trousers

2008-04-10T11:20:00.001+01:00

Hackney blogger Dave Hill met up with Ken Livingstone yesterday in the NarrowWay in Mare Street, central Hackney, where Ken talked about the borough where I live:

Ken mentions about his experience representing Hackney North & Stoke Newington on the GLC from 1977, when he had already been active in London local government for the best part of a decade. Back in Ken's days as a local politician, he recalls, the borough was "dirt poor" with only two Indian restaurants in Stoke Newington Church Street. I'm not entirely convinced by this argument. The vast majority of Hackney's "dirt poor" population back in the 1970s couldn't afford to eat in either restaurant and can even less afford to eat in the much more expensive establishments that now pack the street. Also, although I was only a toddler growing up in Kent at the time, I've been told that there were various other restaurants in the street even in those days, including a Singaporean restaurant and two Greek Cypriot-run fish and chip shops at least one of which offered facilities for eating in. I'd be interested to hear from others with a better memory for Stokie dining than Ken appears to have.

Still, at least Ken was paying for restaurant meals in 1977. Boris Johnson was also paying for his meals at the time, but in the form of parental cheques made out to The King's College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor. Lots of beef and gravy, with plenty of this for afters. Yummy!

It's All About Charisma

2008-04-09T16:00:00.001+01:00

Sudden Moment Of Nostalgia

2008-04-09T11:15:00.001+01:00

We all have a moment like this. A point in our lives when the memories come flooding back. Memories of being force-fed sulphurous boiled eggs in early childhood, having scrambled eggs pipetted into our orifices in the boarding school dorm and suddenly realising, with just days to go before GCSEs, that we have no idea what's inside that oval shell. Sit back and enjoy Boris Johnson re-live those wonderful moments from life's rich tapestry.

Gordon Brown Attempts To Sieze Back Imprudent Lower Band

2008-04-07T23:58:00.001+01:00

Millions of British tax payers were left in a state of shock tonight after the Prime Minister attempted to snatch back the 10p lower tax band that he had given to the nation as part of the 1997 General Election manifesto a decade ago, as Chancellor of the Exchequer. This lower tax band, helping the lower paid to ease their way out of the poverty trap, had been seen as the blazing policy torch of Labour's support for the poor until the events of yesterday.

Former cyclist, Bollywood extra and Playboy centrefold refusnik Konnie Huq (কনি হক), who had been carrying the policy torch in order to draw media attention to temporary lack of full-time employment, spoke tonight of her shock at the incident. "My sister Rupa, who is a member of the Labour Party and an ardent supporter of the Government's policies on taxation and the poor, is bound to think this was all an April Fools' Day joke gone wrong after being delayed at Heathrow Terminal 5. But it was no such thing. The withdrawal of the lower tax band was a shock to me and as a result of it my finances have been 'bashed about a bit'."

The incident was recorded by a Chinese Security Service officer who kindly sent the video clip into the BBC in response to a Blue Peter appeal for material for its forthcoming feature 'Politicians Do The Funniest Things'. I've been able to obtain a copy via a mate of mine who works at Broadcasting House, and here it is.

Stick Your Olympic Torch Where The Sun Doesn't Shine

2008-04-07T23:30:00.001+01:00

I've been to see my GP, but she simply can't come up with any clinical explanation for my recent mental vacillations. Although I've been showing strong signs of bipolar disorder, I haven't been smoking skunk and I'm not pregnant or menopausal so she's not sure what's causing this condition that has been labelled 'snowitis'.

Now you see my politics on the right

Now you see them on the left

Only last Tuesday I was bashing radical long-haired, sandal-wearing, dope-smoking, layabout students. Then the following day I was supporting the unaccountable, fraudulent, dictatorial, ineffective, wheeler-dealing, uncontrollable, criminal, PR-obsessed, Trotskyite, conspiratorial, pro-fanatical, anti-Israeli, revolutionary, anti-semitic, profligate, imperial alcoholic Livingstone. Twenty-four hours later I was backing Harman against Hague - even though I'd attacked Harman vigorously not long ago during the Deputy Leadership election and have always vehemently supported comprehensive schoolkids done good over privileged public schoolchildren (except in the case of minor public schools, such as the one I attended). This was followed by another swing to the right - albeit a subconscious one this time as I genuinely did not realise the implication of the PM's smart new logo. Followed by a lurch clean past Livingstone to become a supporter of the SWP's Left List. And ending up on Friday night playing with my torpedoes in the bath.

I think you're getting the point by now. Definitely time for another swing back to the left. A demand for the IOC to refuse to award future Olympic host status to any country with a human rights record as bad as China's and insistence on a clear basic level of human rights and democracy as a pre-qualification criteria before you are even entitled to submit a bid to be a host. The Olympic Charter says: "The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man,with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity." The current situation in Tibet is not compatible with "harmonious development", "a peaceful society" or "the preservation of human dignity."

