First stop major protest against the planning decision made earlier this week where Labour ignored due process and steamrollered through the granting of permission for luxury houses crammed into a backlands site in Crouch End.

I turn up at the site to find over fifty residents there to protest. The local papers are there too. I talk to the residents and following a meeting on Thursday night there has been a slight change in what they want now. Instead of the decision being looked at again in Haringey, they want to finesse the procedure and have it go to a planning appeal with one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors.

On the Cranford Way concrete factory, the Inspector over-ruled local concerns, so this isn’t a guaranteed solution – but the residents believe there’s more chance of a fair hearing on this issue with someone from outside than with Haringey Council. (The difference from the concrete factory is that the political pressure on the Council made them come out against the plans in the end). The residents are absolutely determined to take this to judicial review if necessary.

4.00 am start and am picked up by car to get me to GMTV for a 6.12 appearance. Drink driving is on the up. Over the summer the police did a one month campaign and found that 1 in 10 drivers are driving over the limit and that about half the people the police pick up for suspicion of driving whilst having taken drugs and are therefore impaired are also nicked.

Seems to me that there is a bit of an issue going on. Breathaliser tests have decreased in the last nine years. Over the same period fatalities have increased. And not co-incidentally (in my view) traffic police have given way to cameras. Now cameras can nab you in a bus lane, in a yellow junction box and for speeding – but they can’t breathalise you. And I think that the high chance of not getting caught is beginning to make peoples’ fear of losing their license less – so they are beginning to take risks again. Combine that with the hot weather and the extension of licensing hours – and we obviously need to do some new thinking and take some new actions to damp down these figures once again.

The Government have been spending about £3 million on advertising – the shock ones that show you dreadful endings to young lives – but clearly they are not working. Shock wears off – so perhaps the ad agencies need to think how next best to challenge us on drink-driving.

Also, it may be time to look at the ‘allowance’ for drinking and bring it in line with most countries in Europe. At the moment we allow 80 milligrams of alcohol as opposed to 50 on the continent. For me it’s not so much the actuality of the level – but that it is not so easy to measure. It’s over a pint and over one glass of wine. Perhaps bringing it (and associated pub measures) in line with a level that is easier to understand and remember would help.

I would also like rather than just being delivered the new figures of one in ten drink drivers to have some drilling down into those statistics so that we know whether people are just over the limit – or whether they are now really drinking without a care.

We need to know what we are dealing with. The drink driving laws are what I regard as one of the all time successful changes in culture – from a time when no one gave a thought to how much they drank before they drove to making it socially completely unacceptable. It was done through a combination of legislation, tough enforcement, excellent penalties (losing license) and a major education campaign through TV. So if the statistics are changing – then we really need to make a move. I would have though the obvious starting place was to make sure no one feels safe about not getting caught – and accept that cameras don’t do the job on their own.

In the evening I go to the launch of a book on the history of Noel Park. You know, just sometimes you get a really unexpected evening of delight – this was one such. The author, Caroline Welch, had written this history commissioned by the Neighbourhood Management. Caroline read aloud a couple of passages from the book. The book rightly places Noel Park at the centre of Haringey’s historical landscape, highlighting the pioneering design of the social housing on the Noel Park Estate built in the late Victorian period – an artisans’ colony. A huge number of local residents from Noel Park have turned out for the evening – very impressive. The social history of our lives is wrapped up in these bricks and mortar. Architecture is social history (and one of my pet subjects actually) and it affects us and we affect it. This particular estate, named after a (very) previous MP, surname of Noel, was the outcome of philanthropic effort.

After the readings (and me), a local historian told us some Noel Park stories – and they too were fascinating. He told of a Chinese Magician who appeared at the Wood Green Empire. His speciality was to get his wife to ‘shoot’ him and then show the audience the bullet caught in his hand or sometimes spit out from where he caught it in his mouth. One day did not go so well – and he was shot dead. There were many rumours about his wife having had an affair … Lots of local stories – fascinating. And then a woman from Bruce Castle museum read out the history given to her from a local resident of ‘my first married home’. And as she talked of the furnishings, the outside loo and the net curtains – she sparked a memory for me too.

My mother had to work on Saturdays as well as during the week and she was always ‘placing’ me with one or other relative to look after me. On many Saturdays she would leave me to be looked after at a net curtaining shop on Wood Green High Road – Taylors of Wood Green – at the Turnpike Lane end. I hadn’t thought of that in years. Other members of the audience gave their memories too. The woman from Bruce Castle said that she was in charge of oral reminisces – I liked that!

Too hot to think or work properly – so by the evening I drift out onto the terrace of the House of Commons for fresh air and because, quite frankly, it is absolutely beautiful. To sit with a drink gazing out on the Thames as it rolls endlessly by, and to watch the river boats and the back drop of the London Eye, is a real perk of being an MP. I know that lots of people think MPs have loads of perks etc – but in my experience this is the real perk of being an MP. As the sun begins to set, late on a summers’ evening, the lights that bath Parliament in a golden glow come on and it is just the loveliest experience to be able to sit out on a balmy (if a bit sticky) evening with all that as a backdrop.