The rhetoric from the Government is astounding. The Number 10 website proudly announces “we want to be the most open and transparent government in the world”, Francis Maude has heralded the need to make transparency “an integral part of government business”, Nick Clegg has promised to extend FOI powers.

Of course, a lot of this is simply rhetoric – data is published without any context and is rendered almost entirely meaningless (see Richard Osley on the difficulty of armchair auditing).

But the information is there, to follow up through FOI or phonecalls. The number of meetings are published and there for the citizen to pursue.

Like, if you were to, say, FOI the minutes of published meetings between Government advisers and banks.

Say this list – if you wanted to know the details of the meeting between Sir Jon Cunliffe, the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Europe and Global issues and Goldman Sachs in November 2011, after the Cabinet Office published a list of meetings, you would email the Cabinet Office and FOI the minutes.

Because surely if the meeting is on the public record, a public record of what happened at the meeting exists.

But no. I just received this from the Cabinet Office: “I am writing to advise you that following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established that we do not hold the information you requested.”

I have emailed them back to ask who holds the information – and this could be my fault for assuming if the Cabinet Office publishes lists of meetings, then they hold the minutes too. But FOI’ing minutes of meetings published by other departments has always worked before. Will update with more details as and when I get them.

It’s more  looking at why 507 out of 649* MPs are men. That’s seventy-eight per cent. Is it politics itself, or politics at Westminster which has fewer women either participating or being elected?

To satisfy part of my curiosity, I took a random sample (and when I say random I mean utterly random, not stratified) of six London councils and checked the percentages of their councillors who were male/female. You can see the full spreadsheet on google docs here, and summarised results below:

And here are those results compared with parliament:

Initial (slightly obvious) conclusion – a higher percentage of women are councillors than MPs. So it’s parliament rather than politics itself which is putting women off . But this is just using six out of 32 London councils, and they are all in North London.

As I’m currently doing a dissertation on a subject completely unrelated to women in politics, I’m almost certain I’ll widen this over the coming weeks and look through more councils, as well as the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, GLA etc.

* There are 649 MPs in the House of Commons currently, but there are 650 constituencies overall. One constituency, Thirsk and Malton, has a delayed election after a candidate died.

** Richard Osley, the deputy editor of the Camden New Journal, tells me there will be 54 seats (as opposed to the 51 I’ve counted) on Camden council as of next week after a delayed election in Haverstock for similar reasons.

It doesn’t need to stop with MSM. There’s also the fantastic Straight Choice, where you can have a look at election leaflets from almost any party in almost any constituency in the UK. They’ve even got a map of how many leaflets they have in different constituencies (online maps have to be one of my favourite parts of election2010).

Anyway, the Guardian election live blog today included an interesting tidbit from Martin Wainwright about the Straight Choice. I’ve highlighted the relevant bits:

I’m at a press conference in Liverpool where the Straight Choice – political activists who want fair and truthful elections – are publishing a study of 4,000 leaflets delivered in the election so far. Their findings show massive misuse of statistics to convince voters that support for one or other of the parties would be a wasted vote, and also the level of “centralised leaflets” which save parties money – because local candidates simply upload or mail-merge a bit of personal stuff on to a shared template – but also set the tone of the campaigns. Thus Labour leaflets almost all emphasise the word “Labour” and hide the word “Brown” while Tory ones do the opposite with Conservative and Cameron. The report also shows astonishing neglect of safe seats; Liverpool Walton with its 15,000 Labour majority has had just one leaflet so far while marginal Liverpool Wavertree has had 51.

I’m quite pleased about this because it correlates with a story I worked on (with a reporter) when I was doing an internship at the FT, where we found a serious lack of mentions of Gordon Brown in Labour leaflets.

Which is great, but I suppose it doesn’t help in understanding what I’m going to do with my time once this is over. Any suggestions? Will there be a post-election hotline for people with withdrawal symptoms?

