Category Archives: Blog

Haringey didn't CRB Abdulla Achmed Ali

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Latest information that I have thanks to Cllr Gail Engert, LibDem Children’s Services Spokesperson on Haringey is about CRB checks.

It would seem that the foster couple were relatively long term foster parents and had something like twelve placements from Haringey previously. They are CRB checked (advanced) as is the elderly father of one of them who lives in the same house – and he has been CRB checked (advanced). They have four daughters – three of whom have been CRB checked (advanced) but the youngest is only eleven – and they don’t apparently CRB check at that age.

They have CRB checked the neighbours. They have CRB checked frequent visitors.

Seemingly the only person Haringey Council didn’t CRB check was Abdulla Achmed Ali. They say they didn’t CRB check him becuase he wasn’t a frequent visitor.

But as I understand it – he was living there. He had all his bomb-making equipment there and his books there.

More digging required I feel.

Haringey hid the truth!

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I don’t know where Andrew Gilligan got the information from about the fact that Haringey had placed a child to be fostered with the family where Abdulla Achmed Ali was living – but he must have phenomenal sources. Not a peep, not a dicky-bird had been said by the Council about this latest incident.

At this point whilst we are asking the questions that need to be asked of Haringey – we don’t know how badly or otherwise Haringey has performed in its duties to safeguard children it places in foster care – but unfortunately with Haringey’s track record we can only think the worst. And as there still has been no public inquiry into Child Protection in Haringey – we all suspect that there is much more of this under the radar as this revelation today has demonstrated.

However, what we do know now, is that Haringey Council has known about this for three years and not brought it forward as something that needs to be examined. Again we see Haringey cloak the whole incident in secrecy. Hide it away and hope that no one will find out. It is secrecy that has bread the breathtaking failures in child protection and elsewhere.

Robert Gorrie, Liberal Democrat leader on Haringey Council said of this latest shocking story:

‘Haringey Council vowed during the Baby Peter tragedy that they would end the silence and cover up in Children’s Services yet this shows a Council still committed to a culture of secrecy.

‘How many more cases of Council failures do we not yet know about? Who knew about this fiasco and was keeping it a secret and how many more cases of Haringey Labour failure do we not yet know about?’

Fostered in a terrorist house!

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Haringey Labour Council hit the headlines again today – courtesy of investigative journalist Andrew Gilligan of the Standard.

Haringey place a foster child in the family where – now convicted terrorist Abdulla Ahmed Ali of the liquid bomb plot to down seven planes lived! It beggars belief.

Haringey seems to lurch from crisis to crisis – all generally of their own making.

The child was fostered and Abdulla was living there – and apparently reading terrorist tomes which you might think would be a give away.

Of Course the secret services weren’t going to tell Haringey about their surveillance of the suspected terrorist. I know it’s been suggested that they should have somehow tipped the wink at Haringey so that they knew something was up – but the magnitude of the plot and the importance of the operation would have prohibited that. And with MI5 or MI6 watching the house – the baby was better looked out for than most in the borough.

So – it would be down to Haringey’s rigour in terms of their policy on checking on foster parents that was the only gauge as to whether there was anything recognisably untoward in the home. Would Haringey normally know who lives in the house of foster parents? Do they do background checks? Apparently the couple were already foster parents – but did Haringey know a male adult would be living there? Did they visit?

And in the article it also says that someone says that Muslim children must be placed with Muslim foster parents. I don’t know if that is Haringey’s policy – and in an ideal world it might be a good policy – but if it means that there is any lessening of checks – then that cannot be acceptable either.

Many questions need to be asked and answered – because if Haringey could have known and should have known – then they are in the dock again. But we don’t know the answers to that yet.

I suppose that if I was being charitable I could say that Haringey was unlucky – but the amount of times appalling things happen in Haringey makes me believe that Haringey makes its own ‘luck’.

Save Election Night!

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Jonathan Isaby (Conservative Home) started this campaign against the rising threat of the count for elections starting the day after rather than on the night. Politicians from all parties have joined him to Save Election Night!

I’ve joined the campaign! No – it’s not just the excitement of the night nor is it about which day would be a better voting day – it’s because we will be betwixt and between.

If we want to count the day after an election then we need a change to the constitution. In America – there is no ultimate urgency in the count – because the new President, for example, is President Elect for a good couple of months before the new administration comes in.

Not so in our neck of the woods. We have no one properly in charge until the election result is announced. It is our system that is different and is the reason that the count has to take place that night – barring some tricky rural territories where it cannot happen that quickly.

We aren’t American!

On a personal note, and as someone who has generally been going since 4am the morning before delivering ‘Good Morning’ leaflets – I am knackered by the time the result comes through – but I still think it is right to have it on the night.

And it’s not only right, but is the one time in politics when the nation – or at least some of it – gets a little excited and has (and I quote) the ‘audacity to hope’. Let’s not extinguish that faltering flame.

There are lots of arguments save election night and you can back the campaign on Facebook by joining the group.

Recycling batteries should be made easy!

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It’s a real problem. You know when you change batteries that you need to recycle the old ones and that you mustn’t put them in with the ordinary rubbish because they are hazardous – but there’s nowhere convenient in Haringey to do the right thing!

So my Liberal Democrat Haringey councillor colleague, Bob Hare (inveterate campaigner on all matters environmental) and I got together to illustrate our point.

In a bid to make it easier for local residents to recycle their household batteries, we local Liberal Democrats have called on Haringey Council to increase the number of battery recycling points in the borough.

