On Monday, David Cameron gave a hypothetical example of two young women living on the same street. One’s living at home desperately saving up, the other signs on and ‘automatically’ gets Housing Benefit if she moves out of her parent’s place.

Disregarding the hideous inaccuracies in Cameron’s speech, how seriously out of touch is this man?

In Islington young people struggle to find anywhere at all to live, let alone saunter out of their parent’s house straight into a cushy number on Housing Benefit.

I don’t know about you, but most of my cases are dealing with desperate parents who are struggling to find somewhere for their children to live – often already in their mid-20s – before they all simply crack up.

Just when we thought that the Government couldn’t do anymore to hurt young people – scrapping the EMA, increasing tuition fees, terminating the Future Jobs Fund, leaving 1 in 10 young people on the unemployment scrapheap. Just when we thought there was little more they could take away, Cameron floats removing Housing Benefit from under 25s.

It takes a particularly confused person to bemoan the fact that so many young people have no choice except to stay at home with their parents into their 20s, and then suggest a policy which would force many more to do exactly that.

The fact is that when Cameron’s in trouble, he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t look at a Plan B. He simply appeals to the most rabid of his backbenchers with populist nonsense which punishes the poor, the young and the disabled, while the rich get a tax cut courtesy of George Osborne.

It’s all very well cajoling young people to find a job and save while they live on their parent’s sofa.

But where are the jobs? Where is the growth? Where is the hope?

Edwina Currie summed up the Tories’ attitude to young people yesterday in a tweet. She wrote: “They have the vote, don’t use it and have no economic power.”

How despicable. How insulting. How sinister.

In his speech Cameron lamented the huge cost of social security to the exchequer. But if Housing Benefit costs so much to the government, it’s because they have rejected rent caps, are presiding over a new fire sale of council homes through right to buy and are heaping more and more debt onto the younger generation to the point where their savings go into a black hole.

It doesn’t take a prize winning economist to work out that if there are no jobs, the social security bill will increase because people are rightly claiming benefits. Why should the young bear the brunt of this Government’s ideological mismanagement of the economy?

In the face of these welfare changes, many of which have yet to bite in 2013, it would be over-optimistic to think that one council could hold back the tide. You would think that the Tories’ partners, the Liberal Democrats, would provide a moderating influence, but they have merely proved that they are indeed the Tories’ partners, partners in crime that is.

It has been left to Islington Council as a Labour administration to do the best for those residents who are most likely to be affected by these so-called reforms.

That is why we are investing in our advice services – the only council to open a new Citizens Advice Bureaux. In the last year alone the CAB have received 4000 enquiries about changes to the benefits system.

The Income Maximisation Team have helped residents claim £5.9 million in unclaimed benefits from 2011-2012, ensuring that our poorest residents have a little extra to help them by in these difficult times.

But we need more than just advice, which is why Labour in Islington have committed to building 1,800 new homes by 2014 and why we have defied the government’s “affordable rent” of up to 80% of market value by maintaining our rents at one-third of market value.

This can’t overcome the pure fact that 1,300 Islington households, many with children, will see their income slashed next year.

The Government seems awfully fond of u-turns. Perhaps they might consider adding some of their welfare reforms to the growing list?

Cllr Jessica Asato

We will be having our first meeting of the new ward-based committee on Monday 4th July, from 7.30-9pm at St George’s Church, Crayford Roadand we want as many people from the local community to come to discuss:

• The proposed new Budgens on Campdale Road
• Match-day parking
• Gang issues on the Tufnell Park Estate

Even if you aren’t interested in these issues, please come along to make suggestions of future agenda items. Since this is the first year of the committee we will be learning as we go along, but the aim is to rotate the chair every six months between the three ward Councillors in St George’s. We hope that residents will come along to make their voice heard, and to see what is going on in their local area. This will be a really good way to meet up with neighbours and help to tackle issues together.

Meanwhile, if you need to get in touch or would like more information about how the ward partnership meetings will work please contact Cllr Jessica Asato at jessica@jessicaasato.co.uk or call 07939 594 634

Look forward to seeing you on the 4th July!

There’s a long way to go before that, but I had a lovely time (and found some underused muscles!) doing my bit. The Tufnell Park estate has had some real problems with crime and drug dealers, and it’s hoped that the new allotment beds will be one small way of helping to reclaim the estate for the residents. Hopefully the local kids will learn about growing their own food, and with prices going up, families will be able to make the pennies go that bit further by having fresh food on their doorstep.

Here are the beds all nicely filled up waiting for planting!

The Big Lunch is a nationwide event started by the Eden Project in 2009. The simple aim is to bring the community together over some food so that we build relationships with people we share our streets with, but may never normally meet. Two neighbours who had lived in Anson Road for over 20 years couldn’t believe they had never bumped into each other in all that time and then found they had a lot in common.

It was great that our MP Jeremy Corbyn could join us as well as Catherine West the Leader of Islington Council. Everyone left vowing to make the Big Lunch next year even bigger, and we’re hoping for some sun too! If you are interested in helping out with next year’s event, please email Jessica Asato at jessica@jessicaasato.co.uk

Thanks to everyone who contributed, but particularly Keith, Xenia, Ash, Seph and Aubrey.

