Archive for September, 2008

Future of recycling

30 September, 2008 at 10:32 pm · Filed under Going green ·Tagged , , , , ,

I popped out in a rainy lunch hour today for a pleasant lunch with Alexis Rowell.

Alexis is a LibDem councillor over in Camden, where he chairs the Council’s Sustainability Task Force. So as two environmentally-friendly folk, we met at the Duke of Cambridge, Islington’s award-winning organic pub. (Two lots of swede-topped fish pie, a lot nicer than it sounds).

Roll back fifteen years, and Alexis & I were neighbours in Highbury; we reminisced about the bad old days when Islington had a Labour council, our rubbish was collected every three weeks, and the borough recycling service consisted of about 6 bottle banks!

It’s changed enormously since then: Islington residents now have weekly recycling collections for glass, paper, cans, cardboard and plastic bottles, plus the brown bucket service for food waste. Even our garden waste gets taken away for composting (although it’s actually greener to compost it in the garden if you can).

And that’s part of the challenge. Recycling has moved from a minority pursuit to a mainstream universal service – operated on an industrial scale, to meet ever increasing government targets. That’s great for diverting waste from landfill; but the scale of the operations and the distances involved, don’t always feel very green. It’s certainly a far cry from people and communities taking responsibility for their own waste, close to home.

Alexis is a critic of the co-mingled recycling scheme that’s now the norm across London boroughs (of all political complexions), including both Camden and Islington. That’s the system where you put all your paper, cans etc in together, and they get sorted at the other end. I’ve seen how it’s made recycling easier for Islington residents and how the amount of material diverted from landfill or incineration has soared as a result. But I also think we need to start thinking now about the 3rd generation of recycling schemes.

My thinking? It will be much more focused on carbon neutrality. Combined with rising fuel prices, the ‘material miles’ will be a much bigger factor in our recycling choices. There will be more personalised packages of recycling services, reflecting people’s different lifestyles. More recycling will be integrated into shopping – as with the way your old washing machine now gets taken away when you buy a new one. More charities will offer niche recycling schemes – like recycling mobile phones for Refuge. And there will be more sophisticated individual incentives for recycling: carrots for citizens rather than sticks for councils.

Changing the way central government treats councils is key to this. Labour talk about localism and innovation and personalised services – but their central control-freak targets have the opposite effect.

The other thing that needs to change is petty party politicking about recycling. To change recycling services needs long term planning investment. If opposition parties (of whatever variety) pick holes in the service for the sake of it, it undermines the effort we all need to make to continue to improve recycling.

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100 concerts in 5 days at Kings Place

30 September, 2008 at 7:07 pm · Filed under Movies, media, music & culture, Neighbourhood ·Tagged ,

The new Kings Place development celebrates its opening this coming weekend, with a festival that runs from 1 to 5 October.

Kings Place has a mix of offices (including the relocated Guardian Media Group) and restaurants, but its centrepiece is the arts complex, including a new home for the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

So it’s appropriate that they are celebrating the opening with 100 concerts in 5 days.

And as the indefatigable Sophie Talbot of the Kings Cross Access campaign points out, it’s a great opportunity to highlight the need for keeping some access to the rebuilt station from the Islington side.

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Islington Community Credit Union

29 September, 2008 at 1:52 pm · Filed under Consumer, Neighbourhood ·Tagged ,

The country’s best shadow Chancellor Vince Cable has pointed out that the collapse of Bradford & Bingley is part of the sad end of the traditional mutual building societies.

Credit Unions can provide safe, local alternatives. Islington Community Credit Union is a member-owned not-for-profit savings-and-loans co-operative (a mo-nopro-sloco?) dedicated to encouraging savings rather than borrowing.

Members can invest up to £10k, which is 100% guaranteed safe. The members (investors) agree an annual dividend rather than getting a particular interest rate. The Credit Union also provides low-cost and flexible loans to members at times when they have to borrow.

Originally the Credit Union was set up by Islington Council staff for their fellow employees. But thanks to a campaign by Highbury Lib Dem councillors Laura Willoughby and Terry Stacy, it has been extended to benefit residents too.

So now anyone living or working in Islington or the City of London can join and become a member of the credit union. You can find out more on their website.

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Willetts rewrites history

29 September, 2008 at 8:29 am · Filed under Local history ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Just heard David Willetts on the radio, touring Birmingham. He was arguing – bizarrely – that the experience of Victorian Birmingham under Joseph Chamberlain shows how the Conservative party is relevant today (and he had a totally uncritical hearing from Evan Davies).

