It may be that if Lib Dem MP John Leech had been a trainee manager with Tesco, Christie Fields would now be home to a great many jobs for local people. Instead the former waste land adjacent to Manchester’s Merseybank estate provides offices for companies like AstraZeneca.

When deciding if an area is worth bothering with, marketers often look at where it is on the ACORN map. You’ll find Merseybank in the ‘hard pressed’ category, grouped with ‘struggling families’ at type 48: ‘Low incomes, high unemployment, single parents’. It’s a generalisation of course, but people so categorised tend to work at ‘routine jobs in nearby factories or shops’. The proportion of people educated to degree level is low. AstraZeneca tends to recruit graduates.

Tesco was refused permission to build at Christie Fields thanks to a protest campaign endorsed by local Liberal Democrats and John Leech has turned his nose up at more work since, saying of the proposed SuperCasino: ‘…3,000 jobs is also not as good as it sounds because it would only be low-paid low-skilled jobs that would be created.’

In all this we see an MP who might be described as leading a principled fight against the blight of the McJob, currently defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an ‘unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, especially one created by the expansion of the service sector’. It’s a platform that may go down well in a constituency whose middle class is known for shopping at independent co-operative grocers, supports an unusually wide range of other independent ethically minded traders and which voted Lib Dem because it sees John as a left-winger who opposes the Iraq War and will protect public services from alleged creeping privatisation.

But hold up! John’s only signed up to a McDonald’s campaign I’ve described elsewhere as wrong-headed and that even some Tories feel marks him out as too close to McDonald’s. Leech claims this criticism is ‘pathetic’ and told the Manchester Evening News he’d continue to champion the burger chain.

And yet the critics are far from pathetic. Those who are troubled by the ethics of Tesco – and have been kicking up a fuss – are unlikely to think McDonald’s saintly… in fact they are likely to be most upset that their MP is happy to volunteer for the role of McDonald’s parliamentary spokesperson.

For Labour to score on this point, it is going to have to forget the two jobs stuff, avoid name calling (it just puts voters off), get serious and ask the people if their values, interests and aspirations coincide with those of Ronald McDonald.

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If summer hadn’t started so early, the new sports and leisure shop from Amazon.co.uk would have opened just in time… but it’s still not too late to stock up on essential summer sporting gear.

Amazon’s sports and leisure shop offers thousands of individual lines, including many from third party merchants. Amazon sports and leisure includes camping and hiking gear, tennis stuff, running gear, sports footwear and, of course, loads for water sports.

And there are always great deals. At time of writing, for example, there’s forty per cent off selected Prince racquets, 25 per cent off selected York Fitness products and one third off selected bicycles including Muddyfox and Silverfox.

So go on! Treat yourself to the latest in leisure wear over at Amazon’s Sports and Leisure Shop.

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I’m not a Pimm’s & lemonade drinker, but it was still a sad sight to see all the cans stacked so high and discounted, along with all the BBQ stuff.

The Bank Holiday witnessed the coldest Cricket Test Match day ever, which is pretty crap.

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These ‘Jesus Rocks’ belts are all the rage and sitting outside waiting in Next, all who passed this girl raised their eyes in an appropriate manner. We all pity the God botherer.

But it’s an odd thing this youth culture.

I happened across the catalogue of some urban clothing store too young even for me a short time ago and there was ‘Jesus Rocks’ merchandise aplenty; all most ironic.

So if it turns out that Jesus Rockers aren’t so sad, could it be Emos aren’t so tragic?

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I know pop videos are easy game, but I was surprised that Popworld’s Alex and Alexa focussed their ridicule on Gwen Stefani’s immaculate allegedly 4am hair and make-up.

With all that sunshine pouring in, it’s no suprise she can’t sleep. She must have been touring somewhere like Scandinavia or Alaska, but you’d think they’d have really thick curtains.

I shall miss Popworld when it’s gone. Sure there are plenty of music channels, but they just rotate the same videos. It some ways we were better catered for when it was all left to Top of the Pops.

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My Best Friend is a gentle unchallenging comedy, that you could imagine translating to a rom-com with Steve Martin. This version would end with the friendless protagonist copping off with his lesbian business partner (a possibility hinted at in the strangest way here).
A pleasant enough 6 out of 10.
Director: Patrice Leconte……Starring: Daniel Auteuil……Dany Boon……Julie Gayet
This is England……Shrek the Third

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See: Vote Peter Hain!
Jon Cruddas is busy campaigning for change, impressing many at the Sandwell launch of his deputy leadership bid; a venue chosen for its unfortunate associations with the BNP (who Cruddas is expert at fighting) and not being London.

