I WARN YOU NOT TO GROW OLD....

Two weeks from today Labour will have a new Leader . Chances are it will be one of the Millibands. Looks like "Red Ed" (irony) might make it by a whisker but whoever wins needs to act fast.
While the endless hustings roadshow has been crossing the country, the Tories have been using the hiatus to build a mindset that they have no choice but to make obscene, draconian cuts .
Using Churchillian rhetoric, they have somehow managed to hoodwink millions into thinking there is no alternative. There is. It's called socialism and an alternative economic strategy which cracks down on the tax dodgers and the City and the business community who continue to profit while we are led into a maelstrom of misery.
The problem is that all the leadership candidates have colluded in this unspeakable policy programme by going along with the cuts consensus. The gist is that Labour recognises cuts have to be made - but we will be nicer about it.
So far, £15billion worth of welfare benefit cuts are coming. This will impact on the most vulnerable in society and, as today's Observer reveals, the plan is to cut harder and deeper.
So far, most of the PLP, fixated by the leadership contest, has stayed quiet.
Most of the media goes along with the myth that the Government is doing its inevitable duty in the national interest.
To the point where my once catatonic commute at 6.30am to work in Leeds is one of wide-awake fury as I listen to the BBC Today programme touting out the line that cuts have to be made.
The tragedy is we are wasting billions on wars and weapons of mass devastation.
We could cut Trident - saving around £76billion at a stroke. We could also save plenty of money by bringing the troops home from Afghanistan. Yet only 14 Labour MPs voted to do so at a shamefully ill-attended debate in the Commons.
If we are to win back support, and credibility , Labour has to change tack. And grassroots members can be part of that change.
Whoever becomes the Leader 13 days from today, they have to be told in no uncertain terms that without real Opposition to the cuts, without a democratic socialist alternative, we are letting our people down and colluding with a Government which thinks it can do what it likes - and get away with it.
At the Labour Party conference, it's time to make our voices heard and put pressure on from below via the trade unions and local campaigns to show our opposition to these cuts and start nailing the lie that it is somehow in the national interest to consign millions to poverty and go beyond what Thatcher would ever have dared do. We can all be part of that process.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/11/george-osborne-slash-Assickness-benefits