Congratulations to Jenny Willott

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Congratulations to Jenny Willott – my Liberal Democrat colleague from Cardif Central who was promoted on Sunday to be our Shadow Secretary of State for Department Work and Pensions.

About time Jenny joined our Shadow Cabinet – very talented and very experienced in the portfolio having been on the Select Committee equivalent for the last three years.

It came about because Danny Alexander who had the portfolio has also been doing what was meant to be a temporary post as Chief of Staff for Nick Clegg. However, too much to do both and given that they get on so well – Danny asked if he could have a replacement for the Work & Pensions job – couldn’t get better than Jenny.

Haringey Liberal Democrats offer to run Area Assembly

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Haringey Labour’s Deputy Leader last night blamed “unpleasant” local residents for disruption to a meeting of St. Ann’s and Harringay Area Assembly. Frustrated local residents, upset by ineffective chairing and bad organisation, were instructed by Cllr Lorna Reith to conduct themselves better in the future.

Local Liberal Democrats, who also attended, were annoyed by Cllr Reith’s patronising remarks and have attributed the confrontation to Labour’s failure to listen to residents and to keep the meeting in order.

Liberal Democrats have demanded that Cllr Reith apologises to residents and will be raising the issue with the Leader of the Council and Chief Executive. They have also offered to chair future meetings in the absence of competent management of the Area Assembly.

Cllr Karen Alexander (Harringay) comments:

“Harringay and St.Ann’s Area Assembly meetings are often very lively as residents are desperate to have their say on the Council’s poor performance. Members of the public need to behave reasonably. However, it is typical of Labour to blame this on residents and not look at their own management of both the agenda and meetings. I was staggered that Cllr Reith chose to speak to residents in such a patronising way. I would have thought the most obvious way of approaching this was to talk to those responsible for managing the meeting and get them to conduct these meetings properly.”

Cllr Carolyn Baker (Harringay) adds:

“Residents in St. Ann’s and Harringay do not feel they are being listened to by an aloof and arrogant Labour Council. I challenge them to let the Liberal Democrats run the area assembly for six months and see the difference.”

Labour abuses non-partisan meeting on gun and knife crime

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Amongst various meetings, briefings etc yesterday I popped into the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Guns, Gangs and Knife Crime. Massive meeting with lots and lots of young people – excellent!

The APPG is chaired by Dawn Butler – a Labour MP. I could only stay for half and hour – and Vernon Coker (the Labour Minister) certainly made a decent speech. Various members of the audience contributed too – in the usual way.

But looking around the audience I noticed they all had a printed piece of literature in front of them – pinky purple in colour. Clearly it had been distributed to them – but then I realised what it was – it was Labour Party literature (their pamphlet for young people) including a request to join the Labour Party.

Well – this is a no no! APPGs are just that – non-partisan – but you can’t get much more partisan than handing out leaflets praising one party! Indeed, it is strictly against the rules to distribute party literature. The Conservative member of the panel is writing to the Speaker and when I spoke to him later that night in Parliament he said that there were three other serious transgressions which he would also report. I had also reported it to our Chief Whip to take further.

Just before the meeting I met a very genuine and successful peace campaigner who works tirelessly with young people – but who was leaving rather than going to the meeting. I asked why he was leaving and he said because he couldn’t sit through another one of those meetings where people just talk – not again.

I still think these type of meetings are worth having – even if they are mostly talk – as they engage quite a lot of young people and the more people we can engage the better. But it’s just not on to use young people as Labour fodder. And that is what the whole thing looked like to me. Anyway – I’m going to meet up on my own with this peace campaigner to see about action not words!

Extending Oyster: one person persuaded!

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Keith Flett kindly wrote in the local newspaper about my push to get Oyster more widely accepted on train services:

Full marks to Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, for raising the issue of pay as you go Oyster Card use on rail networks in Haringey. At the moment they can’t be used on the line from Finsbury Park through to Hornsey and beyond, although the train operator First Group seems to be happy for this to take place on its services out of Paddington.

Meanwhile on the other side of the borough, recent changes means that Oyster can be used on services out of Liverpool Street to stations in Hackney which includes Seven Sisters and Tottenham Hale, but not beyond.

How visitors and tourists make sense of this glorious mess one can only wonder.
– Keith Flett, Mitchley Road, N17.

