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Active young Labour party members on joining, staying in, and making a future for the party in these grim times of falling party membership, faltering ideology and other well-documented horrors.

First up: the young socialists

Owen Jones, 22, Marsha-Jane Thompson, 26, Tim Flatman, 22, Mary Partington, 22 and Vino Sangarapillai, 25, are extremely clear about the party's options, or option: socialism is Labour's future. Blairism, on the other hand, strikes them as tantamount to political suicide, what with its thousands of dead Iraqis, collapsed party membership, flaming thirst for a lengthy rape of the public sector by the private one, burgeoning list of cash-for-honours delinquents, et cetera. Everybody normal, they say, knows that they're seeing the end when they look at Blairism.

A packed Islington staff meeting heard this week that a private company had been awarded a 25-year contract to run mental health care services for older people with mental health care needs.

The packed staff meeting listened as Care UK representatives tried to alleviate their concerns about the service and their futures under Care UK management.

The company was awarded the 25-year contract by Islington Council to run the two homes and two day centres at Highbury New Park, Lennox House, and Carniegie Street. 'The company told staff that they would be subject to an ETO to enable the company to bring in their policies and procedures.

The meeting was attended by UNISON reps, and the company faced a large number of questions.

Brief snapshot

A typical scene in the borough at this point:

'Look at that guy!' one of the People's Party's female councillors shrieked, pointing a pale and shaking finger across the negotiating table at one of the many union representatives who'd turned up to this meeting to fight with her about the council's plans to cut jobs and funding at an important local welfare and benefits advice centre.

The advice centre was much utilised by a very large number of the borough's underprivileged residents - they needed the centre's help to negotiate the nation's complex welfare systems and they needed the face-to-face service that the centre provided if they were ever to figure out their entitlements. People came to the centre in their thousands. And they weren't all losers, as the People's Party would have the people believe. Many were abused wives, or people from war-torn countries, or people who'd been sick, or injured through no fault of their own and needed help getting back to the point where they could provide for themselves.

The councillor was trying to convince the union reps at the meeting that the best way to save the advice centre from People's Party plans to cut funding to it was to find something else to talk about and let her head down to her favourite local.