What's left of the Bedford Road loo

What's left of the Bedford Road loo, originally uploaded by Simon Redfern.

Now this shows that stuff can be done. This was a really horrible public bog that sat, squat and unpleasant at the top of my road. There was always loads of druggie types hanging around there, and it obscured the car-park behind making it a great place for bad things to happen.

Hats off then to Cllrs Reardon and Gladstone, two Labour activists in the Borough who have done the near impossible and got the thing pulled down.

Not with a bang but a meeting

Last night, at a meeting of a certain polticial party of which I am much beloved, a man stood up to report on the year's activities. "Well" he said, "we have had nine main meetings, and we lost three byelections".

We then went on to endorse the same tired structural set up for another year. Well I didn't endorse it, but that's one of the irritating quirks of democracy.

So now we'll have meetings and pre-meetings before the meetings. Sometimes we will even have a meeting and then hold the same meeting again for a few additional members who aren't part of the executive. And my brain will implode with boredom, frustration and impotence.

This is the collective madness to which my party has come. Unshakeable adherence to a rule book that is becoming in parts utterly obsolete, a rule book which has all but removed radicalism, sponteneity and flexibility from our political lexicon.. And last night we were unable to prevent the forces of conservatism winning out again.

But there is hope...

An appalling act...

Another case of 'mad dad' syndrome is all over the papers today. It's hard to know the circumstances but it just leaves me with a sense of total horror and confusion. A bad divorce, losing your house, your life changing irrevocably. Of course there are strong emotions, but enough to over-ride the love you have for your own children, to the extent you would rather snuff out their lives than let them live? This needs more explanation.

Is it that such men feel homicidally disempowered by their lives? Or that they feel like perennial victims blaming everyone around them for their lot? Whatever the circumstance it seems to me to be the worst crime of all: to take the lives of children because you want to deprive your partner of them, claiming ultimate ownership of them and their existence just because you had a part in their creation.

These actions have to have their roots in some kind of infantilised rage which finds its escape in the most horrific and deadly way: the last lashing out by a totally damaged mind that refutes, in those final moments, every last claim on fatherhood.

Remembrance of things past

For anyone that ever sat in the balcony at Labour conference and tried hard not to be moved to tears by one of Tony Blair's early speeches: this is for you...

http://tonyblairoffice.org/2008/05/blair-delivers-yale-class-day.html

I think that's just you and me Steve... Ah well.

Change the Crewe?

Crewe and Nantwich. Difficult. We need to reflect. The campaign was poor - we knew that half way through, but didn't seem to change tack. I also have an issue with the campaign materials which insulted the intelligence of many voters. In this day and age we have to respect residents' knowledge about the world around them, not try to pull the wool.

One example was the inflated claim that Tamsin Dunwoody had helped convince the Chancellor to compensate losers in Crewe over the 10p tax band debacle. Everyone knows that is political bluster. Why not just calm down and focus on the facts? It frustrates me.

I don't want to carp and criticise. Gordon is a phenomenal politician who has slipped behind the zeitgeist, I hope temporarily. We need some of the new Labour organisational skills back, some of the dynamic narrative. I suspect that the quiet twosome, Milburn and Byers, may have something to add to this debate - they were campaiging hard in C&N I note.

A quick reality check

Put me in a room full of the party faithful and my political batteries re-charge. It's why I love party conference so much.

So tonight's Progress meeting, Can Labour Win in the South?, was just what I needed. I can already see the big beaming grin spreading across Lewis's face so let me elaborate. First off, the room was completely rammed. Packed. A good sign.

Charles Clarke was pretty restrained and it would be difficult to build a critical story out of most of the comments he made - although he did set out a very Blairite routemap as a way through. I could see the political ghosts of Alan Milburn and Steve Byers standing behind him, a bit like Yoda and Obi Wan at the end of Return of the Jedi.

John Denham was passionate about Gordon's ability to get the party out of its current position. Everyone on the panel talked about a febrile media environment with "paraphrasing" misquotes rampant.

It was the call for authenticity that rang true for me - that's what appears to be lacking at the moment. Alan Johnson was authentic on Today this week - angry at the "True Confessions" mindset, irritated that policy is playing second fiddle to personality. But of course personality is the conduit for authenticity. Hmmm tricky that...

All in all it was a great analysis of the current situation from a politician's, rather than a commentator's, point of view.

Derek Draper was nice, Nicky Gavron took a shed-load of notes, as did Martha Kearney. Peter Hain listened, nodded, but cuts an odd figure these days without a Cabinet role.

Dawkins!

This morning Richard Dawkins did two impossible things before breakfast, on the Today programme. First he nobbled Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Conor's argument that perhaps athiests should have a dialogue with the church. Second he actually put John Humphreys on the spot arguing that, given he's always so forensic in his interviews with politicians, he shouldn't let the good Cardinal off just because he purports to believe in a higher power.