Bank Holiday weekend

Saturday evening Ian Martin came to dinner and we had a good old reminisce going back to the days when he was Secretary-General of Amnesty International, right the way through to his most recent appointment as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Nepal. Now that he's based in London we hope to see a bit more of him.

Yesterday I canvassed locally in the pouring rain, and found it particularly difficult to access the blocks of flats where the answerphones were all outside entry gates. If residents answered. they generally didn't allow me to enter the building, so I got pretty wet. Generally, though, the results were good. Only one person told me to F--- off before I had opened my mouth, and an eccentric local Tory journalist slammed the door in my face, but others were friendly and many accepted window stickers.

Today, I went to Streatham for the visit of Nick Clegg, a tremendous success. Its a constituency where there's a chance of a surprise LibDem win.

Then on to Tooting, where our energetic candidate Nasser Butt is making a great impression. But there's a sour note, with the Khatme Nabuwwat intimidating local shopkeepers who put up Nasser's posters. Who are the Khatme Nabuwwat? An extremist Deobandi organisation that promotes religious hatred and violence in Pakistan, resulting in murder and violence against the Ahmadiyya Muslims. They now want to bring their ideas to the UK, but we do have a law here against incitement to religious hatred.