One of the things I’m really enjoying about my new(ish) job is the opportunity to work across the range of issues affecting people in poverty in the UK, both in terms of who those people are (women and men; younger and older; UK citizens, refugees and migrant workers), and where they live (Scotland, Wales and England). So it comes to pass that I’m in Glasgow for a few nights to meet people who use the projects my employer supports.

Today was a wonderful example of a project that genuinely is a grassroots changemaker (and I use the dreadful jargon deliberately). The community centre I visited was set up in 1991, and as far as I can see, has had the same small dedicated team keeping it going on a shoestring ever since. Developing welfare advice, education and leisure services for people in their area, the centre must be responsible for changing thousands of lives. I heard today about just one example - a lorry driver injured in an accident driving abroad and unable to work, who didn’t know what he was eligible for and was existing on almost nothing, now enabled by the centre to claim the £400 per week he’s entitled to, to support his family while he recovers.

From my description so far, it’s remarkable but far from unique - great independent advice centres all over the UK do this sort of work day in, day out. What so impressed me was the analysis that powered the work of the centre, grounded in a conception of the rights of ordinary people to education; welfare benefits when elderly, out of work or ill; representation and a voice. The centre’s links with the trade union movement, with campaigns for change and with international counterparts were astonishing. I could have spent all day reading about the campaign against jobseeker’s allowance in 1995/96; the struggle to get a computer suite; the visit of Abdullah Muhsin; fraternal visits with Australian and Polish trade unions; the candlelit vigil against unemployment in the early 90s recession; the current campaign to make the regeneration of the riverside work for local people and be more than importing jobs for people for elsewhere and building homes to house them. The community centre stands up for local people - it’s not a centre for service delivery tied to contracts and service level agreements with staff talking the language of targets and monitoring and soulessness, clients and numbers. It reminded me of what the voluntary sector can be when it’s right there, tied to the grassroots and unafraid to challenge councils and statutory services - transformative.

I’m sure the unknown author of “the Insider” in the Oxford Mail is sharpening their pencil to feature the return fixture of Blogger Bance’s junket to Budapest (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, see here); I hasten to point out that this trip was entirely under my own steam, powered by my own cash, and accounts for another lengthy absence from posting.

As might be expected from a trip the driving force behind which was Cllr Turner, there were trains and provincial cities galore. From touchdown at Budapest Ferihegy, we caught a bus and a train to Szeged, a university city in the far south of Hungary. The palatial Hotel Izabella was home for two nights while we explored, ate ice cream, got an unseasonal tan and sampled the Hungarian national poleaxer, Unicum. The highlight of Szeged was undoubtedly the wonderful synagogue, decorated in gold and blue with a huge dome, though the boys may argue for JATEKLUB, a Szegedi Purple Turtle with a licence til 4am…

From Szeged, a four-hour trip across the great plains (very flat; occasional deer) took us to the north-eastern city of Debrecen, and the austere Soviet-era Hotel Debrecen. The highlight of our first night was a resturant entered through a huge jar, where Colin sampled the renowned local delicacy of bread spread with lard. After a visit to the thermal baths on Friday, the team was bolstered by the arrival of the iron-lived Dr Joe. We just about made the train to Budapest after celebrating his arrival.

In Budapest itself, we stayed in two flats near another beautiful synagogue. Our arrival was enlivened by the letting agent’s insistence on demonstrating how to use door keys, taps, windows and blinds, and by her warning to my male companions to beware of beautiful girls wishing to part them from their cash in disreputable bars. Four days in Budapest was ample time to visit the Statue Park, site of forty Communist memorials brought together after the restoration of democracy in the early 90s; sample a range of Hungarian wines; visit another thermal bath; be seneraded by a gypsy band in a tourist restaurant. Time also allowed a return visit to the Great Market Hall, where Russian dolls in the likeness of world leaders may still be purchased as I noted last July. Unfortunately closer inspection revealed the artist to have unpleasant and unsavoury politics: Osama Bin Laden opens to reveal Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat (!) and Hitler in ever decreasing sizes - obviously a set of “great murderers the world has known”! - and Bill Clinton contains Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers and Hillary Clinton, with the tiniest doll being not a doll at all, but a cigar…

After having completely misjudged the weather, I arrived home on Tuesday night with a tan and an unworn overcoat. Unfortunately I’d failed to book Wednesday off work, which is how I come to be writing this from a hotel in Glasgow after a second aeroplane trip in less than 24 hours. Oh well. I may see my home tomorrow.

Yet more reasons why we desperately need more houses in Oxford:

Oxford’s homelessness problem is recognised as the worst outside inner-city London, affecting about 17 in every 1,000 families. [...] There are 8,000 council and 4,000 housing association properties in Oxford, but the authority has a waiting list of more than 5,000, with about 450 properties becoming available each year. City council community housing manager Graham Stratford said: “If you aspire to live in a council house you have no chance whatsoever. Unless circumstances change you will never be housed by this authority.”

There’s only one solution to the problem: building a sizeable number of houses on a bit of scrubland designated as Green Belt to the south-east of the city. It’s clearer than ever that those lobbying against the urban extension are in fact lobbying for the maintenance of current levels of homelessness, temporary housing and overcrowding in our city.

Meanwhile, 23 homes in Oxford fetched more than a million pounds last year. The contribution of housing costs to inequality in the UK has never been more apparent.

You may read in the Oxford Mail at some point in the coming days about how those dreadful south-east councillors couldn’t even turn up to a crucial area committee meeting, so it couldn’t go ahead ‘cos it was inquorate. Just so you know, I’d like to point out that one Rose Hill and Iffley councillor was discharged from hospital earlier today, and the other was fifteen minutes late having rushed from a meeting in the city centre about rebuilding Rose Hill estate. Oh well. (NB: I’m not the one who’s been in hospital, thankfully.)