Family and friends who’ve campaigned so tirelessly and with so much dignity for two decades. Initially in the face of racism from the police. These friends and family are rightly being praised for their quiet stoicism in the face of what often looked like overwhelming opposition from ‘the system’ in their pursuit of justice for their son.

But I also want to pause a moment to mention the contribution of David Blunkett to today’s conviction. He wasn’t a universally popular Home Secretary, particularly in the Labour party. And the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was a controversial piece of legislation. Certainly there was much to dislike in it. From almost any political perspective!!!

I was a press officer at the Home Office for much of the controversial bill’s passage through Parliament. Although I wasn’t the lead (I headed the prisons and probation desk, before the creation of Justice), I was across many elements of the bill because of the cross over with my sister desk, the Criminal Justice desk. The many controversial elements to the bill meant there was a lot fo horse trading over its provisions and many amendments laid and negotiated over, by the Government and by the opposition.

The Double Jeopardy provision, that made today’s conviction possible, was itself the subject of considerable controversy. Many, very acute legal minds argued that a verdict in a criminal trial should be both binding and final. In all the horse trading and lobbying that went on, I was never once aware of Blunkett wavering for even a second. His commitment to this section of the bill was absolute.

In no small part due to his firm commitment to enabling the Lawrence family to secure justice should the police ever be able to recover their mistakes of the original criminal investigation. Today they did. In such a controversial bill it may have been easy or tempting to cede this point in favour of other areas, perhaps provisions that could have been viewed as having a bigger or wider impact. That David Blunkett didn’t is to his emmense credit. And while I’m a long way from being his biggest political fan, I always try to give credit where it’s due.

John Terry, high profile Chelsea football and captain of the England national team, racially abused Anton Ferdinand in a game on the 23th October. I have no problem saying that because I’ve seen this video. It’s pretty clear that John Terry insults Anton Ferdinand and uses the colour of his skin as an intergral part of that insult. It’s racist. He should be punished.

And yes, for the record I do realise under UK criminal law John Terry is, rightly, regarded as innocent until proven guilty. But even a verdict of ‘not guilty’ will not convince me that calling someone a ‘black cunt’ is anything other than racist. In the court of Sarah Hayward he’s been tried and found guilty – because calling someone a ‘black cunt’ is racist.

So what’s happened since John Terry made those comments? Over nine weeks ago.

He’s played every game for Chelsea. He’s earned a reputed £150,000 per week. He’has the full backing of his club.

Meanwhile the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) has investigated. Which presumably means watching the same video I have and taking statements. Although, given the video evidence the statements could yet prove superfluous to procedings.

Yesterday, the CPS decided that John Terry does have a case to answer. And they decided to charge him with a racially aggrivated public order offence. The maximum sentence that Terry appears to be able to receive is £2,500.

So what happens now? Well, John Terry will play every game for Chelsea. John Terry will earn £150,000 per week. John Terry’s club will stand by him.

He will attend a commital hearing at a magistrates’ court on the 1 February, and god knows when the trial will be. It may or may not be before the end of the season. It may or may not be before the end of the European championships taking place in Poland and Ukraine next summer.

He will play every game for Chelsea (and almost certainly England). He’ll earn £150k per week and he’ll have the full backing of his club.

His club probably aren’t really at fault here, because since he is innocent until proved guilty. The judicial process has almost pushed them in to a stance of backing him rather than dealing with his racism, or the culture they (and many other football clubs) breed that makes it, in his view, acceptable for him to behave this way.

The judicial process will get to the point of the season where his behaviour is excused in the name of his club, or worse his country. England will play on grounds and against teams where other England players have been subject to racism by the fans of those clubs or countries. And John Terry will probably wear the captain’s arm band.

So when another team’s fans monkey chant at Theo Walcott or Ashely Cole, as so often happens when England travel in Europe, what will we do? We’ll have a captain who’s on video calling a black English player a ‘black cunt’. Who has played every game, earning £150k per week with the full backing of his club. Could we really lodge a serious complaint with UEFA in those circumstances?

I guess this isn’t really an argument against the charge per se. But he’s on tape. Calling another player a ‘black cunt’. Everyone can watch it, everyone can draw their own conclusion.

