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

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!

Here as a JPG

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

“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 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.

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…

The real alternative has been distilled to four key points:

• end student tuition and top-up fees

• prevent older people having to selltheir homes to pay for long term personal care
• provide 10,000 more police and cut their paperwork
• scrap the unfair council tax

A little something for everyone.

Download PDF or view JPG

As I should be revising for my economics exam next week and not posting to this blog, I’m going to combine both interests… I will be using this letter as a starting point for the mock questions I’ll be setting myself. ‘Labour has brought economic stability, Discuss’

Download PDF or Download JPG

Something about a solar powered public address system playing a campaign song being cycled by tandem around the constituency. Anyone got any snaps?

I hope to be able to post an MP3 of the song here soon.

After speaking with Costas who owns the Olive Tree organic food store on Willesden Lane I’m becoming more convinced of the Green proposition. For Costas, if you put aside party politik and vote from your heart, the only vote is a Green vote. A Green landslide in Brent East? You only have to look around and you’ll see thousands of trees waving in support.

If you see any more campaign materials or meet any of the candidates out and about please let me know – blogger@robdyke.com.

It features a photo of the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy with Sarah Teather on Kilburn High Road. Good to see that when top ‘names’ (to borrow the description Yasmin gave to the ‘top labour’ people who have given her support) from the Lib Dems come to support their candidate it is their Leader and prospective Prime Minister that visits.

Any sign of Tony Blair or Michael Howard in Brent East other than on advertising hoardings or standing next to George Bush on Sarah Teathers campaign materials?

Here’s the front page – PDF file.

Front page – PDF file
Back page – PDF file

A preferendum is an experiment in participatory democracy. The Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket party is encouraging the electorate to vote not only for their candidate but also for the policies of the party should it be elected to form a government. The preferendum distills the policies of Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party and UKIP onto a single sheet of paper (a feat in itself!) and invites the electorate to indicate by a YES ONLY option the issues important to them.

We are all invited to join the ‘futuristic, mystically directed Rainbow Connection Movement and the Vote For Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket for a five minute wonder online on 5th May – visit www.050505.tv

For further information on the V4YRDT visit www.deadsexy.tv/555

For further information on Hydatum The Publishers, visit www.hydatum.com

And if I can work out how to get the Preferendum sheet scaned to present it online I will do so.

Postal Vote Application Deadline:

The deadline to apply for a new postal vote is Tuesday 26th April at 5pm.
Please make sure all applications have arrived at the Town Hall by that time.
You can deliver them in person should you wish.

Telephone 020 8937 1372 or e-mail using the link below if you need any assitance.
E-mail Electoral Services mailto:electoral.services@brent.gov.uk
Brent’s General Election Pages http://www.brent.gov.uk/generalelection

Hi Rob,
Maybe you were there tonight. If so, I’m wasting your time. If not, highlights included: Kwasi (who, incidentally, and I appreciate this is always the luck of the draw, is the only candidate I have seen campaigning in the streets) being compared to Boris Johnson; a nice Irish chap pointing out that some Candidate for Kilburn’s Beleaguered Motorists (really? I have not been canvassed, but I am willing to believe) might cull the vital few hundred votes in a very tight campaign; Yasmin saying she’s one of those people who constantly gets parking tickets and forgets to pay and has to pay the extra (she must be made of money); and Yasmin saying she was all for the replanting of Brondesbury’s lost trees because the environment is vital, and oxygen is important (I do not think the questioner was envisaging a rainforest).

There was the the usual knickers in twists over tactical voting (Conservatives had 10% last time; Lib Dems had 10% the time before; we want PR anyway; you’re not voting for a local MP, so vote New Labour to keep the Tories out, because the margin’s really small, actually, promise it is). Got the usual feeling that many constituents are labour voters faced with extremely articulate and personable LibDem and Conservative candidates.

The Candidate for Kilburn’s Beleaguered Motorists… is that Michele Weininger? I’ve still not hearded anything about this candidate – any info readers?