Now that I've read Cherie Blair's book…

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Over the last week I’ve read Cherie Blair’s autobiography. This follows on from my appearance on Radio 4’s Any Questions? where it came up and I defended the idea of her having written it – saying that everyone should be able to have their say, especially someone like her who has been on the receiving end of judgements from so many other people over the years without really being able to answer back.

But she’s lucky I didn’t read it before I went on air – because having read it – what a dreadful book it is! I mean it’s not dreadful in the sense that the English is awful – or that Cherie doesn’t take us through her life. But she says nothing of real interest.

It’s an I went here, went there, did that sort of autobiography with a smidgen of resigned saint attitude to the unfairnesses done to her.

She was at the heart of ten years of British Government married to the Prime Minister – and it leaves out any of the real, real tensions and pressures of that decade. Sure it covers the Iraq war and says how difficult it was for Tony – but it says nothing real. If you’ve not got much to say – then don’t write a full book! What a let down.

The problems with Gordon Brown's article on detention without trial

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So – Gordon Brown flows over many column inches in The Times today defending his insistence on introducing 42 days detention without charge.

He holds forth in fulsome manner over the ‘compromises’, the judicial oversight, the need to come to Parliament for a vote if time beyond 28 days is necessary etc. There’s much to disagree with on the grounds which he chooses to argue – such as how meaningful will Parliamentary oversight really be if we’re all asked to vote suddenly after a new terror horror or scare? Those are just the circumstances in which you get rushed judgements, faulty information (think how often the initial media reports get major things wrong when there is a terrorist incident) and bad or blind decision making.

But what’s really striking is what’s missing from his piece. All those column inches today and not one single example of an instance where more than 28 days was needed. Not one example of where something went wrong because the 28 day limit was reached. Not one example of where something nearly went wrong until a a lucky break just before the 28 day limit was reached. Just not one example to back up his case. That gives it all away.

Instead, he tries to scare us with stories – about the thousands of hours of work now needed to sort through many aliases, many computers, many countries. And yet – no word about employing more people or more computers instead to speed up investigations

When you’re proposing to curtail our liberties – to say it’s OK for innocent people (because yes, many people arrested do turn out to be innocent) to be locked up for long periods – you really do need to make a careful case, with evidence and examples and explaining why the alternatives aren’t sufficient. Do that – and I’m all ears. Failed to do that – and no, I’m not persuaded.

Post Office closures: Labour admits they're making profits

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Watching Labour minister Pat McFadden on TV yesterday (Andrew Marr show) state what we have all been screaming – that even profitable sub-Post Offices are being closed in the relentless decimation of local public services.

I’ve always argued that you can’t judge local public services simply on the basis of direct cash profit and loss – there are indirect costs and benefits too, and many of the benefits are not cash but in other forms. But it really takes the biscuit to be told that even Post Offices that are making a profit on a narrow cash basis are being closed!

For those that aren’t making a direct cash profit – with an open mind and a bit of determination it is not beyond the wit of man to make more of them profitable by introducing other services.

In Highgate, for example, the Highgate Society did a cost / benefit analysis. They obtained from the Post Office the proposed savings from closing that outlet.

And what did they find? Savings from central services around £25,000. Cost to local people in terms of extra time taken to go to further away Post Office alternatives – around £300,000.

So – the cost is to us and the benefit is to the Post Office. Did the Government not think that some of us think the £150 million ‘subsidy’ was actually a subsidy worth paying until more services could be brought in to up the profit of each branch? They are certainly happy enough to throw zillions at useless things like ID cards.

Also – there are fifty councils looking to try and help Post Offices stay open by putting council services through them. I attacked George Meehan (Labour leader of Haringey Council) when I did my surgery from our threatened Salisbury Road Post Office on this – and he promised to look into it. I have, since written to him to ask same. No reply as yet.

You should be able to use Oyster on trains north of Finsbury Park

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Extending the use of Oyster to First Capital Connect’s overground train services running north out of Finsbury Park is the subject of my latest local column:

To us public transport users in London it seems as plain as the nose on our faces that Oyster should be extended to our local overground rail (and everywhere actually) – so we can go boldly and easily wherever we choose! But no – we still have to put up with a two-tier ticket system if we want to use our local overground stations like Alexandra Palace and Haringey.

We are stalled because First Capital Connect are holding back from extending Oyster north of Finsbury Park station. Having to get separate tickets to travel in the same city is akin to Soviet-style bureaucracy – not what you expect in a world-class city like London.

