Email received: Foreign Office (FCO) (foreignoffice) is now following your updates on Twitter.
Not sure if I should be worried or flattered or both. However if I start updating my Twitter status with advice on international relations, you’ll know why.
More seriously, the use of Twitter to get messages out of Iran, for example, is something that should inform our Government, even if regional media cannot. Iran, after all, has more journalists in gaol than any other country.
On Thursday I spent the day with fellow governors interviewing candidates for the new headteacher at St Andrew’s CofE Primary school.
I’ve been a governor there for over a decade now, and our new appointment will be the third permanent head in that time. Under the leadership of our outgoing head, Michelle Thomas, St Andrew’s has moved from failing its Ofsted to becoming an outstanding school. She’s done an amazing job. So quite a challenge for the new head to follow; to find, as our ad said, a still more excellent way.
So there was much talk of team-building, innovation, monitoring and delegation at the interviews. Or rather, assemblies, interviews, written exercises, presentations and more interviews. The candidates must have been exhausted; I know the panel were…
Every profession has its own jargon; education certainly does. Combine that with management-speak and it can be quite hard work to sort out the good practice from the worthy theory. I think some of the best management training comes via the much-maligned reality TV. Not the human zoos of Big Brother etc but programmes like the Hotel Inspector and Mary, Queen of Shops, where strong-minded women come in and sort things out. A bit like Michelle at St Andrew’s!
Mary Portas has also made a mark in Islington. She overhauled ‘Comfort and Joy’ on Essex Road, now flourishing as ‘Handmade and Found’. Her latest series, looking at charity shops, has even inspired comparisons with working in a Lib Dem office.
BTW I was googling Mary Portas when I found this link to the Telegraph fashion pages. It helpfully points out ‘Mary Portas tends to get many of her necklaces from Mimco www.mimco.com… ‘ Follow the link and you get to Mimco Equipment, who provide belts, chains and collars, it’s true, but for engines not people. So now we have Mary, queen of sprockets.
The Gazette has two of my letters online this week – one on the Bradley Carty walk, and the other on Iraq.
New figures from the Office of National Statistics report that London’s children are the most deprived in the UK.
One in four London children is growing up in poverty, and we already know that for Islington it’s nearer half all children.
The growing gap between rich and poor is not only a terrible failure by the Labour government; it makes society more stressed, less healthy, trusting and secure, than societies where wealth is more equitably distributed. Although it’s arguable that redistribution is the consequence, rather than the cause, of a happier society.
In the midst of this, an invitation arrives from the Rev Chris Brice in Gospel Oak (what a great name for a parish!):
Professor Richard Wilkinson acclaimed author of: “The Spirit Level – why more equal societies almost always do better”
Is speaking in London On: July 5th At: 6pm at St Martins Church Gospel Oak NW5 4NL
Followed by a Question and Answer Session after his talk
ALL WELCOME !
Come and hear about the pernicious consequences on millions of UK citizens of Britain being one of the most economically unequal countries amongst the 23 richest democracies.
Prof Wilkinson has carried out a number of studies on the effects on inequality on health, and the links between inequality and racism – highly topical given the rise of the BNP. It is, after all, just a short train ride from Gospel Oak to Barking.
Gross and growing inequality is certainly bad for society’s health. That’s not to say it’s avoidable. Like sugar or sunlight, it’s excess that’s bad for us. I don’t believe total equality is achievable – and certainly not by means that are acceptable to liberals (or Liberals).
Liberal Democrats are pledged to fight poverty, ignorance and conformity, not inequality per se. But the extremes of rich and poor, and the growing gap between rich and poor, both globally and within communities, undermine the conditions in which liberalism can flourish and breed intolerance. To quote Barack Obama, money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference.
A fascinating picture of Highbury & Islington station nearly 100 years ago here on Flickr.
I won’t write up the history of the station as it’s done brilliantly by various contributors in the notes on the picture. Read and enjoy.
This week is Recycle Week, on the credit-crunchy theme of Let’s Waste Less.
Islington Council has more information online. There are lots of recycling schemes out there, but getting the information to people is crucial.
While were sheltering from the storm in the pub on Monday I had a good chat with the licensee. She has piles of bottles to recycle, and was regretting the limited opportunities for glass recycling from the main trade waste contractors. It doesn’t help that the inevitable government targets for councils are all about domestic recycling, plus business rates go off to the Treasury and don’t cover local trade waste services. Even small firms have to find and fund their own recycling. One option is to use a specialist contractor such as Paper Round.
Meanwhile in the Angel Business Improvement District, there’s a new scheme to collect paper for recycling, starting with firms based in St John Street, Pentonville Road, Penton Street and White Lion Street.
This message has arrived from my Lib Dem colleague Mike Tuffrey, who leads the Lib Dem trio at the GLA:
I have been fighting for two years to get people on jobseekers’ allowance half-price bus and tram travel. So I was delighted when the Mayor of London finally took up my plan.
But I’ve discovered that take-up of the discount since it started in April has been disappointingly low. Just 215 people have applied for this entitlement in Islington. That means more than 1,300 people are losing out.
Lib Dems want the Mayor to do far more to publicise this new scheme. I encourage everyone on the allowance for more than 13 weeks to claim. Go to tfl.gov.uk/discountcard or call the helpline on 0845 330 9876.
This is a great idea. London may be one of the best-connected cities in the world, but that’s no good if you can’t afford to get to your job interview or training course in the first place. So if you are entitled, claim your discount card now!
The Daily Mail is famous for its ‘middle England’ obsessions – from house prices and health to the Royal family – but also has a nasty undercurrent of racism and homophobia.
There’s even a widget to generate your own Daily Mail headline: my current favourite “ARE MUSLIMS GIVING YOUR PETS SWINE FLU?”
Yesterday, their online poll was beyond satire: “Should the NHS allow gipsies to jump the queue?”, in response to reports that travellers can get GP appointments without pre-booking. (As the alternatives would be clogging up A&E or dying in a ditch, it doesn’t seem too crazy to me.)
As Mark Pack reports, someone picked it up on Twitter and urged us all to cast our vote. When last seen, the poll was running at over 90% for YES – before the Mail took it offline….
While we’re on the subject of the Daily Mail, another of their obsessions is ‘Town Hall snoops’.
It was the middle of the Euro elections, so I didn’t find time to write about it then, but this article last month annoyed me. The story says ‘Councils are recruiting children as well as adults to spy on their neighbours’.
Rubbish! The truth, at least as far as Islington is concerned, is rather different. The Eyes for Islington scheme is not about snooping on people; it’s about reporting problems so that the Council can clean them up. It’s about taking pride in our neighbourhoods and responsibility for helping keep them clean. And it’s about encouraging young people to be responsible too. School kids have helped design anti-litter posters and run recycling schemes. It’s all good stuff and nothing to do with snooping. You think the Daily Mail would approve!
I should declare an interest in the Eyes – I launched the scheme when I was a local councillor. So I was glad that the Tribune gave fairer coverage of our Eyes scheme.
There is a debate to be had about council’s ’surveillance’ powers – see Sara Bedford’s piece – but misrepresenting what’s really happening helps nobody.
