Air weapon misuse still causing mayhem

I've been reading a piece in the Evening News about a cat which has just been at the vets having had TWO injuries from airguns in recent months. That's a good example of the mayhem that the misuse of air weapons can cause - and I've seen some horrific photos from the SSPCA of injuries which have been caused to other animals (I'll put a link to the SSPCA campaign on this issue up on this blog shortl). And of course, we've had some even more horrific attacks (sometimes fatal)on children. I - and many others, of course - have been campaigning for the law on airguns to be tightened up (there are details and a petition on my website www.marklazarowicz.org.uk), and incidents like this just show why this needs to be done - urgently!

Sometimes you can get results

Spent quite a bit of time at the weekend and Monday following up cases from the weekly surgeries (Pilton, Stockbridge, and Leith Walk) on Friday. The surgeries weren't as busy as they can be - I think some people believe the impression given in the media that MPs are all off on 12 week holidays in exotic destinations! - but all the cases were quite complex. It was a normal mix of cases - issues about benefits, housing, and a lot of problems with passport, visas and immigration - but this week I think most of the cases were ones about which an MPs intervention should be able to make the difference, which isn't always the case, and it's good to results when you can.

After I'd finished, I dropped in for a coffee to the excellent Vittoria cafe/restaurant across the road from my office. I'm happy to give Vittoria a "plug", as once again this year Tony Crolla at Vittoria's is letting me organise a coffee morning as part of Macmillan Cancer's "Biggest Coffee Morning in the World", on Friday 29 September (at 10.00 am). Tony gives all the money spent on coffees during the event - last year we managed to raise more than £200.

Losing a community facility at the local Tesco

I see that the Tesco on Broughton Road has just been going through one of its periodic reorganisations. Part of the change has been to replace the cafe with a Costa Coffee outlet. As a result, we've seen the disappearance of one of the few places in the Broughton Road area where people could get an "ordinary" - and not too expensive - cup of coffee or tea. I know that the cafe was a popular gathering place for a lot of local pensioners, who would often meet up after they'd done their messages, and I am not sure if there is anywhere else for them to go. Now they've been turfed out, with only a sign on a blackboard saying "Thank you for your custom over all the years"!!!

It's all very well talking about "corporate social responsibility", but here's an example of big business taking away what was a well-used community facility - to make a bit more money, I am sure, but I suspect even that will not be much. Somebody has even suggested it's part of a strategy to drive away pensioners and others on lower incomes from the supermarket because they don't spend much - but I hope that even a big supermarket chain wouldn't go as far as that! (Incidentally, if anyone from the local Tesco reads this, I am sure that this decision is one of those taken by some anonymous corporate bean-counter in head office! - and if I'm wrong about any of this, let me know!).

Getting the post through

Organised one of my regular meetings with Royal Mail, at their offices around the corner from my constituency office. I have these meetings to bring up any complaints or issues raised by residents - and this time I also mentioned the recent report from the consumer organisation Postwatch which said that this part of Edinburgh had a particularly bad record for wrong deliveries. I know that delivering mail in areas with lots of tenements is getting harder and harder, what with more and more door entry systems (intercoms), flats with lots of changing tenants, and more and more (heavy) junk mail, so I have a lot of sympathy with the postal workers who have to try and deal with all of this, and I'm not blaming them. However, I do get quite a few complaints about mail going astray etc, and although Royal Mail say that there has been an improvement in Edinburgh, they accept they still have more to provide the quality of service the public are entitled to.

One particular difficulty in much of my constituency is that Royal Mail have changed the system they use for mail which can't be delivered. It used to be the case that you could either collect the mail from the delivery office, or have it redelivered. However, for some time now, in parts of Edinburgh they will no longer redeliver, but instead insist on people going to the delivery office. This means people may have to go quite a distance to pick up their mail - and the problem is made worse by the fact that at weekends in particular there are sometimes long queues at the delivery office to pick up mail which hasn't been delivered - I've had to wait 15 minutes or so myself, on occasion.

