This is a key route for children going to Stroud Green Primary School and many years ago the Council employed a ‘lollipop lady’ to patrol the crossing. However, I’m told that when she retired she was never replaced. So as a first step to make the crossing safer, we are calling for the Council to employ a new crossing patrol person.

Thanks to pressure from Lynne, Ed Butcher and myself, the Council have now agreed to put up more warning signs on the road, and the local police are doing extra speed patrols on the road.  However, the real long-term answer is to get the crossing upgraded with traffic lights and measures to slow down the traffic.

To get the Council to take action, we have launched an online petition to demonstrate how strongly local people feel about this issue. Please sign up here.

Everyone I’ve spoken to so far has been extremely supportive of the campaign. In fact, when we took this photo of us launching the campaign, several residents came out of their houses to offer us their backing and tell us their concerns about the traffic.  I hope with such strong support we are able to make a difference.

I’m also delighted that Ed, Katherine and I were also elected in Stroud Green ward with increased majorities over Labour (the Greens remain in third place and the Tories in fourth).  Full details of the parliamentary and council election results are on Haringey’s website here.

Ed, Katherine and I would also like to thank our large network of volunteer leaflet deliverers, envelope stuffers and other activists in Stroud Green – as we couldn’t have inspired so many people to vote Lib Dem without their help.

Sadly, we failed to end Labour’s 40 years of control of Haringey Council.  This is hugely disappointing as we had so many fantastic plans to improve the Borough.  But obviously we’ll continue to use ours seats and influence on Haringey Council to fight for local residents.  We remain the only opposition to Labour on the Council, with yet again no Greens or Tories elected, so we are very aware of our responsibility to challenge and scrutinise the Council’s leadership.

I’m absolutely shattered after the hard work of election (and the epic 11 hour count which took from 10pm on Thursday till 9am on Friday) – but really excited about being able to serve the residents of Stroud Green for another 4 years.

It is now over four years since the Council last tried to condemn the play fort in Stationers Park as unsafe. During the election of 2006 the Labour Council promised to replace it – but instead once the election was over the money was diverted elsewhere and the fort was just patched up.  But, as I mentioned in a post back in January, thanks to the work of the local residents on the Friends of Stationers Park, most of the funding to replace the fort has now been granted from various sources (though more fundraising is still ongoing).

The fort has been treasured by local families for years – and we need to make sure it is replaced with something even better.  The design of the new play area should be down to local residents – especially the children who will use it.  To achieve this, Groundwork (the environmental charity managing the new design) wants to engage with the community through Friends of Stationers Park – and has planned a public consultation to present design options to park users.

This consultation event will be held in the park from 11am to 3pm on Saturday 15th May.  Please bring your family along and have your say!

It is brilliant to see progress being made at last.  However, there have been too many years of broken promises on replacing this fort from our Labour Council.  The Lib Dem team of Lynne Featherstone, Ed Butcher, Katherine Reece and I have made it a key election pledge to make sure that this time the promise is not broken – and that the Stationers Park fort is replaced with an even better play area.

I attended a first brainstorming session a few months ago which the Friends group ran with the play area designer from Groundworks. People came up with some really imaginative ideas,  so I think this event in the park could be a really exciting opportunity to get local families’ reactions to these, and to add even more ideas into the mix.

• We will make sure the Finsbury Park Controlled Parking Zone (CPZ) is reviewed, and that streets outside the CPZ can join if there is residents support.
• We will fight for measures to slow down traffic on Upper Tollington Park and to make the pedestrian crossing safer.
• We will make sure the Stationers Park Play Fort is replaced with an even better play area – ending years of broken promises from Labour.

Of course, there are a million other things we want to do, from improving our children’s centre to fixing our pothole problem, but speaking to residents – its the council’s failure to sort out these three problems that is causing the most frustration.  Residents are angry about the parking situation, want action on speeding traffic on Upper Tollington Park, and want an end to the years of broken promises on Stationers Park play fort.

I hope local residents will back these positive pledges to improve Stroud Green.

