Does Labour deserve to win?

Damn right it does!

First, the economy. The Stock Exchange stopped going down yesterday and actually went up. That couldn't have happened if the banks were still in free-fall. I find that this month isn't markedly different from around 4 months ago, when this crisis first appeared in the news. Actually, tomorrow, when I fill my car with diesel, it will cost me less than it did 4 months ago. My mortgage is the same now as it was then. My other bills haven't gone up. Food did go up, but is now on the way back down. World leaders have complimented Gordon Brown's bold handling of this crisis. People here in the UK are slowly catching on to that, judging by the Opinion polls, finally favouring Gordon's handling of the economy.

Employment. Correct me, if I'm wrong, but didn't the Tories have much higher unemployment than we do now? Double now? Many more people were benefit-trapped. We are a much more service-based economy than we used to be, so we have no more, or little more, manufacturing base to lose. Labour introduced Sure Start, the Minimum Wage, Childcare and after school clubs, which has enabled many, particularly single parents to re-enter the job market.

Education. Schools were dire when I was at school in the 1960's. Schools didn't even try to move around 75% of their students forward to college, grammar schools or university. During the first year in the newly elected 1964 Labour government, one teacher told us that Labour was spending £25 million on education. £25 million was a huge amount back then.

Law 'n Order. Finally, Labour has been proving that this topic is no longer exclusive Tory turf. It never has been, in fact. But for some reason, people's perception is that Tories are tough on crime. Probably because the right of the party succeed from time to time in attempting to return the Death Penalty. They always fail and they always will.

Crimes get reported now much more than they ever did before. There's always been murders, robberies and fraudsters. There's always been crooks and paedophiles. There's always been knife crimes, bombings and shootings.

The irony is, that the authorities are more successful than ever, in both catching and punishing criminals, although this is overshadowed by so much more information about how violent a place any nation can be.

Of course, it is always right to campaign, and do whatever we can to rid the streets of murderers, rapists, paedophiles and thieves. Education is key here. Crime is a weed that's fertilised by people who are excluded. Criminals prey on their need for money, drugs and drink, and even sex. The weeds take over the garden. The best way to make sure you don't have weeds is to have a tidy garden in the first place.

Labour has probably only achieved a small part of what people, and good, loyal Labour people, believe it should achieve. World class schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and also decent affordable homes for people who would like to improve their lives and for those who simply can't.

The Tories believe in an Excel spreadsheet where only companies and shareholders matter. Everyone else is rewarded as an afterthought. Without the "afterthoughts", there would be no companies to have shares.

What Gordon Brown's been trying to do, is to help our country and also the world to avoid a terrible depression. If people refuse to co-operate and try to make political capital out of this situation, then that's all they'll end up with. Political capital. Even America, that proud bastion of Western capitalism, is wising up that their government and opposition alike, will need to unite to see us through this. If the majority of people refuse to co-operate over here, then we're all really going to head for all time economic nose-dive - and we'll have deserved it, if we're that daft!

Learning by mistakes; or not....

I've always assumed that to become an MP, you need to be above average intelligence, have a modicum of common sense and have the ability to learn not to repeat mistakes.

The Labour MPs, who have been requesting nomination papers, don't seemed to have benefited by Labour's own mistakes in the 80's and the Tories, in the 90's.

Voters have never re-elected a governing party who is at war with itself. Neither have they voted for a party who have had a leadership election a year before a general election is due. A party, especially a party that is governing the country, simply cannot put into a place a proposal that is credible to the people in such a short time.

If these MPs reckon that Gordon Brown is such a bad leader, then they should have made this plain when Tony Blair left. Gordon Brown is not a bad leader. He is simply facing economic circumstances that Tony Blair never had to face. The irony is that most people, if they're honest, accept that Gordon Brown delivered Tony Blair's leadership a mightily improved economy, when he was Chancellor.

Mortgages and prices were low enough and stable enough for me to succeed in buying my flat.
I am as clearly convinced as it's possible to be, that this was because Labour was in power and not the Tories. Most of my success is my own, but Labour definitely helped me.

In the 1950's, the city of Los Angeles had a streetcar system. It was ripped up and replaced by busses. NCL was an organisation formed to acquire streetcar facilities and NCL was owned by Firestone Tyres, General Motors, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum.
Perhaps in the 1950's, this de-railing of the streetcars didn't seem such a bad idea.

However, in London, in 2008, I would've thought London voters would have known better. Mayor Ken Livingstone bravely introduced the Congestion Charge. Personally, I have never needed dissauding from driving into London's city centre, even before the introduction of the Congestion Charge. It was hell to find a place to park and when you did, it cost a fortune, you could walk to where you were going, faster, than you could drive there.

