Having previously written about the similarities between Ken Livingstone and John McCain, I have since been struck by another US-UK comparison – though this time it is once that cuts across the political spectrum in the other direction. It’s between David Cameron and Jimmy Carter.

For Conservative supporters, I guess this might sound a hopeful comparison – after all, Carter led the Democrats, who had previously lost twice in a row, to an election victory against an opposition disgraced by scandal. But it’s the manner of Carter’s campaign that makes the comparison interesting for me – and less hopeful for Conservatives.

For Carter very nearly blew it. He came in short order from being avirtual unknown to winning comfortably his party’s nomination (soundfamiliar?) Then in the Presidential election itself, from being overthirty points ahead he only just sneaked it at the end.

His campaign was heavy on general aspiration and light on policy detail,typified by the slogan stating that he wanted “a government as good asits people.” These are just the sort of words you can imagine comingfrom David Cameron in his “let sunshine win the day” mood. Cartersuffered from coming over as a nice guy, but not having – when it cameto the crunch – given people a clear idea of what he stood for orbelieved.

As for Cameron – well the modernising, I’m a liberal too, pro-sunshineman is also the man who wrote the 2005 election manifesto for MichaelHoward (not a pro-sunshine politician, methinks!) and who was NormanLamont’s top advisor at the depths of the Tory economic recession (not asunshine period either). Good room for doubt as to what Cameron reallybelieves.

As Carter’s Director of Communications latter put it, Carter “stood forgetting elected.” So clearly does Cameron. The swiftness and apparentsuperficiality of his conversion from Michael Howard’s policy maestro tohis all-new, all-dancing, I’m really a liberal too, persona means thereis very little evidence that he really believes what he is now saying,other than that he’ll say anything different to get elected. When putunder pressure, he views have been remarkably fluid – as on Iraq, wherehe voted for it, flipped to telling the voters of Dunfermline that heagreed with the Lib Dem on Iraq after all, then flopped back to beingfor the war after all, then flipped again to voting for an inquiry.

As with Carter, Cameron has also tried to make something of histransport arrangements. For Carter it was ostentatiously carrying hisown suitcase (to contrast with scandal ridden, complacent and arrogantpoliticians – here was an ordinary chap). For Cameron, it’s been cycling- with the ordinary, environment hugging bloke message. An image justslightly ruined by having a chauffeur driven car following him aroundwith his shoes! Though as Cameron has pointed out – the trailingchauffeur isn’t a permanent fixture. Having only a part-time shoechauffeur makes you a man of the people I guess.

So that’s why David Cameron does not scare me. We should not becomplacent about the different sort of opponent he is from previousones, but he is very vulnerable. It is the same story with Gordon Brown- another person who (at least used to) have the aura of personalpopularity around him and who commentators have predicted would helpspell the demise of the Liberal Democrats.

Being an MP who is very much a child of the 2005 general election,garnering many former Labour voters on issues such as Iraq, civilliberties and student tuition fees, I am just the sort of person whoneeds to keep the support that commentators have predicted Brown couldwin back for my Labour.

My experience, out on the doorsteps pretty much every Sunday through theautumn and early winter talking to supporters, have been rather morepositive than that. Although the public widely expect Brown to becomethe next PM (I’m not quite so sure myself – there may yet be a surpriseor two on the road to Labour’s leadership election), they recognise thatthis is the man who signed the cheques for Iraq, who betrayed our trustin government by failing to ask searching questions about the quality ofthe WMD intelligence, who insisted on part-privatising the LondonUnderground and wasting huge sums of money on lawyers and contracts, whoregularly voted for student tuition fees and who has presided overcomplicated and failing scheme after scheme, as with the tax creditsfiasco.

Moreover, Iraq is not fading as an issue. This is not just because theproblems and deaths in Iraq continue to feature so prominently in thenews, but because for many people in broke a life-long commitment to theLabour party. The loss of that instinctive support and loyalty can’tjust be put back together again even if Iraq was been and gone as anissue. It’d be like an adulterous person turning to their partner andsaying, “It’s all ok now, I’ve stopped having the affair so things canjust go back to how they always were.”

Just as the Tory economic recession and Britain’s crash out of the ERM(remember who was Norman Lamont’s top advisor at that point!) has had along, long electoral legacy for the Tories, beyond even changes ofleaders – there is no reason to think Iraq will not have a similarimpact on Labour.

