I strongly recommend this, even if neither genre is your usual.

It’s been more than three months since I posted here - the longest time I’ve left the blog dormant (and non-existant for a while, when my hosts forgot to remind me to pay for it). I did say I’d be super-busy. And I love it - work, representing Rose Hill and Iffley on the council, and, especially, being lead member for social inclusion and young people on Oxford City Council.

Here’s one of the things I’ve been putting time into rather than writing blog posts:

A £2.5M overhaul of Oxford’s rusting play areas is to start within months.
All 94 play areas will be transformed from ageing relics to ones containing new swings and slides within two years as part of a radical programme of investment.

(Quite what possessed me to swing, monkey-style, from a swing frame with no swings in front of the Oxford Mail’s photographer, I don’t know!)

Lots of the other things I’m working on are a little more low-key, but still vital: community centres, community cohesion, playschemes, grants for the voluntary sector - enough to keep me out of trouble.

Anyway, I don’t know whether I’m back blogging or not, to be honest, so see you around.

One minute, you’re sat in the pub with your mates and this guy you vaguely recognise from the telly talking about the Labour party, in the way that activists from all over the country do all the time over a pint. Then, somehow, it ends up in the paper. How did that happen?!

Stan Taylor, Labour leader of Oxford City Council from 1994-1996, died earlier this week. I didn’t know Stan well, as we were never on the council together, but it’s worth reading Dan’s short piece here. One of my colleagues was telling me earlier this week about Stan being hugely determined to get down to vote for him three weeks ago, despite being very ill, and his pleasure when he realised Labour had held his ward. A real loss to the Oxford party.

Update: Stan Taylor’s funeral will be a Requiem Mass at Our Lady’s RC Church, Hollow Way at 12.30 pm on Friday 6th June followed by a woodland burial at Wolvercote Cemetery.

Short post as the weather’s too gorgeous to stay inside too long. Been away for the week, so it’s only this morning that I realised how much breast-beating about the Crewe by-election has been going on.

Dan and Hopi have written good posts on this. It only remains for me to add the following to Labour comrades: get your bloody heads up, we run this country and the next election is ours to lose.

Last night on Newsnight, “insiders” were suggesting that we make the next two years about fairness. This gives me hope that there are still some in the party who are still up for a fight rather than a winding down to opposition.

In three terms in government, we have quietly done well on fairness - for older people, for families, for children, for workers. Talking about the value of fairness, with its link to the British value of fair play, lets us talk about the changes we want to see in people’s lives. Like making sure that ordinary people feeling the pinch from high living costs - not least food, energy and fuel - get more help from a government that is on their side. Like making it easier for working mums and dads, and for families worried about looking after their older relatives. Like making sure everyone has somewhere affordable and secure to live - be that through social renting or home-ownership or more help to the thousands of people stuck in the middle in a rubbish private rented sector. It could even mean - whisper it quietly - a windfall tax on energy companies and a new rate of tax for the super-rich. (And by the way, for all the criticisms of the Labour campaign in Crewe, people still do instinctively know which side they are on: us and them still exist, even if not so narrowly defined as in the past. The team in Crewe might have done better to focus on how “we” are better off under Labour rather than leave it as a class caricature, but there is something in it.)

Fairness as a narrative is harder for us now than it was even a few months ago: the 10p tax debacle undermined our entire reputation for caring about the least well-off, particularly those who are working for low wages - a reputation that is deserved and prouder than any other party’s record, even if we’ve done nowhere near enough to make sure that no-one in this rich prosperous nation lives in poverty. But I think it’s the only answer at a time when people’s thoughts are turning to their bank balances and overdrafts, their mortgage repayments and electricity bills.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the Blairites have the answers. I was at a Progress event (yes, I know, unlikely, but I was) recently, and heard Charles Clarke speak. His policy prescriptions (contained here) were appalling for connecting with voters rather than broadsheet leader writers. I asked about living costs for ordinary people and how we show that we understand that it’s hard at the moment, and he replied with some guff about integrated sustainable transport. Does this guy ever knock on any doors?! Whatever answers the Blairites may have had (and in their time they had a fair few), they don’t have them any longer if this is the best they can do.

Along with the vast majority of Labour members and supporters on the centre-left, I do want us to talk about why we’re involved in politics - and fairness is it. We have a vision of a more equal society, where people work hard and aspire, and are supported and protected by government. I want us to remind the Labour coalition - of working-class voters, lower middle-class voters, middle-class voters, BME communities and liberal lefties - what they’ve gained, what is still to come, and what they could lose.

Millions of people are better-off after eleven years of Labour. We must not give up on them. I’ll be out on the doorstep tomorrow morning, and spending a large chunk of this week coming working for more playschemes, better play areas and a living wage in Oxford as a Labour councillor. I’m still proud of my government and my party. What are you going to do this week to help ensure a Labour government?

I’m working away from home this week with somewhat sporadic access to technology so I’ve not followed all the details, but allow me to say how proud I am of our MPs for standing up for a woman’s right to choose last night.

This brightened my - somewhat weary - Sunday:

it was unsurprising that the MPs began with a rendition of D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better — the anthem for new Labour’s 1997 election campaign

The occasion was the MP Lyn Brown’s hen do, the location was a karaoke bar in the city, and in attendance were several prominent ministers:

Balls and Cooper performed a duet of Endless Love, the ballad once recorded by Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey

and, inevitably:

The highlight, a version of Big Spender, was led by Chris Bryant, a parliamentary aide to Harriet Harman, the Labour deputy leader.

Forgive me for not posting. I do - for once - have an excellent excuse. After our victory in the local elections, the Labour party is now running Oxford city council again. We are (just - by one councillor) a minority administration. At annual council on Thursday, I was appointed to the administration. I’m now our lead member for social inclusion and young people - in other councils it may be called portfolio holder or cabinet member. I’ve known that this was the role I’d take for a week or so, and spent a fair amount of time discussing our priorities with colleagues and officers.

My portfolio covers: delivering our commitment to refurbish Oxford’s playgrounds; expanding the number and reach of our playschemes; overseeing community centres and facilities; the city council’s grants to voluntary organisations, including those which deliver on corporate priorities through commissioning, such as to the advice centres; the public side of the living wage campaign (the Leader is taking forward the internal agenda of ensuring that all council staff are paid at least $7 per hour as part of the wider discussions around pay and HR); estates regeneration; and community cohesion.

It’s all very exciting, though I’m not under-estimating the scale of the challenge, particularly where it comes to financial management and value for money. There’s a slight holiday atmosphere that comes of not being out on the knocker every night producing an inexhaustible appetite amongst Labour colleagues for dissecting the local elections/the state of the party/what we’re going to do on the council, always over a pint. All of this, plus the continued pleasure of representing Rose Hill and Iffley and continuing to hold down a full-time job means I’m super-busy - and loving it.

Thanks to the lovely Steve Hanlon. Please do go back and comment on the past few days’ election posts here, here, here, here, here and here.

I thought Cllr Malik was playing a joke on me when he texted at 5pm that there was to be a by-election in Holywell ward of Oxford City Council. But no, he wasn’t; it would appear that Cllr Richard Huzzey (Lib Dem) is stepping down for reasons unspecified, so there will be another election on 12 June. Labour came fourth in this ward, which is mainly university colleges, with very few permanent residents, last week.

Just when I thought it was safe to hang up my rosette, here we go again…