Deer in Alexandra Park

Been a very pleasant weekend. In the end, just wandered down to Hornsey last night for some food and beer in The Three Compasses, today fairly lazy - few more leaflets and a bit of casework chasing, nice Sunday lunch at the Maid of Muswell.

It's only this weekend that I realised there are deer in Alexandra Park. I'd never been to that corner of the park before and was surprised to see around a dozen deer grazing in an enclosure. Nice.

Very busy week ahead at work, will be making an early start tomorrow...

How was it for you?

James at the Brixton Academy last night... Meh. When the good songs came, the atmosphere was really good and all the classics hit the spot nicely. But to make a reasonably sound comparison era and style-wise, it wasn't anywhere near as good as either the Inspiral Carpets or Charlatans gigs I've seen in the last few months.

I was a bit gutted as they didn't play one of my two favourite songs (How Was It For You?) - and I was a bit worried for a while as I had to wait until the encore for the other one (Laid) to come on.

Support were The Twang, who I hadn't heard much of before - except reading plenty about them in NME. Wasn't amazingly impressed, they sounded alright but unoriginal. But it's always difficult trying to work out how good songs are for the first time live.

Been out delivering residents' surveys in my ward today, mostly around the Colney Hatch Lane part. But soon going to head into town with a mate and probably go to the cinema. And with Spurs currently 2-0 up at Boro, Everton having lost and Bolton only drawing, there could be some celebratory drinks after!

Labour Social Services "action" plan

The Lib Dems managed to stop Haringey Labour's inadequate plans for Adult Social Services being approved last night.

The Audit Committee was being asked to consider the Council's response to the annual audit and inspection letter and then agree the actions that the Labour Executive have planned to address them.

One of the worst parts of the Council's last assessment was for Adult Social Services, which fell from a 3 star rating to 2 stars. In the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) report which looked at this as well, not only did the Council get an even worse (1 star) rating, but also was judged as having "uncertain" prospects for improvement - the worst assessment possible in that category.

Clearly a radical plan of action is needed. But last night we were asked to agree the Labour Executive action plan - just on the basis of being told they had done one, without scrutiny of any of the detail!

My colleague Cllr Richard Wilson is on Audit Committee too and in his role as Opposition Social Services spokesperson he has seen the action plan. He told us that it is wholly inadequate to deal with the serious issues raised by the Audit Commission and CSCI.

As a result of the other Lib Dem member Cllr Monica Whyte, Richard and I refusing to agree the recommendations, the Audit Committee had to simply note the proposals instead. To have given our approval to a plan which we had not even been issued with - and that Richard told us is useless anyway - would have been a joke.

That message will get back to the Executive and hopefully they will look again at their "action" plan. We will be able to see, as we have requested that the full plan comes to the next Audit Committee.

Bluey

Slightly random blog post, but just thought I would share with you my favourite museum exhibit ever. I bet some of you haven't even got a favourite museum exhibit, have you?

It's at the Natural History Museum and I take everyone in to see it whenever I'm passing.

It's called Bluey, and you can see the photo here from when I took my friend Zoe to see it last year, when she was visiting London from Finland.

It amuses me, anyway.

Berbatov in team of the year

I'm a bit late blogging this, but good to see Dimitar Berbatov getting the recognition he deserves - a place in the PFA Premier League team of the year. Especially when he is one of only three non-Man Utd players to make it into the 11 (along with Gerrard and Drogba).

20 goals so far this season - not bad in a team that also has the highest number of different scorers in the league, i.e. a lot of different Spurs players share our goals around, we don't just rely on our strikers... which is a good thing when Mido is playing... Berbatov has been brilliant to watch and just a totally class act.

Hopefully he'll be at Spurs for many years to come...

Diet Coke break

CSS were excellent last night. Missed the first support act at the Astoria, as my mate Dan was a bit late - he had a good reason though, his sister had just called him to tell him he'll be getting a nephew/niece before too long. Congratulations.

The second support were, I think, Tilly & The Wall. Well, whoever they were, I really liked them. Six always seems a lot of people to have in one band, but it seemed to work so mustn't grumble.

