Home ?

Nothing makes me reexamine what I believe in more than the transition from Inner City Hyde Park back "home" to Cumbria. I'm enjoying a break back in Whitehaven on the west coast where my family still are. You can almost feel the social capital. Its clean, tidy and vandalism free. Its socially stable with the most amzing ecology of local self help groups. It looks after and respects its architectural inheritance. It has avoided the worst excesses of clone town Britain. It has park keepers I remember from school and shop keepers with shops where the "and Son" really means it.

Its not a rural idyll. The Cumbrain Coast is ex industrial but it superfically has stronger and more robust social structures than my inner city home. When I lived here I couldn't wait to get out and was shaped politically by its conformity. My liberalism has always featured on diversity, critiquing tradition and authority, mobility, innovation and exploring cultural boundries. Nowhere exibits this more than my liottle bit of Bohemia but what is left when every taboo is broken, Authority isn't just checked but destroyed and tradition isn't just challenged but obliterated with 1001 different world views with no over arching narritive?

I hope I'm not sounding like the Daily Mail but there are social consequences to having 60% of your population move house every year, having 70% of your population under 30 permanently and virtually no owner occupation. Comming back to Whitehaven reminds me that I ran away from home in search of a post modern paradise more accepting of those that are different. But living in a complex inner urban area reminds me that tradition, structure and conformity have other roles than just smothering the different. They keep a certain level of civility and livability in place as well. I suspect I will never square that circle. The closet I will ever come is another strand of my liberalism. Localism. Perhaps the one thing we could export from the semi rural to the inner city is local control of services. As I have observed before inner cities would be very differnt places if decsion makers actually lived there.

Unity Day

I was very kindly asked to present the Annual Community Recognition Awards at Saturdays Hyde Park Unity Day. ( though this has now grown beyond the area and is a city wide event)
As I stood on the main stage looking out across Woodhouse Moor and the crowd I did wonder if this was the best event yet. Its always been a popular event but in fairness has had managerial and financial problems. These have been addressed but so as the content. Its decent into a bohemian music festival delayed an hour or to and the community and children's activities in the afternoon improved. The Crowd was the most racially and demographically diverse I have seen and for the first time ever a genuine and well received attempt being made to recycle a lot of the mountains of rubbish the event creates.

Some local politicians, who will remain anonymous for the time being, have bought into the Council establishment critique of the event as being run by anarchic hippies and should no longer receive local area funding. I fought hard ( and successfully ) to get them a £2500 grant this year. Special credit goes to Cllr Bernard Atha ( Lab, Kirkstall) who fronted the application at the committee meeting.

After what was likely to be the most successful event ever its time to come out fighting for Unity Day! The community recognition awards where won by Sarah Erskine and Neil Thompson long time community activists and much deserved. I did " a little bit of politics" at the end and directed people to the Friends of Wodehouse Moor stall and spoke of the vision of the people who put Woodhouse Moor there in the first place for everyone to enjoy and the vision needed to protect it from threats for the next 150.

Some one once described the Unity Festival as " Christmas Day in Hyde Park ". It may sound patronising, its really not meant to be but I couldn't help but smile at the varying local families in the park. The slight air of pride they exhibited as they sat in the sun. Something Superb and special was going on in there area and it was being run by them. In an area where superb and special things don't often happen and things are run from the wealthy suburbs in the north. I'm not sure if we were a Republic that day but its as close as Leeds 6 every comes.

Leeds Pride 2007

Sunday saw the second Leeds pride march and festival starting off at Millennium Square and working its way to Briggate. It was bigger and better than last years and I think its hats off to Yorkshire MESMAC for taking this project on. Designing a socially inclusive but commercially viable Pride event seems to require alchemy but they seem to have done it. An honourable mention to my Council Colleague Cllr Terry Grayshon ( Morley South, Morley Borough Independent) who gave the starting speech from the steps of the Civic hall. he may have referred me to the standards board twice in the past but all that was forgotten as I bought him a drink after the parade and chatted about Leeds politics.

I particularly enjoyed seeing Mission night club turned into a community fair for the afternoon. Lots of health and social support information and recruiters. Leeds City Council LGBT staff network was out in force and the sunshine helped all round. I bumped into loads of people I hadn't seen for ages. Credit is also due to the Yorkshire Evening Post for its front page coverage of the parade the next day. It can be a bit socially conservative at times and last years coverage was rather low key.

The Council has backed this initiative but I have just one question. The whole idea that 2007 is Leeds 800th Birthday ( utter nonsense its much older ) is predicated on the signing of the charter turning Briggate into a commercial area in November 1207. If briggate is being made the centre of the celebrations then why has the explosion of the gay scene in this area, colonising the very run down lower briggate area 15 years ago been air brushed out of all the publicity material? I think we should be told.

Lunacy

The week began with me doing an over night shift at a Mental Health unit. The night of the Full Moon. It reminded me of the contradiction about the Moon and its relationship on Mental Health. The belief that the Full Moon effects people is deeply held amongst many mental health workers. The problem is a distinct lack of any hard research evidence. It all points to the contrary.

