"Welcome to sunny Berwick-upon-Tweed"

I succeeded in getting home from Scotland yesterday evening on the East Coast Main Line. On the radio this morning the line was reported closed between Dunbar and Berwick-upon-Tweed, owing to landslides.

I'm not surprised. I travelled through this area at about 4.30pm. On one side of the line the fields were filling up with pools of cocoa-coloured rain (the colour of the soil) and on the other side the sea was boiling beneath the lashing rain and driving winds. "We are now approaching sunny Berwick-upon-Tweed," the guard said.

I once said that if the union between England and Scotland were seriously threatened, I would move to Edinburgh and walk up and down Princes Street with a sandwich board campaigning to maintain it. (I think we all have a cause such as this that could make us behave rather eccentrically.) Obviously, I meant that I would do this if the weather were fine.

I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend in Edinburgh. I attended an academic workshop with the title "Another Europe is possible? The radical left and the European Union." This was my fantasy conference. (The phrase "one man's meat is another man's poison" might have been invented for just this moment.)

I meant to do some sight-seeing before I caught my train home on Tuesday but it was too wet and windy even for me. Instead, I spent the day profitably in the National Gallery of Scotland, in the Scottish artists galleries, looking at landscapes of lochs and glens.

However, I still had to shuttle between my B&B, the cafe where I ate my lunch, the gallery and, finally, the train station. I'm finally understanding why certain aspects of Scottish culture, the love of "calorie-rich" food, the whisky, the bagpipes and, most of all, the top-rate central heating have come about.

The food for an essential layer of insulating fat, the whisky to numb the pain of the chilblains, the bagpipes because it's the only sound that can climb above the sound of the howling wind and give you heart that you're not completely alone in the world, and the central heating to make you forget that if you venture outside you'll be frozen and soaked through within five minutes, so that you go ahead and do it anyway.

FBU president Mick Shaw usurps Brian Coleman

I'm going to Scotland tomorrow for a couple of days. I only have time to write a brief report of the Barnet trades council AGM held last Thursday night. Suffice it to say that, incredibly, our agenda was so full we didn't even get around to talking about easyCouncil!

Yes, the challenges are coming thick and fast. The growth of the far-right, what attitude we should take in the elections, tabloid press vilification of trade unions, proposed abolition of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme...

Still, we found time to smile, as the photo at the top, of our guest speaker Mick Shaw, president of the Fire Brigades Union, sitting in the chair usually occupied by Barnet mayor Brian Coleman, shows. We had booked to have our meeting in one of the committee rooms at Hendon Town Hall, but it was needed for another event, so we were fobbed off with the council chamber.

The photos below are, first, of local civil servants talking about their dispute, and, second, the tasty chairs that the councillors sit in when they are in the chamber. Naturally, this being Barnet council, the rest of the time, the chairs just go to waste.

A big fat zero - Barnet Tories launch their manifesto

The Times series reports on the launch of Barnet Tories' manifesto for the council elections. The biggest thing they are boasting about is that they will freeze council tax for a further two years. This seems a most rash promise given that they don't know what else they will have to do in the next two years. It seems like an attempt at a big fat bribe to me. And, if you're going to do that, why stop at two years?

On the easyCouncil/Future Shape front, the Tories say:

“We will give you the choice to tailor certain council services to your own needs and offer incentives to those who use fewer Council services.”

Next, they'll be paying us all just to go away!

I give their manifesto a big fat zero. Oh, hang on. According to this picture on the Barnet Tory-loving website London Daily News, I don't need to, because, bizarrely, that is something Barnet's Tories are happy to admit themselves.

Adopt-a-pothole week

It's been fashionable in the last few years to drive around town in a 4x4 (I think they're called). If you don't have one, it's been fashionable to sneer at people who do.

After driving back to Burnt Oak from North Finchley last night, dodging the pot holes, I can suddenly see the point of an off roader. Me and my driver talked the whole way, so I was only half-concentrating, but it dawned on me near the end of our journey that he had spent the entire time steering around potholes. Some of them are complete craters!

Which is your "favourite" pothole? Mine is the trench where Golders Green Crescent joins Golders Green Road. There's also a small, but very annoying one on Colindale Avenue between Colindale tube and Booth Road. Annoying because it fills up with rain and every vehicle that passes sends dirty spray up onto the pavement.

Barnet council's "FixMyStreet" website, where residents can report potholes and other street repairs needed, only seems to work where people feel they have ownership of a pothole because it is close to their house. Holes in more public places seem to be going unreported and unrepaired. Sometimes these are the biggest holes!

Perhaps we should start an adopt a pothole scheme. Tonight I am going to take charge of the two potholes mentioned in my blog and report them to FixMyStreet. I'll let you know how things go.

Apologoogle

The statcounter I use on this blog can tell me what keywords people have used in their internet search to bring them here.

This is my chance to apologise to, for example, the person who wanted to know the Indian High Court ruling on the daily rate for a tabla player but wound up here instead.

To the person who was looking for articles using the keywords "Nigel", "Farage" and "twat" and wound up here, I hope you were pleased with what you found.

