Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 2 hours ago
The Government’s promise, that it would close a loophole in our law so that in future our citizens will get compensation if blown up in terrorist attacks abroad, has been dropped. This wrong was to have been righted in the Queen’s Speech and would have been included in the Crime and Security Bill. However, the Ministry [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 8 hours ago
Here's my latest column for the Muswell Hill Flyer and Highgate Handbook: Finally I managed to get Transport for London (TfL), Haringey Primary Care Trust (part of the NHS) and me together in the same place to bang heads together about the need for better bus links to the new Community Health Centre on the old [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 21/11/2009
I was invited to St James' Church, Muswell Hill, to talk to a new group that has formed to engage in a variety of topics - this one being about politics generally - and politics and religion. In our modern world - new challenges arise as we battle with where the right place is to draw [...]
Matt Davies (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
There is a fight brewing on the future of Whittington Hospital Accident & Emergency Department. Local Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone and my Haringey Lib Dem colleague Cllr Nigel Scott are on the case already - as you can see from Lynne's blog post , there is a real threat that proper A&E services at the Whittington will be withdrawn. Having had to rush Owen there in the summer when he had appendicitis,...
Merry Warriors (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
The wheels may grind a little slow, but they do go somewhere, eventually. I contacted my MP, Lynne Featherstone, about the case of Michael Yon, an indepedent reporter who has done great reporting with both the British and American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is where I blogged about this issue before . Earlier this year, he was embedded with UK troops. At the end of his embed, he accused the...
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
I was shocked by the leaked letter (see my earlier post) that showed the Whittington would lose it’s A & E department under all four options being put forward for the reorganisation of health services in what is called London North Central (LNC) Sector of the Strategic Health Authority (Islington, Camden, Barnet, Enfield and Haringey). I [...]
Mark Reckons (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
Watching the debate in the House of Commons yesterday about the Queen's Speech I found my jaw dropping at the rudeness of Gordon Brown. Watch this clip where David Cameron is trying to get Brown to respond to the question of why there was nothing about MPs' expenses in the Queen's Speech: Twice Cameron offers to give way so that Brown can clarify the position and twice he declines. My problem however...
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
Cross-posted from Lib Dem Voice: Women now have the vote on the same terms as men. With the majority of the electorate female - and indeed the majority of actual voters at the last general election female too - what's there left to worry about, one might ask? Well - with only around one in five MPs [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
The Government is proposing as one of its key pieces of legislation in the Queen's Speech to bring forward a Bill to impose a new legal duty on the government to eradicate child poverty by 2020. Noble in aspiration maybe - but it makes a mockery of serious government. Laws are not about warm words - or [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
I will literally fight them tooth and nail if they try and close or even reduce our emergency A & E services at the Whittington - which they (NHS London and the Government) clearly wish to do. If you read the four options on the first letter sent out byRachel Tyndall, CEO for N. London Central NHS which [...]
Puffbox.com (Free subscription) | 17/11/2009
My friend / colleague / client Mark Pack gave a presentation at last week's Social Media 09 conference on 'Liberal Democrats and social media': in fact, it was a case study on the work we did to relaunch Lynne Featherstone's website. Although they don't make much sense in isolation (nor should they), here they are [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 16/11/2009
The news this morning that police had arrested a 52 year old, married man as a suspect in the case that has defeated them for years was of particular interest to me. The crime he has been arrested for is the rape and violence perpetrated on over a hundred older women aged between 65 and [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 15/11/2009
It's Mitzvah Day today. Mitzvah is the Hebrew word for 'good deed' and Muswell Hill Synagogue had about one hundred of its congregation out doing those good deeds today. The Rabbi, David Mason, joined parents and children at Stationer's Park planting tulips, daffodils and crocus bulbs around the base of the trees. In February - it [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
Broke my toe on Thursday morning rushing out door to get to engagement (but did nothing about it except hobble and moan)so hobbled to British Association of Social Workers conference where they had invited me onto a panel to talk about my experiences during Baby P. What was lovely was the amount of social workers [...]
Lynne Featherstone's Parliament and Haringey diary (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
I moved an amendment at Committee stage of the Equality Bill which would make it against the law to discriminate on grounds of caste. The Bill moves to protect a number of 'protected characteristics' such as sexual orientation, disability, race, age and so on - but not caste. The Government would have none of it. As [...]
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