Blogging MP Tom Watson has been having an amusing, on-going feud with self-professed world famous scientist Richard Dawkins. You, the people, can decide:

a) Is world famous scientist Richard Dawkins not really quite half so clever as he thinks he is?

b) Has world famous scientist Richard Dawkins had a total sense of humour (humor, for any American readers) bypass?

c) Does world famous scientist Richard Dawkins rely on a researcher who can't possibly be as intelligent as he is so feeds him duff information?

d) Is Tom Watson being slightly too touchy about all this?

e) All of the above?

First proper council meetings of the year today. Ive got a planning panel this afternoon, followed by one of my surgeries in the St George's Centre. The new surgery at St George's is turning out to be one of the best that I do. Not only is it a much nicer venue than the dreary halls and community centres we normally use, but it must also be a better place to visit as there is always a good number of people with cases turn up.

I did a quick interview with the Wakefield Express earlier this week as they had been reading my blog and spotted the story about fly tipping. This is the second time the media have picked up a story off my blog, without me even needing to contact them or do a news release. Yet another example of why it's worth doing this.

This evening we have the selection meeting for the new Middleton Park ward. This is where the new Labour Party branch picks its three prospective candidates. As the new ward includes parts of both the old Middleton and Hunslet wards we have five of the existing six councillors on the shortlist, as well as three others.

Well the new Middleton Park branch of the Labour Party has selected its prospective candidates for June 2004 elections. The prospective candidates at the shortlisting meeting were:

Cllr Stuart Bruce (old Middleton ward)
Cllr Jack Dunn (old Middleton Ward)
Cllr David Langham (old Middleton ward)
Cllr Judith Blake (old Hunslet ward)
Cllr Geoff Driver (old Hunslet ward)
Cllr Karen Marshall (Garforth and Swillington ward)

The three chosen prospective candidates are: Judith Blake, Geoff Driver and Stuart Bruce.

Just had a look at the LeedsNet web site and see that they are running a poll about what political news readers want to see. At the moment only Labour takes advantage of this great community website to post its news releases. LeedsNet has encouraged both the Tories and the Lib Dems to post their releases, but with no luck, so is now running a poll to shame them into it.

The Tory response is an absolute cracker in showing how out of touch they really are: "the Leeds Conservatives told us that their news should only be available through newspapers and radio". There's dumb, dumber and then you've got the Leeds Conservatives.

It's a very long time since I've been bored enough to take a look at Under the Umbrella, the newsletter of the Leeds Left Alliance. So thanks to the incredibilly hard working Councillor Eileen Moxon for alerting me to the latest issue which contains an article entitled "Stuart Bruce and the devil" (you need to scroll down a bit).

Apparently they think it is "really impossible to parody his writing" and that my musings provide "a good insight into the Blairite clones' lives". The mind boggles as what they would think of The Thinker. They obviously haven't read the results of my political compass test which revealed that I'm almost a hard-line lefty.

I've always thought of myself as a moderniser but with very independent views that don't really fit on a conventional Labour Party right-left axis which really only still applies to a few old dinosaurs (on both ends of the spectrum).

A quick perusal of previous editions reveal that this is not my first appearance in Under the Umbrella.

Probably the most interesting thing (the only interesting thing?) about Under the Umbrella is how pompous it is. The anonymous scribe prefers to be known as "Half-Celestial Khan" and states that the site cannot be "externally linked without permission". Whoops.