Lynne also organised a public meeting which took place last night to give residents the chance to put questions directly to the health bosses responsible.  This is a great move by our MP to try to make these people accountable, but it is outragous that unelected quango appointees are having to answer these questions rather than their political masters in the Department of Health.  Given that Labour Health Ministers have refused to lift a finger to save the A&E (and it is Labour’s policy to cut A&Es by reducing the number of ‘general’ hospitals), I think the hypocrisy of senior Labour politicians going on the march is astounding.

This made me suspicious and I suddenly realised there was a device attached to the card slot.  A little look around and I also spotted a concealed camera positioned to video the key pad.  With my card and a recording of me typing in my PIN, they would have had everything they needed to empty my bank account.

The hidden camera was only attached to the cashpoint with a magnet so I took it off and stuck it in my pocket and scarpered – slightly worried whether the people who were trying to steal my money were nearby watching me.  Fortunately, I knew Hornsey Police Station was up the road and has a 24 hour front counter so I went in and gave the criminals’ camera to the police.

The officers at Hornsey Station who helped me were great, and it was very reassuring to speak to the police face to face.   Sadly though, I’ve just had a call from CID to say they think its unlikely they will be able to identify the culprits – as there is no CCTV camera facing the cashpoint.

So I’m posting this story to remind people of the need to be vigilant when using cash machines in the area and to look out for devices attached to the card slot.  They are very cleverly concealed and I only noticed at the very last minute just as I was about to walk off thinking it was just a faulty machine.

And I’m also posting this to highlight the importance of police stations remaining open 24 hours.  This has been a big issue in Haringey recently with Lynne Featherstone battling to keep the front counter at Wood Green Police Station open 24 hours (story here).  I think I slept sounder last night because I’d been able to speak to the police and hand over the criminals’ hidden camera.  I’m not sure what I would have done if the police station had been closed.

However, the bad news is that if like me you have a travelcard on your oyster and want to use pre-pay to go beyond your travelcard zones, then TfL and FCC have designed a fiendishly complicated system to make it almost impossible.  Apparently you’ll have to load something called an ‘oyster extension permit’ on to your card just before you travel (details of TfL website here).   So, if you have a zone 1-3 travelcard and want to travel from Harringay Station out to say New Southgate in zone 4 you’d need to get a permit.  However, it doesn’t look like you can actually get the permit at Harringay  Station.  Instead you would have to go to a shop with Oyster facilities, which defeats the object of oyster by making it less convenient than buying a paper ticket!

To me it looks like oyster fares are still being designed around the needs of the train companies and TfL rather than the needs passengers.

If the Whittington A&E closed Stroud Green residents would have to travel twice the distance in a medical emergency – to get to the Royal Free at Hampstead instead.  There is no A&E service in Haringey Borough at all – already making us comparatively poorly served.

Stroud Green councillor Ed Butcher joined Lynne in a recent visit to the Whittington to try to stop the proposals (see picture).   Health officials have refused to give Lynne written assurances on the fate of the A&E and so Lynne has launched a campaign to show the strength of local feeling against any closure.

Please do sign Lynne’s online petition here in order to protect our local health services.

Over the last decade Council tax has increased by around 60% – with millions wasted on bungled IT projects and failed attempts to flog Ally Pally.   Meanwhile the Council is now rated one of the worst in the country by Government inspectors.

I’d love to think that Haringey Labour have turned over a new financially-responsible leaf – but the timing is obviously related to next year’s Council elections, and Labour’s growing panic about losing control of Haringey for the first time in 40 years.  But its great news for local residents that the Labour-run Council are being forced to listen and be accountable.

First Capital Connect had proposed to cut the ticket office weekday opening hours by almost 4 hours so it would close at 10.30am – but now it will only bve reduced by 1 hour 30 mins to close at 12.45pm.  Unfortunately, the long term plan remains to stop the ticket office opening at all on a Saturday – but TravelWatch have insisted on an 8 week trial period to see if the ticket machines cope with the demand.

Similar changes have been made to the proposed office hour cuts at Hornsey Station.  Full details of the revised proposals are here.

Rather than cuts, I’d like to see our stations more visibly staffed to make passengers feel more secure.  But I’m really pleased that local residents concerns have been listened to – and the office hour cuts have been reduced.