Here’s the list of candidates:

• David Miliband
• Ed Miliband
• Ed Balls
• Andy Burnham
• Diane Abbott

My vote will be for Andy Burnham so I thought I’d set out the reasons why.

I’m a new Labour Party member, I joined immediately after the 2010 General Election and I wrote about the reasons for joining here. It’s also my first political affiliation of any kind.

When I first drafted this post I started to outline my reasons for not voting for candidates other than Andy Burnham. The post started to have a negative feel to it and that’s not what I’m trying to outline here. You see one of the five candidates is going to be the next Labour Party leader and will garner my support no matter which one of the five it is. Whoever it is will hopefully be the next Prime Minister and the entire party must get behind them. Whilst I have made up my mind, there are many attributes of the other candidates that I admire and support. So I’ll concentrate on why I have made Andy Burnham my preferred candidate.

Firstly, Andy is the candidate I most identify with. He didn’t grow up with a privileged background and was the first member of his family to attend University. When he talks he gives the impression that he really understands the needs of both grass roots Labour Party members and working class people in general. If he wasn’t a politician I could imagine knowing him socially. He could be a member of my Cricket Club. He could be the bloke in the next office that I natter to at lunch time. He could be any decent guy that you know and like in your social or work circle. I can imagine that if I were a politician, I’d be like Andy.

So OK I like the guy, but what about his ability to lead the Labour Party and to be a future Prime Minister. Well, I think he’d be a breath of fresh air. I can imagine him at PMQs facing Cameron. We’d have the stage managed, privileged, cosmetic politician who hasn’t got a clue about the lives of ordinary people, versus a bloke that not only understands ordinary people, he actually is one. Andy could completely engage voters who may have strayed away from Labour in the aftermath of New Labour because, as Andy says, he’s not New or Old Labour, he’s True Labour. A real representative of the majority of ordinary working class people leading the people’s party. Fighting for the aspirations of us all in our Parliament.

I keep thinking about a BBC series called The Amazing Mrs Pritchard. Mrs Pritchard, played by Jane Horrocks, was a Supermarket Manager who, feeling disenfranchised from the political process, formed her own party called The Purple Alliance. She swept to power, ousting Tony Blair and became Prime Minister. She won the election because people saw themselves in her and liked what they saw. One of them, one of us leading the country. Isn’t that what politics is supposed to be about?

I know, Andy Burnham is now a career politician and not a complete political newcomer, but the similarities between him and Mrs Pritchard are there for all to see, commonsense values and social aspiration.

I think Andy Burnham is the man to rally the party and then country to return Labour to Government. Just think about him stood on the steps of Number 10 after a Labour election victory. A working class man ready to lead our country. What a wonderful prospect for us all. The Tories wouldn’t know what’d hit them.

Two Horse Race

The media have built this election contest into being a two-horse race between the Miliband brothers. It suits them because it makes a great story on the front pages. Brother versus Brother, simmering sibling rivalry. They must be rubbing their hands together. I’m convinced this leads to people thinking they have to pick one of the two favourites. Everybody wants to back a winner and in a two-horse race, you’ve a 50/50 chance of being a winner. Except it’s not a two-horse race, there are three other candidates.

I know a little bit about horse racing. In the 2010 Gold Cup at Cheltenham, the media built the race up as the show-down between two great rivals, Kauto Star and Denman. Both mighty stallions and powerhouses of National Hunt racing. The racing press were in a frenzy about which one of the two was going to triumph over the other. What happened? Kauto Star fell and Denman ran out of petrol leaving the race to be won by the younger Imperial Commander. It’s where all the clever money was placed and it was a great victory.

There’s no such thing as a two horse race.

When you get your ballot paper this week, please give your first preference to Andy Burnham. Andy’s leadership will give a fresh look to British Politics to which everyone can relate.

They just can’t stop themselves, yesteryear headline addicts, locked in the old quarrels, oozing sectarian malice to their last gasp. Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair elbow their way back into the limelight for one last show with their competing memoirs – a breathtaking self-indulgence dragging the party back, just when the ballot papers for Labour’s future land on doormats tomorrow morning.

A wise party is unlikely to heed their ill-judged intrusions. Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher did their reputation no favours with sour backseat driving. Blair is reported in the Mail on Sunday as saying Ed Miliband would be “a disaster” while Mandelson tells the Times Ed would lead Labour into “an electoral cul-de-sac“. Naturally the Murdoch press and the Mail are only to keen to give them their last pathetic moments of attention, to Labour’s detriment. But their day is over. Mandelson had one last chance to do his party a service when he could have ousted Gordon Brown before inevitable electoral calamity. But self-interest kept him taking notes for his memoir instead: pollsters show that a new leader would have won Labour the extra 20 to 30 seats to prevent the present coalition. That hardly makes his leadership advice valuable.

