First of my visits to residential and sheltered housing in my constituency to talk to my older constituents over the summer. In the photo – you can see Peter White and me with just some of the glorious plants and flowers that Peter has grown. These are outside his own flat – but Peter has made the whole of the outside area of Abyssinia Court burst with colour and beauty. It is absolutely glorious – and the picture doesn’t capture but an iota of the glorious gardens.

Anyway – not that many around – but had a great conversation with those that were. Parking tickets were again the order of the day. Seem to be a hot topic in Haringey at the moment.

Peter’s wife is disabled and a wheelchair user – so he has a blue badge and he was regaling me with a whole string of tickets that had been put on the car within moments of parking. All had been written off when he wrote in – and all had been wrongly issued. Makes you want to scream – for goodness sake – train your bloody wardens properly Haringey. All the time and effort Peter has had to put into writing about each wrongly issued ticket – all the time that Haringey spends then writing them off.

Time to introduce penalties for wrongly written tickets perhaps?

Anyway – second on my list of campaigns for the day is the hard skin on feet. In terms of older people, it can be excruciating and the Government has hugely reduced the number of older people who qualify for free care. At Abyssinia they do a free nail cutting service – but it is the hard skin that is so painful it keeps older people at home and immobilised. And it costs quite a lot to have it done privately – beyond many pensioners’ pockets.

So – I am trying to gather evidence enough to present to both the local council, health care trust and Government to bring in free foot care for the elderly. It really would be not only the right thing to do as part of a national health service – but a very good investment return on the cost – as the consequences and expense of immobility outweigh the investment by a long shot.

You couldn’t make this up.

Walk out of my office this afternoon having parked outside on High Street Hornsey for about half an hour – perfectly legitimately. The actual sign is the sort that says you can park between 10am and 4pm for up to one hour and no return within two hours. A ticket on my windscreen. I look at Ed (who is my Head of Office and with me at that moment) and say – why, how? We check the signs – they haven’t changed.

At that point a woman came up to me and said, ‘Thank goodness – you’re the MP aren’t you? The wardens have ticketed all the cars both sides of the road, even though lots of us shopkeepers came out and told him to read the sign and that it is perfectly OK to park here. The wardens read the signs – and ticketed anyway.’

I am dealing with my own ticket as a private citizen (and no – I won’t mention that I am the MP) and no doubt it will be dismissed etc. However, I have written to Haringey’s Chief Executive because I want to ensure that all the cars that were ticketed in High Street Hornsey, between 3 and 4pm on Wednesday 30th July, are rescinded and apologies given.

Outside of the actual issue of writing tickets when none are valid and all the bother and trouble those people have to go to get them written off – there is the issue of Haringey (who are already in trouble over sharp practise on ticketing illegally) having traffic wardens who firstly do not understand the actual signs and parking regulations and secondly that even when a number of shopkeepers (who know the traffic rules outside their own premises) tried to get them to understand that all the cars were quite legally parked – they were totally ignored.

I am looking forward to hearing from Haringey with both assurances that all such tickets issues will be withdrawn, apologies given and what action they propose to take in terms of the wardens who wrote the tickets.

Blimey – it was only last month I wrote the column ‘Don’t let the good guys be the fall guys’. Speaking as a good guy … I rest my case!