Right, I’ll be liveblogging this for the next hour or so until both results are in:

00:15 Sedgefield result estimated to be in about 30-40 minutes.

00:20 Looks a little tight in Ealing Southall but its starting to look like a Labour hold, Lib Dems second and a bit of a disaster for the Tories - sorry, I mean David Cameron’s Conservatives - after everything they’ve thrown at the seat. ETA about an hour.

00:25 The tables apparently have it up in Sedgefield - Tories and the LDs allocated two tables for the count, Labour give four… low turnout reported, estimated at around 38%.

00:27 And the excuses are starting up North, with the Tories talking up tactical voting amongst their supporters and bitching about the Lib Dems.

00:34 A little classic comedy while you wait…

00:38 Blanket coverage of the ‘no charges in cash for honours’ story - that’s Guido’s remaining shreds of credibility down the shitter.

00:46 Quick shot of the tables at Sedgefield. Looks to be about the double the number of vote bundles in red than in yellow. Tory table looks alarmingly bare… well it does if you’re a Tory, but from where I’m sitting it looks just fine.

00:48 Golf on News 24… yawn! Might have to dig out another video in a bit - any suggestions? Ah fuck it - how about Guido making an arse of himself on Newsnight…

00:51 Thank fuck for that, we’re back to the politics and they’re rounding up the candidates for the declaration… As far as results go, I’ll stick to the big three parties unless anything unusual happens. Meanwhile, have a bit of Blackadder:

00:55 Lib Dems predicting Labour 46%, LD’s 24%, Tories 13% and BNP in fourth in Sedgefield.

00:58 BNP looking cheerful - may well have kept their deposit.

01:00 Right, we’re on…

Labour - 12,525

Lib Dem - 5,572

Tories - 4,082

BNP - 2,494

1:05 Labour Majority 6,969, Lib Dems nearly 1,500 ahead of the Tories and the BNP behaving like a bunch of cunts as usual. No change there…

1:08 Wonder when Greg Stone will start Labour Watch up again? Usual BS from Stone - reckons he’s struck a blow for Lib Dem kind… by gaining all of 637 votes over their result in 2005.

1:12 Tory vote down over 2005 by 1890… that’s a sickener for Cameron.

1:14 Thank fuck that twat from the BNP has shut up, for a minute I thought he was going to start on this…

1:20 Tories talking up their share of the vote as what matters - still lost nearly 1900 votes. Good old bitch about the LD’s negative campaigning - fuck knows what they’ll be saying down in Ealing. Fair play to the Tory for laying into the BNP.

1:22 Anyone else listening to the Tory whinging about the LDs and thinking ‘Shapps’…

1:23 Stone on now - usual ‘coming second here’ waffle and reckons the Tories will come in third in Ealing Southall.

1:28 Over to Ealing Southall. Journos not allowed in the count due to lack of space.

1:29 BBC calling it a Labour hold, LDs second and the Tories rolling in third - with Cameron having hung his hat on this one by parachuting in a chosen man, if that’s correct it’ll be a sickener. 43% turn out estimated.

1:35 Shapps on now - talking up having increased their vote and how the third party always gets squeezed. They’re fucked…

1:37 What a twat - the plus for the Tories is gaining the five councillors. Mwahahahahahahahaha!!!!

1:39 That’s the third or fourth time he’s mentioned the third party getting the squeeze - loo-oooser…

1:42 Just a reminder, last time out the results went…

Labour - 22,937 (48.8%)
Liberal Democrats - Nigel Bakhai 11,497 (24.4%)
Conservative - 10,147 (21.6%)

Tony Lit just arriving - nice of him to show up…

1:45 Christ, another 15 minutes - any thoughts on a another vid to pass the time?

1:47 Tell you what, let’s have a bit of Beck for Tony, Grant and Dave…

1:54 Back on the Blair story - re-running the interview with Sir Alistair Graham…

Time for another classic video - ‘and the vegetables?’

