the candidates

Today I had the privilege of fulfilling one of my duties as a Londoner (apart from complaining, paying taxes and lining up in a queue).

I have cast my vote in the London city elections for the London Assembly and the Mayor of London. The 3 main mayoral candidates (glibly speaking) are:
1. an experienced socialist mayor who is looking for to add to his 8 year term for a 12 year term (Labour)
2. a privileged former right-wing journalist clown who has never run anything in his life (Conservatives)
3. a respectable but gay (gasp!) tree-hugging, lily-livered pinko former senior police commissioner (Liberal Democrats).

There are of course the usual assortment of greens, racists and complete psychos, but hey, in a city the size of London you need to take the good with the bad.

I cast my vote at the polling station near my apartment, and I'll be eagerly waiting for the results and the analysis. For those of you who know me well, you'll know I aint joking about looking forward to reading election analysis.

I just think it's nice that Commonwealth citizens who are resident in London are allowed to vote in local elections. Make no mistake about how important these elections are - with the Mayor commanding an 11 billion pound sterling budget overseeing transport and the police, it's important that we have our say. Having said that, I also cast my vote for my local council too in Greenwich and Lewisham, though my care factor is not particularly high on that count. Well, if the freaks win, it'll be a different story altogether.

Has been an exhausting and stressful week trying to sort out my life here in London. Issues of my flat (trying to get the lease extended), trying to change credit cards with intransigent Australian banks needing me to call them at midnight, trying to sort out visa issues and trying to keep on top of work.

I musn't complain about work. For the first time in my life I asked for a pay rise and got it! I was really pleased as it will take some of the pressure off me. However, there were major caveats added - I have doubled my responsibilites. Part of my new and improved role is assessing counter fraud arrangements across 400 health organisations across England and Wales. Given the small size of our team, I have been allocated to assess 100 organisations. With each organisation declaring about 50 pages worth of documents as evidence, this is going to be bigger than Super Tuesday.

I am enjoying it though - I am learning a lot about fraud and audit functions which is interesting, and I'll be sad when my contract us up. I did however get to go to Leeds today which was bloody tiring - 3 hours up, a 2 hour meeting and then 3 hours back to London. I am about to drop dead.

On a fun note, I went to see "The Mousetrap" last Saturday with Frances. Being at a loose end, I decided that Saturday night was going to be a night of culture, and given that The Mousetrap (an Agatha Christie play) has been running non-stop for 55 years, I thought it would be worth going to. I must say I enjoyed myself - there is a great twist at the end, and the actors implored us to keep it a secret. I wonder if I would get sued if I told you the twist here...

What the hell. One of the mayoral candidates will probably sue me for the above descriptions anyway.