Welcome, if you’re visiting for the first time following the article in today’s Guardian. I must admit to nearly falling off my chair when I got the call from the Guardian women’s editor yesterday.

To be honest, I’m not sure how I feel about being one of the top six political woman bloggers in the UK (if indeed that’s what I am). Ellee Seymour’s blog I don’t know well, but she appears to be a party insider, which I’m not; I’m not prolific and interested across a wide range of fields, including the arts and history like Philobiblion; I don’t have a public profile that makes people want to read my words like Lynne Featherstone or Melanie Phillips; I don’t have a mission to make sure that there’s a comprehensive women’s and feminist news service like the F-word blog. I’m just me, blogging when I get time, which is getting less and less often, about things that interest me. Hope you like it.

You may want to start here with the full introduction, and the Guardian’s quote comes from this piece.

… and if one Lib Dem councillor should accidentally fall, there’ll be 17 Lib Dem councillors sitting on the wall.

Welcome back to Cllr Sajj Malik, who’s just left the Lib Dem group on Oxford City Council to join the Labour group. Read what he had to say about it here, and defeated Liberal candidate Jock Coats’ take on the situation here. If the Liberals keep up this rate of defections, one a month, having already lost Paul Sergeant and now Sajj Malik, they’ll nearly be in single figures by the new year…

Wanted to post a cross defence of Clare Curtis-Thomas’ bill to relegate lad mags to the top shelf after reading Zoe Williams’ piece of fluff in the Guardian yesterday. Turns out Fisking Central has done it already.

In the comments below:

Ms Bance fails to grasp that promoting lesbianism and alternative lifestyles, noble as it is, is not going to enthuse the majority of working class former or current Labour voters to carry on voting for us or to push leafelts through doors etc. A great many loyal labour people, especially from the older generations, would not identify one iota with the kind of guardian trendy stuff Ms Bance spouts. In order to win a fourth term we need to address their concerns and not isolate them with guardian inspired cack.

I get quite a lot of homophobic comments on this blog, most of them incredulous that my area could have elected a lesbian - not a Labour person, or a woman, or a young person, but a lesbian. Apparently living with a woman, talking about the issues that matter to me and occasionally mentioning the shared episodes of our life on my blog is “promoting lesbianism and alternative lifestyles”. (Talking of which, Wednesday was the anniversary of the day four years ago that Jo and I got together. We had steak and pepper sauce in front of the telly to celebrate. Does anyone feel a twinge of envy? Want to come and join the lesbian fold? After all, we recruit… )

Quite why the people of Rose Hill are supposed to care about who I sleep with, I don’t know. Lots of them know Jo, who comes out leafletting and canvassing and is my personal driver and photographer; no-one has ever had a problem with us - not the working-class Labour activist couple in their eighties, nor the community centre bar regulars.

So, I thought I’d blog my week for you - unexpurgated, complete with all the vegan-food-and-sandals-101 classes and the mentoring sessions with baby dykes, just so you can get the reality of being a Guardian-cack councillor.

Sunday - Lots of paper, need a filing cabinet. Pick up unwanted filing cabinet from a friend. Labour colleagues come over and we discuss tomorrow’s first meeting of Lib Dem-dominated executive.

Monday - 8.30am to the town hall for the executive meeting. It’s the first one since the election, at which we moved from minority administration to opposition to a minority Lib Dem administration. I’m one of two Labour members without portfolio, so our job is to represent the views of Labour voters and the group. Primarily that means arguing for more housing and better waste collection and recycling in Oxford, all of which the Lib Dems are apparently reluctant to do. There’s also a review of community grants on the agenda, and with diffculty I resist the temptation to argue for funding for a three storey building to house lesbian mothers’ self-insemination workshops. The meeting goes on until about one o’clock, I have lunch with the other Labour member and go to my real, paying, job. Monday is a rare night off, so Jo and I promote lesbian lifestyles by going to the supermarket and blatently buying groceries.

Tuesday - At 8.30am, I’m at the city council, meeting the community centres team about the redevelopment of the Rose Hill Community Centre. It’s an exciting project and could become a real hub for a community with meagre facilities nearby. The money’s a problem, but when’s it not? I try to work in how important it is that there is space for gay men’s dancing lessons in the building, but we run out of time. The meeting overruns, and I’m late for the real, paying, job. To make up my hours, I’m at my desk until 7.30pm, and then go to watch the England match with friends. Two constituents call during the day with housing issues. I spend time taking details from them and email the relevant staff members. I’m still chasing two bits of casework from last week, and one from the week before. The new queries prompt me to follow up on them too.

