Stuart King was today selected to be Labour's candidate for Putney, comfortably beating Elisabeth Davies (who came second) and Floyd Millen (third) on the first ballot.
Update [2007-6-28 16:34:56 by Jag Singh]: Stuart's website is at www.stuartking.net/blog

Why are the Unions trying to come up with variations on the same word as their (meaningless) title all of a sudden?

We're now going to have Unison, Unity, Unite and Unify: is this going to be more or less helpful in getting workers to join unions given that you can't tell from their new names what sectors or trades they represent?  I think not.

So I'm today proposing one union: the UUUUU; which has the advantage of being able to be further abbreviated to just U.  Think of the opportunities: "U, U and U can join U, today!".

Are there any remaining variations on the word "union" that haven't been utilised yet, given that we've still got a handful of TUs with very old Labour acronyms like USDAW and CWU...they've clearly got to go. 

Have to say I much prefer the more traditional names that actually mean something to this new meaningless PR makeover - the Unions need so much more than this sort of stunt to turn themselves around.

There are quite a few selections taking place in the next eight weeks or so: here's a list of when they're all happening:

Can anyone update us on who has been selected for the following seats, which according to the timetables published earlier in this section should have completed their process by now?:

There's an interesting blog here looking into the claims by the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith, Shaun Bailey, that he runs a grassroots charity in North Kensington. 

The blog's author -  someone called Ivan Pope - has been trying to find out what this charity is, and has come up with blanks.

Not trying to imply that Shaun Bailey doesn't do what he says he does, but you'd think there'd be some information about it somewhere, especially with the media profile he's developing... 

Did anyone see the end of the Six O'Clock News when the correspondent outside Downing Street (I think it was John Piennar) said that there was likely to be a leadership election: Gordon Brown vs Michael Meacher?

Yesterday was of course the day that he and John McDonnell met up to compare lists of supporters...

Putney branches have now completed their nominating process, with the following results:

Amid all the "shock" at the high number of spoilt ballots in the Scottish Elections, I can't help but ask where the Electoral Commission's concern, let alone it "full, independent review" was when precisely the same thing happened three years ago in the London Elections?

Sian Lloyd-Webber kindly provided the shortlist for the Wimbledon selection in the (long) thread on BAME candidates, so I've posted it here.

• Eleanor Tunnicliffe
  
• Mee-kuen Chong
  
• Dan Lodge
  
• Mark McDonald
  
• Abdal Ullah

Hustings scheduled for 2nd June.

Interestingly, three of those shortlisted have also applied for Putney, and, assuming that that CLP wants a shortlist of six, given that only three women have applied, Eleanor and Mee-Kuen will be shortlisted there.

It's a rather interesting dilemma though: it's pretty near impossible for someone to campaign effectively in two selections occurring at the same time, and if they lose Wimbledon (which selects first) it will, I suspect, be rather hard to convince members in Putney of a commitment to that constituency.

Of course, it could be argued that anyone applying for more than one constituency will have that problem - what makes this slightly more difficult is that these are adjoining seats selecting at the same time where connections across the two boroughs are decent and people will know what's going on in both.

Can anyone clarify the rules for me about who can describe themselves as black or from a minority ethnic community in terms of the parliamentary selection process please?

Well, the result of the East Barnet by-election is in and - surprise, surprise - the claims by the Lib Dems who posted on this forum that they were the only ones who could beat the Tories have once again been exposed as a pack of lies.

According to reports on Conservative Home, Birmingham's (Tory-administered) Council has bunged the Tory Pary £2million to host their 2007 Conference in the City.

The word on the grapevine is that Martin Linton is having some selection trouble in Battersea.