Friends of the libraries under threat of closure by Brent & Friend of Libraries NOT under threat are campaigning to change the Councils plans. Keep up with the campaign and volunteer your support, ideas, skills and stories at More Than Books.

Sarah joins the small group of women in David Cameron’s LibCon cabinet from the equally small group of women in the Lib Dems. Now this season of Britain’s Got Men In Suits has finished (watch out for the special Autumn edition folks!) we can see that Men In Suits is pretty much all we’ve got. The gender imbalance round Cameron’s cabinet table is lamentable.

Sarah in joined by Lynne Featherstone, appointed Under Secretary of State for Equalities. Congratulations to them both.

UPDATE – newly appointed Liberal Democrat minister has attacked the lack of women in the government saying she is “very disappointed” by the level of female representation in the coalition and said she has told David Cameron “we must do better”.

The Local Election results 08/05/2010 from Brent Council.

Lab – 40 (21 seats gained)
Lib – 17 (10 seats lost)
Con – 6 (9 seats lost)
Other – 0 (2 seats lost)

Would Brent Central Lib Dem voters punish Sarah Teather for a Lib/Con pact? In a briefing paper published today by the Fabian society, Brent Central is listed as a constituency likely to swing back to Labour at a second general election in 2010.

“As this table shows, there are 15 Lib Dem seats that would fall to Labour if just one-in-five of their voters switched to Labour. These would include all five gains that the Lib Dems made from Labour on Thursday night – Norwich South, Bradford East, Brent Central, Burnley and Redcar. Several Lib Dem MPs, including frontbenchers Sarah Teather and Jo Swinson, are even more vulnerable, falling if just one-in-ten Lib Dem voters defects to Labour in protest.”

I think the assessment is right. On the doorstep and in the cafe, liberal voters I’ve spoken to are both left/centre-left and tactical. A deal with Tories would most likely unseat Sarah Teather and return Brent to Labour. Perhaps Dawn Butler will rise after all.

Barry Gardiner’s £198,500 dwarfs Dawn Butler’s £66,000 expenses claims.

Election summary for Constituencies

Constituencies	Elected Candidates	Elected Party or Parties
Brent Central	Sarah Teather	Liberal Democrats
Brent North	Barry Gardiner	Labour

It was a long and tense night with some low drama at the first validation following the ballot paper mixup in Willesden Green and the re-routing of the Hampstead and Kilburn ballot boxes via Camden. The ballot counters of Brent Council worked really hard, first collating and validating the ballot papers, then counting the ballots cast. Tally Teams from Labour and the Lib Dems jostled politely for space to count the Brent Central ballots as they were sorted, while at the Brent North tables it was Labour and Conservative Teams that rubbed shoulders. By 530am, both Labour and the Lib Dems were looking tense, each thinking their candidate had just clinched victory. As the Harrow Observer report, ‘Labour [believed] Dawn Butler, the former MP for Brent South, [was] two per cent ahead in terms of number of votes, or just one ballot paper in every 50.‘

Brent North was announced first, with Barry Gardiner warning against Labour “starting a new love affair” with the Lib Dems so soon after being rejected by the electorate, saying he was “deeply distrustful” of the party.

In Sarah Teather’s victory speech she thanked the people of Brent for renewing their trust and faith in her, promising to continue her work as a constituency MP.

Dawn Butler quoted Maya Angelo in her valediction to the assembled: “You may write me down in history, With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

Does she not recall who was caught out spreading ‘bitter twisted lies’ to the electorate?

Shahrar Ali thanked the Green voters, saying that with the direction of travel for politics there will come more Brighton Pavilion victories in the future.

Click here for all my photos from the night.

UPDATE: Fixed!

Brent Central results

Election Candidate	Party	Votes	%
Sarah Teather	Liberal Democrats	20026	44%	Elected
Dawn Butler	Labour	18681	41%	Not elected
Sachin Rajput	Conservative	5067	11%	Not elected
Shahrar Ali	Green Party	668	1%	Not elected
Errol Williams	Christian Party	488	1%	Not elected
Abdi Duale	Respect	230	1%	Not elected
Dean McCastree	Independent	163	0%	Not elected

Mapesbury returned Cllrs Leaman, Matthews and Hasmi. Full results posted by Ward over at the Brent Council website.