I felt ashamed by the participation of British Ministers, celebrities and sports people in the torch relay yesterday and by the co-option as auxiliaries of our police force into helping what appeared to be a goon squad from the Chinese Security Services to protect the flame. Well done to the Free Tibet campaigners for the scale of their mobilisation! The relay was a farce and we should have told the Chinese where to stick their torch. Victory to the people of Tibet! Free Tibet! Down with the repressive state apparatus of China! What do we want? Free Tibet! When do we want...

Oh, f**k. I'll have to go now. I've just been arrested.

Euro Fighters For 2009

2008-04-04T17:42:00.002+01:00

Wow - just take a look at these. What fantastic missiles and rockets and guns and things. Zap! Wooosh! Bang! I could play with these for hours. Zip! Wham! Pow! Come on you out there, come and take on New Labour's Britain for the British, if you're tough enough. That should make amends for the previous post.

Scientific Justification For Voting Ken Lindsey (Er... What?)

2008-04-04T17:20:00.001+01:00

Following my late night design session, I logged onto the spoof website this morning to find a whole bunch of comments demanding to know how a moderate Labour type like the one he purports to be could justify supporting Livingstone for Mayor of London. I don't have this sort of problem myself, as I explain my position far more consistently and cogently than the idiot who is impersonating me. In fact my only two comments on the subject were criticising the Greens' sense of poetry and Jon Cruddas' sense of geography.

Nevertheless, I thought I'd better demonstrate, scientifically, the basis of my decision to support Ken for Mayor. The successor organisation to Charter 88 has designed this nifty website, which tells you which mayoral candidates' policies you most support. So I'm going to take the test now and write up the results as I go along.

The capacity of London's airports should be increased.	I've always supported the Kyoto agreement on climate change and attacked Boris for opposing it. So I'd better say no.
The Congestion Charge should be the same for all cars regardless of their engine size or exhaust emissions.	Cancelling the £25 congestion charge for gas-guzzling Band G vehicles is a policy that we and our Green allies have recently attacked Brian Paddick for. So obviously it's no to this one.
All residential streets should have 20 mph speed limits.	We've pioneered 20 mph speed limits in Hackney and as the father of a young child how could I not support this. Faster traffic should use the strategic transport distribution routes. So I agree with this one.
The planning rules that protected the views of the Palace of Westminster and St Paul's Cathedral should be reinstated.	I'm often attacked for supporting unrestricted planning, but it's totally unfair. I've had a much more sensible approach since the Darren Parker debacle. These Tory planning waivers should be reversed.
London doesn't need any more skyscrapers.	My wife Linda voted against the Dalston skyscrapers on the Planning Subcommittee because she thought the buildings were not appropriate for the location. I'm a bit more iffy on the subject, though it depends on whether they contain affordable housing. I'll abstain on this one.
The Congestion Charge should be abolished.	Obviously not in a million years would I agree with this.
'Bendy' buses should be withdrawn from service from inner London.	I've always preferred the old Routemasters myself and although the bendy buses are good for getting ordinary people to work, they also encourage street crime. So I agree with this.
London City Airport should be closed.	Whatever for? It's a nice little airport on the Thames that never did anyone any harm.
We should continue to ban the feeding of pigeons in public spaces.	Pigeons spread diseases and I don't want Augustus getting ill through handling them. On the other hand, for some old people pigeons are the pets they can't afford. I'll abstain on this.
Specific targets on the level of affordable housing that must be built in London should be scrapped.	As I recently argued, Boris' policy of scrapping the 50% target will simply price housing out of the hands of ordinary Londoners. So it's a definite no on this one.
The lack of affordable rented accommodation is a bigger problem in London than immigration.	I've always argued for sensible policies on immigration, but since when has immigration been a bigger problem than decent housing? It's a yes from me on this one.
Public sector workers should reflect the ethnic diversity of the communities they serve.	I'm very proud of the ethnic diversity of Hackney and we on Hackney Council have worked very hard to ensure that the community is fully and properly represented in the allocation of Council jobs. So of course I agree with this.
Inter-racial marriage should be strongly discouraged.	I hardly need respond. Total rubbish.
The 'stop and account' form that the police have to fill in when they use stop and search powers should be scrapped.	I'd like to see it modified to make less paperwork for police officers, but not scrapped altogether, or we may go back to the bad old days of 'sus'. So it will have to be no to this one.
Under 18s who abuse their free travel on buses should have it withdrawn and have to earn it back through community service.	I completely agree. They should be made to scrub the walls clean of graffiti by yobs like Banksy and dig the flowerbeds of Sir Julian Pipeshaft while he's on important Council business.
People found in possession of cannabis should be let off with a warning so that the police can concentrate on fighting harder drugs.	I'm completely opposed to decriminalisation of cannabis, mainly because it's a LibDem policy. But the police are hard stretched and need to focus on the crack dens and heroin dealers round Hackney, so I'll have to agree with this.
Penalising anti-social behaviour among young people is more important than investing in youth centres and youth services.	This is the sort of question posed just to catch me out. Everyone knows I've been a supporter of ASBOs and other methods of getting tough with anti-social behaviour among young people. But that doesn't mean I expect them to fend for themselves without community facilities. I'm not a Tory on this issue! So it's no.
We should increase the number of Community Support Officers on the streets to support police.	I've tended to swing both ways on this one, although I never said anything quite as outrageous as my spoofster, when he said of the CPGB that "they have yet however, to arm the workers, unless the proliferation of PCSOs is a first step." I think we probably have enough PCSOs deployed now, so I'll say no to this one.
The Mayor of London should have the power to appoint London’s Police Commissioner.	Totally disagree. What's the point in having a Metropolitan Police Authority if it doesn't hire and fire its police chiefs? No to this one.
The Greater London Authority should have powers over primary and secondary education in London.	I'm very nostalgic about the days of ILEA, when good comprehensive education was available to all in London and we didn't have Tory boroughs charging parents illegally for admission. So I'll agree with this one.
The London Assembly should be replaced with a body appointed by the London boroughs.	Definitely not - that would shift the balance of power towards the Tories and LibDems.
Tackling poverty should not be a priority for the Mayor.	Again, hardly worth commenting. It should be the highest priority.
Unemployment should be tackled by giving businesses more freedom.	"Giving more freedom to business" is a euphemism for scrapping the minimum wage, weakening health & safety laws, attacking the trades unions and other Tory savagery. A definite no to this.
The portion of Council Tax set by the Mayor should be frozen or cut over the next four years.	I've been vociferous in the past about the London precept on my council tax being used to fund a festival of Cuban culture to celebrate 50 years of the revolution. But I wouldn't want to see a Labour Mayorship with a reduced budget. So I have to vote no to this one.
The jobs and long term regeneration that the Olympics will bring are more important than its cost.	Everyone knows I have absolutely no interest in sport, but I have expressed concern about the spiralling budget for the Olympics. I'm not convinced about the regeneration and employment benefits, so I'll vote no to this one.

