Contrary to popular belief (see here, here, here, here and here), Oxford city council has *not* cancelled Christmas, even if shoddy Oxford Mail reporting (swiftly copied by the rest of the media) implies that it has.

We have *not* changed our usual celebration events for the festive season. We will be having the usual Christmas trees in the Town Hall and Broad Street. The Lord Mayor’s Christmas Carol Concert (at which the City Rector gives the Blessing) will go ahead as a civic event - Susanna, as this year’s Lord Mayor, will keep the tradition of the Lord Mayor singing a solo of the opening verse of one of the carols. The Christmas reception for community workers is going ahead. The council will send out Christmas cards.

The confusion has come about because Oxford Inspires - who are separate to the council - are using the title ‘Winter Lights’ for a set of cultural events this autumn. The events organised by Oxford Inspires for November 28th will include the switch on of the city centre Christmas lights and the re-opening of Bonn Square. There will also be lots of other dance, music and other cultural events around the city’s museums and galleries as part of the wider season.

I must admit, I feel like banging my head on my desk. When you combine what is, frankly, a lack of nous on the part of Oxford Inspires (how did they not see this coming?) and the determination of the mass media to get at least one “loony left council bans Christmas” story this year, plus the irresponsible spin of the Sun in making it out to be about not offending Muslims, you were always going to get a perfect Christmas storm. Given that there is clearly a dastardly PC plot to deprive the mass of Brits who tick CofE on the census forms of their right to celebrate Christmas, will anyone believe me when I say that the first this councillor heard of it was when the Oxford Mail got hold of it? Of course not. And my protestations, my declarations of passion for turkey and cranberry sauce, the way my heart rises as the organ crashes and the descant soars in the final verse of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, the love I feel for my family, so rarely all in one place these days, opening presents and telling jokes on Christmas morning - that all counts for nothing, as I am a PC Christmas-cancelling Christian-hating leftist loony Labour Scrooge. Obviously.

UPDATE, 3.45pm: the letter that will appear in tomorrow’s Oxford Mail, hopefully:

Dear Sir
Your front page story about the Winter Light event was both dishonest and irresponsible.It can only have been designed to smear the City Council and will be the subject of an immediate complaint to the Press Complaints Commission.
Your readers ought to be able to trust their local paper to present facts not fabrications, and not to sow dissension and disharmony where none exists.
The facts are as follows;
1. The City Council has not ‘banned Christmas’ and has not banned the use of the word ‘Christmas’. The Council has not even considered doing either of these. On the contrary, the Council will be celebrating Christmas 2008 in the same way as it has celebrated all previous Christmases: we will have Christmas trees in the Town Hall and in Broad Street, the Lord Mayor will host a Christmas reception for community workers and will hold the annual Christmas Carols event, and we will be sending out Christmas cards.
2. Oxford Inspires designed the Winter Light event for 2008 , building on the very successful event of December 2007, which had the same name.This involved the late night opening of many museums and galleries, with musical events, food and drink, and things for children to do - together with the illuminated Pyramids in Broad Street.
3. For Christmas 2008, Oxford Inspires agreed with the City Council to time the Winter Light event for November and to have it on the same evening as the switch-on of the city centre Christmas Lights and the re -opening of Bonn Square.
Oxford Inspires is jointly funded by the two Universities, the City and County Councils and the Arts Council to sponsor cultural and arts events across the county. Their Winter Light event builds on similar events in many cities across the world where the arrival of darker evenings and colder weather creates the opportunity for some magical and exciting events in public buildings and public squares. It is a cultural event without any specific reference to the religious festivals that also occur in this period.
All these facts were explained to your reporter, so it is evident that the Oxford Mail has chosen to misrepresent them to an unsuspecting public for murky and dishonourable political motives.It a disgraceful display of gutter journalism.The clear intention of the newspaper was to suggest that the Council was seeking to deny the Christian character of Christmas. That is a slur without foundation.
Your sincerely
Cllr Bob Price, Leader, Oxford City Council
Cllr Ed Turner, Deputy Leader, Oxford City Council
Peter Sloman, Chief Executive, Oxford City Council

I strongly recommend this, even if neither genre is your usual.

It’s been more than three months since I posted here - the longest time I’ve left the blog dormant (and non-existant for a while, when my hosts forgot to remind me to pay for it). I did say I’d be super-busy. And I love it - work, representing Rose Hill and Iffley on the council, and, especially, being lead member for social inclusion and young people on Oxford City Council.

Here’s one of the things I’ve been putting time into rather than writing blog posts:

A £2.5M overhaul of Oxford’s rusting play areas is to start within months.
All 94 play areas will be transformed from ageing relics to ones containing new swings and slides within two years as part of a radical programme of investment.

(Quite what possessed me to swing, monkey-style, from a swing frame with no swings in front of the Oxford Mail’s photographer, I don’t know!)

Lots of the other things I’m working on are a little more low-key, but still vital: community centres, community cohesion, playschemes, grants for the voluntary sector - enough to keep me out of trouble.

Anyway, I don’t know whether I’m back blogging or not, to be honest, so see you around.

One minute, you’re sat in the pub with your mates and this guy you vaguely recognise from the telly talking about the Labour party, in the way that activists from all over the country do all the time over a pint. Then, somehow, it ends up in the paper. How did that happen?!

Stan Taylor, Labour leader of Oxford City Council from 1994-1996, died earlier this week. I didn’t know Stan well, as we were never on the council together, but it’s worth reading Dan’s short piece here. One of my colleagues was telling me earlier this week about Stan being hugely determined to get down to vote for him three weeks ago, despite being very ill, and his pleasure when he realised Labour had held his ward. A real loss to the Oxford party.

