Ram FM

When I blogged the other week about the Palestine/Israeli problem getting worse I didn’t even imagine then that it could get as bad as it is. But this morning just as I was going into Brixton station I caught, on my iPOd, the beginning of a piece on the Today Programme on a relatively new radio station, Ram FM and for the first time in days I can see something that might, possibly create something good over there.

One of the big problems in any area where there is conflict is the difficulty of getting a balanced view of what is going on. Even when there is access to balanced programming it is perceived by many as unbalanced – note the number of complaints that go into the BBC of equal number that accuse the BBC of being either anti-Semitic or pro-Israeli in their coverage. Ram FM is trying to be different; it is reaching out to Israeli’s and Palestinians using pop music and balanced news bulletins.

It was started up by a South African company that did a similar thing in the dying days of apartheid. And it seems to be working with listeners from both communities. One of the most important messages that I took away from the LIBG Fringe Meeting on Palestine last year was the need, in order to create peace, the people had to start seeing each other as human beings. Changing habits, getting the kids to stop throwing stones at each other in the street, as they do in the West Bank, is a pre-requisite of not a dividend from peace.

I am in awe of those like Ram FM who get in and start doing the right stuff on the ground. It is small, things may get worse before they get better but someone somewhere is trying to reconcile ordinary people to each other.

It is hard though even to attempt to look positive; a Bedouin friend was visiting his family farm last week, which is on the main road from Egypt to Israel in north Sinai. He tells me that the guns, tanks and explosions from Gaza made his family house shudder. They have there own problems. Egypt, so often portrayed as a benevolent host of peace talks in the Middle East is particularly harsh on the Bedouins in north Sinai. there have been demostrations against the governemnt and he tells me there are so many Bedouin in prison now from the north, they are literally full up.

As I write to my friend, telling him how worried I am about Gaza and how sad it makes me, he replies that I must stop worrying about the whole world; that this is the life and that it is only by seeing the evil that you can understand the good. I can even see in my mind his shoulders being shrugged!

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!!!

Stranger Danger

It is not every day that I agree with Anne Atkins but I agreed with her absolutely on the Today programme this morning in discussion with Esther Ransom. It was following The Children’s Society findings that although many of today’s adults were allowed out for unsupervised play as children they are not giving their own children the same freedoms.

Anne’s argument was that this approach is illogical because children are at no higher risk of stranger danger than we were ourselves, the risk that our children won’t learn independence and grow up is far higher than anything untoward; that parks are in fact safe places. Esther Ransom’s argument in return was that letting children out wasn’t worth it because you would feel very bad if it turned out to be your child (one of the approximately 12 a year) that was killed by stranger.

This, I find an entirely parent rather than ‘child centric’ view from Esther Ransom, it is incredibly selfish, not to mention illogical.

Firstly, it should not be how the parent feels about something that is important; it is about what is best for the child. So a parent worries; well, big deal, that’s part of being a parent and it is not right to try and deal your own fear by attempting to remove any risk to your children. There is risk in life and there is a balance.

And that is why it is illogical to be so fearful of stranger danger when in fact more children are killed by their carers, by being in a car or by accidents at home than by strangers. And yet, we ignore all that and harm their development by keeping them tied to our apron strings until they are 14. There is no balance in that.

It seems to me that we have got too used to being able to control so much that we are unable to cope with the ambiguity and lack of control in providing our children with the freedom they need to develop,

When I was 9 or 10 I had a friend that I used to go out to play with and we would maybe come back for lunch or maybe at the end of the day. I was probably always pretty independent but it gave me a belief in my ability to negotiate my way through life that has been the most valuable thing in my life. From an early age I have travelled all over the UK and all over the world, taking sensible precautions but never in fear. I really do feel for the teenagers, that I know, whom are not even allowed to go on an hours journey by themselves because of their parents’ rather than their own fears.

UK's DNA Database Shame

There’s an interesting discussion going on at the Radio 4 PM Blog about the impact of the new stop and question powers that the government want to bring in. My concern is particularly on the impact that it will have on the DNA database and I see I am not the only Lib Dem concerned about this today.

If one assumes that the purpose of new stop and questioning powers is to identify, arrest and convict more potential terrorists or just 'ordinary' criminals, then the police will be able to take more DNA and put them on the DNA database.
Some DNA database facts from Lynne Featherstone’s blog:
· 25% of the people on the database innocent of any crime
· In London, 57% of the innocent people on the database are in fact non-white.
· A third of all the black population in England & Wales is already on the database.

