Cllr Shah Jahan Khan today decided it was time to leave the shower that is the minority ruling Liberal group on Oxford city council, and join Labour. The scores on the doors are now Labour 19, Lib Dems 15, Green 8, IWCA 4, Tories 2.

Waking up this morning to the dulcet tones of Labour’s Colin Cook on Radio 4 was surreal; I was dismayed to hear him tell the world that far from the worst being past us, in fact the water had surged overnight and Osney Island, bits of the Botley Road and parts of the Abingdon Road area are once again under water.

I’d urge loyal readers to consider donating to the Red Cross appeal to help people affected by the floods in the UK. Though flooding hits everyone, people at the bottom of the income scale will be hardest hit. In particular, they are less likely to have household insurance cover and less likely to have the money to replace damaged goods than those who are better off. Flooding in the UK may not have the impact of that in, say, India, in terms of loss of life, but it’s still hugely distressing.

I groaned at the front page of this week’s Sunday Times magazine, emblazoned with a picture of a naked pregnant woman, and the the text:

This is Aimee, eight months pregnant and only 15 years old. She is part of Britain’s epidemic of gymslip mothers. Underage sex, teenage motherhood and welfare dependent lifestyles are a national scandal. Are we right to be so outraged?

But Lesley White, who went and spent time with several young mums and their families in London and Reading, delivers a thoughtful and balanced article, which acknowledges that motherhood isn’t the worst thing to happen to many young women, without glossing over the real difficulties. Definitely worth a read in full.

Great article in yesterday’s Guardian from Sandra Horley of Refuge:

In an ideal world, children would be able to have contact with both parents. But this is not an ideal world, and in many cases domestic violence is behind the denial of contact. At Refuge, we see many victims of such violence; and an automatic presumption that it is in “the best interests of the child” to have contact with both parents, ignores the courts’ responsibility to protect that child.
The women I speak to are not bitter exes vengefully preventing separated fathers from seeing their children. In fact, less than 1% of fathers’ contact applications are denied, in spite of the fact that domestic violence has occurred in over a third of cases. [...]
It is a sad reality that many women face a stark choice: expose their children to danger or defy court orders. So if “a mother adamantly refuses to let the child have anything to do with the father”, instead of removing and possibly placing a child in danger, judges should be taking a closer look and asking why.

While I’m on the subject of the Tories’ social justice commission report, I can’t leave uncommented upon the chapter about the better involvement of the voluntary sector in fighting poverty. My worry isn’t that this appears in the report - after all, Tories are supposed to think private philanthropy is better than democratically-controlled taxpayer-funded universal provision, it’s sort of what they exist for.

No, my dismay is the enthusiasm with which many not-very-bright medium and large charity (sorry, “third sector”) CEOs will greet this. For those of us that work for campaigning charities to change the things that are wrong with the world as we see it, there is something vastly miserable about watching our sector forget that:
1. charitable provision will never replace the state adequately (that is, if you have any concern about services being provided consistently to everyone in every area, which you should);
2. charitable provision is not in and of itself high quality, simply as a result of the sector from which it originates;
3. it’s elections which guarantee a political voice to millions of working people, not NGOs helping marginalised people of whatever stripe to participate, though that top-up participation is valuable;
4. if sustainable funding is what you are after, the Tories see NGO provision as a way to spend less money, not more, so your battle cries of “respect the COMPACT!” and “for a long-term funding settlement with full-cost recovery!” will go unheard. (Well, did you really think that a shrinking state would give masses more money to NGOs, rather than in tax cuts?!)

I’m not in practice against charities taking on state contracts or delivering public services (though I have red lines around charitable delivery of coercive services such as prisons and making funding allocation decisions, both of which I think require democratic accountability). But I do think that the sooner that the leadership of the sector recognises that it is deluded if it thinks of itself as inherently better or more responsive than the state and realises that the main distinguishing feature of a charity is that, independently funded, it can advocate for structural change, the better for the variety of disadvantaged people we’re supposed to serve. Charities exist to solve the problem they were set up to tackle: our aim should be to put ourselves out of business.

Apologies if this last post is intelligible only to other regular readers of Third Sector magazine. Once again, none of these points reflect the views of either the Oxford city Labour group, nor of my employer.

So, the excitement of the day has been about the Tories’ publication of their policy commission report on what they call “breakdown Britain”. And their policy prescription to end poverty in the UK? Well…

Reinstatement and full public use of the term ‘marital status’ and associated terms ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘spouse’ and ‘marriage’, sending a clear and unambiguous signal about marriage.

Okay, so that was a cheap shot, but it says so much about the report that frankly embarassing nonsense culled from the letters page of the Daily Telegraph (”SIR: the other day, I was filling in a form for the Government, and did you know, my wife has become my PARTNER! It’s political correctness gone mad! I remain…”) has made it into the final version of policies that the party is recommended to adopt.

I will admit to feeling torn about this: much as when the Tories began to be reasonable rather than red in tooth and claw about women’s issues and lesbian and gay rights, the campaigner in me is pleased that they are seriously engaging with the issues (and don’t be mistaken: this is a serious engagement with the issues, and the Tories giving up on bashing poor people, if this is what this is, is to be welcomed). But at the same time, as a Labour member, I know that their prescriptions are going to be wrong - how could they not be, starting from such as dismal view of the world? - but may be enough to fool people who care about poverty in the UK into thinking that they’re reasonable, and electable… and that way lies ruin.

