One of my favourite blogs has hit some top form recently. Here’s the Provisional BBC on inquiries into the death of famous people:

An official inquiry into the heart disease that killed Robin Cook has found no evidence the politician was murdered. Lord Stevens, who led the investigation, said the death was a “tragic accident”. But a spokesperson for Compass says it does not accept the findings as questions remain “unanswered”.

Some highlights of Christmas at home with my family:
* buying my first Oyster card to go Christmas shopping and being regaled with stories of relatives’ mishaps paying for tubes, trams and buses; getting renewedly cross about the difference in travel costs in London compared with Oxford (80p anywhere you want to go here vs. £1.50 into the city from Rose Hill there!)
* realising that your mother has stopped walking through the ladieswear department where you are shopping together for new Christmas clothes, and is looking longingly at the very top you’ve bought and wrapped for her already, and that you have to get her to move on before it’s too late without giving the game away; the look on her face when she opens it on Christmas day
* visiting the gym en masse to give moral support to your dad as he takes up the membership bought for him by your mum for Christmas. At one point there were four Bances on treadmills and cycling machines…

And all the usual highlights - spending time with my grandad and parents, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles; hearing all the family news; silly presents and sillier party games; M&S party food (my brother’s working there on his break from university, so we’ve treated ourselves with his staff discount!); presents from my family - jewellery, books, DVDs, clothes, and, once again, driving lessons - this will be the year that I pass my test, I’m determined - watch out Oxford motorists!

Here’s hoping Christmas treated you well too.

Funnily enough, I like that there is a Labour party. I think the twentieth century would have been happier if Labour had had more years in power. I think the twenty-first century is better for only having had a Labour government. I think the country and city I live in do better with Labour.

So, like many party members, I worry that at some point in the future there may not be a Labour party, that the whole edifice may go belly-up as a result of our parlous financial state. Just in case you need reminding of quite how depressing it is, another Oxford politico has worked out that each party member would need to pay £117 each just to clear our debts. Finances are also particularly important to me, living as I do in a constituency with a Labour MP that following boundary changes is listed in the “notional LibDem” column of websites like this one.

So, I think the priority for our (and our affiliates’) spending is not on a ruinously-expensive postal ballot of all members for the deputy leadership and leadership (yes, you read that right - even if there is only one nominated candidate for leader, we still have to have an affirmative ballot!). Therefore I propose that we create a premium rate phoneline to enable members to cast their votes, save the party postage and printing and even raise some lolly while we’re at it. As it is (just) still Christmas, I have had a glass of sherry, so this suggestion is, of course, only half-serious. (Be glad - after yesterday’s prolonged festivities I was ready to propose that each member have unlimited votes like on the X-Factor.)

Of course, I’m making, cack-handedly, a real point. I want us to have a democratic party, for sure; but more than that, I want us to do well in this year’s local, Welsh and Scottish elections, and those coming up over the next few years. We have to do what we exist to do - winning elections so we can make Britain a better place - first, and that should be the first call on our cash.

PS: Don’t get me wrong - I still think that this man is part of the solution, not part of the problem, and whether it be by pressing 1 for Jon Cruddas or marking the traditional X, I will vote for him.

I’m posting this from the top deck of an Oxford Tube coach to London, somewhere on the M40. The coaches now offer wifi on all services. Unfortunately they don’t supply an off-button for the four teenagers in the front seat who have now been tunelessly treating the whole packed coach to Christmas carols for twenty minutes now…

Pleased to discover that there is a new blog about the governing issue I feel most strongly about - ending child poverty. Jim Murphy, the minister for employment and welfare reform, started this blog at the DWP in October. As you may recall, I was impressed by his commitment to the issue at party conference.

Should have said it earlier in the week, but a hearty well done to Anneliese Dodds for getting selected as Labour’s PPC for Reading East. I’ve known Anneliese for more than eight years, and I’m sure she’ll work incredibly hard in Reading. She’s emphatically not one of those types I described rather memorably in this post; she’s clear and honest in her politics, which are to the left of the party. I’m incredibly chuffed that Reading members selected her - she’s exactly the sort of young woman who’ll get us that precious fourth term.