The CPS’s action has inadvertently meant that John Terry will get to play, probably, the entire season, get to pick up his really fat pay cheque, with the full backing of his club (and probably country) consequence free.

Meanwhile on Regent’s Park Pitches and Hackney Marshes and countless other grounds up and down the country kids will be playing football, having watched the video of John Terry, the England captain, call a peer a ‘black cunt’ apparently completely consequence free.

The FA just banned Suarez for eight games and fined him £40k – 16 times what the courts can fine Terry, for a racist incident that happened the weekend before John Terry’s abuse hurling. It’s actually pretty crap that the FA has a greater sanction, but then I guess our fining structure isn’t written with premiership wages in mind.

Terry should be punished. He shouldn’t be able to play every week, he shouldn’t be able to continue to receive his £150k pay cheque each week, and his club should be dealing with the racism within football not backing their player.

But the interminably slow wheels of justice means we’ll practically have forgotten what happened by the time it comes to court. The FA will lose the appetite or even the ability to sanction. People will start to make the argument that we need him for England games and Chelsea get to keep their player for the whole season.

I’m sure the CPS have the best intentions in mind, or at the very least think justice is served by bringing charges. And the prospect of a premiership footballer getting a conviction is a big prize. If it happens. But this justice seems to me to be coming at a massive cost and not just the tax payer expence of extracting a maximum £2.5k fine out of someone who earns 60 times that in a week.

What happens if the threshold of criminal proof can’t be met for the specific charge? Well then Terry’s still on tape calling someone a ‘black cunt’, that’s still racist. But people who don’t want to deal with the issues will again be able to argue that, oh well he wasn’t actually racist afterall. It will make it practically impossible for the FA to charge separately. And we just won’t deal with it.

What the CPS has actually done is give football another excuse to ignore racism and sweep these persistent and deep seated issues under the carpet. That doesn’t serve Anton Ferdinand, it doesn’t help combat racism and it doesn’t serve English football.

Tomorrow tea time the London Cycling Campaign have organised a vigil for those cyclist and pedestrains who have died on London’s roads this year.

Sadly I won’t be able to attend. But I hope others can and I wish the campaign every success now and in the future for their continuing work to make London’s roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists.

This is ahead of the launch next week of our campaign to provide debt advice to people drawn to legal loan sharks for stop gap funds or pay for christmas.

I love the Olympics. My idea of heaven is several weeks of wall to wall sport. From July to September next year I will be an armchair expert on the double pike, half volley and the best technique for all three phases of the triple jump. I will know every single one of Usain Bolt’s vital statistics and I’ll scour the football teams for the next superstar of world football. In an ideal world I will sit on my sofa with all the food I need being delivered to me so I don’t miss a second. I won’t be going to the Olympics, because as you’ll understand, like pretty much every other Londoner I know I didn’t get tickets for anything in the Olympic park. Despite this, I love the Olympics and am (sporting cliché and mathematical impossibility alert) 110% behind it coming to London.

Despite this, despite my ability to enjoy literally any sport (apart from test cricket – and that’s not an Olympic sport), I am offended, gobsmacked and darn right outraged by David Cameron’s personal decision to double the budget for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic games. I don’t care that it’s coming from within ‘the Olympic envelope’. It’s still public money.

I’ve watched every Olympics I’ve been alive for. As a nine year old I got up in the middle of the night to watch live as Daley Thompson (summer) and Torville & Dean (Winter) won Olympic gold for Britain and celebrated as I watch Linford Christie win in Barcelona. I watched us fail spectacularly in Sydney. The smile across Kelly Holmes’ face as she crossed the finishing line to complete the middle distance double in Athens in 2004 is an image that will long live in the memory. But I don’t remember the opening ceremonies. I just don’t. Even my abiding memory of Beijing is Boris the Buffoon at the closing ceremony, rather than the opening ceremony – which I’ll admit was pretty amazing.

But £41m extra on a glorified party that the vast majority of taxpayers won’t get to enjoy – when the budget was already £40m – is obscene. It’s banker extravagance obscene in the current climate. Particularly if the NAO is right and there’s a real risk of the Olympics going over budget.