And now, Lib Dem Research suggests that in 3 years half of all black men will be on the database whether they have been convicted of a crime or not.

As I've blogged before, the DNA database is racially skewed, to mirror a racial skew in the police’s stop and search/questioning policy. This will eventually mean that an even higher proportion of convicted people are non-white (hence the Lib Dem researched projections).

The obvious inability to identify potential terrorist subjects by sight and therefore the need to use crude indicators based on colour of skin, or length of beard or dress underlines why these things are so pernicious. A leap is made from appearance to behaviour and then, in the UK, it gets hard coded into data on databases.

I consider myself very fortunate to be living in Britain and I love my home, the country and the city I live in but when I think about how we as a nation are the world leaders in compiling databases on our citizens such as the DNA database I hang my head in shame.

"Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security." (Benjamin Franklin)

Chavez and Livingstone: a tawdry alliance

More reports today than Hugo Chavez has an eye on yet another TV station that he doesn’t like. It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, watching someone pulling the switch on such foundations of democracy as free speech.

But here in London of course, Mr Chavez is our great friend, since the deal done by our Mayor, Mr Livingstone with Mr Chavez back in February for cheap oil to fuel our buses. Yes, Venezuela, a developing country is helping to subsidise the travel of one of the most prosperous cities in the world.

So, what’s in it for Venezuela? Apparently part of the deal is that we are giving them advice on recycling and waste management! Us! In that case one might expect that we are a best practice City for recycling; but we’re not. In fact our recycling figures in London are some of the worst in the world, far behind such cities as Berlin, San Francisco or Seattle.

Not only that, but recycling isn’t even within Ken’s powers at the GLA. He has failed to get his own Government to include in the GLA bill provisions for a pan London waste authority. So presumably Ken is providing advice on the basis of what he’s like to be doing as opposed to what is actually happening in London.

A raw deal for Mr Chavez, perhaps? For Venezuela, maybe; for their increasingly despotic leader, no.

Because what Mr Chavez gets are signed contracts with one of the greatest cities in the world, which he can tout around other countries just like service organisations provide in their sales pitches their list of blue chip clients. London’s business is in effect a loss leader for Mr Chavez.

What Mr Livingstone has given him is an air of respectability that he does not deserve.

And so to my day job....

Today I read with dismay but also a certain level of comfort about the almighty cock up in the development of a ministry of justice. Why comfort? Because as long as the government doesn't follow even the most basic principles of good change management there will always be work for someone like me! And that means I get to fund the new extension to my flat that I've just today commissioned an architect to design! Because this is all a very expensive mistake!

I have to admit that I raised a bit of a professional eyebrow at the speed at which the new organisational design for the home office came out - I gave them the benefit of the doubt that they'd had people beavering away doing all the hard thinking about how it was going to work, the legal and constitutional constraints and making sure they kept all the interested parties on board along the way, for the years that everybody's been talking about it.

But no, my benefit of the doubt was sorely misplaced. Not only was it poorly thought through in terms of feasibility but they didn't even bother to speak to the Lord Chief Justice about it! And where was their stakeholder plan!

This is just plain incompetence and if there are any external companies advising or working with them on this they should be dumped forthwith; and if they're working under a contract that doesn't allow them to be dumped when they screw up like this then, frankly all the OGCs work on government procurement has been done for nothing!!!!!!!

Grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

Woman forced to divorce husband

More human rights abuses from Saudi Arabia, well, what a surprise!!

Fatima A has been forced to divorce her husband because her half-brother, her legal guardian, has claimed and won in court that her husband failed to disclose that he was from a tribe with a lower status than his wife to be. This is effectively, under Saudi Law, a breach of contract.

Both Fatima and her husband wish to remain married to each other; they have two children. Fatima is currently staying in al-Dammam Prison with one of her children rather than return to the house of her half-brother. If she contacts her now ex-husband then she will, by law, be guilty of adultery and subject to the death penalty.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman is not a human being but just a possession of her nearest male relative; having asking permission from a male guardian to travel is just the start of it.