And if Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, will the plotting andfactionalism in the Labour party really stop as they rally round him?For the truth is that plotting for and against Brown, and suspicion ofhim, has stretched right back to Kinnock’s days as leader. As PhilipGould has recounted, even back before the 1992 general election:

“The whole thing was so debilitating because every time Gordon appearedon TV, someone in John [Smith]’s camp would say, ‘Look, it’s another bidfor the leadership’, Patricia [Hewitt] remembers.”

Meanwhile, Labour’s big idea – “choice” – sounds good on the surface,but is very vulnerable. For “choice” to really mean something it meanshaving surplus capacity in the best schools and hospitals – otherwisebeing offered choice is just a chimera. Yet simply getting sufficienttop quality school places, hospital beds and so on is a struggle and ahalf – even without having a policy that actually requires you to geteven more. By contrast, the Liberal Democrat emphasis as regards highquality local services for everyone is simpler, more convincing and moreachievable. It also provides an answer to issues such as crime wherechoice simply doesn’t make sense – or will Labour in the spirit ofre-engaging with communities offer them direct elections to choosewhether Group 4 or another security firm will do the policing in theirhigh street next month?

The contrast between the over-complicating, centralising and meddlingLabour party – traits personified by Gordon Brown – and a LiberalDemocrat approach that is based on simplifying government, freeing upindividuals and emphasising fairness is one that we can and shouldexploit.

On terrorism and crime too, whilst Labour likes to talk tough, we can beoptimistic about our alternative approach – believing that the need isto tackle criminals and terrorists, not spending huge sums of moneybuilding up databases of innocent people (ID cards, DNA records). Whywaste these resources on tracking innocent people when they couldinstead go on tackling criminals and terrorists directly – and to sortout records of criminals such as the mess that is the Criminal RecordsBureau? It shows how there is something very wrong at the heart ofLabour’s approach that they are keen on piling up records on innocentpeople but don’t give the necessary attention to keeping proper recordsof criminals.

This weakness of Labour is particularly important not just for MPs likemyself who took their seats from Labour, but also for the party’soverall long-term growth. After all, even if we concentrated all ourfire on the Tories and by some magic managed to win every single Toryseat, it would still leave us short o
f a majority. We need to progressby taking seats from both parties.

That may be certain, but one thing that is uncertain though is what thebig issues are which will crop up between now and the next generalelection. We can all make our guesses, but one regular feature of ourpolitics is how then end up being dominated in a Parliament by an issuethat barely, if at all, featured in the previous election. Who wastalking about Iraq in June 2001 for example?

For this unknown future it comes down to trust and judgement, and justas the party has got it right on the recent big issues that cropped uplike Iraq and tuition fees, I am confident that – looking at the qualityof my colleagues compared with those on the other benches – we willagain. So at the end of a very lively political year, with more than afew ups and downs on the way, I am confident about what 2007 will bring!

This article first appeared in Liberator.

Once upon a Christmas Eve – not long ago or far away – the snow was falling gently on the Stone Palace by the Great River. Not far away, in a house with the magical Number of 10, the Strong-Willed Prince was reluctantly coming to the end of his long, and for the most part, unhappy reign.

There had been so much hope and happiness in the land when he had first been crowned. The people had loved him and believed that a new age had dawned – and there was hope in their hearts. But the Prince had become wilful over the years. He had stopped listening to the people. And he had even stopped listening to the Political Red Elves who carried out his orders. (He had never paid any attention to the Blue or Golden Elves anyway as he regarded them as inferior).

And so, against all advice, he had led his Kingdom into a treacherous war in far off lands at the behest of a very powerful, if somewhat obtuse Wizard, who lived in a Great White House in a distant land across the water.

Now many different types of people lived in the Prince’s Kingdom – and they came in all shapes and sizes and colours. There were white ones and black ones and brown ones – and all shades in between. And for the most part, if left alone, they all got along together. But to justify his war, the Prince had lied to his people. And a lie once told, begets all sorts of evil consequences.

And now the long Shadow of Mistrust was creeping across the land – and as it fell on each person, they began to lose their reason. They turned on each other, blaming each other for all the hatred and unhappiness in the land. And the Prince was sad when he saw the trouble that he had brought upon his people – for he was not a bad man – just a bad Prince.