I’m in favour of protest, and I understand how angry people are with the cuts that the Government is forcing councils to make. But the level of cacophony last night was off the scale. If people don’t like the way democratic politics works, it’s their prerogative to get stuck in to change the system from within; not to shout Councillors down who are trying to do the job for which they were elected.

It was a real shame that the proceedings had to move to another room without the public, but with the press present. No one there relished it, but we had to agree a budget one way or another. Most of the protestors had come to demand that Labour Councillors vote not to set a budget at all. Resist and fight the cuts they yelled. But if they truly cared about ensuring the poorest paid in Islington and the most vulnerable are protected, they wouldn’t have been asking that. Because had we not set a budget, the consequences for Islington residents would have been far, far worse.

Legally, not setting a budget or setting one which didn’t balance would have allowed Tory Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles to determine that we hadn’t fulfilled our ‘best value duty’ as set out in the  Local Government Act 1999. That would have allowed him to either direct us to set a budget or to take over the setting of the budget himself. I can’t see Eric Pickles keeping spending on free school meals, or the £100 council tax discount for people over the age of 65, or establishing a Citizens Advice Bureau, can you?

Even if Pickles didn’t intervene, not setting a budget has potentially disastrous consequences because the Council would not be able to collect council tax. Without this money we would quickly be unable to pay for services and staffing costs. As a Council, we’re not allowed to borrow money for revenue purposes, only capital, so we wouldn’t be able to cover salaries through that method. If we couldn’t pay salaries or for services we’d be served with legal challenges left right and centre. So what we’d end up doing is cutting off our nose to spite our face. We’d end up hurting those people we got elected to try and protect through making an irresponsible party political protest.

A well known St George’s Ward resident has been down this path before and made this point in one of the most powerful speeches of the second half of the 20th Century. It went like this:

I’ll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council – a Labour council! – hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.

The melee last night is exactly what Cameron and his supplicant, Nick Clegg, wants to happen. For their political survival, they need the public to believe that their local councils can avoid making these cuts with a few tweaks here and there. They want the public to focus their ire on Councils in order to escape the blame themselves.

But we’re not going to let them off the hook. We will say loud and clear for as long as this disgraceful government exists that there was an alternative. An alternative which would have halved the deficit by 2014, but would have kept our school building programme going giving jobs to construction workers and making our secondary schools fit for the 21st Century. There was an alternative in which we would still have had to find efficiencies – cut middle management posts and merge services – but in which the Future Jobs Fund would have been saved. An alternative which wouldn’t have forced the NHS through a costly reorganisation which looks set to end in privatisation.

In fact, Labour’s alternative was very similar to that proposed by Nick Clegg as he stood, like a yellow-tie’d siren, on those leader debate stages. Remember when he said it would be “silly” to stop the Building Schools for the Future programme? “We need to continue to invest in our schools building”, was one of his last interventions in the final Leader’s debate.

Now all we hear from Clegg, and our Lib Dem opposition on the Council, is that Labour’s to blame. If you missed the Lib’s “it’s the Labour Party’s fault” briefing which sought to distance themselves from the Government, you can read about it here. It is particularly disappointing that the Liberal Democrats continue to oppose the introduction of free school meals in Islington primary schools. Not only is it incredibly valuable for bringing the hugely diverse school population together and ensuring disadvantaged young people get one hot meal a day, it has also increased the amount of money the Council receives from central government because we have identified more  children who are eligible for free school meals. At a time of cuts, this money going to young disadvantaged children is more important than ever.

I didn’t dream of getting elected only to have to decide which services to cut or to look at lists of people who are about to lose their jobs. It’s horrific. It’s not what Labour people want to do. But I strongly believe that Islington Labour has gone about this budget process in the best possible way. We’ve stuck to our values of trying to make sure the cuts don’t impact on the poorest and most vulnerable. So we’ve provided £2 million for child protection. We’ve found £2 million extra for people with learning disabilities. We’ve earmarked £400,000 to help low income families to find work to ensure we help combat child poverty. Islington is one of the few boroughs in the whole country to keep adult social services for people with moderate needs.

And this is despite the fact that Islington has had the highest reduction of government grant of any borough in London despite being the capital’s fourth poorest borough. The councils in London which have been awarded some of the smallest cuts are Richmond, Havering, and Sutton. What do these councils all have in common? They are controlled by Tories or Lib Dems. These cuts are designed to protect the Coalition and hurt Labour councils like Islington which have to provide for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the country.

But despite the cuts that we face, we have kept our manifesto promises, unlike the Lib Dems in Government. We’re keeping our free school meals pledge, we’re establishing a Citizens Advice Bureau – needed more than ever in this dreadful climate of cuts and job losses, we’ve kept the £100 council tax discount for people over the age of 65, and we’ve decreased the next Chief Executive’s pay packet by £50,000. Unlike so many other boroughs, not a single children’s centre or library is going to close as part of this year’s budget.