That's all the questions - now you have to tick the ones on which you have the strongest views one way or the other. I'm choosing these: Emission charge cars, 20 mph speed limit, Congestion Charge, Targets affordable housing, Immigration vs. affordable accommodation, Diversity public sector workers, Inter-racial marriage, Under 18s free travel, Appointing Police Commissioner, Education powers, Appointment Assembly, Tackling poverty, Free business to fight unemployment.

Then you click on all the candidates so the result does not just match you to the parties already represented in London and you press "result". And the person whose manifesto are most closely matched by my views is...

What? Something must be wrong. Don't tell me everyone has moved to the right so fast I've been left behind. This could destroy my image. Linda... Linda... help. What do I do?

Mind you, the viagra woman/viagra man alliance seems to have worked well - look at their identical scores relative to mine and compare them with floppy Paddick!

Council Logo

2008-04-04T10:25:00.001+01:00

I was incredibly inspired yesterday when I read this post from Guido Fawkes showing the smart new branding for the Prime Minister's Progressive Governance Summit on Promoting Prosperity.

I was especially taken with the PM's dynamic new logo (see left) which puts me in mind of sport and peace - just what's needed at this time of difficulty with the Beijing Olympics.

I can't quite put my finger on the associations, but the logo reminds me of London 2012 and Formula 1, as well as the ancient Sanskrit symbol of peace.

I was so excited that, as I was staying up late into the night anyway, waiting for announcements of Tory victories in the Fenland and East Devon District Council by-elections, I'd use the time turning my artistic talents to redesigning the Hackney Council logo.

I've emailed my efforts (below) to Julian and Jamie this morning and I can't wait to see what they think of my design.

Comprehensive School Boy Trounced By Independent School Girl

2008-04-03T12:18:00.002+01:00

I told you it would be fun. And I never had any doubt that our girl would win the day. Hague may have gone on to become President of the Oxford Union and take a First in PPE, but social class always tells in the end. And our girl's got bucket loads more of that than the boy from somewhere up North called Rotherham. Sit back and enjoy Labour's speed queen trumping every one of Hague's stupid jokes. The only bit I didn't understand was the bit at the end about having to look behind her. Someone will have to explain that to me.

My Proudest And Least Proud Moments

2008-04-02T14:20:00.001+01:00

My second proudest moment in politics was when the London Labour Party's electoral college blocked Ken Livingstone from standing as Labour Party Candidate in 2000 and picked Frank Dobson instead. My least proud moment, as regular readers will know, was when Linda and I got caught by the BBC Panorama team passing the Labour Party membership list to the Dobbo camp in order to give him an unfair advantage against Independent candidate Red Ken and his purple bandwagon. So you can imagine how sick I'm feeling after spending most of my recent spare time canvassing for he man. Why am I doing this? Because, as I explained the other day, Ken may be an unaccountable, fraudulent, dictatorial, ineffective, wheeler-dealing, uncontrollable, criminal, PR-obsessed, Trotskyite, conspiratorial, pro-fanatical, anti-Israeli, revolutionary, anti-semitic, profligate, imperial alcoholic... but these days he's the Labour Party's unaccountable, fraudulent, dictatorial, ineffective, wheeler-dealing, uncontrollable, criminal, PR-obsessed, Trotskyite, conspiratorial, pro-fanatical, anti-Israeli, revolutionary, anti-semitic, profligate, imperial alcoholic. And that makes all the difference. If he was a Tory or a LibDem, I wouldn't touch him with a 50ft barge pole. I've just found some video clips on YouTube that show something of Ken's policies. I'll leave it to you to work out how closely aligned his views are to my own.

