Parliament is now in recess until October 8th. The media obsess about the long ‘holidays’ that MPs have – but of course – recess doesn’t equal holiday. I don’t know about all MPs – but certainly all the ones I asked had pretty intense programs.

For the record – I will have one week off to sort my house out, two days at the Edinburgh Festival and one week in France – and yes I will be travelling by train! That’s the hols bit.

What about the rest of the time? Well, once you get beyond the "10 weeks holiday" jibes, I think there is actually a lot to be said for MPs having blocks of time (though not quite so long) to concentrate on matters other than the immediate Parliamentary demands.

When Parliament is sitting the hugely frenetic political and media cycle means there often isn’t time to stop and think – or to do those things that take more than a moment. Now – you can get away with either in the short run, but in the long run – that way bad decision and out of touch politicians rest. And of course there’s also plenty more to being an MP that talking and voting in Parliament.

So – in case anyone wonders what I am up to – this is my summer program. I have a number of ‘projects’ planned this recess. The first is getting around the businesses in Hornsey & Wood Green. Businesses don’t have a vote – but they still need to be properly represented. Small businesses, shops and restaurants are the life-blood of our local communities. This year huge rent reviews resulted in much loved local businesses like Bond & White (DIY shop – Muswell Hill) deciding to close after decades.

So I want to try and get round as many businesses as I can to introduce myself, hear what the particular issues are – and continue my campaign to introduce business recycling. Did you know that it is illegal currently for a business to take its recycling to a council recycling facility? If we are serious about recycling – we have to bring businesses into the loop.

Next project is to knock on lots of doors in to make sure that I spend time in each ward meeting residents face to face. Of course, I do all this anyway during the term time – but it is just not possible to do it enough – and recess presents that opportunity. I like meeting people – and there is nothing like turning up at someone’s house out of the blue if you are the MP.

I go to many meetings and neighbourhood assemblies etc during the term time – but there are many, many people who will never go those sort of gatherings (unless a very specific issue affects them). Each year I carry out with my colleagues a residents’ survey which gives me a very good picture of what is going on (or not going on that should be going on) in each street of the constituency – but there is still nothing like meeting people face to face.

And then alongside all this there is making sure the office is up to date and that my paperwork, emails etc are all up to date; writing a number of articles; reading papers and documents that I have slung in a ‘when I have time’ pile; preparing and time-tabling campaigns for the next term and also doing more work to make sure two new-ish local groups continue to take off and prosper. These are MailWatch (residents concerned about the state of local postal services) and the Darfur Action Group (campaigning for more action against the genocide in Sudan).

All the time of course other local issues will carry on ticking over and calling on my time I’m sure – such as making sure people know what health service changes are proposed and are properly consulted on and the futures of Fortismere School, Parkland Walk, Hornsey Hospital and Hornsey Town Hall – plus two short work trips – three days in South Africa looking at AIDS projects and a short trip to the USA on foreign affairs and international development business where I plan to meet with UN and World Bank officers.

And that’s that. It will be over in a whoosh!

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007

I think my local GP practice in Highgate is fantastic. In one form or another I have been going there since I was a child when it used to be at the bottom of Jackson’s Lane – even before it moved to North Hill. I can walk to it. I am familiar with it. And instinctively I don’t want to have to go anywhere else if I am ill! And I would guess that most people feel the same about their local GP practice; or if they don’t and have problems with their local GP practice (or don’t have one) – what they want is a high quality local practice.

But that doesn’t seem to be our government’s vision for health services. The London Plan proposes super-duper special hospitals for stroke, heart attacks and major traumas to save lives. Then there are a series of rationalisations around district hospitals, A&Es and what health services are offered where. And the bit that I wanted particularly to bring to your attention and which will be part of a consultation exercise by the Haringey Primary Care Trust is the plan at the local level. The Government envisages five or six ‘polyclinics’ for Haringey.

The first polyclinic is likely to be the long, long awaited, new health facility to be developed on the site of the old Hornsey Central Hospital.

The positive version of this is that these new polyclinics would have fantastic facilities for diagnostics, chiropody, midwives, sexual health or whatever is needed locally plus GP practices to serve up to 50,000 people. In other words – you go to one place and get a wide range of services delivered then and there, without having to shuffle between GP and hospital with all the delays and travel that involves. Fast, expert service that means people don’t have to be committed to hospital – that all sounds to the good doesn’t it?