Wednesday - A full day in the office, followed by a meeting with the new learning co-ordinator for our estate. She’s got loads of great ideas, and is really impressive. In the one lesbian moment of the week, she assumes that me and male co-councillor Ed are a couple. We gently disabuse her amid much shared laughter. Get home at eight-ish after last-minute dash to buy steak for beloved. BT have finally installed new landline, so we have an answerphone and my mobile number can finally come off the council website. Huzzah!

Thursday - Another glorious full day in the office of the organisation that pays my salary. Leave at 7.15pm and to Labour group until 9pm. It’s my first meeting of full council next week, and despite the temptation to ask question about changing the city badge to the gay pride flag, Labour group agree that I will ask a question about getting a dispersal order on Rose Hill to help us deal with the problems of young people intimidating everyone at the shops.

Friday - 8am with the neighbourhood renewal team to get an update on the progress of the redevelopment of the council-owned prefab houses on Rose Hill. The first ones have been demolished, but the scheme is six months behind schedule. Nothing is more important in our area than getting these buildings down and the new housing built; most of the Orlits (as they are called) are empty and boarded up, and are a magnet for trouble; the remaining residents are desperate to move. As it was only an update meeting, I didn’t raise the issue of the segregated sheltered block for elderly separatist lesbians that we so sorely need, but rest assured, I’ll make sure it’s in the final plans.

At 10am, I’m at the youth centre on Rose Hill at a meeting of our brand new neighbourhood action group, which is managing the rollout of neighbourhood policing on our estate. It’s a great meeting, with a clear shared priority list: stopping antisocial behaviour on the estate, dealing with the gangs of young people, and getting to grips with the drugs problem. We get an action plan, and I’m hopeful that the police have taken residents’ concerns on board. It’s pretty infuriating that the county council don’t seem to understand that the youth services that we’ve got on the estate, while run by great committed workers, just don’t have the capacity to meet the needs of young people. So once again the city council will plug the gap, and the Tories on the county can find yet another rural bus route to subsidise instead of supporting really deprived young people and communities. As I come out of the meeting, a resident approaches with a housing problem, so Ed and I spend some time with her. I’m back at my desk for half-past one, and try to focus on work - difficult.

At four-thirty, Ed and I are supporting a resident at a meeting with the city council’s building control team. We’re plagued with unscrupulous developers in our area, so whilst the technical details are sometimes obscure, it’s worth it. By six it’s over, and Ed and I sit down for a debrief on the week and catch-up on the casework. A while later, we’re joined by Jo and get some dinner.

Saturday - It’s time to catch-up on the paperwork and emails. There’s over 100 council emails in my inbox, and I’ve just been firefighting them all week. Now I should get a chance to answer some and chase others, as well as followup on the casework, queries and letters that have been arriving all week.

So, that’s my week. What have you learned about lesbian councillors? Well, that this one goes to the supermarket, watches the football, eats dinner with her partner, helps constituents and talks about community centres and crime and young people and housing and education and building control in her area. Hopefully you’ve also learned that being a member of a particular section of the community doesn’t mean that I put that community first to the detriment of all others. If you’re surprised by that, you shouldn’t be, and if you don’t know which bits of this week didn’t actually happen, then you’re a numpty.

White middle-class male Labour party member (in the comments):

BTW I notice that Hemel Hempstead (majority 499) and the seat I was twinned with at the last election (along with Watford) has been declared All Women Shortlist. :-/ How. Rubbish. Is. That.

Hemel is one of the few marginal seats we don’t hold in the region - and, as I mentioned, one I campaigned in at the last election having been twinned with it. But obviously I am not worthy to be considered for it on the basis of being a man. :-/

Tell you what Lola, why don’t you come and stand here? After all you are female, so are infinitely more qualified than someone like me to contest such a seat. :-/

My heart bleeds for you.

You either believe or you do not that the people who make decisions for us should be broadly representative of the UK population. If you do not, then why are you in a party founded to ensure that working people had a voice at the highest level? Women have been discriminated against and discouraged from entering public life for decades: no wonder just 19.8% of Parliament are women. The only way to change this is positive action to get more women selected and elected. Gentle encouragement just doesn’t work (just ask the Liberal Democrats - so committed to women’s representation that their Gender Task Force will take another forty years to get equal numbers in their parliamentary party, when AWS could do it in half the time). Not when selection committees still ask women what their husbands will do for sex when they’re in London all week, and inquire as to the colour of their underwear. Not when local favoured sons (and it is always sons) get preferential treatment.

