I have migrated to…

 … paperbagstories.substack.com

but I will continue to post to:

mywembley.blogspot.com

which I do occasionally.

I know hat I said but…

I have posted this photo I took as I ate my lunch today of Cornish sardines on homemade toasted caraway seed bread onto the Beeston Updated Facebook page.

I went into Hallams on Beeston High Road at 8.30 this morning and left with oven-ready sardines, plus brown shrimps, a large melon, raspberries and watercress. The latter for tea today and we’ve eating melon and raspberries since Monday and will continue to do so until Sunday. A whole week, so cheap, so full of flavour. The shrimps we will have for tea tomorrow.

This week has been one of isolation due to the heat, apart from medical appointments and shopping first thing on Monday and today (Friday). This is how ‘a half-day person’ can still live the good life in Beeston.

PS. I’ve also spent time posting stories to my paperbag reader blog.

The way my world is going

 

I walk along this footpath half-a-dozen times a week or more. This is the view from Central Avenue towards Wollaton Crescent and Wollaton Road. It is a truly lovely place to live and is, literally, my world in so many ways and in this image I see my future.

I have been a 'half-day person' for a while now and this is what I want to spend more time doing – writing on, and gaining inspiration from, paper bags.

I came to writing late. I was about nine when I realised I could write as well as read. Being left-handed didn’t help. For now all I want to say is that from now on my writing can be found at: https://paperbagreader.blogspot.com/

I hope you will come and visit.

Robert Howard, 13 July 2021.

A Doughmother Paper Bag story written today

'I'll be back at one'.

'Okay luv, don't forget my prescription'.

Kurt wondered if one day she would turn up at the café. She had threatened to many times, as if she didn't believe him, when he said he was going to Zoe's.

It was a good place to write, the far corner table with a view down past the counter, through the entrance and onto the street beyond. From where he sat he could see all his characters enter and leave, as if they were acting out their lives on a stage. 

There was Tanya, who always composed herself before she stepped inside. What dark secret was she hiding? One day, one day he would know. But today it was Gwen who had his attention. She was a regular like himself. Twenty years older but that didn't stop him enjoying her company, wanting to hold her hand, to kiss her, and him fifty-three. She was a retired registrar, who had worked in the Town Hall for forty-five years and was remembered by those who had a birth, death or marriage certificate bearing her signature, and remembered by her to the point that he never had a conversation with her without some kind of interruption, every one followed by a story, to which he would listen and claim as his own.

'I don't know where you get them all from Luv' said his wife. Karl didn't tell her about Gwen. She would not have approved of his stealing her stories. She accused him of much the same thing when it came to her life — that Karl had stolen it before it got going. She could have been a writer too. A better one of that she was sure. Instead she became a gardener, creating flower beds for the well-to-do and supermarkets until her knees gave out. It was then that she re-invented herself as a 'vertical gardener' and found success as a columnist and a part-time TV celebrity. If a show needed five minutes filling, then she would get a call.

It was their daughter who said 'Mum, don't knock Dad off his perch. I think he will fall badly'. She had laughed at the time but when Hamlyn Books appealed to her vanity, how could she resist?

'Luv, I'll be back this evening I promise' didn't go down well with Kurt, but that's another story for another day...

©Robert Howard, 11 July 2021.

Parliamentary constituency boundary changes - some thoughts

 I have contributed to a few reviews in the past and have the satisfaction of seeing one of my proposals (to create a Beeston and South West Nottingham constituency) adopted in part. In the years since the numbers of electors has changed and this impacts on the arithmetic. Given this I looked at what the Boundary Commission proposed and looked at ways of clawing back some of the old Broxtowe constituency from Nottingham North, but this would have meant losing another part of Broxtowe instead. 

I am one those who believes that the Boundary Commission are not party political. However, they have never had much sense of place and I understand why — because their brief is all about numbers. I posted the map below to Beeston Updated on Facebook over a month ago, but the County Council election left me close to exhausted, thanks to my pulmonary fibrosis (which is why I describe myself as a 'half-day person').

