Elections

Getting too busy to blog now, its more and more manic, with absolutely no let up in the support for and interest in the Liberal Democrats, which I predict will surge higher after tonight's final leaders' debate.

I am spending all my time answering constituents and journalists, delivering and canvassing. The hustings was my first ever, and I was pleased overall; strong start on the economy and strong finish on crime, with a bit of a wobble in the middle caused by random heckle. Onwards and upwards.

Yesterday morning on my way to our campaign HQ I saw a boy of about 13 walking along my street wearing a Lib Dem sticker - he certainly wasn't old enough to vote but just seeing him seemed to summon up what's going on at the moment - 500,000 newly registered voters, most of them young, with a belief that at last real change could be on the way.

This close to the election you might be surprised to hear that I gave myself the afternoon off, but I went to watch my brother and others running the London Marathon for the British Red Cross. We're all very proud of him - just turned 50, stranded in the US by the ash until Friday evening, and still got round in a very respectable 4 hr 38.

Well, that headline should get a few more readers, but don't get excited - the revelations won't come until after I'm elected as MP for Westminster North...

First of all, another great day's canvassing, delivering and everything else involved in running a campaign, with yet another record turnout of helpers. While visiting a newsagents in Westbourne Grove, I got a hello and a smile from someone I'm 99% sure was the sex writer and TV personality Tracey Cox - I hasten to add there were lots of other people out there in Bayswater introducing themselves and saying encouraging things.

Yesterday evening was entertaining - you couldn't make it up. The Conservatives and the Lib Dems often see each other while out campaigning, and I've bumped into Karen Buck a couple of times, but up to now Joanne Cash and I have missed each other on the streets of Westminster.

Until last night. Our Lib Dem team started at one end of the street, and soon we saw the Tories coming from the other, with none of other than Joanne Cash among them. As the BBC were filming us Lib Dems doing our work, the inevitable happened, and when the two parties met halfway up the street, the cameras were there to film it. I don't know what the BBC will end up showing, but all I can say is we didn't stand around chatting!

Malcolm Rifkind's venture into blogging is a curious fiction.

He claims Tories are inclusive in decision making.

Does this mean he was fully included in the Tory decision to ally with the marginal hard right, including Waffen SS commemorators, in the European Parliament or in the Tories' human rights alliance with Mr Putin's party?

Contrary to his claims, the Liberal Democrats are the only Party to publish in our Manifesto the cost of our plans to make Britain fairer.

And we plan to save more than we plan to spend.

The Tories must be seriously spooked to be misrepresenting Liberal Democrat policy so extensively so early in this Campaign! It's certainly true Kensington would have a genuinely local and much more assiduous Constituency MP with the initials RM instead of MR.

Only Liberal Democrats offer genuine local democracy and involvement.

The real Tory message is: "if you fall on hard times, you're on your own".

Tories have still not twigged that they have no automatic entitlement to rule.

The British people decide who goes to Parliament. If the British people decide they want parties to work together, then we should work together: as we do in Scotland.

For some time now, I've been talking to residents in Earl's Court about the proposed demolition of the Earl's Court complex. This is part of a massive plan for redevelopment by the developer CapCo. It would really be an entirely new neighbourhood rather than simply a housing development, which would stretch across two London Boroughs and include office and leisure facilities. The Hammersmith & Fulham side of things has had significant press coverage because, controversially, the development would mean the demolition of existing social housing. CapCo have promised to re-provide the housing in the new complex but it would mean the breakup of the existing community.

But here in Kensington, residents immediately adjacent to the existing Earl's Court complex are worried about the impact of the first stages of the development on the existing neighbourhood. That first stage, which could happen as soon as the Olympics have finished, will be the demolition of the enormous Earls Court 1. This is the part of the complex that everyone has heard of because it's the exhibition and concert venue.

According to a recent survey by Nationwide Building Society house prices in Hammersmith and Fulham rose by 22% in the last year, to take the cost of the average home in Hammersmith and Fulham to over £497,000.

Property prices in Hammersmith & Fulham are now the third highest in London, after Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster.

Merlene commented:

"There are clearly market forces at work pushing up property prices in the borough. The weakness of sterling caused by Labour's quantitative easing has also enticed more foreign money to compete for our limited supply.

This is all the more reason why we need to increase the supply of affordable housing in the borough. The Tories fail to understand that there are social costs to forcing more households into overcrowded accommodation, which has resulted in the further widening of the wealth and heath gap within the borough."

Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh, Tory leader of the council continues to advocate reducing the proportion of social housing available in the borough. It is the professed policy of the Tory controlled Council, endorsed by the Tory Parliamentary candidate, only to increase intermediate housing which would in reality be out of reach of the 9000 households currently on the Council waiting list for affordable housing.

If I may, I would like to use this page to extend commiserations to all Polish people, and most especially those living locally, on the tragic death of the President of Poland and his wife, The Rev Canon Bronislaw Gostomski of Shepherd's Bush and so many others, including former President in Exile Kaczorowski, in the plane crash at Smolensk.

In living memory, Poland has had to endure vastly more than its fair share of tragedy. This included the appalling Katyn massacre which Poland's leaders were today flying to Smolensk to commemorate.

The Royal Borough went into absolute panic in March about the scale of the public and press reaction to the replacement of a historic part of Portobello Road Antiques Market with a branch of a fashion chain store.

There has been widespread disbelief and downright anger on the part of local residents that RBKC has allowed the developer of the All Saints store to pierce the historic flanking wall of one of the most prominent buildings in a Conservation Area. Now, an application for retrospective planning permission for the shopfront is about to come before the Council. It strikes me that this grants the Council one final opportunity to show that it has listened to the extraordinary scale of the public opposition to the appearance of this premises which - while absolutely fine for Westfield - is entirely inappropriate to this location.