When politicians return to Westminster after the new year holiday the main item on their agenda will be Brexit. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has expressed a determination to push the UK’s exit from the EU through by the end of January, with an eighty-seat majority he will probably get his way too.
There is though, another equally major issue that will have to be decided by the new parliament, whether to replace Trident, the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
Replacement is part of the ‘Dreadnought’ programme to replace the country’s existing fleet of four Vanguard class submarines with four new ones. These will be used to maintain the continuous at sea deterrence strategy.
Plans for replacing Trident have been in the works since 2006 with a projected cost of £41billion, making it the largest capital project the government has on its books. In order to keep things on track to meet the completion deadline of 2030 a decision will have to be made during this parliament.
A final decision on replacing Trident was deferred during the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security review until the one to be carried out in 2019/20. The UK currently has four Vanguard class submarines armed with Trident II D5 missiles that are held in a common pool with the United States. There are 215 warheads held in the Trident stockpile, of which 120 are operationally available.
The cost of the Dreadnought programme involves £31billion to replace the submarines involved with a £10billion contingency fund. There is also a £2.5billion annual cost for keeping the vessels in service, representing 6% of the defence budget.
The National Audit Office has previously raised concerns that despite being within its budget the programme to replace Trident could have a negative impact on the affordability of the Ministry of Defence’s equipment budget.
Opposition to replacing Trident has also been expressed by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), who say the real bill for the programme will be closer to £200billion once decommissioning and other costs are accounted for.
In a statement on their website CND say: ‘Preventing Trident replacement remains an urgent priority, we want to see a world without nuclear weapons and stopping Trident is an essential part of that process’.
Any decision to replace Trident made this year would coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT). A conference to be held later in 2020 is set to criticise nuclear armed nations for refusing to sign the treaty.
Quoted on the Politicshome website a UK government spokesperson denies that replacing Trident would breech any legal obligations saying: ‘all parties are agreed that the NPT does not prohibit updating weapons-systems’. Then goes on to highlight the significant arms reductions made by the UK since the end of the Cold War with the stockpile held projected to have fallen by 65% by the middle of the coming decade.
A large majority gained in the recent general election gives the Conservatives a strong position from which to push through replacement, a policy the party has long advocated. They may also have support from the Liberal Democrats who are, partially, in favour of replacing Trident, although this position may change in the wake of their impending leadership election.
Labour included replacing Trident in their 2019 election manifesto, although leader Jeremy Corbyn was vocal about the fact that if elected as prime minister, he would never authorise its use. This position may also change when the party elects a new leader.
The Green Party and the Scottish Nationalists both oppose renewing Trident and the UK having nuclear weapons, with the latter making agreement with this position a requirement of their cooperation with any partner in a coalition government.
Trident is an issue that has the potential to divide political parties and the general public alike, with some seeing it as a guarantee of freedom, and other as a huge and wasteful expense.
It is also clear that the costs involved in decommissioning one weapons-system and installing another are likely to be closer to the £200billion suggested by CND that the £41billion official total. At the election the Conservatives promised to invest in areas of the country that had been forgotten for decades, it is hard to see how they can pay for this and buy and maintain a nuclear deterrent at least on the current scale.
Opposing the replacement of Trident may provide a rallying point for an opposition that is still reeling from the unexpected election result. It might also though further expose their internal divisions.
Monday 30 December 2019
Thursday 26 December 2019
Labour must ask serious questions about their purpose not just plan to return to the centre ground.
After recording their worst result in a general election since 1935, returning just 202 MPs to parliament in December 2019, the Labour Party is to convene a commission into what went wrong.
The commission will be run by Labour Together, a member’s group with the Canute like task of promoting unity in the party. It will be chaired by former shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell and will include former leader Ed Milliband.
The commission will report back to whoever wins the leadership contest, the runners and riders for which will emerge early in the new year.
Both Powell and Milliband have the Labour Party in their blood and have shown polite, compared to many of their colleagues, misgivings about the direction under Jeremy Corbyn. Powell was a leadership contender in 2015 and despite his bacon sandwich related misfortunes and the bizarre decision to have the party’s policy pledges carved onto a giant tombstone in the closing days of the 2015 election Ed Milliband owns one of the sharpest brains on either side of the house.
The commission will hear evidence from the 59 former MPs who lost their seats in December and hold focus groups for party members. It is, of course, good to hear what the view looks like from inside the tent, though it might be somewhat obscured given that said tent has just been blown down by a perfect storm.