Iraq - the biggest demo in 2000 years	Welcoming Hugo Chavez to London
I'm backing Jon Cruddas for Deputy Leader	Trident - a total waste of £billions
Defend Iran against American aggression	You sanctimonious hypocrites - Lee Jasper is innocent

I particularly like this viagra video clip. It shows that in New Labour we aren't quite as daft as we frequently look.

Ken Livingstone was never my first choice for Mayor of London.
I used to be my first choice for Mayor of London.
But I've completely fallen for Ken's crafty plan to undermine the LibDem leadership and get re-elected.
Just because I'm blonde and blue-eyed, it doesn't make me stupid!

Whatever Happened To Rhyme And Metre?

2008-04-02T10:45:00.001+01:00

This poetry contribution to the Dalston debate, purporting to originate from the Children's Laureate and general Hackney trouble maker Wayne Rosen, has just been brought to my attention:

Once there was a shop,
Then the shop was sold.
Then the shop closed, then the shop was burnt down,
Then the wall of the shop was knocked down;
Then the shop was demolished.

Chorus:
Historic Houses in Hackney are safe in the hands of Hackney Council.
Historic Houses in Hackney are safe in the hands of Hackney Council.
Oh... historic Houses in Hackney are safe in the hands of Hackney Council.
Historic Houses in Hackney are safe in the hands of Hackney Council.

Now what kind of poetry is that? What happened to rhyme and metre? (I think that's what Miss Potter called it in English class). And he's supposed to be an Oxford graduate. I bet Boris can write poems much better than what he can.

NUS April Fools' Hoax Goes Wrong

2008-04-01T22:10:00.001+01:00

It was a very funny idea, or at least I thought so.

We never came up with such a great stunt when I was NOLS National Secretary. Mind you, we never managed to find the CIA's phone number, either. The idea of a "Governance Review" leading to transformation of the National Union of Students from a campaigning, representative body into a professional lobby group and annual "celebration" organiser was brilliant. We all kept such straight faces as we proposed a "Blairite revolution" leading to the union being run by spin-doctors, professionals and an old boys' network of sabbatical officers.

The only problem was that the hairy left-wing loonies were supposed to believe it.

But they didn't. Damn!

High Noon In The Palace Of Westminster

2008-04-01T20:40:00.001+01:00

Keeping out water in Centre Parcs

Keeping out bullets in Peckham

Should be fun at PMQs tomorrow.

Great Design Should Be Obvious To A Blind Man

2008-03-29T10:02:00.008Z

Although I must confess to a temporary bout of insanity due to my hatred for TfL at the time (and my wife's chastisement), I have for the most part always supported the excellent proposals for Dalston re-development, especially after I recognised the full extent of the role of Trotskyites, Tories and LibDems in opposing the plans and even more so now that I have become one of Ken Livingstone's leading supporters.

Everyone with half a brain knows that Dalston is a rotten, run-down area full of peasants scrabbling about in £1 shops, take-away burger bars and tatty street markets and is in urgent need of redevelopment.

What could be better for the area than a pair of 19-storey architectural masterpieces - the Julian Pipe Memorial Erection and the Herbert Morrison Trades Union History Centre - towering over Dalston as an example of what voting New Labour can do for you?

As I've argued many times, the proposed developments will encourage wealthy young people typical of today's modern Labour Party to move into the area, while encouraging the riff-raff to get on their stolen bikes and decant to somewhere more suitable, such as Thurrock or Belgium.

So I was disgusted to read the shocking comments made in The House Of Lords on Thursday by cross-bencher Lord Low of Dalston - a man who should know better:

"In my maiden speech, I hinted at the baleful influence of the planning policies of the London Borough of Hackney on the lives of the residents of Dalston, where I live. The protocol surrounding maiden speeches precluded my going into greater detail on that occasion, but today I am under no such constraint. If I may, therefore, I shall describe for your Lordships our experience in Dalston, as I believe that it throws into sharp relief much of what is wrong with development today and what accordingly needs to be put right... When we heard that Dalston was to be regenerated, we had high hopes that this derelict, neglected and overcrowded area of east London would rise as a modern phoenix. We anticipated that our few remaining historic buildings would be given a new lease of life and inform the proposed development around them. How naive we were... A massively expensive concrete slab over the railway will accommodate an unnecessary and potentially dangerous bus stand, where current routes will be cut short... A brutal phalanx of tower blocks of up to 20 storeys will be erected on the slab to help to pay for it. These will blight the environment and bring no benefit to the area. Of their 300-odd dwellings, none is to be affordable... The adjoining site is being developed by the London Development Agency. It has similar disadvantages; moreover, it is aesthetically and architecturally unrelated to its neighbour. Together, they represent the worst type of unimaginative and destructive town planning. No more health and other services are to be provided for the total of 550 extra households. Such high density, in an already overcrowded and underresourced area, completely ignores the potential for alienation, anti-social behaviour and vandalism, as we have heard. As a criminologist, I know that this is not the way to build a housing estate... How has the travesty that I have described come about? Three reasons immediately come to mind. The first is a poor understanding of what constitutes good architecture and design on the part of town planners and developers... Secondly, consultation with the public was, to say the least, inadequate, even misleading... Thirdly, in direct contravention of planning guidance, these schemes have not preserved heritage buildings or enhanced the cityscape that remains. They meet neither of the mayor’s much vaunted criteria that new housing should be built to the highest architectural standards and that it should be 50 per cent affordable. The council has waived social housing requirements and parking and space standards... Why should all this be? The answer lies partly in the need to meet external and undisclosed financial imperatives out of a misplaced fear that developers would otherwise walk away, partly in developers’ ability to hoodwink poorly qualified planning officers into accepting substandard designs and partly in the ability of multiple authorities in central and local government to evade responsibility with a cynicism bordering on the corrupt. In a country of historically renowned architects and with present-day architects who are changing the face of the world, surely we can do better in our own backyard."

"A cynicism bordering on the corrupt"! What can this man be talking about? If he can't see the massive benefits that our Council is bringing to Hackney - albeit with a bit of unavoidable pain in the process - he must be completely blind.

My Imprint

2008-03-28T23:55:00.007Z

I've spent ages checking the law because I haven't always got this right in the past. But my new imprint complies fully with Section 66 of The Electoral Administration Act, para 3.20. Anything from now until polling day that is published here and seeks to influence people to vote Labour is: Promoted by Luke Akehurst of Flat 1, 8 Beatty Road, London N16 8EB on behalf of The Labour Party, 39 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0HA and the Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C. 20505. Printed (web hosted) and published by Blogger.com (Google Inc.) of 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 who are not responsible for any of the contents.

Please note that, except where specifically stated otherwise, everything I write is solely in a personal and individual capacity and The Labour Party is not responsible for anything. Well, certainly not anything that goes wrong.

Candidates

2008-03-28T23:50:00.002Z

John McCafferty and Peter Watson. No - of course not. It's just a joke. Or should that be a nightmare?

The Plot Between The Greens And Labour

2008-03-28T23:45:00.002Z

The Greens are making a very tactically astute grab for left-leaning Lib Dem voters with the aid of a lot of free advice, PR support and foot-soldiers provided by the Labour Party. But don't let that fool you into thinking that it's red and green against blue and yellow. Oh no. We're not that stupid, or at least Ken isn't. In an election campaign like the London Mayoral race, with transferable voting, you work out who the serious opposition is and try to isolate them in subsequent rounds by enticing everyone else to trade second votes with you. The more stupid members of the minor parties get quite excited by this, hoping that you will be eliminated and transfer your votes to them thus making them look much more credible in future contests. The really stupid ones actually think you may tip the balance for them and push them into first place. Dumbos!

So when we encouraged the Greens to parade outside Lib Dem headquarters in Cowley Street with anti-Paddick placards, it certainly wasn't in order to attack the LibDems. Rather it was to drive a wedge between the right-leaning former police chief and the bicycle and prawn cocktail brigade in his party. By undermining the LibDem leadership, individual supporters can be encouraged to give some of their transfer votes to Labour and the rest to the Greens, with the result that they all end up with Ken as a result of the deal with Siân Berry. Smart, eh?

Dave Hill, my mate and Clapton's most famous pond life, writing in the Guardian yesterday explained it better than I possibly could, describing the strategy as "trying to build a big green and yellow tent that all fellow 'progressives' would be wise to share". Regular readers will know that I've always had a lot of respect for Dave's views - to the point of having lunch with him in Cantina Augusto, Clerkenwell back in January. So believe Dave, but don't believe everything you read in the media. When it comes to environmental viagra, mine's a stiff one!

Council By-election Results

2008-03-28T23:40:00.003Z

Last night's council by-election results:

Stevenage Bedwell Division, Hertfordshire County Council. Lab hold with a 0.8% swing from Con to Lab. Pin Green Ward, Stevenage BC. Lab hold with a 0.8% swing from Con to Lab (coincidence).

Well done to Stevenage Labour Party on these results which are fantastic given the national opinion poll context confirmed by YouGov today - and very heartening in a key parliamentary marginal. Proof for Labour activists in the run up to 1 May that hard work at a local level by ordinary grass-roots CLP members can mean you buck the national trend. The photo on the left shows a couple of hard-working local activists at the end of a long day on the stump on Tuesday, before attending a rally at Bedwell Community Centre in the evening. These two CLP members were joined by some local chap called Tony McNulty, but he was too shy to pose for a photo.

Redwell West Ward, Wellingborough BC. Con hold with a 17% swing from Con to BNP. Unfortunately the local Labour activists weren't quite as recognisable as those in Stevenage and this, combined with the fact that we ran an almost entirely negative campaign resulted in Labour being pushed into third place by the BNP, many of whose policies had been toned down to such an extent that they appeared to many voters to be to the political left of us. Hmmmph!

