Labour run Haringey Council - the truth about the cuts

I tend to keep my eye on the political situations in the areas I have worked for the last decade, after working for Lynne Featherstone MP as her head of office immediately after the 2005 general election for eighteen months, Harinegy is one of those on my watch list.

In 2006 we were just 94 votes away from taking control of Haringey Council, unfortunately in 2010 that goal slipped, but the silver lining was Lynne holding her seat and then going on to become a Minister of State.

Haringey Council run by old Labour for years has never been shy of blaming other people when they have had to make cuts, so this year when they announced they were having to slice £60million from the budget, everyone wondered who's fault it was.

The Labour Councillors blamed the new coalition government.

The Daily Telegraph journalist, Andrew Gilligan decided to look at the books, rather than just believe the hype.

Long-suffering readers of Haringey People, Haringey Council's taxpayer-funded propaganda newspaper, used to know what to expect. Smiling Labour politicians at new Sure Start centres, holding shovels. Happy multi-ethnic children in eco-friendly wigwams. Page after glossy page on how their brilliant council had turned this grimy chunk of north London into a municipal Shangri-La, one composting bin at a time.

Now, however, to the consternation of local residents, Haringey People's world has suddenly and dramatically darkened. Uplifting articles about new fairtrade procurement schemes have given way to vast pieces printed on sinister black backgrounds and illustrated with tottering piles of pound coins.

"The government cuts are a hammer blow to the people of Haringey," says a grim-faced council leader, Claire Kober, in the rag's latest issue. Overnight, it seems, evil Tory cuts have transformed Avalon into Hades.

Photo: Demotix/melpressmen

In Andrew Gilligan's article he really does look at everything the Council published, and then looks behind the closed doors and investigates the figures in great detail, leaving no stone unturned.

Last week, in rowdy scenes, Haringey voted to close four residential care homes and six old people's day centres, halve park maintenance and cut three-quarters of its youth service: hammer blows indeed, at least for users of those services, and a tale repeated across the country as local authorities struggle to come to grips with the spending cuts demanded by the Lib-Con coalition.

The article goes on.

Haringey says the £60 million was their estimate before they knew their full grant settlement, and the £46 million was publicised before some last contributions from Whitehall came in. They insist there is "no question of our having exaggerated the impact of these unprecedented cuts".
Yet the story doesn't end there. According to the council's own budget papers, the cut in its Whitehall grant next year will actually be £27 million – less than half the amount it initially claimed.

So, if the council's grant is going down by only £27 million, why is it cutting £41 million? Well, a few months ago (coincidentally, just as the anti-cuts campaign was getting up steam), a mysterious need to spend an extra £26 million next year, described as a "change and variation" figure, popped up in Haringey's accounts. Without this, the budget would be more or less in balance without needing many cuts.

We asked the council what this £26 million was for. They said it was partly inflation – which you'd think they might have allowed for already – and partly because they expected there to be "increased demand pressures" on their services over the next three years.

Service demand may indeed grow as the economy continues to stutter. The population is also getting older, and the elderly are a big part of council budgets. But, according to its own figures, Haringey is budgeting for 85 per of the "increased demand" over the three-year period to come in the first year alone. And though "changes and variations" are, insists the council, annual events in its accounting process, it just so happens that next year's is unusually large – though Haringey denies front-loading to make the squeeze look worse.

Even ministers admit that a lot of money has been taken away from councils this year, and it seems clear that some cuts have been forced on Haringey. But the actual amount needed is anyone's guess. It could be the council's £41 million. Or it could be as low as £10 million. Local government finance has been more or less deliberately designed – by Whitehall as much as town hall – to be hideously complicated, to frustrate real accountability and to allow everyone to blame everyone else.

On the subject of £10 million, there's one last nugget from the Haringey Council paperwork. As part of its budget process, the council was obliged to assess the impact of each cut. This has been buried pretty deep, but once you find it, it turns out that just under, well, £10 million of the cuts next year – nearly a quarter – are assessed by even the council itself as having nil, minimal or even, in a few cases, beneficial impacts on service users. In other words, it is at least possible that Haringey might have needed few, if any, "hammer-blow" cuts.

But that might not have made such a good headline in the Haringey People.

Well done to Andrew Gilligan to not just believing the hype coming out from Miliband and his cronies across the country.

You can read the full article here as I have only used two extracts.

They have left this country paying £120million per day in interest alone on the debts they left behind, it really is time that they and their councillors in Haringey started taking some responsibility for their actions instead of trying to blame everyone else around them.

My memories of the day London was attacked - 7/7 2005

My day was a weird one on the 7th July 2005, to be fair given the Olympics announcement it was a weird week.
I was now Head of Office and Constituency Organiser to Lynne Featherstone MP and Haringey Liberal Democrats.

Lynne and I had had a good day on the 6th July when the Olympics result was announced - in fact we had been stood in the corridor behind the Speakers Chair when the announcement took place, a rare occasion that cheering happened in the Chamber!

Anyhow, back to 7/7. I'd come into our Norman Shaw office early to deal with casework, parliamentary questions and the like but was due to take my laptop over to Southwark (previous job) so Matt could take EARS off my laptop.

I'd gone from Westminster to London Bridge on the Jubilee line and was halfway up the escalator when they just stopped (afterwards we realised it happened at the moment the first bomb went off). 3 tube staff ran, no, sprinted down past startled passengers.

I continued up and out to Matt, the staff at the top were saying there had been a power surge, so people were just carrying on as if nothing had happened.

After seeing Matt, handing over the laptop and having a quick catch up I headed back into London Bridge but given the fact that the Underground staff were no longer allowing people down onto the platforms and the sheer density of the crowds I headed up to the overground train station and onto a train to Charing Cross.

Still the power surge was to blame.