CSS were just awesome - rocked through the set with massive energy and finished off (last night of tour) with all 18 members from the three bands bouncing around on stage, just looking like they were having so much fun.

They also did a great cover version of 'Pretend We're Dead' by L7. What a great track - not sure that *too* many of the people crowdsurfing down below me would really have remembered it from the first time around though!

The only downside of the night was the extortionate beer pricing. Well, you get used to paying over £3 for a pint at gigs, but £3.20 for a can of Carlsberg? A can? Take a look at the photo, it doesn't look anything special, does it?


Thinking of canned drinks, reminds me of something that amused me. Yesterday in a meeting at work we all got distracted by some ropes being dangled down the window (top of the building, 15th floor). One of my colleagues correctly predicted we were about to see a window cleaner start abseiling down.

But she made this point by saying "maybe we're about to have a Diet Pepsi moment". All the billions Coke spent on that advertising campaign and the branding still didn't quite get through to everyone.

Long live the republic

For those who "missed" the front page (yes, the front page) of The Sun today, they exclusively revealed that Her Majesty the Queen is a fan of Tottenham's south-London originating rivals from the Emirates stadium.

As someone who favours abolition of the monarchy, I took this as good reaffirmation of my support for that - as well as for my support of Spurs!

Prepare to be scanned

I've been a bit slow getting around to posting this, but liked the helpful conclusions Alex drew in the comments of this post Love and Liberty: A Blissful Saturday Evening, following up my own post showing the results of that celebrity-face-scan-thing.

Meanwhile, Matt may not look particularly like Tobey Maguire... Zach Braff, Ronan Keating or Seamus Heaney, but the pattern recognition software he tried thinks they all look alike from the clear photo he supplied – without even his wearing a hat, or dark glasses, or being in indistinct shadow, or blurred, or photographed at an odd angle. Not that people are ever seen like that in real life… But, to change the subject entirely, isn’t it good that the Labour Government is forcing a multi-billion-pound biometric computer ID project onto all of us? I mean, computer identification is infallible, isn’t it, and what could possibly go wrong?

Now you've read that, please do visit the No2ID campaign website.

DPTs and Tim Burgess

Awesome.

The Dirty Pretty Things gig tonight for Make Roads Safe was just awesome. Again. Hot Club de Paris were good again and DPTs as always were excellent.

The big bonus tonight was the appearance on stage of Tim Burgess (i.e. from The Charlatans), singing a DPT song - actually singing from lyrics on a piece of paper - and then a Charlies song too. Ok, it was North Country Boy, which is one of my least favourite of theirs, but it was still great.

With the Dirty Pretty Things being one of the best bands I've seen live and The Charlatans being the second best gig I've ever been to (just behind a Suede gig I went to at the ICA), it all worked out nicely. Tim Burgess is a god.

For more info on tonight's very worthy cause, go to www.makeroadssafe.org

Joan Oatway

Sad news that the grandma of one of my Lib Dem colleagues, Cllr Susan Oatway, passed away recently.

I had no idea, but Joan Oatway had a very active life helping the community, through charity and voluntary work - and her husband was mayor of both Hampstead and Camden.

She was a divisional nursing superintendent with the Hampstead branch of the British Red Cross, and travelled to Hungary twice during the 1956 revolution, leading a team of volunteers.

She was also the founding secretary of the Friends of New End Hospital in Hampstead, a member of the North West London Region Health Board and the Whittington Hospital's management committee, chair of Hampstead's Save the Children's Fund - she seems to have packed a lot into her busy life.

Even when she retired to Spain in 1986 she was heavily involved in her local Residents' Association.

A very full life, by all accounts, and my condolences to Susan and all the family.

Dirty Pretty Things again!

On the tube to Shepherd's Bush, for the Dirty Pretty Things gig which they're doing in support of the Make Roads Safe Campaign. Also found out that the support are Hot Club de Paris, who I saw supporting them in November and were pretty good.

Seem to have spent most of the day travelling, even though I've only been coming back from a wedding near Northampton. Congratulations again Gill & Stu.

I only get to keep up with the Spurs match yesterday through texts from mates - but I've seen the highlights on my phone and Jermaine Jenas' wonder strike is something I could watch again and again. If only I could edit the highlights to take out the goals we conceded, I'd be very happy.