Civil servants to strike on budget day

The PCS union are organising a third day of strike action on Budget Day, 24 March, to protest aginst the government's unilateral ending of their redundancy scheme. The government wants to make it cheaper to sack civil servants.

Budget day tomorrow is when the Chancellor explains his plans for restoring the national finances. Unfortunately, a lot of that is going to be done through cuts in public services, including cutting the number of staff delivering services.

I'll be visiting some of the picket lines around Barnet.

Here is a list - if you are nearby and want to know more about the dispute do go and ask the PCS members there. If it's not specified, please assume that you should go in the morning. Many civil servants are likely to go down to a central London rally in Parliament Square which is from 11am to 2pm.

North London Revenue Branch will be staging a picket outside Capitol House, 794 Green Lanes, Winchmore Hill, London N21 from 7-10am.

London Customs Branch will be staging a picket outside Berkeley House, 304 Regents Park Road, Finchley, London N3.

Jobcentres - there are likely to be pickets at most of the Jobcentres although you might have to go around to the staff entrances to find them!

Here from the Barnet Press is an account of the first two days' successful action on 8-9 March.

Barnet College - tonight's meeting cancelled

The public meeting about planned cuts at Barnet College scheduled for this evening has been cancelled. See the notice on the college website front page.

What a shame. I hope that there will still be some campaign around this. I'll share any news I get.

Barnet politicians grilled over sheltered housing wardens

Not able to join us on the sheltered housing demo yesterday were people involved in Barnet's 55+ forum. They were busy with an important event of their own, a hustings for local politicians.

More than 50 people were in the audience to grill Hendon Labour MP Andrew Dismore, Liberal Democrat council group leader Jack Cohen, Tory councillor Sachin Rajput, who is Barnet council's cabinet member for adult services, and Green Party parliamentary candidate for Hendon Andrew Newby.

The proposed sheltered housing warden cuts were high on people's agenda. Sachin Rajput continued to defend the cuts.

There's a full report on the Times series site.

Taxi! Or, Why I Am in the Wrong Business

Last week I gave over a half-day to draft the press release and letters to party leaders for today's sheltered housing demo. Today, I gave up another day's work and travelled, at my own expense, to join the protest in Parliament Square.

Sheltered housing residents from Barnet and elsewhere - Portsmouth, Cambridge, Hackney, Camden, Kensington, Whitstable - many of them elderly and disabled, stood across the road from Parliament and shouted "Save our wardens!" at a motorcade of chauffeur-driven cars bearing dignitaries in wigs with their families out of the Palace of Westminster. No, I haven't a clue who they were, but this certainly wasn't access to ministers.

We stood there with Brian Haw, he of the seven-year-long anti-Iraq war protest, and his supporters. We were photographed by the local press and the Times (the press release had some effect, then).

On schedule, the less able pensioners climbed into the minibus they had hired for the day (sometimes Barnet trades unions have paid for transport for these protests), while the rest of us set off on foot. We headed up to 30 Millbank to hand one of the letters in to Tory Party HQ. Then we went around the corner to Liberal Democrat HQ in Cowley Street. Finally, we trundled up to 10 Downing Street, to hand in the third of our three letters to the PM, leader of the Labour Party. We didn't see a single politician all day.

Because - for once - we hadn't arranged permission from the police, our small protest over the road from Downing Street was, strictly speaking, illegal, under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, but we held it anyway. At 2pm, tired but satisfied with our efforts, we broke up and went home.

I don't have to spend my days like this, but I do it because I take my politics seriously. Perhaps one day, when I'm old, someone younger will do something for me - God knows, the way things are going, by then we will need all the help we can get. (I fully expect to be working or starving till the end of my days.)

Today's escapade (not our first - we have been at this for a year now), where a group of old people put themselves out and have to co-opt the voluntary help of people like me, in order to try to get a hearing from the people who laughingly describe themselves as politicians, contrasts so starkly with the scenes exposed in tonight's "Dispatches" programme on Channel 4 that there is no point trying to say more on the matter!

One small crumb of comfort is the fact that it is some of the most Blairite soon-to-be ex-MPs - Patricia Hewitt, Stephen Byers, Geoff Hoon - that were exposed tonight, preparing to cash in on their contacts and sell themselves to lobby on behalf of private business. (I do believe that there is still such a thing as an honest MP.)

Politicians like these look down their noses at politicos like me, but they are the ones looking sleazy now - and I think John Butterfill can kiss goodbye to his peerage!

You can see the programme here for the next 29 days.

My Tracey Emin moment

I saw Tracey Emin on the David Dimbleby "The Seven Ages of Britain" programme last night. I'm not a huge fan of her work, but I can understand the motivation behind much of it, and applaud that.

Then my artistic cousin Gemma Parker has sent me a request for a picture of my dressing table for a project, "The Art of Dressing Up".

I have snapped what passes for my dressing table and as it is probably too ugly to make it into my cousin's gallery, and I hate for my efforts to go to waste, I will share it with you now (whether you want me to or not). It is mostly covered in objects covered in dust and, obviously, an empty tea cup. Time for a spring clean. I do, however, use the deodorant and the hairbrush.

The picture is of me in my mortar board and gown for my MRes degree ceremony - a year ago now!