Women come in all shapes and sizes, have every type of political opinion and have the full range of experiences and points of view. They are clever and stupid; cunning and naive; great at oratory and terrible public speakers; compassionate and uncaring; mouthy and quiet. Some women would make great MPs. Some wouldn’t. But why on earth would you think that from all the women available in the Labour party, all those talents, all that choice, Hemel Hempsted CLP wouldn’t be able to find one that suited them?

I’m sorry in the specific instance that your aspirations are dashed, but we really don’t have a shortage of white middle-class men in Parliament. It might be worth pondering why it is that equality is always okay as a general aspiration until men (or white people, or straights, or able-bodied people) actually have to do something about it.

Don’t know how I missed this at the weekend:

Almost one in four Labour supporters wants their party to lose the next election, according to a new poll which will provide ammunition for David Cameron.
In a sign that the leadership has become increasingly divorced from its own grass roots, 23 per cent agree that the Labour party should be kicked out of power to give it ‘a period out of office to rethink what they stand for and what their vision is for the future of the country’.

Why join the Labour Party if actually whether or not we win elections isn’t important to you? If discussion is what you’re looking for, then Labour really isn’t the place for it - join a drinking club or debating society. If you want to help change the world with no responsibility for making it happen and maintain your ideological purity at the same time, give some money to your favourite charity. But you’re a democratic socialist or social democrat or think you might be, and if you want to be a part of something that stands on a broad platform built (however tenuously at times) on shared principles and that might actually have a chance to put them into practice, then join the Labour party.

There are swathes of people who have no memory of life under a Tory government, and no conception of how bad it could be. Many of the people who advocate time in opposition are comfortably off (as am I), with secure jobs and housing, and the ability to get their children into good schools and support ill or elderly relatives. But the people who will get shafted by a Tory government are people without those resources, people who will be abandoned if we give up now.

Lessons from previous spells in opposition and the example of the Tory party’s last decade should warn us that opposition isn’t a quick fix, if indeed it’s a fix at all. The chances of a short four years out of power giving us a chance to renew ourselves and be all that we should before a real socialist sweeps back into Number 10 on a wave of public support and reverses the odd bad thing the Tories have done is a mirage, a dangerous fantasy, an indulgence.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m hugely disappointed in our party, and our government. Like most members these days, I’ve a shopping list of what I would change as long as my arm. We’ve not managed that elusive renewal of the party in power. But give up any ability to change this deeply divided and unequal world for the better? Believe that it is no longer possible to make a difference? Prefer passing motions at a branch meeting to fighting for Labour policies on the doorstep? Retreat to the comfort blanket of the eighties (some comfort)? It can’t be the answer.

Great. It’s open season on vulnerable women yet again.

Anyone see this on The Hits’ post-match comedown? Anyway, it’s available to download here (and guess what, Tim Ireland from Bloggerheads is involved).

I live in a flat above a parade of shops next to a council estate. Most of the flats in our parade are let through private landlords to recent immigrants. I talked a bit more about the demographics of my area here.

You wouldn’t really expect many marketing leaflets to come through our doors, and no, the Next catalogue van doesn’t often stop here. But, still apart from the fast food ones, there is a type of leaflet which does arrive frequently. At least once a week, there’s a door drop from one or other credit card or financial services company offering loans and cheap money, a way out of your debts, help to stay in control of your budgeting…. you know their spiels. Yesterday’s one offered me a credit card with a typical rate of 39.9%, one last week was 49.9%. It’s daylight robbery, targeted at vulnerable people.

Thankfully, there are other ways. I’m hoping that in future, this scheme for people renting through a social landlord will become more generally available, and in Oxford, we have a brand new credit union. I don’t know much about the readers of this blog (except your IP addresses, of course!) but if you live or work in Oxford, you’re eligible to join. If you’re having financial difficulties, make the credit union your first port of call. If you’ve got a savings account, consider moving it across to the credit union, where it’ll help the staff build up the capital to make more loans to people who need them, give people who can’t get a bank account some security and provide local jobs and services.

… in an article about how crap the leftwing blogosphere is, by Iain Dale. His comment was about how I’m one of the few Labour blogs with any humour.