Lib Dem councillor in Camden resigns over mental health problems

Camden is facing yet another by-election following the resignation of Belsize councillor Chris Basson. The Lib Dem member, elected in 2006, announced his decision in a frank statement to the Ham and High newspaper after being made aware of an investigation into his elements of his private life by the paper.

I have no idea what the issues relating to Mr Basson's private life were and, as long as they relate only to his private life, see no reason why I or anyone else should know. I am particularly sympathetic as Mr Basson suffers from bi-polar disorder, otherwise known as manic depression and, according to his statement in the Ham &High, had been hospitalised several times following a series of nervous breakdowns over the last 3 years.

It is unclear whether it was the investigation or the councillor's persistent mental health problems that led him to conclude that he could not longer carry on in his position. I agree that serving as an elected representative while suffering from an illness serious enough to warrant frequent hospitilisation is untenable. However, if it transpires that the stress caused by Ham & High's investigation into his private life was the straw that broke the camel's back, then they will have far more to answer for than Mr Basson.

The only question that remains is whether or not councillor Basson, having been diagnosed way back in 1996, should have told his constituents about his illness when running for election 10 years later. I believe that a politician's private life only stops being private when it begins to clearly and directly affect their performance or conduct as a public official. I very much doubt that Mr Basson would have run for election if he even had an inkling that his illness would force him to resign just three years in. So, if the sufferer himself had no idea what effect his condition would have on his performance as councillor, how could his constituents have been reasonably expected to make such a judgement?

I think the councillor has done the right thing by his constituents as while it would have far more convenient for each of the rival political parties if he simply announced that he would not stand again next year, he decided that if his constituents were to be effectively represented in the town hall, he would need to be replaced now. I just hope that the residents of Belsize remember that when they go to the polls. I also hope they remember that the policies and ideals that earned councillor Basson their vote in the first place will only again be found in the Liberal Democrat candidate in the impending by-election.

Street lights petition success

I am delighted to announce that the petition to improve street lighting on Goldhurst Terrace and Aberdare Gardens has been successful and that we will have new and improved lights by May this year.

The council's community safety team responded recently after viewing the petition at a recent Safer Neighbourhoods meeting and emailed me to confirm the decision.

The petition will still be formally submitted at the next full council meeting in March in order to secure a public confirmation and to address several outstanding issues that have not yet been addressed.

May I just say a heart-felt thank you to all those who supported the petition and made it possible including local residents' association CRASH and the Hampstead and Kilburn Liberal Democrats in particular.

My biggest thanks though go out to all the residents who took the time to talk to me on their doorsteps and sign the petition. My faith in community activism has very much been reinforced by their crucial support.

It is only a shame that the petition could not gain support from both major parties in Camden with the local Conservative councillors refusing to add their support to the petition which they deemed an "inefficient" use of their resources.

Thank you all.

What Turkish PM really meant at Davos

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been hailed as a hero in his home country after he exploded at Shimon Peres during the recent World Economic Forum at Davos over the number of Palestinian casualties following the recent Israeli incursion into Gaza. Before storming off stage in protest at not being given enough time to talk by the moderator, he said to the Israeli President: "When it comes to killing - you know killing very well. I know how you hit, kill children on the beaches."

While many people across the world naturally disagree over whether the Israeli offensive was justified or not, what I find hardest to believe is that Erdogan in any way shape or form meant what he said. Even more surprisingly perhaps though is that Shimon Peres later appeared to forgive the Turkish PM for his very public onslaught, insisting that relations between Turkey and Israel had not been affected, despite never even receiving an apology.

Why do I find it so difficult to believe Erdogan meant what he said? Predominantly because his outburst ran contrary to the role Turkey seems to be carving for itself as the neutral moderator of all Middle East conflicts, but also because he has not one leg to stand on when it comes to illegal occupations and the killing of innocent civillians.

How can Prime Minister Erdogan come out with such a tirade against Israel and then invite the leader of Sudan round for tea while he is being investigated by the UN for genocide in Darfur? How can he castigate President Peres for his country's reliance on the use of force while launching incursions into Iraq to take out Kurdish separatists? And how can he condemn the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and simulataneously defend his own country's illegal occupation of Cyprus - the closest international parallel there is to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?