McCain bombs out of Presidential race

Haven't been keeping too close an eye on the race for the US Presidential nominations recently. Although one Kinks fan over there did tell me she was starting a campaign to change the constitution so that I would be able to stand in 2008!

I'm more interested in the Democratic race and can't imagine anyone they select being worse than any of the Republican options. But a colleague pointed me to this news from the Republican side - specifically Senator John McCain.

I know one of McCain's strengths could be seen to be that he has not been a career politician. But even with limited experience, singing 'Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran' should probably have been easily spotted as a Bad Thing to do.

Surely that will pretty much have finished him - whether for the Republican nomination or if he does go on to face any of the Democrats in 2008? Maybe a similar 'joke' might have gone down well prior to the invasion of Iraq, but with the popularity of that war continuing to drop in the US presumably this tack will have a big negative effect on his ratings?

Arrange your wedding carefully or lose your friends

Have a busy day ahead at work today, but looking forward to an action packed weekend - and I don't mean delivering leaflets!

Will be doing some Lib Dem campaign stuff with Monica tonight, but then tomorrow am off to the wedding of my good friend Gill.

Well, I say good friend. Less so since she arranged her wedding to clash exactly with our match at White Hart Lane against the team formerly based in Woolwich. Really, you'd think people would check with their guests before picking the day. Another friend, Kirsty, has also arranged hers for the opening day of next season.

Anyway, Sunday night am going to see the Dirty Pretty Things (again) and on Monday seeing CSS. With James following up on Friday, it's a bit of a gig-tastic week.

So although I'm missing the big Spurs match - having missed the home FA Cup tie against Chelsea too, that because of a council meeting - a good weekend ahead anyway.

Shoes vs flip-flops

Opposite our stall at the RCN exhibition was a company called Ward Walkers.

Although all the stalls were getting plenty of visitors from the massive crowds swarming through, they were getting more than most - and seemed to be doing brisk business.

Essentially they sell shoes, mostly over the internet. The particularly eyecatching thing about their stall was a range of shoes called Crocs, which I hadn't heard of but which apparently sold 50 million pairs in the U.S. last year.

They are eyecatching because they come in a range of fairly striking colours. The two guys on the stall were wearing orange ones and there's turquoise, yellow, pink... as well as some slightly more subdued colours like black and white.

In another triumph of my skill at photography, this photo of the stall manages to (1) be out of focus (2) have a light shining on the sign (3) not actually show any of the brighter colours - well, a turquoise pair has just crept in there at the top.

As my photo is a bit useless, if you want to see what 50 million Americans bought last year you can see them here. Although I thought it might be rude to ask about Ward Walkers' own sales figures for the whole of the UK, I can tell you that a whole load of people bought them in Harrogate this week, as well as all those Americans.

UPDATE: It turns out I'm just not as up with shoe fashion as other people I know. Since I posted this, several people have told me that Crocs are already massive - notably my mate Mark who runs his company Remarkable Innovation in Singapore (from what he says could be the only person in Singapore not wearing a pair) and Alexa who tells me that they are already all the rage in SE22...

They would be so proud of Wildcats

Got back tonight from a couple of days working at RCN Congress in Harrogate. I'd never been to Harrogate before last month, now twice in six weeks - I feel I know my way around already.

It was a good couple of days and Harrogate is a very nice place to sit and have lunch in the sunshine. I didn't manage to take any useful or picturesque photos - just these two, of something that amused me.

The first is a foundation stone on a building not too far from the train station. It dedicates the building to "the glory of God and for the salvation of the people".

The second is the same building from a little further back, showing the entrance next to the stone... For those not familiar with the name of the venue, it described itself as a "gentlemen's" club. I just wonder, if those who dedicated and laid the stone would be proud if they were still here today...

Hopefully they would be able to smile about it.

Make Roads Safe

I first became aware of the Make Roads Safe campaign last November when I went to see the Dirty Pretty Things in Birmingham. Well, I have to admit that by aware I mean that I saw the campaign logo on the flyers/tickets and assumed it was a good cause but didn't look into it at the time.