It appears that I have won the Bloggers4Labour award for best blog by an elected representative. Thanks for that, folks! Very flattering. Though, as Stuart points out, it’s not really as though this is a true councillor-blog. After all, I don’t really post about my ward or the bin collection (though that may change when the bi-weekly collection is rolled out to Rose Hill and causes chaos…) I’m never convinced that many people in Rose Hill actually read this blog, though I know that fellow councillors, council officers and local journos do. /waves

In the early 80s, women were told not to go out in Leeds for fear of the Yorkshire Ripper. 25 years later, the headline on the BBC News at Ten on BBC1? “Women in Ipswich were tonight warned to be on their guard, or better still, to stay at home”.

From Gordon Brown’s pre-budget report speech yesterday:

I have received powerful representations that in the last months of pregnancy when nutrition is most important and in the first weeks after birth, the extra costs borne by parents could be better recognised if we did more to help through our universal benefit, child benefit paid to all.
Maternity grants are available to low income mothers from the 29th week of pregnancy.
Help should be available to all mothers expecting a child. So child benefit will be paid on that basis for every mother - additional child benefit that recognises the important role at this critical moment that child benefit can play.

About time too. In 2004, the sadly now-defunct Maternity Alliance published a paper looking at how much money pregnant young women got a week, and how much it cost to eat a healthy diet. (sadly no longer online) They found that you needed to spend £20.25 a week to eat a healthy diet, but the vast majority of young pregnant teenagers living away from home couldn’t afford that. The project had young women living in a hostel keeping food diaries for a week; it was shocking to read these young women were surviving on tea, chips, biscuits and toast for the most part. Hopefully this scheme will make a real difference to pregnant women and the health and lifechances of their children.

This isn’t a councillor-blog. But you lot know a little about the ward I represent, right? In case you’ve forgotten, here’s some information about the ward and here’s some about the meetings I have been to every week since I was elected.

Rose Hill has been through a rough couple of years. It’s a pretty deprived area, particularly in terms of housing and facilities. We’re in the middle of a huge project to knock down 150-odd prefabs and replace them with new homes, but it’s been beset with delays. We’ve got a few difficult young people who entertain themselves with criminal damage and joyriding, and we’re had some pretty appalling serious incidents too. Lots of people on the estate are working hard to make it a better place to live, but sometimes you wonder whether everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet when the county council decides to cut nearly £14k from the advice centre, meaning it will probably open only three mornings a week next year.

So, why do I feel cheerful tonight? Well, we’ve had eleven arrests on the estate over the past two weeks, including some for drugs; for an attack on the flat of an elderly person; for breach of the dispersal zone; for breach of an ASBO banning a former resident from the estate. Our beat team has four excellent officers, and their oddly-named Operation Boodle is getting results. Following the problems we’ve had, we’ve got a pair of officers on foot guaranteed to be on the estate every night of the week until midnight, up til the end of December, and around the 27th, our new pair of PCSOs start. Last night at the area committee we approved two CCTV cameras to go up in a notorious trouble spot near the shops, and in a few weeks the police team will be reviewing the dispersal zone to see how it’s working. We’re finally sorting out the stick.

And the carrot? Well, at the same meeting last night, we passed brand new floodlights for the recreation ground, so that the Football Foundation-funded youth work and sports development work can finally restart. The SEEDA Learning Communities project which came on stream in May has refurbished part of the Community Centre and will do up part of the Sure Start building to finally get IT suites on the estate. They’ve set up a regular group meeting with Brookes University on the estate, and five residents are being supported to apply for next year. They’ve persuaded the different agencies to get on board and run a weekly careers information and guidance session on the estate, and started entry-level courses running in ESOL, literacy, numeracy, beauty and IT. Learning Communities has set up a young learners’ group, Asian women’s group, an at home learning project and is supporting the development of the Sure Start cafe as a social enterprise. They’ve got the BBC RaW project coming to run a pilot on the estate.

And there’s more. Our local school was taken out of special measures last week. Nine teenagers came to our residents’ and tenants’ meeting last week, and they want to sit down with us and our beat team to try to work out together how we make things better for young people and reduce trouble on the estate. Not to count chickens, but we may finally have an agreement on how we develop the community centre with the planning gain money from the redevelopment. And, last but not least, the tenders for the developer to build the new homes are in - a huge step forward.