The hotel manager warned us. He said (and please read with a deep south USA drawl for proper effect): “Dontcha aw-ll wear any of yos jewellery and dontcha aw-ll carry any bags. If you is mugged givem yo ca-ash and dontcha aw-ll argue none.”

Having hired a babysitter for our three year old – which is a pretty daring thing to do in a strange country – my husband and I set out at 11pm down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans to hear Warren Zevon.

It was a fantastic night, strolling through the heart of Tennessee Williams country it felt just like it was meant to. The cast-iron, steamy scenes of Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sprang to life. And no harm befell us.

Having spent days staring unbelievingly at the devastation that has now visited that incredible city I was reminded of my sojourn there 18 years ago.

The lawlessness: was it always there, the nasty underbelly of a sub-class? Or do good people turn bad when survival is the name of the game? Or is it both?

I doubt whether I would have any qualms about looting for food and water if my choice for my family and myself was loot or die. And if there was no law and order and we were threatened and I had a gun – would I kill to protect my family? Or would my civilised upbringing kick in? Hard to tell until it happensbut I have always believed that civilisation is only skin deep.

Hurricane Katrina has raised some hugely challenging questions in her stormy wake. And her winds are still blowing – not just through the corridors of power in Washington as people struggle with some of the issues so brutally exposed by her destructive savageryand the collapse of the levees. (I had always wondered what that line in Don McLean’s classic meant – drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry).

New Orleans and the Mississippi have seen flooding before and this particular catastrophe was meant to be catered for in disaster plans, tested out only recently. Yet we were left with the pictures of piles of unused buses and coaches whilst nearby those who couldn’t afford their own transport were left stranded and struggling – and often dying.

Given that London is a flood plain for the most part and that the weather the world is experiencing appears volatile and threatening, we have a lot of work to do to make sure that our house is in order before we look down our noses at the Americans.

Shocking too has been the racial divide – so many of those left behind black, so many of those troops, police and officials white. And so many of those officials touting guns. This wasn’t the aftermath of a terrorist attack. New Orleans was not a city at war. But the scenes of armed people looked more like a scene from war-ravaged Beirut.

Whatever the mix is of fear between different groups of society, a gun-loving culture and desperation born of disaster that triggered this outpouring of weaponry, it is a shocking commentary on the state of America.

So when we turn our thoughts to our troubles here perhaps we need to recognise what lies beneath. We see eruptions born of discontent from time to time – a riot here, a bomb there. Communication, action, engagement, respect and hope and a feeling that we all matter – that is what every citizen has a right to. The words these days are good – stakeholder, partnership, engagement, social inclusion – but the reality, whilst not on the level of the disenfranchised of New Orleans, is still at danger levels.

If I was a town or a small town – I would want the government to stay a million miles away from me. I would take their money – but I would want to develop local schemes by local people.

What I have witnessed in the name of sustainable housing provision in London and proposed housing in London is a travesty of all the warm words that cascade so easily from Labour’s lips.

At the pan-London level – the Thames Gateway will deliver the Government’s housing targets at a stroke as a city the size of Leeds is plonked down but the level of planning or vision is appalling. More than that – it is absent.

There is no vision – let alone a sustainable vision – of the type of jobs, transport, development that would make this turn into the exemplar project it could be.

There is no master plan – this is no Milton Keynes. Just boroughs with a combined UDP that parcels up land for development piecemeal, with nightmares of traffic generation as the hundreds of thousands of residents make their traffic laden way into town for employment.

In my constituency, Hornsey & Wood Green, we deal with the warm words but crap reality of Mayor Livingstone’s London plan – where we are meant to support 19,000 new homes in the next 15 years.

And as for sustainable – what I see on the ground are the poorest standards of design, making high rise prisons, using the poorest quality materials and with no proper infrastructure to support the developments.

It’s like the Emperor who had no clothes. The Mayor doesn’t see, or more likely care to see, what is being done to those who are poorest and worst off.

So if I had one message – it would be about quality of design, quality of concept and quality of materials. The built environment is vital in terms of spirit and aspiration – and those most in need of being able to lift their eyes above the daily miseries are those who are worst treated.

I don’t think it matters whether it is a small town or a large metropolis – in the end it’s about human beings who are just trying to make their way home.