As a corrective I’d like to offer my own view based on having been a member of the Labour Party between 2001 and 2010. One who was driven away by many of the issues that have led them to this sorry point.
The first thing that must be said is that Jeremy Corbyn made some serious mistakes and so is in many ways the author of his own misfortunes. These include not taking a position on Brexit, failing to respond adequately to accusations of anti-Semitism in the party and relying too heavily on support form the hard left.
This last group, in the shape of Momentum, despite near fanatical loyalty to Corbyn did him few practical favours. Many entered the party by paying their £3 fee as supporters with the purpose of voting in a left-wing leader and then stuck around to pick fights with the Blairites. They also brought with them the familiar political narrative of the far left that winning elections is less important than maintaining ideological purity.
The answer to the mess that has been created is, according to former prime minister Tony Blair, is to reject ‘Corbynism’ and for the party to return to the centre ground. Preferably under a leader cast in his image.
Advice from a three-time election winner is always going to be alluring to a part reeling from losing four elections in a row. The awkward thing is though that making such a journey would be at best a false hope offering only ineffectual mediocrity; at worst it could be the path to disaster.
Many of the problems that boiled over in 2019 could be seen when I left the party in 2010. In fact, they were around long before then, I remember in 2005 the year the saw Blair win his last election that members should ‘hold their noses’ and vote for a party they didn’t much like for rear of getting something worse in its place.
The biggest of these problems is the disconnect between the party elite in London and grassroots members in what the former probably think of as the ‘provinces. It is a relationship based on a mixture of paranoia and paternalism that has seethed out of sight for decades until the pressure got too great and resulted in an explosion.
The paranoid belief of New Labour that if given the slightest say in making policy grassroots members would embrace revolutionary Marxism led to the ideological hollowing out of the party. Unlike the Tories who believe in power and wealth and nothing else the Labour Party must believe in something to have any purpose; when it doesn’t it drifts about in the doldrums desperately trying to catch the wind of whatever is popular now.
On a practical level the control freakery of New Labour led to the collapse of local parties, branches were swept up into tame CLP’s, all the better to be controlled by regional offices who often acted like colonial administrators. As a result, ties with communities that had taken decades to create were severed at a stroke.
Local Labour parties also lost control over the selection of candidates, this led to legions of eager young men and women with impeccable metropolitan credential being ‘parachuted’ into communities they didn’t understand; many went on to compound things by not even trying to do so.
This led to the embitterment of individuals and whole communities who felt their loyalty to the Labour Party had been taken for granted. The 2016 referendum on leaving the EU provided the catalyst for their resentment to be turned into rage.
Now as it reels from another defeat at the polls the Labour Party must accept some truths that will be awkward for all sides of its internal divisions to accept.
The first is that for all his mistakes Jeremy Corbyn got one important thing right, he gave the Labour Party back its sense of being different. If the hard left and the Blairites had been able to have a mature dialogue rather than a squabble for supremacy that might have translated into the purpose the party so badly needs.
Second, this isn’t the 1990’s, today the centre ground will not hold. Despite his love of larking about for the cameras and profession of being a ‘one nation Tory’ Boris Johnson has led his party sharply to the right. An opposition that promises to follow much the same sort of policies, but to do so in a ‘kinder’ way; will be ineffective and irrelevant.
The third and maybe most awkward truth takes the form of a question, in 2019 just what is the Labour Party for? I can get a dozen books out of the library telling me about its past; but neither I nor many people who are still members have a clue about its future.
Whoever wins the leadership election and gets to read the report of this commission might have to recognise that his or her first task may have to be thinking seriously about dissolving the Labour Party and forming a new progressive one in its place.
The commission will be run by Labour Together, a member’s group with the Canute like task of promoting unity in the party. It will be chaired by former shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell and will include former leader Ed Milliband.
The commission will report back to whoever wins the leadership contest, the runners and riders for which will emerge early in the new year.
Both Powell and Milliband have the Labour Party in their blood and have shown polite, compared to many of their colleagues, misgivings about the direction under Jeremy Corbyn. Powell was a leadership contender in 2015 and despite his bacon sandwich related misfortunes and the bizarre decision to have the party’s policy pledges carved onto a giant tombstone in the closing days of the 2015 election Ed Milliband owns one of the sharpest brains on either side of the house.
