Lynne's Parliament and Haringey diary

At the same time as the tornado hit Kensal Rise yesterday, the thunder clapped, the lightening lightened and the skies opened and bucketed down on me and my researcher Mette as I delivered the teacher cut outs by local children from Bounds Green School to 10 Downing Street.

As you can see in the picture I am holding two of the cut outs - there were hundreds in paper folders - but I couldn't hold them for the picture without getting them soaked. But all were handed in and Mette and I got very, very wet.

Then I hosted a meeting on Shingles - which is a form of the herpes virus - to raise awareness of just how serious and debilitating an illness this is. It requires effective pain relief and relatively few GPs are truly experienced in this field and there are not many pain clinics. Also, there are drugs that can be prescribed if caught very early that prevent it actually coming full on - but the cost is not something some NHS primary care trusts will stomach with Patricia Hewitt's job on the line if their budgets don't come in on the line.

A new vaccine is hopefully soon going to come on the licensed market - but in the meantime, if raising awareness will help sufferers get the treatment and consideration for this painful disease that they need - then here is a bit of blog-awareness.

Last but certainly not least is a Westminster Hall debate on the reports of the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. It was a sensible debate and you can read what I said about the powers of detention under the Terrorism Act here.

Labels: mette kahlin, nhs