Loving the spin that the IWCA put on the Dovecote affair over at their place:

In response to the IWCA motion, Labour councillor and Executive Board member, Antonia Bance, proposed an amendment to an Executive Board decision pulling out an extra £20,000, seemingly from nowhere, for the Dovecote.[...]
Needless to say, when the IWCA motion to cut the ‘ethnic minority champions’ project came up, Cllr Bance said pointedly, ‘Well there’s no need for this motion now is there.’
This only helps to confirm suspicions that it is only when Labour’s key concerns—such as divisive multicultural schemes—come under threat that they are prepared to come up with funding for important social projects aimed at the whole community.

Coupla points in response:
The IWCA, despite being represented on the council for more than three years now, still haven’t understood the basics of how to get things done. Putting posturing motions trying to cut money from services funded through extra grants from central government that can’t be spent on other things is just silly. I’ve a history of standing up for social inclusion, and I found a way to get the money for the project. The fact that the Lib Dems are poor losers who can’t recognise when they’ve been outwitted and have called in the cash for further consideration means that it’ll take a bit longer to get there, but we’ll sort it out. I did enjoy, at that vote, one of the IWCA councillors coming running in when they realised that we were talking about BBL, and I enjoyed even more their faces when they realised they’d have to vote for a Labour motion.

As I recall (and am willing to be corrected if wrong), it was a Labour councillor (me) who led the shouting at south-east area committee and at executive board about the allocation of grants in the south-east of the city. As I recall, I wrote SEAC’s proposed reallocation of grants cutting cash from central Oxford arts organisations and allocating them to projects in BBL and the rest of the south-east, which the executive board rejected out-of-hand. (As it happens, this isn’t an isolated example: at one area committee last autumn, I was the only councillor present - we were about three down - who had read and realised the importance of the paper on playgrounds. There aren’t any proposals to close play areas in my bit of the city, but if I hadn’t read the paper and started shouting about closing playgrounds on Blackbird Leys and Greater Leys, then none of the IWCA councillors would have picked up on it.)

Oh, and I’m proud to stand up for supporting black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people, some of the poorest in our city, to get involved in politics and community activism. That’s the “divisive multicultural scheme” they’re talking about.

Well, it appears that this blog has been rated the 15th best Labour blog in the country this year, down from 5th last year. I’m pleased, as this year has not been a good one for blogging for me. Major changes in personal and professional life, plus the sheer workload of being a councillor hitting for real, means that blogging has fallen far far off the agenda. The reasonably tedious habit of the Oxford Mail’s Insider column of reproducing almost verbatim anything vaguely politically-frivolous I write, with associated spin, means that I’ve ended up being a bit cautious. I’d also say that the blog’s subject matter is becoming more limited, as my views on the majority of feminist issues (rape, abortion, fathers’ rights, sex education and teenage pregnancy, equal pay) haven’t changed much, but merely reproducing a new post on the same topic every time they’re in the news seems pointless. I also have to try hard not to post on the issues that I work on, as although there are many advantages to working on the issues you care most about, one of the disadvantages is the limiting effect on what you get to say in a personal capacity. Finally, I think I’ve moved a bit politically, and my allegiance to the party has hardened, meaning that I am both less likely to criticise the government’s actions (particularly since Brown took over) and more likely to self-censor when I want to shout about how wrong they are. Hey ho.

The one surprising omission from the Labour list, though, is, of course, the utterly wonderful Let’s be sensible. Spent a happy half-hour dissecting Gordon’s policy announcements and rhetorical style with Tom on the seafront this week, sharing our mutual disbelief that the word “maths” might pose a challenge to our glorious leader.

So, I’ve worked hard at two party conferences, and am enjoying a precious day at home frantically filling the washing machine in preparation for a third in the hideous Blackpool. I’m also trying to book a last minute break in the sun for a week; unfortunately it’s likely to be the week when Gordon goes for it, which may mess up my holiday plans slightly, as instead of strolling along a beach, I instead stroll gently around Rose Hill, asking people for their vote for Andrew and Gordon.

