My colleagues in the Lib Dem group on Haringey Council released earlier today a document summarising our position on the current CPZ and pay and display controversies.
You can download it from my website (pdf format) and there’s also their press release up there too.
Happy Birthday to me! Happy birthday – well more accurately – to my blog! Three years old today. I do sometimes wonder who reads it. I know several thousand different people do a month – but I don’t know if it serves the primary purpose that I started it for. I wanted to give an account of myself and my actions as an elected public servant – particularly to my local residents so that they could see what I did with my time and the role which they had elected me.
Obviously, over time, blogs have become source of fodder for media and opponents, the wider party et al. And now are the flavour of the month. I’ve started doing small films too – to see if that makes ‘politics’ more digestible and I note this morning that Dave ‘I’m a nice guy’ Cameron is doing ‘home’ movies on his new blog. His children are young now and he may think they look cute and seeing him at home makes him more digestible – but he risks abdicating his right to his childrens’ privacy if he uses them for political advantage. Dangerous territory.
Anyway – back to my Blog Birthday: I’ve had a look through some of my old entries (the very first should be in the running for an award for least interesting first blog posting I think!).
Most interestingly – lo and behold, the entry for 6th October 2003 is about travel planning – and now three years on, travel planning appears to be on our doorsteps in Hornsey & Wood Green. I had an irate email from a local resident who campaigns on various issues to ask if I thought that there was a plot to target rich car owners as everyone in western Haringey was being asked to consider their travel planning.
I got a letter myself – and actually I welcome this move, because travel planning is all about making it eaiser for people to use public transport by helping them figure out how the journeys they normally take by car would work out using public transport. It’s often much easier and quicker to use public transport than people think – so you need to work with people one by one to show them how their own journeys would work on public transport. Where this has been done – e.g. in Perth, Australia – it’s been very successful. Let people be free to make their own choices – but make sure they have the full information to make those choices. Very liberal!
If you read that old blog entry, you can see what my thinking was back three years ago when I was championing travel planning and nagging Transport for London to get pilots up and running.
I am writing to Peter Hendy to ascertain that this is what the letters and surveys in my constituency are about – but I’m pretty sure that’s what is going on and if so – hurrah. It’s a qualified ‘hurrah’ though – until I find out how they are doing it, what resource they are putting into it and what shift they are expecting. But basically – this is really good news – and it’s only taken three years to permeate – not bad!
I 
spent a few days this week in Prague. Having walked for hours and hours around this beautiful city thought I would just bring home one hot tip.
We may have these dog bins and dog pooh bags somewhere here and I don’t know – but I thought it a particularly neat way of supplying the necessary for pooper scooping and of reminding dog owners of their duties.
I have seen the odd dog bin on Hampstead Heath – but to supply the bag and the bin – heaven!
The one in the picture just dispenses the bags – but others also have a bin below for the proceeds.
My colleague Wayne Hoban (Alexandra ward councillor and our deputy group leader) has been ferreting away for some time over questions on how certain funds have been handled by Labour-run Haringey Council. Now the Audit Commission is concerned too … interesting times!
My latest newspaper column is about the party conference season:
In my experience, party conferences have a host of purposes – but I am not sure that the wider world actually sees them through anything other than a looking glass darkly, and that dark looking glass is either the media take or the party spin…
You can read the rest of the piece on my website: Conference season
One of the things that really attracted me to Chris Huhne’s leadership bid earlier this year was his commitment to the environment. Although Chris didn’t win, his run for the top post really helped shift the party’s position – confirmed by our debates at conference on our “green tax switch” policies.
I see that this week the party released a fun little film poking fun at the lack of action from Labour and the Tories (despite boy Dave’s warm words!) on the environment. You can watch the climate change film on the party website. Personally, I’d have been a bit blunter about Tory and Labour inaction!
My latest column (for a local magazine) is about Muswell Hill Library. Do let me know what you think of the council plans!
So – today was Tony’s big farewell day. How did he do as regards his speech? Put it like this – if Brown was Prime Minister and Blair the heir apparent, I think after their pair of speeches, Labour members would be begging for Brown to step aside. Tony’s speech was a class act of oratory – unlike Gordon’s dullness the day before.
I have never been much of a fan of the Punch and Judy show that passes for Prime Minister’s Questions, but there’s no doubt that Blair is very, very skilled in that arena. As he also is at the podium in a party conference hall. There is much I disagreed with in his words today, but you can admire his skill in speech making even as you disagree with content.
And now – we enter a rather weird twilight, “he’s going but he’s not yet gone” period. Today’s speech was the speech you expect as someone goes, not months before they go. All very odd!
So – today was Gordon’s big day. For a man renowned for obsession with detail and preparing speeches for ages – I thought it was surprisingly bad. Overall – ok, but in the circumstances – Gordon didn’t rise to the occasion. He has sometimes in the past – “we are best when we are Labour” was one of the few speeches of the New Labour era that really seemed to strike a chord and stick in the memory – but not this time. Today it was dour and brooding Gordon.
For me, as a London MP, he’ll always struggle to overcome his obsession with privatising our Tube, pouring away millions and millions in fees for lawyers, accountants, consultants etc etc drawing up hugely complicated contracts rather than putting the money straight into improving the service. Prudent, not!
As front-runner perhaps he just wanted to play safe in the leadership election, though as David Davis showed with the Tory contents front-runners don’t always stay at the front…
Opened
St Mary’s Estate Fun Day today. How lucky were they – the sun shone brightly unlike yesterday when it poured.
St Mary’s is a quiet estate with no through traffic and very nice little gardens – and two staunch resident women who try so hard to look after it and get things done.
A couple of years ago I remember dragging along the then Chief Executive of Haringey, David Warwick and numerous council staff, the Housing Association managers and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all and marching them around the estate. So much needed doing from new paving to new bin areas – and the resolution of the most stupid arrangement in the world between London Quadrant and Haringey Council where each was responsible for part of the estate for waste removal. You can imagine the shenanigans. And indeed, there are still issues around the council part of the estate which needs attention and some new lighting and so on and so on.
These two women, Nadia and Jeanette, really work to make the estate nice and are entirely frustrated (and probably worn out) by things just never really getting done or moving forward. So – I have said that I will ask all those involved in the maintenance of the estate to convene into a working action group to meet once every two or three months (like had happened in the past) to try and move this forward.
Having arrived to open the day at 1pm – things were clearly going to start later than planned – so for the early comers I launched the day and said hello – and wished everyone a good time.
Lynne Featherstone 