The commission will hear evidence from the 59 former MPs who lost their seats in December and hold focus groups for party members. It is, of course, good to hear what the view looks like from inside the tent, though it might be somewhat obscured given that said tent has just been blown down by a perfect storm.
As a corrective I’d like to offer my own view based on having been a member of the Labour Party between 2001 and 2010. One who was driven away by many of the issues that have led them to this sorry point.
The first thing that must be said is that Jeremy Corbyn made some serious mistakes and so is in many ways the author of his own misfortunes. These include not taking a position on Brexit, failing to respond adequately to accusations of anti-Semitism in the party and relying too heavily on support form the hard left.
This last group, in the shape of Momentum, despite near fanatical loyalty to Corbyn did him few practical favours. Many entered the party by paying their £3 fee as supporters with the purpose of voting in a left-wing leader and then stuck around to pick fights with the Blairites. They also brought with them the familiar political narrative of the far left that winning elections is less important than maintaining ideological purity.
The answer to the mess that has been created is, according to former prime minister Tony Blair, is to reject ‘Corbynism’ and for the party to return to the centre ground. Preferably under a leader cast in his image.
Advice from a three-time election winner is always going to be alluring to a part reeling from losing four elections in a row. The awkward thing is though that making such a journey would be at best a false hope offering only ineffectual mediocrity; at worst it could be the path to disaster.
Many of the problems that boiled over in 2019 could be seen when I left the party in 2010. In fact, they were around long before then, I remember in 2005 the year the saw Blair win his last election that members should ‘hold their noses’ and vote for a party they didn’t much like for rear of getting something worse in its place.
The biggest of these problems is the disconnect between the party elite in London and grassroots members in what the former probably think of as the ‘provinces. It is a relationship based on a mixture of paranoia and paternalism that has seethed out of sight for decades until the pressure got too great and resulted in an explosion.
The paranoid belief of New Labour that if given the slightest say in making policy grassroots members would embrace revolutionary Marxism led to the ideological hollowing out of the party. Unlike the Tories who believe in power and wealth and nothing else the Labour Party must believe in something to have any purpose; when it doesn’t it drifts about in the doldrums desperately trying to catch the wind of whatever is popular now.
On a practical level the control freakery of New Labour led to the collapse of local parties, branches were swept up into tame CLP’s, all the better to be controlled by regional offices who often acted like colonial administrators. As a result, ties with communities that had taken decades to create were severed at a stroke.
Local Labour parties also lost control over the selection of candidates, this led to legions of eager young men and women with impeccable metropolitan credential being ‘parachuted’ into communities they didn’t understand; many went on to compound things by not even trying to do so.
This led to the embitterment of individuals and whole communities who felt their loyalty to the Labour Party had been taken for granted. The 2016 referendum on leaving the EU provided the catalyst for their resentment to be turned into rage.
Now as it reels from another defeat at the polls the Labour Party must accept some truths that will be awkward for all sides of its internal divisions to accept.
The first is that for all his mistakes Jeremy Corbyn got one important thing right, he gave the Labour Party back its sense of being different. If the hard left and the Blairites had been able to have a mature dialogue rather than a squabble for supremacy that might have translated into the purpose the party so badly needs.
Second, this isn’t the 1990’s, today the centre ground will not hold. Despite his love of larking about for the cameras and profession of being a ‘one nation Tory’ Boris Johnson has led his party sharply to the right. An opposition that promises to follow much the same sort of policies, but to do so in a ‘kinder’ way; will be ineffective and irrelevant.
The third and maybe most awkward truth takes the form of a question, in 2019 just what is the Labour Party for? I can get a dozen books out of the library telling me about its past; but neither I nor many people who are still members have a clue about its future.
Whoever wins the leadership election and gets to read the report of this commission might have to recognise that his or her first task may have to be thinking seriously about dissolving the Labour Party and forming a new progressive one in its place.
Sunday 15 December 2019
A Bad Night for Labour as the Tories Sweep Through Stoke and Other Heartlands.
On Thursday the UK held a General Election in December for the first time since the 1920's. It turned out to be one that delivered something like an electric shock to the body politic.
The exit poll conducted for the BBC and published after voting stopped at ten pm suggested the Tories would have a fifty-seat majority. At the time this seemed somewhat optimistic; before dawn broke on Friday, they had secured one of seventy-eight.
Remarkably it was one gained by winning seat after seat in the North and Midlands where until recently they didn't count the Labour votes; they weighed them.