Mandelson’s book has been an occasion to reflect on the damage he has done to Labour over the years – far outweighing his early red rose rebranding that started the party on the road to electability. A sulphurous fascinator, the flick of his tail flavoured New Labour from the outset with a venality that seduced Blair, too.

Mandelson knew, better than anyone, the importance of imagery. Much revulsion against New Labour sprang from those indelible scenes of Blair and Mandelson holidaying in palaces and yachts: see how Cameron has learned from that mistake. How could Mandelson be a Labour person, yet spend his leisure hours with tax-exile Tory bankers or powerful Tory society hostesses, Labour’s natural enemies? Choosing such friends debased politics – was it just a day job like any other, forgotten in the evenings or on holiday, not a conviction or a way of life? No wonder voters turn cynical if all the party tribalism, the ideology, the fury and passion was only play-acting after all. So when Mandelson and the Blairites suggest any slight move leftwards from New Labour would be fatal, consider how oddly disorientated and distorted their position on the spectrum became. Power and money sent their compasses spinning, Blunkett and others were seduced too, so many of the Blair entourage now retired to very un-Labour worlds of lucre.

Mandelson’s sole historic quote – being “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” – became lethally emblematic of New Labour’s infatuation with super-money. It undermined them from the early days, from Bernie Ecclestone’s £1m to Lord Levy’s cash-raising, failing to bring in an austere state funding of parties. New Labour’s insistence that the hyper-wealthy must never be offended became suspect. Why never raise tax on the richest, as boardroom pay rose by 30% a year and bankers’ bonuses soared? How did a Labour government let inequality slip backwards in those golden years?

Blair’s retirement into an orbit of mega-wealth has done immeasurable damage to his legacy: far too late comes his gift of book earnings to the British Legion. Had he taken the Jimmy Carter ascetic route, devoting himself to good works, keeping no more than his sizable pension, he could have done himself and Labour honour. Neither Miliband is tainted with money fascination, but both need to recognise how much of that past needs vocal rejection.

Blair and Mandelson, now trying to meddle with the future, have had no new ideas for a decade: they would do well to go gracefully into their platinum-plated political retirement. If David Miliband were wise he would pick up the phone and blast Mandelson for his intervention. He would seize the next mic and chop him up in public. Spilling anti-Ed poison to the Times, which paid Mandelson more than £350,000 for his memoirs, is about as helpful to the elder brother’s campaign as a gushing endorsement from Brown would be to Ed’s chances. For his own sake, David should also warn Blair to keep his tanks off the lawn. At the same time he should publicly rebuke him for the appalling timing of his book this week as an act of selfish disregard for the Labour party, to whom he owes everything.

This contest is Labour’s chance to make a clean break with the past, above all with the old Blair-Brown schism. That’s not easy, since all but Diane Abbott were implicated – Ed Balls most conspiratorially, the Milibands a bit less. Some doomsayers think Labour will not be back in power until a new generation takes over. My own view is that the brothers can be fresh enough in their approach to make the break – but only by kicking away the worst of the past, which Ed Miliband is doing. That means celebrating all that Labour achieved in the NHS, schools, Sure Start, child care, crime, the minimum wage and restoring pride in civic spaces, when so much of that is about to be slashed by the coalition. But Labour also needs to escape the deadly tropes, the meaningless language of “modernising” and the unimaginative straitjacket New Labour locked itself into after 1994.

David Miliband needs his break-free moment, when he gains the independence to tell Mandelson and Blair to shut up. He might reprise Clement Attlee‘s laconic put-down, “a period of silence on their part would be welcome”. Or echo his younger brother who, asked if Mandelson would form part of his cabinet, replied sharply: “All of us believe in dignity in retirement”.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

I’ve decided to let the live site run the theme even though it’s not really 100% ready. it’s a little work-in-progress but it’s nearly there. A few things need sorting out and a few of the pages are a bit icky, if you can find them that is. The site navigation is another thing to sort out.

I’ve called the theme Fitzy and it’s a child theme of Thematic. Once I get it working fully to my liking I may make it a download on here if anyone wants it.

We’ll see.

Things seem awfully heated in America right now; so heated you could probably toast a marshmallow by jabbing it on a stick and holding it toward the Atlantic. Millions are hopping mad over the news that a bunch of triumphalist Muslim extremists are about to build a “victory mosque” slap bang in the middle of Ground Zero.

The planned “ultra-mosque” will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin’s call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for “victory” is.

I’m exaggerating. But I’m only exaggerating a tad more than some of the professional exaggerators who initially raised objections to the “Ground Zero mosque“. They keep calling it the “Ground Zero mosque”, incidentally, because it’s a catchy title that paints a powerful image – specifically, the image of a mosque at Ground Zero.

