My year in Tweets

Twitter, it seems to me, is like an online diary, and when you look back at what you’ve tweeted it can serve as an aide memoire of the year that’s just gone. How else would I ever have remembered that at Easter I ate a slice of Simnel cake that confused my tongue, or that I started the year by making a ‘to do’ list, getting scared, and looking at Twitter instead? (Actually, I could’ve probably guessed that one). But you catch my drift: little, insignificant details of life, that would be lost forever, are preserved for posterity.

Naturally, the year up till May 6th (election day) was pretty much preoccupied with canvassing, leafleting and generally doing everything that might, just might, result in Green councillors getting onto Haringey Council for the first time ever. January saw me injure my back (I have never felt pain like it, and hope never to again). Consequently I spent two weeks lying on my back, making frantic ‘phone calls to fellow Haringey Greens, drugged up to the eyeballs on a potent mix of Tramadol and Valium. “Go on without me!” I wailed. “Canvass Inderwick Road! I need Woodstock Road done by next week!”

Soon I was back on my feet, albeit gingerly, getting soaked to the skin one night, complaining that I was entirely spherical the next due to excessive fleece wearing antics. The joys of canvassing alone in the dark, in the rain, with a torch in my mouth. Ah, sweet memories.

February saw me attend Green Party Conference in North Finchley, but a bus ride from my abode. I mused how nice that was – better than Blackpool. I spent my time at conference mainly talking tits, a subject I have become a bit of an expert on. (Translation: we passed the Breastfeeding Policy, and later in the year I would help run a ‘Keep Haringey Breastfeeding’ Campaign, which even saw me demand that Nick Ferrari of LBC look into his non-existent soul to see why boobfeeding so disturbed him).

I also had a bit of fun asking questions at Full Council Meetings. Will Haringey 'do a Kirklees'? No. Will Haringey do some good stuff for LGBT History month? No. Will Haringey follow the recommendations put forward by the London Assembly Environment Committee re: street trees? No, no, and thrice no. Now pack up your little bag and go home, wannabe councillor. I had much fun asking ‘supplementary questions’ which had little to do with the subject I was meant to be talking about and giving people a good laugh. Well, I mistook Haringey Civic Centre for the Comedy Club, what can I say? Fun times.

Every bizzare conversation and encounter that I had whilst canvassing is documented on Twitter, by the looks of it. I would have forgotten some of those gems if I hadn’t tweeted them. For example, on March 14th a voter galloped up to me, grabbed my arm and said “Excuse me, are you Lynne Featherstone?” Adopting my best helium-enhanced voice, I retorted “Indeed I am! And I think you should vote GREEN in Stroud Green!” (Actually, I didn’t say that at all. I think I just looked very confused, having been mistaken for a 60ish year old Lib Dem millionaire).

March saw me scrape rubbish from the cold earth with my bare hands at Granville Road Spinney, joyfully noting that the Lib Dems were out leafleting at the same time, but that ‘the pitchfork beats the leaflet, my yellow adversaries.’

As the elections fast approached, I decided to enlighten the Twitterati with ‘Cope’s Campaigning Tip of the Day.’ Starting with the priceless advice that one should always wear an interestingly-coloured nail varnish when leafleting, to make watching your hand do the posting more interesting, I continued to proffer utterly useless advice on a daily basis right up to polling day.

April dawned and I went canvassing with a cat, was asked out on a date on the doorstep by a woman called Syd (I declined, and lost a vote, no doubt), and took a rare trip out of Haringey, over the border into exotic, unknown Camden, where I was mightily impressed by Natalie Bennett’s performance at the Camden Square Neighbourhood Association hustings.

Late April, and our leaflet designer, Nadia, was talking about being ‘kissed by the creative muse’ as she was designing our ‘’We Can Do It! “ ‘eve of poll’ flyer. As election leaflets go, it was a corker and should probably be in an ‘Election Leaflets Museum’ if such a thing exists.

Voters continued to ask me difficult questions, such as the man who kissed my hand and demanded to know whether I was a ‘respectable woman’. I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t even have my breakfast in a café in Crouch End without someone telling me that the first thing they’d seen that morning was “your face on my doormat.” I humbly apologised.

