Suburban Comeback

Had a post at CiF today arguing that after years of people sneering at suburbia it’s now become cool, albeit in a kitschy way.  See this recent Evening Standard article here, New Book “The Freedoms of Suburbia” by Paul Barker and London Transport Museum’s current exhibition – details here – for more evidence. A talk for those interested in how the Tube facilitated the growth of London neighbourhoods on the edge is on tomorrow night at the Museum, whose poster I have displayed below here:

Hell even the kids in America are getting in on the act as last month’s mega suburban conference/ convention at Hofstra University in Hempsted, Long Island (a suburb of New York) demontrated.

The best bit of the Guardian thing (in myopinion) ended up on cutting room floor. It was meant to conclude with the words “Now where’s that old Spandau LP of mine?” (Read the article in order to “get” it).

Memo to western governments: could do better, much better

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, a landmark declaration. Since then this has been built on with last year’s Manifesto for Children. Yet a disturbing report today from the charity World Vision shows that nearly nine million children won’t see their fifth birthday – that’s 8.8 million or 24,000 deaths. As mum of a five year old it’s a shocker.

All this is largely preventable: vitamin and mineral supplements to beat malnutrition  (like Oral Rehydration Salts that cost 10p)  and proper postnatal care to prevent post pregnancy complications and infections could turn this around but an agreement made in 2000 by the UN and Western governments to reduce infant mortality by two thirds by 2015 is falling way short of its target.

World Vision is now campaigning for rich countries to increase their commitment to health from the current level of $16 billion a year to $42.5 billion by 2015 to meet the Millennium Development Goals –  equivalent to five days of health spending in the USA. Significant progress has been achieved eg in Malawi, of every 1,000 babies born, 125 more children survived to their fifth birthdays in 2008 than they did in 1990. But there’s a long way to go.

Ways in which you can do your bit to increase awareness are listed here. If all this wasn’t so far away it’d be more widely considered scandalous – which it is in the 9th year of the new century.

It’s Not What You Know It’s Who You Know

Image courtesy of Channel 4 and their new interactive web2 type site Who Knows Who which reveals the incestuous nature of life at the top. Related programming begins on Saturday without another airing of faction docu-drama When Boris Met Dave at 8pm.

Sun Fanning Flames

The nation feels terrible about the situation that’s arisen about Mrs Janes. Losing your own child is the worst nightmare for every parent – her son Jamie was just 20 years old. The PM-penned sloppy-looking letter was not appreciated by her, although by contrast other recipients of similar ones were on the tv news yesterday saying they were touched by the hand-written aspect of theirs. However having just clicked on the Sun website to hear the conversation between Gordon Brown and her I wonder if there is there a danger that the Murdoch rag is using the greiving mum to score points against a PM who it openly declared war on during the week of the Labour party conference. Why else would a transcript of the 13 minute conversation be available on several pages of the paper today? Obviously the Sun rigged the whole thing up, who normally records phone conversations after all? The clickable version is an edited highlights of 4 mins, obviously selectively cut.

Gordon Brown has written a few of these before (229) and sadly Mrs Janes’ one will not be the last. It was sobering to hear her describe exactly what happened to her son: bringing a human dimension to figures that we hear about in an often clinical way. The timing of all this was all the more poignant this poppy season with Rememberance Day having recently happened but let’s hope she is not succumbing to playing out the political agendas of the Sun and the Murdochs.

Expenses: Chris Kelly exclusive

This was the best pic I could find but following the dribs and drabs coming out, it looks like it’s the Clapperboard signalling CUT  for state sponsored property purchase gains/ duck-houses/ moat cleaning/ porn DVDs/ gingernut biccies/ keeping it the family regarding staffing arrangements.

Opening titles for the cinema-themed Granada show of yesteryear are here (1981 version) while a whole episode (from that golden year 1972) is a click away here.

