Kerry McCarthy, Labour’s Queen of Twitter

It’s been an evening of confusion in the grey area between old and new media – Mark Hanson has summed up pretty well what happened when the Guardian let slip something LabourList was supposed to tell us first. It’s almost as though Labour needs someone to coordinate our new media presence…oh, wait, what do you know [...]

Burma: Free Aung San Suu Kyi

As you’ve probably heard, Aung San Suu Kyi was found guilty earlier today in her trial for “violating the conditions of her house arrest”. She was sentenced to another 18 months of house arrest – meaning she’ll still be imprisoned during Burma’s next general election.
Amnesty say: ‘Until she is released unconditionally, there can be no genuine improvement in [...]

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 [...]

Donate Not Hate

Got the following email from Hope Not Hate today:
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Thanks to the expense scandals we’re in a tough spot.
Voters are turning away from the traditional political parties – and the BNP are cranking up their propaganda machine to try to take advantage.
Politicians have let every person in Britain down. Lots of people could be considering staying [...]

Enough is enough

On Friday night I was at the launch of Manchester Young Labour at the Town Hall. The turnout was encouraging – even a few young members who’d joined up in the last fortnight – but the talk inevitably focused on MPs’ expenses, with an on-form Andy Burnham getting questions on little else.
One member said she’d [...]

Topshop falsely imprisons P&P activists. Yes, really.

Remember I was blogging about People & Planet’s ‘Redress Fashion’ Day of Action aimed at Topshop? This is how it went down in Edinburgh. Absolutely outrageous.

‘Missing the point’ moment of the day

Spotted a girl on the bus with a re-useable shopping bag from Topshop. Slogan: ‘Reshop/Reuse/Recycle’. What the fuck might ‘re-shop’ mean, exactly?
This might be a good moment to remind you all of People & Planet’s Day of Action against Topshop, particularly since it’s tomorrow. Call 0844 984 0264 and ask why Topshop hasn’t joined the [...]

Free Roxana Saberi

(Copy and pasting alert…give me a break, I’ve had a long day)
Roxana Saberi is an American journalist who has been imprisoned in Iran since late January. She was first arrested for purchasing wine (which is illegal in Iran) and held without charges for over a month. On April 8 she was suddenly charged with espionage [...]

Save the whal…ing campaigners

I can’t remember if I’ve treated you to this bit of ‘Grace’s life’ trivia before, but: the first campaign I ever took part in was a Greenpeace ‘Save The Whales’ one, when I was five. (I wasn’t clinging to the mast of the Rainbow Warrior, or anything, I just wrote a letter to someone in Japan [...]

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 [...]