Voting in all elections should mandatory, on penalty of £50 fine.

Everybody should get the day off.

Wandering through Fulham today I saw Simon Hughes, mayoral candidate for the Liberal Democrats, campaigning. So I stopped and asked him some questions. I started by asking him about online government and what his feelings were about it, he said we need more, but had no immediate concrete ideas, he alluded to the lib dems being up on this sort of thing generally and talked about regular consultation of Londoners, though not solely online. He started into policy shpiel so I cut him off relatively quickly by mentioning faxyourmp.com and asked him if he had heard of it. He said he had and when I questioned him about his response rate replied openly, saying he had started out badly, but had got better (his page on theyworkforyou.com says he replied to 42% of faxes). I also asked him about theyworkforyou.com and again he replied that he thought it was a good idea. I told him that my most burning issue with this set of elections was the number of people who weren't going to vote in them and he very much agreed with me on that. However, at this point (about five minutes in) he wound the conversation up, not unpleasantly, but he obviously didn't want to stand and debate with me all day. He finished by saying that he was the youngest and most modern of the candidates and to make sure I used my vote on Thursday.

As I walked back to the flat I thought of loads of other questions to ask him, but there you go. It was an interesting encounter, but I can't let being starstruck sway me really. He didn't convince me of much, but that was because he was on the sell. I guess no candidate can afford not to be at the moment. I would have liked to ask him "why shouldn't I vote for Ken" and got a short, pithy and brutally honest answer, but there would be no chance of that. The outcome of the whole event is no effect, I'm still just as unsure as I was before! The issues are all a bit student president for my liking., keeping the tubes open etc. The first and second choice model for the mayoral election means that I'm considering playing fast and loose with my first choice, but I'm realistically very attracted to both the Greens and the Lib Dems. However, I'm feeling defensive, I don't want to see Steven Norris elected, but I hope there's little chance of that.

Cybaea's NotCon notes. Much better than mine!

Just got back from NotCon, could have blogged while I was there, but was busy on the IRC chan - irc://irc.freenode.net/notcon (log). I really enjoyed the day, the highlight for me was the group. I really liked being hooked up to a busy network and chatting to people on IRC in the background. Tom Coates of plasticbag.org (who I met at the blogmeet a few weeks ago) had SubEthaEdit running and was using it to take notes. All the Panther users contributed, including me. The final file is a treasure trove, especially as I missed the first couple of hours. It was just great editing the file and contributing and it was much slicker than a wiki.

The talks were pretty good, the political stuff downstairs was the most interesting IMHO. The techie stuff was a bit obvious really. I would link to everything, but all the URLs are on the NotCon pages. The best stuff was Tim Ireland's MPs and Weblogs and, of course, Alex McLean (of Dorkbot) and his live hardcore coding.

Phew, bit tired now. Might blog more when more awake.

Went to Fabric on Friday. It was wicked! Definitely the best club I've been to. The club building itself is sweet, set in a big old cellar complex beneath Farringdon. It bears great similarity to a Quake level, especially being lit in primary colours. The rooms are big, but not ridiculous. The sound system was very good as well, actual treble! Did hurt my ears quite badly, but they're back to working order now.

Woke up very broken yesterday and even more today. Lots of muscles strained in my arms and back. I did really enjoy the dancing, but next time I think I'll have to limber up!

I even took some pictures and put them on my Moblg.

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Last updated at 11:32, Wednesday June 18th, 2008. All times are shown in 24-hour clock format and are BST.

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