Finally ended up at our Annual General Meeting for the local Lib Dem party. Loads of new faces – always welcome and old faces – equally so.
Martin Hay took us through the events at the High Court that saw the Labour Council damned over their failure to conduct the Alexandra Palace sale properly.
We had the Tottenham hustings for our prospective Parliamentary candidate – won by David Schmitz – who gave a brilliant speech (and lives in the same street as Tottenham MP David Lammy)!
Went to the unveiling of the plaque on the house where Oliver Tambo lived in Hornsey & Wood Green in Alexandra Park Road.
Oliver Tambo was the president of the African National Congress from 1977 to 1991 and lived at this address during his years of exile. The family made its historic return to South Africa in 1990. Later ceremonies included the unveiling of his statue in Albert Recreation Ground and then a luncheon at Alexandra Palace. High ranking diplomats from South Africa had flown in and her Excellency, Ms Lindiwe Mabuza, the High Commissioner of South Africa hosted the luncheon (which I couldn’t stay for). All in all, a great scheme – as I’d hoped – for remembering his time here in our midst.
It was a fantastic occasion – and we are lucky to have that history in our midst – for it was Oliver Tambo who kept the belief and the campaign going all those long years of exile. His granddaughter gave a little speech at the plaque unveiling and told a wonderful tale of how they always referred to their house here as ‘Muswell’. Meet you at Muswell tea-time etc. When they moved back to South Africa, they wanted to name their new house – and in the end – called it ‘Muswell’ as they decided that ‘Muswell’ meant home!
A day of weighing up thoughts on the Lib Dem leadership contest. First – many thanks to everyone who has been lobbying me to run for the leadership. It’s flattering – but sorry, I’m not in the running.
Instead, I am sticking with Chris Huhne. You know he had real balls last time – took the risk – gave the party a real choice. And in the campaign – it was Chris who had the big ideas – so much so that the other leadership contenders followed his agenda. I want the person who sets agendas – that is leadership.
Outside of loads of media interviews – it has been a day of Lib Dem huddles. Who will support who? Who’s the media backing? And so on … but perhaps at last there is a chink of light in the media being (a little!) interested in what the policy choices there may be behind different candidates and what our party’s approach is rather than obsessed with what socks Ming is wearing.
But I’ll give you one firm prediction: whoever runs and whoever wins – their best policies will be nicked by the Tories without hesitation, then nicked by Labour and then the Tories will complain about Labour doing the nicking – as if they were really their policies in the first place!
I interrupt the current frenzy around the blogs about the Lib Dem leadership to bring you news from China – promising news from President Hu Jintao’s opening speech to the Communist Party’s congress.
He talked about the need for China to “promote a conservation culture” and “energy and resource-efficient and environment-friendly industries”. Of course words in speeches come more easily than action – but it’s good to see him setting out the need for China to become more green – and that should mean good news for our one, shared global climate.
Well – it seems to be the coming thing! There’s now a cross-party campaign to introduce fixed-term Parliaments: www.fixedterm.org.uk
If you’ve read my blog before – you won’t be surprised to know I think this is a very good idea! And of course it’s always nice to see people from other parties – and none – take up a long-standing Lib Dem policy and suddenly say how wonderful it is! But in the spirit of cross-party campaigning I promise not to tease some of the recent converts too often when they forget to mention it was a Lib Dem policy in the first place!
Sunday night – so did my stint on Radio 4’s The Westminster Hour again. It was reasonably lively tonight. No prizes for guessing the main topic – leadership! Both Brown at PMQs and Ming.
I am so fed up with this Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs) rubbish. The House loves it. The media loves it. It is a great spectator sport (blood sport that is) but it is not the way to judge leadership or to hold the PM to account – at least, not if you are a grown up. It’s boys behaving like boys do – and I don’t mean that as a compliment!
Can you imagine anyone in the real world behaving like that? Can you imagine in your workplace that sort of shouting and disorder passing for normal at meetings where the manager answers questions from staff or the directors answer to shareholders? I think not! Yet in the majesty of Parliament – we have the behaviour of the playground. And our political system is meant to rest on this sort of behavour. Not impressed!
Anyway – my verdict on this week was that I thought Brown did his best (following his delivery of his own mortal blow in terms of bad judgement) and Cameron just appeared like an upper class bully boy – famed of public school films.
As for Ming – yes Simon Hughes said what he said. But the way it was portrayed in the media was OTT. It was a statement of the bleeding obvious for any party – you always want to do better. So – pooh to all of that!
This week’s historic court judgement on Alexandra Palace (courts blocked the planned sell-off) is a damning indictment of the behaviour of the Labour councillors who rammed through the deal on Ally Pally with Firoz Kassam’s Firoka group. It is justice being done and seen to be done (see Hornsey Journal here and here and Ham & High coverage).
A real local hero, Jacob O’Calloghan (who is a local historian), is the David who took on the giant of the Labour establishment over their now found to be much wanting ‘sale’ of Alexandra Palace. Throughout the process Labour steamrollered through an inadequate consultation process in which they refused to let anyone know the terms of the contract. Yes – they were told. Time and time again local campaigners and Liberal Democrat councillors raised these issues – but Labour ignored voices that contradicted their plans.
And the Charity Commission, tasked with the proper conduct of charities such as Ally Pally, showed itself to not only be toothless but in my view negligent in their duties.
The judge was clearly appalled by what has gone on and had no qualms about saying so. During Friday’s hearing Mr Justice Jeremy Sullivan attacked the Charity Commission for being “completely unreasonable and wholly unrealistic” in its treatment of residents’ concerns.
He suggested that a fresh consultation process be launched and the lease be made available for people to see so they could make an informed decision about whether they agree with it.
