Morning update 31.03.15: Frank’s semi-colon; Simon’s photo shoot
LOOK EAST
THE Labour baton in Holborn and St Pancras passed from Frank Dobson to Sir Keir Starmer on Sunday evening with a gathering of 80 members at the Gospel Oak Community Centre. Activists were urged to head to Finchley and Golders Green to help out with Sarah Sackman’s campaign against Tory Mike Freer, and to Hornsey and Wood Green where Labour wants more manpower in their hustling of Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone. The strategy makes sense, although to make sure that anybody in the room didn’t think Sir K was taking anything for granted in his home banker of a constituency, he insisted that 20,000 doors in the south of Camden had already been door-knocked. For Frank’s part, he’s had several farewell moments and this was on the low key end of the scale. He said it would be a “nice semi-colon, not a full stop” if Labour held his seat with an increased majority and Ed Miliband became PM. He railed against Tories, who he claimed were left with nothing but personal abuse against his party’s leader… before going on to call the cabinet ‘squalid’ and Featherstone ‘slithering’. The shift over the borough border works two ways, of course. Lib Dem activists who might have been expected to have been seen more regularly on doorsteps in Camden in these past few weeks are migrating in the same direction to defend their MP.
SIMON’S PHOTOSHOOT
IF Conservative Simon Marcus is not successful in winning the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency, at least he will have some top class photography to remind him of the election experience. The professionals from Getty, who allow their images to be embedded in blogs and news sites, followed him on a recent canvassing sesh with Grant Shapps, creating quite a strikinbg gallery of pavement-stomping and Shapps’ pep talk while clinging onto a tree and rocking a bottle of Diet Coke.
PS: what is Hampstead by-election candidate Oliver Cooper whsipering into Councillor Siobhan Baillie’s ear?
GEEK!
JEREMY Paxman called him a ‘North London Geek’, while David Cameron said Ed Miliband was a ‘Hampstead socialist’. Rather than being digested as cuss words, certain Labour supporters in Camden are apparently printing up t-shirts to wear the intended insults across their chests in the run-up to May 7.
TWEETS
Highbury and Islington tube staff on the money….
To those who hand out medals: please give one to the Tube worker who did this. pic.twitter.com/8ta3BaP8XP
— GeorgeMonbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) March 31, 2015
Richard Osley 