I have been trying to imagine what my life would be life if it were to be lived at the whim of my nearest male relative; but it is impossible to compare. In the west we are lucky, with our relatively small families, that we can have close relationships with our male relatives. But neither, my uncle living in Thailand, my two cousins in Australia nor my Step-Dad would ever contemplate telling me what I could or could not do, firstly because the culture we have all grown up in means that they view me as an equal; secondly, frankly, they wouldn’t dare!! Although that last bit may be a function of the first; perhaps my character and my confidence would be altogether different if I were brought up in Saudi Arabia. So, it is hard to imagine any of them ordering me to break up my family against my wishes even if they had that legal power! I tell you something, I wouldn’t want to have been living at the whim of my (ex-)father in law; he certainly wasn’t one of my fans! Apparently he thought I was ‘too bossy’, I can’t imagine why.

But I have acquaintances, who are from traditional Bedouin families (not from Saudi Arabia, I might add, so they don’t have such direct legal power) that have up to 30 siblings – so you might end up hardly knowing the person who has effectively the power of life and death, happiness or misery!

And, no, I can’t even begin to imagine the constraints that one half of the population of Saudi Arabia have to live under. To my mind, this is surely a form of slavery.

And this is a country that we are so eager to do business with, that we suppress investigations into corruption with BAe in order to keep on the ruling Saud family’s good side.

You can find more details on Fatima’s case and how you can help from Amnesty.

Further from peace than ever....

I am feeling miserable and full of gloom for the world and the Middle East today.

In the autumn of 1994 and stretching into the summer of 1995 I spent the lion’s share of my time in the Levant, specifically Israel, Jordan and Egypt. In those days, once you’d paid your airfare, volunteering on a Kibbutz or Moshav in Israel was self funding and was a ticket to a mild winter, at times boredom and more than a passing acquaintance with Carmel wine, of which it was rumoured, had a complete absence of grapes in it! The fact that I saw Jerusalem primarily as a weekend clubbing destination should give you an indication of the fun that was to be had pootling around the region in those days. I arrived on the 26th October 1994; the day the Israel Jordan Peace treaty was signed.

It was a trip that literally changed the course of my life because on travelling to the Sinai, I fell in love, came back to the UK in order to settle down, got a proper, reasonably well paid job with Barclays Bank and the rest, although not an entirely straight path, is history. Somewhere in another a dimension, is Jo Christie-Smith the slightly poorer University Lecturer, who continued on with her studies and didn’t go to work in the City.

So far, so what? Last night it became absolutely clear just how much the lack of peace in the region has spread to every corner. It is a sign of the utter misery of the situation in the Middle East that the very sites of some of the most precious memories of my twenties have now become imbued with the war and terrorism. At times I feel like my anger at what is happening, makes me sound kind of spoilt because frankly my memories are the least of it; but for me, the fact that now so many things that are precious to me are being subsumed into the violence is evidence of the all pervading nature of such violence. If it does this to me, a woman, who just happened to spend a few months of her twenties in the region, what must it do to the people whose home it is?

I haven’t been back to Israel but I have lost count of the number of times I have been to Egypt since.

Just under a year ago, I was holed up in a hotel in Halifax, eating my room service dinner when I recognised on the 10 o’clock news, a bombed out shell of a bazaar in Dahab, Sinai, where I spent the summer of 1995 hanging out with my Egyptian boyfriend, Azima.

Last summer I stood where the blast of the bomb had made it’s indentations into the concrete of the pavement on the exact spot that I had first clapped eyes on Azima back in 1994. In the end, the pavement had got off lightly and by the time of my visit, about 6 weeks after the bomb, the shop had been rebuilt. But now it is the spot where ‘Little’ Mohammed, a young man, in 2006 a great hit with the girls who came to dive in Dahab but who as a 12 year old had trailed around behind me in a persistent, and at times quite annoying manner, was killed by the bomb. His father, who owned the shop opposite for getting on for 20 years, has sold up and gone back to Cairo. How would you be able to face work every day looking out onto the site of your son’s death?

And then last night another 10 o’clock news, I got another jolt. I have been getting used over the last couple of years to hearing the small town of Sderot described by BBC correspondents as a city and each getting quite annoyed because the Sderot that I knew 13 years ago was much more of a large village than a city, as anyone who had been there would know!

