Getting back into the swing of things

I had one of those rare events, a Sunday in London, which offered me a chance to catch up with all of those things that I should do but don't.

Flick, London Region's indefatigable Administrator (and the capital A is truly appropriate), had produced a draft preliminary agenda for our forthcoming Regional Conference. I amended it a bit and then, having dismally failed to call a meeting of the Region's Conference Committee, decided to circulate it to the entire Executive by way of information.

The response, a whole bunch of suggestions that might have been slightly more helpful (and viable) had they come when I asked for ideas a month ago. I don't know, you communicate with your stakeholders and they wait until the last moment to get back to you. Flick was, it is fair to say, not impressed.

I am left with a choice, either to amend the preliminary agenda that is now being printed in time for the next mailing, stick with my original thought, or try to finagle some sort of compromise. Time to call a meeting of my committee, methinks.

Meanwhile, the selection of a prospective GLA candidate for Lambeth & Southwark has finally been concluded. It has, I confess, been a bit of a nightmare, but congratulations must go to Caroline Pidgeon for an overwhelming victory over a persistent opponent.

This now frees me up to start work on the selection of a PPC for Chipping Barnet, not a million miles away from my home. The amount of paperwork involved seems to get a little bigger every time I do this, so it will be interesting to see what effect this has on my stance on the Selection Rules working group that meets next week.

Worryingly, all this means that I'm rather up to date. The upside of this is that I have time to drop in on the Leyton and Cheam by-elections. Perhaps I may earn the awarded moniker of 'Liberal Democrat activist' after all...