Visited St Pancras to see how the new Eurostar terminal is progressing.
LCR showed us the works. The opening is on November 14 – and I have to say, it is a very exciting new station. I love that they are using the high level standard and model of New York’s Grand Central.
So we will see a station the like of which we haven’t really seen before in this country. Proper boutique shops (like in airports), farmers’ market with fresh produce, eateries and the longest champagne bar. And trains!
Catching up on some of the media coverage from whilst I was away, I’ve been reading the claims that some of the cash for peerages accusations being thrown at Labour’s fundraiser Lord Levy have been tinged by anti-Semitism.
Now – there’s a whole heap of evidence that there is something very rotten at the heart of Labour over money and peerages, so I approached this story with a fair degree of scepticism.
But there is one point that has struck me as valid – why do we keep on being told Lord Levy’s middle name? It’s Abraham – and so telling us his middle name in a news report emphasises, deliberately or not, that he’s Jewish.
By comparison, we don’t get told Ruth Turner’s middle name. Actually – strictly speaking this isn’t true, we do – because Ruth is her middle name. But her first name is Caitriona and – just as Abraham = likely to be Jewish, so Caitriona = likely to be Irish.
But whilst “Michael Abraham Levy” is a commonly used phrase, “Caitriona Ruth Turner” is only rarely used. (Try doing a Google search on the two – I just did and whilst “Michael Abraham Levy” gets 884 hits, “Caitriona Ruth Turner” gets just 5. Levy gets more coverage in general, so that explains some of the difference – but not the 884 to 5 margin).
The BBC website is a good example of this lopsided behaviour. Ruth Turner’s profile doesn’t tell us anything about her family background and doesn’t use Caitriona, whilst Lord Levy’s profile uses “Abraham” and “Jewish”. So – why does being Jewish matter to the BBC whilst being Irish doesn’t?
And it’s not just the BBC – Michael White in the Guardian uses Abraham too but Ruth Turner is just Ruth Turner.
All a bit rum. I’m very loathe to leap to the assumption that people in the BBC and elsewhere in the media are being deliberately anti-Semitic, and I’d like to think that even a charge of inadvertent anti-Semitism can be explained away, but I’m stumped for a decent explanation for the repeated use of “Abraham”.
To be fair to both Michael and the BBC, they’re by no means the only people I could have highlighted, but they’re the ones with examples most easy to find when sat at a computer with an internet connection. Perils of having big popular websites!
But anyway, I’ll email a copy of this blog posting off to Michael White and Mark Thompson at the BBC and let’s see what they say.
Haringey Liberal Democrats have called for Labour-run Haringey Council and Homes for Haringey to provide adequate information to their tenants following an admission of the delay in funding for the Decent Homes programme.
A letter received from the Chief Executive of Homes for Haringey, the Council’s ‘arm’s length management organisation’ (ALMO), has shown that the Decent Homes work promised by Labour to be completed by 2010 will now be delayed until at least 2012/13. However, tenants have not been notified of the delay either by Haringey Council or Homes for Haringey.
The Decent Homes initiative aims to increase the standard of all tenants’ homes in social housing by 2010 but, as Haringey Liberal Democrats have highlighted, this has turned into a broken promise by Labour with the postponement of tenants’ home improvements until 2012/13.
Cllr Catherine Harris, Liberal Democrat Housing spokesperson comments:
“The Labour government have tightened the purse strings and it is the people of Haringey that have to suffer.
“It is totally unacceptable that Labour have, once again, let down tenants, who are entitled to see improvements in their homes, having voted in favour of the ALMO. I would call on the Council and Homes for Haringey to have a open and honest discussion with residents to show why the funding has been delayed.”
Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green adds:
“Week in, week out in my surgery I hear so many heart-breaking stories of families in my constituency waiting for decent home.This news is going to be blow for all those people who will have to wait even longer for just even the basic standards.This is total disgrace.”
Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey & Wood Green, this week gave the thumbs up to Wood Green based water supplier Quench Direct, which was awarded the renowned ISO 14001 for its environmental management and ISO 9001 for quality management systems.
These ISO standards are important milestones for this local young business and are vital for growth in allowing the company to compete for major contracts where these ISOs are often required.
Lynne Featherstone comments:
“It is fantastic to see a local business flourish in this way and the importance they have given to assessing the environmental impact of how they do business.I know it has been a considerable investment for the team and I very much hope they reap the rewards they deserve.
Small businesses are the backbone of our local economy offering so much potential in terms of jobs and regeneration so I take my hat off to the Quench Direct team and wish them every continued success.”
Labour’s national DNA database-by-stealth has been in the news again, though there is also good news that some decent ethical oversight of the whole exercise might be put in place. Typical however of Big Brother New Labour – do the database first and worry about whether it’s the right thing to do or not afterwards!
You can take part in the Lib Dem campaign on this issue on our DNA database website.
I’ve been thinking – dangerous for a politician! Out of all the briefings I’ve had since becoming the Lib Dem Shadow Secretary of State for International Development about all the injustices and challenges of the developing world, the one that jumped out at me was the plight of children – orphaned, displaced and traumatized, sometimes for generations.