And yet I’ve found it hard to get a handle on the man and the changes for which he’s campaigning. As a former Downing Street aid, who nominated Gordon Brown, he doesn’t appear particularly radical. Although given that 85 per cent of MPs nominating him had voted against the Labour whip plenty seem to hope that he is.

That Roy Hattersley’s endorsement is rather convincing, is a backhanded complement (though not against Hattersley). Roy points out that, like so many deputy positions, the job isn’t worth much and that Cruddas’s proposal that Brown to do away with the deputy prime minister bit is a good thing. Indeed, I don’t see what the deputy leadership has to offer someone like Alan Johnson who, unlike Jon Cruddas, should have little difficulty securing a cabinet position with a good portfolio.

What the role does offer is a party appointed seat at the cabinet table, creating the only minister the PM cannot sack and so a powerful voice for an important section of the government coalition that might otherwise struggle to be heard.

There’s little of more immediate concern to people than where they live and where they work. So Cruddas’s prioritising the neglected policy areas of housing and union rights goes strongly in his favour. Holding Brown to his commitment to build more affordable homes and encouraging the restoration of employees’ workplace freedoms would improve the lives of a great many, while removing some of Thatcher’s most egregious legacy.

His apparent amnesty for illegal immigrants (‘…the cornerstone of our flexible labour market. They would cost £11,000 each to deport…) is tamer than that proposed by George Bush in similar circumstances and his accepting Migration Watch statistics is worrying. (A dodgy Migration Watch paper I discussed on 3 January has now disappeared, though something making a similar point is there dated 13 January.)

But unlike Margaret Hodge, he seems able to put migration on the agenda without conflating it, and so housing, with race. (Nowhere is housing a bigger issue than in Salford, a city with a non-white population of 3.9 per cent against a national average of 9.1 per cent. This is a class issue not a race issue.)

So I’ve struggled to get a handle on what Cruddas is campaigning to change, but I reckon it’s the same things Gordon Brown wants to change and Tony Blair wanted to change. But instead of leaving the difficult stuff to fester, Cruddas might get something done. Then again I’m still tempted by Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson, Peter Hain and Hilary Benn.

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The rise of Nobby’s Nuts has been previously noted here with great dismay. The dry roasted are quite flavourless and the manufacturer has somehow managed to rid peanuts of their moreish quality. Perhaps this all part of the current war on salt.

Anyway. These coated sweet chilli Nobby’s Nuts are not too bad, but the Greene King IPA is looking a little dark for a pale ale.

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It seemed inevitable that the news his would-be opponent had thrown in the towel would reach Gordon Brown before he returned to London, but he clearly isn’t a man to take the party’s support for granted. Brown knows that it’s not enough to be merely nominated for the leadership; the party needed to take the opportunity to demonstrate its unity and show how proud it is to have bequeathed the country its most effective chancellor.

Here in conversation with Oona King Gordon Brown was anything but dour and grumpy. The format brought out the best in him and he was relaxed yet passionate, earnest but witty. Straight questions received refreshingly straight answers.

The polls may have begun to move in the right direction. But political honeymoons are always short lived and past triumphs quickly forgotten. The UK suffered economic recession in the 1970s, ’80s and early-90s, but since 1997 we’ve known nothing but growth (a trick no previous government has pulled off). Yet Labour rarely receives credit for this or many other achievements, like the 1,106 new schools, 27,000 new or improved classrooms and 1,260 new children’s centres that have been built in the last ten years.

Brown’s is an impressive vision of Britain as a world beacon for social justice, enabled by the sound economic management he’s already proved delivers stability and prosperity. But just as Brown hasn’t taken Labour’s support for granted, Labour must not take the country for granted.

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Rather a small Troops Out demo to welcome us to a packed New Century Hall beneath the HQ of the Co-operative Group. Thanks to several years of practice, the drummer is quite good.

We’re here for ‘Gordon Brown in Conversion’ (don’t know who with yet).

With John McDonnell apparently unlikely to make the ballot, it seems this is destined to be a solo tour.

Gordon has a new hair cut, but will he let his hair down?

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