It’s nearly time to go to bed, but I just wanted to wish all the Labour candidates across the country and their footsore weary activists good luck for tomorrow. I’m particularly thinking of friends and comrades in Reading, Portsmouth, Cardiff, Haringey and Hackney, but I’m not exclusive. And best of luck to all of our Labour candidates across Oxford city. I’m proud to have worked for you over the last months, and I’m hoping to celebrate with you this time tomorrow.

If, in my worn-down state, I could work out how to do it, I would post a photo from my phone of me grinning with a freshly-created “re-elect Ed Turner” placard, the day-glo yellow contrasting nicely with my pearls. But afraid managing technology is beyond me, so you’ll just have to imagine it. Good night.

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This article about celebrities who are considering voting Tory (and the reaction of a traditional Tory to why they were converting) tickled me:

One thing that bothers me is that when you quiz these potential swing voters on what has drawn them to the party, it tends to be the things that most sound like initiatives from the Lib Dems, the Greens or New Labour.
“I think David Cameron’s very appealing on the NHS and the environment,” a Left-leaning Tory convert told me on Friday.
Right, but since when was being a Tory about using taxpayers’ money to prop up ailing, super-inefficient state monoliths? When was it about surrendering rationalism, rigour and economic pragmatism to what some would see as an overblown scare story that owes more to New Age superstition and misguided sentiment than hard-headed science?

And while we’re on the subject of what separates parties, here’s an Oxford student Liberal on the difference between Labour and the Liberals:

… rather than forming a progressive alliance with Labour against the Tories, we need to seek to build a liberal alliance to battle against two authoritarian, intrusive and statist parties that are, in their different ways, just as bad as each other. Labour’s commitment to social justice can’t justify their invasive style of government; the fact that they share many of our ends can’t justify their means.

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… liberal-lefty unmarried couples who “have to” get married to avoid inheritance tax. Remarkably un-self-aware article in the Observer here.

Oh, and this irritated me too:

… the UK is alone in insisting that this punitive tax can only be avoided if two partners marry - unless, as it happens, they happen to be of the same sex, in which case they are able to demand a civil partnership ceremony that declares them as good as man and wife and thus immune to the tax.
It’s heterosexuals who are forced to surrender their freedom in order to save their children the necessity of paying the tax at their death.
In France, and in a number of US states, the equivalent of a civil partnership is granted to heterosexuals. So the government’s attitude is reminiscent, in its grim Victorian dictates, of the worst discrimination against what used to be known as living in sin.

Er, nope. Civil partnership = marriage, in every meaningful sense. Would have been a lot simpler if they’d just called it that, to be honest, but they didn’t. So excuse me for not wanting straight couples to be able to get civil partnerships until gays can get married, and excuse me for thinking that neither cause is particularly urgent at the moment, no matter what those who write for the Observer think. I think I last pointed this one out a few years ago.

Talking of civil partnerships, there was a lovely moment today. It won’t surprise you to know that I’ve been out tapping on lots of doors ahead of the local elections in Oxford. Earlier I spoke to a woman who had a problem which needed sorting out (I’m being deliberately vague) so I popped into her lounge to take down the details, out of the cold. Her wall was covered in photos of her family - there must have been forty of them, and when I commented on them, she proudly said that she was very careful to make sure that she had all her sons and daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were up there, though the newest great-grandson won’t arrive until later this summer so he’s not up yet. She pointed out her own children, including one photo of two women, with a cutting from the paper stuck into the frame. “That’s my daughter and her girlfriend on their wedding day - she’s gay, so they had one of those civil unions. What a lovely day - here’s the ad me and her Dad put in the Oxford Mail for them.” And we returned to talking about parking, and all the other things people might talk to a party political canvasser about. Marvellous.

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This is rather wonderful. Fix My Street is a new-ish project from the boys at My Society who brought us Write to Them and They Work For You. When I heard about it, I subscribed to the feed to hear about problems being reported in my ward, and promptly forgot about it.

This Thursday morning, the pedestrian lights went down at the corner of Cornwallis Road and Henley Avenue. A man called David Sheldon reported it on the site and the site emailed the county council four minutes later to tell them. Someone called Ray Taylor later fed back that they were working again. Doubt it was the service that prodded the council into action, as the lights were back up again in an hour or so, but I really like that the web is being used like this, and think there’s real potential for this service to become a way to report problems in the neighbourhood.

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I know who I’m backing in the battle of South Oxhey.