When war wrecks a child’s life – be it the murder of their families, loss of their home, displacement or injury – they are left vulnerable and fragile. Where natural disaster, war or protracted conflict rages the world rushes in with medicine, food, water and shelter – obviously. But there is something more that is needed – even at that first point. It is education.
So instead education often stops – and this stores up huge problems for the future. So I’ve just launched a new website http://www.teacherswithoutborders.info to consult on some ideas around this problem. Do take a look and send in your views – thanks!
This Sunday I’ll be appearing again on The Westminster Hour: Radio 4, 10pm.
So – without going into the detail of every briefing and every person we met – my overarching and enduring feeling on the Middle East was that it was the ordinary people – both the Palestinians and Israelis – who were being let down by the lack of resolution and by leaders who could not move forward.
Yes – the Palestinians are being squeezed by the choking off of funding and the brutality of the wall up against their windows – but it is equally in Israel’s long-term interests to find a solution. The paranoia of living armed to the teeth does them no good either – albeit their discomfort is more emotional than physical when compared to the poverty of the Palestinians.
With complex and teetering political situations for politicians on both sides of the Middle East divide, it needs brave men and women to take this forward and the United States and the world community to hold both sides safe whilst forging the two-state solution.
Looking at the increasing settlements and the ‘wall’ it seems a forlorn hope. But it cannot be beyond the wit of humankind to create a step-by-step process towards a viable state for Palestine and a secure state for Israel. I remember growing up with the Berlin War, the Cold War, apartheid and the IRA – all of which seemed insoluble and intractable – and all of which are now changed states.
And there is a window of opportunity as the regional powers shift and vie for their communal interests. This is a period when the moderates in the region need each other – and the hardliners of Syria and Iran with the help of Russia and China can perhaps be persuaded to work with the world community rather than against it.
A couple of other interesting bits and pieces from the three days: seeing a group of Darfurian refugees visiting Yad Vashem (the memorial museum to the Holocaust) – refugees from one genocide learning about another genocide. Very moving. And then coming out of breakfast at the hotel on the third day and bumping into – Paddy Ashdown. It’s a small world – as they say. He was making a film about Jerusalem with Channel 4!
This 
morning I held my surgery – with a break in the middle to attend the awarding of a certificate to a local business in Woodside. Quench Direct is a small local company that was receiving the award. I was delighted to go to celebrate with them and see the certificate presented – especially as this small company employs some local people – and I am a great fan of small business enterprise. Very impressed with Denise and Denver who are absolutely lovely, enthusiastic and clearly going to make a huge success. The company supplies water stands and water – and is looking for more customers. If you are interested in learning more about them then you can contact them on info@quench-direct.co.uk
Then in the evening I zoomed off to the Civic Centre to celebrate Newroz – the Kurdish ‘new day’ which is a lovely annual event. Well – I say event in the singular – but there are in fact many celebrations with Mayor Ken holding one next Tuesday, and on April 1st a huge one which I hope to go to. I spend a fair amount of the time trying to persuade members of the community to get involved in the political process – whatever their politics. I am always keen to inveigle people from communities – especially women – into politics.
Busy week so only just catching up on blog now – first there was a visit to the Middle East and then it was the Trident vote. So here goes with my retro-blog, part one…
I am not going to do a blow by blow account of my two days in Israel and one day in the West Bank. So instead here is an over-arching view of the impressions and information gleaned from the trip.
I was travelling with my Liberal Democrat colleague, Michael Moore, Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. We were going under our own party’s steam as we wanted to avoid any possibility of pressure from either side.
We had briefing after briefing after briefing – from military intelligence, to politicians, to journalists. On both sides, almost everyone we met had a different view of the situation.
What is virtually indescribable is the intensity with which each person we met gave us their briefing – as if a desperate plea for us to see it from their perspective. And the emotional intensity of such onslaughts was draining as for those three days I was caught up in the Middle East’s cauldron of troubles.
I learned a huge amount. This is my first trip as International Development spokesperson, and whilst I will constrain my travel to those areas where I believe it is important to visit personally – it was clear to me on this trip that for situations like this one, there is very little to compare with seeing for yourself and hearing for yourself – from both sides.
My key request for the trip had been to add in a visit to a school to see what aid was doing in terms of education in conflict zones – which I have made my priority for campaigning for the Lib Dems. Save the Children therefore arranged for me to visit the Kalandia School which serves the Kalandia Refugee Camp in Ramallah. They had arranged one of a series of workshops being carried out with a local partner – Pyalara (Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights Activation).
The class I met was a group of around thirty 15 year old girls. The idea was to empower young people to get their voices and issues heard. Two women from Pyalara were trying to get the girls to understand how to use the media to raise their voices about their problems. In an earlier workshop they had identified their biggest problem as early marriage. It stopped their opportunities and their futures – but culturally it was very difficult to speak up on the issue. Three of the girls in the class were married already. The workshop went through how to identify the key story, how to raise it in the media and how to campaign to get the issues around early marriage into the media etc.
It was such an eye opener in terms of how bad things can be, how much needs doing and how vital work is being done through aid agencies to build the capacity for the future.
More to follow soon … but in the meantime you can see some photos from the trip on my Flickr account.
Lynne Featherstone 