Where did EU go?

So that’s it. We’re done. Only a few more hours of the UK’s decades-long European Union membership left.

As someone who can’t remember not being a part of this European family, who has studied, lived, worked, and holidayed throughout Europe, including every single one of the #EU27. Europe is part of me and I’m part of it.

I thought Seb Dance, one of London’s MEPs summed it up well here:

When I’m sad, I head to the allotment or go and look at flowers. Here’s a photo I took this week of a fabulous fuchsia in the low winter sunshine:

Work work

I’ve been supporting the Institute of Fundraising’s Change Collective and helping to write some of the recruitment toolkit. I’m endlessly astonished at the poor practice displayed by some charities and recruitment consultancies when they’re recruiting new team members. I shared a particularly poor example from my own job search adventures online, and, from the responses, sadly, I’m not alone. Hopefully, the toolkit will help recruiting managers do recruitment better, open vacant roles up to a wider range of candidates, settle them in and support them effectively in their roles.

Surely, this is all common-sense basic stuff?!

Council work

This week I’ve been catching up on casework. It’s particularly sad when someone you think you’ve helped writes in again to say that they’re still struggling. I’ve got a number of these cases at the moment and they’re hard to fix as they all relate to the shortage of good quality properly-affordable homes in our over-crowded borough. Even the most vulnerable residents can’t always be rehoused. It’s heartbreaking. The government has committed to sorting out this particular Tory mess and ending rough sleeping within this Parliament. My colleagues and I will be making sure they keep their promises.

Politics

On Saturday, Clare and I went to Brierley Hill for a thank you dinner with local Dudley South members and activists. There were around 20 of us and it was a lovely evening. Someone made the point that that would be a good turnout for an All Members’ Meeting in that CLP.

Which brings me to our nominations’ meeting in Vauxhall, which took place last night. 177 voting members and our total membership is apparently pushing 3,000. We nominated Lisa Nandy (by one vote over Keir Starmer) and Rosena Allin-Khan. It was a good-natured and well-organised meeting.

One of the reasons I’m personally backing Rosena for Deputy Leader is her campaigning action plan, something that would have been so helpful to me in the General Election in Dudley South. Making better use of the skills and talent throughout our party, sharing of resources, talent and knowledge seems so sensible but the way we are currently organised makes it very difficult to do. I’d like to see that change and I really hope Rosena makes it to the final ballot.

Equality Book Club

The next meeting will be on Monday 2 March at 5pm and we’ll be discussing "The Class Ceiling: Why it pays to be privileged". Book tickets here.

Learning points:

The BBC blamed “human error” for mistakenly using a picture of Lebron James instead of Kobe Bryant in its coverage of Kobe’s tragic death. We (by we, I mean white people) have got to take a long hard look at why these mistakes would ever happen and keep happening and then take the steps needed to stop them happening.

What am I reading?

Why it pays to be privileged - Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison (the next Equality Book Club book, of course)

What am I listening to?

Scene on Radio, the brilliant podcast from the Centre of Documentary Studies at Duke Unviersity, North Carolina, is back with a new series. I learned so much from the last series, Seeing White, and I’m looking forward to more.

Joy-giving things

I’ve planted some sweetpea seeds to give me some light in the dark days. They germinated on the kitchen window sill and I’ve put them outside in the cold frame. This year I’m growing the original variety, Cupani, named after Francis Cupani who sent some seeds to the UK from their native Sicily in 1699.

Let’s see what happens to these seeds in sunny Stockwell.

I’m also writing a chapter for a book. More soon

Happy weekend everyone!