Trying to define what being British means is a bit like our constitution. It’s unwritten – but you kind of know what’s what, almost by instinct and practise – or at least we used to.

And that’s part of the problem we face.

For the first two thirds of the 20th Century being British was – mostly – empire, Protestant and monarchy. (To any Scots, Welsh or Irish in the audience – apologies for the list that’s coming. I know it’s really an English list, but – hey – that’s part of being English too, forgetting those other nationalities).

We had a stable class system where we all jolly well knew our place. You could tell class by accent and we aspired to the Queen’s English as aired by the BBC. Highfalutin standards set by British film inspired our behaviour from a stiff upper lip, public school and Biggles, to Upstairs Downstairs, nannies, fair play, having one’s dander up and so on.

Wimbledon and cricket, leather on willow. Billy Bunter and Goodbye Mr Chips. Miners with dirty faces. Dick van Dyke’s terrible rendition of cockney – gawd bless you sir. Pearly Kings. Giving the wife the pay packet on a Friday and going down the local for a beer with your mates. Football on Saturday and fags weren’t even known to be dangerous.

A genuine belief that taking part was more important than winning. The Women’s Institute and the army of women in dreadful shapeless floral prints who make jam, have expansive bosoms, buy material at John Lewis to make their own curtains Loving eccentrics And being nice to pets.

As the Victorian English novelist Charles Kingsley put it:

What we can we will be
Honest Englishmen
Do the work that’s nearest
Though it’s dull at whiles
Helping, when we meet them,
Lame dogs over stiles.

So we hanker after that idealised past – at least the older generation do. We expected the waves of newcomers to our shores to adopt our sense of fair play and tolerance, to adhere to our rules – written or not – and above all – to understand that we are a democratic country where if we do not like what our government is doing – we protest – peacefully – and we gather the people to our view and make our point through the ballot box.

But that is a generation that is ageing. Families are more flexible. Empire and war are no longer are no-longer underpinning a common, communal heritage. It’s less about fighting the Germans (though not perhaps as much less as it should be!) and more about beating the Aussies at cricket, and rugby too! Just a shame about the football…

Even with no significant immigration over the last few decades, these social changes would have brought about a great change in what it meant to be British. But that extra ethnic mix adds a further twist.

So to the serious heart of today’s debate – tacking integration and alienation after 7/7.

The shockwaves that hit us when we learned that British lads hated us enough to blow us up indiscriminately sent us into panic mode.

We seem to be on a psychotic and urgent search for instant answers and instant solutions. The soul-searching and breast beating of what have we done wrong? And the fear – who are Muslims really loyal to? Their home and neighbours or some other calling? Only a few extremists these days doubt that Catholics can be British – revering a Pope in Rome doesn’t stop loyalty to this country. But many do harbour such doubts and fears about Muslims.

And that fear is heightened by terrorism.

But whilst issues of integration and alienation are important, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that they will have more than a minor impact on terrorism in this or other Western countries.

Because whilst poverty, racial discrimination and alienation are all important issues for ethnic minority communities in Britain and undoubtedly segregation is growing dangerously untrammelled – it’s not from the poorest or the most marginal where the terrorists appear to have been coming from.

They’re generally rather more middle class than that.

It’s become a common story – the relatives, neighbours and colleagues of a terrorist speaking out about how normal and helpful they were, how they took part in their local community and seemed healthy and well-balanced. Because it’s not from the most marginal or most hard-pressed communities that the terrorists come.The 7/7 bombers were not making a statement about community or poverty.

So fighting terrorism, and casting and testing all policies just in that light is not enough. What is to be done?

Well part of the answer is to be firm in our values. We live in a democracy. No one group – be that Muslims, Jews, old people, people with disabilities – whatever – even if every last member of that group disagreed with the government – if that group does not form a majority of people in the land or can gather other to its views – has any right to disagree by means other than peaceful protest or political campaigning. Full stop.

Another part is to be realistic about our impact on the world. Tony Blair’s first statement after the bombings were that they had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq.

Mr Blair, that was one of the most stupid statements you have made. Iraq may not have been the direct causal link – but it sure made for a good cause to rally extremists around and recruit to the fundamentalist cause.

A third part is to welcome the debate within the Muslim community. Should more preaching in English? Why don’t more Mosques carry out more outreach work and play a part in the whole of the local communities in a way that so many local churches do for Christians and non-Christians alike?

