tomroyal.com

You've probably seen Channel 4's report on campaigning expenses, and Zac Goldsmith's rather bizarre attempt to ignore every rule of media training in addressing the allegations made against his campaign. In any case, once he did finally turn to the matter at hand, one of Mr Goldsmith's key arguments seems to be that the methods he used in his campaign – apportioning a percentage of costs for signs bearing his name and face to council elections, for example – are standard and have been used across the country. At the very end of the interview he even notes, of the Electoral Commission:

"Or they'll look at it and find something wrong. In which case, we'll need a repeat general election, because the rules that I adhered to are the same as the rules for other MPs".

This doesn't entirely make sense – as if he has adhered to the rules there'll be nothing for the commission to rule against – but the point's clear. Apparently every MP out there has been apportioning some costs off to local elections, leaving their short campaign expenses within the limits.

Only one way to find out, then.

As Mr Goldsmith claimed to have taken advice from Conservative Central Office, I figured it was worth checking the Short Campaign expenses of our local Conservative candidate, Jonathan Clamp. And, just to see if the other parties might be up doing the same sort of thing, I also checked the records for his opponent – Labour candidate, and now MP, Heidi Alexander.

The Short Campaign expenses limit in Lewisham East for the General Election 2010 was £7,150 plus 5p per elector. I took the electorate figure of 64,880 from the Lewisham council website, making this £10,394.40. Interestingly both candidates had worked to different figures, based on different numbers of voters, but not by much – we all believed the limit to be around £10,400 to £10,600. So, what did they spend?

Jonathan Clamp

In Mr Clamp's case, it's all rather simple. His expenses were neatly tallied up with receipts, and having spent around £400 on advertising and £7225 on direct mail his total was barely above £8,000. Should anyone wish to check I've created a PDF of his short campaign expenses here – note that I've redacted his home address from the one document where it appears. There are a few costs on the print receipts not included in the Short Campaign tally, but those were all accounted for in his Long Campaign expenses (examined, but not reproduced here). So far, so good.

Heidi Alexander

It might be argued that, as a third candidate in what is largely a two-horse race between Labour and the Lib Dems, Mr Clamp had little incentive to really push his campaign as hard as possible. So, I checked Heidi Alexander's expenses also. Again, I've created a PDF of the short-run receipts, which you can download here. I've redacted Ms Alexander's home address, her website username and a few bank account details from some receipts, and skipped the inside pages of BT phone bills.

These are rather more tricky to check, with hand-written documents and more receipts. The summary page lists a total spend of just under £6,000 – even less than Mr Clamp – although looking at the Spending Breakdown you can see that many items are marked with an "amount paid" significantly greater than the "value of item" that was included in this total.

In some cases this disparity makes sense, as for example it appears that £200 of a £400 sum paid for balloon gas was a deposit, but it's not always as clear. Nonetheless, assuming the worst case scenario – that the entire Amount Paid should have been accounted for in every case – the total expended works out at £9190.03, which is still some way below the maximum.

And that's it – a lot of ink and a few badly photocopied receipts, but not much else. I look forward to seeing what the people checking other constituencies come up with, not to mention what the Electoral Commission decides with regard to Mr Goldsmith's signs.

While waiting for the film to start yesterday we had a rifle through the south bank book market outside the NFT, and I came across this. It's from early 1953 and contains one of Philip K Dick's earliest published short stories – it's listed seventh in my rather battered copy of Beyond Lies the Wub, which is a must-buy if you like his stuff. The cover art is by Ed Emshwiller.

The story (or 'novelet', as it's billed)  includes three black-and-white illustrations, also by Emshwiller, which you can see scanned nicely in this Project Gutenberg edition (HTML). It's a classic cold war science fiction piece in which humanity has retreated underground while robots fight on their behalf up above, and was used as the basis for his novel The Penultimate Truth.

(Massive spoiler warning here – if you haven't yet read the story, please do so!)

I first read this story in maybe 1993 – in fact, I tore through the entire anthology, and then the next three volumes. I still have the books, although they're now so faded that it took a while to find them this morning. I can remember enjoying the clever twists in so many of these early tales, including The Defenders, but what leaps out reading them over 15 years (plus most of high school, a degree and a few jobs) later is the political context.

The story was published in the middle of the McCarthy Senate Committee era, and yet portrays a conclusion to the cold war (it's not even thinly disguised – one side is American, the other Russian, both have spheres of influence in Europe) in which, having nuked the hell out of one another, soldiers from the US and USSR are convinced that it's in their best interest to set aside weapons and differences and work together:

The Russians waited while the Americans made up their minds.

"I see what the leadys mean about diplomacy becoming outmoded," Franks said at last. "People who work together don't need diplomats. They solve their problems on the operational level instead of at a conference table."

The leady led them toward the ship. "It is the goal of history, unifying the world. From family to tribe to city-state to nation to hemisphere, the direction has been toward unification. Now the hemispheres will be joined and—"

Taylor stopped listening and glanced back at the location of the Tube. Mary was undersurface there. He hated to leave her, even though he couldn't see her again until the Tube was unsealed. But then he shrugged and followed the others.

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn't be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles.

"It has taken thousands of generations to achieve," the A-class leady concluded. "Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history."

"The conquest of space," breathed Colonel Borodoy.

"The meaning of life," Moss added.

"Eliminating hunger and poverty," said Taylor.

The leady opened the door of the ship. "All that and more. How much more? We cannot foresee it any more than the first men who formed a tribe could foresee this day. But it will be unimaginably great."

The door closed and the ship took off toward their new home.