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Here in Oxford, we’re gearing up for our local elections once again, after our one year in four without elections in 2007 - when you have city council elections in two years out of four, plus county, general and European elections, you don’t get many years without an election! Oxford city council has two-member wards, with one councillor elected every two years. So, for example, I was elected in 2006 for Rose Hill and Iffley ward, and have two years still to go; my colleague Ed Turner was last elected in 2004, and will be seeking another four years this May.

Below is the full list of 24 Labour standard bearers hoping to restore local government in our city. (There are, of course, other candidates too: Greens and Tories in all wards; Liberals in all OxWAb wards, but, oddly, not all Oxford East wards; IWCA, Respect - not sure which flavour - and assorted independents in a few places. If you’re really interested, the full list is here).

Barton and Sandhills - Andrew Lomas
Blackbird Leys - Cllr Val Smith
Carfax - Sarah Hutchinson
Churchill - Mark Lygo
Cowley Marsh - Cllr Saj Malik
Cowley - Cllr Bryan Keen
Headington Hill and Northway - Maureen Christian
Headington - Van Coulter
Hinksey Park - Cllr Oscar van Nooijen
Holywell - Kieran Hutchinson Dean
Iffley Fields - Mike Rowley
Jericho and Osney - Cllr Colin Cook
Littlemore - Cllr John Tanner
Lye Valley - Cllr Bob Timbs
Marston - Beverley Hazell
North - Sue Ledwith
Northfield Brook - Richard Stevens
Quarry and Risinghurst - Laurence Baxter
Rose Hill and Iffley - Cllr Ed Turner
St. Clement’s - Altaf Hussain
St. Margaret’s - James Fry
St. Mary’s - David Green
Summertown - Scott Seamons
Wolvercote - Michael Taylor

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Yesterday, Stonewall published a report, Serves you right, based on a survey on the experiences of lesbian and gay people. Apparently it was the first statistically-significant survey of its kind, surveying 1658 people of YouGov’s panel of 115,000. (I was one of those surveyed, by the way. YouGov, here’s a hint for free - we have civil partnerships now, we can’t get sacked for being gay, heck, we can even serve in the army, so you really don’t need to preface the question with “Some people might think the following questions to be of a personal nature”. We’re grown-ups, and we can cope with you just asking which team we bat for).

Anyway, even if the survey was the first of its kind, it was really rather bland, to be honest. Most people still know that the Tories don’t really feel very comfortable with the gays (Boris gave some rather wonderful proof of that the other day). The extent of homophobic bullying is still depressing. Discrimination, prejudice and the perception of it still deter lesbian and gay people from using public services and getting involved in their communities - particularly anything where lesbian and gay people might come into contact with children.

The bit that particularly interested me was about the gays and politics. Apparently between 60 and 70 per cent of gays think they’d face barriers to selection as a Labour parliamentary candidate or council candidate, and about ninety per cent for the Tories.

My experience is that it’s not been an issue for local party members, people in my ward, or councillor colleagues of all parties or staff of the council; it’s been an issue for commenters to this blog (notably here) and for the anonymous writer of the political column in the Oxford Mail, who is wont to insert the description “lefty lesbian” in front of my name, as if I were some early-eighties GLC throwback (though s/he’s got a bit better recently). What I couldn’t do is put up with the sheer homophobia Conservative wannabe-MP Iain Dale experiences in any comments thread on his blog which even touches lightly on homosexuality. And I recognise that my experience, in a liberal-minded city with a youngish Labour group and an active local party is probably not the norm.

A little over two years ago I posted about an amazing inspirational Zimbabwe trade unionist I met, Tabitha Khumalo. She told us about the dangers she faced, about the times she was thrown into prison, about her fears that she wouldn’t be allowed back into her country, yet she was determined to keep opposing Mugabe. People of my age didn’t stand outside South Africa House, singing “We will overcome”, but we sang it with her, in a conference hall in Coventry, two years ago.

Anyway, about an hour ago, a familiar face was fleetingly on News 24, and I hurried to my computer.

Here’s the confirmation of what the BBC’s caption said: Tabitha Khumalo MP, MDC. Maybe change is coming, at last, in Zimbabwe.

Do you know what? I don’t care that Harriet Harman looked silly in a stab vest when out with the police in her constituency. But here’s something I do care about: tomorrow, for the first time, a Labour woman will answer Prime Minister’s Questions for a Labour government. That’s something to be proud of.

(Yes, I know two women have played a starring role before. But one was a Tory, and one was in really horrible circumstances and in opposition.)

UPDATE, 2 April: she was really rather good. Hurrah!