Tomsk79

For obvious technical reasons, the natural way to share a year of leave is for mum to take the first half and dad the second half. This meant I was able to benefit from Mrs Tomsk's hard-won experience in many areas, but weaning would be a daddy-managed activity. Little did I realise how it would dominate proceedings. The advice from on high these days is not to start weaning until your baby is six months old, a good couple of months later than used to be the case, and exactly the time I was due to take over. Elspedoodle had tried a few things before this time, most notably in the notorious Magnum chocolate accident, but also broccoli and a chip she reached out and grabbed when we weren't looking. So she was aware of the most important food groups, but making a concerted effort on her weaning fell to me. I am rather proud of navigating her from an essentially milk-only diet at the start of my leave to three meals a day by the end while somehow miraculously maintaining her

I've been back at work now for almost as long as I was away on paternity leave, and excuses for not writing a blog about it are wearing thin. My memories are starting to get distinctly rose-tinted too: as we battle through nursery virus season juggling work commitments it feels like a lost era of tranquillity and cake. Not that there wasn't cake, of course, but I'm pretty sure I'm imagining the tranquillity. Time to publish before it turns entirely fictional. It's only recently that fathers have been given a right to paternity leave in the UK. The standard leave of one or two weeks after birth was introduced only in 2003, and it wasn't until 2011 that it became possible to transfer a portion of maternity leave from the mother to the father (aka "additional paternity leave"). These were the rules under which I took my time off work, but things move fast in the paternity leave game and since 2015 the more flexible "shared parental leave" h

On 7th September last year, YouGov published a poll putting Yes in the lead in the Scottish independence referendum, and so kicked off a year of political wackiness that will almost certainly end in Jeremy Corbyn being elected Labour leader this 12th September. Hands up who predicted that? While the eventual referendum result went the other way, the poll was enough to provoke the panicked "vow", followed by the notorious tone-deaf Cameron speech in the wake of victory that did so much to cement the SNP's support. Then Labour wipeout in Scotland and a Tory majority, each a bigger surprise than the last. We should have guessed that Labour's leadership election would not be the dispiriting snoozefest it initially promised to be. In the wake of Miliband's defeat, all 3 mainstream candidates vied to cosy up as much as possible to business, declare their undying love of "aspiration", and drop as many leftish policies as they could get awa

Just when you thought it was safe to check the mail... Yes, the Lib Dems are back in the game! And there's a proper old-fashioned dodgy bar chart on the back to prove it: I'm impressed that Leech and co are still up for a fight, but the chances of them overturning Labour here are  zero for as long as Labour remain in opposition. I do think the Lib Dems will recover, particularly if Tim Farron leads them back to a Kennedy-style position on the political spectrum, but their recovery won't start here. So this will definitely absolutely be the last piece of political literature I post up. PS: Slightly embarrassed that Leech has got back in touch before I got round to writing my very important reflections on being a stay-at-home Dad. I blame the pressure of no longer being a stay-at-home Dad.

Withington was a very comfortable win for Jeff Smith: Labour: 54% Lib Dem: 24% Conservative: 10% Green: 8% UKIP: 4% Mysterious Independent: 0.1% The outcome was remarkably close to Ashcroft's poll from almost a year ago. If that was a true snapshot then the Lib Dems' impressive campaign was worth all of 2% extra on their vote. It appears their famous incumbency bonus vanished this time, in line with the many other Lib Dem losses around the country. The Predict-o-Matic 5000 clearly requires some adjustment. The local results are also out, more or less mirroring the parliamentary vote, although locally the Greens were almost level with the Lib Dems (this is actually an improvement in the Lib Dem position from last year). So with a Labour majority of almost 15,000, it's fair to say we no longer live in a marginal. The only question left is where to move to in time for 2020?