These days we’re no long train travellers but customers – but whatever then happened to putting the customer first? This sort of bureaucratic small mindedness does rather make a mockery of their slogan, “Your Journey, Your Choice, Your Railway” – but not “Your Convenience” or “Your choice of ticketing” it would seem.

Other train operators like First Great Western and South West Trains have already committed to making their passengers happy and will install the Oyster pay-as-you-go system in the next year – and they are putting First Capital Connect to shame.

Recently I met with the Oyster specialists Cubic – who delivered Oyster for our tubes and buses – at Alexandra Palace overground station and they are keen as mustard to get on with it. So I’ve written to First Capital Connect calling on them to get on with it – and you can too at Freepost RRBR–REEJ–KTKY, First Capital Connect, Customer Relations Department, PO Box 443, Plymouth, PL4 6WP.

But before you do – you can read the rest of the piece here.

Tap in and tap out: yes please

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It’s one of the great successes of Transport for London. Yes – you heard right – TfL and the word ‘success’ in the same breath. I’m talking Oyster!

Now we tap in and tap out without a second thought. We nimbly flit from tube to bus – tap in / tap out. And then we try and nimbly flit from tube to bus to train – and oh dear – we can’t!

To us public transport users in London it seems as plain as the nose on our faces that Oyster should be extended to our local overground rail (and everywhere actually) – so we can go boldly and easily wherever we choose!

But no – we still have to put up with a two-tier ticket system if we want to use our local overground stations like Alexandra Palace and Haringey. We are stalled because First Capital Connect are holding back from extending Oyster north of Finsbury Park station.

Having to get separate tickets to travel in the same city is akin to Soviet-style bureaucracy – not what you expect in a world-class city like London. These days we’re no long train travellers but customers – but whatever then happened to putting the customer first? This sort of bureaucratic small mindedness does rather make a mockery of their slogan, “Your Journey, Your Choice, Your Railway” – but not “Your Convenience” or “Your choice of ticketing” it would seem.

Other train operators like First Great Western and South West Trains have already committed to making their passengers happy and will install the Oyster pay-as-you-go system in the next year – and they are putting First Capital Connect to shame.

Recently I met with the Oyster specialists Cubic – who delivered Oyster for our tubes and buses – at Alexandra Palace overground station and they are keen as mustard to get on with it.

So I’ve written to First Capital Connect calling on them to get on with it – and you can too at Freepost RRBR-REEJ-KTKY, First Capital Connect, Customer Relations Department, PO Box 443, Plymouth, PL4 6WP.

Now, don’t get me started on that Freepost address with the twelve-letter string we all are meant to write out – that’s the sign of another service, the Royal Mail, which also seems to have forgotten what serving its customers really mean. They’ve got the address, they’ve got the postcode – but on top of that they expect people to remember and repeat such an unintelligible set of a dozen letters each time you want to use the address. Customer friendly – not!

But back to the topic at hand – not only are First Capital Connect dragging their feet, but they seem keener to install Oyster at the stations south of Finsbury Park with higher passenger numbers than our smaller but vital stops north of that interchange. Wonder why that is?

In fact – we should have smart ticketing connecting all our transport modes nationwide – but the Train Operating Companies are also feet dragging as they don’t want to incur the maintenance costs – even though when he was Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said he would pay for the installation of the readers. And the Government – well they don’t see it as a priority and seem happy for it to take decades – only making changes when the rail franchises are up.

Personally, I think they should make the Train Operating Companies install the smart ticketing, insist it is compatible with Oyster etc and do it now – though with added safeguards to protect the data about individuals that ends up in the Oyster system.

Anyway first things first – local nagging is required to make sure that First Capital Connect don’t skip out our local overground stations and that they get a shifty on!

Tap, tap, tap…

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2008

42 days detention without trial: Lord Goldsmith speaks out again

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Interesting to see the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is speaking out – again, but in much more strident terms this time – against Labour’s proposals to introduce detention without trial for up to 42 days.

There’s much I’ve disagreed with him on over the years, but he has it absolutely right when he says, “We start ourselves to destroy these values and the very basis of the free society which our ancestors fought hard to create if we readily give away critical liberties, such as the right we all have not to be arbitrarily held without charge.”

Moreover – we’ve still not had a convincing case put that this 42 day proposal is actually needed. I fear it is becoming a game of political macho posturing – Gordon Brown’s said he wants 42 days, so 42 days he must get – regardless of whether or not it is the right policy.