Well what a difference a year makes. Last year there was smoking in the Town Hall and a late (unlicensed?) bar. This year after two major pieces of legislation (smoking ban and 24h licensing) the Town Hall is not the den it was. Shame about the bar… Now, where would I find out if the Council was licensed for the late bar last year…….

Germaine Greer has some advice for newly elected politicians – don’t wear little red suits. You’ll have to listen to the Radio 4 Any Answers stream of the show to hear it…

Well, I didn’t expect that I’d be at the count for the Brent constituencies General Election ballot. But strange things happen in blogsphere…

I’m joined by NK a friend from Goldsmiths. We’re surounded by more rosets than a horse show. It is a three legged…sorry…horse race (sorry Kwasi) after all!

Some of the ballot boxes have arrived already but the count isn’t fully underway.

Results as and when I get them!

/rob

Out and about in Brent East this morning and all is quiet at Brent East Conservative HQ.

My first stop was Sarah Teather HQ at 1 High Road to give my support before going off to meet Sarah at her polling station.

Team:Yasmin are at Willesden Green tube, handing out leaflets that look like an inducement to shop at a furniture store (to be scanned later) before going off to vote.

I met with June Thomas – Hi June! – Foreign Editor for Slate magazine at Willesden Green. We walked and talked Brent East and the local campaign.

Spotted a vandalised Labour Party poster…

And the biggest Liberal Democrat ‘Winning Here!’ garden poster I’ve ever seen!

The independent candidate for Brent East fighting for Justice for Motorists from the ‘totalitarian power machine’.

Here as a JPG

The Blue team managed to get a photocopied A5 flyer delivered yesterday…they must have had a few quid spare after buying all those billboards.

It’s a three legged race – Front / Back as JPGs

Recevied a letter from Ken Livingstone yesterday.

“If you thought I was right as the local MP to take an independent-minded approach then you will find that Yasmin stands firmly in that tradition”

Front page JPG – Back page JPG

I thought that the time had come to talk about my personal voting intentions for tomorrow, in case you havn’t guessed them already.

I was talking to E over supper this evening about voting for what you believe in. This reminded me of C of the Olive Tree on Willesden Lane and his view that the only vote that matters is vote of principle. And I agree with him, although if I lived in Lewisham Deptford, the constituency where my university is located, I’d be voting Green – tatical voting combining with principles. Lewisham Deptford looks like it might even return the UKs first Green MP; my vote having helped carry them to Westminster.

On the Conservative flyer that arrived this afternoon Kwasi had borrowed Sarahs idea of a ‘three horse race’ – ‘Kwasi Kwarteng is CHARGING through the middle’. That sums up this election for me: a race for second place.

I’m resigned to a Labour win nationally. But like the talking heads from the Today program this morning, I also think that the ‘landslides’ of 150+ seat majorites of the past are gone. A 70+ majority? 1997 gave everybody the change they wanted – the Tories out. Getting them out of government was, in hindsight, easy. Getting them out of opposition is the hard part. They are still here, one general election later. The Lib Dems are the only hope that the Conservatives will be relegated to third place. And as what I want to see is a change in the opposition as well as a change in Government I’ll be voting Liberal Democrat.

I won’t be the 1-in-10 that let the Conservatives back in Tony. It’s not happening and you know it. But I will be the 1-in-10 who votes to get the Liberal Democrats elected with a majority sufficient to form Her Majesty’s Opposition.

More from Kwasi Kwarteng!
More from Sarah Teather!
More from Team:Yasmin!
First piece of campaign materials from Michele Weininger!

And Archant Media Group, publishers of the Times series of local papers, lead with the headline ‘Appeal to Vote’. Although WTF Archant are doing partnering with Beacon Bingo and Paddy Power Bookmakers I do not know…

All coming tomorrow…