Another quiet week for meetings - a good chance to catch up with casework and make up some hours in the day job. I also managed to get down to London to visit my parents for the weekend. Everywhere I go now, I look at what other areas are doing and wonder if we could do it in Birmingham. I like the Oystercards for public transport in London -they seem much more user friendly than the travelcard system or the current system in Birmingham where there are numerous different passes for different types of transport and operators.

Heading to the station yesterday, we passed a car, which had clearly been involved in a crash, parked on the hard shoulder with notices saying 'Police Aware' in the windows. My Mum swears that this is a police initiative to educate people of dangers of crashing your car because she keeps seeing cars with these signs on roundabouts, and she has seen the same car in different places. I think this is an unintended side effect of delays in collecting abandoned cars. Who is right? I can't believe that damaged cars would just be left as an example, nor that the Police would expend the effort to move them to different areas in the borough as an illustration to drivers. It's just plausible enough to be believed though..

Finally, it's been eight days since my last post; it has also been eight days since my last cigarette. I've got one of those calendars on my computer which calculates how much money you save by giving up, which is almost as big an incentive right now as the other benefits. The real test will be my first election campaign without smoking..

Edited to add: There are some new links in the 'Other Blogs' section, which I really should change to the 'Other People's Jobs' section. In addition to a police officer and a magistrate, there are now links to blogs by a teacher, a London Ambulance Service EMT, a parking attendant, a school governor, and an NHS scientist. Go read!