Click on the map to enlarge:

Amazingly, there is now talk that Broxtowe's Conservative MP wants to transfer the Beeston Central and Ryland wards to Nottingham South so he can claim back the Nuthall and Kimberly Broxtowe wards from Nottingham North. Such a move would only make sense if ALL four Beeston wards were transferred.

I have been of a mind to leave well alone, but our Conservative MP may have opened a door through which, better, alternative, proposals my pass, so I have decided to revisit the topic. I will post more tomorrow.

County Council Election turnouts 2017 and 2021

 I have long believed that low turnouts at elections favour Labour and in recent years this has been documented in reports you can now find in the House of Commons Library. It is why I like campaigning 'under the radar', Labour drawing attention to itself seems to bring out Conservative voters who might otherwise stay and home. I include a couple of links to my earlier blogs below. 

This table is one from January 2021 to which I have added a column showing yesterday's turnouts across Nottinghamshire in the county council election. I think it holds true to my belief, with the exceptions proving the rule. Of the county divisions Labour held seven had turnouts of 40% or less, with only three being 41% or higher.

One District jumps out and, at present, defies explanation and that is Mansfield. One of the annoying things about election data is that how it is presented in the public domain changes from one election to another. The County Council Election results data for 2017 does not show the size of the electorate or ballot papers issued, whereas 2021 does.

If anyone can explain to me the as good of doubling of turnout percentages for 4 out of 5 Mansfield divisions(only Warsop hasn't changed), I would welcome their input, otherwise I will follow this up with the County Council Returning Officer next week. I suspect there is a simple explanation but I can't see it.

Anyway, back to my table. I hope you find it of interest (click on the table to enlarge):

An archbishop says it as it is - you know it, so ask the question ...

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE

And the question is ‘Why can’t a politician?’

 

We can't sit on our hands and wait for the little buses to go

 I have spent time the past week creating three maps and collecting data. I have a love of buses which goes back to my childhood and is something I have written about a good many times throughout my adult life, some of it published. I've never collected bus numbers and could tell you little about bus makes and their names, but I can tell you where they go and how often they run. I have been travelling on my own on buses since I was 4 (a long time ago). What follows is for you to ponder. The issue of what happens to the the little LocalLink L10 and L11 buses which run past the end of my road is of great concern to me. They are a lifeline at times — it's as simple as that! 

Living with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis I manage well compared to many fellow sufferers but I am mindful of the fact that one slip on my part, when it comes to how and what I do, could kill me (in a couple of weeks if I'm lucky, as I don't fancy taking a year to die as my lungs give up on me). In other words I am someone who has been able to use the little buses which serve places I might not otherwise reach except by car, and, yes, we are lucky enough to have one of them, but  I've spent  a life preferring the bus to a car, so at 77 (in May) I'm not about to change the habit of a lifetime (lockdown has meant only one bus ride in a year, when last August my wife Susan and I caught the L10 to town and back (by 'town' I mean Nottingham city centre).

Go into Beeston or the Nottingham city centre by car and you have to make your way back to it. By bus or tram you can get off and get on where you want. Arguably, this has to be to the advantage of local shops and cafes etc. Get off an L10 or L11 on Wollaton Road at Denison Street, walk down the hill past shops, then onto Albion Street and along Villa Sreet to the High Road, ending up at the Interchange and bussing back up Wollaton Road and home. This an aspect of bus use I’ve yet to see any bus operator or bus authority exploit.

I don't believe the L10 and L11 LocalLink bus routes can be saved, so it is up to users like me to come up with a possible alternative and the maps and draft leaflets which follow are intended to argue for action and discussion without political point scoring, like the Liberal councillor for my ward has been indulging in. I want the Labour Party to say is that we need an open discussion about the future of local subsidised bus services in and around Beeston but, more immediately, we need the County Council to temporarily fund my version of the route and talk to CT4N to see if there is any mileage in the possibility of incorporating my suggestion into their existing route 18 hourly short working (see below for detail):

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE:

Twelve Wasted Years and why it matters. A note to Curtis and Becca

Last year when my grandson Curtis and his girlfriend Becca arrived in Nottingham, where he had come to do an MA at Nottingham-Trent University, Susan and I took the opportunity to pass on most of our Labour and Post-war Reconstruction library. Both Labour Party members and active, it seemed only natural that these books should go to them. One was a thick paperback titled Twelve Wasted Years. You can see the cover below and somewhere in my text, a brief explanation as to its content but when Curtis sent me the image last night he made the fatal mistake of asking 'What do you need it for?' Below the cover is the reply I sent him:

Being an oldie does have its advantages. At times I feel like a walking archive and this is one of them! All the web searches in the world could not tell me what I know or the significance of Twelve Wasted Years, starting in 1951 and continuing until 1964.