I worked on a kibbutz which was in between Gaza and the village of Sderot, so that rockets that fly over from Gaza must have to fly over where I once lived. But Sunday night, and this shows that seeing something really is believing, it came home to me with a thud, as the correspondent delivered her broadcast from the fields in between the village and Gaza; the very fields that I had driven a tractor up and down when I was 23. Another precious memory! I had been so excited that I was being allowed to drive a tractor, even if it was only pulling a trailer of irrigation pipes. As I go about my daily business in London, I don’t have the look of a woman who knows how to drive a tractor (not very difficult, in fact, as long as you’re not ploughing) but it is certainly on my list of my life’s achievements.

No one has died in Sderot, yet, but people are scared and angry and I know that I am glad that I’m not living in Kibbutz Gevim at the moment. What’s more, the price being paid by the residents of Gaza for those rockets is terrifying.

Of course the two incidents should not be conflated; the supposed reasons for the bombing in Dahab (according to the Egyptian Government a result of internal terrorists from northern Sinai, where there is a Mubarak resistance movement) and the rockets going into Sderot are different. But if I feel dismay having the scenes of my memories overprinted with death and fear then think how it must be for the people who live there.

I don’t have some perverse way of picking out future war zones for my travels; the increasing violence in my old stamping ground must mean that it is all pervasive, that in the 12 years since my life changing trip, nowhere is safe, nowhere untouched by sadness and loss. It’s true, it is worse in Iraq and no one knows what would be happening in the Middle East now, if Iraq had not been invaded in 2003. But the worsening situation in the Levant and the Sinai does reflect the action in Iraq. It is too easy to view the region as having a perennial problem, but make no mistake, it is getting worse.

But really, I have no great political point to make in this posting; just to wonder at the situation and to give voice to the sadness I feel for all the people who live there and have their happiness and joy rubbed out by violence.

The trouble with targets

The police federation is complaining about targets and saying that this is not what they all joined the police force for.

OK but all organisations that are spending someone else’s money, whether shareholders or tax payers, should be accountable and transparent in showing what they’ve done with the money.

BUT, lets face it, the government has a real blind spot when it comes to setting targets.

You get what you measure and when setting targets, you have make sure that you actually want what you’re measuring.

Too often, government departments set out to measure activity rather than outcomes. So, what you get is a lot of activity. In the example of the police’s you get a lot of arrests being made rather than serious crime being reduced; in education, you get good test results but kids who get to university unable to spell and in health you get short waiting lists but a rise in hospital acquired infections.

The trouble is, this government, does trust people to deliver those outcomes, it is unconvinced that it will be done their way and so, in the manner of a control freak (and Gordon isn’t even in charge yet) it sets out to measure what actions are taken as opposed to as what outcomes are achieved.

Outcomes are invariably harder to measure and often subjective and qualitative rather than easy numbers but it can be done. I have filled in enough Lottery and other Grant application forms to know that it can be done; it just takes more work and a bit more vision…or…..trust, even.

That said, one concern I have about the call from the Police Federation is their suggestion that dealing with small crimes isn’t what they all joined the police service to do and they should be focussing on large, serious crimes. Well, maybe they didn’t, but an awful lot of money been spent on a new focus, particularly in the Metropolitan Police Service, on community policing and dealing with low level crimes.

Safer Neighbourhood teams are the physical incarnation of that focus and they are as much about the perception people have of crime and dealing with their fear of it as they are about dealing with the big things – there is definitely no rushing around in police cars with the sirens on allowed – our PSCOs, in Crystal Palace, have bikes when they’re not on foot!

Key to this is dealing with signal crimes like graffiti, fly tipping, unruly teenagers and unruly adults and crime prevention. It is slow burn stuff but here in Crystal Palace Ward (where I chair the resident’s panel that provides direction to the team) we are just beginning, after two years, to reap the benefits. The police are starting to get more information about the drug dealing that goes on in the car parks of one of our estates because the residents are starting to know and trust the beat officer. This kind of success will eventually be measured in terms of arrests but in them mean time we need to protect and support the activity. Because what it seems do is change people’s perception and fear of crime and above all improves the quality of their lives.

This approach to community policing and its focus on dealing with low level crime is important and over the last 40 years the direction of the police, particularly in London has oscillated between the ‘Bobby on the beat’ and dealing with the big, ’important’ crimes that the Police Federation and John Denham (Chair of the Home Office Select Committee) seem to want them to go back to pursuing.

However, the model of community policing that is being implemented by the Met and funded by Londoners has not been made up on the fly…it is based on a model developed in the US and the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy that has been in place and successful since 1993.

