I’m finding blogging a challenge at the moment. It’s not that there’s nothing interesting going on in my life; there is. It’s not that I don’t have opinions about gun crime, Iraq, bird flu (well, maybe not bird flu) and everything else that’s going on; I do. I just haven’t felt moved to blog. I’m uninspired, perhaps - assuming this blog was ever inspired in the first place.

Some highlights of the past few weeks have been listening to Hilary Benn set alight an unbearably tedious Labour local government forum a few Saturdays ago, and afterwards enjoying a marvellous dinnner at the Empress of India with colleagues from Hackney council; having a weekend with the boys in Liverpool, encompassing watching co-councillor Ed run the line in fog so dense the match was called off and dancing the night away in a St Helens nightclub called Retro; attending my first budget debate as a councillor, and seven hours later, at quarter to midnight, walking out of the chamber having watched an unholy alliance of Greens and Liberals fritter away money on misguided environmental schemes instead of prioritising helping poor kids in our city. A full life, and that’s not the half of it. Not sure whether I’ll get back into this blogging lark, to be honest; everything else is so interesting.

Glad to see my old student union is still run by sensible types who won’t allow idiot journos to give a platform to the BNP.

You attend a fundraising dinner for your CLP at the community centre in your ward. You pay what would, if we were a small leftish newspaper, be called a “solidarity price” to hear Peter Hain speak and eat (delicious) curry from Cafe Spice. You get fleeced for another fiver in Cllr Tanner’s raffle, and win a small green candle. And still they expect you to do the washing up!

Oh, you wanted to hear about Peter Hain’s speech, given that he’s another deputy candidate? Well, bearing in mind that my comments are mediated through a prism of gratefulness to him for being kind enough to come to a snowy Oxford on a Thursday night to help us raise money for the fighting fund, I thought he spoke well. As always, his backstory is compelling, and he treated us to a a rundown of his battles as an anti-apartheid campaigner, remembering an Oxford anecdote about a rugby match that had to be switched to Twickenham following protests from students and Cowley workers. As a good pol, he picked up on the local characters, the most recent by-election winner and the importance of thanking the members from non-Labour Oxfordshire constituencies.

In terms of substance, there was nothing new or startling. He’s got a line on a sort of libertarian socialism that appeals to the civil liberties/constitutional types - electing the Lords, condemning arrests for heckling ministers at Labour conference and wearing Bollocks to Blair t-shirts. He was strong on opposing Cameron (”we want a progressive government, not a contracted-out government!” “If you were planning a tax cut of £4billion, would you give it to the tiny minority who take part in share transactions or to the millions of hard working families?”), weak on the Lib Dems (saying we need a new way of dealing with them, but then failing to outline what it should be), and concilatory on Iraq. The best part of his speech was about the work he’s doing in Northern Ireland, telling a story about rival graffiti in republican and unionist areas that reads “Sinn Hain” and “Hain’s Insane” as evidence that he must be doing something right, and outlining his hopes for elections and a renewed devolved government.

I enjoyed his speech immensely and was very impressed with him personally, though it hasn’t changed my mind about who I’ll be voting for.

Hello all. It’s been a while hasn’t it? I had my first night at home with no meetings and no social engagements since 16 January last night, and funnily enough I didn’t choose to spend it blogging, though I did catch a little of this Party Animals television programme everyone is so excited about.

So, perhaps the readers of this blog can help with a little confusion I have. As you know, most of my politics have gone out of the window since becoming a councillor (a fact Giles so amusingly picked up on in his local-pol-goss column in the Oxford Mail). In NUS, I was variously used to being called a Trot (in the unique Labour Students sense of “I don’t agree with you, and your ideas are a cigarette paper to the left of mine or otherwise unauthorised” as opposed to the ice-pick sense) and a fake-left careerist (particularly nice phrase that - I rather like the implications that there are real left careerists). But recently, given real enemies to deal with (!) in the council chamber, the degree of political self-analysis has slowed somewhat.

But still, comrades, I am confused. Let me explain.

Ben Harris’ PoliticsForum quiz tells me:

Overall, the PoliticsForum quiz considers you a socially-orientated, materialist, big-government, internationalist, controlled-market kind of person, who also seems quite Marxist.
These characteristics would put you in the overall category of Marxist. Your natural home at PoliticsForum would be the Communism area.

That puzzled me slightly. I was further perturbed by Voltaire’s Priest including me in her (his?) denunciation of Cruddas suppporters as “he allegedly left-wing (although I can’t quite see how) Antonia Bance”. And then my confusion is compounded by Paul Burgin listing me as a “right wing libertarian” (though I think the intention is humorous). Oh well. Back to the detail. Hope to see some of you at the Local Government and Equalities conference in Hackney on Saturday.