Election day dawned, and my tweets remind me just how bloody terrible I was feeling. Hardly any voice left, temperature soaring, aching all over and consequently off my face on cold remedies. Knocking-up was interesting, as I wasn’t sure what my name was by this point.

Off to the count we crawled, and sure enough, although we had more than doubled the vote in Strouders, we’d not done enough to get councillors. 16 months of hard slog came to an instant end, and I retreated under my duvet, coughing up phlegm the colour of Green Party day-glo posters, I record delightfully. What a truly luscious individual I am. Even more depressing than my snot was the news coming to me via twitter of the loss of all but two of our councillors across London. Like every other Green, I had to repeat to myself for, ooh, 6 months, “but we have our first MP. We have our first MP…”

Next up I was applying for jobs, and getting myself all hot and bothered about my unemployability. Then I decided to be less bothered, possibly because I couldn’t face any more rejection – sob!

Instead I devoted myself to being a Proper Mother and taking my daughter on an endless assortment of edifying day trips. Margate (depressing if characterful ), Broadstairs (ice cream parlour…), Hastings (Funiculaaaar!), Eastbourne (count the mobility scooters), Whitstable (oysters – mmm…), Sandwich (because I liked the name), Deal (because it was near Sandwich). In short, we had FUN, which is something that had been put on ice for far too long.

I visited Norfolk for a week , where I made it my mission to eat crab every day. I succeeded in this, so hurrah for some belated success. Back in London, I got involved with the fantastic Transition Crouch End, where I met a rather nice woman called Tilly. She and I enjoyed rolling tyres at each other in the sunshine (we grew veg, fruit and flowers in the tyres, so there was a point to this activity, I stress).

I did seem to write a lot of blog posts, particularly post-election (lots of posts slagging off the Lib Dems - they've make is so easy), and I even met some people who read my blog, so that was good. (This lengthy post should put paid to that, eh…?). I also had singing lessons this Autumn onwards, and it turns out I have quite a good voice. As I told my singing teacher, Margaret, earlier today, learning to sing has been one of my highlights of 2010.

Well, I think that’s enough about my year. I did some stuff, some of it fun, some of it tricky. I didn’t succeed at some things, other endeavours (crab eating, tyre-rolling, aria-singing) were more successful.

Demonstrating about Lynne Featherstone's Betrayal

Today, alongside other Green Party activists, I took part in a demo at Crouch End clock tower, after our local Lib Dem MP, Lynne Featherstone, betrayed constituents by going back on her pre-election pledge on tuition fees.

I spoke at the demo, where I said that having spent the 16 months running up to the elections knocking on doors in the area, I knew how well-regarded Ms. Featherstone used to be. "She replies to my letters," people would tell me, time and time again. Yes, I agreed, in that respect she is a good constituency MP.

However, this week, in ignoring her constituents and voting for reforms that will price poorer students out of a university education, she has committed political suicide.

The Lib Dems are hoping that we will have forgotten this huge betrayal by the time the next election comes around, but we won't have forgotten. My fear is not that the Lib Dems have damaged their party for good (which they have), but that voters will trust political parties even less than they did previously.

"What's the point of voting?" some residents have said to me, previously. "You're all the same. You say one thing, get into power, and go back on your word." And when it comes to the Lib Dems, they're spot on.

As I pointed out to the crowd today, though, the Green Party have consistently opposed tuition fees and are continuing to do so in the House of Commons, through our MP, Caroline Lucas, who of course voted against the rise in tuition fees this week.

We believe that if the money can be found to bail out the banks and fund an illegal war, it can damn well be found to pay for education.

Featherstone, the fairweather 'feminist'

On a day when there was, to quote Johann Hari, 'shameful massive vandalism in Westminster: the Tories and Lib Dems voted to smash up our universities & chance of poor kids getting on', there was at least one thing to have a bit of a laugh about, albeit a slightly bitter one.

