Category Archives: Blog

Sylvia Lawla Court

Posted on by

Visited Sylvia Lawla Court – a residential supported block for older residents. Absolutely lovely little place – brilliantly situated for the shops and transport of Wood Green and clearly well run. And a very happy bunch they were.

Definitely cross about those on the breadline with a fixed income state pension and nothing else facing rocketing prices – pushing some into financial difficulty. Other key issues were about the time having to wait for ambulances as only two hour slots given – meaning a resident has to wait in the hall downstairs for that length of time. Will see if Health Service amenable to giving a ring say 15 minutes before arrival? Just a thought!

My favourite subject – foot care for the elderly. If you are ill enough – it’s free on the NHS – but otherwise it costs an arm and a leg. And overgrown nails and hard skin can mean having to stay in because the pain of walking is too much.

The biggest issue was really the paving virtually opposite the block – where two residents have fallen and hurt themselves (including having to go to hospital) and despite being reported to Haringey Council by the management – nothing has been done. So – on the case! There are currently building works where the uneven paving is – but it simply cannot be left until building work is finished – far too dangerous for older people many of whom have aided walking with frames or sticks.

Very enjoyable coffee morning! And as I say – a happy group of people – a real pleasure.

Helping people back into work

Posted on by

Once again visited Working Links – a group which takes referrals from the Job Centre of those who have had their time on Job Seekers Allowance with no success in getting a job. Working Links works with them through to employment and thereafter for some weeks to help them stay in the job.

Mostly the jobs are with local employers and they have a pretty good success rate. Currently success is counted as staying in the job for thirteen weeks – but that is soon changing to six months which will be even more challenging. If you remember that some of those that Working Links works with are long time unemployed and sometimes can believe that they are actually unemployable – you can see how challenging this mission is.

I have to say (just as when I visited three years ago and blogged about it) the team, Loretta and all, are just as enthusiastic, warm and committed as they were then. I really take my hat off to them for their enthusiasm and dedication.

The other main group they channel into employment is lone parents. Lana was one of the people I met. Today she has applied for three jobs. She seems very, very employable to me – delightful to talk to, skilled and very keen to work. Her issue is the nature of the work as she is a lone parent and therefore wants particular employment conditions. I’m sure she will find something good to do.

So – all in all – a very heart-warming experience. We who don’t have to struggle against having lost our confidence through years of unemployment sometimes don’t know how lucky we are to have a job – somewhere to be every day and something to do. That sense of place in the world is pretty central to many people’s well-being – and operations like Working Links make it happen.

Uncle Sam is keeping tabs on us

Posted on by

Was in Parliament all day today. Had an interesting meeting with the political officer from the American Embassy. Seems he (or rather they – the Americans) are interested in learning more about the Lib Dems (just in case……) and my interviewer has the job of monitoring the Liberal Democrats. Given he gave me carte blanche to talk about LibDemmery – I seem to have meandered relatively randomly across my thoughts (many and various). An enjoyable discussion – to be continued.

It's Residents' Survey time

Posted on by

Lynne Featherstone delivering a surveyI’ve just launched my annual Residents’ Survey in Hornsey & Wood Green to find out (as I do every year) what are the issues at the forefront of people’s minds in every street – from the big issues to the small piece of casework that no-one has got round to raising in-between times.

The survey is delivered by local volunteers (and me) – and it takes an army. The survey started with the Muswell Hill team back in 1997, when we only covered one ward. It rapidly spread over the next few years to cover the whole constituency, and has continued so since I’ve become MP. This year it is a four-page survey and it is going to over 84,000 people in 47,000 households.

The survey is an opportunity for local residents to tell me what they think of services such as schools and the police as well as to bring to her attention any particular local issues needing action. Local residents can also highlight issues that they would like raised in Parliament.

If you’d like any extra copies of the survey or if your survey goes astray (as with one person who has just emailed saying their dog chewed it up!), just get in touch.

Something I should have done previously

Posted on by

Friday saw – after my advice surgery – a meeting met with our new Borough Commander – David Grant. He served in Haringey when Highgate Police Station was still open (oh – those were the days) and at Hornsey Police Station – so is familiar with the terrain! We ranged over the ills of the world, policing, where resources should be put and so on and so forth. This was our first meeting – so think we were trying to sus each other out. Seemed to have heart and head in right place.

Lynne Featherstone getting a donor card from Clive Denham in Wood GreenThen earlier today went to meet Tottenham and Wood Green Rotary Club members who were manning a stall at Wood Green Shopping City to get people signed up to carry a Donor Card. As you can see from the photo – I signed up. I’ve always meant to. Been, if I am honest, a bit squeamish about death stuff, and put it off and put it off. And that’s the whole point – by having a stall and having it all there with the forms to fill in and the box to post it in – all done in an instant. So finally – I’ve done it. And am sure lots of other people are just the same – mean to – but somehow don’t get round to it.

