|
|
 |
| |
MP Emily has impressive record of achievements
• IT will not surprise you that I strongly disagree with the analysis of our MP Emily Thornberry from the Lib Dems’ Bridget Fox (Bell goes for round two of the Bridget-versus-Emily contest, August 10).
But can I offer the Tribune’s readers some details of our MP’s record so that they may judge for themselves?
In her first two years as MP for Islington South and Finsbury, Emily (pictured) has worked determinedly to raise housing and the environment up the government’s agenda – and the signs suggest that her efforts are paying off. Housing has taken a far greater prominence in the government’s programme under Gordon Brown and, as he acknowledged during his first week as Prime Minister, Emily has been “a persistent campaigner who has talked to me on many occasions about the cost of housing in her constituency and the need for more affordable homes”.
Meanwhile, Emily’s work on her Commons environment committee has pushed the government in favour of using fair environmental charges, and the committee’s reports have supported the use of micro-generation over nuclear power. Emily’s climate change bill in the last session of Parliament raised many of the principles now being considered by the government, like binding carbon targets and ministerial report-backs to parliament.
And while Emily has always aimed to work with the government, she has not been afraid to stand up on issues where she differs.
Many of us in the local Labour Party were impressed that just a few months after being elected, Emily had the courage to vote against the government on 90-day detention for terror suspects.
She showed similar guts by voting to scrap Trident earlier this year. In Islington, she worked with the government to help secure the future of Barts Hospital, and she persuaded the government to introduce the country’s first cap on security work charges for leaseholders in the EC1 area.
Successful lobbying of Ed Miliband led to the Women’s Resource Centre in Clerkenwell getting £500,000 funding, while Emily’s auctioneer skills helped raise money for the Amwell Street shops’ fighting fund.
But one of Emily’s most striking achievements is apparent when we go round Islington knocking on doors.
It is remarkable the sheer number of people who tell us how Emily has helped them personally with their housing benefit or council tax problems, or a whole host of other issues. Emily reported back to us recently that she has helped over 9,000 individual constituents since being elected – and I think this is one of the often unsung, but most impressive, parts of her work.
In contrast to Emily’s record over the last two years, the most we have to thank Ms Fox for from her past years on the council is a legacy of road humps. This comparison speaks for itself.
IAN McLAUGHLIN
Chairman Islington South and Finsbury Labour Party, N1
Looking to an election
• WE liked Mark Blunden’s piece about the Bridget-versus-Emily contest (Tribune, August 10).
Ms Fox undoubtedly blotted her copybook by her tendency to love, honour, and obey former Islington strongman, Steve Hitchins.
However, she is working hard to retrieve her position.
While out visiting people on the Pleydell estate on a wet Sunday morning we were interested to find Bridget and Councillor Ruth Polling doing the same.
The fate of many a candidate is decided on the doorstep.
At the 2005 general election Labour scored 12,345 in Finsbury and South Islington.
The Lib Dem candidate got 11,861.
The Lib Dem and Tory candidates together got 16,455.
Only a few Tories would have to vote tactically for the Lib Dem candidate in order to get Labour out.
At the by-elections in 2007 the Labour vote in Sedgefield slumped by a half and the Labour vote in Southall slumped by a third compared with 2005.
The Lib Dem plus Tory vote held up. Despite his promises, and the opinion polls, at the only polls that counted the voters were distinctly unimpressed by Gordon Brown.
Emily Thornberry annoyed many Labour Party members and affiliated trade unionists by not nominating anti-war candidate John McDonnell for the Labour Party leadership. She was not asked to vote for Mr McDonnell if there were a contest, merely to nominate him in order to ensure that there would be a contest. In the event, Ms Thornberry joined 312 other Labour MPs in nominating Mr Brown while Mr McDonnell secured only 29 Labour MP nominations of 45 he needed in order to be able to stand.
In this way, 200,000 individual Labour Party members and three million affiliated trade unionists were deprived of any vote on the leadership.
Morale is not high in the Labour Party.
In our own Bunhill ward, the 35 members are completely inactive. Other members have stated their intention to desert Finsbury and South Islington at the next general election in order to ensure that anti-war North Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn does not share Emily
Thornberry’s probable fate.
IVOR AND FLORENCE KENNA
Address supplied
Judgment not so bad
• SO Bridget Fox thinks it was ‘bad judgment’ for Emily Thornberry MP to refuse to vote in the Lib Dems’ parking referendum?
Emily refused to vote because the scheme was unfair and unequal – I think the only bad judgment here came from Fox’s Lib Dem colleagues, who proposed a scheme that would cut charges for people living on streets, while leaving charges on council estates unchanged at £200.
LYNNE WELLS
Central Street, EC1
|
 |
|
| |
| Your Comments : |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
|
