Charity auction for a signed Tottenham Hotspur pennant!

As you can see from the Justgiving widget on the right, I am running the marathon for Shelter in April - please do click through and sponsor me. Shelter do vital work supporting people at risk of losing their home, dealing with rogue landlords or desperate for just a decent place to live.

Tottenham Hotspur Football Club have kindly given me a signed pennant to auction to help raise funds for Shelter too. It's been signed by 9 of the Spurs players and comes with a signed Certificate of Authenticity too. The player autographs include my favourite Spur, Michael Dawson, and everyone's favourite Welsh winger Gareth Bale.

You can put in a bid for it by clicking here to go to eBay - the starting bid is just £4.99 so ideal for treating yourself or for a present for a Spurs fan!

Community clear-up in Tottenham this morning

We headed over to Tottenham this morning to help with the community clear-up - there was a good turn out of local residents and councillors, as well as people coming from further afield to help too. It certainly felt good to be part of something so positive and seeing action on the ground in our borough.

The photo at the top is me with Sonia and Julia, a mother and daughter who work at a school in Tottenham and had come in on Saturday to help out the local community, with Cllr Lorna Reith next to me. As I'm missing seeing Spurs play today, you might notice that my t-shirt is a map of White Hart Lane, at least.

That photo was just outside Tottenham Police Station, where we were removing bricks, rubble and even a chair - which had all presumably been used as missiles in the riot. But on the whole, most of the High Road looked to be back in good shape already, which was good to see.

The photo below was taken of some of the gathered masses as we collected our brushes, shovels and bin bags and got some instructions before we headed along the High Road and found side streets that needed our help.

I can see Cllr Matt Cooke (Bounds Green), Cllr Jim Jenks (Muswell Hill), Cllr David Schmitz (Harringay) and Cllr Claire Kober (Seven Sisters, and leader of Haringey Council) in the photo. But there were a bunch of others there too.

Just do what the sign says

On the way home from helping with the community clear up in Tottenham, saw this sign. The photo says it all really!

Looters and rioters arrested in Haringey

The number of arrests following the riots is phenomenal, latest count I got from the police was 1103 in London. There's been plenty of news of charges and sentences across all the media, but here are a couple of bits of information from Haringey, as an example:

Man charged with handling stolen goods after £40k recovered
An estimated £40,000 worth of electrical property was recovered by police in Tottenham following a call from a member of public. A 25 year-old man has been charged with handling stolen goods

Man arrested for violent disorder and theft
A 19 year-old man has been arrested in Haringey for violent disorder and theft. He is believed to have posted a picture on Twitter posing with stolen goods.

Man arrested in connection with violent disorder
A 22 year-old man has been arrested in Haringey on suspicion of violent disorder having seen his image in a national newspaper and handed himself in at Hornsey police station.

Man arrested on suspicion of burglary
A 21 year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of a burglary that took place at a store in Wood Green after being recognised by a CCTV operator from images released by police.

Reminder too that you can go to www.met.police.uk/disordersuspects to see if you can help identify any other suspects.

I will blog at some point over the next week about the sentences being handed out, people being evicted and calls for housing benefit to be withdrawn. But following up my post yesterday about all the riot rumours being spread around, I noticed today the BBC have also covered this problem.

Support Tottenham - visit and help out tomorrow!

Want to show that the rioters didn't win? Want to help people get their streets back in shape?

Come to Tottenham tomorrow (Saturday 13 August) to help clear up, meet local residents and councillors and give the community a boost.

Meeting point is the green on Tottenham High Road by Rheola Close, just south of the junction with Lansdowne Road, 10.30am for an 11am start. But if you can't make that and want to help then head to Tottenham and spend money in the shops, pick up litter - do whatever you can to show your support. You can also make financial donations, details here.

And if, like me, you are a Spurs fan who has an unexpected free day tomorrow now - use it to come and help our club's home since 1882 (and for at least another 129 years to come...).

Do you know anyone involved in the looting?

Good news that lots of looters and vandals have been arrested - but just a quick post to advertise the link to the Met Police website where you can look through the photos of suspects and help even more get brought to justice.