Currently, residents can only recycle their batteries at Haringey Council’s two recycling centres – in Hornsey or Tottenham. In contrast, several local authorities across the country run successful schemes that give residents the opportunity to recycle their batteries in special battery recycling points on the streets or in local shops and libraries.

Why is Haringey Labour Council so bad at everything? The clue is in the phrase ‘Haringey Labour Council’!

Labour don't care about Finsbury Park residents

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A Haringey Labour councillor hasn’t attended the local regeneration board that she is on for nearly two years. Obviously not all councillors can be at every meeting they should be at for reasons of clashes or other commitments – but for a local councillor not to attend a single meeting for nearly two years of such a vital local Board as FinFuture – which is all about improving the Finsbury Park area – is a dereliction of duty and shows exactly how little importance Labour attach to improving the Finsbury Park area.

The local Liberal Democrat councillors say that Cllr Gina Adamou should step down as Labour clearly don’t care about improving the area and should make way for a local Liberal Democrat councillor who does!

Figures show that since 2007 Cllr Adamou has only attended four of the twenty board meetings that have taken place. Morevover this news comes on top of the announcement from Haringey Council earlier this year that they would scrap funding to improve the area.

Sudan arrests

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I am contacting David Miliband to ask him to make urgent representations to Sudan about the arrest of 51 women activists in front of the court in Khartoum this morning. This is completely unacceptable. According to an email forwarded to me three of those women have been injured and had to be taken to hospital.

And what were these activists protesting about? The trial of Lubna Hussein. Lubna Hussein is a Sudanese woman faces a flogging and lashes for wearing trousers. She resigned her UN job which would have afforded her immunity so that she could fight for Sudanese women’s human rights.

The Times has a fuller version: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6824037.ece

I suggest anyone reading this should email David Miliband immediately to call for the release of the 51 women and the ending of such archaic and repressive laws.

We're sick of jam tomorrow!

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Just watched Trevor Phillips on Andrew Marr saying that tomorrow the Equality Commission are going to publish (finally) their report into unequal pay in the financial services sector – and ‘it’s shocking’! No kidding? We know that – so presumably it’s even worse than we thought and women are not only getting unequal pay and unequal bonuses (setting aside the issue of size of bonus momentarily) but the differential will be staggering. So much so – that the Equality Commission says that if the City doesn’t come to heel – they will have to use their statutory powers. Oooooooh! Warm wards indeed.

And yet – the biggest flunk this century in terms of ending pay inequality comes from the Equality Commission itself who rant on about the importance of the Equality Bill currently going through Parliament yet failed to do anything really significant on women’s pay in the Bill. In the Bill was / is the opportunity to make all companies publish their pay scales and value male and female jobs.

The Equality Commission, clearly in cahoots with the Labour Government and running scared of the CBI, refuses to endorse mandatory pay audits saying that they will leave publication and valuation as a voluntary code for four years and then if the private sector continue on the naughty step – only then will they make it mandatory. (Forty years ago when the Equal Pay Act came in – the then Government gave business five years to get its house in order – and we are still waiting!) And whilst the Equality Commission chief equivocates his remarks by saying how hard the city is trying – it doesn’t mask what is obviously going to be a damning indictment of the lack of success it has had in so doing.

Surely what we will see tomorrow is a clarion call for all sides of the House of Commons at the Report Stage of the Bill to introduce mandatory pay audits. It was a LibDem amendment at committee stage and will be again at Report Stage. So I expect the Equality Commission to put its clout where its mouth is. It cannot be right that the Commission can investigate the financial sector – which means looking at pay scales and work value – find it to be hideously biased in its pay practise – but then draw back from supporting legislation which will make all companies publish and therefore put power into individuals to see whether they are being discriminated against to take a case forward.

I asked the Commission to look into another sector a while ago – and was told that they couldn’t because they were busy conducting the investigations into the financial sector. Equality shouldn’t have to wait until the Commission has time and resource to investigate. They cannot do everything – so give us the information to see and do for ourselves!

Lockerbie: shades of Alexander Litvinenko

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When Alexander Litvinenko was murdered (in Muswell Hill), poisoned – I challenged the Government and then Home Secretary John Reid to pursue his killer without fear nor favour, however close the trail got to the Russian establishment.

That is the promise I got from him – but in the end – and despite taking Mrs Litvinenko for a private meeting with David Miliband in which he also promised to bring this to the European table to put pressure on from that angle – justice has never been done.

And it will never be done – because not only is there definitely fear and favour – but it would seem that real justice will always take second place to trade deals and arms deals, with political expedience coming way above the justice that ordinary folk believe in.

If the Libyan bomber had genuinely been released for genuine compassionate reasons because he was genuinely going to die within three months and we are a compassionate country and there were genuinely no other considerations – then we could argue the genuine debate about whether he should have died in prison or be released.

As it is – we have been duped again. It is quite clear, after all the leaks and all the published papers of correspondence and the contradictory statements (contradicting themselves usually)that Straw and Brown have made, how justice gets treated as an expendable add-on. The size of the tragedy at Lockerbie highlights throws into sharp relief that expendable face of justice.

Haringey to get new Chief Executive!

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Got a surprise this morning – Ita O’Donovan – Chief Executive of Haringey is retiring. Good! That means that another person who presided over the Baby Peter tragedy and aftermath is going.

I always thought it was strange that the Chief Executive’s voice was hardly heard at all during the Baby Peter case. Sharon Shoesmith – for all her faults – was out there taking the full force of public, media and everyone’s disapproval.

Anyway – moving onward and upward is the most important thing for Haringey Council. So – hopefully not only will we get a top notch new Chief Executive – we will also have a new administration next May when we have local elections – a Liberal Democrat one!