And of the wider community – why still the reluctance of so many to face up to the racially divisive impact of police tactics like thoughtless stop and search? Why such a readiness to fund military action, whatever the bill, but still such reluctance to fund tackling poverty in our urban areas?

The good part of Britishness – at its most base level of live and let live and adherence to the laws of this basically good hearted country is under threat – and we need to find ways, soft measures not new laws, to open up and share all that is good in this land so we all enjoy the benefits of democracy.

Thanks to all of you for coming and to Liberal Democrats Online for inviting me to speak here tonight for what has now become – much to my surprise! – my specialist subject.

Not that long ago, I would have laughed at the idea of me being invited to hold forth on blogging – or in fact – anything to do with computers and technology.

So I have to confess – blogging wasn’t my idea originally. It was a friend of mine, who knew I liked writing. And my reply was – that part of it which is repeatable – that:

a) it would have to be between the hours of 2 and 4 in the morning – given I was already working all the hours there are, or

b) happy to do it but an equivalent task would need to go to give me the time.

Needless to say – nothing went and I did it!

For me blogging (once I got going) is therapeutic. I love writing. It lets me think about what I have done – and let’s be honest – what I want to say about what I have thought and what I have done.

And it’s my voice – without a middle-man. No newspaper reporter, no campaign manager, no one wanting their angle, their interpretation with a sound-bite quote from me.

In a typical month, I write around 12,000 words. When you think that one of the party’s typical 4-page constituency wide newspapers has only 2,000 or so words, you can see why I like the chance to talk about things at greater length than normally possible.

Of course – you need people to want to read it. And – outside of being written therapy for politicos – it is also an incredibly valuable tool for campaigning and winning.

I would say that on-line campaigning and blogging played at least as important a part in my win in Hornsey & Wood Green – where a 10,614 majority over me converted into a win by 2,395 for me – as did press coverage.

Not leafleting however – that still reaches the parts other methods cannot reach.

During the election almost as many constituents read my blog as cast postal votes this time – which gives some idea of the reach and potential of on-line campaigning

I now am in regular email contact with 6 times as many people as I was in 2001 – of course – that is not just blogging but also e-campaigning.

I believe that e-campaigning will also become common, or more appropriately – a must do part of campaigning as will blogging. Local people will expect their candidates to have websites and blogs – so they can see what they are up to.

Anyway, I started a blog now two years ago as a good way of marrying my love of writing with political communicating.

As the last five years have rolled on, more and more people seem to use the net as a common way to find out information and communication – so it is vital for a politician (that is, someone who wants to represent and listen to people) to also be present in that milieu.

I cannot tell you how many people I meet and am introduced to say to me that they read my blog.

In fact it is a bit freaky sometimes. I remember one of the two UKIP members of the London Assembly (UKIP then before they switched to Veritas, and now something else again) whenever I bumped into him would start talking to me about an issue that I was involved in. I couldn’t understand at first how he knew so much about my local activity. Of course it was the blog – but he must have studied it, learned it off by heart. It felt marginally like having a stalker – because he literally knew my every move.

However, one of the bugbears of communication is the theoretical desire of the public to be able to interact on every thing with everyone.

It’s very common to criticise politicians for ‘not getting it’ and failing to use the internet to interactively communicate with the pubic but I believe that interactivity comes with a high cost – in terms of time taken to deal with comments and messages which come back – often from the same small group of usual suspects.

So my blog doesn’t have a comments section. On the evidence I’ve seen so far for candidate blogs, particularly as elections near, this form of interactivity actually nearly always becomes just a soapbox for a small minority to shout – often mindless and repeatedly. Comments work well on some blogs – and good luck to those who have such blogs.

But there’s a particular problem with candidate blogs as polling day nears. So I’m not condemning commenting across the board, but people who want to comment on things on my blog find me pretty easily through one means or another.

More generally, it’s pretty easy to get contact with an MP if you want to, but if you don’t want, to it’s pretty easy to blame the MP for not getting in touch with you.

So – just to put my blog into perspective in terms of a campaign tool – particularly during an election. My webmaster tells me that something like 5,000 people a month – different people – look at my blog.

He told me this during the election (and actually traffic doubled from this level during the campaign) – which was scary as made me realise that I wasn’t just writing for myself!

So – I don’t see blogging as some miracle cure for the ills of politics. But it is a useful way of communicating with more people.