With another DPTs gig happening this Sunday, also in support of Make Roads Safe, it was worth taking a look at the campaign website.

The gig on Sunday helps kick off United Nations Global Road Safety week (23 -29 April) and the Make Roads Safe campaign looks at road safety in the UK and abroad, pointing out that worldwide there is a death from a car accident every 30 seconds.

The reason that the DPTs got involved in the campaign was the death of three teenage girls going home from one of their gigs in Suffolk last July. You can get involved yourself very easily, by signing the petition via the website.

Six more goals

Was planning on going up to the Spurs match at Wigan today originally, but couldn't make it - and didn't even get to watch it in the pub either. Seems to have been a bit of a cracker - ended up 3-3, which means Wigan have still never beaten us in the Premiership but gives them a point that should help them stay up and have another crack at us next year.

One random stat I read yesterday remains intact - apparently Spurs and Newcastle are the only teams not to have conceded in stoppage time this season. Makes a change from last season, when opposition corners in the 93rd minute seemed to almost inevitably lead to us conceding.

75th anniversary of the Highway Code

Today is, I believe, the 75th anniversary of the Highway Code.

A colleague told me that she has some great quotes from the original version from 1932... I'll try and post those in the next few days.

In the meantime, if all the drivers in London could please read the Highway Code and start following the rules, that would be very nice. Thank you.

By the way - and I know this is only adding fuel to the fire - but why on earth is Prince William breaking up with his girlfriend the headline news story across the UK today? News?? Another few dozen dead in an Iraqi blast, but a 24 year old lad stopping going out with someone gets top billing?

In less well reported news, Andy Murray is due to move into the Top 10 of the world tennis rankings when the new list comes out on Monday (at No.10). Great work.

Friday lunchtime fun... do I really look like these celebrities?

Few days ago I spotted that Rob Fenwick had done this on Facebook. This website scans your photo and then tells you which celebrities you look like.

It's an interesting mix to say the least. I think I might try it again with a different photo...



Just realised that the little collage hasn't saved their names. Hmmm, I can't even remember who they all were now.

But, safe to say of the ones I can remember, no one has ever told me I look like Tobey Maguire, Zach Braff, Ronan Keating or Seamus Heaney...

Government Minister now driving David Beckham's stolen car

A Government Minister may be driving David Beckham's stolen car. Strange but (possibly) true.

Labour Executive Member admits colleagues are useless

Last night Overview & Scrutiny Committee met to debate the call-in from my ward colleague Cllr Martin Newton - who spoke very eloquently against the Labour Council's plans to impose an unwanted pay & display scheme on Muswell Hill and Crouch End.

You can watch the full meeting, if you have a couple of hours to spare, here.

There was much debate over whether changing the scheme to allow the first half hour of parking to be free was enforceable... Incredibly frustrating, as the "arguments" being given by the Labour Executive Member were weaker than the plotline of Eldorado. You enforce a free parking ticket exactly as you would a paid-for one - it has a timestamp on it, if the ticket is not valid when checked then the vehicle gets fined. End of.

The former Leader of the Council Charles Adje was there to support his colleague from the Executive, waving around an e-mail received from a trader in March 2006 asking for the currently restricted parts of Muswell Hill Broadway to be "brought into line" with the rest. They were trying to use this as evidence in support of pay & display - even though no part of the Broadway has pay & display (and didn't in 2006). So how can bringing in to line be support for a completely different set-up?

It was mentioned that "you never get 100% unanimity" in consultations. But at the first stage consultation the Council did get 99% in Muswell Hill and 95% in Crouch End - AGAINST their proposals. That's as clear a message as you're ever likely to get, but - surprise, surprise - this Labour run Council (laughably with "Beacon Status" for good consultation!) is pushing ahead with their plans regardless of what local residents and traders want.

It was the local residents and traders, along with ward councillors, who asked Haringey Council to address the parking and traffic problems around these shopping areas, as we were repeatedly told last night. But that doesn't change the fact that RESIDENTS AND TRADERS DO NOT WANT THE COUNCIL'S 'SHOP & STOP' SCHEMES. It does not solve the problems and is a mess of a proposal.

But, thanks to the Labour majority on Overview & Scrutiny, that is exactly what they are going to get. Democracy in action.

