SIMON’S GAMBLE

NOT a morning update, more a lunchtime update… but it’s press day down in Camden Town and things have been happening. Conservative parliamentary candidate Simon Marcus has announced he is stepping down from the council. So there will be a by-election in Hampstead on May 7 – the day of the general election. The line here is that things have tightened up in his attempts to pip Labour’s Tulip Siddiq in Hampstead and Kilburn are going so well that he doesn’t want to cause the expense and trouble of a council by-election three months after his grand parliamentary victory. You can imagine what Labour rivals think of that explanation, describing alternatively as Simon ‘doing a runner’ or someone making wild assumptions about his prospects of victory. Oliver Cooper – last seen singing Give Peace A Chance on the New End development protest mach – will stand for the Conservatives in a ward which has all been blue since Lib Dem Linda Chung was outrun there last May.

HUSKY TIME

FORTUNE Green Labour councillor Lorna Russell was excused from a weekend of door-knocking to have a short break to see the Northern Lights. Here she is being towed across the snow by some huskies. Eat. Your. Heart. Out. David Cameron.

A REAL DARTMOUTH PARK KITCHEN 

THE coverage of party leaders’ kitchens has all been a bit odd. The Daily Mail has provided a guide to every product in the PM’s kitchen for example. Then there was a major ticking off from a tag-team of Michael Portillo and Alan Johnson on the This Week sofas for Sarah Vine, Michael Gove’s wife and the newspaper’s columnist, for using a picture of Ed Miliband and his wife Justine’s second cooking space as an excuse for a list of mean comments about how they are a bit like aliens. What these national reporters obviously needed was a proper look inside a Dartmouth Park kitchen doubling up as an election campaign headquarters ahead of the May 7 poll. So a big thank you to Highgate councillor Oliver Lewis for giving us a peak inside and show us what they really look like, via the public forum of Twitter. I’ve done my best to include DM-style annotation.

SAY IT WITH A PICTURE

REMEMBER the story of Lord Fink and his dislike for the twinkly hotel extension planned for the top of the former Camden Council annexe building in King’s Cross last week. Although perfectively clear in what he was saying, his official objection lacked the creativity of others who have sent comments to the Town Hall’s planning department

TWEETS

Labour councillor James Yarde’s take on Simon Marcus’s resignation from the council: 

@RichardOsley Sounds more like he is doing a runner to me…

— James Yarde (@JamesAYarde) March 25, 2015

Conservative campaigner Havard Hughes gives his view on the same development:

@RichardOsley @belsizebulletin demonstrates the confidence of the Hampstead conservative campaign – wheels coming off the labour wagon — Havard Hughes (@Havard_Hughes) March 25, 2015