It seems the police have become involved after allegations that the signatures on a central Oxford Tory candidate’s nomination forms were, well, forged, according to the Oxford grapevine. The BBC is more circumspect.

Update: The Oxford Mail has his name - it’s Charles Steel, a student at Merton and - surprise surprise - president-elect of OUCA, Oxford University Conservative Association. Up to their old tricks again. Nothing ever changes.

Today’s Oxford Mail:

Oxford is the top place to invest in property outside London, according to TV experts.
Kirstie Allsopp and Phil Spencer, described the city as “investor heaven”, because of its winning combination of large numbers of students, young professionals and families. And they predict average house prices could soar by a staggering 42 per cent in the next four years, from £265,034 to £377,673.
[...]The programme, shown on Channel 4 on Tuesday, has already provoked a response among property agents. John Scrafton, manager of the Cowley branch of Andrews estate agents, which had a property featured in the show, said he had been taking inquiries yesterday from London-based individuals interested in investing in the city.

Thanks for that, Phil and Kirsty. Exactly what we need - more parasitical landlords leeching off people in Oxford, putting up rents willy-nilly and driving up property prices beyond the reach of people trying to buy. But then what would you expect from a couple of Tories? What we need is a windfall tax on profit from buy-to-let property investment, to plough back into affordable and social housing.

My mum’s dad, Michael West, was born in 1912, and was a lifelong Arsenal supporter. For many years, whenever they played at Highbury, he set off from Carshalton across London to see them. I think it was on his eightieth birthday that the Arsenal team of the time sent a signed photo to thank him for decades of support. After he couldn’t make the trip anymore, he saved up for Sky to watch them on TV.

It’s almost exactly four years since Grandad died. Funny how these things link up in your mind - he was buried on the same day as the local elections in 2002.

By accident, I watched the second half of the Champions League semi-final last night. I’m not really into football anymore, though I vaguely know what’s going on. After canvassing, after the tenants’ and residents’ association, I ended up on Dan’s sofa with fish and chips watching the game. So I saw a man called Jens Lehmann save a penalty, and the stadium in Spain erupt as Arsenal went through to the final.

Now, I don’t have a religious faith, and I don’t know what happens when we die. But most of my football-mad family - dad, aunts and uncles - were probably watching the football last night and I’m sure we all thought of Grandad when the Gunners on the terraces started celebrating.

Tamanou has a post that strikes a chord:

Particular highlights of recent months have included:

• the revelation that the Labour Party’s expenses last year were a secret between the PM and the then General Secretary (who seems to have gone very quiet)
• the inspired decision to timetable debate on the Education & Inspections Bill for this spring
• the monumentally screwed-up NHS budgeting process
• the decision to pick a completely unnecessary fight with the trade unions over the Local Government Pension Scheme
• irritating UNISON to the extent that they suspended co-operation with the Labour campaign
• the inexplicable decision by Brown in concert with the PM not to renew the Council Tax rebate to pensioners this year
• the order to Milburn & Byers, both slightly more charmless than gonorrhoea, to foster disunity in the party and undermine Brown
• the apparent availability of peerages on demand to those with the pockets to afford them

All that, and I wake up this morning to find that John Prescott has been having an affair, and Charles Clarke let foreign violent, sex and drug offenders wander off into the ether after their sentences.

Just one thing after a-sodding-nother. And it’s eight days to the election. A new leader won’t solve all our problems, but it would be a start. Time to go, Tony.

Reading Maureen Lipman’s column in the Guardian G2 today (scroll past the whitterings about buses) reminded me that I meant to blog about this campaign to get sanitary protection for women in Zimbabwe. When I was being a supportive girlfriend at Jo’s conference earlier this year, I heard Tabitha Khumalo speak - not just about this campaign, but about the struggle for freedom in Zimbabwe. She’s one of the deputy secretaries of the MDC, and a Zimbabwean trade unionist. She spoke about trying to be dignified whilst pressing for change, and how hard that was without sanitary protection; about being thrown into prison countless times, put in a cell flooded with water and sewage meaning she had to stand constantly; and she told us that on her return to Zimbabwe, she expected to be gaoled and to have her passport confiscated to stop her leaving again. It was extraordinary, and extraordinarily moving.

You can hear her being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour here.

I don’t want to host a discussion about the local elections in general, and those in Oxford in particular, but I thought I’d just post a link to the new Oxford Labour website, created by Jo. There’s plenty on there, including our manifesto for the city and a note about each of our candidates.

The last week has been mainly about pounding the streets, as you’d expect. Ten days to go.

I have very little time for this internet thing at the moment (and what time I have I feel like I should be doing something else with), but I happened to notice that a lot of people have got very excited about something called the Euston Manifesto. There was even mention of it in the Guardian and the New Statesman. Doubtless if I were to go to technorati and plug it in, there would be hundreds of posts.

Couple of things spring to mind, in no particular order. Why are most of the founders and signers men? Why is it the same bunch (many of whom I have met and like) operating under a variety of different names? (But then, unlike when they launched www.stopkensracism.com and every time they publish another copy of that blasted Democratia (there’s supposed to be a Y in there somewhere, but I don’t know where) I have yet to receive fifteen or seventeen emails in a bunch from the same address, so I should be better disposed to this Euston thing).