Plus C'est La Même Chose

2008-03-27T16:30:00.003Z

As a deeply nostalgic former student hack - the six years I spent in student politics in NOLS were the best political and organisational training it's possible to get and provided me with a network of friends and comrades that I've stayed in touch with ever since - I get incredibly agitated and upset when I read coverage of matters NUS in the media, such as today's letter in the Guardian signed by Rob Owen, Dominic Kavakeb, Claire Solomon, Assed Baig and Jennifer Jones.

Just who are these people, who refer to modernisation of the NUS in terms of "the NUS reformed back to the 1950s, when it was little more than a network of right wing students associated with the CIA."? And what on earth makes them think that NUS (like the Labour Party) would be better off under SWP dictatorship than under the sensible concensus management of spin-doctors, full-time professionals and an old boys' network of sabbatical officers such as myself?

A quick bit of Googling reveals that Rob Owen is a Midlander who has infiltrated the Southeast in order to propagate his particular brands of music, rugby, woodworking and Irish stout. Dominic Kavakeb is a man who likes a good laugh, especially by invading the privacy of Brixton rappers. Claire Solomon is a fictional character from the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street. Assed Baig is a promising young black football player and Jennifer Jones is an 89-year-old Oscar-winning former sex goddess. It's just typical of the Guardian to assume that they represent today's students.

When I was NOLS National Secretary, I couldn't find the CIA under C in the phone book. But it wouldn't have made any difference even if I had been smart enough to contact them through their website, or leave the motorway at Langley, as instructed by those massive and iconic freeway exit signs. The CIA didn't trust me in those days and certainly would not have talked to me about communist infiltration of the national union of students. I think it may have had something to do with Director Bob Gates having an irrational loathing of red-heads, the term he used to describe the Sandinistas in the days when he was funding the contras.

It's all very different today, of course, when a visit to Waterstones or 10 minutes online at Amazon will equip you a veritable library with books on the subject of CIA postwar funding of social democratic organisations and establishment of anti-communist front organisations in the student and labour fields such as the World Assembly of Youth and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

Still, I suppose it's still a good idea to pretend that this is all a fantasy put about by the SWP.

After all, most people can't read and the rest are stupid enough to read my blog, so I can tell them anything really and they'll lap it up.

One thing's for sure, though. This is all much more fun than writing about Hackney and its boring local politics. I'll leave that to our MPs, who are much more interested in local affairs than I am. This is very definitely not a "Councillor blog". It's a blog by someone active in Labour politics, one of whose forms of activity happens to be being a Councillor. I wouldn't want anyone to think it was something I took at all seriously.

A Quiet Weekend In Hackney

2008-03-25T08:55:00.001Z

There's been very little happening here in Hackney during the Bank Holiday weekend worthy of my attention - just the odd teenage shooting, fatal stabbing and whingeing arty-farties moaning about some nice yuppie towers we're planning to build in Shoreditch. So I'll ignore these minor inconveniences in Labour's greatest local Borough and concentrate on the matters of real interest to Hackney residents - Colombia, Tibet, Iain Dale, Charlie Whelan and the LibDems. I've got plenty of time to write about these core issues because, following my recent post on blogging from the office, I've suddenly realised how to get away with it without leaving any evidence. What I didn't notice before is that if you click on "Post Options" you can change the date and time of your posts. So I can amble into the office, sit down and write about Brian Paddick blowing a gasket, and make it look as if the piece was published earlier in the morning before I left for work. Smart, eh? There's something hot under this auburn shagpile and it isn't a steamed rice pudding!

I hope I get this right, because I made some notes before I left home but they blew away in a sudden gust of wind just as I was cycling the wrong way down Stoke Newington High Street. So I've got to write this from memory.

Iain Dale

Kim Howells

Brian Paddick

Charlie Whelan

Iain Dale owes Charlie Whelan an apology for stupidly having stated that the man responsible for Peter Mandelson getting a real job "runs a salmon fishing business in Scotland". Everyone knows perfectly well that Charlie Whelan lives in the woods outside Dulnain Bridge in Strathspey, where he runs a training centre teaching FARC militia the techniques of public relations, mountain guerilla warfare and fly-fishing.

Journalists at The Observer have deserted the NUJ and voted to join Unite, Labour's largest union affiliate under President Geoffrey Robinson and General Secretary Douglas Alexander. Perhaps now we'll see an end to the anti-Brown tone that has characterised the editorial position of The Observer in recent times.

Kim Howells has written an interesting letter to The Guardian, arguing that militant opposition to Chinese rule in Tibet will lead to the same failure as the burning of holiday homes in Wales by Meibion Glyndwr. The best way to make the Chinese government see sense, argues Howells, is a New Labour policy of investing heavily in high value-added business ventures such as finance, research & development and tourism. Once the Tibetans are freed from the oppression of feudal tyranny and learn how to dress smartly and say "Computer says no..." there will be a transformation of Tibetan society and they will all live happily ever after with their Chinese friends.

