Category Archives: Blog

Jacksons Lane funded for another year

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Hurrah! Brilliant! A reprieve for Jacksons Lane Community Centre. The Arts Council decided to fund us for one more year. Of course am over the moon, having petitioned, met with them, done my column on Jackson’s Lane and generally lobbied and agitated as much as I and my colleagues could.

Thank goodness.

We now have time to make sure that when that year is up – Haringey Council has put in place the commitment and funding necessary to reassure the Arts Council that it is really supported by the local authority. Lack of commitment by Haringey Council was the stated and only reason it was in the firing line for cuts in the first place.

So – onward and upwards! Saved – for now!

If you want some material for a satire of Parliament, read on…

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My office isn’t anywhere near the office my staff use in Parliament. Not terribly convenient so, when the person in the office next to my staff moved out, I thought – ah, why don’t I see if I can swap my office with the now empty one?

They’re pretty much the same, except one is next to my staff and the other is some way away.

Simple, sensible, straight-forward? Oh no, this is Parliament. You’d have thought I’d asked for a whole new floor to be added to Portcullis House or something like that.

One year on (yes – one year!) this is still in limbo because, basically, the Conservative and Labour Chief Whips have vetoed the office move. Or rather – they’ve said I can move, but only if all the Liberal Democrats promise to not ask for any other moves or anything else similar between now and the next general election (whenever that may be) for any MP or their staff.

Well, that’s pretty silly – one might even say childish – condition. Why try to attach such a condition anyway – especially as all we’re talking about is effectively moving the empty office from one location to another?

And what if some other similar sensible swap opportunity comes up? They’re basically saying – tough, no matter how sensible or necessary any other changes might be – you can’t have them. Because we’re the Labour and Tory Chief Whips and we say so.

And what if, say, an MP or one of their members of staff, have – please no – a serious accident and therefore mobility problems? Sorry – no chance of then moving office to one more convenient, because Conservative and Labour Chief Whip would have said IT MUST NOT BE DONE.

You may have guessed by now – I’m not impressed! So we’re lost in a world of complicated three way negotiations (hello Henry Kissinger – fancy a negotiation job?).

I cite this as an example of the utter stupidity of some of the practises at the Commons. This is about childish display of power and nothing to do with making the appropriate decision.

The whole allocation of office space in Parliament is a mess – and this one year to sort one empty office makes the eight weeks it took to give me an office at all when first elected seem quite short by comparison!

So come on Patrick McLoughlin (Tory) and Geoff Hoon (Labour) – show some sense!

Good news for users of Highgate Group Practice

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Big issue around parking near the Highgate Group Practice but good news at the Area Assembly this week – managed to extract a public promise in blood from Brian Haley (Haringey Council Labour Member for environment) that the ten desperately needed (and long promised but not delivered) parking bays for the Highgate Group Practice would indeed finally be installed by the end of February. Hurrah!

What's it like in Google's offices?

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Google are on a charm offensive. Such a successful product. We nearly all use Google Search – don’t we? And thus – earlier this week I visited their London offices – and found out!

They gave us a tour of their offices. In short: it was geek heaven. The Google logo and colours stream through every department – reminiscent of a children’s nursery. Primary colours – and decorated departments. Toys and props of all sorts – cuddly, inflatable, cardboard cut-out everywhere. Quite a few plants and several pieces of immiation picket fencing. Not quite sure why the fencing is so popular!

They are very idealistic about the story of two kids in a garage who make it big in e-land with innovation and good motives, launching new products for free and letting the world play with them. The overall message: we are all nice people who want to bring information to the world. When we get our revenue later (clearly quite a lot of revenue) – it’s a side effect of success.

All in all – I was impressed with the organisation. But there are issues of privacy and domination as this giant of the information world expands its operation and areas at the rate of knots.

Getting the information you want quickly and accurately is good – and if that includes relevant adverts which interest me, that’s fine. But what about when that targeting is used to push products at vulnerable people who end up getting exploited by being sold a product that’s supposedly the answer to all their problems? Or if the information about us isn’t held securely enough and someone gets to pry into your life? (Google have a better record at protecting information than our government – but as the old saying goes, the only totally secure computer is one switched off and locked away with all its cables pulled out). Or if the two founders retire and the firm is driven by people with different outlooks on life? And so on.

Everyone there is young, young, young. Google too is young – hard to believe in some ways that they are only nine years old. Can’t imagine a world without Google!

East German nudists, stars, Scientology and me

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Well! That was quite a varied TV piece I just did for Sky News – their 7:30pm round-up featuring the most popular stories on the internet. You can read more about the topics on their site and also a quick piece from me about how we should change the rules to do with MPs and their expenses following the Derek Conway affair:

Day in day out I question how taxpayers money is spent by the government therefore it is perfectly reasonable that the taxpayer should be able to question how I spend their money.

If we want voters to believe that we are honourable members, we simply cannot be afraid to open ourselves to real independent scrutiny.

UPDATE: You can watch the piece on the Sky website.

