What teachers are writing to me about

Posted on by

Have been receiving letters from worried teachers about Big Brother! No – not the one on the television – but the fact that from September 2008, each child living in the UK will be issued with a unique number at birth which will be required to access services (schools, health visitors, housing, benefits etc).

If a family moves, the number remains “attached” to the child, so – the plan goes – children can no longer slip through the net, as in the case of Victoria Climbie.

A laudable intention, and whilst understanding the need to protect children and for agencies to have a robust mechanism whereby they can work together – not sure this isn’t baby identity cards. Anyway – needless to say – am tabling a raft of questions about this new database identifier to follow up on the letters I’ve been sent.

Ten most popular blog postings (2nd quarter, 2008)

Posted on by

In traditional reverse order, here are the ten postings which have proved the most popular over the last three months:

10. The morning after the night before: the moment when it looked like Paxman might punch Johnson – one of the (few) TV highlights of the London Mayor election: Boris Johnson flounders over his bus policy.

9. The real lesson of the 10p tax rate fiasco – it wasn’t just the tax policy that was wrong, it was the whole way we do budgets.

8. What will Boris Johnson be like as Mayor of London? – no prizes for guessing the topic of that piece!

7. The London results – yes, Boris is Mayor.

6. Olympics protest – I joined the protests as the Olympic torch passed through London.

5. Crewe & Nantwich by-election: are the rules wrong? – should election campaigns really be rushed through at the convenience of the incumbent party rather than giving the public time to find out about the candidates and their policies?

4. Iris Robinson – homophobia is certainly still alive in Northern Irish politics.

3. Nine years in a squalid and infested flat – a tale of failure that should make Haringey Council ashamed.

2. David Davis and his resignation to fight a by-election.

1. What did you think of the BBC TV local elections results program on Thursday night? Not a lot by the looks of it, though given the amount of traffic to this post long after the poll has closed it’s clearly an issue still on some people’s minds!

No surprise to see the London elections features so heavily in the list – but interesting to see that several of these posts are very brief and basically just me saying what my view is on an issue of the moment. I guess people have read them either because they’ve been very timely – or perhaps because they do want to know my views on issues!

Visiting St Ann's

Posted on by

Go to St Ann’s Hospital to celebrate its Lordship Ward becoming the 300th ward of the national ‘Star Wards’ project. David Lammy (MP for Tottenham) is on the visit too.

We start by meeting Marion Janner. Marion is a service user from Haringey and is a vocal campaigner and mover on the Star Wards project. This is a national project started to begin to address one of the great challenges of mental health care – that on an inpatient ward the boredom is enough to drive you to madness. It is totally counterproductive to a therapeutic outcome – and so Star Wards begins to address some of those challenges.

St Ann’s is only at the beginning of its program to generate and implement Star Wards – but judging by the enthusiasm of both staff and patients that I met this will deliver real improvement. I also visited the ‘healthy living’ part of the equation and met patient and trainer in the gym.

St Ann’s has had a difficult recent history in terms of administration at higher echelons – but as they move towards their application for ‘foundation status’ with their new Chair, Michael Fox (who I met later in the day at Parliament – coincidentally) they have hopefully moved onward and upward. And there certainly was a very positive attitude around the wards and the patients and the potential.

Two notes of discord did surface. The first was a desperate plea for me to tell the Government that they don’t want, and can’t cope with, endless new initiatives. They feel that they are barely given time to get a new directive in place and begin to embed it – before it is changed and the next headline initiative rolls in – and it’s all change, thereby never reaching a point of proper implementation and smooth running.

The second was about the service provided by the crisis centre – which deals with emergencies. The problems ranged from being answered by an answerphone (not great if you are suicidal) to being told to ‘pull yourself together’.

As I said, later in the day, I met with the new Chair of the Mental Health Trust who seems very determined to turn St Ann’s into a modern and exemplar service deliverer. There will be a need to sell around half the site to fund the new building etc. My criteria – as I told him – was about what would be provided post development, how real and thorough the consultation would be (we are sick of faux consultations) and so on. St Ann’s is not a great layout for a hospital – but it is friendly and human scale. So – we will see how all this develops over the next period.

Campaigning with Helen Duffett

Posted on by

Big event of the day Sunday was – no not the footie – the Centenary of Hornsey Bowling Club. To celebrate one hundred years there was a tea and a match with the Francis Drake Bowling Club.

What a great institution this is. But as the members said – they need some new and younger blood. It is such a lovely sport – with the pure, manicured bowling green. Thank heavens I wore wedge shoes – as heels are a no no!

I only had to go on the green for the ‘spider’. This is where they place a spider on a white bowl – and then everyone stands around the edge of the green and rolls their wood to try and knock the spider off the white bowl. I didn’t get mine anywhere near – so thank goodness it’s the taking part that matters.

I talked to lots of the members who were there – and it is quite clear – that for many folk (particularly those who at this stage of their life find they are on their own) that this fulfils a really important social function. Sadly – no photos – as my batteries had run out.

