Diet success and election failure

I'm into week four of the Weight Watchers diet and it's working splendidly so far - I've lost nearly half a stone so far. Current weight (as at the 'official' weigh in yesterday morning) is 9st 4.8. I'm actually below 9st 7! For the first time in such a long time that I have no idea when I last weighed this amount. Sometime in my early teens I suspect. The weight loss did slow down last week which is only to be expected really since we're in quite new territory here. I've just realised I should have done taken the various measurements again as well yesterday since they have them marked down at week 1, week 4, week 8 and week 12, but I'll do it in the morning. Most of my points were consumed late afternoon/early evening today since I spent most of the day dozing on the futon, which made the cat very happy as he had his pillow for the day.

The reason for my excessive sleepiness is that I had a very long day yesterday. I unexpectedly had to go down to St Clear's, which is the other side of Camarthan, and back, doing a favour for some friends who were let down by their ride at the last minute on Saturday night. It's very tiring, doing such a long return journey in one day. The M4 on the return journey was a bit hairy because of tiredness, but by the time I had turned off towards Monmouth I was feeling okay again. And I'm doing it all again on Friday too. Still, it does the car good to have a long journey sometimes. It hasn't been getting a huge amount of use recently.

European election results were worrying in parts - there are now two BNP MEPs, one for Yorkshire and the Humber, the other (Nick Griffin) for the Northwest. About the only microscopic crumb of comfort in that result is that the BNP actually polled fewer votes than they did in 2004, but it was the combination of the collapse of the Labour vote, low turnout and PR that got them in. Just goes to show what a bad idea PR is really, doesn't it?

Still, the Conservatives did very well and even topped the poll in Wales. Labour came third behind UKIP and Labour woes/leaderhip crisis remain the focus of the media. What seems not to have had much of a mention is how bad this result was for the LibDems - with the ruling party in meltdown one could be forgiven for having expected the LibDems to have picked up more votes, but while they gained an additional MEP their vote share actually fell by 1.1%.

But the chaos in the heart of Government is much more entertaining, if exasperating, and it seems the PLP have shown yet again this evening what a bunch of spineless nonentities they are since supposedly Brown was given the support of today's PLP meeting. He has led Labour to some of their worst election results ever (they haven't lost in Wales since 1918 for example and they lost the four county councils they held across Britain), he has lost five Ministers who have resigned saying he should go, the economy has tanked, there are reportedly two potential leadership campaigns ready to run (as soon as someone else plunges in the knife, of course) and he got booed by the veterans at the D-Day anniversary. Yet still the spineless cowards of the Parliamentary Labour Party still don't have the nerve to give him the boot.