Bonkers.

Labour celebrities: Ross Kemp, Jo Brand, Eddie Izzard, David Tennant.

Conservative celebrities: Michael Caine, erm….. (help me out here, I don’t watch the telly!)

Lib Dems: Floella Benjamin, erm…..

Team Glenda gave me a DVD with ROSS KEMP on it! ‘Gone in 60 seconds’ explains “what’s at stake on Thursday“. Hopefully. He. Makes. It. Easy. For. Me. To. Understand.

Some more celebrity messages for Team Labour attacking the Tories from Jo Brand and Eddie Izzard. And David Tennant shares with us that he thinks David Cameron is “a terrifying prospect” in a viewspaper ‘Britian’s recovery at risk from Tories‘.

I also read David Cameron’s Contract With [me]. Headline: If we don’t deliver, kick us out. Detail: In five years time.

Here are a few photos of the last remaining block on the Stonebridge Estate off Hillside, Brent. You can see the cleared land from recent demolition work in the foreground.

Here you can see the newly built Fawood Childrens Centre in the foreground.

And yes, Brent Labour can use these photos in campaign materials as they are public domain.

Whatever you do, don’t visit the web address stencilled on the windows of the building, unless you want to book an escort….

Are Brent Labour sure?

Only that is not Stonebridge. It’s Trellick Tower, 3miles down the road in Ladbroke Grove…..

The stock photo comes from PhotoEverywhere.

This isn’t the first time Labour have had stock photography issues locally. Remember the 50 extra police on Brent’s streets in Yasmin Qureshi’s materials in 2005 that were photographed in Shepherds Bush?

On the back, Brent Conservatives ask Mapesbury residents how they would vote IF there was a general election in the next few months…… Someone ought to let Sachin Rajput know that he’s on the list for Thursday.

Picked up on Mora Road on Monday. Uploaded to TheStraightChoice.

A building like this?

The ex-Unisys building on Brentfield has been empty for well over  a decade. In 1997 the owners were granted planning consent to convert the office blocks to a 330-bedroom hotel, add a new penthouse storey on front block facing North Circular Road, a new single-deck car park and new boundary wall. The planning application was renewed in 2002, but nothing has happened on this site while all around what the wrecking ball of progress has flattened on the Stonebridge estatem the Hillside Housing Trust have rebuilt with low-rise low-density modernity.

I was attracted to the Labour posters along the boundary fence and the massive Vote Dawn Butler advertising hoarding, sadly fallen from grace and lying in the mud.

According to the planning conditions attached the the permission granted in 1997, “Prior consent may be required under the Town & Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992 for the erection of any advertising signs and/or hoardings on the subject site.” So I spoke with Brent Planning, who advised me that An Advertisement means:

• announcing any local event of a religious, educational, cultural, political, social or recreational character, or
• relating to any temporary matter in connection with an event or local activity of such a character,  not being an event or activity promoted or carried on for commercial purposes.

And that No advertisement may exceed 0.6 square metre in area. From my measurements it looks like Brent Labour are in breech of the planning regulations.

Here are a few more snaps of the building and the Labour posters.

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Bridge Park is just of Brentfield as you come down from Harlesden.

View Larger Map

Mapesbury - Brent Lib Dems

The local election promises to be more exciting than the race for Brent Central. Will Labour regain the Council from the Lib Dem / Conservative coalition? Will the Lib Dems gain more councillors, sufficient to gain a majority (32 seats) and control the whole council? Perhaps the Greens, fielding candidates in every ward in Brent, will gain a seat on the council.

These graphics show the political makeup of Brent Council after the 2006 Local elections and subsequent local by-elections.

Source – Brent Council website.

Uploaded to TheStraightChoice.

I’ve just scanned and uploaded all the materials I could gather in Queen’s Park ward of Hampstead and Kilburn to TheStraightChoice.

