I was emailed a copy of the Queen’s Park Conservative Action Team campaign materials yesterday. Arwh, they are so smiley! not meanleanbusinessy-looking like some of the candidates in their campaign materials. So friendly looking I almost misstook them for the Greens!

Anyway… The photos, I noticed, were all taken in the Brent Conservatives office on Walm Lane. No ward walking for this lot! Where others have posed mid-reporting-a-local-grot-spot (sorry Sarah), the QPCAT (!) have opted for ‘about the office’ poses.

But….over the weekend my extra-day was interrupted by the Brent East Conservatives BATTLE BUS! ROCK ON! I wish I’d had my camera at the ready to capture the sight: A bright red double decker bus, still with the advertising posters for a film or something, with a brent Tory screaming down a megaphone: VOTE JACK SAYERS! VOTE CONSERVATIVE ON MAY 4TH!. It reminded me of Fridays Greeen Wing - the political ambitions of Dr Alan Statham broadcast from a small car: Come back here! Listen to me! Vote for me! etc etc….. You probably had to have been there…..

After bumping into one of the Dudden Hill Tory candidates last friday I now have the correct website for the Brent Conservatives. The link has been added to the sidebar. I’ll keep the old link up as it is the link that the official Conservative Party website links to - when they update, so will I.

An update to this post.

I was sitting out my step, enjoying a smoke in the evening air, when Jack Sayers walks up the drive out on the campaign trail delivering leafets. Jack has been a Councillor since 1990 so he is looking to be returned for the fourth time by this ward. The leaflet introduces us to the other two Conservative candidates, Khalid dar and Jennifer Brown.

Speaking of police… The Conservatives leafet compares the size of the Safer Neighbourhood teams in Conservative run Barnet Council to Labour run Brent. Brent’s Safer Neighbourhood teams are “about half” that of Barnets. Now, I’m not sure of this, but I had understood that the deployment of police resources were not a  matter for the council but for that of the Borough Commander for the Met.

The Compassionate Cameron Conservatives have plans for saving £1.2m in Brent Council - savings they think they can make in the machine without impact on service delivery.

The proposal for the tower block in Queen’s Park is a lead topic for each of the parties contesting the electoral ward of Queen’s Park. For Labour it is getting like the Monty Python topic not to be mentioned in front of our hosts for the World Cup. The Lib Dems have made great gains from this thread - well, a sitting (yet not restanding) Councillor defected to Team Yellow with the tower plan as a key issue. The defection as on the front page of this weeks Willesden and Brent Times and the ‘bun fight’ at the Queen’s Park Corral was analysed over a double page spread.

The Green’s in Queen’s Park have made opposing the development symbolic of their opposition to decision making without consultation - a characteristic of Brent Council in their view.

While I have not seen any campaign literature from the Conservatives in Queen’s Park (please forward some if you have it!) the Party is opposing developments in the Dudden Hill area - maybe they have the same tac in QP?

More to come:

• Lib Dem scans….
• Labour negative campaigning against the Lib Dems in Mapesbury
• Scans from the press
• Links to other places….

Thank you for reading.

I’ve been trying to contact the websites of the Brent East Conservatives and Kwasi Kwarteng. I know they were available during the General Election last year but now they are uncontactable…

and