This just in from the BBC election website. I've been trying to find out who is standing in my constituency. Excited to see that one candidate is called Rex Carter. Disappointed to see he's the UKIP candidate. If I wasn't in an anyone-but-Labour mood then Andrew Slaughter is just the kind of bucaneering name I'd like representing me. But sorry Andy - no dice. However the Lib Dem candidate suffers from the two first-names curse, Gary Malcolm. Not sure that's got the gravitas I need to send me over the barricades. Am I shallow?

Anyhow here is the the lowdown on my manor:

Ealing Acton & Shepherd's Bush This seat is to the west of London and is made up of the eastern part of the borough of Ealing and the northern part of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was a creation of the 1995 Boundary Commission which transferred in five wards of a Labour persuasion and removed two Tory-vote areas from the old seat. Within its boundaries are White City, the BBC's west London home, Wormwood Scrubs Prison, Queen's Park Rangers Football Club and the upwardly-mobile areas around Shepherd's Bush and Goldhawk Road [Wahey! Get in there]. It is an ethnically and socially mixed community. Just over 30% of the inhabitants come from ethnic minority communities. Housing tenure is pretty much equally divided between owner-occupation and renting, with 16.4% local authority ownership. This is mainly in the estates round White City and Wormwood Scrubs which are for Labour. From 1945-1974 the Acton area was Labour - except for a short period following a 1968 by-election. In 1974 the affluent suburbs of the abolished Ealing South went into the new Ealing Acton seat and this enabled the Tories, in the shape of the cycling baronet Sir George Young, to succeed against the tide. He held on here until the seat's abolition in 1997 when he was selected and elected for North West Hampshire. This seat had one of the highest numbers (10) of candidates in 1997 who polled only 5% of the vote between them. Labour's Clive Soley, who had moved over from the old Hammersmith seat, won with a majority of 15,650. This fell to 10,789 in 2001 - a majority of 29%. Mr Soley has been chairman of the Labour Party since 1997 but is standing down this time. The constituency will again be abolished at the next election and three seats in Ealing (including Acton) will be revived. Shepherd's Bush will once again go back into the Hammersmith seat.

So now you know - it's a lotus land, a utopia, a jewel set in a silvered sea. It's soon to be abolished!