Oh what a glorious day - weather wise at least. I did spend a fair proportion of it indoors however phoning the Clerk of the Legislative Council, picking his brain about candidacy, commitments etc. It seems a fairly generous package in the event you are elected - $135000 pa plus $35000 electoral allowance (for making donations, buying raffle tickets and so forth), a car, an office, an office assistant! Quite astonishing really - no wonder the State is going broke. And that is the base line package - more if you have particular duties!!

What this boils down to is that I will be running for the seat of Prosser in the next Leg Council election (that's May for those of you in Tassie). The area includes the southern half of the East Coast, Tasman Peninsula and Sorell as the major town, and then staggers over to Oatlands before turning into MacKenzie - both of these are newly created districts, with MacKenzie being held by our sitting member for (formerly) Apsley, and the new district, Prosser is not currently tenanted.

My team is a Green-leaning Kiwi from Sorell who I know via Facebook and have met personally, and a former campaign manager for the Greens. But I will be running as an independent because some of the issues require the capacity for independent thinking and I am more inclined toward Labor's position on others. I probably have a sufficient wardrobe to survive the campaign period as budgetary constraints mean most of my campaigning will be done via local media (radio, newsletters), school newsletters and local markets (take a stall and hold a salon, previously advertised in the school/local newsletter) rather than flyers, posters and such.

Meanwhile another load of firewood arrived and I have just finished helping unload it. Very nice to see the pile growing faster than I am using it (fire last night, but it only used one middling log).