In 1963 I was 19, a Young Socialist, an active trade unionist, just changed jobs and not long engaged engaged when Twelve Wasted Years was thrown into my hands by a wonderful old guy called Ray Dent, then Treasurer of Wembley South Constituency Labour Party and a world-weary ‘Labour man’, who had seen it all. He always wore a suit and ash from the cigarette half hanging of his lips always covered the front of his waistcoat.

I remember saying to him ‘Don’t you want it?’ It was as if he had given me a first edition of the New Testament. I read it with a sense of excitement over the following days and quoted from it on endless occasions thereafter. It was a work of reference: how we had got to where we were and where we were going. It was all there in one thick paperback. Read the section on housing and weep.

Ray Dent’s reply to me was ‘No need. I know what it says. It’s as if we scared to cross the finishing line, we always throw it away and one day they’re going to give up on us if your lot don’t make it happen’. The ‘they’, of course, was the working class and ‘my lot’ was the YS, then a bunch of working teenagers, a few would find their way to university, but most, like me, married young, bought houses, had their first baby and were on the way to finishing their apprenticeships, becoming  managers, civil servants, skilled workers and even young Labour Party councillors like myself, and one of our lot is now a peer. 

That, at 76, three of my ‘comrades’ from those days are still good friends I find amazing. Three of us still in the Party, one of us Green, and we all still talk politics, still believe and I have the great joy of having had Susan to listen to my rants and put me right for the past 46 years and now I have you and Becca to listen to and watch, proud to busting that you are, in so many ways, taking on a far harder fight than the one I took on from Ray Dent, your Uncle Dave and Auntie Nannie, now sadly gone but both Labour Party councillors in Harlow. How I wish you could meet them.

Uncle Dave (Howard). I took this photo in Harlow in 1960. He was a plumber and Secretary of the Plumbers Trade Union in Harlow. He became a Labour councillor for Brays Grove, where he lived in 1972. When he stood down, 16 years later, my Auntie Nannie replaced him. I spent many of my school holidays with them and my cousins until I started work in 1959 aged 15.

All this prompted by the hearing Keir Starmer a couple of days ago set out his vision and thinking is that really the best you can do? Harold Wilson became Leader of the Party in 1963, twelve years after Labour lost the 1951 General Election and with him came Twelve Wasted Years. A brave thing to do at the time and unimaginable now.

Make of all this what you will. As for myself, I fear Ray Dent’s prophecy has come to be and that the Labour Party is lost as presently constituted, but I will go to my grave a libertarian socialist and a community activist committed to localism, glad that I have had local history to guide me; that I got to ride on trolleybuses and that I have a Nottingham bus named after me. At my age I have the right to see the world a little differently and to share my vision, but that’s for next time...

All I will say is that the word 'coalescence' looms large in my future vision. 

First past the post voting results in higher turnouts than proportional representation.

Compiled these tables for a friend today. It's old data I have shown in other ways before. Even though I've supported PR since 1960 (and will continue to do so), the evidence shows quite clearly that UK electorates are more likely to vote when FPTP voting is used.

What to look out for turnout-wise come the Notts County Council election on 6th May 2021

In an ideal world, the Nottinghamshire County Council election would be on hold until the end of the summer but the pressure is on and the Conservatives sense that they may be able to pull off some great  local election and mayoral victories, as they persuade voters to believe that they have got Covid-19 beaten, so the Government get on with it and don't let Labour's hesitancy spoil things.

