I really meant it when I said super-busy…
It’s been more than three months since I posted here - the longest time I’ve left the blog dormant (and non-existant for a while, when my hosts forgot to remind me to pay for it). I did say I’d be super-busy. And I love it - work, representing Rose Hill and Iffley on the council, and, especially, being lead member for social inclusion and young people on Oxford City Council.
Here’s one of the things I’ve been putting time into rather than writing blog posts:
A £2.5M overhaul of Oxford’s rusting play areas is to start within months.
All 94 play areas will be transformed from ageing relics to ones containing new swings and slides within two years as part of a radical programme of investment.
(Quite what possessed me to swing, monkey-style, from a swing frame with no swings in front of the Oxford Mail’s photographer, I don’t know!)
Lots of the other things I’m working on are a little more low-key, but still vital: community centres, community cohesion, playschemes, grants for the voluntary sector - enough to keep me out of trouble.
Anyway, I don’t know whether I’m back blogging or not, to be honest, so see you around.
I think you should try. I thought it was good when Stephen Tall blogged sometimes about the stuff he was doing - such as that podcast he did explaining the budget process.
Besides, in the next couple of months I want to be inviting people to join an Oxford blogs aggregator - to try and create a sort of online co-operative news and views site from and about Oxford and it would be pretty dull without some Labour blogging (not that I hope it will be mainly political necessarily).
David Miliband yesterday gave the speech of a leader in waiting to the Labour Party Conference.
So much so that he even admitted afterwards that he had to tone it down so it didn’t come across as a “Heseltine moment!”
Despite more spin from the Brown camp suggesting all is fine and everyone is happy as ever the plot goes on.
Yesterday it was revealed that the latest figures in on the plot are Hazel Blears and Caroline Flint.
One report suggests that Gillian Merron may also be in on it after declining to appear on stage during the Foreign Affairs debate yesterday.
And another suggests that there is dismay amongst the Cabinet ahead of Brown’s speech later today with some openly saying that it could well be an “acute embarrassment!”
Earlier on Sunday John Prescott and Charles Clarke were Literally at each other’s throats on The Politics Show, David Miliband was promoting his Leadership campaign for Progress ready for the Downfall of Glenrothes, and John Cruddas was demanding a 45 per cent tax rate for anyone earning over £175,000.
In the words of Rebel Labour MP Barry Gardiner: “It’s like a family putting on a good face at Christmas, when underneath it all, the family knows there are problems and that they need to be addressed!”