So as he pondered deeply on Christmas Eve – three not particularly Wise Men came to his door. And they bore him gifts. The first gift from the Chief Blue Elf was Wisdom – although he had been considering a pair of flip-flops, but decided to keep them for himself.

The second from Chief Red Elf – soon to be Prince himself and a somewhat dour and grumpy Scottish Elf – was Humility (well, this is a fairy tale).

And the third and, of course, the best gift was from the Chief Golden Elf – who was very, very wise. And he said to the Prince: "I have no gift for you. For the thing you need most cannot be given. It can only be gained by he who lost it in the first place. But if you can find what it is you lost – then the Kingdom will be saved."

So the Prince set forth and travelled the length and breadth of the Kingdom that Christmas Eve – and on his journey he found himself in a forest where no light breached the velvet darkness. He was terrified and alone, and cried out for help. An Angel appeared and took him by the hand and said: "There is an Evil Wizard in these woods who would kill you and come after your people. You must kill him in order to be free and to save your Kingdom. I will light the way."

And so the Prince fought a battle royal and slew the Evil Wizard and escaped from the dark forest. But as he turned back he saw an army of the Evil Wizard’s creatures coming after him. He cried out to the Angel and said: "I did what you bid me do. But now even though the Evil Wizard is dead his minions are coming after me. I trusted you!"

And as the words left his lips he found himself back in his house at Number 10 sitting by the big, open fire. And then – like a blinding light – he understood what he had lost. He had lost the peoples’ trust. And he had lost it because he had misled them. The most precious gift had already been his – and he had squandered it. How sorry he was. How he wished he had done things differently. But it was now all too late. Or was it?

The Kingdom itself was indeed saved and the people were re-united once again. But for the rest of his reign as Prince and for the rest of his days on earth – he would work tirelessly night and day, day and night with all the rulers of all the lands around the country where he had brought such death and disaster – to bring peace on earth and good will to all mankind.

And I’m the Christmas Fairy!

Happy Christmas.

As I write this Christmas message, it is a stunningly mild December day and the hottest year on record since records began – a seemingly scary reminder of the threat to our world. So as we go into the Christmas break – there are two issues that ricochet around my brain – the two great challenges I believe the world faces – climate change and living together.

There have been many important local issues this year – from Hornsey Town Hall, to the dreadful planning permissions granted at appeal for the Concrete Factory in Stroud Green and poorly designed high density flats in Wood Green We’ve seen the completion of the roll-out of Safer Neighbourhood Police Teams across the borough and the fight to get a decent new health facility on the old Hornsey Central Hospital site. There has been the usual debacle of lack of school places and we are almost at the point of handing over of Ally Pally – who knows what that will bring?

But it is these two great challenges – or threats to our world – that we need to focus on in the year ahead. We can all make a difference to climate change if each of us does our little bit to reduce our own carbon footprint – and that we should do without questions.

But the shadow of 7/7 has fallen across our land and there is a schism developing between different peoples. We must, in Haringey, make sure that we hold hands across any such divide and send our thoughts too to the people in particular of the Middle East and Africa – the people of Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan and Darfur.

At this time of year – let there really be peace on earth and good will to everyone.

I am sick of the good guys being the fall guys. Let me elucidate. At its most simple it’s that honest, good citizens (the good guys) who transgress, for let’s say, staying on a parking meter or pay and display a few minutes over time get a ticket – and pay it.

The bad guys – who perhaps don’t bother to find a meter and park illegally and get a ticket or are involved in a traffic incident or so on – by contrast frequently don’t pay. And the worse they are, the less likely they are to pay – because they’ve not got up-to-date car tax, not got insurance, not got a license, given a fake address, using a stolen car, can’t be traced via the DVLA or because of any of 101 other reasons.

It all amounts to the more honest you are, the more likely you are to be punished if you make a mistake or have a momentary lapse of judgement. Don’t get me wrong – I am a great supporter of proper traffic and parking regulations – and if we park illegally we should be done for it and pay up – but the rules have to be fair and they have to be right. But the zealous – often over-zealous – chasing up of people who are easy to find whilst others can escape completely means we have the opposite of how a fair and just system should work. Good guys get the punishment, bad guys escape. Yes, punish people if they break the rules, but punish people more severely the worse their actions.

