It was indeed supported by that spawn of the devil (as far as Boris is concerned) ex-Mayor Ken - which may be the reason that Boris pulled the plug on it. However, at the risk of extending the 'plug' analogy - it plugged a good message - and it is a shame that Boris wasn't big enough to understand the importance of that message in this very diverse part of London. And with the abhorrent rise of the BNP - my own view is that a public statement where we all hold hands together against racism is a jolly good thing.

Or maybe it was because the unions backed it.

Either way, the two who came to see me and Cllr Ed Butcher (LibDem Stroud Green councillor) have managed to contact many of those involved in the organisation of the original Rise. We suggested that they concentrate also on making it a local community event and bring in the local businesses and schools - so that the heart of the new festival is community too - albeit obviously open to all.

They are working very hard to find funders and sponsors so that - albeit on a smaller scale - Rise can rise again.

Here is the parliamentary question that I put down for written answer last week - and the answer itself.

Lynne Featherstone (Hornsey & Wood Green, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether all of the proposals made to the North Central London Service and Organisation Review include the Whittington Hospital, Islington, having a (a) 24 hour accident and emergency unit and (b) full intensive care unit; and if he will make a statement.

However, there had been no discussions, consultations or anything - just an announcement that the Bill would be on the floor of the House on 2 December - a derisory one day only. This means that the dozens of amendments and New Clauses that are down for debate won't even get discussed. For only one day - and almost certainly a statement after Wednesday's PMQs on Afghanistan - will mean that we will be lucky to get a few hours.

Report Stage is not just about the Government getting its amendments and New Clauses down and through -but it is the only chance back-benchers get to put down their amendments and debate the issues.

So in Business Questions today, I along with many other MPs asked Harriet to extend the time to allow proper scrutiny. Harriet was disingenuous about the 'discussions' and led the House to believe that they had taken place when they had not. Moreover, in her view there was plenty of time and it appeared as if she thought we were all making a terrible fuss over nothing.

Exemplar - I don't think so.

There are (or rather, were) websites that we can access when we want to know, for example, if there is a planning application near us. There are websites that can take the information about jobs available through the Job Centre and send us that information.

It is that very special feature – being postcode driven, so that information can be given in the geographical locations we want - that makes them so useful. This dissemination of useful information, driven by postcodes, is beneficial forgot just for individuals but for the country.

But the Royal Mail has decided that only it can use postcodes – even if as in this case – it is not for profit and for human good.

The Royal Mail threatened to take a case against Ernestmarples (which underpins a range of valuable different website services) on copyright grounds. Obviously – this is David and Goliath – and Ernestmarples could not afford to take on the might of the Royal Mail and so have closed down their site.

But we all need to join in this fight. I was asked my views - and here they are:

As Chair of the Liberal Democrat Technology Board - and an MP who believes that the internet should be used to strengthen democracy - I want to declare my support for the Free our Data campaign.

We need postcodes to be owned by the public - not sold to the public. Postcodes are the basic pre-requisite for allowing services to be developed that support democratic accountability.

As an MP, sites like MySociety and others are revolutionizing our accountability and the accountability and accessibility of Parliament. But they currently have to operate on the edge of legality - and if our postcodes were set free - could and would be right at the heart of a new politics - an open and accountable politics.

This is an issue that cuts across parties - hence Labour MP Tom Watson talking about it on Lib Dem Voice - and so it should, because it's about how the data about us can help us all.

The responses are pouring in. In the first 24 hours, since yesterday afternoon, 745 people have already signed the Whittington petition and 89 the North Mid.

It is already quite clear that local people don't want to lose their local A & E nor see it reduced. That is why it is so important that local peoples' views are heard loud and clear NOW. Otherwise when the Health Authority 'options' finally come to public consultation - we may find that there are no options that keep the Whittington A & E open and that in reality the decisions have actually been made. That goes for the North Mid too.

I support improved clinical outcomes, obviously, and there are lots of health services that may be better provided by one or other hospital. But A & E is one of the services that needs to be local and 24 hours - that's the point.

