Excellent news from Whitefoot ward in Lewisham where there was a council by-election today. Having been to help several times and having delivered goodness knows how many leaflets, I’m very pleased to report that Pete Pattisson has been elected as the newest Liberal Democrat councillor in the borough.

Labour will be very disappointed to have lost yet another by-election in Lewisham, especially having lost out to the Lib Dems last week in the Crystal Palace by-election, a ward that forms part of the new Lewisham West and Penge seat.

Well done to the team in Whitefoot!

Update: Here are the numbers.

So the Saatchi and Saatchi agency has been recruited to look after Labour’s advertising for the general election. Whenever that might be. <cough>

Here’s their pitch:

What the BBC story doesn’t tell you*, is that they were previously turned down by the Liberal Democrats after this proposal:

For some reason, the Tories – despite the success of Labour Isn’t Working in 1979 – also turned them down. Can’t imagine why:

*because (let’s be clear for legal purposes) I’ve made it up

A novel way to get young people to church is being tried out with a special service at St Paul’s in (Lib Dem) Grangetown, Cardiff. The church was used as a location for Paul Cornell‘s Doctor Who episode Father’s Day a few year’s ago, and the series is its means to entice fans in, as icWales reports:

Fr Dean Atkins, youth officer with the Diocese of Llandaff and one of the organisers of the service, said: “The figure of Doctor Who is somebody who comes to save the world, almost a Messiah figure.

“In the series there are lots of references to salvation and the doctor being almost immortal. We are using the figure of Doctor Who as a parable of Christ.

“The language used in the series lends itself to exploring the Christian faith.”
[…]
Parish priest Fr Ben Andrews said: “I love the series, and it has such a great following that we couldn’t resist doing something for young people on a Doctor Who theme.

Full story here. I hope you appreciate my restraint in titling this post, when Rise of the Congregation, The Sound of Hymns, Army of Holy Ghosts or Pew Earth were all out there.

Once I’d heard that Best Liberal Democrat Blog to Feature a Fair Amount of Doctor Who Stuff* and Best Video Made in October 2006 Spoofing a Party Leader on a Liberal Democrat Blog weren’t going to be categories this year, I jumped at the chance to take part in the judging process for the Liberal Democrats’ Blog of the Year Awards. The shortlisting stage is now complete and you can see which blogs we’ve chosen on Liberal Democrat Voice.

The winners will be announced at a ceremony on the Sunday evening of party conference in Brighton.

*I was never going to win that with Alex and Millennium around, but I could have held out hope of a shortlisting