You can't help but be impressed by the man - can you?

My only problem is that I know he won't be able to deliver the level of expectation put in him. Mandela was the same. He was amazing and is still revered but he wasn't able to build enough homes, get clean water and create millions of badly needed jobs. Creating utopia is harder than we all think. So we as politicians need to inspire a generation as Obama has done - but somehow we need to be honest about how hard change really is. So many vested interests will try and stop him - events will stop other things happening and the state of the economy will put so many programmes out of reach.

But as I have said before, even if he is half as good as I think he can be it will be a great 4 years for America as it starts to understand why we hate their foreign policy so much!

However, the great news for progresive evangelical christians like me is that Obama has done so much to show that God is not American and certainly not a Republican!

I have worked closely with American Jim Wallis http://www.sojo.net/

Last Friday I visited Cuttlefish.com who provide this website. I love listening to Sean and what the web is now achieving. I was so inspired that I have now fallen for Twittering as well as facebook. The great thing is that interaction now is instant. So I post a 'Tweet' and it appears on my facebook profile. With my updated web site it will appear here too.

You may be wondering why this is so exciting - sounds pretty meaningless to you!

Just think I spend weeks putting together an annual report. I get 35,000 printed with about 10-15 stories on it. Then its posted over the next few weeks and its put in the bin - recycled and then its dead. The stories are old and not all of interest. Social networking puts you in instant touch with me and my work minute by minute - not year by year. You don't have to wait for an annual report - you can check what i happening in parliament or the constituency minute by minute - and give instant feedback. Now we don't know the full consequences of this new technology but it certainly opens up many interactive possibilities. Still not excited. Well each to their own.

It doesn't get any more exciting. Every few years there are seismic shifts in political tectonic plates. Tonight is probably one of them. Hoping that Obama will sweep to victory - not just scrape through. We need America to rejoin the real world and escape the Neo-Cons. They have been dangerous times for the word whilst Bush has been the President. I still can't believe Blair allowed himself to be so close to him. Listening to the Tories and Republicans you realise there is a big ideological difference growing across the world.

I am in Nigeria at the moment - the biggest country/ population in Africa. The few days before I left were so hectic I had no time to do any more than update the website with the stories from the last few days. I hope to do a full report on my return but I know all too often I WANT to do that but then the pressure of work means I do not.

However, whilst I am here on this delegation it is amazing how much work I can do these days from 6 hours flight time away. I am doing all my emails on the move and am in constant texting distance of all my work. In the last hour I have dealt with 5 pieces of casework and some local issues. Technology really has made the planet so small.

The overall purpose of the visit to Nigeria is part of my international development portfolio. Despite its vast Oil wealth there are still 77million poor Nigerians. And I mean poor. Not just relative poverty but absolute. I believe - as do most aid agencies, the IMF and governments - that the best way to improve the lives of these millions is not just through poverty reduction programmes but by capacity building to delver good governance and economic & poltiical stabilty. That is what we are here to foster and help. It is in our British interests in the long term to have stable countries in Africa and it is great to be a small part of that working with Nigerians parliamentarians who want to do the same.

I am often asked what a typical day may be like and now I am also being asked about my emails? So I thought I would summarise a typical weekend list of things people raise with me...

This weekend it has been Baby P, the situation in Congo, Cameron jumping on Baby P bandwagon,a complaint about my Tory opponent, the KSF bank in Isle of Mann situation, the Care & Share Foundation, the Planning Bill, the Eastern Gateway Project (or lack of progress to be more precise), the price of diesel, Climate Change Bill & airport expansion, RNID Campaign, & diary enquiries for the new year!

This is not untypical although it is often more widespread. This doesn't of course include the private casework I also undertake. They come in at about 20-30 per week. Dairy enquiries are usually 30-04 per day. People moan about us but we do seem to be in demand.

I was also cheered up by a pile of thank you letters over the weekend from my letter on the HFE Bill. People can be very gracious.

Quite a few issues got me angry today as I read the Metro on the way to a meeting I was doing in Teddington for Tearfund. (more later)

I was struck by the front page and wanted to shout out YES at the top of my voice. In Australia a bunch of C list stars are eating bugs for Television and yet in Zimbabwe children are lucky to find a bug or two to eat.

I then turned to stories about Baby P. I am as angry as anybody about the death of a small child and my heart sinks at the thought of what he went through. But to be lectured by the press on how a social worker does their job really takes the biscuit. The facts and the tough decisions need to be brought out in a calm rational way so we can make rational decisions about what went wrong and how we can do things differently next time. But with our great British press there is no chance of that happening.

Then I get onto the pages about the Tories economic 'plans'. Clearly they are a bit fed up and not getting media coverage without trying (as they have for the last 12 months) and so are having to say more and more ridiculous things to grab headlines. Unfortunately we are in a serious crisis which requires serious responses. They have failed the first test of government in waiting.

Couldn't help smile at this story today. Another disgruntled ex BNP staffer has done us all a service. By leaking the details of the 28 members of the BNP in Loughborough we may all be a little wiser about the fascist movement locally as well as nationally.

I don't condone the publication of this information on the Internet though it is just that I can't rustle up any sense of sympathy for any of them.

This is the BNP constitution -
and restricts party membership to "indigenous British ethnic groups deriving from the class of ‘Indigenous Whites’". The BNP also accepts white/British emigrants (i.e Colonial Nordic Whites) that are assimilated into one of those ethnicities.[19]

Any party that pretends it is not racist with this as its starting point is fooling itself.

To deny other human beings in Loughborough even an acknowledgement of their existence is deeply hateful. How on earth any sane rational person could ever contemplate joining such an organisation deserves nobodies sympathy.

So the Tories are chasing headlines to keep them breathing and losing the plot as a consequence. They have become intoxicated by being in the news and have hated being pushed back to look like bit players in a massive drama. With nothing serious to say about the global economic crisis they have resorted to making it up as they go. The latest public spending cuts they have announced will be of no comfort to most people in Loughborough. Which hospitals, school or children centre do they want to cut? They will have to know because I certainly won't be letting them get away with the tosh they have been pushing out for the last 12 months. Every time they moan about Post Offices, schools or hospitals I expect journalists and the public to scrutinise them and ask if they will match our spending plans. If they won't we have to conclude they are insincere at best.

We know already that they want to cut 10% from the Building Schools Programme. This is the money which will give us £60m to rebuild schools in Loughborough & Quorn.

We also know they want to slash the budget for Children Centres and Sure Start - putting in Jeopardy the 6 planned for Loughborough.

Now they are proposing deeper cuts and we will want to know what next will be lost. They can't hide any longer.