We've not lately delved into what's been bubbling away in the run-up to London's elections next year. So Wilkommen, Bienvenu, Welcome to this new and possibly occasional feature to catch up with what's going on out there. Let's have a rummage and see who's up and who's down: Mayor Ken fights back in a hefty spat with Evening Standard over a hatchet-job on his race advisor. Standard's tactics are questionable, but the story went......

Apparently many CCTV cameras may as well be doing just that for all the good they are. The Lib Dems have drawn attention to the apparently arbitrary relationship between the number of cameras in each London borough and their respective crime solution rates. There are some councils who have loads and loads of the things (Wandsworth leads the pack here with 993), and yet they are no more successful at the old apprehension of felons......

You could be forgiven for not giving a fig about how the candidates for the London mayoral elections in 2008 are shaping up. Londonist, however, does. On the left, the Greens were first off the block in March with the selection of anti-4x4 campaigner Sian Berry, followed by Respect (remember them?) in April with Lindsey German, who stood last time on behalf of Team Galloway. For the far right, the British National Party have selected......

In 2012, eight out of ten London tourist sites will be inaccessible to people who can’t use stairs. So reckon the Liberal Democrats in the London Assembly. Their Olympic spokesperson, Dee Doocey, told the BBC: Disabled athletes and visitors to the Games travelling on the Javelin trains from Stratford to St Pancras will not be able to continue their journey into central London to visit the capital's top attractions because most of the Tube......

Thai PM update: he's here on a private visit as a private citizen (although that didn't stop him using the VIP reception suite at the Thai Embassy). The Lib Dems are demanding that bus deregulation must be reversed and councils given greater powers over services and fares. Southfields Community College in Wandsworth is the most cosmopolitan college in Europe: its pupils speak 71 languages (they don't all speak 71 languages obviously...oh you know what......

I.D. Cards Battle To End? It looks like the battle over the I.D. cards Bill is set to end today, with the government making a major concession to appease the opposition. Today, the Lords voted by 287 to 60 to accept an amendment which would mean that anyone applying for a passport before January 2010 can opt out of having an ID card. This ends speculation as to whether the Government would have to......

Somewhat later than promised, here is the latest Inside Westminster report on the Lib Dems under Ming: The Rt. Hon. Sir Menzies "Ming" Campbell CBE QC M.P. (to use his full title) is the new leader of the Liberal Democrats after one of the funniest and most farcical leadership elections in British politics. But now, "Ming the Merciless" has a real dilemma to face: where to take the party now? The Liberal Party was......

Ming Campbell Elected Leader Londonist must put its hands up and admit to being entirely wrong about the result of the Liberal Democrat leadership election. We thought Huhne would pip it marginally. The gossip in the House of Commons Members' Tea Room was that Huhne had won it, right up until 2:45 this afternoon, when the tide turned towards Ming. In fact, after Simon Hughes was eliminated from the competition, and the second preferences......

The Lib Dems clearly aren't damaged by the shambles that has been the deposition of Kennedy and the subsequent acandal-ridden leadership election. The results of yesterday's by-election in Dunfermline and West Fife - a neighbouring constituency to the Gordon Brown's. The Lib Dem candidate, Willie Rennie, received a gigantic 16% swing from Labour, and 9% from the Tories, turning an 11,562-strong Labour majority into a 1,800 Lib Dem majority. The results in full are......

An eventful day at Westminster today, with many revelations. The first was that the Government has now decided to allow its backbenchers a free vote on the proposed ban on smoking in public places. The Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, has been under fire for some time from the Commons Health Committe, who are tabling an amendment to the Bill proposing a total ban, as opposed to the partial ban that her Government are proposing.......

We really should consider a weekly No Shit Sherlock column which this week would be won by the BBC's story that 79% of Londoners rate overcrowded trains as their biggest commuter gripe. So not the drunk drivers, bad armpit smells or hairy loons pleasuring themselves in public then? Oh well. We'd love to know how much Hong Kong's MTR Corporation paid YouGov for the information. Surely a couple of quid on a ticket into......

Rob: (To be sung to the tune of Elvis Costello's 'Watching the Detectives') "Blogging the election. Blogging the election. Looks like we're blogging the election" Well our computers might not be quite as fancy as the BBC's but here we are. The coffee pot is on, the phone's off the hook and our typing fingers are...flexed? 22:05 We're barely 5 minutes into the BBC's coverage and already Peter Snow is stood in a computer......

How long have we been hearing the 'mobile phones will work on tubes' story? Well it finally it looks like Ken is taking some definite steps to getting the Underground totally wired up. According to the press we should see mobile phone transmitters on the Tube by 2008, with a trial to be held next year at just one station (no, we don't know which one). The LibDems are worried that the coverage could......