This week, what with the American elections, lots of hard work in the office, and visits from John McDonnell and Jon Cruddas to Oxford (reports to follow), I’ve not found time for much blogging. I certainly don’t have space in my head to say anything more than one or two intelligent sentences about each of these interesting links:

The Don is setting up a new internal party campaign: Labour against poverty. His post, and one following at Bloggers4Labour, are both worth a read.

On of the feeds in my feedreader is the Indymedia Oxford newswire. I’m sure the type of people who post there wouldn’t like me very much - I’m sure elected Labour politicians aren’t very popular there, they seem to find the local Greens a bit sell-out - but I usually think of them as on the right side of things, in some vague way. The comments following this post by one of my sucessors as OUSU VP Women, though, riled me.

I enjoyed this account of election day in PA-08 by a student from the university of Pennsylvania. I daresay you don’t need me to tell you the result in that district… On a related topic, this new blog, Britain and America, is consistently interesting, though the comments seem sadly to be descending into mouth-frothing anti-BBCism. Having tried to get any news from US terrestrial TV and radio during the 2004 election, only to be stymied by the endless parade of lifestyle shows advising on Halloween wear for dogs and finding the BBC hour on PBS a godsend, I really don’t know what they’re complaining about.

I see Oxford West and Abingdon Conservatives are picking from a shortlist of four women to fight Evan Harris at the next general election. The comments box at Conservative Home has the usual laments for the men who were obviously shut out of the selection, as it’s clearly inconceiveable that the four best applicants for a seat could all be women. The open primary is this week coming at the Guildhall in Abingdon - I wonder if anyone I know is going? I’m sure Neil will give us the insider goss…

Here is a short paper by Philip Cowley, the revolts man, about party and gender splits in the abortion vote in Parliament a few weeks ago. Surprise surprise, 96% of Labour MPs voting opposed the bill, and 81% of Tories voting supported it. 89% of women MPs voting voted against the bill.

Luke yesterday blogged about a 1980s guide to Trot splinters and factions that he’s recently rediscovered online. Oxford and Hackney Labour comrades may wish to read the section on Red Action…

Finally, the proprieter of this blog is always glad to hear of ructions amongst Lib Dem groups in local government. This quiz to find out what type of Southwark Lib Dem you are made me chuckle.

Proper posting on Cruddas and McDonnell to follow, I promise!