On a political point, I’ve read the document, and agree with most of it in a broad “well that seems sensible”-sort of way, but it is of course far more noticeable what is left out than what is in. I’m confused about how supposed lefties can write a new manifesto for the left with barely a mention of poverty and seemingly no awareness of class and the affect that has on what you can expect from life. The new dividing line is about where you stand on dictatorship, eh? Well, no; it’s where it always was, unfortunately.

Love this BBC piece about how a French feminist group, Les Chiennes de Garde, are fighting for the right for all French women to be addressed as Madame, rather than Madame or Mademoiselle. And they’ve got a point: how is it still acceptable that what women are called is dependent on their relationship or not with a man? Good luck to them!

Once they’ve won that battle, I think we need some of their vigour over here, where calling yourself Ms is still seen as some out-there statement. (And writing letters to a household of Ms Bance and Ms Salmon is completely unthinkable - hold you hands up, our letting agency, who yesterday wrote to Ms Bance and Mr Salmon despite having met both of us on several occasions and taken rather a lot of money from us!)

Did a double take when I saw the front cover of the Times while buying my coffee this morning:

Town halls to take over “coasting” schools

Schools that are “coasting” or failing to stretch pupils to their potential will be given just 15 days to make improvements spelt out in “warning notices” issued by councils. Failure to respond will trigger intervention by town hall hit squads with powers to take control of a school’s budget and appoint new governors. [...] Local authorities will have powers to compel a school to join a federation so that it can be run by a more successful neighbour. [...]

The powers effectively overturn years of policy from both Conservative and Labour governments, which have successively cut the powers of local authorities to intervene in the running of schools.

Interesting. The Times says it is about Mr Blair and Ms Kelly trying to win back Labour MPs unhappy with the creation of independent trust schools in the Education Bill. I can see how it might, but it still seems odd to take power from LEAs with one hand and give it with another… Oh well, at least this probably means we won’t have to watch Labour MPs shuffle through the same voting lobby as Tories now. That’ll blow Mr Cameron’s cosy “consensus”.

In the increasingly small gaps in my day when I’m not a) working b) eating c) sleeping d) leafletting or e) canvassing, the occasional small thought appears, lingers for a moment, and then disappears into the reality of the boxes of election literature that have taken up residence in my front room, my car, my hallway and my stairs.

Here are a selection of those thoughts from the past few days.

Am I the only one who would actively like Alan Milburn to stand against Gordon Brown? The prospect of a Blairite ultra forcing Mr Brown to look to his left for the votes, allies and policies he needs rather than to the right when challenged by a Campaign Group type seems great to me. Just as long as we get an election, not a coronation.

In what way is this a story? Those of us who have major disagreements with our party on Iraq have been making it clear for years, and since when is it a surprise that the party of local and national government would quite like the electorate to make up their minds on the issues of the election, the issues that the people being elected might actually be able to affect, and not well-printed but content-free puffs about “Blair’s man in (insert constituency)”?

I spent Sunday stomping around my (hoped for) patch leafletting in a state of supressed fury as well-spoken “friend of the royals” after well-spoken “friend of the royals” queued up on Radio 4 to excuse Prince Harry’s end of term excursion to Spearmint Rhino. Given that I disagree with the existence of a royal family altogether, why his latest outrage should surprise me I don’t know.

And this morning, I see that the Tories have joined the civilised world and realised that child poverty is a blight on our nation. Despite their support for the Labour target to end child poverty in a generation, though, they won’t sign up to it, just make it an “aspiration”. Nothing ever changes there then.

So, that’s that. Prepare for another week-long gap until more thoughts appear on this blog. Seeya.

Good luck to the Dean of Southwark, the Unicorn Children’s Theatre and the London Bridge Hospital in their appeal against the licensing of a lapdancing club on Tooley Street in Southwark:

Southwark council says changes to the licensing laws mean that it had no option but to give the club, called Rembrandt’s, the go-ahead, despite objections from residents or on moral grounds.
New regulations in force since November give the council just four grounds on which to refuse a club licence: proven public nuisance; harm to children; a threat to public safety on the premises; and a threat to crime and disorder on the premises and the surrounding area.
Nick Stanton, leader of Southwark council, says the new laws even remove his right - as ward councillor for the area where the club seeks to operate - from voicing his objections at the licensing committee.

The definitive study on the impact of lapdancing clubs was carried out by Julie Bindel for Glasgow City Council in 2004 (link here - scroll down); she found that the buying and selling of sexual services does occur in some lap dance clubs; that for the most part the working conditions and terms of employment of lap dancers are exploitative; and that dancers are subjected to humiliation and sexual harassment on a regular basis, from customers and management. She also found that the existence of such clubs ran directly counter to promoting equality between women and men, by promoting sexualised stereotypes about women.

It’s clear to me that local residents and community groups should have the right to object to the opening of a facet of the sex industry that normalises the objectification of women on their doorstep. So let’s hope that the appeal succeeds.