The cricket club’s grounds off Park Road are the subject of my latest column:
In the hustle and bustle of urban life, losing those little oasis of peace and tranquillity is a tragedy – we all need places to pause, reflect and move at a slower pace.
You can read the full piece on my website.
Campaigning 
in Kentish Town. There is a ward by-election due to the resignation of a Labour councillor. This is a hard fought one and a half. Since the May local elections, Camden has been run by the Liberal Democrats (with the Tories in coalition as the minor joiners) as no party had overall control on their own.
The LibDems came from miles behind to dethrone Labour who had reigned in Camden for decades. It was time for change.
But with a Labour seat now up for grabs – all the parties are fighting hard. The Liberal Democrats were out in force at the street stall I joined yesterday. Tories, Labour and a couple of Greens each had stalls near the tube station – ours was a bit further down the road. What gave me the giggles was the Tories. For reasons I will never understand – they send one or two of their entourage to plonk themselves in front of our stand. There was quite an aggressive Tory girl who plonked herself literally in front and touching the front of our stall for a very long time. I suppose the psychology is to either a) not let us hold sway over that particular couple of metres or b) to make photographs difficult as you wouldn’t want a Tory in a LibDem photo or c) to hear what we are saying. I don’t know for sure.
However, if that is the mentality and stupidity of politics (and it is not just Tories although they are the worst at this sort of tactic) – no wonder real people disengage. As for passers by – many were really interested in the issues around any potential closure of the local police station. The Met is reorganising its estate and some police stations will go in that change.
The by-election is on this coming Thursday.
Off to Queen’s Road Residents’ Association Christmas Social. This is an A-grade residents’ association which has created not only a truly active body that operates to protect and improve the area – but also a real sense of community.
The two local Liberal Democrat councillors, John Oakes and Ali Demirci, were there. In fact it was John who suggested I might like to drop in.
And how pleasant it is just to go to a social occasion and have a bit of time to talk with people properly. Everyone had brought different foods to contribute – for as ever we are nothing if not diverse and integrated. Talking to one group of people – who were obviously from a variety of cultural backgrounds – what was really funny was that we all celebrate Christmas in some form. Discussing it we decided that it was because it is such a basically nice festival – in terms of family, presents, tree, decorations and food etc and comes coterminous to an extent with Diwali and Hanukah – and we all from our different backgrounds enjoy it.
And that to me is the real integration – that we are all different but can all join in, in our own ways, the same festivities. Very heartwarming!
Received an interesting email / thesis from a local resident about the sudden (but very much needed) £176 million injection for schools in Haringey. The resident was a school governor in Haringey during the eighties and nineties, who saw PFI being used to modernise the secondary schools. He says that they were told that this was the only way the works would be funded. Now his view is that the £176 million that the Government has ‘found’ to give to Haringey is political. He said: ‘It appears that your parliamentary seat and the removal of 12 councillors [there are 12 more Lib Dem councillors than 4 years ago]is worth a lot of money. If true then the money for peerages issue is mere chicken feed.’
Makes you think!
It was off to St Mary’s Junior School to present the winner of my Christmas Card competition with a certificate, some of the cards and some chocolates. The card I chose is absolutely lovely. I had set the title ‘Christmas at Alexandra Palace’ and Jemima Hammett (aged 10) had drawn the most beautiful representation of the Pally with Santa’s sleigh flying above it in the sky. So that was a very pleasant task of the day.
UPDATE: And here’s a picture of the winning card:
This morning there was one of those cases that makes me so angry at surgery. A woman had come to see me. Her employers had her escorted off of work premises as she had been unable to produce documentation to show that it was legal for her to work. She had sought asylum in 2001 and been given exceptional leave to remain. She has worked all the time (i.e. not on benefits). She married a British citizen and has two British children. She is and always has been fully entitled to work. At the end of her four year exceptional leave to stay she applied in the normal way for indefinite leave to stay. To do that she had to surrender her passport etc. One and half years later – nothing. And now she was thrown out of her work premises because the Home Office (still not fit for purpose – nowhere near) didn’t want to know. She had gone there yesterday – and received no help.
I was furious. Phoned up the MP helpline and in the end they faxed over a letter stating that she was entitled to work. She came to collect it from my constituency office as if she didn’t show them something today, her job was out the window.
But the bigger issue is that when I spoke to the Home Office (and today the helpline was helpful – credit where it is due) the hold up on her proper papers is an outstanding police check to make sure she hasn’t broken the law. So a year and half later – she is waiting for what should take five minutes on the computer. I have written to Sir Ian Blair and to John Reid. It is totally unacceptable. You can’t bugger up peoples’ lives endlessly through total inefficiency.
Meetings scheduled at last minute and requiring attendance meant that I was prevented from a number of meetings – including one in Leeds with the Association of Police Authorities and the Holocaust Educational Trust (being re-organised).