Islington got the worst deal in London, but the Labour Party here is doing its best, letting our values guide us and doing our utmost to protect the most disadvantaged people in this borough. This is only the beginning. The next step is to join us at our rally against the cuts on March 26th. We want to see as many Islington residents registering their disgust at the Government’s cuts as possible. If you want to get involved, please find more information here. Hope to see you there!

Cllr Jessica Asato

“Madam Mayor, I am honoured to have been the only Labour member elected to represent the residents of St George’s Ward and to give my first speech in the Council Chamber tonight. I want to speak in support of Islington Council’s response to a letter sent by Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, detailing his new plan for schools.

This Tory/Lib Dem Government, not content with punishing the poor with cuts to services and benefits to pay for the excesses of bankers, have embarked on an ideological gamble with our education.

Whereas Labour introduced academies to take over schools failing our most disadvantaged children, the Government’s aim seems to be to allow schools at the top to gain ever more freedoms while leaving those at the bottom with no hope.

Their free school programme might more accurately be named the free market school programme. It will take money away from the most vulnerable children in schooling in Islington and potentially put it in the hands of people who are not educators, but agitators.

Don’t just take my word for it, take the word of Paul Carter, the Tory leader of Kent County Council who said that free schools would take money away from Local Authorities and prevent them from fulfilling their statutory duties to “arrange and organise school admissions, statements for special educational needs pupils” and other important responsibilities.

Instead of elected Local Authorities determining educational priorities, I’ve read that actress Goldie Hawn’s Foundation might be in line for taking over the education of our children. Some cursory research shows that serious questions need to be asked about the educational evidence for her programme which seems to consist of improving education through breathing exercises.

But crack-pot educational methods aside, the evidence from Sweden which is the inspiration for the Tories and which has implemented a free schools policy since 1992, shows that these schools increase segregation. In a borough such as ours which has such a large gap between rich and poor and educational outcomes, this is the last thing we need.

Free schools are meant to compete for pupils, and in Sweden they do so to the extent that schools bribe prospective pupils and parents with free laptops or driving lessons, according to the Head of Communications for the largest free school in Stockholm.

Making a choice of school should not be reduced to the level of deciding whether to buy Grazia magazine because it’s offering free flipflops or Marie Claire for its free nail varnish. Parents and pupils need to make their decisions on the basis of the educational benefit of schools, not how glossy the PR is. In a market for goods and services, in order to compete companies have to build huge marketing departments to persuade people to buy their product, and this is what has happened in Swedish free schools, directing money away from core curriculum materials and classroom resources and into “flashy exhibition stands”.

Welcome to the future of schooling in Islington!

Unless we fight to retain the Local authorities’ powers over common admissions policy; fight to stop the cuts to the previous Labour Government’s Building Schools for the Future and Primary Capital Programmes; and fight against the pay freeze for teachers which will make recruitment so difficult in a borough like ours, this could become the reality.

It’s good to see the Liberal Democrats locally expressing their concern too at the direction of their Government since they are supporting the new Labour Council’s letter to Michael Gove. I hope they will be using their voice within their Party to tell Nick Clegg how much they detest his new Thatcherite masters. Let’s see…”

Cllr Jessica Asato

I’ve known Jess for 18 months, in which time I’ve come to hugely admire her leadership, intelligence and astonishing work rate. She will be a fantastic and dedicated representative for this area.

As someone who has lived in the ward for over six years, Jess knows the community and our neighbours’ concerns well. She is a school governor at Tufnell Park Primary school, and also runs the Gareth Butler History Trust, which funds history trips for underprivileged school children.

Throughout our campaign in this election, Jess has led our team with energy and vision — skills we know she will continue to bring to the area as councillor. We are all fortunate to have her.

Unfortunately, Gary and myself were not elected this time — but we will continue to work in the community in whatever way we can, and to support Jess in her work as councillor.

Alex

The government has told NHS London that they must not close the A&E and maternity units at the Whittington hospital.

Labour’s secretary of state for health, Andy Burnham, said:

“It is inconceivable that Labour would support the closing or downgrading of the Whittington A&E or its maternity service. I will order a complete halt in the process that is being run and I’m asking NHS London to go back to the drawing board. As a government we only support changes in the NHS when the local clinicians propose them and when there is evidence that they will improve quality and save lives.”

The leader of the Labour Group in Islington, Catherine West, said today:

Working together we have made a huge difference and stood up for the Whittington. After months of local campaigning, I joined Emily Thornberry and Jeremy Corbyn to announce that the review has been halted.

Thank you to everyone who has supported our campaign — who marched with us, attended our meetings with Jeremy Corbyn and who signed our petition on the doorsteps — over the last 6 months.

Jeremy Corbyn, Emily Thornberry and Islington Labour Group leader Catherine West spoke alongside former London mayor Ken Livingstone to the gathered crowd of supporters.

Here are some photos from our event, and the 6 key pledges in our manifesto:

David wished us all luck and talked over some of the issues in the area with Alex, Gary and Jessica, before moving onto a Chinese for Labour event at the Islington Chinese Assocation across Holloway Road.