Can you solve the gerrymander jigsaw?

US political website Slate has a rather fun game...

Friday favourite 120

Here's Bastille with Pompei at the British Museum earlier this year...

Byelection night 3 result

A routine hold for the Lib Dems in South Lakeland with a small swing to the Tories:

Lib Dem 431

Cons 248

Lab 29

 

Council by-election night 3

There appears to be just a single principal authority by-election this evening. It's in the Windermere and Bowness North ward of South Lakeland District Council.  As the Lib Dems had almost two thirds of the vote last time and the ward is in the redoubt of Party President Tim Farron anything other than a comfortable Lib Dem win would be a shock.

A correction from last week.  I mistakenly thought that the Lib Dems fought both Scarborough wards, but they only fought Ramshill where their vote slumped to 56 - just 9.6%.

Former Kingston councillor Adrian McLeay had the best Lib Dem result of the night coming second in Doncaster with 261 votes and 12.1%.

In total 392 people voted for the party.

Clegg should listen to Alex Wilcock on Syria

Love and Liberty by Alex Wilcock sums up perfectly my view on the unfolding Syria crisis: 

"One of the few bits of moral high ground we still have that lets our supporters sleep at night (and still vote for us) is that unlike the Labour Party, at least we didn’t invade another country and soak ourselves in blood in defiance of international law."

You can read the full post here.

 

Sheep sacrifice quote of the day

Commenting in advance of tonight's Champion's League match at Parkhead, Shakhter Karagandy's manager, Viktor Kumykov, suggested they may again sacrifice a sheep before kick off saying:

"As far as we know in Scotland the agriculture is very developed so it shouldn’t be an issue to find a sheep."
 

Council by election night 2

According to the usually reliable Vote UK Forum there are four local council by-elections this evening - in Doncaster, Lincoln and Scarborough x2.  And for once the Lib Dems are standing in all four - an improvement on the last time the wards were fought, where the party failed to find a candidate in the safe Labour Doncaster ward of Askern Spa.

This time in Askern Spa the Lib Dem candidate is one-time youngest councillor in the UK, Adrian McLeay - a former Lib Dem councillor in New Malden's Burlington Ward which was a predecessor to the ill fated Beverley.

The other result to look out for is in Scarborough's Ramshill ward where the Lib Dems won one of the two seats in 2007.  Last time they were fifth - albeit only 90 behind the successful Tory.
 

40 maps that help make sense of the world

This is well worth spending some time on.  Particularly No. 38.

Friday favourite 119

In memory of Charlatans drummer Jon Brookes, who died earlier this week, here are the band with their biggest hit 'The only one I know' which wouldn't have been out of place on the Stone Roses first album.

Council by-election update

The results (courtesy of Vote UK Forum) from the two elections the Lib Dems fought last night and the 'good news' is that four and a half times as many people voted Lib Dem this week than last:

Hungerford:
Cons 810
Lib Dem 751
Lab 86
Other 28

Walsall:
Cons 1,254
UKIP 615
Lab 470
Lib Dem 114
Eng Dem 72