Category Archives: Blog

Fighting crime in Highgate

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Meet two women in Muswell Hill who contacted me about an idea they have for helping mothers cross the barriers back into work. Brilliant idea – as ever – I am enthused and will try and find funding streams for them to tap into. Funding is always the key (and the full stop to brilliant ideas).

In the afternoon, meet the key senior officers involved in the Muswell Hill (and a bit of Fortis Green) Safer Neighbourhood Team which is about to roll out. Hurray!

This is what residents want. Dedicated neighbourhood teams on the beat. But we need them everywhere – otherwise you get displacement of crime.

And what about poor old Highgate – split between three boroughs? I am working on bringing that together – and have made some progress following my lobbying of the Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA). A methodology and trial is afoot in Bexley – and then once the wrinkles are ironed out there the model can be used for Highgate and any other areas of London where there is a neighbourhood split across different boundaries.

Canvassing in Bounds Green

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Action morning in Hornsey and Bounds Green wards finishing off delivering any leaflets we haven’t got out so far in the month. A really good crowd turned up to help. Attraction must be lots of young people and suggestion that post-delivery we could all meet up in the local pub!

Snow made it a bit nippy. I like delivering – but being the prospective candidate – spent my time canvassing.

On the doorsteps

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Out canvassing in the afternoon. Positive response on the doorstep – there’s clearly a very large group of disillusioned Labour voters who are thinking seriously of voting Lib Dem. It’s not just about Iraq – though that has been key in breaking people’s trust of Blair.

Backing from an anti-war campaigner

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I’ve often heard the expression that ‘politics makes strange bedfellows’. Watching Andrew Neil’s political programme when I get home I am astonished to see Tariq Ali telling the nation that he is going to vote Lib Dem to oust a pro-war MP in his constituency and basically recommending everyone else to do same.

As he lives in Highgate this means he says he will be voting to get Barbara Roche out.

So Tariq Ali will be voting for me … !

Albeit a tactical vote, I am obviously delighted – not least because he was an intellectual revolutionary when I was younger – stirring stories of my student days. Memories…

London Region conference

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Tonight it is the London Region Conference of the Liberal Democrats. I am down to be one of three speakers at the ‘Gold Star Rally’ at the end of the evening where we three (Bridget Fox / Islington South, Chris Maines / Orpington and myself / Hornsey & Wood Green) rally the troops to come out and help us.

I start the evening chatting in the cafeteria to Sarah Teather MP (Brent East). We discuss tactics for the election.

We are joined by Jason Beattie, Evening Standard lobby correspondent, who is chairing a session with Sarah and Ed Davey where questions are put by the audience.

When it comes to the rally, I go on last and really enjoy it. Just for once I don’t have to talk about transport or Ken – and can give a really political speech – which I do. Current bugbear – not surprisingly – the Tory and Labour efforts to be tough on immigration and asylum – for political gain more than anything else.

The sub-text of both Labour and Tory seems to be to scare residents into the view that it’s all their (immigrants’) fault. So groups of poor and underprivileged people fight and blame each other rather than turn the attack where it should be placed fairly and squarely on both Labour and Tories for not providing a decent house-building programme over the last two decades. It is very easy to turn need into blame and then scapegoats are created in that ferment.

Anyway – I am appalled by Blair’s sabre-rattling for the election. He has obviously seen it work for Bush – and believes it will work for him here.

Police recruitment

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Meeting with Victor Olisa, who is seconded from the City police to the Home Office working group on Stop & Search. We are looking for a way to tackle some of the issues that might stop recruitment of ethnic minorities into the police. Looking to hold an ‘event’ at some point in the relatively near future with young people in London.

Then rush home to host a fund-raising dinner. The guest this time is the party’s Campaigns Director, Paul Rainger. His boss (the party’s chief executive) did a similar event a few years ago, so there’s some good-natured rivalry about their relative fundraising performance.

I don’t cook – a local member thankfully does – and boy can she cook. It is a lovely evening. And I think that there are not that many occasions when members of a political party can have a high-level political conversation with a top party insider like Chris or Paul (and previously Lembit Opik and Vince Cable). Anyway – it seemed to go very well.

Brat Camp for Ken Livingstone?

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I tell Ken my daughter’s suggestion – that he be sent to brat camp. We are in Mayor’s Question Time at City Hall having a jolly good spat over CrossRail funding. Ken is going on about how fab it is that the hybrid bill for CrossRail is at last going through.

I merely point out to him that having first worked on CrossRail feasibility about 27 or so years ago I won’t get excited until the government puts its money where its mouth is. Ken, the way only Ken can, says that I must have been still at school when I did that work. I wish! Much hilarity in chamber.

I ask him if he knows how much the government is going to pay up for CrossRail and does he have it in writing?

Once again he tries to joke – so I say to him, “Do you know what my daughter suggested last night? That you should be sent to brat camp.” More hilarity.

But more seriously – it still looks as if the government has not firmly committed itself to funding CrossRail. Ken wasn’t able to point to any firm promise.

Ken doesn't apologise

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Ken’s press conference at City Hall. Trailed as being likely to see the expression of ‘regret’ by him for the comment he made to an Evening Standard journalist.

He arrives and in best nasal tone states that having considered everything and read everything about the ‘incident’ – he has decided there is nothing to apologise for.

Anyone in that position who gives offence – even if inadvertently – should be able to say sorry for any offence caused.

Not Kenneth. He turned it around. It wasn’t what he had said, it was:

– the journalist’s fault
– the Mail Group’s fault
– the Evening Standard’s fault
– Brian Coleman (Chair of the Assembly’s) fault
– the Tories’ fault
– the Standard Board of Great Britain’s fault

… and you can guess whose fault it wasn’t … our ‘I’m a loveable rogue and can say what I like’ august Mayor of London.

Talking about this with my oldest daughter that evening, she came up with what I think is the best idea so far. ‘Send him to brat camp’. She suggested I tell Ken this the next day at Mayor’s Question Time.

Whittington Hospital

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You can tell there is an election in the offing as the level of abuse mixed with panic from the Labour benches rises to even more unedifying heights than usual at tonight’s full council meeting.

Particularly irksome to them, apparently, was our motion suggesting that the PFI deal with Jarvis for the Whittington Hospital was a problem. It’s a bad tradition of Haringey Council to let Labour submit “delete all and replace with…” amendments – despite what the rules say. Needless to say, that’s just what Labour submits this time too.

The snow is coming down thick and fast as we leave Haringey Civic Centre – so instead of a debriefing at a public house – we all head straight off home.