Manifestivities

As I mentioned last week, LabourList has been collating ‘New ideas for a renewed movement’ from tweets and emails sent in. I submitted a few on Wednesday, inspired by my day at work -
Scrap the different rates of NMW and benefits according to age. Being under 25 is no less expensive than being 25+.
Schools should [...]

Tony Benn at the Bridgewater!

My latest e-newsletter from the People’s History Museum - due to re-open this autumn, and I’m counting the days! – informs me that Tony Benn has written the foreword to the museum’s forthcoming book with the University of Central Lancashire ‘The British Labour Movement and Imperialism’; and, even more excitingly, that there’s an Evening With Tony [...]

As promised!

Sorry, this post is going to be a bit massive. Like I said I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, and since I started it I’ve been delayed by swine flu and #freeBevaniteEllie and stuff.
In the couple of months since I was last regularly blogging, I have…
- been listening to a lot of Lily [...]

Rabnawaz Akbar on last night’s results

My local Labour candidate Rabnawaz emailed round this morning with this moving personal response to last night’s results, and was kind enough to let me re-post it here.
At about 2.00am in the morning (we were there since 7.00pm) once word was out that the BNP had won a seat in this region, I was like [...]

What Grace and friends have been up to lately (every blog post could be titled this, really, couldn’t it?)

A good friend of mine has spent part of this week arguing, over the internet, with some of the more opinionated and right-wing students at his university, which is full of opinionated and/or right wing students. (Yeah, that one.) I’m not going to go into the details of the argument because it makes me upset [...]

Going (back and) Fourth

Since it’s been a relatively quiet Bank Holiday Weekend for news – civilisation hasn’t yet descended into chaos at the hands of swine flu; no-one unusual-looking has proved unexpectedly talented at singing showtunes on telly - rather a lot of coverage has been given to various senior Labour figures bitching about the leadership, each other, and [...]

Moston featured in Radio 4’s The Report

The Report last night on Radio 4 was on the Nick Griffin’s chances in the Euro elections, with a feature on Moston as a ‘dress rehearsal’ for June’s vote. Interesting to hear how Sir Richard predicted the vote would go – obviously no-one predicted quite how many votes the BNP would get, but we didn’t [...]

One small step for Rabnawaz, one giant leap for Rusholme

I blogged last week about meeting my local Labour candidate, Rabnawaz Akbar, and about our plans to take Labour’s campaign for Rusholme online.
Well, mastery of the internet is one step closer today as Rabnawaz is now on Facebook, along with some pictures of his campaign so far. I was his first Facebook friend but he needs [...]

Exciting times in Rusholme BLP

I had a branch meeting this evening, having missed one or two, which meant it was my first chance to meet Rusholme’s local Labour candidate for next year’s council elections, Rabnawaz Akbar, and get an update on the campaign.
Rusholme is a famously diverse ward and the branch has some excellent ideas for targeting its campaigns [...]

Excellent result for Labour in Moston

According to two out of the three versions I’ve seen so far of yesterday’s by-election result in Moston, the votes went like this:
Lab 1353
BNP 815
LD 696
Con 558
Green 74
It’s a strong result for Labour, reflecting a strong, enthusiastic and very well-organised campaign; and the extent of the Tories’ humiliation is entertaining. (Cllr Lindley says he knows [...]