It was a misty night with the moon light refracted through thin cloud cover. For reasons of confidentiality I won't give specifics but something very weird was going on. At times I felt like a character in an Iris Murdoch novel. Was there any cause and effect? Were residents effected by the moon or just acting up because they knew the lore better than anyone? Was I seeing what I was seeing or was I giving in to suggestions from the pale moon light? I'm not unsympathetic that urban living has desensitised us to the effect that nature can have but yet...

Its years since I did a Full Moon night shift and it was a mystical experience. I'm just no closer to concluding whether the phenomenon is complete tosh or an insight into deep human Psychology.

The Rise of Boris Johnson by Andrew Gimson

Another book I have read so you don't have to. This is a 263 page "In Joke". An in joke I am clever enough to spot but, not having been to Oxford, not quite clever enough to fully appreciate. This is why I came close to abandoning it and sending it to Oxfam.

"Boris" appears to be an attempt to write a biography of the great man in the style of a Victorian Statesman. Disraeli most probably or perhaps Palmerston. It flirts with the idea its an early life of a future Prime Minister ( well I suppose stranger things have happened - just )

The problem is rather than high parliamentary drama or the challenges of early Empire we are left at this stage with the oxford Union and the Spectator. The usual role of a biography of one so young is to soften a subject up. Tell a side of the story that we have heard. However this book ( which he cooperated with ) just mercilessly confirms every stereotype going. That Boris is a buffoon and that his real love is Journalism.

The questions it sets up remain answered. Why does such a intelligent guy play the fool? Does he really want to be Tory leader? Can he square the circle of journalism and front line politics?

I'm none the wiser of either the great mans or the Authors view on any of these. This and the to clever by half writing style make it a deeply unsatisfying book. I imagine it was knocked off in a couple of weeks for the "what do we buy our Tory Uncle for Christmas?" market. Now he is running for London Mayor it might be attractive to have a more plebeian volume on offer.

I have nothing to say about Leeds Utd

And there in is the problem. I haven't the faintest idea what is going on. On most other strategic issues facing the City I would just put that down to being a back bencher. Out side the loop. Above my pay grade. However I have the most awful feeling that no one in the City really knows whats going on.

I would need to " Live Blog" if attempted to keep an up to date commentary on events. Even the local newspaper refers people to its website in its coverage because so often events are moving fast. I read today, and this seem extraordinary to my lay persons eye that the Club can no longer process debit/credit card payments for tickets so murky is its legal situation. The company that processes them won't do it.

As I have blogged before I don't follow football and struggle to understand the intensity that many people feel about the club. However that passion is very real. If I were a Leeds Utd fan I would feel treated in the most shabby of ways. Just don't ask me what can be done about it or to tell you that things can't get any worse. I have an awful feeling that they can.

Yorkshire Day

We are big enough to be a EU member or make a perfectly reasonable US state. However here in Leeds, Yorkshire's Capital City*, we don't seem to make much of our national day.

Representing one of the shrines of the County's identity ( Headingley Stadium ) I often mull over the confusion. On the one hand I'm certain if we had had a referendum on an Assembly of our own it would have received a North East sized "No" vote. On the other hand I have always felt the one nationality you can't naturalise into is "Tyke". I have been here 14 years but if I said I was a Yorkshire man the next question asked would be where was a I born ?

Our whole Island, in particular our over heating south east would be better governed if we could make regionalism work. If we can't make it work in an area with the historic identity of the Riding's then I don't know where we can. So its left to ASDA with its adverts for Yorkshire Sausages and CAMRA pubs with there local ale festivals. Not bad places to start, reducing food miles is a form of nationalism even Guardian readers like me can embrace. That's fine but as the Yorkshire flooding showed ( and indeed coverage of the southern flooding ) there's a price to be paid for our over centralised state.

* York continues with its silly pseudo historical claim to be the capital of Yorkshire. I don't know why it bothers. The Leeds City Council Corporate Communications team has ruled on the matter and there word is final! We have more Starbucks, trendy bars that shut after 6 months, yuppie flats ( left empty as an equity investment ) and Harvey Nichols. What more could a Capital City want?

Festival Weekend

A plug for this weekends two big Festivals in the area.

Our very own Unity Day ( www.unityday.org.uk ) starts at 12 noon on Woodhouse Moor on Saturday 4th of August. This is the 12th Annual event and show cases all that is good about the Leeds 6 area and attracts crowds from way beyond. The official after party is at the Burley Liberal Club from 11pm to late. They still need stewards for the day and pay a £10 " Thank You" to those completing a 4 hour shift.

Sunday 5th sees the 2nd Annual Leeds Pride march and celebration. ( www.leedspride.com )

The Parade starts at Millennium Square at 12 noon. I'm trying to organise a Lib Dem contingent. Last year I had to walk with the banner of the Leeds Trade Union Council who kindly offered me political asylum for the day!

Leeds Pride events have a torrid history so absolute congratulations to Tom Doyle and MESMAC for finding an attractive formula that doesn't go bankrupt while recognising that LGBT life has more dimensions than clubbing.

The second pairing of these events on the same day is making the "First weekend in August" a highlight of the social calendar. They are free and community minded as well.