Category Archives: Blog

Myddleton Road

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Third call of the day is to Bowes Park Community Gardens where the local association is having a table top sale to raise a bit of cash for their activities. They are a very active and committed residents’ association – including fighting hard for Myddleton Road to be properly looked after. I remember so many promises from my time as a councilor made by Haringey Council about ensuring proper rubbish collection and action on the strange (and possibly unlawful) building that seems to go on behind closed shop fronts on this road. I will write to the Council to ask the status and legality of all the development that appears to have gone on here – as there were worrying tales of overcrowding and inappropriate and inadequate accommodation. I believe it is all privately developed – but the Council must have had to give planning permission – and if not, then their enforcement team must take a look.

The other big issue for the residents’ assoiation is the illegal left turns that traffic makes into Brownlow Road by Bounds Green Tube. It is extremely dangerous and needs to be redesigned with safety first. The residents are gathering a petition at the moment – and when done then we need to push this up the agenda. Promises about next year, sometime never aren’t really good enough.

Garden Africa

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Second With Georgina McAllister from Garden Africa, which helps HIV sufferers in Southern Africacall of the day is to Garden Africa which is a UK based charity working in Southern Africa setting up training gardens in schools and hospitals to teach people affected by poverty and HIV/AIDS how to grow nutritious food and medicinal plants to improve their health and generate income. They teamed up with Ally Pally Garden Centre this weekend and the garden centre is magnificently donating 20% of every purchase made.

I am photographed with Georgina McAllister who set up the charity. I have offered to try and find someone in the EU who can help them apply for funding. There is an enormous amount of funding available for work with HIV/AIDS and Africa etc – but how to get at it is the devil of the problem. I will contact MEP Sarah Ludford – but if there are any fund-getting specialists out there – feel free to contact me or them.

Kidz Adventure Zone, Wood Green

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First Launching Wood Green's Kidz Adventure Zonecall of the day to open Kidz Adventure Zone in Wood Green. It’s a new play system for children up to 12 years old and is the work and vision of a lovely couple – Segun and Chinyama Okunuga who had managed to get this play centre project through all the hoops that had to be jumped – and in Haringey, that’s quite a lot. There is the most amazing structure for children to play in – three stories high with lots of climbing tunnels and tubes. The emphasis is on helping the children develop their imaginations and potential and on reducing the challenge of obesity which means that already 20% of the children in London are overweight. They have put their heart and soul into this – and I wish them every success.

My knitting and I

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Spend until after lunch chairing a Community Crime and Policing Conference at Parliament but then whipped back to grab an hour and a half at the Annual Knit & Stitch Exhibition at Ally Pally. I try and go every year – but I’m working right through the weekend so no time then. I knit! I know this will ruin my image (such as it is) but I love knitting. Since being elected though I really haven’t had much time and the last thing I knitted took four years. And to add insult to injury, when I finished and put it on it didn’t fit and was ghastly. But I just got an urge to knit something new – and having just got back I didn’t actually find a pattern which is just as well as it would probably take about 10 years for the next one.

I like quite high fashion knits and stopped at one stand as I quite liked the style of the two cardigans on display. This turned out to be SIRDAR (who are giants – but not high fashion) marketing a new range which I think was called ‘Sublime’ which is to try and capture the high end of the market. The MD of SIRDAR was there and we had a bit of a chat. Now I know this is all highly irrelevant as it is personal not professional – but it kind of combined both as Ally Pally hosts this really National Event and it is one of the great exhibitions that goes on there. I go to at least a couple of their shows every year – but I wondered how many local people do go. Today there was a veritable army of women (and almost no men – a few tokens) marching up and down the exhibits. This is the heart of Britain – Womens’ Institute and John Lewis women who make curtains, and sew and knit. And I love it!

Cancer awareness and climate change

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Pictured Supporting Breast Cancer awareness week - and trying to look moderately sensible!in pink at Parliament for Breast Cancer awareness week. Turning up for a photo op / campaign support MPs found themselves presented with big pink hats, rosettes, mad pink sunglasses, pom poms, boas and so on. I felt a complete twit – but having observed the propensity for MPs before and after me in the queue to rather seem to enjoy such exhibitionism – I donned a hat and rosette (the least they would let me get away with). Well – it’s for a good cause!

