Today is Brian’s Facebook Friday, during which supporters of Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate for Mayor of London, are being asked to sign up as fans on his Facebook page, and to encourage other Londoners on Facebook to do the same.

Signing up as a supporter is a good way of keeping in touch with Brian’s campaign and of publicly showing your support – it also gives you a tasteful little Brian Paddick icon on your Facebook profile. If you want to see Brian elected Mayor of London in May and you haven’t done so already, please register as a fan on Facebook now.

And, if you haven’t yet signed up for Facebook, it’s a great opportunity to do so!

Satires on taxation, global capitalism and Section 28 aren’t perhaps the usual fare of television aimed at children, but, produced as it was by the BBC’s drama department, Doctor Who often aimed squarely at the family audience, ensuring that there was a something in its stories to appeal to adults while the kids were hiding behind the sofa.

As part of my exceptionally slow progress through all the Doctor Who ever made, I recently reached The Sun Makers, a Tom Baker story from 1977 in which political satire is pushed front and centre – arguably at the expense of younger audiences.

The central conceit is relatively simple: the Doctor and Leela arrive on Pluto, where what’s left of the human race are living, enslaved by compulsory work for the Company and punitive tax rates. The Doctor’s task within four episodes is to overthrow the Company and free the people.

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This year the clocks go forward to British Summer Time on Sunday 30th March, and back to GMT on October 26th – put those in your diary now. (Or your Outlook Calendar at least – if you have a diary, they probably come printed in already.)

I’ve been perusing some information about the system for deciding when the clocks change on the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform website (as you do). Nowadays, it’s always the last Sunday in March and the last in October. It’s the same in all European Union member states and has been set down via EC Directive since way back when (i.e, 1981).

Directive 2000/84/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 19 January 2001 on summer-time arrangements sayeth in particular:

(2) Given that the Member States apply summer-time arrangements, it is important for the functioning of the internal market that a common date and time for the beginning and end of the summer-time period be fixed throughout the Community.

(3) Since the summer-time period considered most appropriate by the Member States runs from the end of March to the end of October, it is appropriate that that period therefore be maintained.

As directives have to be implemented into British law to take effect, this is done through Orders in Council under the European Communities Act 1972. The 1972 Summer Time Act (it was all go in 1972) is amended by the Order to enact the change.

The current arrangement settling on the last Sundays in March and October was introduced via the 9th Directive, which came into force through the Summer Time Order 2002. The main effect, as we already used roughly the same system, was to remove the previous contingency the moved the switch to BST earlier by a week if it would have fallen on Easter Sunday. I note that in the original 1972 arrangements, the changes happened at 2am GMT – now they happen at 1am.

Here endeth the lesson.

Not that I have a vote, of course, but skipping past that… Via Doctorvee comes a quiz which identifies Democrat Mike Gravel (who he? 77-year-old former senator for Alaska apparently) as my best pick for US President:

77% Mike Gravel
75% Dennis Kucinich
74% Bill Richardson
73% Barack Obama
73% Chris Dodd
69% Hillary Clinton
68% John Edwards
67% Joe Biden
45% Rudy Giuliani
41% Ron Paul
40% John McCain
33% Mitt Romney
31% Mike Huckabee
25% Tom Tancredo
19% Fred Thompson

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Obama comes out top of the big hitters, with all of the Republicans trailing the Democrats. Apply the usual health warnings with these sorts of quizzes – they depend on the questions, candidates’ positions will have been estimated, etc.

I’ve also tried another survey which Duncan tried a few months ago. That one also matched me with Gravel, but ordered the big three Democrats with Edwards first, then Obama, then Clinton. Which demonstrates my point about health warnings.