Karen attended the Christmas Play at St. Peter’s Primary School in Maida Vale yesterday and awarded prizes and certificates to the winner, runners-up and participants of her annual Christmas Card competition.

The winning design was drawn by Mackenzie Westwood (left) aged 10. Runners-up Miloš Mihajlov (right - aged 10) and Lisa Malki (bottom - aged 8 ) also received prizes for their designs.

Mackenzie’s design for Karen’s official 2007 Christmas Card of a penguin family celebrating Christmas in their polar igloo can be seen by clicking HERE.

Merry Christmas to all and wishing everybody a very Happy 2008!

Karen Buck this week tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament (EDM 541) in support to Shelter’s campaign to highlight the plight of homeless people this Christmas.

A new report from the housing and homelessness charity shows the Government still has a long way to go to solve the problems faced by people forced to sleep rough or stay in homeless hostels.

Despite setting up the Rough Sleepers Unit 10 years ago, the report shows the Government still does not provide enough specialist help, hostel places or ‘move on’ accommodation. This means many people remain trapped in unsuitable hostels without access to the support they need to turn their lives around. (more…)

Thanks to the very many of you who completed my climate change survey, or who wrote, sent a card or e-mail in, in support of the Climate Change Bill, and/or proposing a further tightening of measures to tackle global warming. It is enormously encouraging to know so many people in this area feel strongly about the issue, although there remains a large number who have to be convinced that the changes that will need to be accommodated are justified.

We need to work to convince them, not only by explaining the risks inherent in temperature increases in line with recent levels of growth - described by Gordon Brown in last week’s speech as ‘comparable to the economic effects of a Great Depression combined with world war’ - but also by demonstrating how effective action is possible and rational.

As you may know, the Climate Change Bill is to be introduced in the House of Lords in the near future, before moving to the House of Commons in early 2008. It will be the first time any country has introduced legally-binding targets for cuts in emissions, and represents a major step forward in the political process for tackling global warming. However, important though it is, it is only part of a process which must embrace a wider range of local initiatives, and a new global agenda that takes us beyond Kyoto, and includes a strategy for elements such as aviation, which are currently excluded. (more…)

Following the recent announcement by the Home Secretary on the police pay settlement for 2007, the Home Affairs Select Committee, which Karen is a member of, has decided to hold a one-off evidence session on Police Pay to explore police reactions to the settlement and its implications for policing.

Karen will be taking on board the evidence put forward by witnesses in the police force and declaring her findings with her colleagues on the Committee.

The Committee will be meeting on Tuesday 18 December at 10:15am in Committee Room 5 (Location and time tbc)

The session will be open to the public on a first come, first served basis. There is no system for the prior reservation of seats in Committee Rooms. It is advisable to allow about 20 minutes to pass through security checks. Committee room and timing are subject to change.

You can get the latest information on the report by visiting the Select Committee website

Drivers appealing against parking fines imposed by Conservative-controlled Westminster City Council have won 88 per cent of appeals over the last year, according to figures released by London Councils.

This placed Westminster at the top of the London league of lost parking appeals, with the London average at 68.4 per cent. In 43.6 per cent of cases Council parking officials who rejected drivers’ initial complaints offered no evidence when the dispute reached the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service Adjudicator.

Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, Leader of the Labour Group said; “These figures are truly dreadful and only serve to fuel the suspicion that Westminster’s parking service is just a money-making racket with drivers increasingly seen as easy pickings. How can the Council justify losing such a massive proportion of appeals? How has the Council reached the situation where, in over 43 per cent of cases, no evidence was even offered by the Council to support the decision to impose a fine?”

“There needs to be a full inquiry so that drivers can feel confident that they are not simply emptying their wallets into the Council’s coffers for no good reason.

When war broke out in Kosovo in 1998, it was not out of the blue. For years prior to the outbreak of open fighting, Albanian Kosovars had been subjected to brutal repression- schools were closed, freedom curtailed, young men conscripted. War claimed the lives of around 10,000 Albanians and 3,000 Serbs, and led to a hundreds of thousands Kosavar Albanians fleeing the country. The decade ended virtually as it had begun (indeed, the century ended almost as it began) with war in the Balkans. The international community had failed to intervene early enough and effectively enough during the early 1990s to halt the massacre of Muslims in the Bosnian war. That dreadful error was not repeated in Kosovo, and whilst Western intervention to protect the Kosovans was not without controversy, it was generally accepted as necessary. 13,000 deaths were 13,000 too many, but the alternative was unthinkably worse.

The trouble was that, in Kosovo as in so many other places, fighting and even peacekeeping operations are only part of the story. A decade on and normality remains suspended. The economy is shattered. Unemployment is the norm at 70%. Investment cannot take place whilst the status of Kosovo is unfinished business. And now talks over the basis of settled status had broken down. Serbia will not move from its insistence that Kosovo is a province of Serbia. Albanians in Kosovo are equally immovable in their insistence upon full independence.

Stalemate is bad enough for those people trapped in an uneasy peace with no real hopes of work. However, stalemate is not the worst thing that can happen. Serbia could tighten the screws on the Kosovan economy and on the movement of people, whilst the possibility of renewed fighting cannot be rules out in such a tense atmosphere. A new outbreak of violence has implications far beyond the Serbian borders. The British government is correctly seeking to prevent the kind of unilateral declaration of independence which could precipitate a new round of fighting, yet the Kosovans cannot wait indefinitely. Independence must come to Kosovo sooner rather than later, and the international community must stretch every sinew to secure it- not as punishment for Serbia but as a recognition of a undeniable reality.