Opening match of the season at White Hart Lane against Everton has now been postponed, so no football on Saturday for me. I am going up to Edinburgh next Thursday for Hearts v Tottenham though, for what will now be our first match of the season - Europa League rather than Premier League!

Unavoidable that the Spurs game has been cancelled. Just to reassure people, it is not because any trouble was expected or a lack of police capacity. It's simply because of difficulties with transport and the potential to disrupt the ongoing police investigations - which would have been the likely side-effect of 36,000 football fans going up and down the high road.

Dealing with riots and rumours

The events of the last week have been devastating for many people - and if you're directly affected, here in Haringey, you can use the council's advice centre.

It's actually not connected to the riots, as his family were keen to point out, but before continuing I should say that Mark Duggan's death in Tottenham is very sad and I am looking forward to the full IPCC investigation.

What followed was nothing to do with protesting or politics and everything to do with thieving and vandalism. The Labour MP Karen Buck put it nicely in Parliament this afternoon: "no-one marched with a manifesto".

Anyway, everyone is hopeful that we've seen the end of this crazy period and certainly people are starting to pay the price for their crimes already. Particularly good to see, on BBC News, that a man has been charged in connection with the injured Malaysian student who was mugged by people pretending to help him.

Plenty has already been said and written about the riots, but I would like to say just one thing - about rumours and the fear of crime.

Here in Muswell Hill, we were fortunate that we didn't suffer any looting at all. In the early hours of Monday someone did attempt to break into the Carphone Warehouse (as you can see in the photo, they broke the window but didn't get close to getting inside the shop). There were one or two burglaries from shops - perhaps taking advantage of police being distracted elsewhere - but these do happen from time to time anyway.

However, there were plenty of rumours around on Twitter that there had been riots and looting in Muswell Hill. As a local resident, who walked around the shopping area after each night and at other times, and as a councillor who had briefings from the council and a face-to-face briefing with police officers including the area commander for North London, I know that these were just rumours. I tweeted a fair few replies to people to set people straight - although some weird people refused to believe me!

Some of the rumours sprang from the fact that a small number of businesses in Muswell Hill took the decision to board up the front of their shops - places like Art for Art's Sake and Crocodile Antiques (see photos) and Foxtons. I knew that they had NOT been damaged or looted, but many people walking past them assumed that they had been. Later on, the owner of the first two did put a notice on the boards which did include an explanation that they were up as a precaution - which was helpful, but most people will not have read that.

Why is all this important? Well, clearly, actual damage to property and injury to people is much more important - but these rumours and misconceptions add to people's fear of crime. At a briefing with the council and the police, I asked for clear information about the extent of the riots to be publicised in due course. Because in places like Muswell Hill, some people think that "youths" ran riot and looted - they did not. It is not helpful if, because of boarded up windows and rumours (some well meaning, some less so) on Twitter, people have the impression that every shop across the whole of London was smashed up.

I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of the last few days, but it helps if people are given the full facts and can be reassured that the whole city was not overrun - terrible though it was for residents in those parts where violence and looting did happen. I think that is helpful for everyone to know the facts - those in areas that were badly hit, as well as those that were lucky like Muswell Hill.

The communities in Tottenham, Wood Green and across London are strong and will rebuild and grow stronger. There may have been plenty of thugs and thieves about, but they were still a small minority. London is a great place to live.

Chaos at Haringey Council's budget setting meeting as protesters storm the civic centre

Last night's meeting of Full Council was unlike any other I have been to in nine years as a councillor.

First, the final result of the night: the council's budget - including massive cuts to older people services, parks and youth services, to name just a few - was approved. I voted for three of the five Lib Dem amendments, which would have prevented some of the cuts taking place, but none of those amendments passed. On the overall budget, I voted to reject the entire package.

The meeting itself was webcast live as usual and you will be able to watch the whole thing again soon if you want (including my contribution to the debate), when it is archived here.