2:00 Results coming up - and I’ve settled on a vid to go with it…

2:05 FFS turn the mikes on… come on…

2:07 Still waiting - now talking another 10 minutes to the result…

2:11 Just thought of a cracking vid for Tony…

2:15 FFS - come on… Beeb keep going on about Ming Campbell visiting on eight occasions - ain’t those bus passes just peachy…

More comedy - Peter Cook this time…

2:20 Jeebus, that political researcher guy’s back on again… come back Peter Snow please…

2:23 Oh do come on - I’m going to run out of fags at this rate…

2:25 At fucking last… Lit’s on the stage - wonder if anyone’s asked him who he is… (Tom, behave yourself)

Labour - 15,188

LD - 10,118 (pretty good on a low turnout)

Tory - 8,230

Majority - About 5,000

43% turnout, down from 57% last time out…

And now the video…

2:33 5,000 majority was at the top end of expectations for us. Lib Dems got their vote out well and a drop of nearly 2000 votes for the Tories with Cameron’s name all over the campaign is a sickener…

Tom’s done a bloody good job down there to pull that majority out of the bag…

2:45 Off to bed in a bit but before I go, here’s the percentages…

Labour - 41.5%

Lib Dem - 27.6%

Tory -  22.5%

All the effort the Tories put in and they managed less than a 1% pick-up. Cameron is going to be toast on the Tory blogs…

Night all…

My, my…

The chancellor, Alistair Darling, today became the most senior member of the cabinet to admit he had smoked cannabis “occasionally in my youth”.

The shock admission, from the minister best known as a “safe pair of hands”, came after the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, revealed that she had dabbled with the drug during her university days.

The disclosure - made while Ms Smith discussed the prime minister’s announcement yesterday of a review into whether marijuana should be reclassified back to class B after it was downgraded to class C three years ago - prompted an avalanche of similar admissions from her cabinet colleagues.

Look I know that with a Ministerial post comes a measure of collective responsibility, nevertheless who would expected this turn in the Labour’s “I’m Spartacus” moment.

More to point:

To the astonishment of colleagues, the transport secretary, Ruth Kelly, a devout Catholic, also admitted today that she had smoked the drug as an undergraduate.

Ruth Kelly’s office confirmed that she had smoked cannabis “in her youth”. A spokeswoman said: “She recognises that it was foolish and a silly thing to do, and she stopped.”

No, I can’t quite picture Ruth skinning up on the cover of an album of Gregorian chants either, but then frankly who cares.

Yes, there’s a stench of hypocrisy around this - talk to most ordinary people who’ve toked in the past and even if they have given it up, most will happily admit to enjoying it and that the worst side-effect they ever encountered was waking up the following morning to an empty fridge.

Much more important, in terms of misinformation and propaganda is that the paragraphs that follow these less-than-stunning revelations:

The home secretary is due to formally announce the review next week as part of a wide-ranging drugs inquiry that in part reflects concern about skunk, a stronger form of cannabis being blamed for an increase in mental health disorders.

Now, I will dig out something I can post in full, but having taken a look at several research papers on the subject of cannabis and mental health, the most striking think about these statements in the press is the wholesale absence of two very important words that appear routinely in the research literature:-

Pre-existing Liability.

Every single research paper I’ve read that examines cannabis use in the context of claims that increases the risk of serious mental health problems such as schizophrenia and psychotic disorders notes that the increased risks that have been identified are found only in those with a pre-existing liability towards those disorders, a predisposition that researchers strongly suspect has genetic origins.

Got that? The current state of play in the research is that there is an increased risk of mental health problems arising out of cannabis use in individuals who possess a genetic predisposition toward experiencing such problems.

The precise genetic and biochemical factors that come into play and the prevalence of such pre-existing liabilities in the general population are both, as yet, unknown, although researchers have identified at least two promising lines of enquiry on the causative factors, both of which require more research before anything definitive can be said.