I raised this problem both with Royal Mail and Postwatch, who I also met this week, and they promised to look into this. I'll be chasing them up!

Edinburgh Samaritans

Made a visit a day or so ago to the offices of the Edinburgh Samaritans, and met some of their volunteers who showed me round. I had assumed they depended very much on volunteers, but I hadn't realised how much until I met them - apart from one admin staff, everyone else was a volunteer - they now had about 150, from Edinburgh and Lothian. It was another example of the way in which thousands, possibly tens of thousands of people, in Edinburgh are involved in voluntary work in their community in some way. I once worked out that just in my own constituency there were probably between 3,000 - 5,000 people involved in community activity in some way (including schools boards/PTAs , sports groups, campaign groups, tenants and residents associations, etc) - which goes some way to answering those who say that community is dead. All political parties have problems getting members and activists - but people still want to do things - it's the political system that has the problem, not the people, I think.

The morning after the night before at the City Chambers

Was up at the City Chambers today. Nothing to do with the Labour group's leadership election which took place last night - but I did come across a few Labour councillors with hangovers! I was pleased to see that the new nominee for Council Leader, Ewan Aitken, has made a point of making his very first statement a pledge to get a better deal from the Scottish Executive. He'll have my full backing in that. The Executive's programme of shifting government jobs out of Edinburgh is going much too far. The latest idea is to move the Registers of Scotland away, and if that goes ahead a lot of local workers will be forced to move away or give up their job, and as we saw with the SNH debacle (where jobs were moved from Edinburgh to Inverness, which had an even lower unemployment rate than Edinburgh!), these moves end up costing the taxpayer. If civil service jobs are moved away from Edinburgh, we'll end up with the Edinburgh economy being even more dominated by the finance sector and tourism. It's great to have jobs in those areas, of course - but trends in tourism destinations go up and down, and who knows what kind of jobs there'll be in the finance sector in 20 years time with all the changes in technology and the market. So we have to keep a broad mix of jobs; civil service jobs cover the whole range of skills and qualifications, and we need to keep that type of mix of jobs in Edinburgh.

I'll be writing to Ewan to suggest we need to enlist all Edinburgh's MSPs and MPs - across party - with the Council (and trade unions and business)in a campaign to put the case for jobs in Edinburgh (not just existing civil service jobs - there's lots of jobs in the environmental and energy industries as well which we should try to get).

I'm not saying no government jobs should ever leave Edinburgh - but we can't have a wholescale shift of civil service jobs out of the city. If there is, we'll have all our eggs in one or two baskets. Where would we be if a big Edinburgh-based insurer or bank were to be bought by (say) a Chinese company in 10 years time, which then threatened to move jobs away?

Media frenzy about European workers

I've been listening to the radio today to the arguments about migrant workers from the new European Union countries which have dominated the news programmes. I was told off by a visitor to this blog a few days ago for not being "positive" because I accused the Tories of being opportunist, but having heard the Tory immigration spokesperson today, I can't help making a few comments (sorry Euan!). Over the last two years the Tory line on immigrants from the "new" EU has been: (1) to say (in 2004) there should be tougher controls on new workers; (2) then to say (first half of 2006) that the controls were unnecessary, and the government should get rid of the controls that were in place; and then again (second half of 2006) there should be tougher controls on new workers!

MPs and the media should be really careful about using immigration as an easy way of getting headlines. I've no doubt that there are growing concerns about the number of migrant workers from the "new" Europe. I've been conscious of that from what I've heard on the streets of my constituency on quite a few occasions over the last few months. Just today two different people stopped me in the street to say they were worried. These concerns have to be taken seriously. That's one reason why I've been campaigning over the last few months to make sure migrant workers are not exploited by employers who don't pay them the minimum wage, and get the conditions at work to which they are entitled. If they don't, the position of existing British workers will be undermined too.

