I may not be the first member of Birmingham City Council to set up a weblog, but I think I'm the first Labour Councillor to do so (so far). Hopefully this will be of interest to residents in Kingstanding and those people interested in local politics in Birmingham once I get started.

Happy Birthday to LibDemWatch - a year old yesterday! Those of you who follow the site will have heard of John Hemming, the current Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council. Last week Councillor Hemming was investigating the Council's biscuit budget. This week he is querying the cost of the recent refurbishment of the Labour Group offices. It's nice to know that he's on top of all the important issues in Birmingham.

Attended the Erdington District Committee last night, which was an unusually short meeting. The devolved Districts are still getting organised in Birmingham, and it's quite difficult to explain what they are to people at the moment. Coming onto the Council in June last year, I missed the first wave of the organisation process, so I'm not part of any of the Theme Groups looking at different areas of delivery. I feel like I've yet to see the full picture as regards the way the District will work eventually; as with so many things I've more questions than I have answers at the moment.

I'm off to a Governor's meeting shortly. The school where I am a governor is, I'm told, one of the worst nineteen schools in the country. The pedant in me wonders how that statistic came about - why is quoted as the worst nineteen, rather than the worst twenty? Anyway, as an outcome of the last lot of results, a partnership has been established with another local school to work on achievment, attendance and behaviour, and to try to get extra resources and staff in to improve the school in the long term. It's still early days, but it is starting to have a positive effect I think. I'll see what sort of an update we get later..

I suppose most of us in the Labour Party will have received these in our email today - a variety of posters for us to vote on and amuse ourselves with..

Not sure about this one..

This just makes me think of Little Britain..

This is the one I actually voted for - simple and to the point..

This one is nightmare material! Not quite as disturbing as the 2001 poster showing Hague morphing into Thatcher, but you definitely feel that their eyes would follow you down the street..

Wednesdays tend to be one of the busiest days for me, as I work part time, and Wednesday is my one full day off each week. This morning I had a meeting of the Local Services and Community Safety Overview and Scrutiny Committee. This potentially covers a huge area of work, both for the council and a variety of statutory and voluntary agencies, so the workload has been quite heavy over the past few months. So far, I've served on two Task and Finish reviews - one on CCTV, which is now complete, and one on Birmingham's You Are Your City Clean and Safe programme, which we should get a draft of soon. I'm also part of a working group looking at the impact of the new Licensing laws, and hopefully we will carry out a review on that later in the year. For the moment though, it looks like our next focus will be on Anti Social Behaviour - a big issue for Birmingham and particularly for Kingstanding at the moment.

This evening I attended a reception to mark the 25th Anniversary of Birmingham Women's Aid. As a former Housing Officer I was aware of this organisation in the abstract, but I don't think I'd had any contact with them before tonight. It started out as a group of women (a group of loud women, as several speakers emphasised!) setting up a refuge in a squat, and has now grown into a organisation which offers a whole range of services to women and children across Birmingham. One point that everyone who spoke tonight made was that the past 25 years have seen huge changes in the attitude towards and help available to those affected by domestic violence and abuse, and that now there is no question that services of this kind are needed.

The challenge for the next 25 years is getting to a point where there is no need for Birmingham Women's Aid and other organisations like it, because domestic violence and abuse will no longer be a problem in our society. Wishful thinking maybe, but it's an interesting reflection on cause and effect in terms of many of the services and organisation out there.