All day the mood music has been about marriage. You know I’m not one to worry about the nanny state, so I don’t believe that the way to argue against promoting marriage is to worry about what the state should or should not get involved in. I think we’re better off talking about how incredibly cheeky it is to pretend that you’re interested in ending poverty, whilst preparing the way for a cash bung to people who don’t need it - Chris D puts it better than I can. It’ll take £4bn or thereabouts to halve child poverty in the UK by 2010 - Labour’s target, which the Tories have signed up to, by the way. But these proposals for tax breaks and increased WTC for married couples will cost about £6bn, and given the depth and breadth of poverty in lone parent families, giving it all to married couples is literally taking desperately needed food out of the mouths of babes. Some of it may go where it’s needed; most of it won’t, and not only will the young people that need it not benefit from it, what will the Tories cut in order to pay for populist vote-grabbing marriage promotion?

And what a shame that the genuinely good stuff in the report (increased carers allowances, increased benefits for severely disabled people, stopping payment of HB in arrears, more help to pay for childcare for disabled children, suggestions for practical support for struggling families) and the stuff that we need to have a debate about (whether we should pay parents to stay at home with their children, whether childcare tax credits should pay family members to provide care, how to ensure that getting people into work doesn’t mean getting them into the first minimum wage job and leaving them there) is obscured by numpty nonsense about marriage, plus a daft dogmatic proposal about stopping state nurseries competing with private ones, when we’ve barely got enough nuresry places as it is. Oh well, what did we expect?

One of the things I love about this blog is that it is my personal space to talk about the issues that matter to me, so you’ll understand that none of these points reflect the views of either the Oxford city Labour group, nor of my longsuffering employer. I’m glad that’s clear.

Some of you may know Emma (Emmie) Goodall, a local Labour party member and convenor of Unison at the city council. She appears to have just been elected onto the Unison NEC, and has started to blog about being on the NEC, and the forthcoming addition to her family. Congratulations Emmie!

Via Iain Dale, I came across this article in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday by Caroline Righton, the Conservative candidate for St Austell and Newquay. Quite why a Tory blogger would want to flag up an article showing what women in their party still have to put up with, I don’t know. Some choice quotes:

Afterwards, much politically incorrect reaction from elderly local Tories who, although resistant to concept of A-list, are secretly intrigued. ‘What did you do, dearie, take all your clothes off?’ asks one. I’m secretly cheered he thinks it would have made a difference.

Apart from a couple of smiling faces, they look unforgiving. I spot several heads shaking in disbelief when I’m clapped. This makes it all the more difficult to discern which of the elderly gents is responsible for sending a text to my mobile phone, saying: ‘Gr8t legs– U gt my vote.’

It’s six years since Fawcett found that “overt discrimination and sexual harassment during the selection process are significant factors in the failure of women to get selected for safe or winnable Conservative seats” (pdf). Then, the researchers heard tales of female candidates being told “I lay awake all night thinking about you”, and “what will your husband do for sex when you’re in Westminster all week?” Is this really very different? Excuse me for thinking that Tory women shouldn’t have to put up with this, and excuse me for feeling sad that this woman in question, Caroline Righton, seems to think these sort of deeply unacceptable comments are just par for the course, even something to be laughed at. She got selected despite them - other women have not. I’m sure parts of my own party are no better; but at least our women have more self-respect than just to accept it.

Glad to see that despite the defection of some pretty opportunistic types to the Tories, the heart of the Labour party in Ealing are remaining united - even those who might have hoped to be the candidate themselves. At least some people manage to put party ahead of personal ambition:

COUNCILLOR SONIKA NIRWAL, Leader of Ealing Labour Group, today slammed David Cameron’s opportunism in doing a secret deal with a backbench Labour councillor.
Councillor Sonika Nirwal said: “I am, of course, disappointed that Gurcharan Singh has betrayed the voters who elected him as a Labour councillor by opportunistically joining the Tory Party. Gurcharan Singh has always made clear that his driving ambition was to become an MP. And he did everything he could within the Labour Party to achieve that ambition. But I am still shocked that he is willing to go to any lengths to become an MP. It seems as though David Cameron has done a dodgy deal with Gurcharan Singh – and he should come clean about what he has promised. I know that what the community in Southall want in their next MP is someone who is a unifying force. What Gurcharan Singh has done today is hugely divisive and the Tories will not gain any votes from it. The people of Southall are uniting behind Virendra Sharma.”

Hoping to get down myself at the weekend to help with the effort.

Been away for a week, so not been following the discussions about the by-elections going on below. Nonwithstanding my disappointment that the party has once again managed to select male candidates in by-elections, I’m sure that both Phil Wilson in Sedgefield and Virendra Sharma in Ealing Southall will make excellent Labour MPs.

Contrast this with the unhappiness of Tories with their candidate and their part’s strategy over at Conservative Home:
“Are there no suitable local candidates?”
“We will come a poor third in both of the by elections. Our record in parliamentary by-elections is appalling.”
“I do object to the party selecting candidates for by-elections in this way.”
“I wish him well, but doubt that we are even going to come close here.”

Update, slightly off topic: just wandered over to Labour Home, not something I do that often, and was chuffed to find out that not only has my friend Kirsty McNeill been selected to fight Bermondsey and Old Southwark again, but that Nancy Platts, who I know from Fawcett’s trustee board, has been selected in Brighton Pavilion. Fantastic news - two more wonderful Labour women.