The answer is that far from being a loose cannon, Mr Erdogan is in fact a masterful strategist, calculating his tone, his target and his timing perfectly. In short, by launching into a full blown attack on Shimon Peres, he managed to take advantage of the crisis in Gaza to align his country's strategic priorities with those of his electorate.

Desperate to confer further public legitimacy on his premiership, and see off the secular elements of the Turkish political and military establishment who fear and suspect the Islamic credentials of him and his party, Erdogan knows how important the upcoming local elections are. A poll taken of Turkish public opinion for a global survey in July last year on Israeli-Palestinian relations showed Turkey to be one of only three countries, out of the 18 surveyed across the West and the Middle East, who heavily favoured the Palestinians. Once the invasion of Gaza began to dominate the headlines, he doubtless saw an opportunity to score big points with the voters.

Taking a closer look at Turkey's relationship with its neighbours, it also became clear that Erdogan had nothing to lose in taking a swipe at Israel, once its stalwart ally against the surrounding Arab countries, hence President Peres's subsequent insistence that there were no hard feelings between the two countries. Since Iran, with its nuclear weapons programme, re-emerged as the biggest threat in the Middle East, Turkey has exploited its cordial relationship with both Iran and the United States to establish itself as the peacemaker of the region upon whom eveyone, including Israel, is now pinning their hopes on peacefully resolving the brewing cold war with Iran.

Turkey has made itself invaluable to the United States and Iran, desperate to avoid a war, invaluable to its Arab neighbours desperate to avoid the regional instability that another war in the Middle East would cause, and also invaluable to Israel who are vulnerable to Iranian funded rocket and terrorist attacks, yet powerless (in spite of their posturing) to do anything about it. Thus Erdogan has been freed to open his arms to the Palestinians as so many of his people demand, even offering Hamas a state reception following their election victory in 2006.

In other words, that's what Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan really meant at Davos.

A layman's perspective on the economic crisis

Following the spew of recent recovery plans presented by the Conservatives and Labour, there are just a couple of things that strike me, as a layman whose 'expertise' are limited to a B in AS level economics several years ago, as slightly ill-conceived. Indeed, a cynical individual might even think each party's plans had more to do with winning the next election than solving the current economic crisis.

It seems to me that any viable recovery plan must address the following two issues: How to get banks lending and people spending without indulging the wreckless behaviour that got us into this mess in the first place; and how to minimise the number of jobs and houses lost in the meantime.

To start with the Conservatives, they want to protect banks who have lost billions of pounds over the last year through their dodgy dealings by giving them £50bn more through an unconditional taxpayer funded national loan guarantee scheme. Then, when they inevitably bankrupt themselves again, they want to let them and all the businesses and jobs they will take with them go to the wall. Furthermore, they want to do this in spite of the fact that the government tried almost exactly the same thing last year by offering banks the oppportunity to swap their debts for £50bn worth of government bonds. It didn't work then, why should it work now?

At the same time, they want to scrap all taxes on savings so that savers, like me, aren't punished by the rest of the nation's profligacy, and they want to pay for it by curtailing public spending which could well be essential to creating new jobs. Question: what am I meant to save if I'm unemployed? Also, do the Conservatives really think the reason that more people don't save their money and more savers don't spend theirs is because of the tax burden? What I look out for as a saver are interest rates and they day they were slashed, so were my future savings. The Conservatives incidentally supported those interest rate cuts in order to get more people spending, so can someone explain to me how they can now claim to be friends of the saver? In the meantime, someone else needs to explain to David Cameron what an ISA is.