I’m pictured with Clive Denham, President of Tottenham and Wood Green Rotary Club, in Wood Green Shopping City.

And if you want to become a Donor Card carrier yourself, just visit the NHS website and register online.

My top ten political blogs

Posted on by

Iain Dale’s doing his annual best blog competition, so here are my top ten political blogs which I’m sending in.

First there are the regular ‘must reads’:

1. Liberal Democrat Voice
2. Iain Dale
3. Guido Fawkes (Love Iain and Guido, or hate them, or love and hate them both – they are a pretty much essential read, frequently breaking stories that are then ones we all pay attention to.)
4. Liberal Conspiracy (The content isn’t as much of a ‘must read’ for me as the previous three, but Liberal Conspiracy has the best discussion in the comments. It’s the place where pieces from myself generate the most interesting discussion compared with the other sites where my words sometimes appear.)

(And yes – no Labour equivalent there. The Labour ‘home’ style sites aren’t quite there yet – at least for an outside like myself.)

And for the other six:

5. Labour MP Tom Harris (Frequently disagree with him – but a great blogging style and manages to be interesting and thought provoking despite also being a pretty much always on message Labour minister. Not an easy combination to pull off!)

6. James Graham’s Quaequam (A previous Liberal Democrat Voice ‘Blog of the Year’ winner and one of the best pugnacious bloggers around – showing how you can be very robust in your arguments without simply lapsing into empty insults.)

7. The Times’s Red Box (I feel it’s a bit of a cheat to include a blog that is really a newspaper online, but this is an excellent example of this genre at work.)

8. Dave Hill (Really came to prominence for many people during the London elections this year – and continues to shed light on what is happening in London government.)

9. Helen Duffett (Helen’s worked in my office helping with casework. I’ll let you judge whether that means her excellent blogging is because of or despite this link!)

10. And of course, the best blogging pink dog in the world, Pink Dog (Where else would I find out about spoon crime?)

You can cast your own votes too by sending your top ten to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com Modesty forbids me to include my own blog in my top ten, but don’t let that put you off voting for me!

Rape Crisis centres

Posted on by

I’m one of the signatories on a letter organised by the New Statesman as part of their campaign over the future of the Rape Crisis centres in England and Wales:

The prevalence of sexual violence is, unfortunately, extremely high, with a conservative estimate of at least 80,000 women being raped every year …

The impact of sexual violence is significant and long-term, affecting physical and mental health, ability to work or study, and disruption in intimate relationships. The cost to the state of sexual violence was £8.5 billion in 2003-04, with much of this cost being lost outputs due to long-term health issues …

Rape Crisis centres provide essential holistic services to support women and girls to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of sexual violence, whether their experiences happened recently or in the past. They provide specialist, longterm support, counselling and advocacy in women-only spaces which empower survivors to take back control of their lives.

Yet most women do not have access to a Rape Crisis centre in the UK (Map of Gaps research), and Rape Crisis centres are massively under-funded, resulting in ever-growing waiting lists, staff redundancies and closure of services, with devastating impacts on women who need support.

One in five centres has closed in the last five years, and new research (The Crisis in Rape Crisis), has found that Rape Crisis centres in England and Wales have a combined annual income of just £3.5m; that 79% of grants are for one year or less, and that the majority of women and girls have to wait over 3 months to access this ‘crisis’ provision.

You can read the rest of the letter here.

Glorious flowers – and parking tickets

Posted on by

Lynne Featherstone with Peter White and his flowersFirst of my visits to residential and sheltered housing in my constituency to talk to my older constituents over the summer. In the photo – you can see Peter White and me with just some of the glorious plants and flowers that Peter has grown. These are outside his own flat – but Peter has made the whole of the outside area of Abyssinia Court burst with colour and beauty. It is absolutely glorious – and the picture doesn’t capture but an iota of the glorious gardens.

Anyway – not that many around – but had a great conversation with those that were. Parking tickets were again the order of the day. Seem to be a hot topic in Haringey at the moment.

Peter’s wife is disabled and a wheelchair user – so he has a blue badge and he was regaling me with a whole string of tickets that had been put on the car within moments of parking. All had been written off when he wrote in – and all had been wrongly issued. Makes you want to scream – for goodness sake – train your bloody wardens properly Haringey. All the time and effort Peter has had to put into writing about each wrongly issued ticket – all the time that Haringey spends then writing them off.

Time to introduce penalties for wrongly written tickets perhaps?

Anyway – second on my list of campaigns for the day is the hard skin on feet. In terms of older people, it can be excruciating and the Government has hugely reduced the number of older people who qualify for free care. At Abyssinia they do a free nail cutting service – but it is the hard skin that is so painful it keeps older people at home and immobilised. And it costs quite a lot to have it done privately – beyond many pensioners’ pockets.