Even worse, those who aren’t easy to trace because of the tax and insurance etc dodges are often flouting not just those rules but, on the too rare occasions they are caught, turn out to be wanted for a host of other offences too. Pursuing the habitual wrong-doers would therefore reduce all sorts of misdeeds and clean up a whole range of misdemeanours.

So – you would think – that the authorities would invest in catching the bad guys. But think back through the recent government announcements and ideas – spying on people’s litter bins, mandatory national ID cards, introducing a database of all the phone calls and emails in this country – and they’re all ones that involve putting huge resources into keeping tabs on innocent people.

Rather than really going after the people they should be pursuing, time and again the government goes for the petty authoritarianism of wanting to keep even more tabs on innocent people.

We need to rebalance the system – and that includes holding to account those who make mistakes that end up harassing the innocent.

Only recently, one Haringey Councillor went public on the fact that two yellow junction boxes in the borough were illegal – yet hundreds of people have been ticketed from those junctions. (By the way: if you know of any more instances where there is bad signing or illegal markings – let me know.)

Haven’t heard Haringey Council announce refunds to all those good guys who did nothing wrong and paid up. And perhaps local authorities should be fined for tickets that are wrongly issued or are the consequence of poor or confusing signage – that would give a real incentive to get rules right and to treat everyone fairly. And what could be better than that?

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

For just over four years I was the leader of the Liberal Democrat group in Haringey. It was a good period for the party – from winning our first three seats in Haringey through to growing to a group of fifteen at the next elections, for years on. But there is one thing about my experience as group leader that I have real doubts over. It’s the question of how the party elects its group leader.

Group leaders – especially those where we run the council or are challenging to run the council – are some of the most important people in the party in terms of real power wielded that affects people’s lives.

Group leaders vary hugely – from the leader of a small group through to the person who runs a multi-million council and has more power than many MPs – but one thing they all have in common is that party members do not get a say in who they are.

And this is my cause of doubt. I have had to campaign for votes from party members for all sorts of things during my time in the party but for group leader – it was only fellow councillors who got a say. Now – when there were only three of us councillors back in 2002, divvying up the roles of leader, deputy leader and chief whip wasn’t the most competitive or angst-ridden of processes! Between us, we were all happy with who did what. But even where there is real choice and disagreement – and where the result determines who heads up a council, one of the most important political jobs there is – party members do not get a say.

As I type this I can just imagine the thoughts going through some councillors’ minds at the idea of members electing their group leader rather than they themselves.

So – I want to take you back to the start of this year. I just want you to imagine if our party leader was elected in the equivalent way to the way in which our council group leaders are elected. That is, by the MPs alone with party members not having any say.

Imagine if we had had an election that way at the start of the year and I had then come along to the recent London Liberal Democrats conference to say how well I thought the process worked, how the leader is the leader of the MPs – so of course it should only be MPs who should get a say – and maybe made a joke or two about some oddball members and asked if you really wanted to entrust the very serious and important choice of leader to people like that?

I don’t think I’d have been very popular – and rightly so!

So instead I ask – think of all the reasons why it was right and proper that I and everyone else in this room had one vote in the selection of the leader, and then ask – why doesn’t the same reasoning apply to the leader of council groups? Of course, a council group leader needs to have support of their councillors and they are the people who know the candidates best – but that can be dealt with by the nomination rules (as with party leader where a candidate has to currently have the support and be nominated by 7 MPs).

This isn’t just a theoretical question, because think again – think of where local parties have gone horribly off the rails, falling apart into infighting and dispute. Almost always, a large part of the story is that the council group and members have gone off in different directions with splits opening up between councillors and party.

Having the group leader elected by members could be an important piece of glue holding the party together.

So it might be that this is the right thing to do not just in its own terms – democratic – but also the right pragmatic thing to do – to help head off some of the problems of division we’ve sometimes had in the past. And don’t forget the benefits too of encouraging councillors to remember how important members are, to retain them and to communicate with them – whilst also giving more members more of a say and a participation in local politics and decision making. That’s what we’re about as a party, aren’t we?

The logic of what I have written sounds pretty good to me – and the various people I’ve tried it out on seem to agree too. Yet within the party, I can’t recall any move to introduce these sorts of changes? So have I got it all wrong, or is it time we changed things?

