Big Brother’s Carole Vincent is Candidate with No Name.

Former Big Brother contestant (and part time “Sun” model) Carole Vincent, is standing to be a Councillor in a by-election in Leyton, Waltham Forest, East London for SWP/Respect.

Due to bickering over the use of the name “Respect” between George Galloway’s “Jamaati/ Respect” and John Rees “SWP/ Respect”, she has had to stand under no political label on the ballot paper (which is pretty apt for all strands of diss-respect)

I am not going to gloat too much since this by-election follows the conviction and disqualification of the Labour Councillor Miranda Grell for “falsely branding a Liberal Democrat rival a paedophile and telling electors he had sex with teenage boys.” Miranda, who still protests her innocence, has since resigned from the Labour party.

Campaigning journalist, Khevyn Limbajee, is the excellent and well respected (in the true sense of the word) Labour Party candidate. I’ll post details about local campaign activities as soon as I can.

Hat tip to Alan G.

Compass Conference – Workshops, Global Question time and Close

This report follows my first post “Navigating the Compass Conference”. After the morning keynote speeches there was a choice of 16 workshops. I decided on the “An Irresistible Force? Managing globalisation” by Unions 21. Just beforehand I sneaked into the debate on Trident and took this quick picture (left) of Labour blogger, Luke Akehurst, who was speaking in favour of Trident(on left with Jon Trickett standing).

Will Hutton, of the Work Foundation was guest speaker at the unions 21 workshop. A lot of international trade unions were represented. This is now the third trade union meeting on globalisation that I have attended in recent weeks. Things are starting to happen. Will made an interesting remark about the Chinese being concerned about goods “being made in china but not made by Chinese” referring to the level of foreign ownership of companies, China retains little “added value”. However, it’s the Asian saving culture and the huge amount of petrol dollars which have fuelled the Private Equity boom in the West. I asked my usual question on the role of workers capital. Which the panel broadly agreed should be important.

After lunch I went to the New Local Government Network workshop on Globalisation and local government. The panel of speakers (see top right photo: left to right) Stella Creasy (former mayor of Waltham Forest), Chair (rudely I have forgotten his name), Lyn Brown MP (West Ham), Cllr Steve Reed (Lambeth Council Leader) and Jane Roberts (former Leader of Camden). It seems that the new bill currently making its way on local government is finally going to decentralise decision making back to local authorities. This went down very well with the audience. Lyn, in her probably unique experience as a local government researcher, senior councillor and now PPS to the Minister for Local government felt that these were an opportunity for a Renaissance in Councils. In the meeting was another blogger, my favourite GMB Councillor from the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Miranda Grell (see pic below). In my response to my question to the panel on the role of unions in this Lyn suggested that we ought to have representation on local strategic partnership boards. While Stella quoted Ed Miliban (I think it was Ed not David) that Council workers should stop being “experts” and start being “navigators” for their communities. A very suitable thing to say at a compass conference!

Global question time in the great hall followed. Poor old Garth Thomas MP, under secretary of state for international development had a hard time from his fellow panellists (Martin Bright “New Statesman”, Shami Chakrabarti “Liberty”, Martin Sedden “Al jazeera” and Sukvinder Stubbs “Barrow Cadbury Group”). However, thought that he stood his ground well and gave as good as he got especially over the debate about a “British Day”. Heather Wakefield, from UNISON asked a question about how the panel would tackle the continued discrimination in public services regarding equal pay for women. This had Shami unusually, she admitted for a Liberty spokesperson, calling for greater regulations and legal enforcement.

Antonio Miranda a Brazilian campaigner spoke about the successful battle in Brazil against water privatisation.

Jon Tickett MP was the final speaker. Jon Cruddas was in Cardiff with the rest of the deputy leadership candidates. He was billed to give a video message, but it never happened for some reason. I thought that Jon T speech was quite negative and even a little grumpy. Nothing to write home about.

It is interesting that I don’t think any of main Compass speakers mentioned Tony Blair by name even once. Despite this I am not wholly convinced that Compass is really that different from “New Labour”. Compass is certainly associated with distinctive polices such as opposition to Iraq and Trident at which they are at odds with the Labour Government. However, on the basis of what I heard at this conference about Compass supporters “positions” on privatisation, economic policy, globalisation etc then I think there is in reality no fundamental schism. I think that Compass is a “traditional” Labour movement which has ditched Marxism and state socialism for civil liberties and equal opportunities.