To put £41m in context, it’s ten per cent of the total amount of money that Grant Shapps allocated to social housing investment just a couple of weeks ago. It’s close to the entire amount Camden is cutting from front line services in three years – including play, and luncheon clubs and freedom passes to help mental health patients find work. As a one off investment it could rebuild or refurbish some of the schools that didn’t get their BSF funding. It would pay for the gap in funding for the Olympic Impacts on Camden that Boris is forcing our taxpayers to pick up 68 times over.

Instead the government, David Cameron personally in fact, has decided this money is best spent on a few hours of entertainment that only a few very lucky, and a few very rich, people will get to see first-hand. This at a time when councils have been forced to cancel bonfire night fireworks and spending on other community events and festivals. And at a time that if we did spend it we’d probably be pilloried by government for spending on unnecessary extravagances.

I support the Olympics wholeheartedly. I support the festival of sport. I support the regeneration of east London. I support London hosting the games. But doubling a budget for a party that already stood at £40m is nothing more than gross overspending. It should be put back in the pot to prevent other cost overruns or invested in tangible benefits in the form of the Olympic Legacy.

But the march through central London was peaceful, calm and good humoured. I marched the whole route starting practically at the Euston Road and finishing on the Victoria Embankment. I didn’t see a hint, not a sniff, not even a hint of a sniff of trouble. And yet, there was a figurative ‘ring of steel’ at the west end of Fleet Street and an actual ring of steel on Trafalgar Square (pictured below). If you know me, you know I have no truck with violent protest. Some of the scenes we’ve witnessed earlier in the year have saddened me. But there was none of that today.

But the police – provocatively in my view – close off half of Trafalgar Square and with it, access to the seat of our Government (Whitehall, leading to parliament) and access to the seat of our head of state (The Mall, leading to Buckingham Palace), with an actual steel fence. This makes me very very queasy. Policing happens by consent, when did we consent to such a curtailment of our right to peaceful protest. I don’t remember these tactics being debated or justified.

I haven’t seen or heard the police’s justification for this tactic today. But the last time I saw the police erect a physical barrier like this, I was working in Belfast for the 2001 marching season. And certainly visually, I would equate the use of something like this very much more with persistent violent action. Not to control striking teachers and civil servants.

I’ll reserve final judgement until I can find out how the police justified this. But visually, to me, there is something profoundly undemocratic about its use.

Tomorrow about 2 million public sector workers will go on strike. The disruption will could mean real difficulty for working parents, out patients, people trying to return to the country and more. I myself have an outpatient appointment that was booked weeks ago and I don’t yet know if it will be affected. But it’s a small price to pay compared to the recklessness that this government is treating the pension schemes of millions of public sector workers.

The rhetoric since the weekend from the government has been provocative and agreesive. Gove branding teachers militant is just one example of many. They simply aren’t prepared to talk reasonably any more. And when communications break down workers are left with little option but to strike.

But their arguemnts about pension reform are as spurious as their unwarranted attacks on teachers. Taking the pension scheme I know most about the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), the government’s case for reform simply doesn’t stack up.

The LGPS is managed locally by pension committees at Local Councils. The only people who qualify for pensions payments from Camden’s scheme are Camden’s former employees. Elected represetatives of each authority with expert advisers manage very large sums of money to ensure the current and future viability of the schemes for its members. The LGPS is stable now and for the future.

Over three years though the government wants to increase staff contributions from 6.6% to 9.8% for every employee. There are no plans for the extra revenue raised to be invested in the future viability of the scheme. This increase amounts to nothing more than an additional tax of hundreds of pounds per year for local government officers up and down the country. Many of whom fall in to the lowest paid workers in the country.

The increase in contributions runs the real risk of mass opt outs from the scheme. The cross party, but Tory controlled Local Government Association agrees. They believe that the risk of opt outs could undermine the future viability of the scheme – the less people are paying in, the less affordable future pensions payments are. Such a reckless approach runs the very real risk of greater demands on taxpayers in future of bailing out a failing pension fund because the very actions this government is taking will destabilise it so much.