From Charing Cross I sauntered up Whitehall, still completely oblivious to what had happened although by now there was the sound of sirens wailing across London.

It was only when I got back to our office in Norman Shaw that I realised there had been no power surge but in fact a series of bombs had gone off bringing parts of London to a standstill, but worse, that people had been killed and even more injured.

The eerie sound of sirens then sounded for the remainder of the day, no work was done, everyone in the House of Commons was just sat or standing in silence watching tv monitors in offices and corridors.

Lynne had driven in with one of her daughters that day and all the MPs were trying their best to act normal and strong in light of this terror attacks.  This was made harder because we knew that constituents would have been affected.

As the hours and days passed afterwards this became very apparent and Lynne and everyone in the office put that bit extra effort into those cases I can tell you.

It was a day I will always remember and will never forget those who died or who were injured nor the people from the emergency services who were heroes.

Thank you to the policemen, policewomen, firemen, firewomen, doctors, nurses and paramedics who worked that day including two friends and colleagues - Richard Porter and Brian Paddick - we owe you all so much.

These are my memories of the day London stood still, you can read in The Independent the memories of a series of other people caught up in the day.

Total Politics and Iain Dale - the top 30 blogging MPs

So, another day, another list from Total Politics, in association with Iain Dale.

Although I am hooked, and ready to order my copy of the Total Politics Guide to Political Blogging.

So, here is the list of the top 30 MPs blogs as voted for by more than 1,500 people who took part and voted in the Total Politics Annual blog poll.

Well done to Lynne Featherstone MP (8), Willie Rennie MP (11), John Hemming MP (15), Steve Webb MP (17), Nick Clegg MP (18), John Barrett MP (22) and Adrian Sanders MP (25) for all getting onto the list this year.

A big congratulations to Tom Harris MP for getting the number one slot.

7/7 four years on

My day was a weird one on the 7th July 2005, to be fair given the Olympics announcement it was a weird week.

I was now Head of Office and Organiser to Lynne Featherstone MP and we had a good day when the Olympics result was announced - in fact we had been stood in the corridor behind the Speakers Chair when the announcement happened.

Anyhow, back to 7/7. I'd come into our Norman Shaw office early to deal with casework, parliamentary questions and the like but was due to take my laptop over to Southwark (previous job) so Matt could take EARS off.

I'd gone from Westminster to London Bridge on the Jubilee line and was halfway up the escalator when they stopped at the moment the first bomb went off. 3 tube staff ran, no, sprinted down past startled passengers.

I continued up and out to Matt, the staff at the top were saying power surge.

Afterwards I headed back into London Bridge but given the crowds headed up to the train station and onto a train to Charing Cross.

From Charing Cross I sauntered up Whitehall, still completely oblivious to what had happened although by now there was the sound of sirens across London.

It was only when I got back to our office in Norman Shaw that I realised the bombs had gone off bringing parts of London to a standstill, but worse, that people had died and more injured.

The eerie sound of sirens then sounded for the remainder of the day, no work was done, it was spent watching the news and just standing silently.

Lynne had driven in with one of her daughters that day and all the MPs were trying their best to act normal and strong in light of this terror attacks.

It was a day I will always remember and will never forget those who died or who were injured nor the people from the emergency services who were heros.

Thank you!

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Lost - one marked register. One owner, no history.

Can you believe it?

As reported by the Press Association.

Kirkcaldy Sherriff Court has lost the marked register from the Glenrothes by-election - this is the list of voters who actually voted in the Glenrothes by-election, we don't know who they voted for, just that they voted (when a voter goes into the polling station they are asked for their details).

So, who will stand up for this and admit they have made a major mistake?

Political Parties are entitled to the Marked Register but not this time.

The Labour Government have a record of losing election data as demonstrated from Parliamentary Questions from Lynne Featherstone MP (when I worked as her Head of Office, although not my questions).

The Courier local paper is running the story, as is Guido Fawkes.

I've also bought a piece of land by Heathrow

Greenpeace have bought a plot of land right by where the proposed third runway would be at Heathrow. They are splitting this piece of land between 'beneficiary owners' who don't have to pay anything but will be signing up to show support.

I've signed up - as have Susan Kramer MP, Jo Swinson MP, Lynne Featherstone MP, Sandra Gidley MP and Simon Hughes MP - as have thousands of others.

So if you're interested and want to help stop Gordon Brown's Government embarking on this absolutely stupid decision to build a 3rd runway at Heathrow, visit the Greenpeace site.

I worked in Twickenham for Vince Cable for three years so I know first hand what damage this expansion would do, not just all the obvious environmental arguments, but the increased traffic - the local roads hardly cope now and the increased noise.

I recall the days when Concord used to land and take off, not only could you set your clock by it but the windows rattled and your ears knew about it, now I know that the planes used today aren't as loud as that, but what impact does the constant noise of planes landing and taking off have on the average person who lives within a few miles of Heathrow like my friends and residents in places like Twickenham?

42 days to go.......

First a Happy New Year to both my blog readers, lets hope this year my readership grows.

Yes, it is just 42 days to go or P-42, until I am no longer 39 - enough said, not enough therapy as yet.

Brian Paddick has had another great interview read or listen here. Ken, you have a fight on your hands this time, okay not between you and the Conservatives this time but in fact from the Liberal Democrats. Boris will trip up, he always does, and to be hoest shouldn't he be busy anyway as the MP for Henley, a full time job if being done properly - I should know, I have workrd for three extremely hard working MPs, Vince Cable, Simon Hughes and Lynne Featherstone.

So, on May 1st Londoners will have a choice of people for Mayor, Brian Paddick, who is serious about London and Londoners or Ken who has had 8 years of tax rises and the largest number of spin doctors - including more than Downing Street itself - what an achievement Ken!