Hooray for Crystal Palace!

At last they have announced the 'potential' training venues for the Olympics and thank goodness the National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace is one of them.

It's been quite difficult to find out about this over the last couple of years and my only hope of a consolation prize for our fantastic park being completely ignored as a potential events venue. Still, I reckon that out of the 96 potential training venues in London we, with 20 different sports on offer, have more variety and scope than any of the other training venues.

Now, rather like signing up to a dating (I assume ;-)) we have to wait for some attractive country to come and choose us as their training venue; I wonder what they'll be like...more to the point, how much hanging around the telephone will we have to do before we find out?

What should MPs look like?

Is it really just this?

There has been a flurry of interesting posts on Lib Dem Blogs gender equality in blogging, in the Lib Dems and in general over the past few days; it feels like it has been a bit of a breakthrough for women bloggers, there’s been a definite surge of confidence.

‘Wimmins’ stuff isn’t massively popular on Lib Dem Blogs and so it was nice to see Alix’s posting on Positive Discrimination getting nigh on 40 comments and opening a lot of discussion. I found it really heartening to hear a wide variety of opinions and some of them even chiming superbly with my own. I was especially struck by Linda Jack’s question on who defines the ‘best’ when it comes to candidates’ she says:

“Democracy has its downsides - if a man gets a job for which a woman is better qualified she has redress in law, if, because of the subconscious prejudices of an electorate that sees an MP as a white middle class well educated man, as better than a more qualified woman, she has no redress. This is the difficulty of using the word best.”

I would argue that the problem is less with the electorate, who actually come out and vote more if there is a woman candidate but the ‘selectorate’…the people choosing the candidate in the first place. I don’t think they realise what an electoral asset women are and are unnecessarily small ‘c’ conservative on behalf of the voters in short I think they read voters wrong.

I also think that all the political parties are conservative, when they’ve finally plucked up the courage to select a woman in a winnable seat around how she should look.

When going to Fawcett Society ‘Do’s’, I find myself more often or not talking to women from the Labour Party, as Lib Dem and Tory female activists are pretty thin on the ground at such events. It is fascinating to hear about a completely different cultural approach to gender and I’m not just talking all women shortlists. However, one thing that doesn’t seem to be different is the requirement for female candidates to look a certain way. In the Labour party they all get sent to Barbara Follett for a makeover…it’s known as ‘folletting’.

And so you end up with something akin to this…better…but still not really representative, is it?

The other week I met Johanna Sumuvuori MP, whom I found completely inspiring and engaging and who had definitely never, ever been folletted!! Obviously, she had a super name; in fact, reading her CV was a bit of a masterclass in visualisation – ‘Johanna sits on this committee in parliament, Johanna is the chair of that committee’; I’ve saved it to waft in front of myself in moments of weakness, in the manner of smelling salts.

But more importantly as I looked at her and listened to her speak I couldn’t help but think how much I identified with her. I find it difficult to explain completely but I looked at her and thought to myself that nobody had ever taken it upon them selves to tell that if she wanted to succeed she would need to dress differently, iron out any individuality and for goodness sake don’t do anything to bring attention to the fact you are a woman!!

Somewhere along the lines to Finnish parties have worked out that you can be representative, you can scrutinise, you can sit on and chair committee whilst looking like a young woman in your thirties; any young woman.

Finland use a list system and PR allows one to focus less on the individual and more on the party; no doubt if it were a first past the post system there would be more pressure on individual candidates to conform to a stereotype that is acceptable to the media and party system.

And obviously, I’m not suggesting that the 9 (is it really only 9?) women Liberal Democrat MPs are lacking in individuality or criticising their personal style or anything like that; they dress like business women, like I do. Our female MPs, PPCs and business women like myself do this because not to would undermine our credibility. In fact, even when I’m working at a client’s who have a dress down policy, I go in wearing a suit, just to make sure. But, I admit I was intrigued by Johanna, her style (which would be much like mine, if I was left to my own devices) and her ability to be all this and still have power! Frankly I was pretty envious and briefly wished my mother had had the foresight to school me in Finnish.

I thought to myself how wonderful it would be to be able to just look myself when campaigning to be selected instead of having to dress in a particular way to try and prove that I have the ability to be a good candidate or MP.

But, I also thought what a fantastic role model Johanna is to young women in Finland, who must surely recognize themselves in her and feel far more confident about their ability and right to go forward and represent their party and fellow citizens without losing part of their own individuality in the process. And of course, vote for her…..because I am quite sure that she is an electoral asset.

Crystal Palace Park: the masterplan

I went to a very interesting meeting at the Penge Forum on the LDA masterplan for Crystal Palace Park last night.

The plans for the park look really exciting – I’m particularly interested in the ‘rooms’ and tree planting at the top space (where the park is all scrubby and horrible now), the removal of the massive car park which is just a honey pot for car thieves and vandals at the moment but most of all by the Energy Towers, the glasshouses which might have a café in them and the tree top walk around my end of the park. I am intrigued by the idea of removing the fencing from the park and having it open, a la Blackheath, but only if it is adequately policed. I’m a little disappointed about the vagueness of the plans for the sports centre; the only mention of the Olympics that was made that there would be more money available afterwards and nothing about the potential for the site to be used as a training ground.

If we can get all this funded, it will be so exciting. It will make the park a local, regional and national resource. Such things as the energy towers and the tree top walkway would bring in international tourists – it could become a stop of the London mini-break trail and that would help not just the CP triangle but the economies and high streets of Penge, Anerley and Sydenham as well.

Of course, there is a possible price to pay in that a potential funding stream of £12m will mean that 1 acre of land where the current caravan club is (currently taking up about 4 acres) will have flats built on it and another three blocks of flats will be built on the site of the St John’s Ambulance building and the Rangers big ugly shed on Crystal Palace Park Road. My concern is that some of this land is technically Metropolitan Open Land and then the whole ‘thin end of the wedge’ turns into a slippery slope and before we know it there’ll be no park land at all. If I am honest, the land they are looking to build on is not parkland at the moment, is not really providing good value to Londoners and local people – I just wish it wasn’t MOL.

Frankly I won’t be sorry to see the Caravan site go – far from being any sort of resource for local people it has always seemed to me to be filled with tourists from outside of London getting straight on the No3 bus and heading into town. I’m not sure they spend any money in the CP triangle and certainly not in Sydenham or Penge!

If we can fund the improvements without building the flats then so be it, but only today, there has been discussion on the radio about the affordability of housing and the desperate shortage which is most acutely felt in London. I think, frankly, that more housing would be a better resource for London than a caravan park. I suspect the conclusion that I am coming to is that the land under question should not really be designated as MOL.

But what frustrated and irritated me most was the internecine warfare and arguments between the various groups claiming to represent various residents and interests, who took up half the audience and the vast majority of questions. Most of which were not questions but rants that they’d already given in a meeting the previous Friday and seemed to be concentrating on arguments that went on around who really defeated the multiplex and with how little money i.e. the past!!!! So, I only got time to ask a question on security measures if the park was opened up (as I chair the Crystal Palace Safer Neighbourhoods Residents Panel, it was my priority) and no time for a question about how we could contribute as a training ground for the Olympics.

Crystal Palace Park has been waiting for redevelopment for 80 years, let’s look to the future and please, please let’s get on with it!!!