Three teenagers are huddled over a CD case in the corner of a Brighton squat. Rave music blares from the soundsystem as they cut lines of white powder from a crumpled wrap. Emily, the youngest of the group at 17, uses a £5 note to snort the largest line. She laughs, coughs a little, then passes the CD case to her friend. “This is just like Skins” she shouts, her voice barely audible over the pounding bassline. It could be any party, in any town in the UK. The powder is ketamine, a Class C dissociative anaesthetic which is also used as a horse tranquilliser. When taken, it causes euphoria and powerful hallucinations, with users reporting out-of-body experiences and conversations with god.

In 2008 the British Crime Survey revealed it was the fastest growing “party drug” among 16-24 year olds, leading it to be dubbed the “new ecstasy.” It now boasts an estimated 125,000 users in the UK and more users among young people in England and Wales than heroin and crack cocaine combined.

But as the number of users rise, serious side effects are beginning to emerge. On internet forums for clubbers the stories all started the same. After about three months of regular use people were experiencing strange side effects; incontinence, blood in their urine and urine infections that did not respond to treatment.

By May 2008, doctors from the Bristol Urological Institute (BUI) became concerned. They published a letter in the British Medical Journal reporting they had seen nine patients with severe urological symptoms associated with ketamine use over the last two years. The letter warned that these cases were “the tip of the iceberg.” It was right. Since then, 15-20 people in the area have been put forward for bladder stretching, a surgical procedure performed under anaesthesia. Two users in their 20s had to have their bladders removed because they had incurred so much damage from the drug.

Daniel, a 21-year-old heavy user from Brighton knows his body is beyond repair. Doctors have told him that drug abuse has given him the bladder of an 80-year-old, and he needs to have it surgically stretched, but he cannot stop taking Ketamine.

“I’ve got a fixation, I just think ‘one more line.’ I’ll go for a piss it will literally be a tablespoon’s worth of urine. I’ll piss out slugs of blood, like congealed jelly and the pain is horrific. It feels like a ball with loads of spikes just bouncing on your bladder. During a bad week I will go to the toilet every five minutes. I was in the job centre once having an interview and I had to stop halfway through because I was sitting there bursting.”

Also known as K, special K and wonk, can sell as cheaply as £6 per gram in the South West. But few of its users will have heeded the warning on the government’s drug website, Frank, of “serious bladder and related problems found in ketamine users.”

Jess was 18 when she began taking ketamine. Two years later, she was wandering the streets of Bristol, high and covered in her own blood: Now 21, her health is a constant reminder of her drug use. She regularly suffers from cystitis because of the damage done to her bladder, and was hospitalised three times from kidney infections during her time on the drug. She also suffered from “k cramps”, severe stomach pains associated with ketamine use. She says that the only cure for the cramps was talking more ketamine – trapping her in a vicious cycle of drug abuse and self harm:

“It started off as very small amounts, when you start using K it’s very attractive, it’s cheap and the effects are strong.”

A leaflet circulated by the Bristol Drugs Project (BDP) and the BUI to GPs in the south west warns: “the symptoms can be severe enough to require hospitalisation… and can result in irreversible bladder and renal damage. Although commoner among those who use ketamine daily or at high doses, it can also occur with lower dose recreational ketamine use.”

The possibilities worry Jess, especially as she knows of 14 and 15 year olds injecting the drug:

“It’s really, really scary. One of my friends got really wasted on ketamine and walked into the sea and drowned themself. It can have a massive effect on your mental state. When I was a heavy ketamine user I spent most of my time in my room on my own self harming. I tried to give up many, many, many times. The only way I managed to do it was to get out of the country.”

Dr Rachel Ayres, from the BDP, said urinary symptoms associated with ketamine use were becoming more widely known in the medical community as more people are abusing it:

“These problems are not due to contamination of ketamine, and they still develop even when you inject it rather than snort it. Some users think that damage is due to contaminated drugs but we think these problems are due to ketamine itself.” Ayres emphasises that the users who had to have their bladders removed or stretched were at the severe end of the scale: “You have to be really bad to be referred to a urologist, and not everybody is.”

Nate, 24 from Milton Keynes didn’t go to see a doctor, even when he couldn’t sleep through the night because he had to use the toilet so frequently. Charlie, 24, a student from Brighton also didn’t seek help when he had the same problem. He says there needs to more preventative education about ketamine’s effects:

“It’s such a massive epidemic, it’s something that you can get on any street corner. When ecstasy came onto the party scene there was a furore but there hasn’t been for ketamine even though young people are destroying their bodies.”

