Stroud Green Focus

dorothy

Does anyone else get sick of Lynne Featherstone's newsletters, just had the Autumn one. It's the way they assume her finger on the pulse of the community, when it's all just her trying to get involved/credit for the micro management of general council services. Is there a Wood Green Focus and a Hornsey Focus too, or is it just Stroud Green that's been focused?

David

I love her newsletters. There's nothing better than a quick [Face Of Lynne count](http://www.stroudgreen.org/discussion/1035/lynnes-face/) over a cup of coffee.

rainbow_carnage

Have you ever actually read the leaflets? We had two within about a month of each other, with the exact same paragraph copied and pasted. For gods sake, hire a copywriter! It's like reading takeaway menus.

Hugh@HarringayOnline

You're not the only one who feels this way. Join many other voices and post the party propaganda you get from all parties on <a href="http://www.thestraightchoice.org/" target="_blank"><i>The Straight Choice</i></a>. Read about a broader national campaign called <i>The Democracy Club</i> at <a href="http://www.harringayonline.com" target="_blank"><i>Harringay Online</i></a>.

andy

Guys, can I possibly suggest that you get a grip? It's a leaflet where an MP in a marginal seat is trying to communicate with voters. Would you rather she: i) didn't communicate with her voters at all ii) spent more money (and expenses) putting together more professional materials Perhaps, given the shocking state of Haringey Council (is there a worse one in the country), it's not the end of the world that someone is trying to micro-manage it. I'm not involved in party politics, but I don't start from the assumption that everyone who's an MP is venal and corrupt. This utter contempt for everything to do with politics is a little bit sad. You could scan every election leaflet in the country and put it online, or you could go outside.

David

I think the straight choice has missed a trick not having face counts.

andy

I mean really, what on earth is the point of this: <http://www.thestraightchoice.org/leaflet.php?q=454>; Tragic. I bet 95% of the leaflets are uploaded by people from other parties hoping to use them negatively.

injoke

so: contempt for politics = bad, on what exactly are you basing your obvious contempt for haringey council? you ask if there's a worse council? what would you measure to determine this? number of newsworthy screw-ups per decade?

injoke

are you weighting these observations by the demographics of the area? are you weighting these observations by funding? i think in the spirit of avoiding ill thought out contempt we can contextualise a little?

David

I've contempt for any face count per page ratio that exceeds 1.25

andy

Victoria Climbie, Baby P, staggeringly poor vetting of foster parents. Nearly a decade of a systemic failure to look after the most vulnerable of its community. I'm weighting these observations against a baseline of competence. It doesn't look great.

poxy

Not 1.25/ω?

Where ω is a measure of the repulsiveness of the fizzog in question.

injoke

"Nearly a decade of a systemic failure to look after the most vulnerable of its community."

how do you know that? how do you know that for every baby p there weren't 100 success stories? you don't, because the council can't shout about them! all their successes are confidential by law.

tottenham is the poorest area of the country, it is the youngest area of the country, it is the most ethnically diverse area of the country (imagine for a moment the costs involved in buying in translation services in area with 180 first languages). yet they have less than half the front line staff of many of richer, less needy boroughs in london.

now, how do you define your "baseline of competence"?

injoke

i do not, and have never worked for haringey council btw.

David

Nope, no ω affecting my face count ratio. This is to keep it unbiased and purely reflecting the vanity of ω.

andy

I'm sorry, you're right. Haringey Council are brilliant. All the dead babies confused me.

injoke

-well deserved scathing comment deleted due to realising who i'm talking to-

David

They were brilliant at sorting me out with a skip permit at short notice.

injoke

look, it's your website. if you want to defend ill informed armchair punditry with smug asides and a resolute unwillingness to examine actual facts then there's not much i can do about it. so i guess i'll leave it alone before david sends me a letter bomb with his IP tracker :)

Ali

Very poor Secondary School provision for Stroud Green. SGPS feeds into Islington’s Arts & Media. People who can leave the area leave the area because of that. This is evidenced by the primary school having two classes in each year until the years just before secondary when it reduces to one.

