Here’s the resolution I’ll be putting to my Labour party branch tonight:
 “That this branch notes the action taken by Liverpool City Council, in cross-party co-operation, in respect of the potential for adding an ethical dimension to the Statement of Investment Principles of the Merseyside Pension Fund.
 
Further, that the branch notes the potential for the development within local […]

There’s been a debate on the ‘members-only’ discussion forum about a petition now circulating calling for the introduction of a limited number of ‘smoking licences’, which would give “the owners of pubs and clubs freedom to allow people to smoke on their property………allowing business owners to decide how to run their businesses and customers to […]

Myself and a couple of seemingly like-minded bloggers have been challenging the well-right of centre views of a blogger from the other side of the pond who’s accusing the UK unions and all who support their right to do what they were set up for of a ‘return to the 1970s’.  My view for what […]

A ‘hat tip’, as real bloggers say, to Dave Ostler for bringing this critique by Tom Hampson (of the Fabians) of the growing use of the terms ‘chav’ to my attention.  For starters, I left this as what started out as a brief comment on his blog, but then it kind of grew organically into a […]

Last year, my first as councillor and as opposition spokesperson on matters relating to leisure, arts and culture services, I focused a fair bit of my energies on a study of the way the Council has handled the privatisation of its leisure services, and how the private company Serco has run those services.  My findings […]

Well, it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve run out of steam, so here’s a couple of jokes, courtesy of the marvellous Angela.  Don’t know where she got them.  My wife fell off the sofa laughing at one, but she is quite silly.
 1) Why do communists only drink herbal tea?
Because proper tea is theft.
2) Marx is round […]

There’s a  lot of blogging activity today around ‘outsourcing’ of public services (‘privatisation’ is how its more commonly phrased by those on the left, but I prefer to stick with the right’s own language when seeking to prove they are wrong).
 Coincidentally, this week I got the latest ‘usage figures’ (for 2007, after a long wait and quite a few asks) […]

A ‘hat tip’, as I now understand experiened bloggers call it, to my friend Angela for reminding me of the publication of the Public Services Industry Review yesterday by the Dept for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (aka John Hutton’s Dept).  Angela also directs me to initial coverage and John Harris’s comment on it, which I think is […]

Here is the Summer 2008 Bickerstaffe Record which will be landing with a satisfying clunk on the doormats of Bickerstaffe Ward residents over the next few days.  This one’s a 12 pager like the last one.   My wife and quite a few Labour colleagues think it’s a bit mad writing such big newsletters, but people seem to read […]

A week or two back I noted my keenness to get involved in the coming fluoridation debate that’s going to be raging soon across the North West.
I have not kicked things off very well.  I was away for a couple of days and came back to the usual eletronic heap of phone messages, two of […]