It looks likely that the other EU countries will decide to restrict migrant workers from Romania and Bulgaria when they join the EU in 2007. If that happens, it will obviously be more likely that a lot of people from those countries will want to come to Britain to work, and there's no point pretending that couldn't cause problems and raise community tensions. So Britain will probably need restrictions on the number of migrant workers from Bulgaria and Romania as well. But it's important to challenge some of the myths being put out by some of the media, and to point out the contribution migrants make to our country. It's all too easy to blame problems on immigrants and as a result stir up ill-feeling between different communities in our country.

The new workers coming in from the "new" EU have been good for our economy. We do have to try and make sure, however, that the existing British lower paid worker doesn't lose out. We've also got to make sure public services can cope (although I suspect the incoming workers make less use of them than many others). That shouldn't be difficult, as after all the vast majority of the migrants from Central and Eastern Europe are in work, and paying tax, so it seems right that some of the money paid by them to central government should go back to help the costs of the local councils where the migrant workers are living. I'll be asking the government about this.

Scotland Yard Adventure Centre needs cash

I dropped in earlier this week at the Scotland Yard Adventure Centre. This project works with children with special needs, at their excellent centre and playground at Scotland Yard, just by Canonmills. I was concerned to hear they were facing financial problems, now that their funding from the National Lottery has come to an end. I know that there is a real problem for the Council because groups always look to it to find money to allow projects to continue when short-term funding comes to an end, but I'll be writing to the Council to ask them to do what they can to give more support to this Centre which works with children from all over Edinburgh. (I see that the Centre has a big open day on Saturday 9th September, which I will drop in to).

The children of war

Went along this morning to the opening of an exhibition organised by the charity Islamic Relief at the Edinburgh Central Mosque, about their work, specifically in Kashmir after the earthquake, and particularly in Lebanon both before the current war and at the moment. What really got to me was the pictures and film showing the effect of the war on children - schoolkids drawings which were all about blocks of flats being bombed, and film showing children so obviously traumatised by what was happening to them. As one of the workers with Islamic Relief who'd just come back from Beirut pointed out, what is different in the disaster of war from a disaster like the tsunami, where he'd also worked, is that the natural disaster happens, and then people can begin to recover - but a war goes on and on, so the trauma is so much worse.

Before anyone says I'm being one-sided, of course I realise that there are children in Israel who have been traumatised by the recent and previous rocket attacks. I'm not making a partisan point here (I've put down my views on the issue on my main website); I'm just recording the fact that even though I've seen many reports of both natural disasters and war, what I saw this morning was really moving - if that's a strong enough word for it.

Incidentally, Islamic Relief is a recogised UK charity, and there's information about how you can donate to Islamic Relief on their website www.islamic-relief.org.uk. Christian Aid also have an emergency appeal for Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. You can donate online at www.christian-aid.org.uk/middle_east/index.htm.(I also see that the Palestinian craft shop which is based at St. Georges West in Edinburgh's West End, has also launched an appeal - see www.hadeel.org for details).

Free cash : a small victory....

We're repeatedly told Edinburgh is booming - and it is, with unemployment having dropped dramatically over the last few years. But while it's undoubtedly true that the majority of people in Edinburgh are better off (at least financially!) than they've ever been, that "boom" also brings problems, not least the gap in incomes and wealth between the richest and poorest areas and communities within the city. It's an issue in which I've been involved in various ways over the years. A small but telling example is the way that if you live in some parts of Edinburgh North & Leith you'll have great difficulty in finding a cash machine to get at your own money - and if you do, you'll get charged for the privilege. I've been backing a campaign for "free" cash machines - and a couple of banks have now responded by saying they will install cash machines which won't charge in areas which currently don't have any. In this area, they are to be installed in Pilton and Muirhouse, and I've been asked by the bank concerned to suggest a suitable location - anyone with any ideas, let me know! You can contact me through my website at

It's only a small victory - I know that the cost of doing this is miniscule compared with the banks' multi-billion profits, and I also know there are a lot bigger issues to be tackled in the Greater Pilton area - but if you can only afford to draw £20 out in cash - and it costs you £1.50 in cash each time you do it, doing something about that is worthwhile, I think.