As one constituent wrote to me who works at one of the hospitals (not the Whittington) 'there is no more logic to an A & E unit at University College Hospital than the others. Medical staff will adapt to what is decided. UCH and RFH could easily become even more specialist than they already are and would flourish without an A & E. The Whittington on the contrary exists to provide a local and emergency service and is at risk of having its lifeblood sucked away'.

Couldn't have put it better myself!

However, the Ministry of Defence got its knickers in a twist in case Murdoch tried to bring injured soldiers into the same legislation for more compensation for their injuries – albeit the soldiers compensation scheme is certainly a just, but ultimately completely different matter.

I got involved in the original case of Will Pike (his father is my constituent) who was dreadfully injured in the Mumbai terror attacks where those with British passports were targeted. Will was dreadfully injured and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. We thought we had victory with this wrong - a very cheap wrong to right at around £4million for all those who might claim from Mumbai and other attacks on our citizens abroad – finally about to be righted. Suddenly Gordon Brown changed his mind and did a complete U-turn.

Downing Street is now faffing around claiming that the ‘delay’ is indeed because of some concerns raised by the Ministry of Defence. Where’s the Government’s moral fibre? Where’s their gumption? You wonder what happened to an Englishman’s word being his bond – doncha?

Finally I managed to get Transport for London (TfL), Haringey Primary Care Trust (part of the NHS) and me together in the same place to bang heads together about the need for better bus links to the new Community Health Centre on the old Hornsey Central Hospital site.

We have this wonderful new facility but, despite the transport issues being raised as a key issue at every public and private meeting (literally for years) by many people, nothing has been properly planned, delivered - or even promised for the future.

And of course now the new Health Centre is here - and operational - but not a new bus in sight. Loads of people joined in my campaign for a new bus to enable them to access the new centre when referred there from wherever they live in Highgate, Crouch End, Muswell Hill, Fortis Green or Alexandra wards by their own GP.

Imagine my shock when TfL said they had no idea that there were services were already being provided (with lots more to come) which would bring people from all over the west of Hornsey & Wood Green to the new facility. TfL seemed to be under the illusion that the only thing happening was that two GP practices had moved in and only they would need transport.

To be honest - I couldn't believe it!

Given the promises on transport, the supposed discussions on transport - to be sitting there listening to the two key agencies basically saying that there was such a gap in communication that TfL didn't know that there was an ongoing and expanding need for access to the site from provision of new services on the site was truly shocking.

From this 'discovery' TfL have now agreed to take away the issue and look at it properly. At least they now both seem to understand there is a problem with providing a major new health facility with no extra transport provision.

I have been contacted by many local people on the back of our campaign giving examples of problems they have encountered. One example is a team who have already moved into the new facility and whose clients will commonly have reduced mobility - albeit still very capable of getting on a bus if it can deliver them near to the health centre - are concerned about how their patients will get to them.

Another example is that of one local health worker who has contact with people with very differing needs in the borough who wrote to me to say that a number of people she is in contact with through her work have mentioned their concerns about the lack of usable transport links to the new site.

I don't know what on earth has been going on - but you can bet my language to both the Chair of Haringey PCT and Peter Hendy (Commissioner of Transport in London) will be pretty strong as I bring this smartly to their attention.

Clearly this is a mess - and I just hope that both Haringey PCT and TfL sort it out now they have acknowledged that they haven't even been looking at the right problem.

In our modern world - new challenges arise as we battle with where the right place is to draw the line between legislating to prevent discrimination - and the freedoms we treasure to believe and practise whichever faith we may follow.

An example would be the relatively recent case of a registrar whose religious beliefs led to her refusing to perform a civil partnership ceremony for a gay couple in Islington. In our modern world - there is no place any longer for conscience or belief (just as with likes or dislikes) for an individual to refuse equal access to public services.

