Good: Balliol is shown with an appropriate higher education icon, whilst Trinity is shown with an appropriate primary school icon.

Bad: Trinity seems to be located in the middle of Balliol’s front quad.

If Michael Sheen is looking for his next real life role then he need look no further, the similarity is much greater than with Brian Clough, David Frost or even Tony Blair.

On Friday a bunch of us from work went to the new-ish oriental buffet, Tuli on Tooley Street. It’s underneath the railway arches and has made great use of the space – it’s light and airy and feels modern. The food was decidedly average – exactly what you’d expect from an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet – and didn’t really seem to live up to the image that they were trying to present. Maybe the teppanyaki or sushi options would be more interesting if we ever went back as a smaller group and/or in the evening.

Saturday was the Crystal Palace Overground Festival and Lettice and I braved the drizzle to take a look. Spread out round all three sides of the triangle were stalls selling exactly what you’d expect from the good people of Crystal Palace – cupcakes, handmade greetings cards and antiques. There was also music and kids’ activities going on. With the events spread out both geographically and temporally, coupled with the poor weather, it all seemed a bit difficult to get into the spirit of things. Maybe if it’s sunny next year we’ll make the slightly longer trip up from Croydon.

And then round to miss_newham‘s for the annual Eurovision party. Alcohol, scorecards, yelling at the telly, and some truly dreadful music. I seemed to be the only person who liked the Albanian entry; the winner of our voting was Greece, which matched the winner of the UK phone vote so we must have been in tune with the national psyche. Not sure why the UK bothers entering – everyone hates us and we always enter rubbish songs. Ben Dalby’s Doctor Can would have been a better entry and some sexy nurses would surely have garnered a few votes.

There’s a new art gallery in West Norwood – The Portico Gallery is very close to us and full of a wide variety of pieces in varied styles and media. I’m rubbish at writing about art (“and everything else,” yells the audience) so there’s not much more to say except that that’s where we were on Sunday afternoon.

And today? Nothing much at all.

The Election

I have never yet voted (in a general election) for a candidate who got elected. This didn’t change. Overall, happy that the Greens got their first MP, happy that Cameron didn’t get a majority, disappointed by mostly everything else.

The Coalition

A Lib-Dem/Labour coalition was clearly not going to work, the numbers, personalities and media. So with the option between a Lib-Dem/Conservative coalition and a Conservative minority government, which would be the lesser of two evils? Considering that neither Labour nor the Lib-Dems can afford to fight another election and that Labour need time to pick a new leader and a new direction, I think that a minority government would have been asking for trouble. So, the Lib-Dem/Conservative might have been the least worst choice, not just for Nick Clegg, but for everyone.

The Government

There are a lot of people in the new cabinet that I don’t like. There are some I grudgingly respect and a few I actually do like. Taking a 5% pay cut is a good sign (but when the company I worked for ten years ago was getting into trouble we took a 10% pay cut…). Other than that it’s all noise and promises so far.

Rewriting the Unwritten Constitution

There seems to be a lot of confusion between the ability to bring down the government and the ability to dissolve parliament. As I see it the proposal (which currently lacks a lot of detail) will change things like this:

So the PM is giving up power, and MPs will gain a new power. So far so good.

The problem is with what happens after a vote of no confidence brings down the PM. Currently it would likely lead to the defeated PM resigning and calling an election. In the proposed system it would only do the first. So what if more than 50% but less than 55% of MPs hate the current government (e.g. in the current parliament, what happens if the Lib-Dems decide they want to get out of the coalition)? The PM would have to resign and then we’d be back in the same situation we were in after the election – horse trading and squabbling between the parties to form a new coalition or minority government.

If the proposed changes do become law, and if that 55% is, as the critics fear, high enough to prevent parliament being dissolved early, then Gordon Brown’s lasting legacy will be to have set the first Thursday in May as the date for all future elections.

Or if they’ve fixed it by the time you read this:

Very True Mood:  amused

Tessa Jowell, Labour

http://www.tessajowell.net/

IA and Design: Nice use of YouTube and Google Maps (don’t re-invent the wheel, use the market leaders where suitable). Two equal width content columns means the user doesn’t know which piece of content is more important. Labour Party banner ad at the top looks like a banner ad. Accessibility and Privacy links go to labour.org.uk so how can we tell whether they apply to this site?

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 10 validation errors. Layout breaks in Opera 10.53. Email sign up things doo.doo is a valid domain name and dfsfsfd a valid postcode. JavaScript for TinyMCE and something call admin-interface.tao are loaded on every page – maybe these should only be loaded on admin screens?

Kemi Adegoke, Conservatives

http://kemi.adegoke.com/

IA and Design: Best looking site, not much else to say about it – simple but efficient.

Technical: Based on WordPress. Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, has 85 validation errors. Kemi claims to “enjoy web development and writing the occasional bit of code”. Layout breaks very slightly in Opera.

Jonathan Mitchell, Liberal Democrats

http://www.jonathanmitchellsblog.com/

IA and Design: It’s a Blogger blog – with commenting disabled. Only been blogging since February apparently. Black text on a mid-green background. All the text is in bold.

Technical: It’s a Blogger blog – claims to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, has 363 (!) validation errors.

Shane Collins, Green Party

Couldn’t find an individual site, so http://www.greensarecoming.org.uk/ShaneCollins

IA and Design: Video should probably be instead of mugshot instead of tucked away at the bottom. Otherwise clean and efficient, if a bit basic.

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 41 validation errors.

Elizabeth Jones, UKIP

Couldn’t find an individual site, so http://candidates.ukip.org/index.php?pg=show&eid=578

IA and Design: Photo looks like it came from MySpace. Nice use of UGC in the Q&A section (but … how can blood sports be “a matter for the individual to decide”?)

Technical: Claims to be XHTML 1.0 Transitional, has 131 validation errors. URL is terrible from an SEO perspective.

So, we’ve learnt that the big parties spend more on web sites than the little ones; that no candidate can make a site that actually validates; that XHTML is hands down winner over ye olde HTML 4 or bright shiny new HTML5. Not much help in actually deciding to vote for.

Happy New Year everyone. Here’s to 2010.

At the start of the year I was working Wicked Web in Clerkenwell, living in West Norwood and had been going out with pink_weasel for six months. We went on holiday to Boston and Tennessee. WW moved office to Old Street in the spring. I went to Las Vegas for Andy’s stag weekend.

2001

I took Lettice to Budapest for her birthday. WW started laying staff off towards the end of the year.

2002

WW went into liquidation and hence I was made redundant. I became self-employed and started freelancing for many ex-WW clients. Went to the south of France with Lettice’s family – first time I’d ever seen the Mediterranean.

2003

I spent the first part of the year working on a site for the BBC. Towards the end of the year I started doing contract work via an agency which meant that I got a large refund from the tax man, eventually. I went on a falconry day and flew a Harris Hawk. I asked Lettice to marry me.

2004

I started this blog and spent several months working for the Home Office.

2005

I gave up freelancing and started work at Visit London. I started cross posting this blog to LiveJournal and joined LibraryThing and Last.FM. I moved house to larger flat, ten minutes down the road from the old one, and Lettice moved in. We got married and went on honeymoon in Canada.

2006

I learnt XSLT. Lettice also started to work at VL. I joined Flickr

2007

Relaunched visitlondon.com with a new CMS, clocking up a stupid number of days off in lieu in the process. I did jury duty. I joined Facebook. We went to Dublin and Amsterdam.

2008

We went to Venice. I learnt JSP and jQuery. I joined Twitter

2009

We went to Barcelona and tried to buy a house. I grew a moustache for charity.