Yesterday there was a women's protest about how tuition fee rises would affect women, outside Hornsey and Wood Green MP Lynne Featherstone's surgery. Ms. Featherstone was asked to comment about this by the local paper. Claiming she hadn't decided what way she was going to vote (she voted for the increase today - surprise, surprise), she added that the women were 'demonstrating in the wrong place' and that 'there is no one more feminist than me.'

(I'll leave a little gap here whilst you compose yourselves...)

(Have you quite finished laughing? Good).

Now, there are lots of people with differing views who define themselves as a feminist. But taking a look at how the cuts will affect women, let's consider whether someone who is a 'feminist' would be happy to go along with these measures...

- CUTS TO JOBS - Two-thirds of public sector workers are women, with women accounting for 73% of the local government workforce and 77% of the NHS workforce. Women will be forced out of the labour market in larger numbers than men and expected to take on the care of loved ones – children, elderly relatives, partners. Part-time and hourly paid jobs in which women are over-represented are also likely to be the first to go. 40% of ethnic minority women live in poverty and this figure is likely to rise as unemployment increases.

- CUTS IN SOCIAL SERVICES AND BENEFITS - women rely on benefits twice as much as men do. For example, cuts in Child Tax Credits, Working Tax Credits, Child Benefit, Housing Benefit and linking pensions to the Consumer Price Index rather than the Retail Price Index will disproportionately affect women. The two most vulnerable groups have been identified as lone parents, 90% of whom are women, and women single pensioners.

So far, not quite fitting in with my notion of feminism - how about yours?

Let's look at Featherstone's latest work as Equalities Minister. Surely she's got to be earning some feministing points there? Er...no. Last week she repealed Labour's plan to tackle the gender pay gap. The Equality Act required businesses with more than 250 employees to publish data on how much they pay women and men. Last week Featherstone announced that the system would be voluntary. Yet in 2008, Featherstone said "a voluntary audit system for private industry is hardly worth the paper it's written on." Quite!

I think, Ms. Featherstone, you need to do a little feminist bedtime reading. I live just down the road - I'll bring some books round. Just say the (f) word.

Fawcett's day in court

I'm just back from the extremely cold protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice, held whilst the hearinge to decide whether there will be a Judicial Review of the budget, called for by the Fawcett Society, took place inside. The Judicial Review was sought because it was clear that the Government hadn't carried out a gender impact assessment before implementing the budget. Women will bear the brunt of the cuts, especially lone mothers and pensioners, with over two thirds of the £8.5 bn cuts in the June budget coming from women. Fair? Hardly. Here's something worth shouting about, and angrily.

The assembled women, including my almost-four-year-old daughter (pictured above with her Green Party placard), made our objections known very loudly, in the hope that the men in wigs inside would hear us.

We await the result of Fawcett's actions, which will very much be a test case for the Gender Equality Duty, establishing whether it is an important new approach to gender equality, or whether it's simply a case of 'business as usual'.

Miliband's Monumental Boob

It must be hard being an MP these days, particularly if you’re a new parent. You can’t claim expenses in the way that you used to do, there’s a pressure to look like ‘we’re all in it together’, and you’ll be grappling with how expensive it is to get together all the baby equipment you need.

Pity then Ed Miliband, who this week was having a walkaround, with the BBC, in Dudley Tescos (you can’t say being a leader of a political party isn’t dead glamorous). Approaching a shelf of baby formula, Miliband commented ‘Yeah, this is the formula we use, Aptimil 0-3 month.’ The BBC camera then zoomed in to the product in question, showing the container very clearly. Aptimil bosses must’ve been punching the air (or maybe slapping the table is more their style, in the manner of the cabinet when they learned of the impending royal wedding…Ugh, what an image).

There’s enough difficulty trying to convince women that breastfeeding is the best way to feed your baby, and that formula can cause all manner of health problems. In 2006 it was reported that the Government were spending just 13 pence per baby on promoting formula, compared by £20 per baby being spent promoting formula by the formula industry.

But let’s look at the facts about formula. Bottle fed babies are twice as likely to die in the first six weeks of life than breastfed babies. Formula manufacturers are not required to log the contents of their product with any body, and there have been many documented cases of contaminated batches.