• But do we need ‘more police on patrol to make our area safer for all’? (Sarah Teather – Standing Up For You)

• Has the fear of crime ‘increased’ in Brent? (Kwasi Kwarteng – In Touch)
• Is ‘crime and the fear of crime and issue for every neighbourhood in London’? (Yasmin Qureshi – Mapesbury Labour News)

If you’d like to see the crime statistics for Brent, the Met have great interactive map, but data looks better as text only.

But do the stats tell the whole story? You’d kind of expect ‘incident count’ crime statistics to increase; I’m not saying that crime is impossible to reduce, just that there could be externalities to the data: a population increase in a borough for example. I’m looking for a crime rate per capita index and other data sets, and if I find any I’ll share them. We can find stastics for just about anything but I’m having trouble finding a dataset on ‘fear of crime’…

In Brent East, a candidate is entitled to use Royal Mail to deliver 40907 items of campaign literature. What I’m not sure about is if that is in total (i.e. to all the households) or per ‘drop’.

There is further information on the Roayl Mail service to candidiate here. Or you could check out the Department of Consitiutional Affairs ‘guidance for electoral administrators and information on electoral legislation‘.

If you have the knowledge perhaps you will share it here?

‘Standing Up For You’ highlights Sarah’s work during her term as MP for Brent East on local ‘quality of life’ issues and links the Lib Dem policies to local ‘real people’ through a varity of in-action photos.

I’ve not had chance to scan all of it. Here is the front and the back for now.

I’ve received a letter from Sarah Teather for her campaign to be re-elected by the people of Brent East to serve a second term.

Her message: ‘I believe that people in Brent East deserve a local MP who will stand up to Tony Blair. I am proud to fight this election on my record of local action from fighting for fairer funding for our local schools to welcoming more police for Dudden Hill, Kilburn and Willesden Green.’

Here’s the full letter as a JPG.

His message: ‘The Conservatives are the alternative. I promise to give you, the electorate, my boss, more for your money. This isn’t some form of magic. Our policies are based on common sense. We will allow all people to get on with their lives and contribute to the constituency in their own distinctive way. We will not allow our diverse and vibrant communities to be shackled by bureaucracy or political correctness.’

The full text of the letter as an image. The back page.

I checked out the domain www.yasminqureshi.co.uk to see if there was a website. I had hoped that there would be a vibrant source of information about Yasmin and the Labour Party but alas there was nothing but a holding page – ” This website is currently under construction and will be available soon”

There are only 13 days to go till the election!

For £200 Yasmin could have used the Labour Party ‘Web in a box v2.0′, the ‘easy to maintain website building tool for the Labour Party family (the 2.0 bit is instead of saying ‘New Web in a box’).

I was not the only person who had that idea.

Yasmin had also distributed her some campaign materials at the AGM, placing an A4 piece of paper, ‘Mapesbury Labour News’, on each seat on top of the MapRA AGM materials. I was distributing my materials and Yasmin asked me to not put my leaflet on top of hers. Well, I, like Yasmin, was only adding the existing pile…. And when further information leafets were distributed about the financial standing of MapRA to the top of the now quite high pile, Yasmin had a quick nip round the seats to restack the papers to ensure her ‘newsletter’ (or rather a seasonal round-robin), was outer most.

At the end of the AGM while people where visiting the stalls from various departments of the Council and other local agencies, an announcement was made by the Chair of MapRA…

Ladies and Gentleman. We have realised that we have been leafleted by the Labour Party this evening this evening without our permission. We apologies for that – we try to keep this event apolitical.

The leaflet drew attention to a ‘gaff’ made by Sarah Teather during an interview and gave Yasmin a ‘gaff’ of her own. Oh well.

You can download a copy of Mapesbury Labour News (front page / back page) from here.

If you have not received the Green Party Election Communication, please let me know and I will pass it on to Shahrar. I spoke to him yesterday and apparently there has been a problem with the delivery of the leaflets by Royal Mail.

I had expected to see Sarah Teather there: She was there last year, speaking on some of the activities that she, as the local MP, had beeen working on with MapRA and other people from the neighbouorhood. And while I expected to see other candidates, I had not expected a full house!

I was seated was on the second row of seats and I could see Yasmin on the opposite side of the asile on the front row. Sarah Teather was on the row behind her. Shahrar Ali was further along the front row, few seats away from Yasmin. I had a quick look around me.