When I heard about it – in passing, in a soundbite – I figured it was a US example of the sort of inanely confrontational fantasy scheme Anjem Choudary might issue a press release about if he fancied winding up the tabloids for the 900th time this year. I was wrong. The “Ground Zero mosque” is a genuine proposal, but it’s slightly less provocative than its critics’ nickname makes it sound. For one thing, it’s not at Ground Zero. Also, it isn’t a mosque.

Wait, it gets duller. It’s not being built by extremists either. Cordoba House, as it’s known, is a proposed Islamic cultural centre, which, in addition to a prayer room, will include a basketball court, restaurant, and swimming pool. Its aim is to improve inter-faith relations. It’ll probably also have comfy chairs and people who smile at you when you walk in, the monsters.

To get to the Cordoba Centre from Ground Zero, you’d have to walk in the opposite direction for two blocks, before turning a corner and walking a bit more. The journey should take roughly two minutes, or possibly slightly longer if you’re heading an angry mob who can’t hear your directions over the sound of their own enraged bellowing.

Perhaps spatial reality functions differently on the other side of the Atlantic, but here in London, something that is “two minutes’ walk and round a corner” from something else isn’t actually “in” the same place at all. I once had a poo in a pub about two minutes’ walk from Buckingham Palace. I was not subsequently arrested and charged with crapping directly onto the Queen’s pillow. That’s how “distance” works in Britain. It’s also how distance works in America, of course, but some people are currently pretending it doesn’t, for daft political ends.

New York being a densely populated city, there are lots of other buildings and businesses within two blocks of Ground Zero, including a McDonald’s and a Burger King, neither of which has yet been accused of serving milkshakes and fries on hallowed ground. Regardless, for the opponents of Cordoba House, two blocks is too close, period. Frustratingly, they haven’t produced a map pinpointing precisely how close is OK.

That’s literally all I’d ask them in an interview. I’d stand there pointing at a map of the city. Would it be offensive here? What about here? Or how about way over there? And when they finally picked a suitable spot, I’d ask them to draw it on the map, sketching out roughly how big it should be, and how many windows it’s allowed to have. Then I’d hand them a colour swatch and ask them to decide on a colour for the lobby carpet. And the conversation would continue in this vein until everyone in the room was in tears. Myself included.

That hasn’t happened. Instead, 70% of Americans are opposed to the “Ground Zero mosque”, doubtless in many cases because they’ve been led to believe it literally is a mosque at Ground Zero. And if not . . . well, it must be something significant. Otherwise why would all these pundits be so angry about it? And why would anyone in the media listen to them with a straight face?

According to a recent poll, one in five Americans believes Barack Obama is a Muslim, even though he isn’t. A quarter of those who believe he’s a Muslim also claimed he talks about his faith too much. Americans aren’t dumb. Clearly these particular Americans have either gone insane or been seriously misled. Where are they getting their information?

Sixty per cent said they learned it from the media. Which means it’s time for the media to give up.

Seriously, broadcasters, journalists: just give up now. Because either you’re making things worse, or no one’s paying attention anyway. May as well knock back a few Jagermeisters, unplug the autocue, and just sit there dumbly repeating whichever reality-warping meme the far right wants to go viral this week. What’s that? Obama is Gargamel and he’s killing all the Smurfs? Sod it. Whatever. Roll titles.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010

Testing out mobile uploads with an image of George from today.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAV0XrbEwNc

I’ve copied this from elsewhere. I just wanted a copy for me, here.

Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control.

It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.

Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially de-humanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well-adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else. They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid-West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think – have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have.

It is easy and tempting to hate such people. However, it is wrong. They are as much products of society, and of a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the poor drop-out. They are losers. They have lost the essential elements of our common humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women. The big challenge to our civilisation is not Oz, a magazine I haven’t seen, let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too permissive. Any society which, for example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is generally employed – although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem. It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and devalues human relations.

Let me give two examples from contemporary experience to illustrate the point.

Recently on television I saw an advert. The scene is a banquet. A gentleman is on his feet proposing a toast. His speech is full of phrases like “this full-bodied specimen”. Sitting beside him is a young, buxom woman. The image she projects is not pompous but foolish. She is visibly preening herself, believing that she is the object of the bloke’s eulogy. Then he concludes – “and now I give…”, then a brand name of what used to be described as Empire sherry. Then the laughter. Derisive and cruel laughter. The real point, of course, is this. In this charade, the viewers were obviously expected to identify not with the victim but with her tormentors.