Then rushed to Chamber. I wanted very much to be called to speak in the Climate Change adjournment debate scheduled for today – at late notice. I dropped a note to Mr Speaker to alert him to my desire – but being only able to put it in just before the debate and with three backbench Lib Dem colleagues wanting also to speak – was not optimistic about my chances. They call about 10 Labour and Tories to every Lib Dem and with no time limit on backbench speeches as the hours wore on my hopes sank.

But after five hours of jumping up at the end of everyone else’s speech in the hope of catching the Speaker’s eye – and just before the wind-up speeches were about to begin – I did get called – last of all. I had tabled an Early Day Motion just before the debate which congratulated Al Gore on his film on Climate Change – An Inconvenient Truth and urged all MPs to go and see it and sign the EDM when they had. The brains of the Table Office said the rules of the House ruled it out of order as the House could not pass a motion to sign the motion if signed. After three brains had a go – we removed the signing bit – and tabled the encourage MPs to go bit. I had been trying to find a way to ‘encourage’ MPs by making sure that they had to see the film before they could sign the EDM – but the House saved them from potential exposure. That’s the way the House always works.

Anyway Supporting the Big Ask campaign for an effective bill to tackle climate change– back to my speech. By the time I finally did get called almost all the points I had scribbled down had been made – so I stuck to pointing out to the Minister that the Friends of the Earth ‘Big Ask’ campaign was clearly hugely supported by individuals in all Members’ constituencies. I think I’ve had about 800 postcards by now (and still climbint). And we all want a Climate Change Bill in the Queen’s Speech to set reduction targets for carbon. And as I said to the Minister – if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

You can read the speech in Hansard, but the main points were on travel planning and on education and dissemination of the threat of climate change. I suggested that the Government get Al Gore’s film shown in all secondary schools. And idea that the Minister nodded quite enthusiastically at I thought – and which was praised as ‘an excellent idea’ by the Tories when they were summing up. That’s not a usual reaction by Tories – but a good idea is a good idea!

Thames Water: update

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Result! Having been so cross with Thames Water over the level of donation offered to MPs (for charity!) for their time in responding to a very very long survey about their services – and putting it on my blog – I arrived in my office to find they had been in touch to say that they heard I was unhappy and are doubling their donation to all MPs.

So in total now Water Aid should get £1,000 rather than £500. So credit to Thames Water for responding quickly and positively!

Internet TV station 18 Doughty Street debuts

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Mad dash to Iain Dale’s new TV (internet) company, 18 Doughty Street, for its inaugural program. A cab is sent for me – but sod’s law – gets stopped by security coming into the Commons to the Members’ entrance. After 15 minutes waiting for it to clear, the policewoman on the door where I am waiting calls to the search post to find that they have found something in the engine they don’t like and are holding the cab pending the arrival of further security experts. So – not wanting to completely ruin Iain’s opening show, (which I am extremely flattered to have been asked to do!) I run out into the street, literally throw myself in front of a taxi and we arrive with about 10 minutes to spare.

There are lots of people and a reasonable degree of uncertainty about whether the mikes should be placed. The other guest – Fraser Nelson of the Spectator – arrives even later than me! Lucky I put my make-up on myself before coming – as there wouldn’t have been time and this was no night to frighten the audience. Chaos appeared to reign – but miraculously as go live 9pm struck – the studio was clear and we were rolling.

Iain’s co-presenter Rena who was absolutely lovely and just the right person to have alongside Iain. And, hats off to Iain. I cannot imagine the stress of going live on your first TV program with guests, films, texts, emails and so on. I don’t know how it came over (pretty well I would have thought) – but I think Iain’s desire was for it to not be so desperately tribal as most format political shows – and to bring in the very live, live media feeds combined with real political discussion. Not soundbites and even allowing a full half hour – yes half hour – for debate on a single topic debate.

So we started with Graham Norton and drugs, followed by remembering a Tory parliamentarian – Eric Forth who died quite recently, followed by blogging (very brief) and then the half hour debate on ‘Rogue States’ – mainly North Korea and her impossible to rein in nuclear progress. I was trying to defend the United Nations which was being attacked as toothless and useless by Fraser and Iain. Challenged to find some way in which they hadn’t been useless – nothing came to mind. Of course, the next morning I remembered a whole slew – including the recent ceasefire in Lebanon / Israel. Love live TV!