Lynne Featherstone and Helen Duffett inspecting street signLater I went over to Ilford and Cranbook ward to help Lib Dem Helen Duffett campaign in a council by-election.

Given that this is virgin territory for Liberal Democrats – it was very positive on the doorstep.

And as you can see from the damaged street name sign – lots of work for to take up and run with!

Tory boys throw toys out of pram

Posted on by

So – Harriet Harman has launched her Equalities Bill into the political process and it’s really only one issue in it that has caught the media and public eye so far – the proposal to allow a limited degree of positive action in some circumstances when choosing who to employ.

If you believe some of the sensationalist coverage, the world is about to end for white men with discrimination against them about to be legalised left, right and centre. Conservative MP Philip Davies said, for example,

How on earth can [Harriet Harman] justify in an equalities Bill a provision that allows people to be selected solely on the basis of their skin colour or their gender? That is completely and utterly outrageous.

Well, what’s really completely and utterly outrageous is the way Philip Davies has got what is proposed completely wrong. Nowhere do the proposals say that employment purely on the basis of skin colour or gender should be allowed. Nowhere. For all that the proposals actually say are that:

The Bill will extend positive action so that employers can take under-representation into account when selecting between two equally qualified candidates.

That “two equally qualified candidates” is crucial and makes a nonsense of the distorted fear tactics from (some) Conservatives claiming that suddenly white men will get dumped for worse women / ethnic minorities.

When you’ve got two equally qualified people for a job, you have to choose somehow between them. We shouldn’t be naïve about what happens at the moment – such as how who know who, who went to school with who, and so on often is using to pull favours in such situations. All these proposals would do is to make it legal to use a rather more appropriate criteria.

Take a primary school with an overwhelming number of female teachers. If you have two equally qualified applicants for a vacancy, why not let the school – if it wishes (and note, these proposals in the bill are only permissive – they don’t force people to use them) it could decide to prefer a man, so that the young children get a better mix of male and female role models.

I think it’s right that the school should be able to decide whether or not to do this, making the decision based on its own circumstances and needs – and I’m damn sure it’s a better way of doing things than letting personal links and favouritism make the judgement in such situations but saying the question of mix of male and female role models is banned from consideration.

School builders criticised for not protecting trees

Posted on by

Some of the London Borough of Haringey’s oldest and best loved trees are under threat from building work at a Crouch End school say local Liberal Democrats.

Established trees on the site of the Coleridge school expansion have been mistreated by contractors to the extent that one ash tree will be lost and several others have been damaged by heavy machinery. Liberal Democrats are concerned that no tree protection plan was carried out by contractors before work started and have blamed Haringey Council for failing to act sooner to save trees that provide vital character to the area.

Liberal Democrat councillor Bob Hare, after meeting Haringey Council tree specialists, planning officers and developers last week, has been given assurances that work will be carried out to save the rest of the trees on the site.

Liberal Democrat councillor Bob Hare comments:

“The contractor has completely ignored good practice.The only objective has been to get the work done without any regard for the trees or the environment. The borough has some excellent, expert officers, but their advice on conservation and planning and particularly trees, was, for a long while, completely ignored. I’m pleased that the contractor is now responding, but some of the trees on the site may well have been damaged, and we shall be entirely losing a magnificent ash tree.”

Liberal Democrat councillor David Winskill (Crouch End) adds:

“This is a part of Crouch End where the trees are a crucial part of the landscape. Criticism has also got to be directed at the political leadership of Haringey Council, who do not make it clear that in Haringey, good tree and conservation practice must go hand in hand with good building work.”

Ally Pally £3 million budget loss investigated

Posted on by

A cross-party committee of councillors has refused to formally sign off Haringey Council’s annual accounts without concerns about the probity of the Alexandra Palace Trust’s spending being properly highlighted.

Last Thursday (26th June 2008) at the Council’s General Purposes Committee meeting, three Liberal Democrat and four Labour councillors unanimously agreed to alter Haringey Council’s 2007/08 ‘Statement of Accounts’ to acknowledge that £3.1m of council taxpayers’ money may have been spent improperly by Alexandra Palace.

In addition, Haringey Council’s Chief Finance Officer agreed to speak to the Charity Commission about councillors’ concerns. The Palace is intended to be managed as a charitable organisation but an investigation by the Charity Commission is currently under way to probe the legality of the botched deal to sell the Palace to private developer Firoka.

The deal left the Palace Trust with a £3.1m budget deficit in 2007/08, which Haringey Council used council taxpayer’s money to pay off.

Cllr Richard Wilson, Liberal Democrat Deputy leader, comments:

“Local taxpayers have been hit with a massive £3 million bill because of Labour’s mismanagement of the Palace.I am outraged that Haringey Council were trying to sweep this catastrophic loss under the carpet, when in fact there are serious concerns about how so much money went down the drain during their failed attempt to flog the Palace.

“It is hugely embarrassing for the Labour-controlled Palace Trust that Labour councillors have at last joined with Liberal Democrats in highlighting doubts about how money is being spent at Ally Pally.”