Sarah Teather and Floella Benjamin

Air Passenger Duty (APD) is an excise duty which is charged on the carriage of passengers flying from a United Kingdom airport. The levy takes distance into account, making long distance flying significantly more expensive. The charges rose on November 1, 2009 and will rise again on November 1, 2010.

The APD hits Brent residents with family overseas, especially those with family outside of the Eurozone. Sarah Teather is campaigning for a reform of the APD and will no doubt continue this work to reform the structure in an incoming Lib Dem government.

Sarah Teather and Floella Benjamin

According to the WBTimes, “Mrs Benjamin also revealed she considered running as the Lib Dem candidate for Mayor in 2007 – but decided not to after her mother warned her about the pitfalls of a career in politics.”

The NW2 Committee

NW2 began in September 2007 as a group local residents who wanted to improve the sense of community in the Cricklewood area. As Carol Granger, Committee Chair, writes “The Association was founded first to try to improve the sense of community in the area and provide opportunities for people in the neighbourhood to get together, and to get to know each other and maybe help each other out; but also to improve the appearance of the area (litter, graffiti, etc); to try to improve relationships with Brent and the officers who look after services for the area; try to make sure Cricklewood didn’t stay the Cinderella of Brent / Barnet / Camden. I think we only have to look around to see evidence that it is all working.”

NW2 thanked local Lib Dem Councillors Hayley Matthews, Chris Leaman and Sami Hashmi for their support and commitment to the group. The councillors have attended neighbourhood walkabouts and acted on local issues raised by residents and helped secure WardWorking funded for NW2 projects.

The full reports from the AGM are online.

Dawn Butler and Sachin Rajput are also profiled on the YouElect site.

1) Promises that candidates make in their leaflets can be compared to what they promise to do elsewhere. In the future we can also compare the voting record of MPs with what they promised on the campaign trail.

2) It helps catch parties or candidates who are breaking electoral law – 2 parties have been reported to the authorities based on leaflets uploaded to TheStraightChoice.org in the past couple of weeks.

and

3) We get to see how the corporate identity of the main parties messages are tightly managed nationally.

Check out Brent Central, Brent North and Hampstead and Kilburn at the StraightChoice website and join in.

Labour Minister Dawn Butler has issued a legal apology to Sarah Teather for calling her a hypocrite over MPs’ expenses. Butler made the accusation while the running of Sarah Teather’s office was under investigation. The Parliamentary Standards Commissioner later dropped the investigation because there were no grounds to suspect any wrongdoing by Ms Teather.

This issue came up at the MapRA Hustings on Monday night. There was a question from the floor on expenses which had Dawn attempting to justify £66,000 ACL since 2005 for her Wembley second home, when she has another property in Stratford. As we know, Sarah Teather has not claimed the second home / additional costs allowances. Dawn did well and may have carried it, but a follow up question on Brent Labours’ smear campaign and the ficititous complaints to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner about Sarah Teather by someone from Dawn Butlers team made a stench. Sarah announced that she had received a written apology from Dawn – you can download it – and won the ‘clean up dirty expenses’ applause.

Cllr Ann John attempted a last minute clawback… however her proclaiming of a ‘citizens right to know’ sounded hollow, now that we know of the ‘false… improper…wholly untrue….’ nature of what they wanted us to know.

But all posts are not lost. Brent Politics will not go un-poked. All the fun, and more, continues with robdyke.com/noc

much more to be done.

I write this weblog and others as I am practicing what I preach: web technologies really reach people. And for new web technologies that goes double. Static, maintenance heavy websites are no good, for the providers and the users. Many technologies are out of reach for individuals and organisations, by price or by size. Self-publishing tools such as wordpress (that powers this blog) and joomla (used by QPARA and BEST, two Brent resident associations) can empower people. Publish newsletters and write websites with a single effort. Mange mailing lists and distribute meeting minutes with information provided and updated by the user, not the valuable resource of a membership secretary or an administrator.
get internet tools.

comwifinet, the organisation I work for, has been working with residents associations and community groups around london, providing community groups and campaigners with internet based tools for communication. we provide training in a collaborative workshop environment to help with the adoption and growth of these tools.

need internet tools? get in touch rob@comwifinet.com

You can get the details on the wards here on the Brent Council website – but right now the website isn’t updating….