David Willetts pointed to Chamberlain’s powerful role as leader of Birmingham council; how the King Edward foundation opened more schools when their original one was a success; and how the Bourneville chocolate firm, founded by the Quaker Cadbury family, built social housing.

That’s all true. But none of it has anything to do with the Conservatives.

Chamberlain could do great things in Birmingham because the Council was a real power in the city. They ran water and gas, health and housing. The Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s deliberately reduced and removed council powers. This has continued under new Labour. Responsibilities that were once given to councils have been taken away and given to unelected or semi-elected bodies instead. And these bodies are accountable to central government, not local voters.

The King Edward Foundation is interesting and unique. It is associated with 7 schools in Birmingham, 2 independent and 5 state grammar schools, the latter with the same ‘voluntary aided’ status as Central Foundation in Islington. Willetts argued that opening more King Edward schools meant the foundation was not exclusive. However they are grammar schools, which entrench social advantage rather than spreading it – as Willetts himself said last year. He got sacked from the education portfolio for sharing that uncomfortable truth with his party.

As for social housing, another item on today’s news is about the shortage of affordable homes. It was the Conservatives who introduced the ‘right to buy’, and prevented councils building new homes to replace those sold. Again, that’s continued under new Labour. And it was Conservative deregulation of financial services that led to first boom, then bust, in the mortgage market, one of the causes of today’s financial crises.

It’s true that Chamberlain started as a Liberal and ended as a Conservative. But Willetts glossed over that everything he was praising came from Chamberlain’s days as a Liberal. Chamberlain joined the Conservatives over the Irish Question (as divisive then as Europe is now) not social policy – and then split them, leading to the Liberal election victory in 1906.

Frankly it’s insulting to Chamberlain to try and claim his Liberal achievements for Cameron and Co. There’s more than a century of difference between Chamberlain and today’s Tories.

ps Chamberlain also has an Islington connection. He lived in Highbury (there’s a plaque on his former home in Highbury Terrace) and named his Birmingham home ‘Highbury’ in tribute.

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Honouring pensioners all year round

28 September, 2008 at 9:12 pm · Filed under Campaigns ·Tagged ,

Westminster Council is promoting the idea of Silver Sunday; a day to honour older people, in the same way that Mothering Sunday honours mothers.

As their website explains, “It is proposed that Silver Sunday will take place every year on the first Sunday in October, this year on Sunday 5th October. The date will complement the newly adopted United Nations ‘Older People’s Day’ initiative, to take place in the first week in October, and the launch of Age Concern’s ‘Grandparents’ Day’, both of which aim to involve young people across the land in celebrating and valuing our older people.”

No harm in that. But pensioners deserve more than an annual greetings card moment. And that needs action elsewhere in Westminster.

This year marks the centenary of Lloyd George’s “people’s budget” and the foundation of the pension. For the first time, the state would guarantee an income for people too old to work, giving financial security for the poorest pensioners.

Since then, that pension has been eroded. First the Conservatives broke the link with earnings; then Labour reneged on plans to let women pensioners catch up on years of missed earnings. It’s shameful that women and carers, who take time out of earning for themselves to care for others, get penalised by Labour’s pension rules.

At our recent party conference, Liberal Democrats celebrated the achievement in setting up the old age pension; but we also looked forward.

We are demanding a restoration of the link with earnings; a citizen’s pension based on residency not just contributions; and the end of mass means-testing of pensioners, so people get the full benefits of the extra savings they’ve made.

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Hell isn’t other people

28 September, 2008 at 8:20 am · Filed under Church & faith ·Tagged , ,

As a liberal Christian, I struggle with the idea of hell, that is of absolute, permanent, irredeemable damnation.

I believe, or at least I want to believe, that God will forgive and accept any and all of us, as long as we let Him. So my vision of hell is not a Bosch landscape of cauldrons and leaping devils, but a self-imposed exclusion from the presence of God.

And letting God forgive us is not about living by a long list of do’s and don’ts (mostly don’ts) but Jesus’ commands to love God and love our neighbour as much as ourselves. In other words it’s about being outward-looking, engaging with others, getting involved.

The opposite, self-exclusion, self-obsession, not getting involved with others because one’s self-esteem is too high or too low, letting prejudice get in the way of relationships, that’s the road to hell. Hell isn’t other people; it’s the fear and loathing of other people.

Which brings me on to the sin thing. I’m not a Catholic, so I’m a bit hazy on the RC theoloy of sin. I thought the only unforgivable sin was despair, because if you despair of forgiveness, you prevent it happening. So I’m not sure where the ’seven deadly sins’ fit into that.