So - when I say the 'modern world' throws up new challenges - years ago this dilemma would not have existed because being openly gay itself was illegal. It is a measure of how far we have travelled that to not register a civil partnership is now illegal. I know I came in for a fair amount of chatter on the Internet amongst religious sites for saying, during the committee stage of the Equality Bill, that given these new challenges people would have to basically go into a different job - meaning that if your religious belief is going to make it impossible to carry out your work in the public sector - then that job is not going to be the right one. For those in the job as the world changes - of course - this is a very difficult circle to square - but in the end (and I believe quite rightly) access to public services cannot be anything other than free of religious belief.

So - that bit is relatively simple - perhaps more complex is how far and in what circumstances can or should the state expand beyond where pubic money is spent.

I spoke a bit about politics generally - but also in particular some of the issues that had arisen thus far on the Equality Bill where there is undoubtedly a clash between religious freedoms and state requirements in the dispensing of public services.

One particularly interesting part of the discussion, I thought, was in the Bill there is a part that says of say a Christian Church in terms of employment - it's OK to discriminate in employing the Vicar and only Christians need apply (pretty obvious) but that employing a youth leader or indeed caretaker that protection would not exist and that employment must be open to all.

The caretaker scenario no-one seemed to mind being a non-discriminatory position but the Youth Leader - people thought should be able to teach and lead in a Christian way - given it was a youth group belonging to the Church. So - I want to throw that over to comment as there is a clash between State and Church on this issue - where principles clash and both have right on their side.

I had not been reassured by the hasty press release by LNC saying that the first letter had been confusing and re-issuing a version which changed the Whittington’s fate to being designated a ‘local hospital’ in the options rather than mentioning A& E at all.

‘Local Hospital’ if you look up its meaning on the Department of Health website means that A& E would be reduced to effectively ‘urgent care’ for between 8 and 16 hours per day with no emergency surgery on site. Given the level of need locally – the idea of people having to travel to the Royal Free which has appalling public transport access – does not seem to be designed with local people in mind at all.

Moreover, Haringey which doesn’t actually have a hospital, relies on both the Whittington and The North Middlesex for A & E – and the North Middlesex' A & E is also under threat in one of the current four options.
Anyway – today I had urgent meetings with both LNC (Stephen Conroy) and the Chief Exec of the Whittington (Rob Larkman) - separately. In terms of LNC – Mr Conroy was very keen to emphasise that nothing was final, that options were still being discussed and drawn up, that no decisions had been taken – and that the options (whatever they ended up as) would go to the Review Panel in December and pre-consultation in January. To avoid the elections – the public consultation on the options would be in September 2010. So if the letter hadn't been leaked - local people would not have had any say before the election.

The proposals are all around what should be provided where and which of UCH, The Royal Free, Barnet, North Midds, The Whittington and Chase Farm would become ‘major acute’ hospitals and which local.
When I pushed for assurance that the 24 hour A & E service at the Whittington would not be terminated – Mr Conroy could not and would not give that assurance.

I also asked him what autonomy and status the Whittington Board had in all of this. From his answer it is quite clear that whilst the Whittington Board’s opinions are important, they are considered ‘organisationally loyal’ and when looking at the bigger picture of service needs in the ‘sector’ it would be the LCN who would take the decisions.

We also pushed (I was accompanied by Cllr Nigel Scott, LibDem local health spokesperson and Ed Butcher, my Head of Office) for openness and transparency about the processes. We are concerned that by the time there is a wide public consultation (as I said - after the election) – the basic decisions will have been made. That first letter stating that the Whittington would have no A & E even though withdrawn – has left its mark – and I can’t help thinking that where there’s smoke….

It has also been pointed out to me that the Whittington sits on top value land – and that letting the hospital wither on the vine of ever reducing services might at some point enable land sales to a cash-strapped Strategic Health Authority – I hope not!

At the subsequent meeting at the Whittington Hospital, Rob Larkman (CEO) said that they had been shocked too by the letter stating that A & E would not be provided in any of the options and that it was his challenge on that letter that had forced LCN to put out the second letter.

In fact I think the Whittington Board may, to an extent, be an ally of local people in the fight to retain A & E and maternity and obstetrics. The Chair of the Board was also in attendance at this meeting and he said that the Board also fought for what the local community wanted and needed.