Reds? Check.
Orange? Check.
Greens? Check.
Blue? Blue?

“Where is Kwasi?” I said to E “I can’t see Kwasi Kwarteng”.

The gentleman in front of me turned round, extended his hand and said “I’m Kwasi Kwarteng, Hello”. Shaking his hand I said “Hello, I’m Rob Dyke”. He spluttered out “Oh, your Rob Dy… I’ve read your…..Oh…..Ho ho……” and then turned to E and introduced himself to her before turning back in his seat.

So we’ve answered the little question I posed earlier this week.

‘Labour has placed its hopes on lawyer Yasmin Qureishi, who is openly anti-war in her selection process. But like many Labour candidates in what was Labour’s urban core support she is going even further to regain disgruntled voters by opposing the policies of the prime minister.

She told Channel 4 news: “I’m one of those people who has their own mind, their own independent mind, and I make my own decisions.” In fact, Qureishi has written to Brent East’s Muslim voters distancing herself from the war, from the government’s approach to Guantanamo Bay and opposing the recent moves on house arrest of terror suspects.

It puts her well at odds with the person she wants to put back in Downing Street.’ From C4.com

The C4 story raises an interesting question. Is Yasmin, with her beliefs so at odds with the leadership of the party that she supports, going to be able to win votes at this election? Can one be pro-Labour AND anti-War/bring the troops home/pro-human rights/anti-detention without trail as Yasmin appears? Riding two horses at the same time is impossible.

This website details the background to the V4YDTP.

While this page has DTP info.

Links from a reader collecting campaign leaflets from this election. Send them some of the paper the Brent East Candidates send you.

The Guardian website also lists George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss, but not as a candidate in this election (they need to get that page of their site updated). They list some additional info for George, including a link to www.xat.org – The Peaceful Revolution Network.

• ALI, Shahrar – Green Party
  
• KWARTENG, Kwasi Alfred Addo – The Conservative Party Candidate
  
• QURESHI, Yasmin – The Labour Party Candidate
  
• TEATHER, Sarah Louise – Liberal Democrats
  
• WEININGER, Michele Anna – Independent
  
• WEISS, ‘Rainbow’ George – Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket

I’m going to try and get hold of web links for George ‘Rainbow’ Weiss and Michele Anna Weininger today. If you’ve got weblinks already post them to me.

If anyone who reads this blog goes to the hustings this evening, please write-up about it here.

Yasmin, Sarah and Shahrar are all out on the beat – where is Kwasi? Or has Conservative central office decided that, with such a low-level of support in this area, this seat is not worth investing resources in fighting.

(Perhaps the reader of this blog from Conservative Central Office would care to email me or press the comments button?)

Fellow Brent East residents! If you see Kwasi Kwarteng around in the constituency please let me know! If you have received any election campaign materials from the Conservatives in your letterbox, please get in touch and let me have a copy.

You can read more on postal voting in London in this story from thisislondon.co.uk

‘However, candidates are mentioning their anti-war positions in constituencies where there has been strong opposition to the conflict, for example, in constituencies with large Muslim communities or student populations.

Yasmin Qureshi, the Labour candidate for Brent East, has not hidden her opposition. In her attempt to beat the Liberal Democrat Sarah Teather, she has written in a campaign leaflet: “The Lib Dems told voters who were unhappy with the Iraq war to vote for them. Less than a week after they won, they backed sending more troops.” ‘ – from the Guardian

Yasmin has got a drum and she’ll beat it. When I met her in Queen’s Park her key message to me was that the Liberal Democrats voted to support the Labour government in additional troop deployments in Iraq. But as I commented then, the Liberal Democrats DID NOT vote FOR conflict in the first place – they were against war. Or perhaps Yasmin Qureshi and the then Labour government didn’t want cross-party support for continuing to work at resolving the mess Tony Blair et al made Iraq. There is a difference between invading a country on false pretenses – something that the Labour government did – and being commited to sorting out the mess when made.

I also hear that Yasmin has been, perhaps only in her enthusiasim, miss-representing the voting record of Charles Kennedy. I hear that when meeting people from faith groups at their places of worship in the constituency, Yasmin has stated that Charles Kennedy voted FOR the Iraq war. To ensure clarity of information, here is a link here you can check for yourself the voting record of Charles Kennedy.

