Morning surgery in freezing cold room at Hornsey Library! Then rest of day paperwork followed by speech to Haringey Phoenix Group – who help the blind and partially sighted with the provision of talking newspapers, arts and crafts and IT classes and home visits. I have been trying to support the call for more rehabilitation officers as there are virtually none available. Here in Haringey there were two posts – but neither are now filled and we have just one locum. The really serious part of this is that when someone becomes blind, it is the first crucial months when you particularly need someone to come and help you in person and with equipment to get you out the house and get your confidence up. If too much time passes – the fears build and people can become reluctant to go out. I am shocked that this is something that is now provided almost totally by volunteers.

I meet lots of the attendees including one chap from Walthamstow who came on the bus with his guide dog. He is clutching a bronze statue of a mermaid that he has sculpted. It is quite lovely and accurate. He says it is from memory. I thought it was exceptional really. I cannot imagine how you can do that by feel and memory alone. And I tell you – it doesn’t half make you think about what you take for granted when you are sighted.

I tell them about how, quite early on as a Muswell Hill councillor, I had an elderly resident (partially sighted) asked me to go for a walk with him around Muswell Hill Broadway. He wanted me to understand the hazards that beset someone like him – and the lack of enforcement by Haringey Council of some of our street laws. He wanted me to gain the awareness of all the things that could trip him up.

And walking with him that afternoon, I learned a whole new attitude to blindness. If the law says that a shop may put out products and wares on the street then the measurement to which they are allowed should be observed. I cannot tell you how many breaches of the law we encountered on our expedition. And hanging goods. And pavement sandwich boards. And uneven paving stones. And old unnecessary street furniture. And so on and so on. It is so easy when you can see – but a completely different world when you cannot.

I leave to run to the inauguration of a new scouts group in Noel Park. I have had to miss the actual ceremony – but get there at least in time to say hello. It has been a real success – and already the scout numbers have increased from 5 to 13. The scouting movement is just still an excellent thing and I arrange to visit the Scout Park next week.

Over to Stratford to the Drugs and Alcohol Service London AGM where I am giving a keynote speak on alcohol. The other key speaker is from Alcohol Concern and the statistics she gave were truly scary. I think we need to be doing quite a lot of work in terms of how to displace the excessive drinking activity that plagues so many areas and people.

We need alternative night-time economy ideas (late night museums and non-alcoholic pubs) and so much more effort in terms of aspiration and how to spend our time. Of course, the relaxation of the licensing laws is ill-timed and probably previous – but you have to hope that we can create a society where it will be ok for people to decide for themselves when they want to drink. The problem – we just ain’t there yet!

Firstly I went to the Environment Audit Select Committee (of which I am a member) to question the Government’s scientific adviser Sir David King.

My questions to him were on his seeming approval of the higher of two carbon emissions figures. Without getting to technical – best scientific evidence is that 550 parts of carbon dioxide per million parts of air would lead to a 2 centigrade rise in our temperature and that is the target that was set.

New evidence seems to point to the necessity of lowering that figure below 400 parts. I want to know why Sir David is seemingly setting his approval to the perhaps more politically possible higher target rather than one that would scientifically be necessary to save the world – literally. He disagrees and states that it should be 275 parts to save the world and tells the committee that he has been misrepresented in the media (don’t we all know that feeling).

So here on record he makes it quite clear that we are in trouble. It really is a depressing Doomsday scenario. I suppose the only cheering point is that there does seem to be a growing that there is a catastrophe awaiting and although hardly anyone has quite yet panicked – post-New Orleans and the tsunami, there is greater attentiveness to the issues.

At 2.30pm I go to Westminster Hall again and this time I am on the front bench for a debate on the rehabilitation of prisoners – which is part of my own portfolio. It is a debate secured on the Home Affairs Select Committee report – whose findings are pretty much pure Liberal Democrat policy. And all three parties croon together in admiration for schemes that avoid putting women into prison for minor offences with short sentences – which means they can lose their home and their children and so causing damage far out of proportion to the original offence. We croon together about restorative justice and community sentences.

We all agree that this is not being soft on crime – but much tougher than simply locking people up. I am able to expound my favourite theory about what sort of individual you produce if you shut someone in a room, give them no attention, skills or education to equip them for coming out of the room. Will you have a well-developer individual capable of taking their place in society, not reverting to crime and not being dependent on the state? I rest my case, m’lord!

Of course, the Minister just responded about how wonderful the Government are and how well they are doing!