I just think this family was so far from anything we know – I feel uncomfortable with comparisons to ‘normal’ separated, divorced or never together couples.

I followed the link from your article about encouraging fatherly involvement over on Liberal Conspiracy. It’s a excellent article and very much in keeping with my own views on the subject.

Well done for endorsing the idea. It’s nice to see a politician who’s in touch with some fathers’ rights issues.

It’s something that I’m studying at the moment, and I’d take it further and implement mandatory shared physical custody between both parents.

Following on from that, don’t you think that shared custody, or at least greater involvement of the father, could have helped in the case of Baby P?

Do you have a link?

What I also suspect is that
1) The reported news is the tip of the ice berg
2) The Council needs a clean up – top to bottom, elected and non-elected – in all departments.
3) The Council needs a firm committment to being a Council for Haringey rather than a selection of people who work in Haringey.

This may be an extrapolation but for me this event shed light on the nature of how things operate in this borough.

During the bin mens strike the other year I wondered how many people working for the council lived in Haringey as the tardiness of the response and the general attitude at the time suggested that not many lived locally and therefore why should they really care – as in, care appropriately, in context and with understanding.

Then I met a Haringey Council press officer on the bus. I was told that the stike was all over and everything was fine.

This person was lovely and ernest but obviously not in touch, had not seen the streets and indeed was on the bus to catch a train to travel home to another borough. It was another 7+days before my stinking rat run of a street was cleaned up!

How can I equate a rubbish strike with the death of this child? The hard-working street cleaners will no doubt have heard that council staff went on a £1,600 tea and cake ‘jolly’ at the Ritz to cheer themselves up – and will wonder that they had to work so hard and be so tough to get a pittance of increment on their wages.

If the Council could not negotiate effectively for rubbish strike how could they cope with complex situations like this.

Yes, people must lose their jobs as they have been shown to be neglectful of their duty of care and no – they must not get paid handsomely to go. They did not do their job and a vulnerable child died.

Haringey will continue to get press headlines for all the wrong reasons as it does not seem to understand the definition of the word ‘Council’ and that they are tasked to serve the community for the better of the community rather than for themselves, no matter how well meaning they may be.

Ben Morris.

The government has already made a point of sending in ‘hit-squads’ to deal with failing schools. So what about the failing councils?

I went to one Haringey council meeting sometime ago and noted how Labour ran roughshod over anyone disagreeing with them about issues. They also loaded the audience with Labour supporters to make it look like the audience agreed with them.

Again I comment that I think you are doing good work.

Regards,

Joanne Silverstein