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Having set out some of the fantastic potential of Oxford and some of the challenges we face in realising that potential, before I come on to specific policy commitments I wanted to outline some of the principles by which I live and which form my thinking and that will shape many of those policies.

Individualism, mutualism, democracy

Individualism - I am inherently anti-government. I think we have too much of it, we rely too much on it and are consequently disappointed and angry when it fails to deliver what we thought it would. I think people feel better about themselves when they have a choice and can do things for themselves.

Nonetheless, there is a place for a community getting together to achieve things that individuals would find it difficult to do or do economically for themselves or because of being excluded in some way, or to prevent any individual or group monopolising some important shared resource or gaining unfair advantage over others through monopoly or cartel behaviour.

Mutualism - I believe that mutual enterprise is the best way to meet many of these needs. Firstly it is voluntary: an individual becomes a member because they share common goals with the other members of that particular enterprise. And they hold the control between them. The aims can't be hijacked by other parts of a conglomerate style organisation, like a local authority for example, when unrelated priorities change or the allocation of resources changes. They are democratic: nobody can take control for their own ends as all the members have an equal say and a right to expect an equitable return, whether that return is in the form of profit, or more likely in the services that enterprise is established to deliver for its members.

Mutual enterprise is a particularly good way of delivering services where competition exists but in which someone alone is unable to compete without the help of others. Of course government has a role in fostering this kind of business in helping like-minded people with similar aims and wants to get together and achieve it for themselves. But it is not constrained by some of the common problems of government - interference from above, sudden reallocation of resources to respond to others' priorities and so on.

Democracy - In the end, and I do think it ought to be regarded as a "last resort", there may be some things that are near impossible for individuals or small groups to do for themselves or as single issues and that would be unlikely to be profitable in the monetary terms needed by a corporation. This is where we communally "agree" to surrender some of our self-sovereignty to some form of representative management for the common good.

I believe the future of democracy, in an increasingly aware and connected world, is for individuals and small communities genuinely to explore what they can do for themselves and carefully to choose what needs to be done in common and when they need to collaborate in bigger groups - neighbourhood, local, regional, national, international. At the moment we have too much top down government, implemented through broad brush targets and with little local discretion to innovate or incentive to do better.

But also, as representatives of a whole host of interests at a city level, local government can be a body that helps get things done that don't strictly fall within its own remit. If you like as a lobby group for the people of Oxford, taking a strategic view to promote new facilities and protect existing sometimes vulnerable ones.

So these three, I hope, are at the root of my personal political philosophy, and I hope anything I suggest in these pages will be seen as part of that overall model. Next, I will want to look at how these principles might be applied to some of Oxford's pressing problems.

I had just got in from dinner with Chris Huhne tonight, and settled down to write about it, and one of those college rites of passage teen angst films came on called "The Rules of Attraction". I have never seen it, and still haven't really, because just as they got to a bit about a frat brother, or whatever it is they call them, being so drunk he had all his friends worried he might have taken something else, or that he might not make it through the night because he wouldn't wake up, a girl from the flat upstairs called down to say that they were worried about their flatmate who had been out with the hockey team initiation pub-crawl and was semi-conscious in the flat.

An hour or so and an ambulance visit later (I always feel a bit iffy about calling out an ambulance for what is so obviously alcohol related but decided not to risk the alternatives since last time I tried to call the on call night doctor service by the time they had phoned me back to say call an ambulance in a previous incident the person had stopped breathing and was pretty close to death from a sub-arachnoid haaemorrage) up come the credits at the end of the film...

"Any similarity to actual learning establishments, students or situations is entirely coincidental"

I don't think I believe in coincidences! But I do believe that alcohol is one of the most deadly, frequently abused and much underestimated drugs. The effects can be hideous and frightening to onlookers. And I have no doubt at all that if he had strayed onto some of the more popular illicit substances, in an ideal world of freedom of choice with regulation on the basis of minimising harm and informing that choice, he would not be in anything like the state he is currently in.

But at least he's in bed, and with someone to watch him for a couple of hours. And I earnestly hope that nobody suffered a heart attack and died waiting for the two ambulances that had to come to deal with two separate incidents of alcohol madness onsite tonight in the space of quarter of an hour.

UPDATE: At least the chap in my block was accompanied home by his female flatmate (who had been called and asked to collect him by his male drinking buddies so far as I can work out!) and had someone to look after him. I now gather that in the other incident the person, who was not even a resident of ours but from that other ramshackle place in town that prides itself on big brains addled with cheap booze from outlets called "JCRs", was simply rolled into what passed for a "recovery position" and left in the quad, unconscious. The ambulance took him away.

We're none of us getting any younger. In four months I reach my big four-Oh. I left school almost as long ago as I have working years left under the current rules at least. Yes, I like to think I'm still young, but I think I'd be right to object to being called "boy such-and-such". David Milliband is a full year and a half older than me and David Cameron is some months older. George Osborne is a little younger, but would have been in the fourth form when I was in my sixth, so not a lot.

Respectively they are referred to disparagingly as the "Boy Emperor" (apparently within his department anyway), "the Boy David", and "Boy George". On the other night's Question Time there was an audience member who looked to be in his early twenties complaining that nobody in politics really represented his generation (pace Mr Tall of course, who, so far as I am aware is not referred to as "the Boy Stephen").

Clearly referring to people nearing or past their milestone fortieth as "boy" does nothing to make them any the more representative of younger people.

Anyway - it's just a rant. Maybe we could find some better epithets to give these people. Dislike their politics, make them out to be naive, yes, but really, can we not be more imaginative than calling them "boy" (and yes, I know I've done it too). Alexander was younger than George Osborne when he had finished conquering the known world, and that nice Mr Pitt had been Prime Minister and given up by the time he got to our age.

Okay - maybe I am a little envious - my English/Latin A level teacher referred to me to some parents he was showing round school one day twenty two years ago as "looks like fifty but really is one of our sixth formers"...:)

I see another article in today's Oxford Mail demanding action over some of the council owned garage sites around Oxford. In Action Demand Over Garages local resident Tony Greenfield suggests that "No-one in the council, it seems, has the business acumen, or real interest, to turn this around. It is a disgraceful waste of our money."

Mr Greenfield and others might be interested to know that since I was ward councillor for his area some four years ago now I've continued to try to get something done about these garages. With my Community Land Trust hat on I have even submitted outline proposals to take over several of these sites and provide mutually owned affordable housing.

I even did sketch plans for these ones off Raymund Rd, and have been asked on at least three different occasions by local councillors (Lib Dems, since Mr Greenfield made such a point of criticisng us/them) whether I've heard any more about it. I reckon with clever use of space and materials you could get at least eight three bedroomed or ten two bedroomed "mews" style homes on that site all with integral garages as you can see in the image below.

The wheels of local government turn very slow indeed in this case. The review of the use of garage sites across the city was begun when I was still on the council - I was not re-elected in 2002! Some have been handed over to "preferred" housing association partners, but others, more difficult to use ones, that the housing associations didn't want to be bothered with, are still festering there blighting their neighbourhoods.

Oxfordshire CLT met on Monday to finalise our registration. Within weeks we will be legally able to accept land, and we have a development partner waiting to help us plan and build. It will only take the city council to say so and we can start putting the effort in.