A very expensive looking item called "Walthamstow News" has just this evening been put through my letter box - which my sources tell me is only one of 50,000* being delivered in the next few days. It comes from the LibDems, who seem to be putting some serious money and resources into their bid to wrest control of Walthamstow from Labour at the next election.

Apparently, a fresh faced cadre of keen local LibDems is gelling around the youthful deputy council leader John Macklin and Farid Ahmed, the Parliamenary Candidate. A full-time constituency organiser has been brought in I am told. An office has openned on Hoe Street and other resources from LibDem HQ provided to try to capture as many council seats as possible as well as the parliamentary seat in the constituency.

The newspaper has a photo of a hapless looking Gordon Brown on the front with his head in his hands. Interestingly, it is not about the economy stupid. Instead, the paper is emphasising a deceitful game which the LibDems say Labour has been playing over the under-manning of the local police force. Farid Ahmed is claiming that while pretending to be working to get more local police at a municipal level, Labour MPs have actively voted against more police for Walthamstow. I am not clear myself which vote in Parliament Farid is referring to, but I have often thought the council's stance to be a strange one.

The Labour portfolio holder for issues relating to crime has one minute been queueing up to claim how well the party is doing on crime (despite the evidence to the contrary) and at the same time the Labour Council leader blaming "someone" (but never the Labour Home Secretary responsible) for the shocking crime rate and lack of police on the beat.

The LibDem paper's other 'policy' points are articles about the unpopular Iraq war, the threatened closure of the Pool and Track, Post Office closures (with the LibDem councillor John Macklin claiming kudos for getting one re-openned) and a couple of pieces about supporting the armed forces and protecting the NHS. Maybe to show it is not just the muslim 'minority' vote they are after, there is also a piece about how aviation taxes discriminate against travellers to the Caribbean. I know the election is supposed to be six months away, but it does seem as if the LibDems think that it's just around the corner.

From the Tories, I have to say for clarity and balance, there has not been a peep, and from Stella Creasy, (who I last noticed was campaigning about bats) there has been nothing on the doorstep where I live as of late. The last entry on her website, dated some three weeks ago, involved her calculated interest in objecting to the UKCG's planning application to restore the EMD cinema. Nothing wrong in that of course, though it is somewhat at odds with her own party colleagues on the council who seem to be more sympathetic to the church's application and are backing it. While it is also an important local issue and one mentioned too in the LibDem paper, I suspect not many non-tribal voters would rate it above law and order or foreign policy in wartime when thinking about who to send to Westminster for the coming few years.

The Greens, meanwhile, have done and said not a sausage, not even one made of Quorn, in my neck of the woods since announcing that Sarah Cope from Highgate would be fighting the seat. This is odd given that they pushed the Tories into 4th place back in 2006, gaining what for them was a very creditable 16% of the vote.

[*Update 3 October 2009: I have subsequently been informed the figure is nearer to 40,000]