Election nights are an odd mix of short bursts of frantic activity and long stretches of boredom. Long before anyone makes a declaration you have drunk enough coffee to make your appreciation of what is going on as realistic as a Salvador Dali painting.
Out of the fog of confusion I was able to piece together a few observations.
As usual there were a few shock defeats, among the suddenly ex-MPs trying their best to smile as their career dissolves live on television was Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson. She started the campaign saying she was poised to be the UK's next prime minister and ended it with time on her hands to spend looking up hubris in the dictionary.
Another surprise exit was Denis Skinner, the Beast of Bolsover slain after almost fifty years in parliament. The next time Black Rod knocks on the door of the commons chamber there will be nobody to ask if it's the Avon lady, the political life of our country will suddenly be a little bit more vanilla than it used to be.
It was a bad night for Labour with the promise of only worse days to follow. Nowhere was this more evident than in my hometown of Stoke -on-Trent. The prediction was that the Stoke Central and Stoke North seats would go to the Conservatives as Stoke South has in 2017.
To be honest it wasn't one I took all that seriously, Stoke is the sort of city where voting Tory is anathema to most people, or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong, both seats turned blue contributing to Labour's worst defeat since 1935.
There were more worrying signs than just the pile of voting slips filling the baskets of the Tory candidates. All the young people in the hall were wearing blue rosettes, suggesting a corps of activists and potential candidates that could consolidate their hold on the council as well as the three parliamentary seats for years to come.
Labour, by contrast looked old and tired, like a party bemused by how quickly things have fallen apart. As recently as 2005 former Stoke Central MP Mark Fisher was able to walk around the room long before two am calling out 'weigh am in! Weigh so in!' as everyone gave him a standing ovation.
How far and how fast the mighty have fallen; how did they get into this mess?
In Stoke Labour's demise has been coming for years, decades of being the only game in town has made them complacent and unimaginative, a deadly combination on politics. While Labour were looking anywhere but where they were going the city was changing, the old industries were dying and with them old loyalties.
Nationally Labour were sunk by the person a small but influential cabal thought was their greatest asset; Jeremy Corbyn. In 2017 he looked almost charismatic compared to the leaden ineptitude of Theresa May, despite losing he became a minor cultural icon appearing on stage at Glastonbury and having football crowds chanting his name.
Deafened by the shouts of 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn ' he made the mistake of believing his own hype. All he had to do, it must have seemed was keep turning left and he would lead his party to the promised land.
While the leader had his eye off the ball his party was tangling itself up in ever more complicated knots over accusations of anti-Semitism and scaring the City with the most openly socialist manifesto since 1983. Now he, or rather lots of MPs in former safe Labour seats have paid the price.
Where do Labour go next? Jeremy Cornyn has said he will not lead the party into another election; but will stay on while the party goes through a period of reflection. He is unlikely to get his wish, no head rolls quicker than that of an icon who has failed.
Whoever takes on the Labour leadership will be taking on one of the most unenviable jobs in British politics. They will be obliged to swallow some bitter truths.
The bitterest of these is that working-class culture as the Labour Party understood it has changed. Their core vote no longer work and play together, they aren't happy to take what the leadership think they should be given for their own good either
They have embraced a cynical individualism that that is ripe to be exploited by an equally cynical populist like Boris Johnson.
The left, at least in the incarnation represented by Jeremy Corbyn has failed, the centre probably won't hold either. Quite what sort of country is going to slouch away from Brexit and its birth I shudder to think.
Tuesday 3 December 2019
The Green New Deal and UNI could free millions of people from poverty.
This has been called 'the Brexit election', while it’s true that the issue of when or if the UK leaves the European Union is important, there is so much more at stake.
On 12th December we will be voting for the sort of country we want to be in the years to come.
Do we want isolation from the wider world and a populist government that makes futile gestures like bringing back blue passports, but chips away at important civil liberties like worker’s rights and environmental protection?
Do we instead want to be an open, forward looking country that respects its long history; without making it a weight to hold us back from progress?
As a candidate for the Green Party in one of the three constituencies representing my hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, I believe we should look out to the world and the future because that is what Britain has always done.
That is why I am backing the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to invest in our shared future.
New jobs created in the industries of tomorrow, a better transport system and an end to the inequality that has divided our society for forty years. Action to tackle the climate emergency and bring UK carbon emissions down to net zero by 2030.