It's all happening in Edinburgh North & Leith

There's a number of arguments against the long summer recess from Parliament (not least being regularly being met in the street with the greeting "enjoying your holidays, then?!") - and personally, I think it would make sense if MPs had a shorter summer break and instead had more time available in the constituency during the time when Parliament is in session. However, the summer recess does have the advantage of allowing MPs like myself to get round a lot of community organisations and keep in touch with what they're doing. On Thursday this week, for example, I visited a really impressive project based at "Out of the Blue" (the former Drill Hall in Dalmeny Street). The project, part of "Gallery 37", works with young people to give them training in various design, arts, and media skills. The Leith project has been runs for 4 weeks, and I understand it's the second year it's run here. I was told that the vast majority of young people who were involved in the project last year went on to make use of the skills they had acquired, and certainly this year's trainees were producing some very good material - and quite a few had actually been able to sell items (sometimes at very good prices) at the project's outlet during the Festival!
The next day, I had a meeting on a very different type of subject, when I met a group of local people who are active in the Jubilee Scotland group. This is the organisation which has been campaigning for some years for debt relief - the writing off of the debts of the poorer countries. They handed over a large bundle of postcards from local supporters of the campaign which I agreed to pass on to the International Development Secretary, Hilary Benn, when Parliament resumes.

Yet another reason not to be a Tory

I could never be a Tory anyway, but if I needed yet another reason not to be a Tory, then David Cameron has just given me another one. I see that having spent much of the last few months criticising the government for being too tough on terrorism, he's now jumped on to the soap-box and is now accusing the government of not being tough enough! This seems to me to take shameless opportunism to new heights (or depths?!). I'm not blaming the Tory party for trying to find new policies given the unpopularity of their previous ones - but it really does look as if the ONLY unifying principle behind the policies which they are coming out with these days is that they will say ANYTHING which seems likely to win a few votes, no matter how coherent or consistent that is with what else they are saying.

Youth in our community

I've had a good meeting with Simon Daley, one of the community police officers from Gayfield Police Station. Over the last few months, there have been issues with gatherings of youths and young adults in a number of areas of the constituency. In some areas, there have been problems with rowdiness, drunkenness, and in a few cases violence. I've been working with a number of local residents on the issue, and the police. Of course, it's only a handful of young people that are causing a problem - and what has emerged is that although there are some very good youth projects - in Pilton and Leith for example - there are large areas of the constituency which appear to have very little for young people in the teenage group to do. This is not something which has just come to light - we came across a report 10 years ago highlighting this issue, but not much seems to have happened as a result.

I was most impressed with the way that Simon Daley has been working with local people, including young people, to put together a plan for more youth facilities in the area. He tells me that they are looking at the possibility of doing something in the Canonmills area, perhaps in or near Scotland St Yard park. I've asked him to keep me in touch with how things turn out.

Middle East crisis

I've just had a meeting in my constituency office with a group of Muslim constituents from some of the local Asian community who wanted to tell me about their anger and concern about what has been happening in Lebanon, and about the British government's policy in particular. I told them about my support for a recall of Parliament, and my call almost four weeks ago for an immediate ceasefire (see also my article on the crisis at http://www.marklazarowicz.org.uk/).

They welcomed my position, but their strength of feeling on the issue was just another reminder of the way how, unfortunately, the British's government failure to call for an immediate ceasefire at the beginning of the conflict alienated so many people. I know that from the considerable number of emails and letters I have had, more than on any international issue since the run-up to the Iraq war.

It's obviously good that as of today a ceasefire seems to be holding in Southern Lebanon, but it's pretty obvious that if there is not a move to a general deescalation of the conflict, and that must also mean some recommencement of the Middle East peace process, the chances of that ceasefire lasting can't be very good.