Journalists too pick up a huge amount of stuff from it. And some very powerful journalists and political editors are regulars. I was reasonably mortified to find that my weight lost during the election was regularly reported in the Evening Standard – a la Bridget Jones Diary.

And my opponents logged on religiously – searching for any of my words that could be used against me. It’s a dreadful business. If you keep it so bland that you say nothing – no one will read it. So I do take risks. I do say what I think.

I think one of the keys to successful blogging is the personal slant in a blog – which includes a large slice of opinion – which opinion may upset some.

But it is also a way of getting out a message when I felt the truth and justice had been missing from one or other issue.

I had the opportunity to put my version out there – which as a candidate (and we are much maligned) I found very satisfying.

But be warned – blogs have a life of their own and can get you into trouble.

For those who have heard this story before – I apologise – but…

I was at the London Assembly before becoming an MP – and I remember a lunch with media. Very nice guy sat next to a member from another party who could bore for Britain. When I wrote my blog I mentioned this – and that I could see his eyes glaze over within a few minutes.

There were only about nine of us at thisit wasn’t long before I got an email from the Head of the Assembly Press Desk saying he knew who I meant.

I thought – so what – no one reads the blog except geeks.

Wrong!

As I came up in the lift to the seventh floor of City Hall and got out – said member got in – and as the doors closed I heard the word ‘cow’ emanating from the descending lift.

So of course – I put that in the blog too – never to be forgiven. But then she failed to get re-elected to the GLA.

I have had corporations ring me to say they don’t like what I have said about them or individuals in the company and will I change things – no I won’t! And it can get pretty heavy. In this instance I was commenting on the sacking of the Chief Executive of Metronet. He had appeared in front of me when I was Chair of Transport at the GLA to answer for the tube performance. He was appalling. Admitted it was his responsibility that there were engineering overruns every Monday, etc. A couple of days later – he was sacked. Relating this in my blog – and I though being funny – I said something like so if you are appearing before me, be afraid – be very afraid: look what happened to John Weight.

Not appreciated by Metronet – and then some. But stick your ground or your blog won’t be worth writing.

This is my work – and no one – unless it turns out I’ve got my facts wrong can persuade me to remove or add anything!

So – that bit is fun.

I don
‘t see how any politician who really wants to engage with their electorate will be able to afford not to have a well-designed and well kept up to date website (if you are not going to do it well – better not to do it) and a blog.

Blogs are no good if you don’t do it with enthusiasm and do it well.

Blogs are no good if they are boring, i.e. – do not put in every detail. I got up, put on a suit and took the tube to work. When I arrived there were three messages on my phone from the council officer who I had asked to look into waste collection in Somewhere Street. At work I had six voicemail messages waiting so the light on my phone was flashing at 0.5 second intervals. Yawn.

Blogs are no good if the politician themselves doesn’t write it. Well – I don’t think it works.

It has to be of interest. It has to say something that wouldn’t be said in another medium. It’s not like a FOCUS.

And it’s no good on its own – if you are not doing all the other things you have to do as a candidate from raising media profile, to campaigns, to literature.

I don’t know what percentage of my swing was due to e-campaigning and my blog – but I do know that over the last two general elections – I have overturned a majorityLabour lead over me of 26,000.

I have no doubt that without e-campaigning and my blog – it simply couldn’t have been done!

As liberals, the sanctity of freedom is absolutely fundamental. However, “freedom” is a concept and state prodigiously difficult to define.

In relation to the current international event – in particular in relation to Afghanistan and Iraq – we seem to increasingly measure freedom in the ability to elect your own government or political system.

George Bush (don’t worry, I’m not a particular fan) boasts about the continued growth of global freedom and democracy – ye ha! But before our government – and that of the U.S. – is able to preach about the need for democracy we need to decide how fair and representative our system is at home.

However perverse it may sound, the House of Lords is in fact more representative of the British electorate than the supposedly democratic House of Commons! Of the political members: Lab 48%; Con 36 % and LD 15%, comparing reasonably favourably to 35%, 32% and 22% at the General Election. Certainly rather better than the House of Commons does on seats.

