Enfield has London’s first solar mosque

This is a guest post by Harfiyah Haleem, a 38 Degrees activist based in Southgate.

“Palmers Green mosque has just announced the installation of its 15 kW array of solar panels. I'm urging them to have a celebration and invite lots of other mosques and interested people.  I hope this will be the first of many solar mosques in London and add to the few already established in other places in the UK and around the world.  (Jordan has announced a plan to make all its 6000 mosques solar.)

Some churches have already got solar panels.  Community buildings usually have large roofs that are suitable for sizable arrays, and many mosques are new-build or still being built so offer more possibilities than old and decaying roofs.  I've also discovered www.Polysolar.co.uk which provides transparent solar PV glass that can be used for windows and conservatories etc. and have passed this information to Palmers Green mosque for their new extension plan, which includes a large glass roof. 

We already have a dozen or so London mosques interested, including Edmonton Islamic Cultural Soc., and are trying (feebly and without funding) to get them to work together to reach a critical mass that can attract social enterprise investment, or to start their own shari'a-compliant inter-mosque loans/investment scheme.  London Sustainability Exchange (LSx) and 10:10 Solar Schools are doing their best to help and have held an inter-mosque workshop on the subject at Al-Manaar mosque in the Westbourne Grove area."

I am number 922!

No, I'm not in gaol! That's the number of the certificate given to me by local 38 Degrees members at last Friday's hustings to show that I've received the NHS petition. It's an odd feeling - I'm more used to being an activist for change than one of those being lobbied!

Of course I welcome the petition which asks me to defend the NHS, resist privatisation and provide sufficient funding - all of which is both my personal commitment and the policy of my party.

Our priority in the new parliament should be to reverse the current privatisation and restore the duty of the Secretary of State to provide a universal NHS. You know, like we used to have.

But then there are major challenges for the NHS:

• We should give mental health parity with physical health.
• We should integrate social and medical care
• We should ensure that treatment is as good at weekends as on weekdays.

In the long run (and this got applause at the hustings) we need to address the causes of ill health which include poor diet, lack of exercise, economic inequality and excessive consumption of alcohol.

I'd like to believe that good policies on food, housing transport, tax, air quality, etc., would reduce the need for spending on treating disease. But I don't. I think they will reduce the need to increase that spending. The growth is driven by our longer lives and the ingenuity of doctors and scientists in devising new treatments - which in turn extend our lives.