What it really needs is consistent funding and a belief that successful outcomes will be delivered in the long term and not necessarily in the short term; although, I have to say our experience in Crystal Palace is that it is a bit of both. The Government, the Select Committee and the Police Authorities all have to hold their nerve and not veer back to measuring just large scale crime detection.

I know that I am beginning to sound like a broken record on this, again, but the government and the centre has to trust locally accountable organisations (although not as accountable as I’d like them to be) to deliver and not force them to use just one method of getting to the right outcome.

We must stop measuring just activity; a good start would be to measure levels of satisfaction with the service provided or perception of crime or quality of life.

How to be happy

The government wants us to be happy and well. So now GPs should be prescribing country walks as medicine for those suffering from depression (actually, it’s called an ‘ecotherapy’) and happiness lessons for school children.

I am not going to do a rant about it all being common sense etc, etc because I do understand that the study on country walks, was looking at non-chemical responses to an illness that by its very nature leads the suffers to not believe that anything can improve their life, let alone something like a bit of fresh air. They are therefore are unable to apply such a self help approach without prompting. I am a great fan of cognitive therapies and this one sounds much better than filling someone full of drugs.

But it doesn’t take much to imagine how we’ll soon be getting leaflets through the door and adverts on TV about the anti-depressive benefits of a walk in the park.

What this has a whiff of, and the teaching happiness directive from a government advisor reeks of, is the habit of this Labour Government, promulgated by Blair, Brown and practically every member of the Labour Party I’ve ever met, of trying to legislate for human behaviour.

For some people this does lead them to wander off ranting about the glories of common sense (or maybe that’s just my Step-Dad!!) but what those rants fail to do is find a solution to the problem...which is, for the Labour Government at least, how to ensure that everybody applies the benefits of collective common sense to their lives.

So, Labour takes a typical process driven response which is to ensure that everybody follows the best practice route to achieve happiness. Rather like I, as a project manager, tend to follow a recognised project management approach to ensure the correct outcome for any change I am attempting to bring about is positive.

Many companies and organisations and, indeed, the Government make it ‘policy’ for their employees to follow these project management processes as otherwise they would have to rely on wisdom, experience and talent… which may or may not be there!

And the Government is trying to make it their policy that we too follow the correct process to deliver ‘happiness’ and ‘well being’.

They have to channel the implementation of these polices through the health service, schools and the police as even they cannot currently reach into our homes and make us do it for ourselves; hence why the responsibility for producing happy children now seems to be the responsibility of the teacher and not the parent.

So far, so logical; if not entirely common sense-ical.

But of course, what this betrays is the fact that the Labour party is pretty much convinced that we have neither the wisdom, talent nor experience to be happy or well human beings.

They do not trust us, and so, they step in and sort it all out for us.

Ten years of not being trusted to get on with things has created in many people a culture of being receivers of aid – it is not our responsibility to sort our problems out but the government’s. This is the nanny state in action and all coming on top of the previous 18 years of Tory ‘personal responsibility’, in other words responsibility for yourself, and maybe your family, but no one else.

As a civil libertarian I am all for a small government and am keen to be as free as possible to follow my own path to happiness and take advice from whom I choose on how to get there…if, indeed, that’s my aim.

But I, like many others, am concerned about reports that our children are the unhappiest in the OECD countries, that anti-depressant drugs are being prescribed more than ever before and that there are teenagers living in my community for whom the value of a human life is less than their pride at not being ‘cut up’ by another’s’ car on the Walworth Rd.

So, it is not enough to rail against the nanny state and leave it at that.

Firstly, we should not get it out of proportion; it is clear that good, well behaved and happy children and human beings do not make the news.

Secondly, we have to look to ourselves and take responsibility not just for ourselves but for our community. And. that, is why I find Liberal Democracy so compelling. At its philosophical heart it satisfies not just my need for freedom but also my desire to be free within a community.

The personal responsibility that I take on is not just a compact with the state but also with my neighbours and fellow human beings. By sucking up all the power into the centre and issuing policies on how to behave and what to do the Government undermine the local community and the personal responsibility within that compact.

Westminster politicians and the government do have a role to play and that is to give the power back to local communities and leave it to them. Of course, this requires them to trust people and communities which is why Labour will never do it, no matter how Gordon bleats on about personal responsibility because they will never be able to believe that they don’t know best, including on how to be happy.