But there could be another side to the polyclinic story. To be viable each polyclinic will need to have a large GP practice on site, so that could mean GP practices being centralised. Will larger practices be a good thing – with all the problems of them possibly having less of the human touch, not seeing the same person twice in a row etc.? And depending on which practices end up moving to the polyclinics, and where the polyclinics are located, will lots of people end up finding that their ‘local’ GP practice now isn’t so local after all?

The result of introducing polyclinics could be centralised, distant and out-of-touch services – as we have seen in so many other areas of public service, such as the police (though, to their credit, many in the police now want to return to a greater number of truly local points of presence).

That is why we, the users of our health services, need a proper say on polyclinics – not a consultation that takes no notice of our views or is so vague in what it asks that we don’t really get to judge the possible outcomes.

One of the key questions to me is: what percentage of people going to a GP currently can be treated by the GP and what percentage need referring on? The higher the proportion of people who need referring on to another service, the more attractive polyclinics are, where those other services will often be right there on the same site. Now – you would have thought this sort of figure would be a key part of the polyclinic decision-making. But when I asked the local health trust couldn’t tell me – so I shall put down a Parliamentary Question on this.

Polyclinics may be a brilliant way forward for our local health facilities – but I want us all to have a proper say in any proposed re-organisation of our facilities and both our GP practises (who operate as small businesses now and who will make their own decisions on any changes to their set-ups) and the local Health Trust need to involve us – the users of the service.

Interested in reading more about polyclinics? Read the postings about polyclinics on my blog.

An earlier version of this article first appeared in the Highgate and Muswell Hill Flier.

So once again our land is under threat from terrorists. How are we going to stand together across our different cultures and beliefs to see off the terrorists who would steal our lives and our freedoms?

I was watching Andrew Marr’s Sunday morning program recently – and he was interviewing Prime Minister Brown the day after the attack on Glasgow Airport, and two days after the two London car bombs. Andrew raised the issue of the thousands of websites that pour out bile against Western girls who go to night clubs – calling them slags and whores. I was appalled. You see, I think it’s fair enough to find such girls’ behaviour objectionable and to be reviled by their activities – although I totally disagree – in as much as it is a free country and if young women want to dress scantily and go to nightclubs and drink alcohol – that is their right to do so. And whilst I will defend the right of those who believe these women are somehow the spawn of the devil to say so – my tolerance stops when there is actual harm or incitement to harm them, to murder them.

I find many things offensive about religions that subjugate women. I find it appalling that a woman’s life can be dictated by a man. I find it incomprehensible that women tolerate such absolute dominance. And I will always campaign and highlight the need for equality – and I hope one day that no woman will be subjugated to a man’s will – and that goes right across every faith, culture and race I know – including white Christians. And I would intervene in a flash if such relationships became violent.

So when terrorists attack nightclubs as symbols of decadence – I say they should look at themselves. Any religion – or perversion of religion – that claims a right to kill people because they find their behaviour offensive is where my tolerance stops. And it is not as if those who declaim against the supposed decadence of Western society are particularly pure or clean themselves. A quick quiz question: who was it who superintended the widespread growing of illegal drugs for Western consumption and made profits out of it? Answer – Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. So much for their claims to being virtuous; the truth is that they are the very same amoral grubby profit seekers they attack others for being.

Now, this country is phenomenally liberal – and that’s why it is such a great place to live. That’s why it is a place of asylum. That is why those who are persecuted by the murderous bastards that seem to inhabit and threaten in so many parts of the world come here to find peace, shelter and safety.

Enough is enough! There must be no hiding place nor shelter for those who would murder us – whatever their perverted rationale. And to anyone who might mistakenly believe that there is any justification for such attacks – then I say they are as guilty as those who perpetrate these hideous murders. I don’t care if you disagree with the war in Iraq. I disagree with it too. We will not be beaten by extremists whose warped views cannot succeed through democratic means – who have to blow up people because they can’t get them to agree with them. That is the true mark of the frailty of their believes and their continued failure.

(c) Lynne Featherstone, 2007