Seen at the Somers Town People’s Forum/Keep Our NHS Public London hustings today (brilliantly attended on a Sunday morning by more than 120 people from a wide range of the area’s communities) was a very young man, perhaps 18, with a “Vote Labour sticker” on the lapel of his sharply cut jacket.
… carrying the Sunday Telegraph.
Politically, it is getting to be a funny old world.
In a Somers Town window, a handmade and heartfelt poster reading simply:
“Not Boris”.
(The Conservative London mayoral candidate and comedy performer, to explain for international readers.)
… and quite fun really. The artists have gone to town:
If you’d prefer an academic take on the election, there’s an excellent (independent) London analysis here.
There’s something slightly inevitable about the fact that as this canvasser was cycling down Dartmouth Park Hill this afternoon, the cyclist who passed her was the Green Party candidate in the Highgate byelection.
(My excuse for going so slowly was that I had a full backpack of leaflets for the morrow, and I don’t know the road… and he is a local. Although it was slightly embarrassing that when we met up again at the lights at the bottom of the hill, he was complaining about a slow puncture and saying he was going slowly…)
Canvassing for four separate elections involving three voting systems is, you might say, challenging – but entertaining. (For the record, the London mayoral vote is by the supplementary vote system; the London Assembly constituency seats by first past the post, and the London Assembly London-wide members by the d’Hondt method (a form of proportional representation). And the Highgate byelection for Camden council is also first past the post.)
Note to my neighbours: if you hear me reciting this in my sleep, don’t be surprised.
I’ve found this in only two papers this morning, despite its importance as a scientific contribution to the coming debate on the abortion bill: in short, despite claims to the contrary from anti-abortion rights people (who are adopting the American tactic of trying to nibble away at rights in Britain) there has been no increase in the survival rates of extremely premature babies born before 24 weeks (the current abortion limit).
The Guardian presents it straight: “The EPICure 2 report, produced by a study group of neonatal experts, is based on analysis of all severely premature births across England in 2006. It found 40% of infants born before 23 weeks die on the labour ward, an increase of 8% since the last study was conducted in 1995. Of those who survived labour nearly 75% died in neo-natal units.”
The Telegraph, after a bit of twisting and turning, has to report the same thing.
It appears not to be reported in the Times or the Indy, so far as I’ve found.
Q. What’s the largest crop in America?
A. Grass.
No, no … not that kind. The suburban mow-it-on-Sunday kind – occupying 30 million acres.
Just imagine how much you could grow on all of that land – things that there was actually some point in growing, like food for example ….
Yes, you might say I’ve an allergy to grass, not the biological kind, but the sociological kind of allergy that comes from growing up in the suburbs.
And even with the millions of acres of land covered over with even worse stuff, you could do a lot with what has been dubbed “asphalt gardening”. I look out on the internal courtyard of my flats and think what a nice lot of mini-allotments the parking spaces would make – and this would probably be the way to do it…
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