I admit that I was hoping that it would all drag on and voters would stay at home. Be it Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire or across England, Labour depends on low turnouts to win seats and elections. As the tables below shows there are exceptions but all these do is prove what I say. I admit that I will following the County Council results and turnouts closely, since I happen to live in one of the County divisions (wards), Bramcote and Beeston North, with the highest turnouts in the County Council 2017 election.

Labour's historic problem with needing low turnouts to win is something it doesn't talk about, or even admit in my experience — hence my being someone with a long record of fighting elections slow and long. I call it 'campaigning under the radar' and it works.

I'll come back with an update after Thursday 6th May 2021, assuming the County Council election goes ahead.

CLICK ON THE TABLE TO SEE IT SEPARATELY.

A walk and a treat for tea

 

The best day of the year, sunny, dry and not nearly as cold as the weather forecasters suggested, so I went with Susan to the local post office on Central Avenue in Beeston Fields and from there it was just a few doors down to The DoughMother artisan bakery, where I picked up two tarts for afternoon tea. We'll share cherry and almond tarts tomorrow and in a few minutes we'll be sharing a mini-pizza and phyllo pastry stuffed with spinach.

If someone I know sees this, then I will be copying some pages for her tomorrow.

Another look at low Labour election turnouts

 In a couple of recent posts I have touched  on the topic of election turnouts and what they mean for Labour in terms of planning campaigns. I am a lifetime 'under the radar' campaigner; someone who likes to fight elections slowly and over a long period of time and in the process identifying Labour's core vote. Low turnouts are to Labour's advantage and always have been. The House of Commons Library has lots of reports on the topic, including one on the 2019 General Election turnouts(follow this link to find it).

Here is a table from the report which should be of interest (click on tables to enlarge):

The table below is from the Library's 2017 report:

Finally, two tables tracing turnout in the last six general elections in Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire. I have collated the data for Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Birmingham. Seats with high turnouts (Broxtowe and Sherwood) were the first to go and the only three seats Labour continues to hold are low turnout Nottingham seats and this pattern is replicated across the other counties as well. Staffordshire is included because I have friends in the county. These facts should influence how Labour organises and campaigns, but I see no evidence that it does. Here are the tables (again' click on images to enlarge):

I will leave it, as there is plenty to think about. In all the talk about Labour and Keir Starmer developing policies and a strategy the importance of election turnouts is the elephant sitting in the corner unnoticed.

 

It’s time we had an English Parliament

 Logic says there needs to an English Parliament elected in the same way at the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, with the MPs also being members of regional ‘Grand Committees’ working alongside directly elected Regional Ministers. 

The UK Parliament would be replaced by a Federal Chamber overseeing non-domestic matters elected at the same time as the the three national parliaments based on their political make-up. 

Local Government would be given a modern Magna Carta and the geographical areas of Mayoral (and mini-mayoral) units would be determined by local populations and plebiscites.

It does not have to be complicated. You simply build on the existing models which have been in place and working for twenty years or more.

If flying the Union Jack and wearing suits is is the best Labour's leadership can do, then they are asking the wrong questions

I found this on the web a few minutes ago marked ‘unknown’. I find it difficult to believe that the Labour Party would create such a thing! Why? The message is fine but, like it or not, the Union Jack is associated by some in Wales and many in Scotland and Northern Ireland with English dominance. I have known this well for most of my 76 years, since I’m half-English half-Irish and I have close family connections with Scotland and Wales too. Labour has lost Scotland, so it is unlikely ever to govern the United Kingdom again on its own - a painful truth it seems determined not to recognise.

If Labour’s alleged ‘plan’ is ‘to focus on (the) flag and patriotism to win back voters’ (Guardian news story, 3 February), then perhaps the Party’s Parliamentary leadership has been asking the wrong questions.