As for Labour, I would be more encouraged by their bold new plans for saving the world -ahem- the economy, if everything they had tried so far hadn't failed so catastrophically. Their plan to kick-start lending was to prop up banks with taxpayers money and then stand idly by while they resumed business as usual by making a mockery of interest rate cuts, dutifully passing them on to savers and treacherously denying them to mortgage holders. Their plan to get people spending was to combine a meaningless cut in VAT with a substantial increase in National Insurance contributions and taxes. Now, they have come up with another grand plan to create a hundred thousand new jobs whilst presiding over the loss of several hundred thousand more. All the while, their leader is looking as happy as Larry as he is probably the only person (aside from debt collectors) whose job has become safer since the recession started.

Another thing that strikes me as odd for a Prime Minister who loves farming things out to committees to report on, so he can avoid having to take a firm stand on any of them, is that he has yet to assemble a cross-party parliamentary committee to focus purely on the economic crisis; it's causes and how best to get out of it. Instead, all we see are these two parties, one of which will be chosen to form a new government by next year at the latest, competing to come up with the most popular solution yet. How about they each put a few of their best people in a room and not let them out until they come up with a solution that actually works? Failing that, Vince Cable, the only person making any sense at the moment, should just be made Chancellor and be done with it.

Time to re-open the debate on Europe

Europe has historically been a bit of a red-herring for UK voters. Despite being an oddly heated issue with plenty of impassioned arguments made on both sides, it never actually mattered to most people before 9/11 and the Credit Crunch, probably the two defining moments of this the first decade of the 21st Century. Back then the pound was strong, the economy booming, the biggest challenge facing our troops was keeping the peace in Northern Ireland and the biggest threat to the environment was the hole in the Ozone layer. However, as long as we could be a member of the Single Market and the single biggest trading bloc in the world, without having to give away any more of our sovereignty, Europe was only an issue for idealogues and academics.

Now things are different though. Our troops are struggling desperately in Afghanistan and Iraq; we have just entered potentially our worst recession in 30 years if not more; the pound, at its lowest point in years, is almost at parity with the Euro; and the developing world has become both a battleground for the Great Powers again as well as a breeding ground for terrorists. On top of all that, the threat of global warming has become an increasingly urgent concern that most political leaders are only just waking up to. Regardless of the wide-ranging political opinions on any one of these issues, all must admit that times have changed significantly and in turn so must our priorities as both voters and political activists.

However, whilst we have already a clear picture of where we stand on development, NATO expansion, the Special Relationship, taxation, the environment and economic policy, in light of these changing times, Europe has continued to take a back seat. Even when the press try to make it an issue again, bringing up the Lisbon Treaty and the prospects of joining the Euro, the government nips it in the bud, out of sheer terror of taking a position on which public opinion is ambiguous at best. Yet, the significance of our relationship with Europe is greater than ever before. Will joining the Euro save our economy or kill it? Is a more joined up European foreign policy the key to easing the pressure on our armed forces and better protecting our country or is that too high a price to pay for burden sharing? Is the European Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme the first step to a viable solution to global warming or is it a waste of time or simply not far-reaching enough?

I'd like to re-open the debate on Europe and see where it runs. I want to avoid repeating the mistakes of old though, with Europhiles and Euro-sceptics alike dogmatically drawing their lines in the sand, resulting in nothing more than an intellectualised name-calling contest. So, let's start with a few key assumptions that hopefully we can all agree on and go from there:

1) Retaining our sovereignty is essential to securing the national interest, but there is only so much we can achieve alone which is why we were happy to pool some of our sovereignty to join the single market and NATO in the first place;

2) Co-operation with Europe is itself desirable. The only sticking point is the mechanism of co-operation i.e. should EU agreements be binding and how much of a role should supra-national bodies such as the European Commission and the European Parliament play in facilitating co-operation;

3) Britain's relationship with Europe should not affect its 'special relationship' with the United States.

I'd like to know now what everyone else thinks...

US-style primaries will never work in the UK

I wrote the following in response to an article in the First Post by Daniel Hannan MEP entitled: 'The primary reason MPs don’t listen to the voters' which can be read at http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/45945,opinion,the-primary-reason-mps-dont-listen-to-voters.