So in a way the Lords is fairer than the Commons. There’s just one small, tiny problem – no elections to the Lords. Perhaps not the best form of fairness in a democracy …

And in a strange way, the Lord’s success corrodes our democracy. Here we have an unelected house, yet its make up better reflects public opinion than the Commons. It’s in the Lords that you find most of the meaningful votes (i.e. the ones which aren’t simply stitched up by the government’s whips). It’s in the Lords that on most topics you find the most genuine and well-informed debate on issues.

Not looking good for the Commons so far is it? And hardly a great advertisement for democracy when the non-democratic performs so much better.

It makes the Lords not so much the last bastion of freedom as a running advert for the drawbacks of our Commons democracy.

The answer of course is not to populate the Commons with those recently de-housed hereditary Peers from the other place, but rather to heed the lesson and seriously improve our democracy.

That’s why we need to reform the first-past the post voting system so that we have a voting system which produces results that generally reflect the wishes of the people.Without reform, Britain will continue to undergo long periods of rule by a single party without a popular mandate, leading to political leadership that is arrogant, out of touch and disengaged from the people of the country.

Remind you of anyone?

But in the interim, it’s crucial to have a House of Lords that acts appropriately as a balance to the flaws of the Commons.

It doesn’t do a bad job of that. Not perfect, but pretty good in the circumstances.

Civil liberties is an area where the Lords have, in many ways, surpassed the House of Commons.

Take the recent example of the ping-pong game on the Prevention of Terrorism Bill between the Lords and the Commons.

The resistance in the Lords allowed for a debate and scrutiny of such things as control orders and house arrests and this indirectly lead to – some – safeguarding of civil liberties.

Perhaps just because they do not have to worry about being re-elected the Lords can focus more on the longer-term impact of issues and on the minority views on points.

But the Lords also has a wealth of technical knowledge – and its members expect the government to be able to make a coherent and expert case to get its laws through.

What a contrast with the Commons. One small example – the government wants to do more to tackle the carrying of imitation firearms. An admirable intent. But it wants to increase jail terms, and I’m dubious this will really achieve anything other than a few short-term positive headlines for Labour in the tabloids. So I asked Charles Clarke what evidence he had that longer jail terms would work in this area? His answer – oooh, there’s been lots of speculation. That was it. Speculation. Nothing else.

Now, that’s not the sort of sloppiness that is so much harder to get away with in the Lords than in the Commons.

With the speed this government is introducing contentious new legislation, the Lords is needed to even more than in the past. In these tinderbox times, we must not rush to judgement.Draconian legislation made in haste is often poor legislation that removes civil liberties at a stroke – so easy to remove – so hard to regain. The House of Lords has therefore become even more important.

As a new MP, I sometimes find it hard to stop and breathe let alone get to grips with a new piece of legislation – there is just not enough time! The legislation that is being thrown at us – with no end in sight – is not only extremely complicated but also lengthy and voluminous.

Often badly drafted, ill-conceived, not thought through and very often similar if not exactly the same as existing legislation unused by the powers that be.

Remember the fuss over anti-terrorism deportations over the summer? First it was the law had to be changed. Then it was that old laws could be pressed into use. Then it was, ‘oh, the current laws are fine after all.’ And now – well who knows what next week will bring.

Labour hate it when the Lords makes them stop and pause for breath – but on the evidence of this and many other examples, a few more such pauses are just what we need.

Now, before this starts to sound like an advert for the virtues of the House of Lords, I must highlight its obvious failings. As Tony Blair famously noted, there is a natural conservative (small c) and Conservative party bias that comes in the House of Lords.

On issues such as gay rights and fox hunting it leaves a lot to be desired. It obstructed the change of age consent for homosexuals as well as the abolition of the unnecessary and pernicious Section 28.

The Lords are known as socially conservative – and real people have suffered as a result.

Clearly the house of Lords has acted illiberally in certain respects but it has also helped to preserve the liberal country that as Liberal Democrats we seek to protect.

Although it may have acted sensibly in the recent passed as a revising chamber for the Government’s pernicious legislation, its fundamentally unfair nature must not be overlooked and as Liberal Democrats we must seek a solution that allows a combination of election and expertise.

Until then, the Lords will be the last line of defence against the Big Brother tendencies of our illiberal government – it is essential we seek to design a democratic successor that includes the Lords’ most enlightening principles.

So – the House of Lords has, ironically, become the last bastion of freedom for some of the freedoms that we hold most dear – but that is a sad consequence of a failings of our democratic systems.