Somewhat to my relief I'm not doing the party conferences this year, though with the help of colleagues and other contacts I'll try to cover bits and pieces of interest to Londoners coming out of Manchester, either here or on Twitter. My main focus will continue to be on the capital's housing crisis and on the complex politics of Tower Hamlets as its mayoral campaign gets underway.
In the case of the former I'll be bringing you more facts and figures about the tens of thousands of Londoners who will be hit so hard by the government's plans to cap and cut housing benefit that they are likely to have to leave their homes - sorry to disappoint the seething trolls, but I'm afraid they're not all workshy scroungers. Far from it.
As for Tower Hamlets, it's clear that Labour knows it has a fight on its hands now that the National Executive Committee has removed the local party's choice of candidate, Lutfur Rahman and imposed the current Council leader Helal Abbas in his place. Rahman will instead run as an independent with the backing of Respect and, in a dramatic weekend development, the support of eight Tower Hamlets Labour councillors and a couple of local members from the left of the party.
Ted Jeory's report from The Labour Friends of Bangladesh fringe meeting in Manchester leaves no doubt about the party's desperate need to win the mayoral contest, which has given Respect an opportunity to make a big, backdoor comeback in Tower Hamlets following their defeats in May. A victory for Rahman will been seen as a massive indictment of the NEC's management of the candidate selection process. I'll be bringing you a range of views about this fraught East End electoral landscape from different parts of the political spectrum.
Plus, more London Marathon training news (rattles tin).