Young people like Emily, the 17-year-old at the squat party in Brighton who snorted the largest line. She’s notorious on the Brighton party scene now – not for her hedonism or youthful charm, but for being incontinent.

*Some names have been changed

The raid, codenamed operation Mermat, was the first of its kind in a British mosque, and caused shockwaves throughout the community. At the time the mosque was led by Abu Hamza, the one-eyed, hook-handed, extremist imam. Although Hamza was not charged in connection with the raid, which centred on an alleged plot to produce ricin poison, operation Mermat marked the beginning of his downfall. He was dismissed from the mosque 14 days later by the Charity Commission and was later imprisoned for intent to incite racial hatred.

“Notorious”

But for all the reports of the fate of Hamza and his fellow extremists, little was said about what became of the largest mosque in Islington and the Islamic community in Finsbury Park, an oversight which its new imam, Ahmed Saad, is keen to rectify.

“When I go for talks outside the mosque, an event here, a talk there or a debate there, people will say ‘are you from the notorious mosque’? The media is not very interested in covering the good activities as much as they would be in covering anything bad; if there was something wrong they would rush to cover it.”

But there is something good happening: the Mosque has changed, and for the better. In February 2005, a new board of trustees appointed by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) took over the mosque. Abu Hamza’s supporters were banned from the building. The new management team set out to give the mosque a new sense of identity, “a new ethos”. Dr Azzam Tammi, a central figure in MAB said at the time that the mosque had to stop being a “headache for anybody who cared about Islam”.

“The mob who had taken over were not interested in teaching Islam or offering services to the community – they were simply interested in promoting hatred.”

Re-branded

Those days ended when the new management began. Pasindu Kithpura, a member of the community says: “They rebranded everything. It’s not called Finsbury Park Mosque any more, it’s the North London Central Mosque. We’ve got a new ethos and more people are coming back. The community sees that it’s changed.”

Now, more than one thousand people attend the main prayers on Friday, its youth club is being awarded prizes from the Metropolitan Police for organising a litter pick up in the area, and the mosque’s newsletter boasts of it being awarded the prize for best Islamic centre in Europe.

Speak to those who live next to the mosque, on St Thomas’s Street, and they’ll confirm that things are different. One points to its minaret, sticking out into the sky over a row of red bricked terrace houses, saying: “There are no preachers shouting outside, or demonstrations anymore. I’m proud to live next door to it now.”

Engaging the community

Imam Saad, who came to the mosque in January 2007, says at first it was hard to engage with the community.

“When I came here, we did not have a permanent Imam who could speak for the community and who spoke English.”

So Saad created activities, such as its award-winning youth club, aimed at attracting the community back to the mosque by word of mouth.

“A change is never easy. First of all for creating a change you need to get the trust of people. Once they trust you then they will feel there is a change happening. To get the trust of people you need time to spread your name in the community and let them know what you’re doing. You need to know them and you need them to know you. This has taken quite a long time, about a year and a half.”

“More mainstream than extreme”

He says the biggest challenge was the low turnout on Fridays, the main prayer day.

“People would listen to the sermons I gave and give feedback. People said I had touched on problems in their lives. They realised the Friday sermon was talking to them; it’s more mainstream than extreme. Then they realised it was safe and they came with their problems.”

But it hasn’t always been plain sailing. Imam Saad says that some individuals in the community were unhappy at his moderate approach: “In every community one or two people will be off track… but people started to defend me and stand up and tell people off. We were empowering the community to stand up against extremism and say ‘this is not welcome in our mosque’.

Spirituality

“From an Islamic perspective, violence is wrong. Religion is not about violence or terrorism or spreading fear in the heart. It’s about spirituality and connecting with God.”