The last thing we need is a public endorsement of formula, which will only serve to heighten the perception that formula is best and that breastfeeding is something only ‘earth mothers’ would ever contemplate.

Do you know what I’d like to see instead? I’d like to see Miliband’s partner breastfeeding their baby in the audience of the next Labour Party Conference. I’d like no one to make a fuss about this, and for it to be as normal as her sitting there and breathing. Which of course it is. But of course this won’t happen.

In an ideal world, I’d like to see the female leader of a political party – actually, let’s go one further – a female Prime Minister – breastfeeding her baby in the chamber of the House of Commons. Women, as I’ve written before and will no doubt reiterate, are fantastic multi-taskers, and when I was breastfeeding I would regularly be on the ‘phone to the council or the local papers, or would attend meetings, whilst breastfeeding my daughter at the same time. It was a godsend because it kept her quiet and content, leaving me free to contribute as usual.

We’ve a long way to go before breastfeeding is normalised to that extent, but that’s what we must aim for. Miliband’s actions this week were a massive step backwards, and show just how out of touch he is – but I expect the Aptimil van will be rolling up outside his house soon, so at least he’ll have bagged himself a freebie.

Don't get sick in Haringey...

Today I attended the NHS Haringey executive board meeting, and presented a deputation on behalf of the Haringey Breastfeeding Campaign. Before the meeting, we unfurled our spectacular banner on an unsuspecting public - see above photo! Marvellous, isn't it?!

Here's what I said to the board (the most senior three members of which were men in suits, who I am sure are passionate about breastfeeding)...ahem...



"We welcome the review into breastfeeding support in the borough. We have read the report and last week had a meeting with Sheena Carr and Claire Wright to discuss our concerns and our recommended changes to the review.

We welcome the recommendation that NHS Haringey and the North Middlesex Hospital begin the process which will see them accredited as ‘Baby Friendly’, according to the UNICEF model. We would assume that beginning the process would result in actually achieving baby friendly as soon as is feasibly possible. We further welcome the recommendation of training for health professionals which is focussed on high quality outcomes not just attendance of training.

We are however surprised at the report's conclusion that ‘where there are specialists there is a tendency for people to over refer to the specialist service’, and that this leads to ‘staff in universal services’ becoming ‘deskilled’. Having read the draft review we have repeatedly asked for a reference to be included in the review on which evidence this assumption is based. As you will see from your copy of the review there is still no reference to any evidence. We would ask you to disregard this recommendation until sound evidence has been provided to back up this conclusion.

The review further highlights the absence of breastfeeding support skills of universal health professionals. Although 11 out of 15 staff who responded to the survey had received training within the last 5 years, and 8 out of 15 felt they were ‘very’ confident about giving advice, 9 of the 15 scored poorly on basic breastfeeding support questions.

We believe that the post of the specialist midwife needs to be re-instated until universal health professionals have been trained to a satisfactorily level and there is sound evidence available to prove that.

We also believe that you need to allocate a separate budget for breastfeeding support until breastfeeding rates in the east of the borough have improved significantly. The inequalities in health in the borough, which the review highlights begin at birth (with, for example, 64.3% of babies in Highgate ward being wholly breastfed at 6-8 weeks, compared to 26.7% in St Ann’s ward).

By not investing in specialist breastfeeding support now you are failing women and babies in the east of the borough.

By not investing in specialist breastfeeding support now the national health service will have to pay more money in future.

As the review points out a recent study in the United States found that if 90% of mothers followed the recommendation to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months then the country would save more than 13 billion dollars per year and prevent more than 900 deaths.

If one were to extrapolate the findings of the US study to the population of Haringey, then it would amount to a saving of more than 9.5 million dollars per year (6 million pounds). For each 1% increase in mothers breastfeeding exclusively for the first 6 months – which amounts to 42 women, seeing as there were just under 4,200 births in 2009 - the borough would save an incredible £78, 500 per year.