So – I am trying to gather evidence enough to present to both the local council, health care trust and Government to bring in free foot care for the elderly. It really would be not only the right thing to do as part of a national health service – but a very good investment return on the cost – as the consequences and expense of immobility outweigh the investment by a long shot.

Parking tickets run amok

Posted on by

You couldn’t make this up.

Walk out of my office this afternoon having parked outside on High Street Hornsey for about half an hour – perfectly legitimately. The actual sign is the sort that says you can park between 10am and 4pm for up to one hour and no return within two hours. A ticket on my windscreen. I look at Ed (who is my Head of Office and with me at that moment) and say – why, how? We check the signs – they haven’t changed.

At that point a woman came up to me and said, ‘Thank goodness – you’re the MP aren’t you? The wardens have ticketed all the cars both sides of the road, even though lots of us shopkeepers came out and told him to read the sign and that it is perfectly OK to park here. The wardens read the signs – and ticketed anyway.’

I am dealing with my own ticket as a private citizen (and no – I won’t mention that I am the MP) and no doubt it will be dismissed etc. However, I have written to Haringey’s Chief Executive because I want to ensure that all the cars that were ticketed in High Street Hornsey, between 3 and 4pm on Wednesday 30th July, are rescinded and apologies given.

Outside of the actual issue of writing tickets when none are valid and all the bother and trouble those people have to go to get them written off – there is the issue of Haringey (who are already in trouble over sharp practise on ticketing illegally) having traffic wardens who firstly do not understand the actual signs and parking regulations and secondly that even when a number of shopkeepers (who know the traffic rules outside their own premises) tried to get them to understand that all the cars were quite legally parked – they were totally ignored.

I am looking forward to hearing from Haringey with both assurances that all such tickets issues will be withdrawn, apologies given and what action they propose to take in terms of the wardens who wrote the tickets.

Blimey – it was only last month I wrote the column ‘Don’t let the good guys be the fall guys’. Speaking as a good guy … I rest my case!

Topping out ceremony for our new community health centre

Posted on by

Hornsey Hospital topping out ceremonyTuesday was a celebration day – for the new community health centre on the site of the old Hornsey Central Hospital as was. I was in attendance to lay the topping out stone. It’s a tradition in the building industry when the building reaches the top floor. There are now only about nine months to go before actual completion and handover.

Yes – there has been lots of controversy about the new community health centre – but my own view is that given the undertaking that there will be no reduction in number of GPs in the borough, everyone will be able to keep their own family doctor and that there would be no more than a ‘reasonable’ walk to them – then what we will gain in terms of better health facilities in Hornsey & Wood Green is to be celebrated.

Anyway – here’s the little speech I made – which will give you my full views:

I am absolutely delighted to be here today to celebrate the Topping Out of our new Neighbourhood Health Center – the Hornsey Central Hospital – as was.

This is an unbelievable day to have dawned!

Having campaigned with local people – originally against its closure – and then through all its incarnations on its way to today’s ceremony – it’s been a long road.

I have always believed that the west of Haringey borough, Hornsey & Wood Green, has tremendous need for additional and better health facilities to be provided for the local community.

I am sure members of our local health trust will agree that the people of Hornsey & Wood Green are a demanding bunch – and rightly so. In one way we are a highly articulate group of people who will give any public authority a run for their money in making sure we are heard.

And in another way we also are a group with a very great demand for health care because of high levels of poverty and deprivation.

I have high aspirations that this new medical facility will contribute significantly to improve the health outcomes for both these groups. This is why have campaigned so hard for so long to help make this happen.

I want to put on record my thanks to Richard Sumray, Chair of the Trust, who long ago at one of my many meetings haranguing him over the years to deliver on a replacement health facility for the old Hospital, promised me that he saw the same need in the west of the Borough that I saw.

And that he was committed to fighting to get the funding to deliver such a facility – no easy task. And he has delivered on that promise.

I have no doubt there will be battles ahead.

Transport for London has still yet to deliver on its verbal commitment to me to improve transport links for the new hospital – absolutely vital.

We also cannot ignore the fears of some in our community that this shiny new hospital will diminish the primary healthcare that local residents have known for generations with an end to a GP who knows your name and your personal medical history.

In my discussions – the Trust has made it clear that this will not be the case – and that there will be no overall reduction in the number of GPs in the borough; that we will be able to retain our own family GP and that we will have a reasonable walk to that GP.

I therefore urge the Trust to continue the work to engage with local people – listen to their concerns and to act to allay their fears.

This will be a community facility so it is vitally important that the community have a full say each step of the way.

There still remain plenty of i’s to dot and t’s to cross, but I hope everyone here today will join me in celebrating what we hope will be a new dawn in the provision of health facilities in Haringey.