Part of this new deal is using a Universal Basic Income to transform the social welfare system, moving away from sanctions and suspicion and towards hope and inclusion.
Universal Basic Income will lift every citizen above the poverty level, freeing them from the want, stress and insecurity that shadow the lives of so many people. In practice someone working 37.5 hours a week would see their income rise by 10 to 15% thanks to UBI.
This would replace most current income related benefits, ending the indignity of means testing and massively reducing administration costs.
Introducing UBI wouldn't just produce a cost savings for the state, it would set millions of people free from the struggle to get by. This would result in a net improvement in their physical and mental health, taking the weight of dealing with the consequences of an unfairly punitive welfare system.
It would also set them free to study, start small businesses and to care for their families; unleashing a tidal wave of previously stymied potential. Far from adding a cost burden onto the state, this could lift the UK out of the doldrums of poor productivity and make us an economic powerhouse.
Delivering the Green New Deal will involve a serious financial investment, £141.5 billion, raised through a combination of measures including tax changes, cancelling Trident and taxing polluters.
As a charity volunteer in Stoke-on-Trent I see every week the consequences paid by vulnerable people for decisions taken in London by politicians who understand little about the challenges they face.
The Green New Deal and UBI would give them something they have been denied for far too long. The hope that comes from knowing that their government is working with rather than against them.
Monday 18 November 2019
Time to End the Injustice of Fuel Poverty
Campaign group the End Fuel Poverty Coalition has launched a manifesto to end the injustice of households struggling to pay their utility bills, despite being in work.
Green Party candidate for Stoke-On-Trent Central Adam Colclough has endorsed their campaign, saying ‘it is vital that we address the injustice of fuel poverty as a matter of priority’, adding ‘the current situation is ruining the health and wellbeing of vulnerable people’.
The End Fuel Poverty Coalition is made up of twenty organisations that campaign against poverty, including charities, health groups and trades unions.
Their manifesto calls of the government to make improving energy efficiency and addressing fuel poverty a national infrastructure priority, improve the standard of rented accommodation, reform the domestic energy market and end the benefits freeze.
Fuel poverty is caused by a combination of low incomes, high utility costs and poor energy efficiency.
Ruth London of Fuel Poverty Action said ‘addressing fuel poverty is a crucial part of meeting its carbon reduction targets’.
Adam Colclough said: ‘there is evidence from multiple sources, including respected think tanks such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that fuel poverty is hugely damaging to families, individuals and the wider community. Any government coming into office on 13th December needs to act to address this issue as a matter of priority.’
Green Party candidate for Stoke-On-Trent Central Adam Colclough has endorsed their campaign, saying ‘it is vital that we address the injustice of fuel poverty as a matter of priority’, adding ‘the current situation is ruining the health and wellbeing of vulnerable people’.
The End Fuel Poverty Coalition is made up of twenty organisations that campaign against poverty, including charities, health groups and trades unions.
Their manifesto calls of the government to make improving energy efficiency and addressing fuel poverty a national infrastructure priority, improve the standard of rented accommodation, reform the domestic energy market and end the benefits freeze.
Fuel poverty is caused by a combination of low incomes, high utility costs and poor energy efficiency.
Ruth London of Fuel Poverty Action said ‘addressing fuel poverty is a crucial part of meeting its carbon reduction targets’.
Adam Colclough said: ‘there is evidence from multiple sources, including respected think tanks such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation that fuel poverty is hugely damaging to families, individuals and the wider community. Any government coming into office on 13th December needs to act to address this issue as a matter of priority.’
Thursday 14 November 2019
We Need to Use This Election to Speak Up for Children.
Green Party candidate for Stoke-on-Trent Central Adam Colclough has backed a charity manifesto aiming to improve the lives of children living in the UK.
The Manifesto for a Better Childhood has been published by the National Children's Bureau and makes four key demands.
These are for greater investment in early childhood, the creation of an inclusive education system, a greater focus on child health and well-being and action to end child poverty.
The charity is also calling on any government former after the election to launch a specific strategy for childhood that puts the voice of young people at the heart of the political process.
In a statement on their website the National Children's Bureau describe the manifesto as ' a new vision for childhood' that calls on an incoming government to develop a specific strategy backed by significant investment.
The Green Party has campaigned extensively for better services for children and young people, including protecting school funding and abolishing SAT's test.