If it's votes Labour is after, then they should stick with Jeremy Corbyn's policies, albeit better managed, and I say this being no fan of Corbyn as a leader, but then I have said this of all Labour's leaders, since I am suspicious of leaders full stop. I also say this because Corbyn got more votes in 2017 and 2019 than Blair did in 2001 and 2005. Way more than Brown in 2010 and Miliband in 2015. The trouble was Corbyn got votes in the wrong places and the Conservatives got more votes in every General Election between 2005 and 2019. Had Labour made less noise, despite an overwhelmingly anti-Labour press, I believe Corbyn could have run Theresa May closer. Before Corbyn there have a string of pre-elections fiascos for Labour (1992, Kinnock triumphalist speech in Sheffield a week before polling day; 2010 Brown's 'Stupid woman' and a few other things into an open microphone and in 2015 Milliband's tablet of stone) and thanks to Corbyn's nasty brigade they kept coming in 2017 and 2019 — now Keir Starmer seems determined to follow them all into the abyss.

From getting police commissioners and councillors to mayors and MPs elected, Labour has a high dependency on low turnouts. There are notable exceptions, but all these do is make the reality more stark. Tony Blair’s General Election successes depended on low turnouts. Perhaps Keir Starmer should ask ‘What will have to happen before turnouts become low enough for Labour to win again?’

What General Election data shows us is that Labour will struggle to win England and needs to adopt a strategy which embraces pluralism and few Labour politicians recognise this, Clive Lewis being an exception. I see no signs of this happening under the present Labour leadership. 

Nottingham: it's difficult to quantify low local election turnouts when there's no real opposition

 This is the latest (and last) of my Nottinghamshire elections' analyses. The city has 55 councillors of whom 50 are Labour. Probably the three turnouts which jump out are the: Radford (17%); Lenton and Wollaton East (21%) and Wollaton West (49%), none of them close finishes. My table makes what comments I want to make, other than there is something unhealthy about an electoral system which enables one political party to sweep all others asides on low turnouts, but saying this this is the electorate speaking.

I also know from this exercise over the last few weeks that where there are elections using either a single transferrable vote system (STV) or a first past the post/added member system (AMS) the turn-out is lower than in FPTP elections (generally speaking), in which electors know that their votes will have more value has not resulted in higher turnouts — quite the reverse in fact!

I have always believed our electoral system(s) to be flawed and I would like to see more pluralistic government at all levels, but this a topic for another day. Right now, my focus is on the 2019 Nottingham City Council election and here is my table (click on the table to enlarge):

The future of LocalLink bus routes L10 and L11 is up for discussion, so let's make sure we take advantage of the opportunity

 

Click on the map above to enlarge and to find out more, please enter 'buggy bus' in the 'Search' window in the right-hand column (about half-way down). This will link you to posts by me dating back over several years.

News posted by Borough and County Councillor Steve Carr on the Beeston Updated Facebook page that Nottingham City Council has launched a consultation into the future of LocalLink bus routes L10 and L11 will come as no surprise to those who take an interest in, and use, public transport in and around Beeston and Nottingham.

Beeston has long been a beneficiary of the City Council’s largess because it no obligations to Beeston, since we are outside the city’s boundary. I have suspected for some time that it would come to an end, given the ever deepening financial mire local government is in.

It will not be enough to argue for the status quo because, having read the consultation document and knowing the City Council wants to save £700,000 with good reason, saving the existing L10 and L11 bus routes is not an option.  What we have to do is take advantage of the consultation to look at how alternative community bus services can best be provided in and around Beeston — hence my idea for a Beeston Buggi Bus Network.

We all have to work together. This is not an issue for political point scoring!

UPDATE: Will add a link to the City Council consultation here. Click to see.

I’ve become a tiny part of how the NHS is changing for the better

 

This is me with my new NHS electronic spirometer which, via an app and my mobile phone, enables me to send lung test measurements I take periodically direct to Nottingham City Hospital’s Lung Department. We were introduced to one another at the City Hospital a week ago with the help of a wonderful member of staff, who took me and Susan through the procedure step-by-step, and after a week of sending in daily test results I learned today that I will part of the program to remotely monitor people with lung conditions (I was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in 2015 and have been living very differently ever since).

The pandemic has changed the way we are cared for dramatically and I have become a tiny part of that future, one where more and more of us will be monitored remotely, thus reducing the number of visits we make to hospitals, clinics and the like.