In Bournemouth for party conference, unsurprisingly. Think I’ve already got the best freebie of the week - Politico Top Trumps cards, courtesy of Sky TV, with 30 of our top movers and shakers ranked against each other. Might liven up dull speeches on conference floor. After a fifteen minute queue to pick up my pass (there are some advantages to arriving on Saturday, one of which is not spending hours getting to know your pass-queue-neighbours’ lives, children’s names, favourite holiday destinations etc.) we hit The Only Party in the Village, courtesy of LCLGR. Off to find a Sunday roast now.

Hello all. Had some strange comments recently, all from 81.5.171.28, under the names of Mickey, Jules, Karyn, Nicola, Phoebe and Jane. I’m sticking this IP address in moderation until further notice.

I have a job, which I like very much. But jdc did a quiz to find out what sort of job he should do, and posted his answers, so I thought I’d do it too.
Here’s my top ten occupations:

1.Probation / parole officer
2.Industrial-organizational psychologist
3.Human resources specialist
4.Foreign service officer
5.Association manager
6.Rehabilitation counselor
7.Politician
8.Lobbyist
9. Corporate / commercial lawyer
10. Psychologist

What is it about my profile that always brings up law enforcement roles at the top of the list? I clearly remember seventeen year-old me being distinctly perturbed when the mid-nineties clunking careers database suggested that my ideal occupation was to be a prison officer… If you’re interested, what I actually do is a mix of 8, 30 (communications specialist), and 32 (public policy analyst) in one half of my life, with a bit of 7 thrown in during evenings and weekends.

Sometimes the Oxford Mail really doesn’t give you the info you need:

A man has launched a roof top protest after climbing on to housing offices in Oxford.
Police have cordoned off an area of Ashurst Way, in Oxford, after the man was spotted on the roof of the Oxford City Council building at about 4.15pm.
A police spokesman said it was believed he had mounted a protest and officers were attempting to persuade him to come down safely.

Be assured that if I find out why he was up there, I’ll let you know.

Regular (long-term) readers will recall that last autumn a bunch of kids rocked up to residents’ and tenants’ association on Rose Hill. Me and Ed and Sgt. Graham Pink met up with them a few weeks later to find out how we could make the estate a better place to live. One of the do-able things they wanted was to get the street sports site floodlit so it was usable outside the summer months in the evenings. After passing the money and sorting the partnerships out, this week we passed the planning application: we’re one step closer.

Been asked to advertise this conference on my blog, as I’m apparently “a well known feminist blogger”. Have no intention of attending as am no longer in a place where discussion of the many and varied ways in which it is considered that I have sold out seems like a fun way to spend precious weekend time. You may enjoy it, though. Men are welcome - and I’m sure some of my fathers’ rights correspondents could learn a lot, if they cared to turn up.

Our local Rose Hill celeb is Mike Knibbs, the chair of Villiers Neighbourhood Watch, who does the travel reports on BBC Radio Oxford’s breakfast show. In a shock move, though, his services are being dispensed with by the station in favour of automated reports from London. You can sign the petition to keep the Nibbler on the air here. More details about the turmoil at Radio Oxford here.

Very much in support of the idea of criminalising the buying of sex rather than the sale of it, as floated by women ministers, according to the Guardian’s front page today:

Senior members of the government are discussing whether to criminalise the purchase, rather than sale, of sex - as Sweden did eight years ago - in part because of the growth in sex trafficking. According to the government, 85% of women in brothels come from outside the UK.

This sentence, however, gave me pause:

The government has won praise from unexpected sources for other socially conservative measures recently, ranging from scrapping plans for a supercasino to launching a review of media violence and its impact on children and young people.

Are these really socially-conservative measures? Had never struck me as such.