This article first appeared on Liberal Review.

If you love statistics, modern government must be heaven. Whether it’s due to the complexity of big government, the realities of modern life or the control freakery of New Labour, or some mix of all three, you can barely breathe in most policy areas without inhaling a lung full of statistics, normally sprinkled with a few decimal places for that added dash of veracity.

The area around crime is particularly prone to not just statistics, but arguments over statistics. So I find I always have to tread with care through all the numbers to try to pull out the essence of what’s going on.

One pair of numbers I have put together recently gets to the heart of much of the debate. It is this: the cost of jailing someone for one year is the same as the cost of employing a full time police officer for a year.

There are allowances you have to make for capital versus running costs and so on, but basically one extra person in prison equals one less police officer.

So when Tories and Labour thump their tubs about being tough on crime, we shouldn’t feel meek about pointing out the costs of their failed policies. Having a large prison population is not a sign of success – it is a sign of a failure to prevent crime and it leaches huge resources away from other parts of the justice system. Instead of prioritising preventative police work and rehabilitating re-offenders, money is sucked into cramming people into poor conditions.

Now – you might say, they are criminals so who cares how bad their conditions are? This is where the difference between those who emphasise the vindictive part course from those who emphasise the effective. For – whilst there are some people who should be locked up for life – nearly everyone else will leave jail at some point. Even if we abolish the controversial automatic reductions in jail sentences for good behaviour (which the Liberal Democrats opposed in Parliament) – the overwhelming proportion of prisoners will still be released at some point.

To me, a priority is to cut the crime rate amongst released prisoners. For if we can do that – then we can stop people becoming victims of crime. And it’s not just a few future crimes we can prevent – because re-offending rates for people released from prison are shockingly high. Just under six in ten of the prisoners released in 2003 were caught committing at least one offence in the subsequent two years. Amongst those who stole from vehicles, the re-offending rate was just under nine in ten. Clearly prison isn’t working for such offenders – which is why we need to make it work.

Prison certainly has its place – and there are those who should be locked up, and locked up for a long time. Longer jail sentences for some crimes (such as knife crimes, as we proposed in Parliament – but were blocked by Labour) have their place too. But prison isn’t the whole answer. If it was, we – with our massive and soaring prison population – would have plummeting crime rates. We don’t.

The alternative – as Alan Sherwell, the Lib Dem leader in Aylesbury Vale, put it well in Liberator no.314 – is to emphasise rehabilitation, re-education, offering people with mental health problems proper treatment and tackling drug addition.

We can’t go back in time and undo a crime a criminal has committed, but if we stop them re-offending – then we have zipped forward in time and stopped a crime before it occurs. If it is a choice between being vindictive about the past or effective in cutting crime in the future, my vote is for being effective.

So when Labour or the Tories attack us on crime, there is no need to be defensive or on the back foot. We should be on the front foot – harrying them over why they want to cram more and more people in bad jail conditions with the result that jail simply becomes a pause for rest between one crime and another. And all the while this failure to cut crime is taking resources away – at the cost of one police officer for every extra jail place needed – from the police and other parts of the justice system.

The same front-foot mentality should also apply to issues around civil liberties – pointing out that plans for ID cards etc mean putting huge amounts of money and effort into keeping tabs on innocent people. Wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on criminals and terrorists instead?

With the Criminal Records Bureau in such a mess, and all the problems we’ve seen this year keeping track of people who should be having deportation cases heard, simply keeping tabs on such people is clearly more than enough for the Government to struggle with, without adding in tens of millions of innocent people too.

It’s effective police focus on the criminals, not the innocent, that we need and should argue for with pride.

This article first appeared in Liberal Democrat News. For subscription details, click here.

Highgate Village is getting ready for Christmas. The lights are up and the Christmas shop windows are looking absolutely gorgeous!

But Christmas shopping is a nightmare for me! I know. I know. Everyone is in the same boat at this time of year – but as well as my usual busy schedule – this time of year sees extra community Christmas events, local groups’ celebrations and visits to fit in. So with no evenings and weekends to fall back on – I diarise a few half days in December for my shopping. Inevitably these get eaten away – in fact the first one which was scheduled for December 7th has already fallen prey to a debate in Parliament on terrorism – and of course, work comes first.