Finally, Brian Paddick has been blowing a gasket in Comment Is Free, arguing that drivers displaying a "Glad To Be GLA" sticker or a Buddhist monk in the passenger seat should be exempt from the Congestion Charge and that the Authority should deploy an extra 200,000 armed police on the London Underground to thwart potential terrorist bombers and Brazilian electricians.

Right, I'd better stop now as it's nearly lunch-time. Click on Post Options, set time to 08:55 and hit Publish Post. Bingo!

Council By-Election Results

2008-03-24T23:45:00.000Z

Just ignore them. Mid-term local council by-elections are absolutely no indication of national voting at General Elections. I haven't even bothered to read them.

Make Sure Someone Else Pays

2008-03-24T10:10:00.002Z

When I started blogging after the 2006 local elections it wasn't long before I realised that this can be a time-consuming activity. Well, to be more honest, it wasn't long before Linda pointed out to me how much time blogging was taking away from her and Augustus. The worst bit is bank holidays, when you want to hit the keyboard but the family wants to go to Legoland, or visit the in-laws or get out in the sun. At first this was a problem, until I suddenly realised that whereas blogging in general hits peaks during holidays - with maximum contributions and readerships - political blogging hits a trough at these times. How could this be? And then, of course, it dawned on me. Politicos don't blog in their own time. They don't even read other peoples' blogs in their own time. They read and write during the boss's time! Once I'd caught on, life became so much easier. Cheers, Colin.

P.S. Before any smart-arse makes a comment, I'm posting this during my own time today because I've got other personal stuff that needs urgent attention at work tomorrow morning.

This Criminal Should Be Shot

2008-03-21T16:20:00.001Z

As a decent, law-abiding cyclist I was outraged to see the Leader of the Opposition flagrantly breaking The Highway Code in this video clip recorded by the Daily Mirror. The Tory boss was spotted outrageously breaking the law by cycling the wrong way in a one-way street, passing through red lights and taking the wrong side of a bollard on his 30-minute trip to work.

His crimes included:

Wrong way up a one-way street - Dawson Place W2, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: Breach of Road Traffic Act 1988 which requires road users including cyclists to obey traffic signs or face a penalty.

Progressing while lights on red - Gt. George Street, SW1, City of Westminster: Breach of Traffic Signs and Regulations and General Directions 2002 which advises that cyclists should not use the crossing while the red light is showing.

Taking the wrong side of a keep left bollard - The Mall, SW1, City of Westminster: Breach of Section 36 of Road Traffic Act 1988 which states that a person driving or propelling a vehicle who fails to comply with the indication given by the sign is guilty of an offence.

Crossing a white line at traffic lights - Parliament Square, SW1, City of Westminster: Breach of the Road Safety Act 1988 which states that all road users must comply with the indication given by the road signal.

These are really serious crimes that in the past might have been punished by being kept in stocks or pillories and, for cyclists on board a naval ship, by hanging, drawing and quartering.

And what was Cameron's pathetic excuse for putting thousands of people's lives at risk in order not to be late arriving at the House of Commons? Apparently he wanted to be there in time for the announcement by Gordon Brown of a future public enquiry into the UK's participation in the invasion of Iraq. An action that a small group of subversives have falsely suggested might have been unlawful and resulted in the deaths of one or two foreign people.

Shame on you, Cameron. Get your priorities right!

Message.Ishihara

2008-03-19T23:55:00.004Z

I have a new geeky toy now that I have been given my own log-in and let lose on data entry on the party's new London political strategy database, Message.Ishihara.

Aside from it being web-based, and having some really irritating bugs involving phone numbers, I am struggling to work out quite how it improves on the old system of simply publishing the strategy in text.

Apparently, only people with certain political views can see these messages, but I can't make head or tail of them. Am I missing something in terms of functionality? What the hell is this message, for instance? All I can see is a load of dots, all the same colour but different sizes.

Answers from other geeks gratefully accepted.

Postscript: I'm supposed to publicise this video, but I'm obviously not having a great day because I can't make head or tail of this either.

Carry On Hutton

2008-03-17T18:35:00.000Z

The TUC's response to John Hutton's Progress lecture here.

Well, bugger the TUC I say! A bunch of raggedy-arsed failures.

A Painful Start To Campaigning

2008-03-17T13:45:00.000Z

The Mayoral and GLA election campaign is well and truly under way.

I'm now nursing extensive bruising as a result of being attacked by rabid morons wielding sticks and rubber hoses and shouting "Boris for Mayor". God, why did I have to represent the unemployed under-class ward of Chatham? Why couldn't I have represented trendy Clissold instead, where people would wave their bicycle pumps and pot plants at me and shout "More degradable recycling bags, NOW!"

I can't possibly tell the truth about yesterday, so I think I'll tell people that I slipped and fell down a set of concrete steps on the way to stick a Ken for Mayor newspaper through a basement flat door. That will make me look less of a prick.

Bloody hell, politics is a risky business!

