Labour Must Find Its Spine

Not much blogging of late. I have been too ill with various viruses . And I have been too angry.
Mulling over events of the past couple of weeks I feel that Labour has to find its spine again- soon.Or else we are in danger of losing the immense goodwill from voters which has delivered stunning by-election success in Barnsley and Oldham and Saddleworth.
It is an absolute disgrace that only a handful of Labour MPs voted against the Government's Welfare Reform Bill.
Well done those who did ie John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, Kelvin Hopkins, Jon Cruddas, Katy Clark, Mike Wood The rest abstained.
Sitting on the fence as we go to hell in a handcart is not an option in my book but it seems to be increasingly Plan B for too many in the Labour Party.
Now most of the council budgets have gone through we also need to ask some pretty searching questions as to why not one local Labour-led authority did the decent thing and voted against cuts.
I don't buy into the argument councillors had no choice. They did.
I also don't buy into the argument that Labour cuts are kinder than Tory cuts.
If you are one of the many recipients of a P45 or enforced retirement it matters not a jot who delivered the redundancy notice. So the lack of real opposition from Labour councillors has been a serious disappointment to many of us.Hand-wringing simply doesn't wash with me.
Nevertheless, we must continue our fight against the real enemy of the working-class , this Conservative-led Government.
Here in Yorkshire, thousands are heading for Sheffield this weekend to protest at the Liberal Democrat's spring conference. I hope Clegg gets a seriously rough ride..
Speaking as one of the many thousands looking the dole queue in the face I'm less conciliatory than some on the left. But frankly I have every right to be angry.And I will continue to be

WHY I'M SAYING NO TO AV .....

See the LRC website for more but here are my own personal thoughts on the matter......

Whatever happens on May 5, AV is not an issue I would die in a ditch for
However, ignoring the obvious temptation to just give the Lib Dems a bloody nose with a massive "No" vote, AV should be opposed for several reasons.
Firstly, it was none other than Nick Clegg who described it as a "miserable little conpromise."
It is not PR. It will not help minority parties like the Greens and those to the left of Labour get representation at Westminster. In fact, it will make it harder.
In strong Labour seats, the heartland constituencies, AV makes no difference at all.
In marginal seats, however, it is likely to lead to even more centrist politics with Labour candidates tempted to be all things to everyone to get over the 50 per cent threshold.
As the Electoral Reform Society says,it "rewards broad church policies."
On average, candidates who win under FPTP get 46 per cent of the vote anyway.
At the last election, AV would have given the Liberal Democrats 32 more seats and lost Labour 10 seats.No wonder they are in favour!
FPTP is by no means perfect but does mean that coalitions are less common..
It also sticks to the principle of ‘one person, one vote. .
AV, is only used in Papua, New Guinea and Australia, where voting is compulsory.
It is not particularly progressive.It is at best an irrelevance, and at worst a distraction from the real struggles people are facing in the face of this Government..
Liberal Democrats sold their souls to hold this bogus referendum with a bogus electoral change with little positive consequence for those facing cuts to services and job losses..
Let's not give them any credibility whatsoever. Vote No.

MASTERCHEF

Tonight's dinner chez moi is likely to consist of new potatoes (reduced at the co-op) with mashed swede (likewise) dressed up with herbs, onion and fishcake.
Last night I did spaghetti with kale, tomatoes, onion and ginger. So with a bit of luck the £10 i allocated for food on Sunday will stretch till tomorrow.
Such penury is, superficially, unnecessary. However, I am on Death Row at my current place of employment and waiting to hear if it's two, three, or possibly a month or so's time until my resources really will be stretched. And necessity the mother of inventions Greg and John could only imagine .
The only comfort, amid all this uncertainty, is that one is anything but alone. A growing band of shoppers in my local co-op do a little circuit to the sell-by veg and other items in the hope of picking up a bargain. Which means there are fewer and fewer to be had.
While welcoming the U-turn on the sell-off of the forests, it is striking there will be no turning on any of the policies which fundamentally affect people's lives. It is a nightmare beyond our worst imaginings.
In the 1930's, people flocked to the pictures to see how the other half lived and these days that translates into enthusiasm for vapid programmes like Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, newly revived for a new generation facing a return to the days of sharper class diviision and what is clearly a wholesale attempt to destroy the welfare state most of us took a little too much for granted.
The anger felt by millions will hopefully translate into a massive turn-out on March 26 for the anti-cuts demo being organised by the TUC. But what happens afterwards is far more important.
There is a danger that the despair many feel at the daily news of cuts and job losses will fade into apathy and resignation. It is up to the leaders of the labour movement to steer a path towards a fighting spirit and hope that things can change.
Meanwhile, I am battening down the hatches, re-trenching for a rough road ahead and trying not to fall into the slough of despond.
The truth is that Cameron, Clegg et al have NO IDEA what it is like to live on a limited income. If they did, they would know that their Big Society is a sick society - in which the poorest and the weakest are set to face years of suffering . On a scale very few of us could have imagined in the run-up to the General Election. The leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party, now threatened by the gerrymandering of 50 constituencies, also needs to get its act together fast and come out in real solidarity with those it is supposed to represent.
The solidarity shown by these six councillors in Hackney is at least a start
http://l-r-c.org.uk/news/story/all-behind-the-hackney-six/