The NHS needs more resources and staff and this Government has to be reminded at every opportunity by all those who care about the NHS of its Brexit promise to redirect £350millions a week to the NHS. Remember this?

Providing outreach services like the ones I am a beneficiary of is one way of spending money differently, so money can go further. The NHS needs spare capacity when it comes to resources, staffing and quality of care. - if the pandemic teaches us anything it should be this.

Many of the NHS 'horror stories' we see, hear or read about in the media come down to overworked staff, often depressed, working long shifts. We all want someone to blame, so perhaps we should look in a mirror, because Governments that fail the NHS are a measurement of shortcomings in ourselves.

My time will come soon enough. In the meantime I am happy with what I have. I am fitter and feel healthier than I have at any other time in my life, despite being a few months short of 77 and medically ‘vulnerable’. I had open heart surgery four years ago this month to replace part of my aortic valve (I was born with two cusps instead of three, which was discovered thanks to Nottingham City Hospital’s Lung Department back in 2015). I am here today thanks to our NHS and what it does with limited resources. 

I am one lucky bunny.

Labour has to hope for low turnouts* if it wants to wins seats in the Notts County Council elections due this coming May.

 *With a few exceptions, it is fair to say that in the 2017 Nottinghamshire County Council elections, Labour did badly. Just one Division/Ward won in the district council areas of Ashfield, Broxtowe and Rushcliffe.

With the exception of Beeston Rylands (41.8%) and West Bridgford North (47.2%), Labour won 16 divisions on turnouts averaging 31.9%. In the three Mansfield divisions Labour won, the turnout averaged 27.1%. 

In the 28 divisions the Conservatives won the average turnout was 38.4%, whilst the division with the second highest turnout of all was Bramcote & Beeston North with 48.2% and the only seat on Notts County Council to be won by a Liberal Democrat councillor (Steve Carr).

Put another way, out of the 18 divisions Labour won 10 (56%) on turnouts of 33% or less (in the Broxtowe 2019 Borough Council elections Labour won seats in 3 out of 6 wards where the turnout was 33% or less). There is a pattern here that is mirrored in the 2019 Nottinghamshire Parliamentary elections.

You can also say the evidence shows that as turnouts go up so Labour is more likely to lose, be it a district council election, a county council election or for parliament. My earlier post shows this quite clearly for Broxtowe Borough Council and Nottinghamshire parliamentary constituencies. Now the figures here show it for Notts County Council too, as I have summarised above.

I have created a table similar to the Broxtowe turnout table and Nottinghamshire constituency graph you can find via the link above. Here is my table showing Notts County Council election 2017 turnouts by district councils and divisions ranked by turnout (CLICK ON THE TABLE TO ENLARGE):

I suspect the May 2021 county council elections may be postponed because of the continuing pandemic, but whenever it takes place if the turnout is low, then Labour could be the potential winner.

Let it snow let it snow...

 I do this post watching the snow fall onto the patio and our back garden whilst eating one of my homemade no added sugar penny buns, so called because they are small. I make them in batches enough to last 12-14 days, then freeze them. How I love snow and I see snow falling less frequently as one of the consequences of climate change. I can say this living close to the top of a hill, at no risk of flooding. 

Let me be clear, I know that as snow melts on higher ground it brings the risk of flooding to millions of people living in homes which have been built on floodplains without adequate defences in place, but I still love snow and will happily pay the taxes necessary to improve flood defences, even though I hold planners and developers responsible for the problem, with some historic exceptions. Preventing flooding up-river/stream often pushes the flooding down-river/stream. Climate change is likely to result in less snow in winter and more storms at other times of the year. It is a problem politicians, governments and business have known about since the late-1960s and chosen to ignore. I must type up and re-publish an article I wrote a long time ago whilst a Birmingham city councillor. I used two nom-de-plumes at the time (Orifice and Able Allchurch) because most of the time I was writing about the antics of the City Council's Labour Group at the behest of the then Council Leader, Stan Yapp. Here is the top of the back page of the Birmingham Trades Council Journal from December 1973:

Once I would have been out there in the snow and loving it, now, thanks my pulmonary fibrosis, I stay snug inside looking out, but my cup of tea and bun are good enough compensation. I also took a pic from our front door before the snow melts. I suspect what we are doing is being repeated all over Beeston. This really is life as it happens.