Me? Of course I’ve voted! I’ve supported Team Yellow in my ward, Mapesbury (Look for the Bird!). When I got to my polling station I spoke to the Team Red vote recorder who was sitting outside – I was the first ‘young person’ through the doors that day… and it’s not like I’m an early riser! Where are the Brent Youth – have the biggest unsigned group in the UK not got their act together? Voting too difficult – i know, i know, making an x in a box…too taxing…..? Anyway – 18-24? Do you care?

Hit the comment button…….

The result is, I hope, consensus driven local politics. And it looks a little like this….

If you are into political betting then you’ll have seen the odds offered by one bookmaker. Here’s the Lib Dems story, bouyed as odds on them winning the council are slashed.

I do have a few thoughts – but its probably just subliminal psychic channelling; my prayers.

Want to see what I can do with a spreadsheet program? Coming right up…..

Barney, Will and the gang have not yet got the hang of the idea that as the web is always on, 24hrs a day they can update their website with information as it happens, without having to wait for lots of things to report and then produce a newsletter. I am not against the printed word, in fact I help various groups deliver print newsletter – what I am against is a newsletter that could have been distributed by posting the information on the website weeks ago.

Here’s some words from Barney on the politics of stopthetower and the forthcoming elections.

“We’re a non-politically-aligned organization. And some of us are life-long Labour voters. But we have to tell you that the towerblock is very much a Labour project. Council Leader Anne John (LAB) is the driving force behind it.”

He highlights that Cllr Jonathan Davies decision to defect from Labour to the Liberal Democrats (as previously reported) was in part due to the failure of Labour to engage with residents over the tower block plan.

“The most important thing you can do to stop the tower is to vote against Labour in the May 4th Local Elections.

“It doesn’t matter what the Labour candidates say themselves about the tower as individual councillors they will be powerless to stop it. The key thing is to change the balance of power in the council, so that Anne John’s pro-tower Labour group no longer has a majority.
If Queen’s Park elects Labour councillors even ones who say they’re anti-tower the Labour majority will remain and the tower will be built. Once again, a vote for Labour on May the 4th is a vote for the tower.”

Brent East Campaigning: The campaign
In the tense 10 minutes that the candidates stood with the returning officer and inspected the doubtful ballot papers I was sharing my impressions of the campaign with Paul Keilthy from Archant Media Group. I was impressed with the technical quality of the campaign run by Lib Dems and Labour; each party had created and distributed localised materials, and each had been able to rapidly turn around ‘news’ of events (e.g. names visiting) into publicity materials. Paul thanked me for publicising the campaign materials (the original stated goal of Brent East Campaigning blog) as the parties don’t distribute their campaign materials directly to the press. That’s twice I’ve been taked for doing somebodys job for them this last week.

The Lib Dems appear to have had greater resources at their disposal that Labour. Team:Yasmin may have been able to pull in the ‘names’ of old Labour but Team:Sarah was superior in people power. The Lib Dems were able to distribute a far greater quantity of campaign materials due to the number of voulenteers at their disposal. I’ve yet to discover if the LDYS were mobilised to support the Brent East Campaign in the same way that the Young Fabians were.

From a technology perspective, Team:Sarah already had an established web presense which provided a source of information on her candidacy. Team:Yasmin were severly lacking in this area. Not having a website must have been detrimental to her campaign. Anyone using a search engine to uncover information about Yasmin would have been presented with a series of news articles – some more favorable than others – as well as a link to this site, whereas the search results for the Blue Team and the Orange Team yeilded links to official information sites.

I have been monitoring the ‘refering links’ statistics (see Note 1) for my website. The blog has been viewed by people refered to it after using the names of candidates in search engines (see Note 2). Another popular search term is Brent East. Searching for Brent East in Google gives the results of my blog, the websites of the Lib Dems and the Conservatives but not Labour. Even Rainbow George manages to make the first page of links (see Note 3).