The study looked at only 10 childhood diseases so in fact the savings and deaths prevented would actually be higher. It did not include deaths prevented from breast cancer, for example. If women in the UK breastfed for an extra 6 months on average then 1000 cases of breast cancer, and hundreds of deaths, could be prevented each year.

In the light of all this we are asking you

• to set a separate for specialist breastfeeding support
• to budget enough money to pay for the entire process of achieving UNICEF baby friendly accreditation
• and to re-instate the post of breastfeeding specialist midwife until the borough is accredited with UNICEF ‘baby friendly’ status."

****


I stayed for the next three hours of the meeting, and here are my observations:

-The PCT will not exist after April. I was concerned in the meeting that there's a real feel of 'we don't know what will happen, and we don't know if we will have jobs, either', so it was as though they weren't sure what they could plan for.


-The breastfeeding campaign presented the case for investing in the borough, as above, explaining how, by investing in breastfeeding support, the borough could save £6m a year. The board didn't respond to this element of the deputation, despite the fact that the focus of almost the entire meeting was on how to save money!


- There was a new 'Interim Chief Exec' at the wheel, one Ian Wilson. He wasn't up to speed on a lot of what's going on (I know he's only been in the job for 5 weeks, so it's not surprising really). At one point, board chair Richard Sumray asked him to comment on something, and Wilson was stumped. Sumray commented "You ARE the executive lead on this..." and Wilson blushed a deep purple. I wonder if he is taking home the same salary as his predecessor Tracey Baldwin (who earned £190,000 pa!) and whether he thinks it is time to accept a pay cut? In the words of David Cameron, we are all in this together...(I am laughing hollowly as I type, dear reader).


- I was shocked to hear that Clinicenta, the medical arm of a construction company, who last year had their north London contracts suspended due to two 'unexplained deaths', are again active in Haringey. They talked about trying to get out of the contract early, but this was for budgetry reasons, not clinical standards reasons.


- The acute sector is where the overspend is, but Haringey, not having any actual hospitals (lest St Ann's, which is of course mostly mental health), has no control over this. I wonder whether there will ever be a day where our borough once again has a general hospital with an A&E. (There used to be 7 hospitals in the borough. Some of these are now luxury housing...).


- There were some concerns expressed about mental health services within the borough, particularly around the treatment of those with psychosis. I wonder what is being done to address this, particularly because the current financial climate means more and more people will be feeling the pinch, experiencing stress, unemployment, homelessness - all which lead to a decline in mental health.


- I sensed that the board were VERY removed from the health services 'on the ground'. For example, at one point, they mused amongst themselves about what it is that school nurses in the borough actually DO. None of the 18 board members knew. I wondered whether, post-April. the set-up we will have will see the people in charge being more in touch with the service they are running (here's hoping!), or yet more divorced from it?


- There was no sense of planning ahead for the long-term health of residents (as evidenced by the breastfeeding issue). It seemed more that they were in a crisis (financial) and were looking at the least painful ways to cut. Simple as that.

My recommendation, then, is clear: if you live in Haringey, don't get sick.

Community Garden awarded funding!

This morning I joined my fellow Transition Crouch Enders at Hornsey Vale Community Centre in Stroud Green for a spot of gardening. You may recall I helped set this garden up in July, when we had loads of fun rolling tyres and filling them with bin bags full of compost.

The area, which is along the front of the main hall, turned out to be a fantastic growing spot, both sheltered and sunny. We've grown various veg as well as flowers, most notably nasturtiums, which went wild!

Today we had a clear-up and also put in some blueberries, kiwi (that's what I am putting in in the above picture!), and lots of garlic.

We also enjoyed Tilly reading out the letter we received from Capital Growth yesterday, which told us that having being declared one of the 2,012 official Capital Growth site, we've been awarded £500 to use to develop the garden. So next year it will be raised beds and lots more growing potential!

It was good to have a visit from a couple of people from the plot on Tottenham Lane, which I helped start in summer 2009. They've also been declared a Capital Growth space, as has the 'Learning through Growing' project behind Stroud Green library.


http://www.capitalgrowth.org/