So far as I can see from the published literature, our current understanding of the precise relationship between cannabis use and mental health problems amounts to a couple of promising hypotheses which suggest that an as yet unquantified segment of the general population might be at greater risk of developing certain psychological disorders for which they have a genetic predisposition if they toke on a regular basis, especially while an adolescent.

If that’s the medical argument for reclassifying cannabis upwards, then one might just as easily justify classifying peanuts as a class A substance on grounds of the increasing prevalence of of peanut allergies in recent years on much the same basis but on the back of considerable more solid research evidence.

Politicians toking during their university days - who cares anymore.

Propaganda and misinformation on the real scale and understanding of the risks involved in cannabis use - that’s the real scandal here.

Time for a video… (NSFW)

Following hot on the heels of the Jonathan Isaby’s gaff in publishing what he claimed were unofficial vote tallies taken by a member of the Tory Campaign team in Ealing Southall during the verification of postal ballots, a second national newspaper appears to have repeated Isaby’s gaff.

Visit in the Independent on-line this morning, and you’ll find its lead by-election story for Ealing Southall is the on-going police investigation into Isaby’s blog post, which appeared on the Telegraph’s website at 6pm yesterday evening.

Ealing Southall: Police to investigate Tories over leaked postal by-election results

By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 19 July 2007

The Conservative Party found itself at the centre of a police investigation last night after allegations a “Tory source” had leaked results of a postal ballot of today’s Ealing Southall by-election.

Scotland Yard confirmed it was looking into the case and a police spokesman, when asked about the claims, said: “We’ve received allegations of possible electoral offences in relation to the Ealing Southall by-election. We take it very seriously and appropriate action will be taken.” The spokesman declined to be drawn on who had made the allegations or how the Conservatives had reacted.

The Daily Telegraph diarist Jonathan Isaby, known for his connections with the Conservative party, posted details of the postal ballot on his blog last night. He wrote: “[A] source inside the Tory campaign [in Ealing] reports that it was looking incredibly close, with them calculating the main parties’ tallies as follows: …”

The blog then listed the early results. Soon afterwards, the posting was removed from the website.

Before going on to note that:

By law, political parties are allowed representatives to oversee the validation process, however any release of an indication of how the vote is going is strictly prohibited on the grounds that it could influence subsequent votes. The offence is punishable by up to six months in prison.

However, pick up the print edition of this morning’s Independent and turn to page 10 and you’ll find a article entitled ‘Divided electorate attracts party heavyweights for last ditch appeal’, also bylined as the work of political correspondent, Ben Russell, in which it states the following:

“Postal voting returns presented to Mr Cameron yesterday were said to show Labour with XX percent of the vote … XX per cent for the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats on XX per cent”

The actual figures given by Russell have, for obvious reasons, been redacted.

As this screen shot from Google’s News Search shows, the article by Russell in which he sites postal ballot figures as having been ‘presented to David Cameron’ was posted to the Indy’s website last night - and the link returned by Google is identical to that of this morning’s story about the Telegraph’s gaff, which shows the the Indy have attempted to cover their tracks by overwriting their original story on the same URL.

There seem to be be possible explanations for Russell’s print edition story. Either these figures were being circulated more widely to and amongst journalists than was first thought, which may hint that there may be some truth to Isaby’s claim to have been given the numbers by a source in the Tory Party, or Russell has lifted the numbers from Isaby’s blog post and filed the first story while unaware of Isaby’s alleged breach of electoral law.

While the Telegraph may be in a position to draw some small crumbs of comfort from their gaff having taken place only on Isaby’s blog, the Indy have gone the whole hog and placed this information into print, which is an altogether more difficult thing to worm your way out of.

UPDATE

There appears to be a discrepancy between the figures cited by Isaby and those given by Russell, so its not at all clear where he sourced his figures from. There was a fair bit of chatter last night on Political Betting and few other sites, with several different sets of figures being floated once posts repeating Isaby’s figures had been removed as news of the police investigation spread.