Here’s my latest column for the Ham & High:

I never imagined when I was at Highgate Primary School, playing kiss chase in Highgate Woods, going to Muswell Hill Youth Club, being dropped at my aunt’s net curtaining shop in Wood Green High Road to play in the back whilst my mother went to work – or even later – when I was getting married at Haringey Civic Centre – that I would become the MP for Hornsey & Wood Green.

It makes travelling around the area rather strange now, because it’s not just my home but also my place of work and even if ‘off duty’ I see the signs of work all around – such as the 603 bus route I spent many years campaigning for with residents, the re-opened police station front counter, the double yellow lines to make a junction safer, the council flat that needed nagging to get repaired, the green space saved from over-development and so on.

It has been a great pleasure – and a privilege – to have had the opportunity to move on from being a councillor and a London Assembly member to having the platform of Parliament from which to help and run those campaigns.

I make it 28,000 plus people that have got in touch and I’ve helped over the years. Across them have been all manners of issues and questions and problems and challenges. There have also been some repeated themes. Often when people come to me it’s because they are angry – angry at how the government or the council has let them down, ignored them or forced an unwelcome decision on them.

From the war in Iraq, being complicit in torture, closing our vital local Post Offices and giving our schools less funding than over the border in Hackney through to the threats to the Whittington’s A&E – Labour have not understood how important are our principles and how vital the fabric of our life.

Even after all the campaigning to save the Whittington’s A&E, we still have the comments from Labour Health Secretary Andy Burnham only last week which led the Daily Express to report that, “Labour believes closing maternity units and A&E departments at local hospitals is the “right thing to do” to improve NHS care.”

With all our campaigning we may have frightened the government into saying nice words about the Whittington A&E at the moment, but with that attitude from right at the top in the NHS, what chances the future for the A&E under Labour? Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg has stated unequivocally that he will not let London North Central NHS close the Whittington A&E – making him the only Party Leader to do so.

On the Whittington, as on many other issues, there is still much to be done. I know some people are cynical about politicians who only pop up just before an election, suddenly declaring their commitment to an area and making promises for the future.

Well in my case – you can judge me not just on my promises for the future, but my record too. If you take a look at my website,www.LynneFeatherstone.org, you can read my blog and news releases from over the years – in and out of election time! – with more details about many of the issues the 28,000 have raised, the questions I’ve asked in Parliament and the campaigns I’ve led or helped with.

I’m not standing for re-election promising that I’ll start doing things for our community; I’m standing for re-election because I want to continue winning victories for our community.

It has been an absolute privilege and a pleasure to serve the people of Hornsey & Wood Green. I remember the night in May 2005 when I was elected to Parliament pledging in my acceptance speech to be the hardest working MP this constituency had ever seen. And I hope that people feel that I have delivered on that pledge.