I did manage to meet with the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC). I have the same concerns I had when I was on the London Assembly about the Thames Gateway. A city the population size of Leeds is being plonked in the Thames Gateway without proper master-planning (in my view).
This is just the hugest opportunity to do things right, but the fear is – that this won’t happen. However, the LTGDC is making a fist of trying to put some organisation and rigour onto the development. They need a huge hit of Government funding – and it won’t be clear for a couple of years whether the Government will be putting their money where their housing targets are.
If the Thames Gateway delivers sustainable housing (around 100,000), jobs and sustainable transport links – then it could be a really good thing. One of my concerns – as ever – from my interest and belief in the importance of the built environment, is the quality of design. Such a lot of shoddy third-rate stuff gets built – and then authorities wonder why there is crime, unemployment, anti-social behaviour and so on. Treat people like dirt and they behave that way.
Early morning out filming for Sunday’s Politics Show. They will have David Davis in the studio – and the bit they wanted me for was to ruminate on any potential threat from the Tories now they hug hoodies. Not sure that Davis is all love and sunshine; however – you’ll have to wait for the program if you’re interested.
I then watched John Prescott in horror. I don’t know him really, as our political paths haven’t really crossed and he has only stepped into take the PM’s role at Prime Minister’s Questions a couple of times since I became an MP – but it seemed cruel sport.
I don’t rate PMQs as an exemplar way to conduct politics anyway. It is a blood sport and as such is quite compelling but actually pretty nasty stuff. However, just as with hunting, when the prey doesn’t even have a chance it is sheer cruelty. Whilst T Blair can take care of himself – Prescott clearly can’t. I don’t suppose they will let him go before the Blair Switch project is complete – but it would be kinder to leave him with a last vestige of pride.
I was speaking yesterday in a break out group at the CRE Race Convention. My session was about race discrimination in the criminal justice system. It was a pretty lively debate. A core problem – on which there was widespread agreement – is that of “disproportionality” running through every part of the criminal justice system. This means that people from ethnic minority communities are far more likely to be stop and searched, have DNA records taken and a host of other things than they should be given their proportion of the population or of the criminal population. And – despite a great deal of talking the talk – the issue appears very resistant to fixing.
My own view is that it comes down to leadership. If everyone understood that any discrimination would be monitored and recorded and SUPERVISED – and that jobs would be lost as a result – then we would see a shift. But despite the very genuine efforts – that level of priority and commitment is not yet truly there.
Take the police and the borough commander level. If the crime targets were down – top brass would be on the phone to the local commander wanting to know the reason why! The same cannot be said around issues of disproportionality. So perhaps the next step is, as one man suggested, disproportionality targets. Only the police are already drowning in targets – and unless the top brass take this as seriously as the crime stats – then the results won’t change.
And in case anyone has forgotten – the stats in London (for example) on DNA retention are that against a background of 28% BME population in London, there is a disproportionate arrest rate of 48% and a rate of 60% of DNA records are from the BME population. Translated – that means that not only are the police disproportionately arresting black and ethnic minority people – they are getting it humungously wrong! And time spent wrongly arresting innocent people is time lost on catching criminals.
I have a meeting coming up with a senior Met Officer to discuss the arrest policy. For it seems clear to me that disproportionality starts with stop and search and the continues through the criminal justice system from arrest to sentencing. Another chap very wisely suggested that there be an independent study of disproportionality across the whole criminal justice system – and I think that would be an excellent thing to do.
As for Ken Livingstone’s purile attack on the Race Convention – typical brattish behaviour from a spoilt child! As usual.
Get a text from the Whip’s Office that there will be an Urgent Question in Parliament from the Conservatives. The Urgent Question is to ask the Home Secretary, John Reid, to make a statement on the death of Alexander Litvinenko.
Basically he just runs through the timetable of events – not really adding anything new. I manage to get called to pose a follow-up question on the lines of:
Mr Litvinenko was my constituent. He was a British Citizen. Can the Home Secretary give me assurances that his death will be investigated without fear nor favour regardless of the diplomatic sensitivities of Russia and that the findings of that investigation will be full, fair and frank?
John Reid was pretty straight in his reply – and basically said that the police would do their job without interference.
As I said in an interview with BBC 24 afterwards, the main points as I see them are: a straight police investigation without interference; that there are questions that still need to be answered as to whether Mr Litvinenko brought his fears to the police before the 1st November; whether other Russian dissidents are concerned and whether they have been contacted in regard to this; have others contacted the police at any time about being followed by secret services and of course – from the public point of view – until the few people who have been asked to take more medical tests get the all clear – there is a residue of concern about contamination around the places where the radioactive material was found.
As Ming Campbell has said, we must not rush to judgement. However, as Ming also pointed out, if it should end up with Russia’s fingerprints on this – then a country which wants a seat at the top table cannot be associated with state terrorism.
Lynne Featherstone 