Today, I write in praise of Mr Hannan and his well-written piece advocating the introduction of US-style primaries for the election of our own MPs here in the UK. However, as much as I agree with his criticisms of the government's proposals to make Parliament more representative, I must confess that I don't believe replicating US-style primaries in the UK would ever work for the simple reason that US-style elections require US-style political systems.

Anybody who votes in a general election does so, with the odd exception of course, with the intention of deciding who they want to run their country. In the US people directly elect their President; in the UK, the Prime Minister is chosen by the party with the most seats in Parliament. And whilst it is foolish to pretend that the party to which a presidential nominee belongs in America, and the person who leads their party in the UK, are of no consequence, it still holds that the 2008 US election was between Barack Obama and John McCain and that the next general election in the UK will be between Labour and the Conservatives.

Also, as attractive as primaries may appear in principle -and indeed I do envy the time and opportunity American voters are given to grill their candidates for office- they are by no means perfect. Having to get elected twice means having to campaign twice and campaigning costs money. The more money a politician needs to fund their campaign, the more likely they are to sell their soul -or at least some political favours - to rich people on fancy yachts. As a result, whilst Daniel Hannan may champion primaries in the US as giving power to the people, the vast sums needed to run a meaningful campaign end up giving far more power to industry leaders, tycoons and pressure groups than ordinary Joe Public.

Although state-funding for political parties would go some way to rectifying this, US-style primaries do still raise the question: what kind of democracy suits us best? A more representative democracy of the sort we currently have in Britain is immensely valuable because it allows the electorate to choose a person or a party whose general outlook and value systems they most agree with, whilst allowing those elected the freedom to make informed decisions on important national issues even if they defy popular opinion - the death penalty being a good example. Tilting the balance towards the more direct style of democracy that primary contests engender, however, can lead to legislative gridlock, as it often does in the United States, with elected representatives more concerned about re-election than governing in the national interest.

The only viable argument for introducing primaries in the UK is that it could increase voter turnout by giving people more of a stake in their chosen candidate, as Hannan himself says. Yet when the Conservatives tried this for the London Mayoral elections, an election far more suited to US style primaries precisely because Londoners were being asked to vote for the person, not the party, they most wanted to run their city, only 20,000 people in a city of 10m turned out to vote. On top of that, they had to pay £1 a minute for the luxury of registering to vote by phone and had to be Conservative supporters, although I have no idea whether they had to have membership cards on the ready to prove it. Their guy might have won, but I don't feel like democracy in London has been particularly enriched in the process.

As for Harriet 'half-baked' Harman's proposals for women only shortlists and ethnic minority quotas, I can't think of any nobler plan more likely to backfire spectacularly. Whilst I completely agree that Parliament should be more demographically representative, I also believe that distinguishing our candidates for poltical office by their gender or the colour of their skin only serves to undermine sexual and racial equality. As Barack Obama has proved, a gifted person destined for high office will get there regardless of their skin colour and will open more minds than any number of ethnic minority politicians who had their positions handed to them on a plate.

Private security or public safety?

I phrase this blog post as a question as I have begun to worry, particularly this week, that it is impossible to have both public safety and private security at the same time. I mean this in reference only to street crime; not always the most serious type of crime, but certainly the most prevalent and most commonly experienced.

In theory the safety of our streets, provided for us by the police service, (public) should be enough to secure the safety of our homes, our cars and other property as well as our families (private). In reality of course, limited police resources restrict them to a more reactive role and no matter how fast they respond to a 999 call, more often than not they arrive too late.

So eventually, after the third or fourth burglary or maybe just one truly harrowing assault, we look to other means of protecting ourselves. We use state of the art technology for our homes and cars, security firms to patrol our roads, and perhaps even hand-held weapons to defend ourselves and our families.

This was precisely the context of the congregation of tired and frightened neighbours I observed on Monday night. Approximately 50 of us turned up to the attractive mini mansion owned by our gracious host, himself a victim of several burglaries. He had invited us there to hear Peter Williams, who runs a private security firm called London Community Services, pitch to us his firm's private security package, by his own admission the most expensive of those offered by all security services in north London.