Cllr Jonathan Bloch, Liberal Democrat member of the General purposes Committee adds:

“Council taxpayers have a right to know what happened to their money. There now needs to be a thorough investigation into whether £3million of taxpayers’ money and charity funds were used correctly.”

42 days and counting!

Posted on by

I am truly sick of the Westminster Village sneering attitude to (now former Conservative Home Secretary) David Davis. Quite frankly – I don’t care if David Davis’s resignation as an MP to fight a by-election in his Haltemprice & Howden constituency was motivated by a desire for truth, justice and liberty or because he was never going to get Home Secretary anyway, or because he is a loner, or is an egomaniac, or because he hates David Cameron – all doing the rounds in political gossip circles as explanations.

What I do care about is the issue – and if his actions help secure the same outcome that I want, then good for him – and I don’t see why I should have to pretend that I don’t really agree with him – or have to pretend that him helping to achieve what I want too isn’t a good thing – just because we are in different parties or disagree about 1,001 other issues.

Why does the issue of 42 days detention without charge matter so much? Quite simply – because locking an innocent person up for a month and a half is an awful, ghastly thing to do. Imagine it happening to yourself. How it can wreck jobs, pull apart relationships and leave a deep and abiding sense of anger and hostility.

And we know that innocent people will get locked up. When the police and other authorities think they know that someone is guilty – they ain’t always right. That’s why people get acquitted.

Even with the best will in the world, mistakes are made. And we know too – the best will often is missing. We’ve seen in the fight against Irish terrorism how some police were so convinced they knew who was guilty that evidence was forged – to frame people for crimes they didn’t commit.

We know we can’t just assume that all involved in security matters follow the rules and do their job properly – look at the repeated incidents of secret documents being lost!

The Government’s key argument is that investigations are complex and take too long: that people (including the innocent) have to be locked up whilst investigations are carried out. But that is an argument for more resources to expand capacity and speed up investigations – not an argument to extend detention without charge.

We have already extended the period of detention without charge from 7 to 14 to 28 days in recent years – already longer than any other country in the Western world by a long shot. Even the US – not exactly a shining beacon of remembering human rights whilst fighting terrorism! – only permits two days detention.

Go back to imagining your life. If you’ve got a diary for the next month or two take a look at it. And then imagine being locked up for 42 days without being told why you’re being held. And think of the impact it would have on you and your family.

That’s why this issue cuts to the very core of the point of having elections and Parliament in the first place. If MPs aren’t there to protect people from the almost inevitable demands for greater and greater powers over them from all parts of the state then what is the point of much of what we do?

The Counter Terrorism Bill will now wend its way through the Commons and the Lords. The fight is not over yet – not by a long way.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

Muswell Hill and District Horticultural Society Summer Show

Posted on by

Muswell Hill and District Horticultural Society Summer Show – to give out the prizes.

Shock I know – but I am wearing a summer dress! The flowers are absolutely beautiful – but not enough entries to make the competition as fierce as usual. So come on Muswell Hill green fingers!

In the first picture I am with Pam Defries and her winning flower arrangement. In the second picture I am with Marion Wilton who is giving me an arrangement she made for me. It is so lovely to receive such a lovely gift – and the sweet peas smell heavenly. The third photo is my next stop of the day – late because of giving out the prizes at the horticulture show – just pop into Abbeyfield. Abbeyfield’s Strawberry Tea is an absolute summer fixture – and today (unlike last year) the sun is shining. In the picture you can see me with resident Ivy Smith (97).

Lynne Featherstone with prize winner Pam Defries

Lynne Featherstone getting arrangement from Marion Wilton

Lynne Featherstone with Ivy Smith at Abbeyfield Strawberry Tea

Heinz and homophobia

Posted on by

So – 200 complaints about two men kissing and Heinz – whimps that they are – withdraw the advertisement.

Just when you think that we have moved beyond the bigotry and homophobic hatreds of the past – something like this (or Iris Robinson) pops into the limelight and reminds us that we still have a long way to go to eradicate homophobia. We may have been able to make homophobic behaviour subject to the law – but it is clearly still there in the people – and in corporate cowards.

Would Heinz have pulled an advert if 200 people had objected to it containing a woman? Or a black person? I certainly hope not! But if such blatant sexism or racism isn’t acceptable, why treat homophobia as ok to give in to?

Andrew (a former employee of mine!) has blogged on the subject at http://andrewrunning.blogspot.com/2008/06/boycott-heinz.html – and gives details of how to lobby Heinz. It’s very easy – just an email or a call to their free phone number.

I have signed an Early Day Motion condemning Heinz for their action – and I hope this whole episode does them the damage they deserve.

(If you aren’t a constituent of mine, do pop over to http://www.writetothem.com/ and email your own MP asking them to sign EDM 1913. Don’t worry if you don’t know who your MP is – the site will look it up for you and sort out sending the message.)

[Cross-posted at http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/06/28/taking-action-against-heinz/]