It beats downloading and reading each of the manifesto documents. But if you really wanted to, here you go

• Liberal Democrats, PDF file, 20 pages, 1.1mb

• Labour, PDF file, 56 pages, 916kb
• Conservatives, PDF file, 32 pages, 712kb
• Greens, PDF file, 32 pages, 376.6kb

Dear Candidate,

I am writing to all the candidates standing in Brent East at the general election with a question. Each party has unveiled their manifesto. National commitments have been made for the program of the next government, which ever colour it ends up being.

Assume you and your party are elected at the next election and you are able to carry out your commitments to the nation.

What do you see as the three main areas of life in Brent East which your parties policies are going to have the most immediate and lasting effect on and how will we see the results in our daily lives?

I will be sharing your responses on a weblog monitoring and reporting on the Brent East election campaign – http://becampaign.blogspot.com – and I will be also using your responses as a guide in making my own decisions come polling day.

I look forward to reading your reply.

Yours sincerely,

Rob Dyke

Brent East Green News – A4 newsletter – Back Page – JPG

Elect Yasmin Qureshi – A5 flyer – front – JPG

Elect Yasmin Qureshi – A5 flyer – back – JPG

Brent East News – Labour Party – front page – JPG

I’ve met Neil Nerva before. He contacted me about Comwifinet and the Queen’s Park Wireless Club. We talked about the community project and about encouraging participation in the democratic process. I told him about the Sarah Teather Blog, and we talked about ‘Why Politicians Need Weblogs.’ I’ve emailed him a couple of times via his @brent.gov.uk email address. I’ve even called him and left messages on his answer machine. But since that first telephone conversation, all efforts as contacting him have resulted in no response. When I pushed him on this, he said something about ‘having a job and working hard’ and then he was interrupted by Yasmin how wanted to point out that they are working harder than Sarah Teather. It is no longer a mystery why Sarah is not getting prompt responses from the Labour government – the whole party, from the cabinet and ministers down to local councillors are poor communicators who fail to return calls or emails.

But I digress.

Meeting Yasmin Qureshi was squally, pressured and damp. It was windy and we were just about to be showered by hail. Neil was blustered about by the weather. Yasmin, ever smiling, was pleased to talk to me – a young voter, unlikely to vote at all but most likely to vote LibDem. I talked about the ‘political web log movement‘ and about the blog I run about Sarah Teather. Yasmin was keen to know if I was ‘engaged’ by Sarah to write the blog and wanted to know if I was critical of her. I told her she could read it and leave comments on the blog – for that is the purpose of the comments button!

Brent East was taken from Labour by Sarah and the Lib Dems in ‘03. For Yasmin, this means that the electorate deserted Labour due to the illegal and immoral war waged by the UK and US in Iraq. Well, I paraphrase. Yasmin sees Sarah as a hypocrite. She, Yasmin that is, hammers on about how the LibDems were ‘anti-war’ yet “Sarah voted for further troop deployments in Iraq”. For Yasmin, the Lib Dems should not have support the government in their efforts rebuild and repair what had been broken into a million tiny pieces by war. From what I can make out, Yasmin thinks it is more important to stand firm to ones principles (being anti-war) rather than be pragmatic and flexible and prepared to support secondary measures (i.e. troop deployments).

I pointed out the EDM signed by Sarah and other MPs that would remove the royal perogative of military engagement from the cabinet and place the decision in the hands of parliament. I couldn’t get chance to ask Yasmin if she would support this EDM if she was elected – Neil was herding her away.

As a parting shot, Yasmin asked me if I had googled her name. I hadn’t, but I have now. Well well well. From the first link it seems that the illegal activities in Birmingham were not the only dubious votes to have affected the Labour party in recent times…

…From Black Information Link ‘Labour faithful brawl as vote-rigging stitch-up denies Qureshi‘

Furious Labour members accused their party of a vote-rigging stitch-up after Robert Evans beat his nearest challenger, Yasmin Qureshi, by two votes after party officials disallowed two postal votes cast in favor of Qureshi