What I'll be up to on Friday on Facebook

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Had an invite on Facebook to take part in Brian Paddick’s ‘Facebook Friday’. The idea is to get supporters of Brian (like myself!) at our computers on Friday to have a mass drive to invite people we know to sign up as fans of his on Facebook.

I have no idea how many people are likely to get signed up this way – but it’s got to be a good idea to use such a popular medium as Facebook to try to connect more people with Brian, and indeed with politics in general – especially in a city such as London with such a huge number of people using Facebook, particularly amongst the younger part of the age range, where there is usually less interest in conventional party politics.

My own personal experience is that many people have a negative view of politics and politicians overall, but give them personal contact with a politician and they very often (though not for all politicians!) end up with a much more positive view of that person.

It’s the personal contact that really matters. Social networking sites like Facebook have a useful role to play in making those personal contacts – which is one reason why I’ve been using it myself for a while now. So – let’s hope Friday is a success!

If you’re intending to vote for Brian, I hope you too sign up as a fan of Brian Paddick on Facebook on Friday (and if you’re not on Facebook, you can sign up on his website).

Are we getting meaner?

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That was one of the issues which came up when I appeared on The Westminster Hour with Conservative MP Ed Vaizey on Sunday night. The trigger for the discussion was last week’s publication of the annual British Social Attitudes survey.

Many of its finding were – to a liberal like myself – welcome: for example, far fewer people now think that homosexuality is wrong (down to around a third from a majority back in 1987), whilst the public service ethos amongst those working to provide the rest of us with public services seems to have strengthened.

But several reports singled out the question of the attitudes of other people towards the poorest in our society: “Hearts are hardening against those who have least” said the Economist, whilst the FT said, “there are signs that attitudes towards state aid for the needy have hardened significantly“.

It was a good thing I’d had a quick rumination over the details before the radio show, because the details seem to me to tell a different story. The key is that these conclusions were drawn from questions such as whether or not the government should spend more on the neediest – and comparing today’s answers with those from 1991, when we were still in the immediate wake of the Thatcher years.

So the change in people’s answers doesn’t really reflect changing attitudes towards those who are poorest per se; rather, it tells us about the difference between the government now and the government, both in policy and in public perception. For all Gordon Brown’s faults, he isn’t Mrs Thatcher – and also the huge splurge in government spending in many public services without matching improvements to show for it means people are, understandably, generally more sceptical about policy solutions which are simply about increasing public spending.

Changing circumstances – changing policy preferences, but without it meaning we’re becoming meaner under all that. Thank goodness!

A brief digression from black cabs into the place of market forces

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London black cabGlad to see Brian Paddick launch his ten-point plan for London’s black cabs today (and to see the good BBC coverage!).

Black cabs are important in themselves – and some of the measures in the plan, such as rephasing of traffic lights – would directly benefit many other people too. But there is also a wider point here, which is one about a general approach to changing the world (if that isn’t too grand a phrase!).

Influencing how the black cab trade performs isn’t just important in its own right, but – given their key role in transport overall – it has all sorts of knock-on effects, including on the minicab market and also on people’s willingness to use public transport (people often more willing if you know that late at night you can get a safe and reasonably priced cab back).

It’s this attitude of working with one part of the market which you can influence, and then letting the effects of doing that ripple out into all sorts of others corners of activity which I think we need to see more of.

Too often the political debate is polarised between market forces – good or bad. Well – my view is that wishing market forces weren’t there is a bit like wishing that English weather didn’t feature rain. The point isn’t to wish them away – or to think that they are always right and never to be touched – but rather to exploit them for desirable ends by guiding them through influencing the rules under which the market operates.

For example – opening up information to consumers about the health impacts of different foods on sale in supermarkets can and is having – via the power of consumer choice and the market forces which come with that – a huge impact, without having to get government into regulating the contents of your or mine lunch tomorrow. We far more of this sort of nimble government – exploiting market forces and letting their power push us, as individuals and as a society, into more rather than less desirable directions.

Rachel Allison selected to fight by-election

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Although I couldn’t attend the hustings (parliamentary debate and votes on the Lisbon Treaty), I am delighted to say that we have selected a fantastic candidate to fight the Highgate ward by-election.

Rachel Allison is our choice to be the next councillor for Highgate and Archway. She is a worker, with a passion and a knowledge for the local area and the drive and determination to make a difference for local people on the council.

Rachel is intimately involved with the life of Highgate and Archway. She has lived in Claremont Road, Highgate for twelve years – having first moved to Haringey in 1986. Her children attend St Michael’s Primary, and she has recently been appointed as a Governor of Blanche Neville, another Highgate school.

Rachel cares passionately about the environment – double points for that as it is a crucial issue for myself too! She has an allotment on Shepherds Hill, drives a hybrid car and is a member of Friends of the Earth and the Organic Association.

With a hugely varied career and range of talents, Rachel has worked as a freelance video producer and copywriter – but her skills don’t end there. She has recently created a cold sore remedy!

So – off we go. It’s fantastic to have such an amazing candidate step forward for the area. Lots of doors to knock on and leaflets to deliver through till polling day!