Two other interesting points to come out of the meeting:

The Council are saying they can't enforce free parking bays. When I asked them how they enforce time limited free parking in the borough now (e.g. max stay 2 hours, no return within 4 hours, etc) the only answer was that they are "reviewing all free parking bays across the borough" - so, just as a warning, there will soon be no free parking left.

And Cllr Brian Haley, Labour Executive Member for the Environment, came up with a delightful endorsement of his Labour colleagues on the Executive. He claimed to be one of the only Executive members who understands his brief and goes through all the facts before making decisions. You can see his glowing tribute to the competencies and commitment of his Executive colleagues on the webcast - these comments came around two hours into the meeting, c. 21:05.

Spot the difference

This is the Council's photo of Patricia Hewitt's visit to Wood Green yesterday.

On the photo on Page 3 of the Financial Times today, there is a different photo from the same visit (which I'll try and scan in and stick up here at some point).

The Financial Times photo is notable for the lady holding up a big sign behind Patricia Hewitt which says:

"FOR THE SAKE OF THE NHS: RESIGN"

Nobody expects... the Pontipines

(With apologies to Monty Python).

One of the great "joys" of visiting small people (like my nearly 2 year old niece Tamsin) is watching hours of CBeebies.

As my brother-in-law works for Network Rail, things like Thomas the Tank Engine and Underground Ernie are obvious regulars. Some of the other programmes seem to me to be unspeakably rubbish. But a new one (to me) on this visit is In the Night Garden.

I wasn't massively enjoying it, featuring as it did a sort of Care Bear/Stay Puft Marshmallow Man cross called Igglepiggle and a sort of Teletubby reject called Makka Pakka, who seems to have OCD and was going around washing everyone's faces.

But my brother-in-law promised me that I would like the 10 miniature people called the Pontipines. The reason he gave was that the little chaps look like Monty Python's own Spanish Inquisition. I didn't believe him, but when the Pontipines turned up on the screen (to get their tiny faces washed with a massive sponge) I saw exactly what he meant...

Bristol: just a short train journey away!

Just back from a quick visit to Bristol - the first time I've ever been properly actually, I went for the day once a few years ago when then boss Edward Davey MP was on Question Time there.

Had a good trip, it's a really pretty city and the weather was great. Stayed at a B&B called Woodstock on Bath Road, as per the attached photo. I'm only including this as it is important to note that if you tell your taxi driver 354 and the actual number is 534 and you then have to spend a bit of time driving up and down, it does tend to bump your taxi fare up a bit. Doh.

Anyway, was a very nice B&B in a great old house. Room was great, breakfast was great, excellent hospitality - can highly recommend for anyone staying over in Bristol.

Right, got to go and sort some stuff out before heading up to St.Alban's to visit my sister tomorrow.

Oh, one random thing - had an email from Facebook yesterday, telling me that Iain Dale had invited me to be in his friends network. I would be surprised if Iain is a regular reader of my blog, he must be fairly busy keeping his going, but it would have seemed rude to say no. So my network is now an eclectic mix of schoolfriends, uni friends, Lib Dem colleagues, tennis friends, ex and current colleagues and one widely read Tory blogger.

Greg Rusedski retires from tennis

Yesterday Greg Rusedski retired from tennis - going out on a high note, teaming up with Jamie Murray for a decisive win in the Davis Cup tie against Holland.

Was always a big Rusedski fan, especially as his skills were never fully appreciated. Yes, he had a massive serve, but he had a good all round game too. And for now he is still Britain's last Grand Slam singles finalist (US Open in 1997), plus he was ranked as high as 4 in the world.

Trouble is, until a Brit wins Wimbledon they will generally be considered a failure by much of the media and public. I don't think many people would think that the 4th best footballer in the world was a bit useless - but somehow tennis gets different standards applied...

Half time: Chelsea 0 Spurs 0

As I am watching the football in O'Neills in the middle of Bristol on my own, thought I might as well do a quick half-time blog.

The Spurs fans are all in good voice, even if we've only got half as many there as we were allowed when I was at Stamford Bridge for our FA Cup match. Can only really hear our lads and I don't think that's because Sky have only put a mic down our end judging by the chants of "just like the Library".