Streatham Shame

2008-03-15T22:45:00.005Z

LabourHome reports that Chuka Umunna of Compass beat Lambeth Council Leader Steve Reed today to become PPC for Streatham. I won't pretend to be pleased, because I'm not. But I'm even more pissed off that members of my own Labour Group may have been involved in the successful promotion of Streatham's CLP Vice Chair, Black Socialist Society organiser and "smooth good-looking bastard" Barack look-alike and "unashamed" Obama supporter in the US Presidential election campaign. Interviewed by Operation Black Vote nearly two years ago, Umanna said he had worked with arts minister David Lammy, whom he counted as "a close friend and political associate".

Chuka Umunna convinces the crowds in Streatham

In an article published three weeks ago, Operation Black Vote reported: "Responding to the nominations outcome and supporting Umunna's candidacy, Skills Minister and Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, said: "Chuka is just as comfortable arguing the big national political issues with senior politicians on the BBC's Question Time programme, as he is in dealing with local issues and constituents problems in a seat like my own in Tottenham - I know this because he worked for me for some time and I have seen what he can do. As a solicitor, charity trustee and political activist, he has a wealth of experience which can be drawn on. He will also help Labour – locally and nationally – appeal to a new generation and reach those parts of the electorate that others can't."

And who advises David Lammy, MP? Who is paid as Policy Advisor to David Lammy MP? Why, none other than Hoxton Ward Labour Councillor, Philip Glanville. And who is Philip Glanville's Chief Whip - responsible for ensuring that he adheres to the correct political line? Why... it's me! No wonder I'm pissed off.

Barack Obama with Oona King

Barack Obama with Miranda Grell

My Prayers Are Answered

2008-03-14T23:45:00.000Z

Hackney has won a national competition at last. We have the honour of having the best fed four and five-year-olds in the country, according to the latest government figures. A total of 16% of youngsters in the borough's reception classes recorded a BMI of 30+ (whatever that means) in 2006/07, compared to the national average of just 10%. But Liz Prosser, Healthy Schools Co-ordinator at the Borough's education authority, Tender Loving Care, said the government numbers were flawed. She told the me: "BMI is not a reliable measurement for kids. They should be measuring brain circumference. On that basis, you are the Kate Moss of North-East London, Luke."

Spink Spanked

2008-03-12T23:20:00.001Z

It's not every day that you turn to The Thunderer for the latest salacious news from the back benches. But Greg Hurst, political correspondent of The Times, has excelled himself in tomorrow's paper.

Ashleigh Sharp

In An affair, a feud, an e-mail — and another Tory MP bites the dust, Greg reveals that the resignation of my successful Tory opponent at the 2005 General Election in Castle Point lies in his sexual, financial and pugilistic activities, rather than in his political ones. The story would have done Jackie Collins proud.

According to The Times, the bust-up (oh, what an appropriate term!) originated in Spink's feud with local Tories over his affair with a former Conservative councillor, Gail Boland — the long-term partner of the local Conservative Association's deputy chairman Bill Sharp — herself sacked by the local Party in April 2006. In an arrangement clearly drawing on some of my own Party's most cunning stunts in recent times, Spink uses his Commons staffing allowance to employ both his ex-wife Janet — who works from Dorset 150 miles from his constituency — and his lover's student daughter, Ashleigh Sharp (who's Bebo entry reports her as having "not much to say"). He also employs his own daughter, Charlotte.

Since Spink started his relationship with Ms Boland, he and Sharp are said to have been involved in a bitter feud. Sharp reported Spink to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, while Spink has formally complained to the police about Sharp's "criminal harassment" and sought injunctions to restrain him. According to Hurst, in one incident — which also ended in a complaint to police — the MP complained that his adversary tried to trap him in a room while Sharp, who ended up on the floor, claimed that Spink had "decked him".

Although Bob's politics are very right wing, he is at least motivated by political ideology rather than self-interest. He is also motivated by sex, greed and violence - allegedly. And, apparently, by long-distance running, pottery and UKIP. What a spanker!

Welcome To Media Competition

2008-03-12T19:30:00.002Z

I'm pleased to announce that a new paper has been launched locally. Apparently it started up a while ago, but nobody noticed at the time. The Hockney Post will bring a touch of class to our little cultural desert in the East End, as well as providing some useful competition to the encumbent scribblers, the Hackney Groveller and the Hackney Toady. Welcome to the Borough!

A Serious Oath For A Serious Blog

2008-03-11T09:40:00.001Z

Recite the following before entering this website:

"I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law. I shall serve Her Majesty's dominions, defend this island nation and its Empire and vanquish all aliens throughout the length and breadth of Her Majesty's domains (especially Muslim ones). I shall at all times speak The Queen's English and I shall teach my children the ratio of English to Scots and Welsh, the name of the document signed in 1215 and the order of the four national saints' days. Furthermore I shall learn and understand from whence Father Christmas comes, how to dial an ambulance and what to do if I spill someone's pint of beer in a pub. I shall always bear true witness and pay due respect to the achievements of Lord Cecil Rhodes, appropriate conditions for neutering dogs and the meaning of the Football Association Offside Rule. So help me God."