So when the last few frantic days before Christmas arrive, I have never finished (sometimes barely scratched the surface of) my present buying. That is when I thank my lucky stars for living in Highgate! The shops are just wonderful – and there have been years when I have done most of my shopping there.

I get my turkey from Phyllis at the Highgate Butchers – so long as I remember to order it in time (not always the case). My personal cards and Christmas wrapping paper are from Le Chocolatier – as are the chocolates that I take around to various places. I buy most of the books that I give from Highgate Bookshop. I get some of my Christmas drink from Oddbins. Nawar and Walter Castellazzo are my last chance hotels for gifts. Raj in the corner shop has always been there – even on Christmas Day – when I discover the things I have forgotten to buy; last year it was lemons! Of course Bailey & Saunders can be relied on for really last minute smellies. The Highgate Society and the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institute Christmas Craft fairs always deliver a couple of creative pieces. And of course – no Christmas would be complete without my Christmas tags from the Oxfam Shop.

And not forgetting the shops on the Archway Road. My dog expects! So I go down to what used to be Pet – but now has added a vet. Papa Del’s and Indian Chef are the take-aways that keep us going until the day itself. The art shop has gone – but I did pop into the new flower shop that has taken its place. It is just beautifully done.

All the shops (including the ones I haven’t had space to mention) on Archway Road and in Highgate Village put on a good Christmas spread. We are lucky to have such a fine selection to choose from – not to mention Christmas Carols in Pond Square and the almost unrivalled and multitudinous selection of public houses and restaurants that grace this area.

So have a Happy Highgate Christmas!

DNA detection has been a phenomenally successful tool for fighting crime, helping to secure identification and confirm guilt in not only thousands of current convictions, but also in previously closed cases, including 37 murders, 16 attempted murders and 90 rapes.

It is appropriate for the DNA database to hold samples of all those who are charged or cautioned. What is not appropriate, however, is the retention of DNA if the suspect is not charged or not cautioned. Currently DNA is taken on arrest and retained regardless of guilt or innocence – and this serendipity of DNA retention gives cause for concern.

There are now around 140,000 people on the National DNA database who have never been charged or cautioned with a criminal offence, including nearly 25,000 children. Moreover, nearly a quarter of the people in the National DNA database are from BME communities – although they make up under one in ten of the population as a whole.

In other words, for example, an innocent black man is far more likely to have their DNA stored in the national database than an innocent white man. Having a national crime-fighting database that singles out innocent members of ethnic minorities in this way raises a whole host of problems, including equity, reducing the confidence of people in the fairness of the police and their work and the risk of further discrimination up the line if the records are ever misused – and remember how often in the past big databases have gone wrong, had their security compromised or been misused.

Control and custodianship of the database is key. It is a positive step that the Government is now finally moving control away from the Forensic Science Service, so as to avoid conflicts of interest. However, it is only relatively late in the day that that Government is even starting to properly consider the issues of control and supervision.

And – regrettably – the evidence from Parliament is that Labour is keener to try to play Punch and Judy politics with this issue than to address these real concerns. I say this because Jack Straw has twice had to be corrected in the chamber for falsely claiming that the Liberal Democrats are against all keeping of DNA records. Not impressed, Jack. The keeping of such very personal records by the Government should be a matter of rather more serious debate.

Meanwhile, The Observer revealed that a private firm has been secretly keeping the full DNA samples along with highly personal demographic details of the individuals including their names, ages, skin colour and addresses. And the Government itself has also authorised research projects using the DNA samples for non-police work.

In fact, the police only need the DNA profile, which is extracted from the original DNA sample. This ability to misuse the full sample for non-police purposes means it should be destroyed once the DNA profile has been extracted. It is the only sure protection.

In addition, the DNA records of those charged, but acquitted in court, should be held for a designated period of time – catering, for example, for the possible need to return to the evidence in an appeal.

A person who wrongly arrested and is not charged or cautioned should be able to choose whether their DNA can be retained. This would bring England and Wales closer into line with the position in Scotland where, under the Labour-led Scottish Executive, most DNA samples and records are destroyed if a person is acquitted or given an order of absolute discharge.

Or in brief – data kept is data open to misuse, and so that which is kept should be kept to a minimum.

