Women's safety, phone crime and NHS pay

Jennette Arnold OBE, London Assembly member for Hackney, Islington and Waltham Forest, writes:

Like millions of Londoners, my thoughts are with Sarah Everard’s family and loved ones at this time.

The stark and wholly unacceptable reality is that women and girls are routinely subject to harassment, abuse and violence, and often have to take an exhaustive list of precautions against this i n their daily lives.

Let’s be clear, if we are to address the sheer scale of this problem, the onus needs to put upon men to change their behaviour.

This is why, as a first step towards this, I am backing calls for misogyny to be made a hate crime.

As a further step, the government must also introduce a Domestic Abusers’ Register- something that the London Assembly has long campaigned for.

What happened at the vigil in Clapham has rightly caused a great deal of concern.
There are now a number of enquiries that will get to the bottom of the issues.

We must now see a step change in how our society, education system and police tackles violence against women and girls.

Phone crime

Phones, tablets and laptops have been banned from the school grounds to combat cyber bullying at Acland Burghley School. Picture: Edward Smith (Image: EMPICS Entertainment)

Mr J E Kirby, Clissold Crescent, Stoke Newington, writes:

Having read the story in the Gazette re Shaneeta Kaur having her mobile phone snatched by a cycle thief in Haggerston, it makes you wonder why people are not more careful with their possessions.

I don’t know how much the lady paid for her phone but I don’t doubt that it wasn’t a cheap thing to buy.

I know that some mobile phones can cost several hundreds of pounds and maybe even four figures. Why do people have this urge to get the thing out and text or chat away without thinking?

For instance, would we go to a branch of our bank, draw £800-£1,000 and walk around with a sign on our back saying “hey, look at me, I’ve got a wad of money in my hand, come and take it off me!”?

Of course we wouldn’t, so why do we do a similar thing by getting our mobile phone out in the middle of the street where it is visible to all and sundry?

The other thing I read was Steve Allen’s “Problem with Phone-y calls” on his landline.
I know where he is coming from as I have had a couple of such calls allegedly from tax people saying that they were building a case against me for non-payment of income taxes.

I rang the Revenue and reported this. I have also had calls about this, that or something else - when trying to trace through the 1471 number, it comes back as number withheld.

‘Betrayal’ of nurses pay

Stephen Sartain, Springfield, Hackney, writes:

Bailey and the Conservatives offer nothing for Londoners or Hackney in the mayor elections.

Broken promises on nurses pay, help for key workers and teachers, and funding for more police to fight crime and keep streets safe for Londoners.

Crashing the economy with exports down and public debt at a record level.
Conservatives running London would risk ruining London and Hackney and cannot be trusted.

Most of all, the utter betrayal of nurses’ pay means I will be urging people to vote Labour as the NHS and its staff are clearly not valued by the Conservatives.