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How green is Katie?
• YOUR readers might want to consider whether Green Party councillor Katie Dawson is really green, after attending two Bruce Springsteen concerts at the Emirates Stadium last week (You’ve still got time to see The Boss, May 30).
Cllr Dawson might like to know that while she was enjoying “The Boss” – twice! – the residents she purports to represent were subjected to:
• Massive inconvenience without any proper notice.
• Waiting for buses that never came.
• Closure of Holloway Road Tube station.
• Traffic gridlock in surrounding roads and vast CO2 emissions.
• Greenhouse gas emissions from a long line of gas-guzzling limos waiting with their engines running to pick up the rich.
• Vast quantities of fast-food litter.
• Noise pollution.
Gary Heather
Mayton Street, N7
• LAURA Fletcher’s perception of the Greens as supporting Islington’s Lib Dem administration is well wide of the mark, since we have stated consistently that the 2006 council election mandated a voter preference for a cross-party administration rather than the ongoing Labour/Lib Dem Punch-and-Judy show (Developers’ friends, May 30).
Yes, Councillor Katie Dawson did vote for Councillor James Kempton as leader at the recent annual council meeting, recognising that we prefer to work with the party in power if they have any ideas worth supporting, rather than just ranting in opposition. It was a vote the Lib Dems would have won anyway thanks to their “power-at-any-cost” dependence on the mayor’s casting vote.
More significantly, Cllr Dawson voted against the Lib Dem mayoral nominee at the same meeting, to emphasise our belief that their position on this is morally indefensible.
Ms Fletcher is wrong to imply that Katie has supported the council’s position on excessive development, or particularly on the JVC Centre, where Greens have been campaigning for 10 years to get a better deal for the community from the stadium redevelopment, specifically to include a replacement sports centre.
Labour, on the other hand, voted in favour of the redevelopment.
Ms Fletcher is wrong also about the Green vote in the recent London elections, which went up significantly in Islington, both in terms of the number of people voting Green and the percentage share of the vote. Across north Islington in the London Assembly votes, Greens beat Tory and Lib Dems into third and fourth places respectively.
The Lib Dem vote did indeed go down, such that the current administration, with its precarious dependence on the mayor’s vote, must be dreading any by-election in the near future. The Greens, on the other hand, would welcome such an opportunity!
Andrew Myer
Green Party Highbury Team
Horsell Road, N5
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