A better world is possible: European version

As David Cameron has egg on his face by U-turning on his cast-iron pledge to assure Britons a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, should a Conservative government be elected, a new debate has launched on the Future of the European left at the website of Social Europe Journal.

According to Labour philospher king Jon Cruddas who is behind the project:

“The poor results in the European elections in June were proof that we need to revive and reinvent our traditions. Since then the elections in Germany have delivered a terrible result for the SPD and in Britain the Labour Party faces a very difficult future. Change is essential. But what kind of change? In April 2009 Andrea Nahles and myself jointly published a document ‘Building the Good Society’ which  we launched in London and Berlin. It brought together social democrats from Germany and Britain to discuss a new direction for social democracy in Europe. The next stage is to use this exploratory text to build a pan-European network of social democrats who are looking ahead to build the good society.”

Looks to be an interesting unfolding debate. I was at a meeting at the weekend of folks from the recently-launched Downing Street Project who also thought that “change” was something that the British public are thirsting after right now but I think the general mood is one of  “anti-politics” since the whole expenses furore and the unalloyed rage it unleashed. The Czech result however seems to have put Europe back on the UK political radar. The EU is often painted by the right-wing press as something restrictive and interfering whereas the aim of the series of articles in this thread is to use the Obama-esque “another world is possible” narrative in a European context. Am hoping to add my voice at some stage.

Manhattan Transfer

Spotted these on the Lower East Side today… making me feel right at home. Proof, if proof were needed, that America really is a nation of immigrants.

The Cable Guy

Forgot to say I saw Vince Cable speak at Kingston University Student Lib Dem Society the other day.

He was quite donnish, as befitting someone with an economics PhD. For example his talk included a section on the formation of the SDP/Liberal Alliance, which nobody really talks  about anymore. Cable is ex-Labour ex-SDP and I think no current Labour person could have really disagreed with his commentary on what is happening now. He did do that annoying Lib Dem “I told you so” thing claiming that he was warning it would go tits up 5 years ago, however when asked on government handling of the crisis he said when the time came they made all the right decisions unlike the Tories whose plans for cuts would worsen things by causing unemployment among other things. When someone asked whose fault it all was the man who along with Robert Peston has been hailed a hero of the recession (at least until mansion tax-gate) answered “Well I don’t think organising a lynchmob to go round Gordon Brown’s house would be very productive”. Right on.

Most memorable quote for me was “In Teddingdon the big issue is parking, even despite the collapse of the world economy crashing down like a pack of cards…”

Talking of suburbia, if anyone’s going to this later see you there.

The ethnic vote (part 364)

Was present recently at Harriet Harman speaking at an Ealing Southall dinner then at the Foreign Office’s annual Eid gathering with David Milliband, Alan Johnson and John Denham. Nice to be at the bashes but it did strike me that speeches to ethnic voters are often pretty samey… fantastic contribution to our vibrant society, blah blah blah. Do these politicians speak to each other before giving them?

Longer post at the fabby revamped Labour list here including a pic that some might caption as a future dream ticket.

Conference Schmonference

All over the political spectrum people are recovering from party conference season including the media and corporate exhibitors. The big three are done with the SNP remaining next week however it all got me thinking

1. Isn’t a four day love-in a bit long for any delegates in non-political jobs? Commentators claimed that Labour attendance shrank after Brown’s speech on Tuesday but that’s probably because the delegates had to flee back to work. The Tories were trapped until yesterday.

2. At around an hour, the leader’s speeches are over-long, particularly as they are chopped for tv. Lots of the commentary on  Cameron said it looked better on the news-bulletins than in the hall, probably because an hour is an age where everyone feels time-poor. Surely for leaders to distill their argument into a shorter space would be more challenging.

3. Policy-making is almost zilch at all of them nowadays. They are effectively rallies.

Just some thoughts to mull over on a Friday anyway – as seen this morning on BBC Breakfast News in case anyone was watching.

UPDATE: Cif post by me on this here