So to me, the crucial issues are not the labels that LNC may wish to give their new configurations of major acute, acute, local and so on – the key is still keeping important services like 24 hour A & E and maternity and obstetrics local at the Whittington - whatever the configuration.

I made it quite clear that I would, apart from keeping in close contact with what is happening, make sure that local people are kept informed about what is going on and about what I regard as a real threat to both the 24 hour A & E and the continued provision of maternity and obstetrics at the Whittington – and that I would be campaigning along with my Liberal Democrat colleagues in Haringey and Islington for what local people want and need.

Women now have the vote on the same terms as men. With the majority of the electorate female - and indeed the majority of actual voters at the last general election female too - what's there left to worry about, one might ask?

Well - with only around one in five MPs female, there's a big difference between what goes in to the electoral system (majority: female) and what comes out (overwhelming majority: male).

So what I want to address in this piece head on why I believe this matters. It is in everyone's interests to have a Parliament that is made up of the best people for the job, and that includes a range of people who can best represent the diversity that exists in our communities. If we don't have the best, and if we don't have a Parliament that fully understands how issues look to people from all those diverse viewpoints, then we get worse decision-making - and we all suffer from that in the end. To take a very simple example - if you have a Parliament passing laws on fighting crime which doesn't understand the perspectives of people under 25, then those laws will not be as effective - and we all suffer as a result.

Now you don't necessarily have to be of a particular group or community or whatever to be able to understand and represent its views. But in general it certainly helps.

Would a Parliament full of people over 70 have some MPs who were good at understanding the viewpoints of those under 30? Of course it would - but it would be even better at doing that if not all the MPs were over 70. The same applies to gender. Yes, some men are good at understanding and representing the views of women, and vice-versa. But when you have a Parliament that is four-fifths men, we are far too close to that everyone over 70 situation.

Now people sometimes say - ah, but if you can't point to an example of an act of explicit discrimination, then the system is fair and doing anything to fix the results means we won't be getting the best person for the job. So I'm going to try to tackle that head on.

First, when you have the number of female MPs at record levels - but still a Parliament that is 80% male - I think it fair to ask, "Are you really, really sure there's no discrimination going on anywhere?" As prima facia evidence goes, that's pretty strong stuff. Of course, it doesn't make the case in itself, but I think too many people are too complacent in the face of what should be a shocking figure.

And, I would ask - do you really think that if you picked the 646 best people for the job of MP (using whatever definition of "best" you think suits), you would end up with four out of every five of them being male? Do you really think the distribution of talent, ability, experience, knowledge - whatever goes in to your definition of "best" - is so lopsided amongst the population that the result is that four-fifths of those people are male?

I am happy to acknowledge that there are - on average, in general, with individual exceptions - differences between the sexes. Yes, if I needed someone to run with an urgent message as fast as possible then, other things being equal, I'd ask a man as on average men are faster - or even, dare I say it, better - at running than women. Just as it would be wrong to assume that all men are faster than all women, it would be foolish to close our eyes to the differences on average.

But what such difference could there be that would justify four-fifths of MPs being male?

Certainly there are aspects of the way our political system works which typically appeal more to men or are more off-putting to women, but those are not aspects that are engraved in stone and always have to be that way. Take the bear-pit performances (and I use that word kindly - embarrassing shambles might often be more appropriate) of the PM / Leader of the Opposition exchanges at Prime Minister's Questions, with massed ranks of people sat behind each and shouting at each other. That sort of behaviour would be completely unacceptable in a work place - imagine running a meeting at work where people behaved like that. And there's no essential need for PMQs to be like that - look around at how other walks of life and other countries manage to have question times that are meaningful and dignified.

And in this example is where, I think, some good news can be found. For tackling issues like this would not only tackle the male/female imbalance, they would benefit politics overall.

But most importantly, we shouldn't turn a blind eye to the gender balance of Parliament as if it doesn't matter. There is no one magic wand to fix any and all problems, but we can only fix problems if we acknowledge they exist.