Vote for London Mayor now

This is the site to visit if you're a Londoner*. If you weren't sick enough of the Mayoral elections already, you will now have to rethink your choice if you answer the questions at fantasymayor.com. Set up by New Statesman - a venerable left-wing political magazine - fantasymayor.com asks you first which candidate you intend to vote for. You are then led through 15 policy issues such as healthcare, transport, finance etc. At each one, click the extent to which you agree or disagree with the policy. At the end of the quiz, the amount to which you agree with each candidate is presented as a percentage. Then, on the final screen, you are given a percentage bar chart of all respondents so far, showing initial and computer-selected candidates. Everyone here at The Register has tried it and we were amazed. Not one person ended up with their initial choice and overall top of the selected list came Darren Johnson (Green Party) followed by Ram Gidoomal (Christian People's Alliance!). Hmmm. Something smelt fishy - was this a cunning attempt to discredit Ken Livingstone (Initial: highest (56%); Final: lowest (7.7%))? Does Darren Johnson have previously unsuspected hacking skills? Have the wrong figures been put in for the wrong candidates? No, no and no, according to site creator Stefan Haselwimmer. He assures everyone that this is completely non-rigged, non-political and no more than an "intellectual exercise". He also explained that the candidates views were graded according to research into their stated views and were sent to each candidiate for checking (only Susan Kramer responded). Haselwimmer refused to release the inputted readings for each candidate, fearing that The Reg would tell everyone (we'd never do that ;-) )and thereby compromise the quiz. We're still not convinced it's accurate (it certainly won't reflect the actual voting on 4 May), but we welcome any attempt to make people question their beliefs and give their brain a workout. Check it out. * For those outside The Big Smoke, we have been bombarded with endless fighting and poll-rigging in the contest for a new London Mayor. There hasn't been an authority concerned solely with London since the demise of the GLC (Greater London Council) in 1986. The then head, Ken Livingstone, is also the independent front-runner in this election (having left the Labour Party when the party's internal elections were rigged to let the Santa-like lapdog Frank Dobson through). The Conservative party candidate was re-selected when its first choice, Jeffrey Archer, resigned after it came out he had asked others to lie for him in a court case several years before. Many other candidates have stood temporarily to get publicity or make political points, but the contest has been cut down to the main political parties. ®