First 10 minutes I was thinking we might be lucky to get away with Nil. But, with the much changed line-up (as it's only 36 hours since we came off the pitch in Seville), we settled down really well.

I am a big fan of Jermaine Jenas, but he has given away a few very careless passes - having said that, he's mostly been serving up good stuff, even if Michael Dawson has had the best passes of the match so far.

Ghaly, Defoe and Mido have all been losing possession too easily. Dawson, Robinson and Rocha have been excellent tho and while we're not making many chances we are looking relatively comfortable in midfield and defence.

When I did finally hear a Chelsea chant of "Jose Mourinho", it was countered more loudly by "sacked in the summer, you're getting sacked in the summer"...

At the start of halftime, Sky played a bit of the Hard-Fi song "Hard to Beat"... 45 minutes to go.

UPDATE: Well, we did make it pretty hard, but they did beat us, 1-0.

Why am I a Lib Dem?

It's a question that I get asked from time to time - to be fair, usually by people who are wondering why anyone would get involved in any sort of politics.

As I have also, very amusingly, recently been described on a Tory blog as a "communist", I thought I'd do a brief explanation of why I'm a Lib Dem.

It's a bit sad to have to admit, but I've always been interested in politics - well, current affairs - and indeed the geeky elections part of that too, particularly starting with 1992. When I was about 17, I decided that I should "do something" about that interest. At that stage, I knew the sorts of things I believed in but didn't have much of a clue as to how those things might fit in to any political party.

I don't come from any political background. My parents are political in that they are very aware of all the issues and always vote, but there is no history of political activism in any branch of my family tree. So, sad but true, I actually set about doing some research - writing to the parties to ask for information, reading the manifestos... just to be clear, I didn't spend my formative years being a political geek, it was very much a side interest.

It became clear to me pretty quickly that the Liberal Democrats were the only party that matched my views. If you want to see why, you only need look as far as the preamble to the party constitution (you can find it by clicking on the party website link to the left) which nicely sums up my reasons for being in politics.

So I have been a member of the Lib Dems for more than 12 years, and first got properly involved when I ran the Lib Dem group at university in Durham. We even won an award from the party for most improved group. I was also on the Executive of the national Lib Dem Youth & Students for a year and then continued to help out campaigning in various bits of the country.

Then, not long after coming to live in London, I had the opportunity to stand for election in Fortis Green, where I've now been a councillor for 5 years. Whatever my level of party involvement is over the remaining (hopefully) decades of my life, I will always be a member of the Liberal Democrats.

Some people love endless ideological debates about left and right, but that sort of stuff bores me rigid and I don't see it having any relevance to being an effective elected representative.

It is important that people know I am both liberal and a democrat and that I support the direction my party takes at Westminster. But what's equally important is that I represent the people in my ward and actually DO things, irrespective of whether we agree on "ideology". Ideology isn't important to me - each individual policy and making a positive difference for people is.

Well, that's helped the train journey pass a bit. Back to reading my book now - Mao: The Unknown Story.

Mexicans have Cornish miners to thank

Had a fairly relaxed day yesterday all round and managed to polish off the rest of my casework - bar one or two tricky ones that are taking a while to sort out.

Just left Paddington, on the way to visit a friend in Bristol. At the station there was a little display about Cornish mining. Having even been down a Cornish mine when I visited my former ward colleague and Newquay & St.Austell Lib Dem Stephen Gilbert last summer, I was interested to see the facts and figures on display.

Apparently, it was emigrating Cornish miners who introduced football to Mexico. Sometimes I forget that all over the world football had to be invented/introduced and it didn't just start existing at the dawn of time...

Anyway, if you want to know more about the Cornish mining industry, you can take a look at:

www.cornishmining.com

Will be getting into Bristol early enough to find a pub to watch Spurs take on Chelsea at lunchtime. Expecting a bit of a different line-up to Thursday night's game in Seville. And, I'm just going to keep on saying this, Michael Dawson should be captaining the side.

With Everton winning emphatically last night, it would be great to get something from the game today and keep the pressure on for 5th place - and who knows, maybe even 4th... We have a pretty important derby game on two weeks today...