Now, early on a Monday morning in March, seven years on from the police raid, the Mosque’s doors are wide open. Walk in and you’re confronted with a notice in English and Arabic asking visitors to take off their shoes as a sign of respect. Next to it, sit rows of colourful toys ready for the children of the community to play with. An electronic board fixed to the wall announces the prayer times for the day, and there’s a stack of notices on a shelf, announcing the opening times of its in-house gym, youth clubs and martial arts lessons. Upstairs, in a conference hall, a group of women sit laughing and talking in a circle, waiting for the afternoon’s prayers to begin. This is a vibrant community centre, not a space for extremist preaching.

“Muslim and British aren’t two identities, they’re one”

So what’s the future for the mosque? Imam Saad says its greatest challenge is to continue engaging the community and Muslims everywhere: “Muslims in Britain need to feel comfortable being British and Muslim because Islam, as much as any other faith or creed, has got nothing to do with where you live; it’s about providing you with facilities to be successful in your society. Muslim and British aren’t two identities, they’re one.”

Image credit – wikimedia

Originally published at Islingtonnow.co.uk

The brilliant Bryony Gordon said in a recent article “I am still partly reliant on my parents despite being old enough to be one.” She was describing the rise of the Yuckies, the Young Unwitting Costly Kids who still need financial support from their parents – she also name checked the Kippers (Kids In Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings). Then there are the NEETS, those not in education, employment or training. The distinction appears to be that Yuckies, rather than their Kippers and NEET counterparts (no, I can’t believe I’m talking in strange acronyms either) don’t tend to live with their parents but still need them to help make ends meet, and Kippers are more likely to be studying or have low paid jobs.

At the moment, whether someone is 21 or 29, they’re still likely to be dependent on their parents. Data from the Office of National Statistics indicates nearly a third of men and 18% of women aged 20-34 live at home. Within my immediate social group no one appears to be totally financially independent – there are those who live at home and those who rent or partially own property, but I can only think of about two who have a substantial enough independent income to live without financial support from their parents.

So what does this mean for the youth of today? Well, I I know what it means for me – the moment I swapped my Yuckie status (when my parents paid my rent at university) for full blown Kipper-hood, I returned to my teenage bedroom, with all its posters intact, and my former life in London. I wasn’t just giving up some personal autonomy, I was regressing. My life now is fundamentally exactly the same as it was when I was 16, except I work harder and drink slightly less. As for my friends, well… one says who lives with her parents she hasn’t bothered to cook or clean for herself since returning home from university: “it’s so easy when I’m at home. I just become lazy. And when I was at uni, I knew I could spend what I wanted because my parents would always bail me out.” In a problem page from this very issue in 2007 a mother said “Although I love having them [my two adult children] with us and have no problem with them actually living here, I feel that them living with us has been quite detrimental to their financial well-being.” But even if you desire total independence, it’s still very hard to achieve. A friend of mine says he would love to live within his means, if only it was actually possible to live in London when you earn minimum wage and when you’re struggling to start a career, rather than just a job. The recession hasn’t helped, nor has the rising cost of transport and the cost of rent/bills/life.

But, with all this financial support, are my generation every going to grow up? And is there actually a viable alternative, given the huge cost of living?

What would Margaret Thatcher do? It’s not the most common of dietary aphorisms but for the past two weeks it has been mine. I have lived, breathed and ingested the Margaret Thatcher pre-election crash diet, a regime of grapefruit, eggs, eggs, a little bit of spinach, and more eggs. Oh, and you’re occasionally allowed a steak.

The whole thing (particularly the 28-eggs-a-week part) seems like an elaborate joke: how could Thatcher’s priority before taking office be looking skinny for a photocall outside number 10? I wanted to know if it was possible to keep to at all. “It sounds like a fast” says a post-graduate student in nutrition, when I contact her before embarking on my project. My friend Rula adds to the chorus of naysayers, telling me:“I tried it and survived two minutes. It’s horrible!”

Undeterred, I begin phase one. Preparation is the key to diet success. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself on the second day ‘substituting’ a kebab for a vital ingredient . So, I clear my cupboards of cornflakes, croissants and all carb-based treats and go shopping. I stride through the aisles of the supermarket, picking up three bags of spinach, 56 eggs, 14 grapefruit, a couple of steaks and salad.

