ahh, finally managed to make my way into this bloody thing.
Seeing as the average viewership of blogs is one, the blogger, i can see the advantages of the Friends page on livejournal. Note to self: increase readership.

This thing with Bevan is most interesting indeed, though i feel i'm not really getting to the heart of his significance. I've started by concentrating on his skill as an administrator, because the ideas of a full and free national health service existed in embyionic form before he ever got his hands on the Health Ministry. His legacy is important in that he managed to turn the health service into a public service, which is increadible considering what it was like before the NHS came about. This of course has considerably wider implicaitons for public services and profit motive generally, and maybe something that i can touch on/ramble on about when it comes to my dissertation, should i ever be able to write it, but that's another thing entirely.

Since reading about Bevan, i'm really considering joining Labour. It's about time i got off my arse and put my money where my mouth is, so i need to get round to being a fully paid up member of the Labour movement, which to me is far more important than being a member of the party, considering its present condition. This is an interesting, and possible historically unique, time as it is the first time that the moderate (or right wing, depending on political predisposition) end of the party has sustained power. It remains to be seen how long this will last, although i feel that Brown will do nothing to diminish its influence. The likes of Miliband coming through make references to radicalism, and of course there's the influence of family and genetics in his case, but i fail to see where the radical element will come from. McConnell is going for the leadership,, which could lead to an interesting battle of ideas, but with the way things are at present i think the influence of the further, rather than far, left is dead and buried. the membership numbers seem to support this, as there are so few now. Maybe a shift back to the left is in order to get some people back? Is a shift to the left possible, or indeed plausable?
we shall see i suppose