I don't use python that much any more for my own projects, and so it shouldn't be any surprise to me that I missed one of the most exciting developments:

Somebody else has done a python refactoring library!

Rope looks tres cool. The problem with bicyclerepairman was that after it did just about enough to allow me to develop code efficiently I lost interest and concentrated more on other projects. At first glance Rope looks considerably more complete and polished than my efforts, which is excellent news for the python community. Hurrah!!