Town

  • The Vale – town, coast and country – seats we need to win

    Constituencies like the Vale of Glamorgan are exactly the sorts of seats Labour needs to win for Westminster – a mix of town, coast and country; of retired, working and not; of high skilled manufacturing, of city commuting and of local jobs. Labour needed to engage with seats like this in 2015, while the impending boundaries…

  • The ‘Talk of the Town’ . . .

    The recent Demos Report “Talk of the Town” seeks to highlight the very different “performance” of towns from their neighbouring cities. It has selected a range of measures through which to compare aspects positive and negative, to some extent social but more economic, through which to suggest how well each community is faring. I am not competent…

  • Raising Aspirations in Coast and Country

    It does not take much for figures on social mobility to astound our consciousness. Given one in every six children are still in relative poverty, it seems Britain is still a broadly unequal society. This situation underpins any modern progressive: spurring each of us on in finding solutions to tackle these problems. Under the last Labour…

  • 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…

  • Devolution should include Town and Parish . . . . Conference Diary

    The conference fringe is as varied and diverse as the issues that face coast and country communities.  This year with the Scottish vote the question of who decides what emerges in most fringe event discussions, be that the value of community pubs, the choice of the second runway or how to deliver new housing. Two reoccurring…