Mr Williams was a large gentleman whose default expression was 'hard-arse'. Running a security firm seemed like a natural progression for him, probably from being a pub bouncer and school bully before that. After all this was a man who had retired Ghurkas working for him. In fact they, he boasted, were the reason his firm was so expensive - apparently no-one is better placed to guarantee the safety of your children than a gang of short, angry Asian men with broken English and a chip on their shoulder.

In any case his pitch was terrible. It amounted to him telling us that we must buy into his security scheme after admitting that he thought it would never work when originally approached by our caped crusader neighbour; telling us that he could stop and prevent criminals from terrorising our road even though his team of militias had no more legal authority to detain them than any of us; promising his state of the art alarms, linked up to his HQ, would be more effective than calling the police and then explaining that if one were to go off his team's response would be...to call the police.

The highlight of his performance was when he told us that he could offer an escort service (no not the kind you're thinking of) for anyone walking home in the dark, but that the escort would under no circumstances be allowed out of his patrol van, nor the 'client' allowed in, and would be absolutely forbidden to converse with the 'client' in any way shape or form. That's like a real escort service charging£1000 for a handshake. Incidentally, £1000 per year per person was the estimated cost given for providing the service for 60 people on one stretch of road.

Yet, there was still vocal support for the scheme amongst the audience as they shared the trauma they had suffered, such as the woman who had been pinned to the ground and mugged on her doorstep or the man who woke up in the middle of the night to find a burglar in his front room. Simply by recalling their own harrowing experiences to an already fearful audience, they did a much better of job of selling Mr Williams' service than Mr Williams himself.

Nevertheless, questions came from all corners of the floor, none of which were particularly well received or dealt with. The lowest moment for Williams was when he silenced the room after snapping at a "dissenter" that she should buy her son a stab jacket for his 16th birthday if she didn't like his service. Eventually I managed to get my question in and I asked him if he thought that a private security service for the few who could afford it would convince the police they were no longer needed and jeopardise the safety of those who couldn't. He laughed this off, mocking me for suggesting that the police had ever ventured down our way to begin with (they had and they still do if but very occasionally).

The point was still valid though. In fact he took several minutes to stress to the questioner before me that his team would alter their patrol routes, quite drastically if necessary, to avoid even passing households who weren't paying for their services.

Now the Metropolitan Police, quite understandably, allocate their resources based on local crime stats that identify trouble-spots. Fortunately for me, my area is no Gotham City; statistically, crime is low - or at least lower than the other surrounding areas - the very reason why so few police turn up to patrol it already. So, it does not seem unreasonable to fathom that they may stop bothering at all if they see street crime fall by a few percent. That's assuming the ridiculously expensive private patrol service actually works of course, for which there is no guarantee.

But what if it does work and keeps the rest of us none paying scroungers safe by association; what happens then? Mr Williams' best guess was that the crime that once plagued our street would move over to the next and make a new bunch of unsuspecting residents miserable and afraid. That didn't seem to bother him though, whereas at least even the most ardent supporters amongst the audience expressed some remorse about it (although understandably if forced to choose between the safety of their family and someone else's, it would be no contest). I couldn't get over the thought though that we wouldn't simply be profiting out of the hardship of our distant neighbours (if the criminals are over there, they're not over here) but that we would be indirectly causing it.

I'm still convinced there's a better way though: setting up a voluntary neighbourhood scheme for example, informed by the Met's own publicly available crime maps of each road in London; setting up a security committee comprised of members of local residents' associations which would liaise with the Safer Neighbourhoods Panel and the wardens of the local estates on a regular basis; and organised lobbying of the local council for better security systems for council housing and better street lighting. A large role for the council is particularly crucial, as we enter our first recession in almost two decades, if the causes of crime, crucial to any long term solution, are to be addressed too.

These are just ideas from off the top of my head. They could be rubbish, but I think they're at least a start. Bottom line is until we recognise that we each have a stake in each other's safety and that we must be prepared to take some responsibility for ensuring it by working together, rather than leaving it all to a skeletal police service or toothless vigilantes, the private security/public safety paradox will never be broken.