Then I came across this piece, not by a theologian but by an American activist, on the seven deadly sins. It’s well worth a read, if only for the photos, and makes the point that these sins – lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, anger, envy, and pride – are all about self-obsession rather than being outward looking.

I’m not claiming that people of faith have a monopoly on unselfish behaviour. There are lots of caring non-believers (some of my best friends…..) and there are certainly some selfish people who claim a faith.

But it seems to me that if you reject other people, don’t care about the wider world, or think it revolves around you, then it doesn’t matter whether you believe in hell or not: you’re already there.

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Publish and be bombed?

27 September, 2008 at 11:03 pm · Filed under Church & faith, Movies, media, music & culture, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , ,

I’ve just heard the horrific news of the attack on Martin Rynja’s home in Lonsdale Square.

The assumption is that Martin was the target because his publishing house – Gibson Square - is to publish The Princess of Jewel of Medina a novel about Mohammed’s child bride. The novel has already attracted pre-publication controversy after Random House backed out.

This attack is so shocking – and depressing. As a Christian, I demand the right to express my faith in any country on earth; and I defend the right of other faiths to do the same. But as a liberal I know that the same freedom that allows me to worship, also allows others to express views that may offend my faith. Freedom is indivisible, bombs unacceptable.

We can’t pick and choose the rights we defend; and we can’t pick and choose the views we allow to be heard. The best way to fight extremism is with words, not swords. Witness the humiliation of the BNP in last week’s Hampstead by-election.

Extreme Islamists who turn to violence in the face of different views betray the peaceful majority of Muslims. Those who use this as an excuse to condemn all Muslims or all people of faith are just as extreme and just as wrong.

I cannot do better than quote Martin’s own words: “In an open society there has to be open access to literary works, regardless of fear.”

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Tea time in Clerkenwell, TV time at home

27 September, 2008 at 10:02 pm · Filed under Liberal Democrats, Movies, media, music & culture ·Tagged , , , ,

A very pleasant early evening in Clerkenwell, with some of my wonderful campaign team.

They work so hard all year round delivering leaflets and knocking on doors, it’s great to be able to sit down over tea and cake to say thank you. The team range from mums with infants to decorators and social workers; the issues raised from the US elections to carers, the internet, and climate change.

Clerkenwell is associated with history, radicalism and a strong sense of community: all qualities well in evidence in the Lib Dems.

Then home for a rare night in. Strictly Come Dancing (my tip: Gary Rhodes), Who Dares Wins (lots of yelling at the telly) and Casualty. Licence fee well spent!

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London Overground cutbacks?

27 September, 2008 at 2:48 pm · Filed under Consumer, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , ,

It seems that Transport for London are already cutting back on major projects, now that Boris Johnson is in charge.

The upgrade of the North London line is something local rail users have been needing for years. The line is heavily used, but has a bad record for delays and over-crowding. So the decision to bring the North London Line under TfL as ‘London Overground’ and upgrade its tracks and signals sounded like good news. But now there are reports that the work is being scaled down. The PR claims it’s to hit the Olympic Games deadline (something that doesn’t seem to have applied to other schemes, like Crossrail); but the small print makes it clear that at least part of the change is that TfL thinks elements of the original scheme are unaffordable.

In particular, it looks as if the tracks west of Caledonian Road & Barnsbury station, towards Camden, will not now be upgraded. That’s bad news for Islington passengers who were hoping travel west on the line would be improved.

Meanwhile Caroline Pidgeon, with other GLA members, is urging Boris to find the funds for the next stage of the East London Line from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction. The idea is to create an orbital railway round London, including the North London Line.

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Legal aid cuts hit Islington

27 September, 2008 at 1:07 pm · Filed under Campaigns, Consumer ·Tagged , , ,

The Times reports that Clerkenwell-based solicitors Hickman & Rose are quitting legal aid work.

Hickman & Rose are one of the leading human rights and criminal justice firms. The Government’s legal aid cuts – which I raised at Lib Dem Spring conference back in March - are really beginning to hit.

Lib Dem MP Alan Beith, who led the Parliamentary scrutiny of the reforms, warned that “a Treasury-driven approach is being taken, and it may be highly damaging to our legal aid system“.

Legal aid guarantees access to justice and is a fundamental human right. If the best firms withdraw from legal aid work because the Government funding doesn’t add up, then that access to justice is at best limited – and at worst denied altogether.

Gordon Brown claims to be angry when people are treated unfairly. But it’s his Government’s policy that’s causing this injustice today.

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