After meeting constituents face-to-face to hear the issues they wanted to raise with me it was off this morning to Budgens in Crouch End to launch / support their new scheme for getting us all to cut out using plastic bags for our shopping.

Their campaign is called ‘Pennies for Plastic’ because the cost of each plastic bag is 1p and for every single one that the customers don’t use Budgens are giving that money to a local project. This time the money will go to Weston Park Primary School. They have had the children draw this huge painting of the Clock Tower and the kids arrive for photo opportunities with their painting, trolleys full of plastic bags (5,000 per day are used) and T-shirts to support the cause. Budgens want everyone to use the purchasable environmentally sound bag – and reuse it every time – or bring their own shopping bag. And it isn’t stopping there – as Budgens are getting together all the independents in Crouch End to support this campaign. It’s win, win, win, win! Local store, local produce, local schools and local community – that’s how to do it!

And because I am so pleased with Budgens taking on this environmental challenge I want to big them up on their approach to their food too! Their new smoothies and fresh food stand is at the front of the shop (delicious smoothie – all fresh ingredients as you can get as they are frozen at the height of their fruit being lives and then used when needed).

Andrew Thornton showed me around and what is clear is that Budgens has decided to make their food as local as possible and as fresh as possible – thus proving that providing good produce reaps financial rewards too! I was amazed that they were able to commission individual orders from specialist local food producers or makers – like the pesto where the father grew the herbs (locally) and the daughter picked them and took them back to her kitchen to make, with the end product now on Andrew’s shelves.

Go to a soup kitchen in Muswell Hill at the Dukes Avenue Baptist Church to support and celebrate National Volunteers Week. John Grant, who is also the Church Warden, started this kitchen many years ago. Now it has grown to a five nights a week mainstay for those who really have nowhere else to go and nothing to eat. Supported by a team of around 50 or more volunteers, most of whom come through Church channels – and several churches in the area are involved – John and his team see that somewhere between 30 and 50 people have food to eat. This is such wonderful work – and the volunteers, most of whom are really young – really seem to enjoy and value the work they do. Congratulations to all who give their time and effort to supporting the soup kitchen!

Ironically enough I had had a destitute man come to Central Lobby in Parliament to see me and I was green carded (which means that a note was sent to me – sitting in Chamber – on a green card that a constituent was here to see me). I won’t go in to personal details – but he was literally starving. Sadly – he was also stateless – and our system does not have a catch all for people in such a predicament. If you have status – then you are eligible for social services support etc – but stateless – virtually nothing is available to you.

It’s a topic I’ve written about previously – when one of the schools in my constituency was catapulted into the media for fingerprinting children and there were complaints from parents about the fingerprinting.

My colleague Sarah Teather, who is Liberal Democrat Education spokesperson, has just done a survey of primary schools to see which are fingerprinting their children.

What I wrote still seems to hold good:

If we are now saying that fingerprinting children is the best way of ensuring that they get their library books back to the school library – then the world has clearly gone mad!

But this is what is happening both nationally and locally … In my view, treating children like criminals is unlikely to be the best way to imbue the sort of values we should be instilling in the next generation.

Fingerprinting and digitised photographs for protecting the Crown Jewels – fair enough – but fingerprinting and digitised photographs for a children’s book about them? That is a hideously disproportionate response to the issue – and a sense of balance and judgement is one of the many things we should actually be teaching children!

You can read the full piece on my website.

Sometimes you really can’t make it up! I met with London Turkish Radio (LTR) – who are based in my constuency – last Friday to discuss the very serious problems they are having as a result of a pirate radio station called Bizim FM which is broadcasting illegally.

My understanding is that they have been raided on several occasions but that with only the slightest of pauses, they are broadcasting again almost immediately.

So – I am going to pursue Ofcom as this is ongoing and long-lasting and is damaging the legitimate, licensed voice of the Turkish speaking community as the pirate radio pays no fees, no overheads, etc etc – and is able to undercut hugely on advertising.

And on the advertising they are doing – I was shocked to hear with my own ears two advertisements from Crimestoppers – one of which had the tag line ‘the Metropolitan Police – working for a safer London’ – which were broadcast on the illegal radio station!

I have written to Crimestoppers and to Sir Iain Blair, Met Police Commissioner to basically ask what an earth they think they are doing advertising on pirate radio. And if the answer is to reach into the communities – then I would suggest they do it through the legitimate chanels. I wonder if the Met realise that this is happening?

I don’t know (yet) if the ads for Crimestoppers and the Met Police are free or charged on Bizim – but it cannot be right for the Met to be advertised on a pirate radio station.

As I said – you couldn’t make it up!

I’m not quite sure what it says about the people who read political blogs but my post about a sign at a tube station has been one of the most popular on this blog for some time!

I see it’s also fired off all sorts of possible explanations for the sign, of which the best seems to be the thread at http://budgie-uk.livejournal.com/750967.html