THE GREAT DIVIDE

A story in today's Independent outlines how the health and wealth gap between the North and South has never been wider. Anyone surprised?
When the vast majority of the money of this country is London-focussed, don't be too surprised when people up here die up to 15 years before their counterparts down south.
On Saturday I was in Halifax for a "Northern Towns Against The Cuts" TUC demonstration which felt as though the 1980's had never gone away.
Halifax itself, awash with Poundland-type premises and empty shops, is a town which never did well even in the good years. Now, like many other pplaces in the North, it's facing meltdown.
Yorkshire currently has a 20 per cent rate of empty retail premises in its towns and cities - the worst in the country.In places like Hebden Bridge, almost entirely dependent on the service sector, the effect will be catastrophic.

NO BAR TO VOTING......

I've been burgled. Twice. Major ransacking of my tiny little flat in Salford was the major reason I moved to the quiet hills of Hebden Bridge 14 years ago.
And having your house trashed is a not a pleasant business.
However......it woulsd made not ablind bit of difference to my distress had my burglars had access to the ballot box.
Indeed, I hope they would have voted Labour - and remain utterly astonished at the way in which the various Westminster tribes have huddled together on the issue of prisoners voting.
Only a handful of Labour MPs (Glenda Jackson, Andy Love, John McDonnell, Kerry McCarthy) took the (I think) sensible stance that just because you are behind bars that does not utterly negate your basic right to have a say in our democracy.
In short, you are still a human being
But clearly I am in a minority so tiny it does not even include most of the "usual suspects."
Did the overwhelming majority of MPs back this incredibly reactionary stance on a wave of outrage whipped up by "libertarian" Tory David Davis and hard-liner Jack Straw.
Or were they just scared of upsetting constituents also frothing at the mouth thanks to the rubbish spouted by the Daily Mail et al.
For the life of me I cannot see what the fuss was all about.
Even the poor wretches shipped off in clanking irons and transported to Australia eventually got the chance to rehabilitate into society.
In denying prisoners the vote, we are writing them off as irredeemable. Bad call.

NOT A FAIR DIVVYING UP....

In times of stress, people tend to seek the comfort of addictive substances like alcohol and cigarettes. No they shouldn't, but that doesn't give anyone else the right to act as judge and jury. Especially when they profit from others' nasty habits.
So bad call by the Co-op, which has just banned smokers from getting reward points on the divi for their fags.
Outrageous is what I say because why don't they do similar for alcohol, saturated fats, junk food or indeed any other substance ( there are many) sold in a Co-op store which is unhealthy and unlauded by the lifestyle police.
Logically, the answer would be to INCREASE points for healthy choices not penalise the (largely working class) people who have already been hounded out of pubs, restaurants and most public places.
I don't think any of us have a problem with considerate behaviour to others not wishing to be polluted by others' smoke. But I do have a problem with shoppers who still smoke being singled out for punishment in a country where we're building supersize ambulances to cope with the fast increasing number of morbidly obese.

FROM GRIMMER TO GRIMMEST

The harsh winds of the recession have reached gale force round here which means blog time is soon to be mine once again.
"Grimmer" is about to become "Grimmest" as in a couple of weeks' time I will be starting from scratch and looking for work along with thousands of other unemployed journalists.
"Unemployed" is a slight misnomer in that as a freelance I have job-hopped for 21 years.
But this time it is serious.
After 16 months as a casual shifter at a leading paper in Yorkshire the management have decided that our services are no longer required. Why?
Despite the fact they got us cheap there is even cheaper to be had in the form of young trainees who will work (who can blame them?) for salaries many were earning 15 years ago.
Circulations are plummeting along with advertising and the internet has made massive inroads into newspaper readerships. Paywalls don't work. And neither do many of my colleagues in the NUJ.
Much publicity recently re Miriam O' Reilly who successfully won a case against the BBC for getting rid of her on grounds of age. As a fellow baby boomer, I sympathise.
My generation had a good time. We got free NHS orange juice, free university education, and we came in at the tail-end of the good times in journalism. And I had those too.
This means I face job-hunting in my fifties with at least a fair back-up of money which I saved for the bad times. Because I knew they were going to come.
Thatcher arrived when I was 21 and those of us who knew the horror of the Tory years never bought the end of boom and bust.
The 1980's have haunted most of my working career and now they are back it seems they have never been away.
I'm shortly off to meet a publisher. I have an idea for a book.It won't make me much money but maybe channel my thought in the coming months on other ways of earning a living.
Over the years I have learned resilience. And now I shall need it more than ever.
In recent weeks, many of my pieces have been on the plight of students at the sharp end of this Government's wholesale destruction of the things we all took for granted.
At the recent demonstration in Manchester, I felt like weepng for all the youngsters facing mountains and mountains of debt. It was as if Thatcher never went away.
So, though this maelstrom of misery, I plan to chart life as it is at the Coalition coalface. Solidarity to all in similar state.....