But where are we now? Well Matt Cooke (the Labour Chair of the Ally Pally board) has refused to take any responsibility for this stinging judicial rebuke. He should resign without question – but he has instead spent his time writing to the local papers to churn out the sort of rubbish his quote in the Ham & High demonstrates:
“Our priority throughout has been to restore the palace for future generations of Londoners whilst removing the financial burden of running the palace and servicing its debts from the shoulders of Haringey taxpayers. We have no reason to assume achieving this objective is no longer possible and every reason to consider fulfilment is just a few short months away despite the temporary delay caused by the High Court.”
Haringey taxpayers have suffered long and hard and expensively – but only because of Labour’s incompetence over decades. Getting this judgement simply demonstrates why Matt Cooke and Labour need to get booted out altogether. They don’t even admit it when they are exposed as incompetents who freeze out meaningful public consultation – as with this example from last year:
Imagine the scene. A group of residents want to lobby Haringey Council about the plans to hand over Alexandra Palace to the Firoka group.
What does Labour do? They say, no – you can’t lobby the full council meeting, you must go to the Palace Board meeting. And when is the next Board meeting they can go to … not until after the decision will have been made about whether to give Firoka the site!
You can have your say, but only when it’s too late with Haringey Labour!
And the real issue is that the Palace could be a wonderful resource for local people and the wider population – but with Labour’s handling that opportunity is being wasted, yet again.
Today was the meeting I had squeezed out of the Foreign Secretary about the death of Alexander Litvinenko (Pollonium 210 radiation poisoning case). This was so that Marina Litvinenko could get an update on efforts to extradite suspect Andrew Lugovoi from Russia to stand trial for killing her husband.
David Miliband had come to the House of Commons to make a statement on the situation previously – including the expulsion of the Russian diplomats – and I had managed to catch Mr Speaker’s eye. Given the opportunity, I asked David M if he would meet with Marina as she had so many questions to ask that were unanswered. So – today was the day.
As it was a private meeting, I won’t go into the details of what took place, other than to say that during the meeting a vote in Parliament was unexpectedly called. So – David M and I ran, jumped into his car and ran again to get to the Chamber to vote.
We were voting opposite ways – and I reached the door from the Chamber to the voting lobby (MPs vote by physically walking through the yes or no lobby) as the shout went up ‘lock the doors’.
The officer of the house actually closed the door on me as I scooted through and really hurt my hand. I understand that you have to have a cut-off point for voting and close the doors – but I would have thought it inappropriate to push it closed with me in it. That is tradition turned sadistic!
Anyway – back we jumped into the car and back to the meeting. Too much excitement for one day.
I had meant to write more on my trip to South Africa last month – but with an election in prospect, there was not much time available so to do. However, I did want to round up a few more points.
One of the things that was clear at every turn – whether through briefings or site visits – was that local delivery is the main problem. There is no real comprehensive coverage or network to deliver AIDS and HIV programmes across the country. There is patchy provision – more holes than patches. Even in Alexandra, the shanty town we visited, various projects led by the Government were capturing some of the people, some were being helped by NGOs and some through their workplaces – but there seemed no surety of pathway into proper care. And this was in a town right next to a rich white area in Johannesburg – let alone out in a poor rural area.
And I guess that was why we were there – to observe how patchy healthcare is – and equally to observe the capability and capacity of these mega corporations who – through trying to ensure a health workforce (and therefore healthy profits) – had developed pretty comprehensive coverage for their own employees and were now extending their care chain to families and down their supply chain.
As far as I could make out (as the South African Government was missing from our briefings), the Government – having denied AIDS / HIV for years – was, despite launching a National Strategy while we were there, still pretty recalcitrant in terms of working with partners and meeting with the business organisations. They seemed only to see them as cash cows – rather than experienced health deliverers with capacity and desire to help.
The second evening we dined with the British High Commissioner, Paul Boetang, at his residence – about twenty invitees. Amongst whom were two kids: AIDS orphans who headed their families and had great dreams – the girl of being a lawyer and the boy a footballer. I was much moved by their bravery. But they were lucky, in that they were picked out by one of the hospices and helped and looked out for.
Anyway, at dinner Paul was asking what we would do when we returned to London to advance the cause. I said that as an opposition politician my role will be to prod our own Government to pressure the South African Government to move forward on their strategy and to work with business parners etc. It was clear, though, that there was some anxiety about me being in any way critical of the South African Government. But I am critical – a critical friend. This South African black government represents the realisation of what we believed in – through all the years of apartheid – and I expect this Government to embrace progress, act for their people and benefit from help that is on offer. This is not a poor country. This is a middle income country – and leaders have to put the well-being of their people first, last and always.
I want the real thing, the vision – not the same old, same old. So – now an election is off the menu – time to table some questions to start that pressure – pin prick though it may be.
Sooooooooooooo – at last my number came up in the ballot and I get to ask a question at Prime Minister’s Questions (basically – other than party leaders – MPs are picked at random to ask the other questions).
Although I think Gordon Brown had other worries today (like his political life) I managed my question competently (I thought) and was rewarded with a reasonably progressive answer. He was forced to admit that Haringey School’s funding deal needs “continued looking at” following my impassioned plea for a fair funding deal for the borough’s schools (the topic of my online petition).
I asked the PM to end the injustice that Haringey schools received on average £736 less per pupil than in inner London, even though local teachers are paid on inner London pay scales. Gordon Brown conceded the point and stated that outer London funding would continue to be looked into.
I will follow up with a letter as a chink has opened up and I am damned if our kids are going to get less than neighbouring boroughs for another three years until the funding formula is substantively reviewed. Waiting for a review may be fine in bureaucracy land – but those children aren’t going to get those three years of education back again – and of course we don’t know for sure what the review will even decide then, or on what timescale. So get a move on Gordon!
Lynne Featherstone 