That’s the question spreading its way through teh internets this afternoon.

Bob Neill, already employed in various jobs and seeking to become Tory MP for Bromley & Chislehurst, is a board member of the North East London Strategic Health Authority (and you’re right, Bromley isn’t in North East London – well spotted).

According the Part III of Schedule 1 to the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, among the “Other Disqualifying Offices” which would prevent one taking a seat in the House of Commons are:

Chairman or any member, not being also an employee, of any [Strategic Health Authority,] Health Authority or Special Health Authority which is a relevant authority for the purposes of paragraph 9(1) of Schedule 5 to the National Health Service Act 1977.

So this is one job from which Bob would have to resign if elected by the good people of Bromley.

It does prompt a big question though, as raised by the Monkey. When Neill signed his nomination paper to stand in the by-election, did he have to certify that he was not covered by the provisions of the 1975 Act at the time of signing? Perhaps someone who knows about these administrative matters can get to the bottom of it.

(Via Rob.)

Not the last one, the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before that (if we’re counting Howard’s unchallenged ascension).

The meme du jour is earliest political memories. I’ve searched my brain through the haze that is the 1980s and while I may have been aware of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release of Mandela and have a suspicion that my dad took me leafletting in the 1987 general election, my earliest clear memory is from the same month as Ryan’s.

I’d not long started secondary school and Heseltine’s challenge to Thatcher and the subsequent leadership election were covered at school (my memory is hazy about which class it was in). I recall predicting, with my 11-year-old’s naivety, that she would cling on – not knowing anything about politics and having spent my entire life under Her reign, it was hard to imagine anything different.

Ben Abbotts canvassing a couple of Cheeky Girls in Bromley.

Beyond an antediluvian pun in the title, words fail me.

theguardian Diary claimed on Tuesday that frivolous (and, indeed, non-frivolous) Early Day Motions each cost the taxpayer £290.

Wasn’t a larger figure than this – four figures, I think – quoted in the past? Surely the actual unit cost can’t be that high? If this is calculated by dividing the total cost of running the system by the number of EDMs, it’s quite possible that by proposing more EDMs, MPs actually serve to reduce this figure further (with the total cost increasing, but rising more slowly than the current average a time) and if they restrained themselves the average cost per EDM would actually go up even if the overall costs fell.