Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
When does 16% of 8621 = 0? When it’s seats on Haringey Council
Maths tutor Ronald Stewart aims to put this right. One in six voters opted for the Green Party in the last elections but without proportional representation, their voices remain unheard. Ronald says: ‘We need to challenge the Labour-dominance of the council, challenging it where it is failing residents on a ward-level, and ensuring that we do the job of scrutinising council decisions and working for concessions for local residents.’
He has started going out to talk to residents, supported by local Green Party activists who have already surveyed some residents in the ward.
If you would like to take the survey you can do so here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/S2MM5LX
Ronald Stewart (here on a visit to StART with Green Party Member of the London Assembly, Sian Berry) lives in St. Ann’s, in rented accommodation, his third address in 2 years. Part of ‘Generation Rent’ he knows only too well the reality of spiralling rents, lack of security and the uncertainty this brings for people.
His priorities for his campaign and for his work on the Council, if elected, are: truly affordable housing, addressing air pollution, and ensuring that local small businesses get a fair chance against the interests of large chains, multinationals and developers.
Ronald Stewart says: ‘the diversity of the community and the spirit of the area is positive, with small and local businesses thriving on Green Lanes. The Green Party will show that it has the capability to defend community businesses from increasing pressures led by landlord and council rents’.
Labour has ruled Haringey for over 45 years. Ronald believes it has become complacent and content to accept Tory cuts imposed by central government without much challenge. Haringey Green Party Deputy Chair, Gordon Best adds: ‘The Council appears to be happy to support the profit of a few developers at the expense of local communities. The small – and dwindling – Liberal Democrat presence on the Council has not been much of an opposition especially with the recent defection of one of them to Labour’.
If you would like to read more about Ronald and his campaign click here:
https://haringey.greenparty.org.uk/news/2016/08/29/ronald-stewart-g...
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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I was considering voting Green in this by-election until I read the (four page) leaflet that came through my letter-box. A full page was given over to fly-tipping and disposal of larger household items, and the services available from Haringey Council to deal with these issues. It seems to me to be very inaccurate, and fails to recognise the services that are available (disposal of larger household items via special collection by Veolia), and also seems to blame the Council for fly-tipping. I am no defender of our Council on many issues, but I feel the comments made in the Green leaflet are incorrect and unfair. Of course, this is electioneering, but I expect a bit better from the Green Party
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Christopher, did you point out the inaccuracies in the leaflet to anyone in the Greens? I'm not a Green Party supporter but I know and respect several of its local members. They are people who are concerned that public information is accurate, balanced and trustworthy.
Politicians or all mainstream political parties have worked long and hard to earn the distrust of the public and the way back is a hard slog.
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Alan - No, I have not as yet emailed the Green Party, but you are quite correct, I should do that. I will email them later today.
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Permalink Reply by Ronald Stewart on
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Hi Christopher,
Thanks for your comments :) I'm the Green Party candidate in this by-election.
The article does highlight that there is a Haringey smartphone app to report fly-tips and other incidents, which is useful although it could be greatly improved. I'm attaching this article in case anyone has not seen it.
I recognise that there are other disposal services available but I'm surprised that you are not as concerned as I am about why these are not being used effectively in St Ann's. I would love to hear more experiences of using these services.
I do think the Council should take more responsibility for fly-tips - being as it is the third worst borough in the whole UK for fly-tipping. There was a fly-tip near my flat on Woodlands Park Road (one of several, in fact) which was collected after 10 days and then I had to report it again because some of it was left. Walking around the streets of this area and talking to people on the doorstep, this doesn't seem untypical. I understand this is maybe not a concern for you, Christopher, but it is one that comes up again and again when we speak to people.
It's my view that ineffective street cleaning and slow fly-tip collection is contributing to a culture that dumping rubbish is normal. Islington and Hackney don't have this problem on anything like the same scale, and in my opinion you can see the difference even by walking around the edges of Finsbury Park.
The cleanliness of the streets is something that could easily be changed by council action, perhaps even just to ensure that private contractor Veolia does its job properly.
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greenpartystreetcleaning.pdf, 226 KB
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Yup...here in N17...flytipping always comes tops when we ask Bruce Residents Network Members what their priority concerns are!
https://mobile.twitter.com/brucegroveres
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" ... the third worst borough in the whole UK for fly-tipping." I'm interested where that figure comes from, Ronald Stewart.
I'm not asking because I'm a Labour Party member. (And married to Cllr Zena Brabazon.) I do actually want to see our streets far far cleaner. To get that and other basics right I'm happy to swap ideas and experience with anyone who thinks it's more important than new logos and lunch with developers.
I found it a toe-curling embarrassment when Cllr Claire Kober's manifesto in 2014 claimed that: "Our streets are among the cleanest in London and resident satisfaction is at its highest ever level".
Well, it didn't and doesn't look and feel that way to me. Though maybe it applies to Crouch End, Highgate, and the spotless shining streets where the leading lights of the Muswell Hill Colonial Administration live.
Several years ago I saw comparative figures from different London boroughs and to me they looked very dubious. Some reported many thousands of "fly-tips". Other adjacent boroughs were then reporting only a fraction.
Hugh Flouch had the same doubts and raised them on HoL. (http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/hornsey-journal-claims)
I don't know the current figures, but I wonder if they are any more accurate and therefore a more helpful basis for effective policy. A few weeks ago I reported a dumped fridge and got a 'thank-you for reporting a fly-tip' reply from Haringey.To be clear I'm not suggesting everything's more-or-less okay. On the contrary. The other week during the hot weather I talked with a street cleaner. He was about to purple-bag the contents of a litter bin which was jammed to overflowing and surrounded by other dumped rubbish. He thought the bin would rapidly refill. And said that he was only scheduled to come weekly, when each time, the rubbish was crawling with maggots.