A sense of perspective on parking

Saw this on the news last night. Obviously very, very sad.

If it does turn out to be the result of an argument over parking, how incredibly futile that someone has lost their life over such a trivial issue.

Davis Cup tennis

I forgot that Britain are playing Holland in the Davis Cup this weekend. Right now, in fact.

Andy Murray, whose last game was a hammering in the Miami Masters semi-final by Novak Djokovic, has started well, already a break up against Raemon Sluiter. Henman will be playing the other singles match later today and Murray's brother Jamie is set to team up with Greg Rusedski for the doubles.

Anyway, it's on BBC2 now if you want to go and watch. I do.

We wuz robbed

The match last night was pretty entertaining overall. Sevilla really did look quite good - but then you'd expect that, looking at their position in La Liga at the moment. But we looked good too, even if on balance, if you hadn't seen the goals, you might have guessed Sevilla 2 Spurs 1 would have been a fair(ish) result.

But as their equaliser came from a penalty which was one of the worst decisions I've seen for a long time and their second goal came from Spurs failing to clear the ball when they had chance, it's difficult not to be a bit annoyed. Especially as the ref booked nearly every Spurs player and was giving freekicks for absolutely nothing - it really was a poor performance from him.

Anyway, 1-2 to take back to White Hart Lane on Thursday night, that's not a bad position to start from and should be a really good game.

It seems like a little while since I saw the Inspiral Carpets, but I have got a few gigs coming up over the next couple of months. Before the end of May I've got CSS, James and the Holloways and just booked tickets for The Good The Bad and The Queen in July. Oh, and going to see Take That (again) with my sister in December. Did want to go and see Brett Anderson, but clashes with a council meeting so am having to pass on that. Looking out for a few more to slot in over the summer though!

Anyway, was going to start delivering our residents' survey today, but haven't been able to get them off my colleague... which is why I'm having a (long overdue) lazy day and writing so much boring waffle on here!

Idiots banned from standing for election

Full story here.

Maybe 250 year old election law isn't the best place to rip your text from.

Talking CCTV: oi, you!

Talking CCTV? Eh?

All explained here.

I'm not convinced, but will be interesting to see the results of the trials - if they are actually effective and if they throw up any problems.

Everything's been a bit crazy the last few days, not much time to stop and think, let alone blog. Had a quiet surgery tonight, which gave me a chance to rattle through some casework. Got back to my flat and housemate Monica Whyte is having a meeting about fundraising - just one of the many, many hats she wears for the Lib Dems. Campaigning, organising, fundraising... if it helps the Lib Dems then Monica is sure to be spending every waking hour doing it.

So I'm just taking the chance to finish off a little bit more casework and think about a very busy day ahead at work tomorrow. But light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Sevilla v Spurs!

Was hoping to go to Seville for the game, but couldn't get the day off work, so will be watching it in a pub near Liverpool Street with my mates instead. Oh well, have the home tie to look forward to next week... depending on the result tomorrow...

Long live The Kinks!

Good news - have received the following e-mail from the organisers of the Kinks petition:

Great news - the new tenant of the Clissold Arms has today made the following statement;

We are thrilled to have secured the site of The Clissold Arms for our next venture. It will reopen as a gastropub this summer, following a major refurbishment.

In respect to the Kinks Memorabilia & subsequent historical connection to the Clissold Arms, I would like to confirm the following: We have no intention of removing it from the building; at no point did I use the word 'auction'- or state that the Kinks historical connection to the Clissold was not in keeping with the way we wish to run the Pub.

Our only aim is to enhance both the natural features & atmosphere of the Clissold Arms & to provide a quality food offering. Our recent comments in the Muswell Hill Journal on this matter were completely misinterpreted and untrue.

Caroline Jones, Jobo Developments

We would like to thank you for your invaluable help in bringing this story to the attention of supporters and the media worldwide.

So, it seems that the concerns were unfounded - which is not surprising, as the financial sense alone of retaining the Kinks link seems clear. It has been good to have such a large demonstration of support for the Kinks though, connecting people across the world and raising the profile of Fortis Green and the Clissold Arms.

We can all look forward to the pub's reopening now!