Tomsk79

OK, so a while back I might have said that I would definitely absolutely not post any more political literature on to this site, but we all know pledges are made to be broken. How could I resist the lure of the first ever Greater Manchester Mayoral Election? Combined Authorities! Supplementary Vote! Brexit Culture Wars! It's got it all. Welcome back first of all to the fiercely independent South Manchester News, which chooses to splash on Corbyn's inept opposition to the Brexit process : Sadly the News was unable to find sufficient space to mention that our local Labour MP voted against triggering Article 50 , but to be fair if I was the editor I'd play up the Corbyn angle for all it was worth as well. Along with the SMN came the first piece of mayoral campaign literature we've received, for the Lib Dem candidate Jane Brophy. She is a Trafford councillor whose name is already familiar to me as the runner up in the safe Tory seat of Altrincham & Sale West i...

Yes really. But don't worry, this blog has not renounced its political values. Let me explain... It's only been a few months since the EU referendum, but already it's clear that it has catalysed a fundamental realignment of English politics (just as Scotland was realigned by the independence referendum). First consider how voters of different parties divided on referendum day: (Source: Lord Ashcroft Polls ) One thing that leaps out immediately from this breakdown is that the major reason for Leave's victory was David Cameron's failure to bring his own voters with him. Labour voters on the other hand broke for Remain in much the same proportion as the resolutely pro-EU SNP, belying the idea that Corbyn's half-hearted campaigning was to blame for the result. The figures for the smaller parties were no surprise, although with the notable exception of UKIP there were substantial minorities opposed to the party line in each case. Now compare with a YouGov...

  With paternity leave now a distant memory it's time to wrap up this series, but not before my promised roundup of the social whirlwind that is the Manchester baby activity scene. An important skill when on leave is coming up with good reasons to leave the house every day, without which you would both surely go mad. As with many aspects of leave I had Mrs Tomsk's wealth of experience to draw on here, including a number of classes she had tried out which then passed on to me. The first of these was Baby Moves at the National Football Museum, a very laid back session for babies no older than one. It was friendly and tranquil with plinky plonky music and lots of gentle games that made it feel like a meditation class (at least for me). It was also one of the clearest ways to see her develop as she got more mobile and better able to explore the room on her own, and interact more with the bits and bobs they put out to play with, some of which nodded to the venue such as ...

These are tough times to be a supporter of the European Union. For decades the EU and its predecessors were rightly held up as a guardian of peace and prosperity of Europe. Then came the global financial crisis, and the Euro currency, the totemic symbol of European integration, became a "machine from hell" (in the words of one German official), ripping apart the fabric of Europe that the EU had previously done so much to stitch together. The Eurozone crisis remains unresolved to this day, stuck between the very reasonable desire of creditor countries not to risk their own finances in bailing out the debtor countries, and the very reasonable desire of debtor countries not to have their people ground into the dust by the lunatic austerity regimes imposed by the creditors. Why then should we stay in an institution that has pursued such a reckless experiment? For starters, obviously, we are not in the Eurozone and its tribulations will affect us no more or less if we vote ...

If you have not had the privilege of looking after a baby on a full time basis, you may wonder how you fill the endless hours of leisure between wakey-wakey and beddy-byes. I too fondly imagined time stretching to infinity between little strolls around the park and long naps as I perfected my guitar technique or wrote the great American novel. The awful truth is that there is time to achieve perhaps one goal during the day that is not directly related to your baby's survival, and only then if you're quick about it. Not only that but there is no time to think about what the goal should be. Thankfully there are a staggering number of pre-organised activities to build your day around, and the only thought required is how to get to them taking into account naps, meals, badly-timed nappy disasters, &c. Baby activities can be divided into two broad groups, namely swimming and not swimming. I was thrown straight into the shallow end on day one of my leave as it ...

Before Corbyn was elected I noted that the results of the Scottish election would be a fascinating natural test of his leadership and some assumptions often made about the Scottish electorate, namely: 1. Scotland is more left-wing than the rest of the UK (look how they don't vote for Tories!) 2. Labour is losing support because it isn't left wing enough (unlike those lovable lefty nationalists) The alternative hypothesis - that since the referendum Scottish voting preferences have been determined mainly by attitude towards independence - was fiercely disputed by some people, predominantly ex-Labour voters north of the border, safe in the knowledge that there was no easy way of determining which explanation was correct. With Corbyn at the helm, however, there is no longer any ambiguity. Labour could hardly have chosen a more left-wing leader, and this year Scottish Labour ran on an overtly more left-wing platform than the SNP. For their pains they have been reduced to t...

I shouldn't let this week go by without noting the supremely dodgy statistic, as reported by ITV , Sky , the Guardian , the Independent , the Telegraph etc. that only 1% of men are taking shared parental leave in the first year since its introduction. Cue much speculation over why the figure is so low. As many others have pointed out, however, this figure, from a survey by My Family Care , is a percentage of all male employees and not, say, those who have actually had a baby and are therefore eligible for shared parental leave. (See More or Less for a dramatic reconstruction of the survey). The takeup of SPL might yet turn out to be disappointing, as any idiot could predict , but these reports prove nothing other than the inability of journalists to get their facts straight. Worse than that, it sends out a misleading signal that sharing leave is the preserve of a tiny minority which could well cause less people to take it up in future. Perhaps not the best way to celebrate th...