Posts Tagged Jo Shaw

Not Stupid!

17 March, 2009 at 10:37 pm · Filed under Going green, Movies, media, music & culture ·Tagged , , , , , ,

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On Sunday night, as promised, I was part of the record-breaking premiere of the Age of Stupid at Islington Vue, one of over 60 cinemas showing the film simultaneously.

I went with fellow candidate Jo Shaw, along with other friends of Angel resident Betty Harris, one of the film’s 200+ funders. To quote Jo, “it’s a difficult film to watch at times, dealing with the effects of climate change and the limited time we have to get to grips with our carbon emissions. Basically scientists are pretty much agreed that we’ve got until 2015 to get our act together, or it may be too late to prevent catastrophic climate change.”

It’s an inspiring film because it doesn’t just portray the devastation caused by climate change but shows how we can, still, change it – provided we act together and act now. Do we want to be suicidally Stupid, or Not Stupid.

The film avoided being too one-sided or preachy. Pete Postlethwaite plays the only fictional role, a man looking back and asking why we didn’t act when we could. But most of the footage is real people in the world now: and their lives show both the terrible impact of climate change and our oil-dependent lifestyles, but also the complex human stories involved.

The film is helping raise awareness of the urgent need for action by government in the run up to the Copenhagen summit. Being at the premiere we also saw the live Q&A with the film’s director, producer and star. They praised the government for the Climate Change Bill, but condemned the decision to go ahead with expanding Heathrow; and if the Kingsnorth power station goes ahead, they are asking people not to vote Labour again.

What else you can do:
– go and see the film! It’s on at Screen on the Green at on Sunday 29th March, Tuesday 31st March and Thursday 2nd April, all at 2 p.m.
– sign up to be Not Stupid
– come on the Stop Climate Chaos march on 5 December.

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Ladies who lunch, dine and twitter

21 February, 2009 at 10:40 am · Filed under Family & friends, Liberal Democrats ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Like most people, I had rather an abstemious January, don’t seem to have been out for a meal for ages.

So it’s been nice to have two meals out in a week, both catching up with other women in politics.

Being a candidate is odd enough (not a regular job to start with, plus by definition you’re the only one in your patch), and being a woman candidate is rarer still, so we do lean on each other. Sometimes literally after an evening out…

Last Saturday lunchtime I caught up with Glasgow North PPC Katy Gordon, who was briefly in London. She came by the Islington Lib Dem office (by lucky chance we’d been having one of our clean-up mornings, so she saw it at its best: we do have carpet under those boxes) and then we went off to lunch at Browns on Islington Green. As well as Katy, there was Bunhill councillor Ruth Polling, and Holborn & St Pancras PPC Jo Shaw (plus Jo’s & my partners).

Our menfolk are both Scots in exile, so there was as much talk of the rugby as of Katy’s campaign to save her local primary schools from closure. Although I thought we’d have to change seats when it emerged she’s a Celtic fan (Richard prefers Rangers). The lads sloped off to watch the rugby while the rest of us were enjoying pudding. Well, we do live the stereotype occasionally.

Browns, like Waterstones next door, is on the site of the old Collins Music Hall, formerly known rather splendidly as the “Islington Hippodrome”. (Could be worse: the rather grand Cambridge branch of Browns is in a former VD clinic.)

Then last night I met up with Jo again, with Flick Rea, the doyenne of Camden Council, plus Lib Dem blogger Helen Duffett and rising star Mili Ahmed.

This time we were at the Pizza Express in Kentish Town (bosco salad, lemon sorbet and a glass or two of chianti: not a bad end to the week). It’s a spectacular building, a great semicircle with a high roof and curvy balconies; a bit like eating on a vintage liner or the set of a 30s musical.

Back in the 30s, the building was more prosaic; the home of the North Western Polytechnic, which later merged with the Northern Polytechnic to form the Polytechnic of North London. The Kentish Town site was closed about 20 years ago: the classrooms converted to flats, while the entrance hall and library became Pizza Express.

The other PNL sites in Islington are still going strong as part of London Metropolitan University. With the exception of the Libeskind building on Holloway Road, they are not exactly architecturally distinguished. I enjoyed my postgrad library course at Ladbroke House; but I don’t honestly think anyone would ever pay to eat there….

Anyway, we had a fun evening discussing among other things Twitter. Helen is an accomplished twitterer, I’ve only been tweeting for a couple of days, but keen to encourage others. So I was very impressed to find @CamdenJo online by the time I got home.

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Boris: clean up your act, and our air

10 February, 2009 at 10:11 pm · Filed under Campaigns, Going green, Health, Neighbourhood ·Tagged , , , , ,

Years ago, when I worked at the Sports Council (then based directly opposite Euston station) one of my athletic colleagues used to run along to Regent’s Park each lunchtime, do some circuits, and then jog back to the office in a healthy glow.

That is, until he read the report that the benzene levels in the air along the Euston Road were way above World Health Organisation recommended levels. If it was a workplace it would be shut down. As it is, we all have to put up with it.

(Any smokers huddling for a puff outside pubs and offices on the Euston Road probably qualify for some kind of award for surviving the multiple carcinogenic intake).

There may always be heavy traffic on the Euston Road, but that doesn’t have to mean heavy pollution. The proposed Low Emission Zone would have helped achieve that. And you think that Boris would want to help; after all cyclists are in the frontline when it comes to suffering from vehicle pollution.

But no. As my colleague Jo Shaw reports, “Last week while everyone was struggling to get into work (or not) Boris Johnson cancelled the third phase of the Low Emission Zone, which was proposed to come into force in October 2010, and would have required smaller vehicles (vans, taxis etc) to clean up their act a bit.”

Is this the first reported case of burying bad news in a snowdrift?

Anyway, we were having none of it. So this lunchtime – armed with a ‘Clean up your act, Boris’ banner and assorted face masks – there we were: a crowd of cyclists, mums, community activists and Lib Dems laid our lungs on the line, and protested in the middle of the Euston Road (on the traffic island helpfully provided by TfL).

Residents around Kings Cross have quite enough to put up with, without filthy air too. 200 kilometres of inner London roads woefully fail European minimum standards for pollution – including Euston Road and Pentonville Road. More than a thousand Londoners die early each year because of the effects of air pollution.

Diesel engines in taxis and vans are the main causes of toxic particulate pollution – this aggravates asthma, and causes cancer and heart disease, and other health problems. Environmental campaigners highlight that Euston Road has one of the highest concentrations of these pollutants in the area.

Added to the congestion, we have taxis idling outside Kings Cross & St Pancras station, diesel-powered trains inside – and a toxic canyon of diesel bus fumes up York Way. Small wonder that residents want a safer, cleaner way to get from Islington to the redeveloped Kings Cross.

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