David

@injoke: _" who i'm talking to"_ ??? If you wanna take a chunk out of Andy as you don't agree with him, go for it. He's a big boy who can defend his own view and likes debate. Just remember, face counts don't lie.

andy

It's not armchair punditry. Your defence gets very close to saying that people can only expect crap outcomes because they're poor. And it's not good enough. After the Victoria Climbie case, you would have thought a 'never again' attitude would prevail. That because they faced the toughest issues, they were going to be the best. That hasn't happened and it's a terrible failure. Compare Tower Hamlets. Similar profile. Nowhere near the issues.

andy

@David. True dat.

injoke

it *is* armchair punditry because you've failed to demonstrate any ability to actually measure how one council is better/worse (your words) than another.

you're basing all this on two similar, very high profile fuck ups (which i'm incidentally not trying to defend - heads should and did roll). you have no way of measuring successes, you have no clear idea about the relative staffing, funding, and need of the boroughs in question. you've made you judgement on woefully inadequate information and are now resorting to this kind of sophistry:

"Your defence gets very close to saying that people can only expect crap outcomes because they're poor. And it's not good enough. "

what i'm saying is that deprived areas are more likely to require intervention from social services, therefore providing those services costs more. does haringey get more money from central government because of this? you don't have any idea.

David

I'm confused. I thought armchair punditry was to do with Hansen on MOTD2. Councils are more to do with face counts on newsletters and some other stuff.

andy

There seem to be no circumstances under which you would call Haringey's service a failure. The Laming Report (into Victoria Climbie) was completed by professionals with a pretty good idea of what's reasonable. They said of Haringey Children's Services: "There can be no excuse for such sloppy and unprofessional performance," This was in 2003. It's not sophistry. Your argument lets them off the hook. They'll never have to improve with you in their corner saying it's OK to be shit because circumstances are hard. But keep telling me I don't know what I'm talking about. It's a very compelling argument.

fordster

it's all getting a little tangential, but surely Andy's actual point is a valid one - on the assumption (yeah, yeah you pick me up on that if you like) that not all MPs are power crazy and only it for themselves, then actually Lynne is doing what she should be doing, which is attempting to representing her constituency.

Am no fan of hers, have never voted for and never will, and i hate the dickhead LibDems, but give me her as my MP any day of the week over some crusty backbencher who's been in Parliament for 30-plus years.

Oh, and Haringey council actually is a load of bollocks (skip permits notwithstanding, where i concur with David - remarkably efficient!).

injoke

let me clarify my position here. i'm not trying to be a cheerleader for haringey council, i'm quite prepared to believe they aren't the "best" (whatever that means) borough council in the UK, and like i said just above - (which you seem to have already forgotten or are willfully ignoring) there have been high profile fuck ups/failures/other synonym for a very poor outcomes.

i don't work for the borough, but i do work with a lot of haringey social workers - people working crazy hours and caseloads for not much money and near constant armchair abuse from catch-all blunderbuss comments that tar everyone working at the council with the same brush - like your comment above. i wonder if you'd make a similar comment to the face of someone tearing their hair out and failing to sleep at night because they're trying to protect 30 different kids from abuse at the same time (for the same money as a bloke who orders photocopier toner in the city) and there simply aren't enough hours in the day?

i'm not trying to "let the council off the hook" in the terms you describe, i'm just trying to contextualise how you would define success and failure - but since you're quite happy to make sweeping pronouncements whilst having no definition for either - nor any methodology to measure either, nor any definition for other terms you're quite happy to use like "baseline of competence" it's not that hard to present a compelling case that you don't know what you're talking about is it?

andy

The Laming Report gives you a methodology and a critique and an evidence base: <http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmhealth/570/57002.htm>; (This reference is from the select committee.) *34.The Inquiry Report identified an absence of basic good practice. There were at least 12 key occasions when the relevant services had opportunities successfully to intervene to help Victoria, but had failed to do so. The Report states that not one of these interventions would have required great skill or made heavy demands on staff:* *Sometimes it needed nothing more than a manager doing their job by asking pertinent questions or taking the trouble to look in a case file. There can be no excuse for such sloppy and unprofessional performance.[17]* There's compelling evidence from Laming and elsewhere to suggest Haringey failed and have failed, for years. It gives me no pleasure, it's just a fact. A fact with which a number of far better qualified people agree. It can't be much fun working in Haringey Social Services, but that's not really the point. It's a hard area to serve, but that's not the point.

tosscat

A nice attempt at lightheartedness David.

injoke

where does laming's report support your conclusion that Haringey must be the "worst" council in the country? and where is his methodology to support that (your) assertion?

i'm not arguing that laming doesn't have cogent definitions and methodology to support *his* carefully worded conclusions, i'm arguing that you don't have the definitions or methodology to support your armchair blunderbuss conclusions.

the point for me is that people should be careful to have some idea what they're talking about before pontificating about it, but the day everyone on the internet limits themselves to issues of which they have the vaguest knowledge will be a sad one for this site and many many others.