Click on pic to enlarge.

By way of a P.S. here is an earlier back page from the Trades Council Journal dated February 1972. This led to me being courted by the the then Eco Party. The Labour Party missed a trick at the time when it failed to embrace those who went on to form the Green Party.

I received my letter today and followed the instructions...

 Click on the image to enlarge.

What amuses me is the fact that the annual flu jab programme has been successfully administered for years via GPs etc. yet, even allowing for what should not be insurmountable logistical challenges, the Covid-19 jab results in hours on the telephone or on a computer trying to make an appointment locally and I haven't got one yet. I'm 76, reasonably savvy and mobile if I have to be, God knows how others are managing?

 PS. The BBC-TV regional news said later the same day (22 Jan 2021) that the vaccination programme for 75-79 year olds in Nottinghamshire and Nottingham had been been suspended whilst the NHS plays catch with those aged 80 plus.

Yummy yummy

 Took delivery today of two very different food parcels. One I broke into to have with a cup of tea an hour ago. The other came with two almond tart, which Susan and I are about to eat with a another cup of the tea.

The leek pasties are in the freezer, so we can eat them as we please. They melt in the mouth and I like to describe them as 'Little bites of heaven'. 

The sugar-free biscuits come from Life Essentials at the Beeston High Road end of Wollaton Road, which is run by a wonderful lady called Pat who, because we're in lockdown, delivers them.

The leek pasties come from The DoughMother in the Central Avenue parade of shops on the Beeston Fields estate. They are made by Houlia and we buy a dozen at a time. It's also where I go to write when we're not in lockdown.

In the meantime, look at my pics knowing where you can go to buy sugar-free biscuits and leek pasties.

For tea and supper today.

12 into the freezer.

For the larder.

Broxtowe Boro' Council elections 2019 – Turnout by wards – What does it tell us?

 I have recently got into my head that trying to predict turnouts at elections is more important than trying to predict which parties the electorate will vote for. This is the result of conversations with my grandson, who is into election statistics and mapping the Labour Party's chances of winning power again.

Back in my Wembley South Young Socialist days we were asked to help Party members in Sudbury ward to organise and fight the Borough Elections in 1962. We got a great candidate and fought hard and it was the buzz of the count in Wembley Town Hall that hooked me for life on polling days and election organising. We came close to winning and just a few days ago during a Zoomtalk with Clive, who recruited me into a embryonic YS branch from the Young Liberals (where I went following a Sudbury girl I knew and whose brother remains a close friend and also joined the YS with me), he said he always regretted us canvassing the better off roads. Had we let the would-be Conservative voters sleep through the election campaign we may well have won, and that was the lesson I took away from an exciting election we lost: always fight below the radar. Low turnouts are better for Labour than high turnouts. As simple as that!

I have been a candidate in four elections for the Labour Party  back in the 1970s and 80s. I won two in Birmingham as I expected to and I lost one in Sutton Coldfield, again as I expected to. In Nottingham I won a seat which was marginal and retained it for the Party until the city went unitary. I was also an agent more times than I can recall. I learnt early on that the best campaigning strategy is to select your candidate and to identify your support as soon as possible, then work it by staying in touch and canvassing only new voters and, the final touch, giving personal Party polling card (as we used to before they became official) to all known supporters and to ignore all other voters. I still think this is a good campaigning strategy. I also learnt early on that Labour does better when there are low turnouts and my recent post shows this very well for Nottingham-shire. Parliament's Library has data which also backs up my belief, as these two tables show for the 2017 and 2109 General Elections. In the constituencies with the lowest turnouts Labour won the most seats. I also created a similar graph for Broxtowe Borough Council election in 2019 and, yes, the three lowest turnouts were all in Labour seats. Here is the evidence. I will add a Nottinghamshire County Council 2017 elections graph before too long.*

* UPDATE: This now has its own post. Labour has to hope for low turnouts if it wants to wins seats in the Notts County Council elections due this coming May.

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE: