Tomsk79

At last the Lib Dem/Labour leaflet duopoly has been broken, with all three of the other parties' free communications arriving on the same day. First the Tories. Receiving a leaflet with hues from the other side of the rainbow is a refreshing change for the eyes, even while the content makes them burn. Manning's cover letter (as ever, click to enlarge) is undermined by some terrible grammatical howlers. "investment ever more in our NHS"? "Liberal Democrats set to loose many of their seats"? I expect better from proud graduates of the University of Manchester! With all the gazillions of pounds being poured in to the party by hedge funds you'd think they'd be able to hire someone to proof-read their sales pitches. On the other hand I quite enjoyed his subtle trolling of the yellow team: "It is not clear that the Lib Dems will be able to support a Conservative government again". Heh. The Northern Powerhouse gets name-checked in a

An increasing focus on local elections as Labour send me a leaflet advertising the Jeff Smith/Matt Strong two candidate combo deal: Good stat work there with the claim that the Lib Dem candidate (who he?) has voted with the Tories 93% of the time in the last parliament. Just guessing but I imagine it's the other 7% of votes that are the important ones. More exciting is the other side of the leaflet which doubles up as a poor man's window poster: Even if I was in a poster-displaying mood I think I'd be too embarrassed to put one up featuring text-speak, but I have seen them go up in a few windows so clearly it's a worthwhile use of leaflet space. The Lib Dems, however, have trumped these puny A4 signs with a supersized hashtag in the middle of Chorlton: I thought political hoardings died out sometime in the mid-90s and spotting one this time round would be as likely as ever hearing a new Blur album. We live and learn.

The 2015 election has been notable for the many new models attempting to predict the result, mostly created by academics trying to avoid doing any proper work. In that spirit we at Tomsk79 have created our own model for predicting the result of the Manchester Withington constituency, which is detailed in full here. The starting point for my model is the constituency poll carried out in June 2014 by Lord Ashcroft (blessed be his name). This poll suggests a decisive swing from the Lib Dems to Labour since the election: The next stage is to correct the Ashcroft poll by movements in the national polls since June 2014. For this we use the BBC Poll of Polls , which reports changes as follows: Con: 31 to 34 (+3) Lab: 34 to 33 (-1) LD: 10 to 9 (-1) UKIP: 15 to 13 (-2) Green: 5 to 5 (0) We assume that the national changes apply uniformly to the Withington constituency. Next, we apply a sub-seat correction using local election results from Withington wards. By analysing

If the election result was decided solely on how many times people have knocked on my door, there would be no doubt about the winner: the Jehovah's Witnesses. Oxfam and "Hello Fresh" would also retain their deposits. No political party has bothered yet, and there's barely a week left for them to get their acts together. Honestly, what is the point of living in a marginal if you're not going to be given the opportunity to rant on your own doorstep? Plus I'm a stay-at-home Dad so I'm in all day and can even offer a traditional baby-kissing opportunity. Roll up! "But her face is covered in porridge!" " Do you want my vote or not? " The leaflets keep on coming of course. Mrs Tomsk has received a personal letter addressed personally to her from John Leech. It's all but identical to the one I was sent except that the controversial opening paragraph has been replaced with something much more anodyne. Either this blog is much more wid

I was kindly allowed off fatherly duties for an evening to attend the election hustings at St Clements Church in Chorlton. A few things I learnt about the candidates: John Leech (unsurprisingly) and Jeff Smith (reassuringly) are both good at this game. Rob Manning (Conservative) and Mark Davies (UKIP) also put up a good front against a mainly hostile audience. Lucy Bannister (Green) was the youngest and least assured candidate but to her credit was the most willing to take on the UKIP arguments directly. Mysterious independent candidate Marcus Farmer was not on the panel. Perhaps he was gazing down malevolently from the bell tower. Jeff Smith was happy to go on record saying that he would vote against his own party in order to ban fracking and cancel a Trident replacement. I don't actually agree with him on either of those issues but still I'm impressed with his independence of thought and it has addressed some of my previous doubts . Of course it was also a canny pitch t

It's always good to receive a personal letter addressed personally to me from candidate John Leech. Not least when it comes on rather nice parchment-like paper. It's the Ferrero Rocher of personal letters. However, this particular letter seems almost purposely-crafted to drive me towards voting Labour. The first two paragraphs contain so much piffle that they actually broke my piffleometer. I understand the need to trash talk Labour in their leaflets, but "Britain nearly bankrupted"? I expect that kind of mendacity from Clegg, but I thought Leech would have more scruples. If you're going to make up recent history for your own benefit, at least be creative: "In 2010, the tyrant Brown ruled the Kingdom with a great clunking fist, and all the peasants did whimper as their first borns were sacrificed to appease the mighty Banker Barons. And yet there was still hope, in a fresh faced young hero named Nick Clegge from the South Riding of York-Shire. And

A confession: I haven't made up my mind how to vote yet. If it were simply a matter of choosing a party I would have settled long ago on Labour. I've never voted for them before at a general election but picking Ed Miliband as leader showed they were ready to stand for something again and I'm pleased with the direction he has taken the party. While some of the policies they have already proposed may be a bit gimmicky (stupid NHS targets), and some I'll believe when they happen (200,000 new homes a year), others look both doable and will tangibly improve the country: doubling paid paternity leave, reducing tuition fees, giving 16 year olds the vote, abolishing non-dom status, giving football fans a voice in the boardroom, reinstating the 50p top rate of tax, scrapping the bedroom tax, and giving renters more rights to name just a few. Small policies that will make a big difference without breaking the bank. I could hardly be less persuaded by the endless attacks on