But there was chaos before the meeting, with hundreds of protesters at the civic centre in Wood Green, which turned into some ugly scenes. The Ham&High have a report here and there are photos on various websites of the protest - the two here are one that I took on my phone at around 7.15 (the meeting was due to start at 7.30) near the entrance to the council chamber and a later photo of the smashed glass door. There was also at least one other door smashed, at the entrance to the civic centre and reports of at least one council worker being pushed to the ground.

When I arrived for the meeting a little after 7pm, the civic centre was already full of protesters chanting "Who's town hall? Our town hall" and pushing towards the council chamber. I'd like to say up front that there were lots of peaceful protesters there, including children. Might also be useful to add that there is a large public gallery above the council chamber and only limited space on the lower level for members of the public. There are usually members of the public in both the gallery and the chamber itself (usually if they are making a formal deputation) and indeed at the last meeting the gallery was full with sometimes noisy protesters.

But many there had getting into the council chamber as their main aim and some broke through a police line to occupy the room. Not 100 as I've seen mentioned on one website, more like 10 or 20 before the police stopped more entering. At this stage I had also passed into the chamber, to make sure I was aware of what was going on. As an independent councillor now, I sat in with the discussions with the two party leaders, police and chief executive as the best way to handle the situation was discussed.

An attempt was then made to convene the meeting in the council's canteen, which was far from ideal - not least as the meeting wouldn't have been able to be webcast, effectively leaving no record of the debate and clearly less transparency in the decision making process. In any event, some protesters followed to the canteen, the fire alarm went off and the police evacuated the building. Councillors, journalists and some members of the public then waited outside the council building for a fair while until the police cleared us to re-enter.

We saw two people being taken out of the building and to police vans, I'm not sure if there were any other arrests at this stage or exactly what these people were taken away for. Once we were able to re-enter the building we finally went into the now cleared civic centre and the meeting began around 9pm, an hour and a half later than scheduled.

The unfortunate result of this was that public access to the meeting was limited to those making deputations (i.e. those who had indicated previously they wanted to speak to the council about the cuts), local journalists and of course the website. I feel sorry for the vast majority of protesters who wanted to be in the public gallery and make their feelings heard peacefully. It's not clear how many of the protesters were local residents - I expect the vast majority - but there were definitely people there who were not from Haringey and presumably had come for political reasons or to make trouble.

I spoke to a couple of the protesters prior to entering the chamber the first time. Clearly there was plenty of anger at the cuts - and rightly so - with mixed approaches... some clearly antagonistic towards the police, some with strong anarchist beliefs and also plenty who were just there to make their voices heard. I could put in some anecdotes of conversations I had, but this post is long enough already.

There were powerful deputations from three groups, all of whom spoke exceptionally well and passionately. The key points I made were that I strongly opposed the scale of cuts forced on Haringey by central government - as I do not think it is necessary or fair. For instance, I believe that to impose these cuts without first considering raising higher rate tax levels is wrong.

Effectively blackmailing Haringey over council tax levels is also wrong - council tax is already high here and no one wants to see it higher, but how does this blackmail fit with the government's localism agenda to give councils more responsibility and bring power closer to the people?

Leaving aside the cuts imposed by central government - and I did say last night that I disagreed with one of the deputations calling for no budget to be set in protest - I don't feel that the Labour council has mitigated against the cuts in their budget as well as it could have. I know that the speed of the cuts has been a real challenge, but just one example - while delivering Haringey People (the council's magazine) costs £234,000 a year and telling people what you are doing is a good thing, if spending that money means closing services and actually not doing things, then it is at best counter-productive.

So, with the meeting finishing at 11.30pm, the budget was passed and service provision is going to be cut drastically. It was certainly my saddest day as a Haringey councillor. Many people are now likely to lose their jobs - as well as voting against the budget I did speak out against any reduction in spending on union officials at this time, as taking away the support that people will undoubtedly need would be wrong.

There was plenty of the blame game going on last night, but the truth is that both sides have to accept some responsibility. We all know that in the real world we can't all have everything we want all the time, but some of these cuts were avoidable and that is the saddest part.