The other illustration is the widespread, implicit acceptance of the concept and term “the rat race”. The picture it conjures up is one where we are scurrying around scrambling for position, trampling on others, back-stabbing, all in pursuit of personal success. Even genuinely intended, friendly advice can sometimes take the form of someone saying to you, “Listen, you look after number one.” Or as they say in London, “Bang the bell, Jack, I’m on the bus.”

To the students [of Glasgow University] I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”

Profit is the sole criterion used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity. From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocabulary in vogue is a give-away. It’s more reminiscent of a human menagerie than human society. The power structures that have inevitably emerged from this approach threaten and undermine our hard-won democratic rights. The whole process is towards the centralisation and concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. The facts are there for all who want to see. Giant monopoly companies and consortia dominate almost every branch of our economy. The men who wield effective control within these giants exercise a power over their fellow men which is frightening and is a negation of democracy.

Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision-making by the people for the people. This is not simply an economic matter. In essence it is an ethical and moral question, for whoever takes the important economic decisions in society ipso facto determines the social priorities of that society.

From the Olympian heights of an executive suite, in an atmosphere where your success is judged by the extent to which you can maximise profits, the overwhelming tendency must be to see people as units of production, as indices in your accountants’ books. To appreciate fully the inhumanity of this situation, you have to see the hurt and despair in the eyes of a man suddenly told he is redundant, without provision made for suitable alternative employment, with the prospect in the West of Scotland, if he is in his late forties or fifties, of spending the rest of his life in the Labour Exchange. Someone, somewhere has decided he is unwanted, unneeded, and is to be thrown on the industrial scrap heap. From the very depth of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men, in business or in government, to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable.

The concentration of power in the economic field is matched by the centralisation of decision-making in the political institutions of society. The power of Parliament has undoubtedly been eroded over past decades, with more and more authority being invested in the Executive. The power of local authorities has been and is being systematically undermined. The only justification I can see for local government is as a counter- balance to the centralised character of national government.

Local government is to be restructured. What an opportunity, one would think, for de-centralising as much power as possible back to the local communities. Instead, the proposals are for centralising local government. It’s once again a blue-print for bureaucracy, not democracy. If these proposals are implemented, in a few years when asked “Where do you come from?” I can reply: “The Western Region.” It even sounds like a hospital board.

It stretches from Oban to Girvan and eastwards to include most of the Glasgow conurbation. As in other matters, I must ask the politicians who favour these proposals – where and how in your calculations did you quantify the value of a community? Of community life? Of a sense of belonging? Of the feeling of identification? These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer. Such human considerations do not feature in their thought processes.

Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under “M” for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.

If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let’s make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let’s gear our society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity.

Even this is not enough. To measure social progress purely by material advance is not enough. Our aim must be the enrichment of the whole quality of life. It requires a social and cultural, or if you wish, a spiritual transformation of our country. A necessary part of this must be the restructuring of the institutions of government and, where necessary, the evolution of additional structures so as to involve the people in the decision-making processes of our society. The so-called experts will tell you that this would be cumbersome or marginally inefficient. I am prepared to sacrifice a margin of efficiency for the value of the people’s participation. Anyway, in the longer term, I reject this argument.

To unleash the latent potential of our people requires that we give them responsibility. The untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people. I am convinced that the great mass of our people go through life without even a glimmer of what they could have contributed to their fellow human beings. This is a personal tragedy. It’s a social crime. The flowering of each individual’s personality and talents is the pre-condition for everyone’s development.

In this context education has a vital role to play. If automation and technology is accompanied as it must be with a full employment, then the leisure time available to man will be enormously increased. If that is so, then our whole concept of education must change. The whole object must be to equip and educate people for life, not solely for work or a profession. The creative use of leisure, in communion with and in service to our fellow human beings, can and must become an important element in self-fulfilment.

Universities must be in the forefront of development, must meet social needs and not lag behind them. It is my earnest desire that this great University of Glasgow should be in the vanguard, initiating changes and setting the example for others to follow. Part of our educational process must be the involvement of all sections of the university on the governing bodies. The case for student representation is unanswerable. It is inevitable.

My conclusion is to re-affirm what I hope and certainly intend to be the spirit permeating this address. It’s an affirmation of faith in humanity. All that is good in man’s heritage involves recognition of our common humanity, an unashamed acknowledgement that man is good by nature. Burns expressed it in a poem that technically was not his best, yet captured the spirit. In “Why should we idly waste our prime…”:

“The golden age, we’ll then revive, each man shall be a brother,

In harmony we all shall live and till the earth together,

In virtue trained, enlightened youth shall move each fellow creature,

And time shall surely prove the truth that man is good by nature.”

It’s my belief that all the factors to make a practical reality of such a world are maturing now. I would like to think that our generation took mankind some way along the road towards this goal. It’s a goal worth fighting for.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=btFHwhgjQGM