More endorsements

Just another quick message to let you know that we've added more endorsements to the website.

I'd like to thank my colleagues Diane Abbott MP and Bob Wareing MP for their messages of support.

I was also delighted to read Kevin Maguire's kind words about the campaign in today's Mirror.

Once again, all of my thanks to everyone who has sent in messages in support of this grassroots campaign. Looking through the list of endorsements, it's clear that we're building a real movement right across the party, the labour movement, and the country. Because of this campaign, huge numbers of people have either joined or rejoined the party in the past few months.

If you want to endorse the campaign, drop us an email and we'll include your message on the website!

Government Blocks Pensions Vote

According to the Government's own figures 2 million pensioners live in poverty in our country. 25,000 died last winter as a result of cold related conditions. In a survey last year 4 out of 10 elderly people arriving at accident and emergency hospitals were found to be malnourished.

A major cause of this suffering is poverty. As Age Concern stated today "the pension is simply not enough to live on". This has largely been caused by Thatcher's policy of cutting the link between rises in earnings and pensions in 1980. Since then a pensioner has lost over £50 a week in pension.

After waging a ten year campaign, pensioners organisations, trade unions and Labour Party members at long last persuaded Gordon Brown to commit to restoring the link with earnings. However he has said that he would only restore the link in 2012 at the earliest based upon his judgement then of its "affordability and the fiscal position" and if necsessary only by 2015. The pensioners groups pointed out to him that 3 million pensioners will have died by then. They need help now!

Today in support of the National Pensioners Convention and many other pensioners campaigning groups I tabled amendments to the Government's Pensions Bill to restore the link with earnings and to increase the basic state pension to the level of the pension credit. The aim was to raise the basic pension and to lift people off means tested benefits. Already nearly 40% of pensioners do not claim the means tested benefits they are entitled to and these benefits are 10 times more expensive to administer.

By guillotining the Pensions Bill debate and having ministers talk at length on other issues the Government made sure that these amendments were not even debated and not voted on. So Gordon Brown got his way and an increase in pensions and the restoration of the earnings link were blocked.

It shouldn't be that after 10 years of a Labour government so many of our pensioners live in poverty. This is not acceptable in the fifth largest economy in the world and when last week it was revealed that the Chief Executives of the top 100 FTSE companies earn an average £6 million a year.

Today we could have helped a large number of our pensioners out of poverty.

New Labour stopped us.

Supporting Labour in the elections on May 3rd

May 3rd presents the biggest electoral challenge for Labour since we came to power in 1997. Despite the hard work and proud record of our Labour representatives, the media are predicting we will continue to haemorrhage seats in Scotland, Wales, and in town halls across Britain.

Local Labour candidates are not responsible for the unpopular policies the government is pursuing. They are doing their best to provide high quality services to their residents within a difficult framework.

Failing to return Labour candidates in Scotland, Wales, and in town halls across Britain will not affect government policy. Liberal Democrats and Greens have been calling on voters to "send a message" to Tony Blair in every election since 1997, and no amount of lost seats has or will change his mind on anything. The way to change Labour party policy is to join our campaign and work within the Labour movement for change.

I have written to local papers across the country, encouraging readers to ignore the distraction of national issues and instead to judge Labour representatives on their local record.

I will be also be travelling up to Scotland and Wales to help Labour candidates in their campaigns. I will be helping Elaine Smith in Scotland (20-21 April), and Sue Lent in Wales (30 April). They are both strong candidates with a fantastic record of standing up for working class people. They are both consistent and vocal opponents of the war in Iraq.

I am delighted to be able to report that a group of young people from the Socialist Youth Network have already organised a group of supporters travelling to Wales on the 30th. If you can, please take a day off work to help in Wales or Scotland . Contact Tim or Jacqui in the campaign office for more details of how you can help.

My key policies for local government include:

• Direct investment in new and existing council housing - implement the consistent decisions of Labour Party Conference on the 4 th Option.
• Stop the disreputable Academies programme. Enable local authorities to promote new non-selective community schools.
• An end to privatisation of local services. Abolish the lucrative secondary market in public/private deals and allow proper public sector funding for capital projects, including new schools, public transport and renewable energy schemes.
• Restore financial autonomy - replace council tax and non-domestic rates with a locally-set annual Land Value Tax.
• Give councils a genuine choice of constitutional arrangements.

Thank you for all your hard work so far, and please continue recruiting new members to the party, lobbying your MPs and distributing our leaflets.

New endorsements

We've just added a new round of endorsements of the campaign - click on the endorsements page to see them.

I want to thank everybody for their kind words. As we keep saying, this is a grassroots campaign and I hope that the endorsements reflect that.

If you want to send in a message of support for the campaign to go up on the endorsements page, email us at info@john4leader.org.uk.

We'll be adding more endorsements very soon, so keep coming back!

New videos

Just a quite note to let you know we've added more videos, including a few speeches I've made out on the campaign trail which flesh out some of the policies I stand for. See the video section for more details. Why not post a video on your website or blog and get the message out there?