“Your blood sugar levels are going to be really low. It’s not going to be very fun,” says my nutrition expert, after I explain the specifics to her. I ask her what she thinks of anyone who would do this kind of diet: “I’d think they were an idiot” is her pithy response. Still, I felt confident. After all, Thatcher managed this diet during the last couple of weeks on the campaign trail in 1979. 5am starts. TV appearances. Kissing babies. If she could do all that on just boiled eggs, I should have no trouble getting to university and back.

The problems start, as they so often do, with beer. “NO ALCOHOL” screams Maggie’s diet sheet (well, whisky is allowed on days where meat is taken, but I’m not that kind of girl). It’s Day 4 (meatless) but I’ve got a pub quiz to go to. No problem, I think, I’ll be the sober one and maybe my team will finally win. Of course, it doesn’t end up that way. I wake up the next morning in last night’s clothes, shoes included and resolve never to drink again.

The act of not eating is not that hard. According to my calculations this diet provides 5,863 fewer calories than a woman’s recommended weekly allowance – it’s the equivalent of not eating anything for three days a week (the height of laziness). The difficulty starts when you have to do anything other than lie in bed feeling hungry. For example, preparing meals for your family that you can’t eat (torturous) or speaking to your friends.

Before I started this diet, I never realised how much my social skills depend on not being starving. Over black coffee with a friend I can’t concentrate on a word she’s saying. My vision goes blurry, and I suddenly feel angry: Why is this woman bothering me? Why is anyone bothering me? Don’t these people trying to talk with me realise I’m ravenous? I could eat a horse – no, a horse wouldn’t touch the sides – better a whale, a cow, three horses, two bars of chocolate and some cake. I make a point to talk about very little else apart from the enormity of my hunger. I’m too lethargic for real conversation, and I feel it’s a valid excuse for my inability to participate meaningfully in social interaction. All I want to do is browse the web, looking at pictures of all the food I’m not allowed to eat (a web 2.0 hunter-gatherer).

Then there’s the weight loss, or, more specifically, lack there of. I’ve only lost three pounds by Day 9. I ask my nutritionist why I’m not really thin yet: “You’re on a really low calorie diet -your body probably thinks its starving and has lowered its metabolic rate.” She might be right. But then again, maybe it’s because I’ve cheated. There was the beer on Day 4, and then another night out where I stumbled home via McDonalds and KFC. Poor diet behaviour.

By Day 11 I’m at breaking point: Hunger has stopped me from sleeping properly for the past two nights and during the day I feel too faint to stand up. I angrily ring my mother’s friend, a GP and tell her I’m dying: “You’re not dying, you’re just on an absurd diet. Thatcher was probably running on adrenaline before the election” she says, “you, on the other hand, need to eat a bit more.” Breaking the diet with cornflakes I feel a rush of euphoria. Suddenly, I’m me again, rather than a useless shell of a person who stinks of boiled eggs. Maggie wouldn’t have done it, but then again, I lack the will of the Iron Lady.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard reports of the Hendon and Finchley Times being left in the street rather than being distributed, I did work experience there and a couple of people phoned in to say they’d seen piles of them the street and weren’t getting them delivered, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it myself.

I’ve phoned the distribution centre and let them know about the problem, and if I see this happening again I will blog about it again and raise the issue further. A quick poll of my neighbours this weekend confirmed that none of them could remember having the paper delivered in the last 12 months. When I phoned the distribution centre, they said they didn’t deliver in East Finchley anymore – maybe that’s why people feel comfortable dumping them in the area, or maybe when I asked at the distribution centre they were just lying/didn’t care. At this stage, everything’s anecdotal but I plan to investigate the issue further – it’s not shocking that local news is declining if this kind of thing is happening. I like the Times series, they’ve got a good website, the reporters are brilliant at their jobs and they actually care about the local area, so I don’t see why the hard work of talented journalists should be treated in this way.

I’ve created a google map if anyone feels like collaborating in this venture. If any North London (roughly East Finchley, North Finchley, Hendon, Barnet, Mill Hill, Edgware, Haringey) residents see any of the Times Series dumped in the street, you can add where you saw it to the map.

Image credit – Carbon NYC

Valentine’s Day playlist for the loveless

Image credit – Mayathepapaya

Valentine’s Day playlist for those who are loved up