Can I suggest too that if the Green Party is serious about rubbish, its members might reconsider their enthusiasm for giving away council cash and assets to "Green Hotels" and similar dubious projects. Instead focusing more on cuts such as to enforcement staff. Enforcing not just against rubbish dumpers, but landlords who - so I hear - move buggy furniture and beds around their properties and into our streets.
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Thanks Martina, As you implied, the Evening Standard article in September 2015 doesn't give the source of the figures. Although it does contain Haringey's comment about the figures being collected in different ways by different boroughs. That's something I suspect may still be the case. But then there's a serious problem if Haringey senior staff and cabinet are making decisions based on badly skewed and unreliable data.
I found it interesting that the "Haringey Council spokesman" mentions the reporting app. Though I'm unsure how we're supposed to take the point that the app produces an increase in reported dumping. Are we to take higher figures as positive? i.e. it's not that there's more dumping and fly-tipping; it's that more people are taking the trouble to report it?
That might possibly be accurate if Haringey was the only London borough using such an app. But it was not. As you probably know FixMyStreet was released in 2012.
LoveCleanStreets - was originally launched in 2005 as LoveLewisham and is now very widely used.
So why mention the app? The apparent implication of the "spokesman's" comment is that Haringey is doing something new and different. Well, this is - I'm sorry to say - inaccurate. I simply don't understand why our Comms Team / PR Unit feels it has to do this.
My advice to my Labour colleagues and to Green Party candidates is to dump the model of confusing public information with marketing. And to instruct staff that telling the truth is okay. I suspect that most people aren't going to fall for obfuscation, half truths and propaganda. But if they do believe it and later realise they've been told a fairy story, that can further corrode the confidence of residents in their local councils and council staff.
Spin and the world distrusts you.
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Hi Alan,
In addition to the link which Martina gave which shows Haringey to be worst in the country for number of cases of fly-tipping, there is:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/you-live-one-britains-fly-tipp...
I agree with you that enforcement is important - and particularly so if the council has outsourced its services to Veolia. Veolia's motivation is to cut costs as far as possible - and it seems clear that they are happy to cut below minimum standards.
It's not news to me that a street bin here is regularly overflowing and filled with maggots. This seems to be acceptable to Haringey Council but not its neighbours in Barnet, Camden, Hackney or Islington.
This is an issue the Green Party is focussing on in this campaign for a council seat, because it's an issue where councillors can make a difference with better council decision-making and oversight.
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The real issue here is proportional representation. Without it, we are stuck in a system where votes for smaller parties are 'wasted'. It would allow voters to opt for the policies they really support. However, like the EU, it is an issue which the media ignore. When I say ignore the EU, I mean refuse to examine what it really is.
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Philip - I agree with you one hundred percent over proportional representation. Our present system is very unfair. However, you will recall that in the middle period of the former "coalition government" there was a referendum on a move towards PR, and the vote against was quite decisive. I personally voted for the change, which I felt was a move in the right direction. I am not optimistic about seeing another vote on the issue, or any change, for ten or twenty years, at least. I also agree that the media have for years been hostile to the EU, and have wildly mis-represented its policies and genuine achievements.
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Martina - By all means, work for PR. Just don't hold your breath waiting for it to happen. I do not believe we will have PR in the UK in my lifetime. You're correct to say that the earlier referendum was on AV, but it _was_ a move towards PR. The electorate rejected it. A large part of that was that main proponent was Nick Clegg, who by that time was throughly discredited, and hated by many of the electorate. Instead of seeing past that to the actual referendum issue, the electorate chose to vote "against Nick Clegg", more interested in giving him a black eye than in any electoral reform. Similar reasons lie behind the EU referendum vote - giving David Cameron a "black eye". With an electorate that is so stupid, and so ill-informed, and many of whom barely understand the present system, I see no chance of political reform.
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Did you ask these people on the doorstep if they voted in the referendum related to a move towards PR? Did you ask them how they voted? The real problem with getting PR is not the interests of both Labour and the Conservatives in the present system, and trying to maintain the dominance of the two parties. It is that the British electorate were given a chance to move towards PR, and they either failed to bother to vote, or chose to express dissatisfaction with Nick Clegg, rather than voting on the substantive issue. There is a significant section of the electorate who can't work up enough energy to vote in Westminster elections (turn-out is 70% at best, and that is turn-out of those who have bothered to register to vote). Turn-out at council elections is even worse. The St Ann's by-election will get at best a 30% turn-out. Face it, Martina, the electorate don't care, they can't be bothered, they are ill-informed, they can't be bothered to make the effort to read real news, many of them have a reading age of 14 or less, they can't do the most basic Arithmetic, they'd have difficulty finding many of the other European countries if presented with a map. As for supporting the Greens, if you really think that most people care enough about global warming or doing anything to protect the natural environment, to consume less meat, even to do basic recycling, you are deluded. They don't care enough about their own lives to eat a sensible diet, or do any exercise, to maintain a healthy weight. Look at the figures for obesity, which are horrific. They are happy to blame someone else for all their problems - Parliament, the Tories, the Labour Party, immigrants, foreigners, etc etc etc - and incapable of taking any kind of responsibility for their own lives. They have no concept of the notion of citizenship and its responsibilities. They just want to sit in front of a TV or other screen and eat and drink themselves to sleep.
Yes, at present I am very jaded, and have developed a thoroughgoing contempt for the mental abilities of most of the British population. As to matters such as ethics, morality - forget it. They just want to blame everything on "johnny foreigner" (most recently, the EU).
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