Progress report

The nomination papers for Lambeth & Southwark have all been signed. Those for Merton and Wandsworth will be signed tomorrow. The intention is to hand them in to the Returning Officers as soon as possible after the date for this opens on Tuesday 20 March.

The election manifestos are at the printers and will be delivered to us (20,000 of them) on Friday or Monday. Meanwhile we are distributing other leaflets, mainly in outlying parts of the constituencies which we are not planning to cover with the main leaflet. Today was Raynes Park, which is part of Merton.

Leafletted the Raynes Park Conservative Club and found a LibDem leaflet which revealed the name of our LibDem opponent -- Lisa Smart. A householder handed one of our leaflets back saying he didn't want "junk mail". I said it wasn't junk mail but an election leaflet but he insisted.

The ironic thing is that if you go to stopjunkmail.org.uk, which some householders give on their letter boxes and which campaigns to limit and ideally ban junk mail such as pizza menus, you find a petition to sign. It calls for a change in the Data Protection Act. This of course is a political demand which could only be achieved by political action and so by candidates standing for election and distributing their programme including door-to-door. So you'd think that people who want to ban junk mail wouldn't mind political leaflets.

South London branch will be handing out the manifestos and running a literature stall outside 52 Clapham High Street on Saturdays 14, 21 and 28 of April from about 11 am.