John Prescott on Prescott Express addresses crowd of Haltemprice and Howden Labour members and voters in support of my General Election campaign 

18 May 2012 

I have blogged at length about the Conservative Party being obsessed by implementing American ideas in the UK, so when David Cameron mentioned the idea of police and crime commissioners I didn’t believe they would come to fruition. When the bill passed, Labour were not interested and they where a waste of money.

When it became clear that Labour would stand candidates, the gravitas of the challenge became apparent and this excited me immensely.  This was a great opportunity to fight an American scale election and really make a difference to policing, and social policy in our area.  I originally said I would support another candidate, Paul, a successful businessman from the south bank who had run a good local election campaign in 2011.  However it became clear, early that the selection process would be rather messy and I suggested Paul step aside and I dropped the idea.

Early this year I was approached by the Prescott team to help assist in the campaign. I was instantly impressed by what they had to say, John instantly talked about tough issues and it become obvious that he had a firm grasp on policing matters. As preparation continued and he polished up on policing and social policy, it became apparent that John Prescott is by far the outstanding candidate for the Labour Party.

John Prescott has already visited a number of Labour members, launched a website and has got stuck into the policing debate. In recent weeks he has already had an incredibly positive response from members, especially young members who have come forward in their droves, not just to vote for John Prescott, but to actively support his campaign.

Over the coming weeks I will blog on the Prescott campaign and our incredible and vast campaign team. 

4 April 2012

During my research in China I discovered that 50% of graduate’s can’t find a job on leaving uni, part of China’s future problems but then I was a tweet from Diana Johnson MP (one should point out she is my old boss) about finding work in Hull. From my experience finding work in Hull is hard, I know graduates in call centres and as a region we are being hit with multiple factory closers and public sector cuts. Some examples include BAE, Commit which was started in Hull and the 20% tax on caravans levied recently a sector which employed 1,000 Hull workers. Whilst to their credit local politicians have not towed the government line of relying on the market to attract work but used their office, this even includes the odd Conservative but mainly Labour.

So let’s look at two statistics, graduation employment and work in Hull. On the graduate front 70 people now apply for each job, with a decrease of 7% in jobs available, the vast majority now insist on a 2.1 and some work experience, when I looked at graduate jobs in Hull just 14 came up on the search and most of them didn’t really look like you needed a degree. Then if we look at the number of people fighting for each job in Hull, we are the top in the whole country with 80 people fight for each post, this is almost a freak, most of the top ten worst have between 25-40 people for each role, only stoke comes near us with 73 per role.

I don’t have the stats to hand, but when I ran for parliament I put together a briefing note on to my campaign team and I remember writing that in the constituency I ran in unemployment was about 2.5%, however I suspect this has gone up.

In 1970 and the same city in 2010…..

3 April 2012

This is the ancient Chinese city of Shenzhen, on the South East coast of China and dates back as far as 5000BC. In 1979 this small fishing city about the size of Leicester had a population of 350,000 however in 1980 it was granted special economic zone status and with government support, by 2010 had grown to a population the size of 10 million people, the 5^th biggest in China and 29^th in the world.

Between 1980-1997 growth averaged at around 15% and since then has steadied at an impressive 5% (we would kill for that in the UK right now.) In 2009 the City has a GDP of $130bn meaning this city has an economy comparable to New Zealand or Hungary. Its close links with Hong Kong allows the city to have a vast trading and financial sector as well as manufacturing and high tech. However from the UK perspective the largest growing sector is service industry, which of course the UK is dependent on, more evidence that the UK needs to diversity as developing states develop their own service industry.

However the city does have some problems, high unemployment for example, however the city has been given every chance it needs with high speed rail, sound road networks, air links and higher education. It is said the 20% of Chinas PHD holders have worked in Shenzhen, can you think of any UK city that comes near any of this? Thought not.