Brent East Campaigning: Misrepresentation
My Brent East Campaigning blog did not cover the whole constituency. A more accurate title would have been ‘Mapesbury, Queen’s Park and Kilburn Campaigning’ as these are the areas I have gathered most of my information from. Perhaps I should have done a little ward walking. In hindsight that would have been valuable as my favorite ‘finds’ of materials have been picked off the street. Additionally, the two main contenders in the recent campaign, Labour and the Liberal Democrats, produced campaign materials that targeting specific communities in the constituency. I would have liked to have been able to post materials from other areas in Brent East. The opportunity to compare and contrast materials from other areas of the constituency would have been interesting: were the candidates/parties emphasing different aspects of their manifesto in different area?

Brent East Campaigning: Participation
My active contribution to this blog over the last 6 weeks totalled 53 postings. I don’t even know how many hours total was spent meeting candidates, scanning campaign materials and researching details. This blog has been viewed by 816 unique visitors (measured by IP address) and I’ve recevied 5 emails from readers contributing information and one comment on a posting. I would have liked to have seen greater contributions from Brent East residents, but I feel that given that the blog was only running for 8 weeks total without link propagation (other than Richard Kimbers Election resources page) the level of readership and contribution was high.

Brent East Campaigning: Pretty Pictures
Here are some images grabbed from StatCounter.com
This graphic shows the daily ‘hits’ to the blog since my first post up to the day of the election.

This graphic shows period from 9th April to 9th May.

This graphic shows the period 3rd May to 9th of May in detail…

Note 1: A refering link is the link that directed a viewer to a website. This information was collected by StatCounter.com as part of their basic counter service.
Note 2: Google has been the search engine responsible for around 95% of my refering links.
Note 3: I would link to it but that ‘breaks’ my listing in Google, so just visit google.com and search for Brent East…

As I posted yesterday, I’d been out and about in Mapesbury and Willesden with June Thomas from Slate Magazine. You can hear a dispatch from June made before the election on NPR. After giving June a whistle-stop tour of Willesden, I had an afternoon of revision to do before going to the count in the evening.

And what a night. I want to thank Shahrar Ali and Rowan Langley from the Green Party for inviting me to join their party at count. That was probably one of the best ‘lock ins’ I’ve ever been too. It was a night of tension and drama with the Brent East result called last after stacking and restacking of bundles of ballots. And at the end of it all Sarah Teather is STILL my MP.

For every one vote the Greens receive, the Conservatives are getting seven, the Liberal Democrats 45 and Labour 47 = 100 votes.

Thats my personal tally count taken from a few different wards and averaged.

Close. Real Close. But the Greens could still take it!

And George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss’s Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket Preferendum.

More photo analysis of Brent East News.

And a rumor of Team:Yasmin in Queen’s Park Café this lunch time…

later…

Yasmin Qureshi's police, beating round the bush.

Fifty extra police officers! Shame that three of the fifty extra police officers in Brent East are on walkabout in Shepherds Bush. The photo of the three police officers clearly shows the Walkabout pub in Shepherds Bush in the background.

[4/5/2010 updated to remove dead link to image]

and they are off.

I’ve already met the candidates for the Greens and for Labour out on the streets of Queen’s Park. I’ll share these two encounters with you over this weekend.

Campaign materials from the Lib Dems and Labour to come – just as soon as i’ve got my image hosting problem sorted.

Because of my own interest in seeing increased participation from citizens in the upcoming election, I’m running another blog between now and ‘the day’ focusing on the Brent East campaign. I see information as crucial in the making of informed choice by the electorate so I’m going to be propagating what comes from the candidates standing in this constituency.

During the by-election in 2003 I couldn’t get through my door some evenings late in the campaign due to the leaflets delivered. I had to swerve to hit, erm, miss several of the candidates while cycling around the area that September. For this general election I’ll be scanning and posting all the materials that come through the door. I’ll also try and post news articles and other materials as they arise to this blog. And if I hit any candidates while cycling I’ll post here about that too.

I’m welcoming contributors from my fellow Brent East constituents. Write, email or fax the candidates. Ask them the questions you want answers to on the issues that you feel strongly about. Share those conversations here in this blog.