Update: Stan Taylor’s funeral will be a Requiem Mass at Our Lady’s RC Church, Hollow Way at 12.30 pm on Friday 6th June followed by a woodland burial at Wolvercote Cemetery.

Short post as the weather’s too gorgeous to stay inside too long. Been away for the week, so it’s only this morning that I realised how much breast-beating about the Crewe by-election has been going on.

Dan and Hopi have written good posts on this. It only remains for me to add the following to Labour comrades: get your bloody heads up, we run this country and the next election is ours to lose.

Last night on Newsnight, “insiders” were suggesting that we make the next two years about fairness. This gives me hope that there are still some in the party who are still up for a fight rather than a winding down to opposition.

In three terms in government, we have quietly done well on fairness - for older people, for families, for children, for workers. Talking about the value of fairness, with its link to the British value of fair play, lets us talk about the changes we want to see in people’s lives. Like making sure that ordinary people feeling the pinch from high living costs - not least food, energy and fuel - get more help from a government that is on their side. Like making it easier for working mums and dads, and for families worried about looking after their older relatives. Like making sure everyone has somewhere affordable and secure to live - be that through social renting or home-ownership or more help to the thousands of people stuck in the middle in a rubbish private rented sector. It could even mean - whisper it quietly - a windfall tax on energy companies and a new rate of tax for the super-rich. (And by the way, for all the criticisms of the Labour campaign in Crewe, people still do instinctively know which side they are on: us and them still exist, even if not so narrowly defined as in the past. The team in Crewe might have done better to focus on how “we” are better off under Labour rather than leave it as a class caricature, but there is something in it.)

Fairness as a narrative is harder for us now than it was even a few months ago: the 10p tax debacle undermined our entire reputation for caring about the least well-off, particularly those who are working for low wages - a reputation that is deserved and prouder than any other party’s record, even if we’ve done nowhere near enough to make sure that no-one in this rich prosperous nation lives in poverty. But I think it’s the only answer at a time when people’s thoughts are turning to their bank balances and overdrafts, their mortgage repayments and electricity bills.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that the Blairites have the answers. I was at a Progress event (yes, I know, unlikely, but I was) recently, and heard Charles Clarke speak. His policy prescriptions (contained here) were appalling for connecting with voters rather than broadsheet leader writers. I asked about living costs for ordinary people and how we show that we understand that it’s hard at the moment, and he replied with some guff about integrated sustainable transport. Does this guy ever knock on any doors?! Whatever answers the Blairites may have had (and in their time they had a fair few), they don’t have them any longer if this is the best they can do.

Along with the vast majority of Labour members and supporters on the centre-left, I do want us to talk about why we’re involved in politics - and fairness is it. We have a vision of a more equal society, where people work hard and aspire, and are supported and protected by government. I want us to remind the Labour coalition - of working-class voters, lower middle-class voters, middle-class voters, BME communities and liberal lefties - what they’ve gained, what is still to come, and what they could lose.

Millions of people are better-off after eleven years of Labour. We must not give up on them. I’ll be out on the doorstep tomorrow morning, and spending a large chunk of this week coming working for more playschemes, better play areas and a living wage in Oxford as a Labour councillor. I’m still proud of my government and my party. What are you going to do this week to help ensure a Labour government?

I’m working away from home this week with somewhat sporadic access to technology so I’ve not followed all the details, but allow me to say how proud I am of our MPs for standing up for a woman’s right to choose last night.

This brightened my - somewhat weary - Sunday:

it was unsurprising that the MPs began with a rendition of D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better — the anthem for new Labour’s 1997 election campaign

The occasion was the MP Lyn Brown’s hen do, the location was a karaoke bar in the city, and in attendance were several prominent ministers:

Balls and Cooper performed a duet of Endless Love, the ballad once recorded by Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey

and, inevitably:

The highlight, a version of Big Spender, was led by Chris Bryant, a parliamentary aide to Harriet Harman, the Labour deputy leader.

Forgive me for not posting. I do - for once - have an excellent excuse. After our victory in the local elections, the Labour party is now running Oxford city council again. We are (just - by one councillor) a minority administration. At annual council on Thursday, I was appointed to the administration. I’m now our lead member for social inclusion and young people - in other councils it may be called portfolio holder or cabinet member. I’ve known that this was the role I’d take for a week or so, and spent a fair amount of time discussing our priorities with colleagues and officers.

My portfolio covers: delivering our commitment to refurbish Oxford’s playgrounds; expanding the number and reach of our playschemes; overseeing community centres and facilities; the city council’s grants to voluntary organisations, including those which deliver on corporate priorities through commissioning, such as to the advice centres; the public side of the living wage campaign (the Leader is taking forward the internal agenda of ensuring that all council staff are paid at least $7 per hour as part of the wider discussions around pay and HR); estates regeneration; and community cohesion.

It’s all very exciting, though I’m not under-estimating the scale of the challenge, particularly where it comes to financial management and value for money. There’s a slight holiday atmosphere that comes of not being out on the knocker every night producing an inexhaustible appetite amongst Labour colleagues for dissecting the local elections/the state of the party/what we’re going to do on the council, always over a pint. All of this, plus the continued pleasure of representing Rose Hill and Iffley and continuing to hold down a full-time job means I’m super-busy - and loving it.

Thanks to the lovely Steve Hanlon. Please do go back and comment on the past few days’ election posts here, here, here, here, here and here.