The spirit of non-conformity is as prevalent now in my part of west Yorkshire as it was in the time of my two immediate predecessors, Mike Wood and Elizabeth Peacock.
I spent the summers packing toothpaste at a factory, working where my dad worked, and everyone else had gone on a gap year!
I live on a big old Dutch barge by Tower Hill on the Thames.
Assad's brutality has nurtured extremism and been its main recruiting sergeant.
I never really grew up being political or Labour. It was just a realisation that where you were born mattered. That how you spoke mattered... who you knew mattered.
I am Batley and Spen born and bred, and I could not be prouder of that. I am proud that I was made in Yorkshire, and I am proud of the things we make in Yorkshire. Britain should be proud of that, too.