I think I'm going to have to go back and do some re-reading of his other stories – who knows what I've missed.

I never did hear back from Simon Nundy about his campaign's dodgy use of graphs with misleading titles. But look, I made him a new one from the 2010 results:

Obviously I took the results from Hackney because, you know, they make the point better. But it still works, right?

Pictured: a personable but slightly dim creature with impressively fluffy hair, left, and my cat Hunter.*

One of the great benefits of the internet is being able to keep in touch with political developments as they happen – whether they be the pre budget report or, yesterday morning, a GLA plenary session on transport policy. One of the great annoyances of life, on the other hand, is listening to Boris 'bendy buses kill more cyclists'** Johnson and his ass-backward opinions on the various merits of public transport.

In fact, listening to Boris on public transport (the only time you'll see those four words together outside a photo opportunity right there, folks) is, as I realised, as frustrating as watching a cat attempt to operate a washing machine. And substantially less cute.

It's not even a matter of failed election promises, although a quick glance back through his transport manifesto does produce some gems – "halting the proposed Tube ticket office closures", anyone? – because, after all, Boris wasn't elected on the basis of his what he planned to do. He was elected because London's suburban voters recognised him as that funny bloke with the floppy hair off the telly. Personality over policies.

And on that note, meet Hunter.

Hunter is one of my two cats***. Like Boris, he has a mop of fluffy hair and, like Boris, he is either a little bit dumb or, very possibly, an evil genius simply pretending to be that way in order to ingratiate himself with fools. Like Boris he has no sensible policies on any issue facing London or Londoners, but has a few irrational dislikes (bin bags) and prejudices (Whiskas, not Felix) and knows how to play to his audience.

Hunter has not, however, published racist drivel, or, for that matter, written any of the same. Nor has he offended the people of Liverpool.

And so, assuming Boris stands again in 2012, I'd like Hunter to run for Mayor of London. In order to officially enter he'll need 330 signatories from around the city, which could be tricky, and a £10,000 deposit, which is frankly never going to happen. Which is a shame, because he could probably do a better job. Should you care to back him, there is what I believe constitutes a "Interweb 3.11 for Workgroups social media twampaign", or something like that, on Twitter here: #VOTEHUNTERFORMAYOR.

Notes:

* Photo by Adam Procter, CC licensed, original here.

** Fans of statistics may be interested to note that no they really really fucking do not.

*** His brother, Ralph H Cat, Esq, has no interest in provincial politics and intends to seize power as evil overlord of the universe sometime next April.

There's something strange about sitting in an office all day, knowing that not far away there's much newsworthy action taking place. We were going to press today – by the time I escaped with a camera the West End was quiet and, save for a few discarded placards and dozens of police, much the same as ever.

From last month – Police forced to confront vigilantism in Surrey:

"Surrey's Divisional Commander Chief Superintendent Adrian Harper was so concerned he had the leader tracked down and called him in for a face-to-face meeting.

He said: "It is my responsibility, and that of my many officers, to ensure those who live in East Surrey are safe and feel safe and I cannot emphasise enough how irresponsible it is for people to take the law into their own hands.

"I will deal robustly with anyone who does resort to vigilantism and targets who they believe may be responsible for these incidents. Often 'justice' groups target the wrong person and an innocent member of the community is seriously injured, something which is neither just nor fair."

Government press release today:

"A group of residents in Nottingham, who are working alongside the council and the police to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour in their area, saw offenders doing Community Payback today as part of a visit to the city by the Government's Crime and Justice Adviser, Louise Casey"

Ms Casey said: "I have been inspired by the determination of the residents I have met today in Nottingham who have said enough is enough to the small minority that are spoiling their quality of life and have had the courage to do something about it. I'm glad that some of these residents are also taking up our offer of free training to make sure they are clear about their rights and even more of a force to be reckoned with."

I know there's no moral or legal equivalence between the actions of the Sheffield group and the yobs in Merstham, and I'm sure that those involved in Sheffield have good intentions, but I can't help but think that the Government's idea that justice should be seen to be done leads us further in the direction of SpringShield-like vigilantism.

With "Community Payback" schemes, a "Victims' Champion" and so on we seem to be moving towards a system where the desired outcome of a criminal prosecution is public retribution to the satisfaction of victims or their representatives. With this idea that punishment must be carried out in full public view will come the assumption that, if punishment has not been seen, it has yet to take place. And if it hasn't taken place, then there's no time like the present..

And in other random legal news, my local MP Bridget Prentice made the papers for announcing a consultation into libel costs. A Very Good Thing, but surely addressing the fact that the current state of defamation law in the UK is absurd (forcing the accused to prove their innocence, for starters) would be a better start than limiting the potential damage of individual actions.

Things that scare the crap out of me, an example: The BNP miss a by-election seat, down the road in Bexley, by just nine votes.

Things that make me feel slightly better about the future, an example: my wife teaches in a school nearby, and heard that some of her students devoted their free time to campaigning against the racists.

Things that scare the crap out of me, another example: if those kids hadn't bothered, the result might have gone the other way.

For the next version of Word, could you add some sort of political rant filter? Nothing fancy, mind – just search for a couple of strings, like so:

Oh, and stick the same thing in Internet Explorer, please. The world will thank you for it.

Tom

.. but I'll gladly take it.

Worth reading as a sidebar to the post-election fallout: first this – Ana Marie Cox interviews Nicolle Wallace on the most elegant way to lie under a bus – then this, where as predicted the Republican right begins to indulge in an orgy of self destruction and blame, much of which is directed towards Ms Wallace.