Viewed through that lens it starts to look less like a move aimed at affordability and sustainability or even deficit reduction and more like an ideologically driven move to undermine the attractiveness of the public sector as an employer. We’ve been here before of course. The Thatcher and Major governments chipped away at terms and conditions of public sector employees to deter people going in to public service as a career. When Labour won the 1997 general election schools and hospitals and local councils were on their knees. This attack on public sector pensions is just one part of what is becoming a sustained assault on the public sector.

The attacks are sustained and thorough because the Tories don’t believe in state provided public services and much less any semblance of universality. David Cameron has said so. Repeatedly. The Lib Dems are powerless to stop them.

Supporting the strikes isn’t just about a fight for low paid workers to keep hold of more of their salary or a reaction to the appalling way the government has handled what it laughably calls negotiation.

No, supporting the strikes should be essential as a signal that we, the whole Labour movement, continue to support strong, high quality public services delivered on the basis of need, not ability to pay.

I have mixed feelings about bendy buses. Back in the days when I was a very regular cyclist I used to hate them. People argue over whether they are impirically dangerous but certainly, along side them at the lights, you’re heading straight on, they want to hang a left, you feel very very vulnerable.

The 29 has been a regular feature of my nearly 15 years in London. I’ve lived on it’s route in Camden, worked on it’s route in Wood Green and regularly use it to get to Arsenal.

One of the reasons it was picked for a bendy route, was that it was so chronically overcrowded as a double decker. Drivers would regularly have to curtail their route dumping people at, most frequently Warren Street, to turn round to try to ferry people in. The was particularly the case in rush hour. And, if you’d embarked in Wood Green, Green Lanes or Finsbury Park the route would often only be changed at Camden Town.

The impact of this is two fold. Firstly many many people from Finsbury park onwards (and sometimes earlier in the route) in the mornings, simply had to wait an age for a bus they could physically fit on and then their route would, without warning change – meaning people heading for more central destinations would have to take a second bus or face a much longer walk.

There’s a socio-economic indicator about bus use. Particularly for commuting. The less you’re paid the more likely you are to get the bus.

Many of the bendy bus routes served London’s poorest communities. The 29, the 38, the 73 (I’m a north London woman, I can’t be expected to list south London routes). If the scrapping of the bendy bus leads to longer waits to get on a bus in the first place and higher levels of disruption to the routes, it’s the poorest workers who’ll suffer most. While it was crowd pleasing politics for some in the last mayoral election the impact will be felt most by those, already cash poor, who may end up more time poor as a result of the change.

Of course it may not happen. Habits may have changed. But on Saturday, a day after the bendy 29 was scrapped, after the Arsenal Fulham game, I got on a double decker 29 to head back to Camden.

It was only going as far as Warren Street.

At last night’s GC we had a contested election for our vice chair campaigns (I know, but stay with me). Two bright, able and keen women stood for the position that had become vacant following a by-election win for the previous incumbent back in September.

 It’s significant because the previous month for various reasons only a man had stood, potentially upsetting the gender balance of our EC. An argument was made that women do well in our GC and locally. They’re right too. 14 of our 30 councillors are women and half our Cabinet are too. The previous incumbent was a woman who succeeded me as the post holder. So why bother?

Dogged on this issue I stuck with the fight – which wasn’t universally popular – and ensured that the party took it’s responsibility to equality seriously.

The point of recounting this is not to criticise my local comrades. There is a legitimate view that in our local area people come through the party from a variety of different backgrounds and are successful. And that can be demonstrated by the people who hold positions in the party and on the council.

But I firmly believe that complacency is an enemy of equality. When there were no all women shortlists in 2001 the number of women MPs fell. Women and ethnic minorities are less likely to be elected as both councillors and MPs. Bringing people through the party’s structure will help develop more viable candidates.

If we as a local area are good at this, we should take more responsibility and we can’t rest on our laurels – as the 2001 parliamentary experience demonstrates. It also shows with a bit of extra effort, asking around, and encouragement people will come forward – and that’s the point. Achieving proper representation at a local and national level doesn’t happen by accident we have to work at it and we have to take responsibility for delivering it. All of us.