Mayor Boris has scrapped the £25 charge for Chelsea Tractors. Apart from being total gas-guzzlers, they take up far more space than my modest 1.6L car. Are roads going to be enlarged to make room for these huge vehicles? I even saw a Chelsea Tractor that was so large that it couldn't even get into a car park!

The more sinister overtone for London is that Porsche's involvement in city politics. Well, the London voters apparently agree with Porsche and Boris?

Anglia Ruskin University the first 150 years!

Of course, we've only been entitled "university" since 1992. John Ruskin, the famous art critic, author and poet, opened, in 1858 , the School of Art in Sidney Street, Cambridge. Ruskin thus laid the foundation for what is today, Anglia Ruskin University.

In 1976, the Mid-Essex Technical College, merged with Brentwood College of Education to form the Chelmer Institute Of Higher Education.

A series of other changes took place and in 1992, Anglia Polytechnic University was born. Public perception of the term "polytechnic" was that this somehow subtracted from the university.

The title "Anglia Ruskin University" was granted by the Privy Council in 2005. Anglia Ruskin University seems to have more energy these days, perhaps because of this rebrand.

I enjoy working here. There's something very rewarding about being a part of providing resources and services to enable to students to gain their degree and realize their ambitions, make their dreams come true. Most importantly, in this ever increasingly competitive world of work, gaining a firmer foothold there and the confidence that goes with that.

You could say we're a dream factory!

Enviroment and how we save it

It occurred to me that I've said almost nothing about the environment. And you may wonder what the EU flag is to do with this. More about that, later.........

Like so many people, up and down the land, I'm still struggling, as I'm confronted with a myriad of different rubbish containers. Bags, wheelie bins, white sacks with pink writing, white sacks with green writing and little bins. I spend more time being informed what I can't put in, rather than what I can.
Oh yes, and they're about to ban plastic carrier bags from supermarkets. The reason is that that are bad for the environment.
"Oh, so what do I put my rubbish in then?" I asked.
"Black plastic bags"
"Ah yes, don't tell me, aisle 14, next to the Persil?"
"Now you're gettin' it!" winked the checkout lady.
So now I'm paying for black plastic bags that don't break down.
That'll help!

I have always agreed that something must be done. But this does my head in. Like anything new, we should expect to be on a learning curve.... (God! how I hate that expression! I hope I don't say "level playing field"..) I am sure that it's top of the agenda....

During the mid-seventies, I saw the firm I worked for throwing out wooden crates and burning them in a field behind the factory! A double tragedy. If they were intent on burning them, couldn't they at least burn them in a furnace attached to a generator?

If they generated greenhouses gas that way, at least this would be partly offset by the saved electricity. Even in those days, the Netherlands were racing ahead of us in adopting, what we now call carbon offsetting practices, in the workplace. The Dutch seemed to be able generate megawatts of power from almost any waste. Dear old England always said that it wouldn't work on this side of the North Sea. The main reason why it didn't work in Britain was that they never even bothered. So I guess they were right!

I joined Labour in 1982. My local party then talked endlessly about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, fighting the Imperialist American-backed contras. I sided with the Sandinistas, sure, but I wasn't that sure how to get more local issues onto the floor. After the meetings, I asked the question. "How much better off are the people of Chelmsford, now, compared to before the meeting?" At least one was worse off. Labour meetings really did take place in smoke-filled rooms!

Neither Labour or Conservative governments of the day seemed remotely interested in adpoting the Netherland's energy saving practices. I don't recall any Liberal comment either. In many other European countries at that time, there was some movement of policies, that would be helpful in at least, slowing down the huge waste and environmental damage. But not dear old Britain.

In Britain, recycling, through the 80's and 90's, was still perceived to be very "brown rice, brown sandal brigade" led. Perhaps people were worried that they might have to re-use toilet paper? Britain, even today, is still the laziest recycler in Europe, despite any government spin to the contrary. To the government's credit though, there has been significant improvement.


Wind power.
Various people commented that wind power
would never work.
"We don't have enough wind in this country" they said.
"We do, just attach a wind turbine to the House Of Commons!"

I am very proud of that comeback!

http://www.freefoto.com/index.jsp

They would still argue that in the 1970's we didn't have good enough technology. Probably true, but at least we would've known that the technology would improve in the future. We would be investing into a wind power infrastructure. The level of technology would've been more likely, even higher, as the research and development in the field is always better.

I am glad to see that these wind critic's arguments have been blown away!

Britain's record shows that no nation state can, alone, would be able to enact, enforce and most importantly, punish polluters. If the EU can take a central role in this, then we can, at least in Europe, look forward to the promise of environmental recovery.