This article first appeared in The House Magazine.

Just off Park Road is a lovely open area of green land, long used for cricket and other sports. For many years the North Middlesex Cricket Club has been based there. This area has special qualities and – in something the authorities have got right! – it has been designated as Metropolitan Open Land, which means it can’t be put to other use.

However, many residents have been expressing concern at the recent take-over of the club by commercial developers who proudly announced that they were going to spend £4.5 million to modernize the club, including a new restaurant for 120 people and function rooms for 450 people.

Now – this will totally change the character of the area, and bring huge numbers of people in, with the traffic, disruption and noise that goes with it. Already, what was a location with well-kept cricket squares where players and spectators could watch a leisurely game of cricket, whilst imagining themselves in an almost rural idyll, is changing with an influx of much larger number of people, and little peace or tranquillity.

In the hustle and bustle of urban life, losing those little oasis of peace and tranquillity is a tragedy – we all need places to pause, reflect and move at a slower pace.

The site has provided a great balance between providing social, sports and leisure uses for the local community whilst also been green open-space with the environmental and wildlife benefits that brings.

So people are understandably nervous. The developers don’t seem to have done a great job around communication with the surrounding residents – and certainly many residents are complaining about not being kept informed of what is going on. The result has been the galvanisation of local residents associations into a group called Combined Residents’ Action Group (CRAG), contained representatives from the roads surrounding the open spaces and from CREOS – the local environmental protection and preservation group.

Already there has been a CRAG deputation to Haringey Council – which was well received by both political parties. CRAG has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for more information and has put Haringey Council on notice not to allow the developers to get away with developing the site without planning permission. Let’s hope that Haringey Council is ready to meet the challenge of keeping a close watch on the site.

So a new session of Parliament begins – cue the Queen’s speech, and cue Labour’s latest effort to out-Tory a Tory and show how strong their rhetoric is in being tough on crime and restricting our hard-won personal freedoms to fight terrorism.

Again our civil liberties will come under assault as Tony Blair grapples for a legacy in the dog days of this premiership.And again, our legislature will be swamped with measures alleged to protect our security – although if simply passing new law after new law solved every problem, we could have all packed up our bags long ago.

Amid all the pomp and circumstance (of which there is a lot when Her Majesty pays us a visit in Parliament) the airways were overwhelmed with the Queen’s Speech and the pending Blair Switch Project, but the latest unemployment statistics were published with relatively little comment.

The rise in unemployment itself was statically relatively small, but the headline gave me reason to pause: unemployment at seven-year high, and in London – the figures are almost one in twelve. For Labour to be so quiet about unemployment is, well …, not really what the Labour party used to be about is it?

No surprise that Labour’s leaders should be keeping quiet about this big blot on their record, but it is a surprise to me how quiet Labour’s backbenchers – and other Labour party members I bump into – are about the steady creeping up of the unemployment figures for almost two years.

After all, the issue of having means to put food on the table and a roof over your family’s head is a need as old as time – and when it comes to modern day London in particular there is something slightly out of kilter. Whilst our Government parades, postulates and legislates to make us more secure, the number of those for whom personal security slips out of their reach grows.

It is easy to be politically opportunistic and pounce on one economic indicator and use it to beat political opponents with. However, there are several factors that make me uneasy when it comes to assessing how this Government is managing the economic security of local people.

You don’t have to be Noble Laureate in economics to realise that if personal borrowing continues at such staggering levels as at present that there is going to be a nasty bump somewhere along the line – and thus the free cash well that has been fuelling our economy runs dry. It can only be imagined as regards the devastation this will be wrought on the nine out of ten people who work in the service industry in my constituency at such a point.

And – worryingly for the future – the number of 16 and 17 year-olds not in work or full-time education has tripled since Labour came to power.

On a more direct level, week in week out I see heart breaking cases in my surgery of people for whom personal security is distant dream when it comes to housing. The London home ownership market has slipped far beyond the reach of most low and middle income families and social housing is literally creaking at the seams unable to meet fraction of the housing needs of people in Haringey.

All this as our gracious sovereign pronounces on other issues. But for how long can Brown keep on claiming he has been the prudent and successful Chancellor? Maybe that’s why he is so keen to move to Number 10 – and then he can blame someone else for any chickens coming home to roost!