What's happening in Beeston, Belle Isle, Cottingley, Holbeck, Hunslet, Middleton and Stourton
The crisis in Gaza and Israel is awful and deeply distressing and a lot of constituents have contacted me about it. On 7 October, Hamas deliberately murdered 1,400 Israelis, including young people enjoying a music festival, and men, women, children and babies in their homes. They took hostages and fired
First things first. 100 not out. What an achievement by South Leeds Life. It was a great pleasure to attend the celebration of the 100th edition of the South Leeds Life newspaper at the Rowland Road Working Men’s Club recently. There was a great turnout of supporters and citizen journalists
I really didn’t want to start my first column of the autumn writing about machetes and zombie knives, but I feel I must. I’ve been campaigning for some time along with others, including the police, for the Government to take much more effective action to ban their sale and possession.
If you’d told me at the start of the week that I would be speaking in a debate on concrete mixers, I might have thought it unlikely. But that’s exactly what I did recently to stand up for a local company called Mixamate that operates in South Leeds and beyond,
The recent council elections – and congratulations to all those elected in South Leeds and to Al Garthwaite from Beeston on becoming our city’s new Lord Mayor – was the first after a new law came in requiring us to show voter ID. In Leeds, 601 residents were initially turned
It was a great pleasure recently to visit Slung Low in their new home in Holbeck. Slung Low is a really imaginative and energetic theatre company that brings performing to the heart of our community and builds links all over the place. I first met Alan Lane and his team
Just under two years ago a constituent called Rory Burke wrote to me. He revealed that he has a brain tumour and asked me to attend a meeting to discuss ways in which we could try to find a cure. I went along and little did I know then that
Our right to vote was hard-won and is very precious. This May the way we vote will be changing because we’ll all need to show specified photo ID at the polling station in order to be given a ballot paper. Acceptable forms of ID include a passport, driving licence, a
Every year on the 27 January the world marks Holocaust Memorial Day. It is the occasion when we remember the six million Jews and others who were murdered by the Nazis, and all those who were killed in more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. It is by
First things first. Happy New Year and let us hope it is a better one than 2022 – mind you that wouldn’t be too difficult! So what about New Year resolutions? One that would make a real difference would be free school meals for all children of primary age, and