grimmerupnorth

I'm sure my comrades in the north-east will be delighted at the news that NUM President Ian Lavery has been selected to fight the safe seat of Wansbeck in Northumberland.

For months it was rumoured that Jack Dromey , spouse of Harriet Harman, was to be "parachuted" into Leyton and Wanstead . In the end, Dromey's clout as a key player in UNITE landed him a safe seat in Birmingham.

The language we use in communicating ideas is desperately important. Too often, the left resorts to mantras and platitudes instead of arguing its case in terms people can understand.

When things aren't so great reading can be a great escape from stark realities. And the older I get the more interested I become in my genetic heritage. Which is 100 per cent Irish.
I was born in Manchester which has one of the largest Irish communities in the UK but the various counties of Galway, Meath, and County Down are all entwined in my DNA .
I've just been reading a book on Irish America I found absolutely fascinating. Coming into Clover by journalist Maureen Dezell is no Angela's Ashes whinge-fest but an academic look at how people fared as the diaspora in various waves of immigration.
Interviewing hundreds of people in the cause of her research, she writes about America but much of what she says will strike a chord with anyone growing up in an Irish background. The study shows we are in many ways our own worst enemies.
My mother often told a tale of getting dressed up to go out dancing in the 1940's and asking her mother how she looked. My mother was a good-lookinmg, well-turned-out woman always but "You'll pass in a crowd" was the stock answer she got from her mum - which more or less sums up the way in which many of us were brought up to be self-deprecating, with low expectations, and an innate lack of confidence which belied any intelligence, charm, or positive characteristics other cultures are rather more upbeat about. If your parents didn't do you down, the nuns and priests most certainly would.
The fearsome Mother Christina, Deputy Head at Loreto College , specialised in a reign of terror which these days would be unthinkable. These days it would be called emotional abuse.
Too many Irish women in previous generations accepted their lot with resignation, put up with the drunkenness which is still endemic in the male collective consciousness and, of course, fell in with teachings from the Catholic church which today have been thankfully discarded .
At the age of 16, I argued with a Jesuit priest about contraception. At the age of 18 I joined the Young Socialists. I wasn't alone - in fact one of my school friends got expelled for selling "Militant" !
Politics and religion go hand in hand - look at any left-wing group and you will probably find a disproportionate number of second and third generation Irish men and women still fighting the battles their forbears did.
Political argument was the mainstay of our house and to this day I can't understand those who find such talk distasteful or "confrontational." In fact, I hope to go to my grave still shouting the odds.

The last time there was a hung Parliament I was studying for O Levels. The result was so close that the outdome was not clear until the Friday morning following the February 1974 General Election. Our history teacher, a Labour supporter, brought a radio in so we could be part of the unfolding saga which saw Harold Wilson presiding over a minority Government.
The same might be true this time round when the votes are finally counted and I suppose the forecasts are an overwhelming relief given the dire predictions of a Tory landslide just 12 months ago.
Back in 1974, the result was so close of course that another General Election was held in the October. It is going to be an interesting night......

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/23/hung-parliament-tory-support-crumbles

Richard Curtis is renowned for escapist films like Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral and of course Love, Actually, in which Bill Nighy stole the show as an ageing rock star.

Yesterday to York for a meeting of LRC members from the North and East Midlands. Thanks to those from Durham, Carlisle, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield and Cambridgeshire who attended. Our mission was to talk through plans for after the General Election, which increasingly looks as though it will result in a hung Parliament, or minority Govt. We plan to meet again in June when the Election is over.......

Someone (I think it was George Burns) once remarked that old age was not for cissies.
Growing old is something most of us prefer not to think about. With good reason.
We spend silly money on anti-wrinkle creams and kid ourselves we are investing in somehow avoiding the inevitable ravages of time.
My own delusional behaviour has been brought up short by several weeks to-ing and fro-ing between Hebden Bridge and Wythenshawe 40 miles away where my previously defying the statistics father is suddenly at 89 a very frail old man- surrounded by people often years and years younger but even more incapacitated by ill-health.
We always hoped it would never come to this.Regarding the consumption of a whole banana as evidence that things were somehow getting better. Truth is they are not. And they won't.
And yet the sheer bravery I've witnessed in this place which needs tons more funding from central government should serve as an inspiration to all of us facing a possibly similar fate.
My dad told me tonight that the whole room he's been in for three weeks suddenly erupted in applause when a stroke victim suddenly managed to summon reserves from somewhere and stand up on his own two feet. There are people in their eighties determinedly hanging on by their Zimmer frames - and they are not going gently . They still want to live.
Whatever happens to my father, and believe you me he is still fighting the good fight against the dying of the light, I pledge to do my best to lobby and fight for better healthcare for our elderly people.
Martin Amis wants euthanasia booths giving "Martinis and a medal" for those who choose to end their own lives.
I regard such obscene pronouncements as a call to arms for all of us who call ourselves socialists to fight for a better-funded, universal healthcare system for the elderly people we will all one day be. No-one shoukld spend the last days of their lives in poverty- and alone

Breaking news: James Purnell, once touted as a future leader, is to stand down.
With the announcement of Hoon's departure, the sad and sorry bunch who tried to de-seat the PM are now going down like ninepins.
I shan't mourn Purnell's departure. One of the architects of the Welfare Reform Bill, and a career politician, he blew it bigtime when he resigned from the Cabinet.
At least he has had the grace to recognise that and leave Westminster. Which is more than one can say for others not so far away from Stalybridge and Hyde
Update:I hear from insiders that Purnell's news came as a complete shock to his local CLP which had already invested a siginificant amount of money in election leaflets etc. I also hear his replacement is likely to be a local candidate who might never set the world on fire but at least has a solid track-record in the area.Good luck to whoever is selected to fight the seat.

