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  • A Living Wage for Powys County Council – success for 6 strong Labour Group!

    Despite the idyllic postcard look and feel to Powys, if you scratch the surface there is real poverty and deprivation – sometimes disguised by our rolling hillsides. The Independent-run council has happily allowed more than 1000 of its workers to scrape by on poverty pay for years, but since Labour increased its numbers in the…

  • The politics of justice – enforcing the minimum wage

    I was astonished and genuinely outraged (as others have been) at the reported remarks of my MP Conservative George Freeman. When answering questions about the low enforcement and prosecutions for those not paying the minimum wage (under this government, there have only been 9, prosecutions and 162 named and shamed) Freeman talked about this criticism as…

  • What does Labour need to do to win the rural vote?

    How will Labour win the rural vote? I’ll some it up in three words: policy, process, and people! People with passion for the rural, for the countryside and coastal communities which help define this island nation. But first of all, we must be clear on what we mean by the “rural vote”. That really matters!…

  • Devolution, Localism and Representing the Coast & Country…. Conference Diary 2014

    Today, the devolution debate continues, though often now in the guise of localism, and how labour will deliver that localism for the people of Britain. At the LGA fringe, Deborah Mattinson, founder of the polling organization Britainthinks, highlighted the need to think of people beyond any demographic category – their interests and needs are more…