Category Archives: Blog

Going, going, … gone?

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Listening to the news. Jacqui Smith gone. Hazel Blears gone. To live through and witness the end of the old order is a sombre experience – a necessary experience – but a sombre and sobering one.

As the government of this country goes into free fall – the shameful secrets of the establishment unmasked – the flawed character of a Prime Minister who doesn’t understand leadership in a modern age – the calculated death by a thousand knives as they plunge into Gordon Brown today – each one landing another death blow – as cabinet ministers murder the man who put them where they are. Et tu brute?

So – just coming up to PMQs. Cannot imagine at a human level how you get up and go out there to fight your corner when the pressure is so immense it must be hard even to breathe. Quite how Gordon Brown will be able to form a new administration as all these blows rain in, I don’t know. He should accept the inevitable and resign. Given his character he may not. But if he cannot form an administration – it might not be out of character for him to go to the Palace next week and let loose the dogs of war.

I never knew it would be like this.

Who should be Labour's Chancellor?

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How on earth can Gordon Brown think that Ed Balls is the answer? Do not Ed and Yvette have equally damaging question marks over their housing arrangements? And does he really think that re-ordering the deckchairs on the Titanic would have helped?

I suppose reading The Observer’s praise for the Liberal Democrats as “consistent and principled” and it being time to give us our due together with Polly Toynbee’s suggestion that people should vote Lib Dem in the Euro elections on Thursday may feed his mania. The pressure to come up with an answer is unbearable – but there are no answers from Labour that can appease the unhappiness and disgust stalking our land.

And I notice the sudden desire of Labour apparatchiks to make friends of the Liberal Democrats and try desperately to breathe life into the dead dodo of some sort of arrangement has been peppering the pages of the papers. They wished! The Tories too flirt with and praise us. A plague on both their houses is my own sentiment!

Getting to and from Hornsey Hospital

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Well – the new all singing, all dancing Hornsey Hospital will open in the relatively near future. But despite raising the issue of public transport needs to the new facility since the day of its inception – and requests to Peter Hendy (TFL Commissioner of Transport for London) and Haringey Council and all – they are still ‘having meetings’ about it.

We need to make sure that this new medical centre is properly served by adequate public transport. They took away the W2 when it was closed some years ago. Official figures from the health trust acknowledge that the area is very poorly served by buses, with less than half of local residents able to get to the Park Road Health centre in less than 20 minutes. We need a new bus – particularly to serve those people whose GP practices move in, but also for everyone who will access the other services on site.

It is absolutely fantastic that we finally have a new health facility in our local area after campaigning for so long with local residents to make it happen. But what’s the point if it is so difficult for people to get there?

Housing in Haringey

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Earlier this week, went walkabout with Metropolitcan Housing – who handle a lot of property in Haringey. They were basically showing me the community events they put in their estates and their upgrades to their housing stock. I have to say the standard of the refurb /decoration was very high – and no wonder the tenant I met was very, very, happy. I just wish they had more housing – as the need in this borough is mega and the supply minimal. Of course – in current climate – development is slowing to a trickle.

Then on to HARTS for Families, who I have visited twice before (see here and here). HARTS was having an afternoon of fun and entertainment for the children of their service users and the service users themselves – with some speeches first, of which I was giving one. It was an event to celebrate diversity – and as the compare introduced the different countries represented by children from those countries – it was an absolutely wonderful parade of our many, many communities. Love Haringey!

And of course – al this plays to the backdrop of the Euro-elections – so off canvassing in between times. Seems very friendly out there to the Lib Dems. Although, as ever with the Euros, so many people not at all sure what the EU is all about. So I spent some time telling them! If you missed me, you can find out more about the European elections and our policies here.

What's going on at Alexandra Palace?

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Alexandra PalaceHere’s my latest column for the Highgate Handbook and Muswell Hill Flyer:

Beautiful building, fantastic location – but a financial nightmare. That’s been the history of Alexandra Palace over the last few decades as one bungle after another has seen tens of millions of pounds wasted – with the bill for clearing these losses landed on the Haringey Council Tax payer.

Over the last couple of years we’ve seen Haringey Labour desperately trying to wash their hands of the problem – but wanting to do so by selling off much of the site on a mammoth 125 year lease to a private developer. A deal was sort-of struck with Firoka, which has since fallen through – leaving Haringey facing a £6.2 million claim from Firoka.

Liberal Democrat councillors have repeatedly criticised this deal – the way in which it was rushed through, the lack of decent public consultation, the lack of proper safeguards in the deal (especially for the historic TV studios) – and the failure to sort out crucial details.

Following the collapse of the deal, there have been two independent investigations – both with damning conclusions about how Labour councillors have behaved. The second one – known as Walklate 2 – concludes that “entering into and maintaining the licence [with Firoka for them to take over Alexandra Palace] has led to losses to the Trust in the region of £1,500,000. The Trustees were not given financial information of the effect of the licence … nor were they given the opportunity to consider whether they wished to revoke the licence.” That is £1.5 million in losses in addition to the £6.2 million claim.

As the reports have shown, the Trustees of Alexandra Palace were kept in the dark about major parts of the deal, they were not told of the concerns raised by some staff and they were not told key financial information either. In other words – there was such a drive to try to get Ally Pally off Haringey’s hands that things were rushed, kept secret and done badly.

The report also concludes that, “There is a moral imperative on any senior management team, particularly in the public sector, to take collective responsibility for such matter and this simply did not happen.” Mistakes, losses – but no-one carries the can other than the rest of us – who have to pick up the pieces through our Council Tax bills.

You just wonder when this pantomime of hideous errors and misdeeds will end; when we the taxpayers will stop having to foot the bill for incompetence and possibly worse and when our beloved Ally Pally will be free of the smell of things not quite right. Next local elections perhaps?

If you missed it before, you can still watch my short YouTube film about Ally Pally.

How can we fix our political system?

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That’s the topic Nick Clegg is (rightly!) talking about in this evening’s Liberal Democrat broadcast on TV. But you can watch it now:

(The film is also on YouTube here.)

Nick Clegg has laid out not only what needs reform – but also a timetable to achieve it. Sorting out the future of democracy in this country demands radical reforms to both sweep away the stench of fiddling and chiseling – and to seize the opportunity that the expenses scandal offers to break the stranglehold of the establishment, both Tory and Labour (who have voted time and time again to retain the status quo and hide the facts). That establishment grip has been unshakeable – until now.

Bring it on!

Where is Gordon Brown?

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They seek him here. They seek him there. If ever there was an example of failure to lead from Gordon (bunker mentality) Brown – his deafening silence at this time of crisis is it.

I find it unimaginable that the Prime Minister of this country has no seeming instinct for what is needed; no sense of purpose in leadership and no ideas for resolution. But that is what we see unfolding before our very eyes.

The old ways are dead Gordon. You should have seen what would happen. You should not have dithered and dallied. You should be out there leading the way.