The other day I had something in common with Nick Winterton - I travelled first-class. I travelled that way because it was the cheapest way of getting from London to Manchester at a time when business travellers have long deserted their laptop stations and digested their business breakfast.
I almost had to pay twice because the kindness of a friend in dropping me by car at Euston station meant of course we hit wall-to-wall traffic en route and I missed the (first-class) train I had booked.
Subterfuge was called for.
I plonked myself in an appropriate carriage, ordered a coffee and hoped for the best. In the event, I got away with sitting on a train which left 20 minutes after the one I should have been on. And therein lies the madness of it all.
Not only do we have a class-ridden, two-tier railway service. The whole privatised caboodle is an on-line lottery where it is sometimes cheaper to travel first and enjoy the undoubted benefits - nice gin and tonic, wine, free tea and coffee, and sandwiches and snacks all provided too .
If you're unlucky, it's standing-room only, long delays, clapped-out kitchens and all at premium prices. Cheap tickets, much-touted in the trade, have to be booked weeks in advance. Fine if you're on a tourist trip. Not so great in an emergency.
What we want, and what Labour Party members have been demanding for years, is a first-class railway for all , back in public hands, and providing everyone with fair fares. Not the shambles which we have at the moment, whichever part of the train you choose to sit in.

Having been away from the blogging arena for a bit ( at the moment it is renewing my spirits in rather difficult times ) I was intrigued to see that Phil in Stoke has left the SP and joined the Labour Party.
I was particularly intrigued having spent a recent Saturday at the Right To Work conference organised by the far left, to which the LRC was invited.
As probably the most "right-wing" speaker there, I was arguing for the Labour left - and trying to argue against many who seemed to think the new Trade Union and Socialist Coalition was an answer. As Phil says in his post on the topic, the prospects eletorally are bleak.
It is pretty bleak also being a left-wing Labour member. No question. But to stand SP candidates against an excellent MP like Mark Fisher is madness.
So is the widely held view among many in the SWP that a vote for Labour is the same as voting Tory and that a Cameron Govt would be no worse. So, Phil, welcome to Labour. You have a long hard road ahead but we need people like you to carry on the fight. With no illusions..........

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/

This Saturday I'm heading for York with other members of the LRC for a joint meeting of members from Leeds, Manchester, West Yorkshire and the North.
By the time we get to the Friends Meeting House at 1pm I hope to hear some good news regarding Ian Lavery, currently President of the NUM, who is favourite to win the PC candidature in the safe seat of Wansbeck. If he wins, it will be a triumph indeed.
I believe the usual suspects have been trying for years to stop him being a candidate andf the fact he was lambasted in last week's Daily Mail as a "hard-line union baron" shows that maybe for once a socialist candidate sympathetic to the LRC has a chance of winning against the machine.
Bad news though from Leyton and Wanstead where I believe the NEC has stepped in to the selection process and rather astonishingly kept its own member, Christine Shawcroft, from making it to the final shortlist.
I also understand that John Cryer, who lost his Hornchurch seat at the last election, is the left's last man standing . Serious commiserations to Christine, who has spent months campaigning in the constituency.

When Neil Kinnock issued his famous speech re the danger of a Tory Govt many of us admired its sheer sincerity and raw appeal to Labour's sense of social justice.
Over 20 years on I wonder what has happened in a world where our old people are treated so shamefully and inadequately by an NHS which was once the envy of the world.
My eyes to the reality behind the slogans of the spin doctors have been opened by several weeks spent visiting my father, now desperately ill, in a Manchester care home where staff are clearly struggling with the impact of years of under-funding.
This place, by the way, is no Gothic horrorshow but a new Intermediate Care unit opened several years ago by a New Labour Minister. When my father was admitted several weeks ago, my hope was he would be restored to health with a simple combination of rest and good food. Neither has transpired.
Food is not cooked on the premises - but outsourced and brought in from a private company in Wales.
Little of it is suitable for my father, who has a chronic gall bladder problem, and most of it is frankful woeful and unpalatable. The consequence is he has not put on any weight - yesterday I resorted to taking in two tins of soup in a desperate bid to improve the situation.
The prospects are not looking good because staff seem to have little notion of nutrition - probably not their fault. But I ask what kind of world are we in when we cannot give elderly people in NHS care a decent meal? When relatives have to advise staff on the right diet for malnourished old folk? And when requests to hand out smaller portions to stop loved ones being overfaced are just ignored?
The bottom line Andy Burnham is we are simply not doing enough for a growing population living way beyond the ages of their parents and grandparents.
The people I saw yesterday suffering from the impact of strokes, long illnesses and chronic conditions like arthritis. This is will be you and I one day.
The least all of us deserve is a system where we willl be treated with dignity and respect.
Free care , first-class care, not £20,000 death taxes and punishment for the crime of living way beyond three score years and ten.
Are the staff where my dad is doing their best? Yes of course they are. The stark truth is that , because we don't raise enough money for a decent NHS elderly care, it is simply not enough. Better than the Tories - but simply not what we should be getting from a Labour Government