The Straight Choice election leaflet project is an archive of election leaflets distributed throughout the campaign. This is a helpful thing to be doing as …..

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.

One sure-fire way of demonstrating that you have some skill with a computer is to generate a barchart from some data in a spreadsheet program like Calc (in openoffice) or a program from Microsoft. Both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives have got someone on their team that would pass a European Computer Driving License test no problem.

Both parties have proved that you can prove anything with stats.

Brent last elected its Councillors in 2002: long before the Iraq war, two (three?) Tory leaders ago, pre-Brown/Blue=Green, before Sarah Teather was elected to Brent East in 2003, before she was returned again in 2005 with an increased majority, before a Conservative and a Labour Councillor defected to the Liberal Democrats….
Brent Conservatives point out that in 2002 the Lib Dems came third. They do this as they believe that Team Orange are essentially a vote splitting party and that a Lib Dem vote lets in Labour by the back door. While Labour havn’t got any spreadsheet skills are not publishing pretty graphs (yet), their position is the same: Vote Orange, Get Blue.

yet 2003 and 2005 have shown the people of Brent East that they can Vote Orange and Get Orange. Will Mapesbury, Queen’s Park, Brondesbury and the other wards of Brent do the same on May the 4th?

Not awake at 415am? Shame as you missed Sarah’s victory speech! If you want to watch it you can thanks to the BBC.

Paul Palmer of the Evening Standard, who was having terrible trouble with his laptop when trying to submit his story, writes about the Brent East result. He focuses on Yasmin loosing rather than Sarah winning.

More later, when google news advises me of it!

I’ve woken up and eaten – needed to do that before posting anything. NK and I left the count after Sarah Teather had been returned as the MP for Brent East, but not before posting to sarah teather is my MP. I’ve still got the ‘wild eyes’ I had yesterday, although that’s now from lack of sleep. This politics junkie had quite an Election Day.

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.

05.05.05 said the Indy.
General erection said The Sun.

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.

The by-election of 2003 was caused by the death of the member of Parliament for Brent East, Paul Daisley of the Labour Party. The by-election to fill his seat was held on September 13, and was won by the Liberal Democrat candidate Sarah Teather.

The turnout by electors at this election was 36.42%

More information on the 2003 Brent East by-election from wikipedia.