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Welcome to my website and blog.
You can read a bit more about who I am and what makes me tick here. A summary of the work I did when I was Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 can also be found here.
The older posts on here date from my time as an MP but I have continued to blog since leaving Parliament.
The opening paragraphs of my blog posts appear at the bottom of this page in reverse date order. The “Read on” buttons take you to what I have written in full. My posts below also contain links to articles I have written and which have been published elsewhere, together with posts imported from my own Facebook page.
To view posts on a specific subject, from both during and after my time in Parliament, please click one of the buttons below.
These are the main subjects on which I’ve written. Click here to view the full list of categories.
Here is the link to my Bluesky account, and here is the link to my Twitter/X account. You can also view my Facebook page and LinkedIn profile.
Click on ‘Contact’ below to get in touch with me.
This feed refreshes intermittently. Please log in to X (Twitter) to view my newest tweets in full.
Last week, our chair @richardburden27 published on his own website some personal reflections about what Remembering Srebrenica has meant for him this year.

Israeli forces are said to have dropped more explosives on Gaza than fell on London, Dresden and Hamburg combined in the Second World War. The level of destruction is hard to fathom as is the humanitarian suffering.
Our Foreign Affairs Correspondent @SecKermani looks at the…
Some personal reflections on what Remembering Srebrenica means in 2025 – for Bosnia and Herzegovina, for the wider world and here in the UK..

“Two years after 7 October and the kidnap of my parents, hate is in fashion. For all our sakes, we need compassion” | Sharone Lifschitz | The Guardian
Lots of residents get in touch with me about anti-social behaviour problems. This can cover anything that reduces local people’s quality of life and causes them distress – and it can vary from abandoned vehicles and litter, to noisy and rowdy behaviour outside your home. These things are not minor nuisances – I know they often leave people feeling completely helpless and desperate. I regularly …
This is just a quick note to say that despite the snow earlier, the public meeting on immigration will be going ahead tonight as planned. We are continuing to monitor the weather, so should it deteriorate please check the website, Facebook or Twitter for updates. The event will begin promptly at 18.45, so we would be grateful if you could arrive at 18.30. Refreshments will be served. The address …
An appeal has now been submitted against the City Council’s refusal of separate Planning Application for a new Sainsburys store on the Car Park of the Navigation Pub near Kings Norton Green. Here are the details of how residents can submit views.
Here is the Letter I have received from Tescos informing me that the store is going to close on or after March 15.
I am delighted to announce I will be hosting an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session between 5.30 – 6.30 pm on Tuesday 3rd February 2015. Social media offers exciting opportunities for politicians to engage with local people directly. I believe that it’s really important we use the technology available at our finger tips to help represent you – the people who elect us. I want to reach out to people in as …
The Government are failing to listen to the public who know that the major problem with Britain’s roads is the pothole epidemic and the failure to maintain our road infrastructure properly. Ministers care more about a top-down reorganisation of the Highways Agency, who manage 2% of strategic roads, than fixing the 98% of local roads – a third of which are in urgent need of attention. The …
It’s two weeks into the New Year and we’re at the point where many of us forget about our resolution of shedding a couple of pounds. With that in mind, this week is National Obesity Awareness Week. Almost a quarter of children in Birmingham (23.4%) are classified as obese, compared with 10.1% nationally. Meanwhile the number of recorded cases of diabetes is double the UK average, affecting almost …
We are now just four months away from the most significant general election in a generation.
On May 7 people in Northfield and elsewhere will have the opportunity to make one of the most important choices they have made in many years.
My final newsletter in 2014 covers everything from residents’ problems with green waste, parking charges and London Midland’s ‘Leaf Fall Timetable’, to historic votes on international aid and Palestine, and the Remembrance events that people in the Northfield area took part in to commemorate 100 years since the outbreak of WW1. You can read it here. And don’t forget, you can read a …
Libraries, leisure centres, crematoriums and now street lights. It seems that nothing is safe from Tory porkies. They seem to be making a bit of a habit of it don’t they? Residents in the Longbridge ward of the Northfield District recently received a letter from the Tory prospective candidate for Northfield, Rachel MacLean, about the street lights in their area. It claimed that earlier in the …
Public Discussion with Richard Burden MP 6.30pm, 29 January 2015 Northfield Baptist Church, 789 Bristol Road South, Northfield, B31 2NQ I know that many people in this area want politicians to talk about immigration. And so we should. It is a really important issue for local people and that is why I am writing to you today. People are concerned about the management of immigration, and they are …
The Overview and Scrutiny report into Birmingham City Council’s Green Waste policies and charges published today is a serious piece of work that demands serious attention by Council leaders. Today’s findings underline that there are real issues with the Council’s green waste charge and that its introduction earlier this year was badly mismanaged. As a result public confidence in the system …
I was Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Northfield between 1992 and 2019 and a former Shadow Transport Minister. I now chair Healthwatch in Birmingham and Solihull, and the West Midlands Board of Remembering Srebrenica. I also work as a public affairs consultant. I am an effective community advocate and stakeholder alliance builder with a passion for human rights. I am a trustee of the Balfour Project charity and of Citizens Advice Birmingham, and a former Chair of Medical Aid for Palestinians.