Of course, everyone condemns North Korea – but I am not sure that anyone has got any useful answers. Sanctions – yes – but they generally hit the poor people not the despot rulers.

So – a bit of TV history! I really enjoyed it. I hope it does develop into a whole new genre of political programming and formats. I thought it went extremely well, am delighted that there is a challenge here for the very traditional fare that is usually political programming, think Iain is very brave and wish it every success for the future.

Just a PS. I was so worried about the poor taxi driver that had been held at the Commons that on the way home I phoned the company that the TV firm had sent to check. They rang the driver and he was OK. They had found what they thought was a bullet in the engine. The security squad had come and it had turned out to be some sort of bolt and then he was let go. So he was OK. And I was quite impressed that they had actually seen something and stopped someone – albeit in this case happily with no bad outcome. But they search all the cars in and out – including mine when I take it in – and I always think ‘are they really looking’?. Clearly yes. 10 out of 10 – even though it nearly gave me a heart attack thinking I wouldn’t get to the church on time.

DNA records

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Went to New Scotland Yard to meet with Gary Pugh (in charge of forensics) about DNA. DNA is taken from people who are arrested, some of whom are then found innocent. Now here’s the thing – if you look at the DNA taken from innocent people, a far higher proportion of it comes from members of the ethnic minorities than their overall proportion in the population. And remember we’re talking about people found innocent here – so it looks as if there’s something very troubling going on.

Anyway – having asked my Parliamentary Question a while back and got the numbers showing that an innocent member of an ethnic minority is much more likely to be wrongly arrested than an innocent white person, I had written to Sir Ian Blair (Met Police Commissioner) to ask why the figures are as they are? Is it discrimination resulting in ethnic minorities being wrongly arrested far too often or does he have some other explanation?

No answer for a long, long time. But eventually they agreed to have a look at the issue – hence my meeting today. However, it turned out they wanted to deal with the DNA side as opposed to the disproportionaly arresting innocent men side. Having first agreed that we would need another meeting about this somewhat important aspect with the appropriate person – we went on to discuss DNA.

I suppose they are concerned because I keep raising a number of issues around DNA in general and around the retention of DNA records from innocent people. (There’s more about this on the campaign website, http://campaigns.libdems.org.uk/dna – including a link on the right hand side to an article I’ve written about why it matters even for innocent people if their DNA records are being wrongly kept).

Gary informed me that there is now to be an ‘ethics’ panel being set up, which is good – if belated – news. It was also clear that whilst DNA and its database was set up in regard to catching criminals (and I reassured him that I think in terms of a detection tool the sun shines out of DNA’s bottom) it is being used for a number of other – probably legitimate – purposes but also possibly open to less worthy ones and commercial ones.

Thames Water – not generous

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I agreed to do a phone interview as Thames Water are surveying people as to what we think of their services (as a Parliamentarian as opposed to me as a person with a home). Lots of companies do this and to entice MPs into agreeing to what is around 20 -25 minutes of interview they offer to donate to charity. The Charity is Water Aid – and that is an excellent charity setting up fresh water access in far flung parts of the world. So I said yes.

So the good news is that Thames Water is trying to find out what we think about it, what it should be doing etc etc. The bad news is at the end of the interview, I asked the interviewer what donation I had just earned for Water Aid. It is £10 per MP and £500 in all from all the MPs. This is beyond paltry. The minimum is usually around £50 per MP for this sort of thing and some going as high as £200. MPs do it – because of the charity benefit for it. 25 minutes of mind-numbing questions would not be first on the list to squeeze into a day.

That is why I am publishing this on my blog. It is my only revenge for a company who make Scrooge look generous!

UPDATE: Thames Water have now decided to be more generous.

Hornsey Central Hospital

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Met with the first of the local GP practices that I am hoping to see as part of the Lib Dem campaign to get a first-class health facility on the old Hornsey Hospital site as promised six years ago by those who closed the original hospital down.

The local trust is bidding for “Community Hospital” money from the Government – and it involves bringing a practice or two into the site itself and provision of lots of services that they hope all the practices will use for their patients. It will save lots of visits to hospitals too.

So I have written a letter of support for our bid – levering in the sort of money that we can get from this bid is, in my view, our best chance of getting this level of services into the west of Haringey and on the site of the old hospital. However, I want to make sure that the GP practices, who after all know the community and its local needs, are fully involved in the process and will be hopefully having further meetings in due course.