Adam Colclough said ' the past decade of Tory austerity has seen services for children and young people starved of resources, this has caused serious problems that need to be addressed as a priority. That is why I am backing this campaign'.
The Manifesto for a Better Childhood has been published by the National Children's Bureau and makes four key demands.
These are for greater investment in early childhood, the creation of an inclusive education system, a greater focus on child health and well-being and action to end child poverty.
The charity is also calling on any government former after the election to launch a specific strategy for childhood that puts the voice of young people at the heart of the political process.
In a statement on their website the National Children's Bureau describe the manifesto as ' a new vision for childhood' that calls on an incoming government to develop a specific strategy backed by significant investment.
The Green Party has campaigned extensively for better services for children and young people, including protecting school funding and abolishing SAT's test.
Adam Colclough said ' the past decade of Tory austerity has seen services for children and young people starved of resources, this has caused serious problems that need to be addressed as a priority. That is why I am backing this campaign'.
Thursday 24 October 2019
Council Plans to Remove Litter Bins Really are Garbage.
Politics, particularly local politics, is seldom about marches, placards and grand speeches made from the podium to an adoring crowd. Instead it is about little things that for all they are resolutely prosaic; are also hugely important.
There is no better example of this than the issue of Stoke-on-Trent City Council deciding to get rid of a third of its 3000 litter bins.
This is part of the emergency budget the council pushed through on the Thursday of last week that sees 42 jobs being axed. In this instance it sees £710,000 being cut from its Streetcare and Greenspace services.
Councillor Dan Jellyman, the cabinet member with responsibility for regeneration told the Sentinel the problem was there are ‘lots of bins which are close together’.
He cited as examples the Longton transport interchange, which is used by only one bus an hour after First Potteries pulled their services out, yet has eight litter bins and bins being located outside schools that have been closed.
He added that the review of litter bin locations, the council’s favoured euphemism for removing a service, was about ‘saving the time of officers who have to empty these bins, as we will have a reduced workforce’. The remaining staff would then be freed up to do other jobs such as ‘litter picking and tackling fly-tipping’.
Yes, you did read that last line right because it was written how Councillor Jellyman said it, getting rid of litter bins will free up council staff to pick up the litter people would have put in the bins that aren’t there anymore. If someone who employs that kind of logic ever comes to ‘save’ your village it might be a good idea to start worrying about just how they’ll do so.
It must be endlessly frustrating for the council to send staff out to empty litter bins that aren’t used because there is little or no footfall in the areas where they are placed. The solution to this problem though is relocation; not removal.
A city that starts taking away litter bins from public places, sadly I fear removing a third this time will be only the start, is inviting problems. They may be doing so, mostly, inadvertently, but they are doing so all the same.
Litter blowing free in the streets is the first sign of a city in decline, followed soon afterwards by graffiti and fly-tipping. How on earth does this square with the narrative about Stoke being a ‘city on the up’ trumpeted by council leader Abi Brown at every opportunity?
To any objective understanding it simply doesn’t and never can do so. The message, again maybe partially inadvertently, sent is that Stoke-on-Trent it a city that doesn’t care about itself. Given that we are in a constant battle with our own inferiority complex and the lazy preconceptions of metropolitan outsiders that can only ever be disastrous.
You don’t need to be an expert in the dark arts of urban regeneration to know that if potential investors see litter blowing down the pavements of streets that are gridlocked with traffic, they will like as not go elsewhere.
This simple truth seems though to be entirely lost on a council leadership that has been blinded by its adventures in property development to its more mundane responsibilities. All those shiny new hotels and apartment blocks in Hanley are at risk of looking like isolated specks of light in the wider darkness of urban blight.
Not for the first time for the want of the horseshoe of having the common sense to see that they should be moving not scrapping bins the council are risking losing the battle to build a more prosperous future for this city.
There is no better example of this than the issue of Stoke-on-Trent City Council deciding to get rid of a third of its 3000 litter bins.
This is part of the emergency budget the council pushed through on the Thursday of last week that sees 42 jobs being axed. In this instance it sees £710,000 being cut from its Streetcare and Greenspace services.
Councillor Dan Jellyman, the cabinet member with responsibility for regeneration told the Sentinel the problem was there are ‘lots of bins which are close together’.
He cited as examples the Longton transport interchange, which is used by only one bus an hour after First Potteries pulled their services out, yet has eight litter bins and bins being located outside schools that have been closed.
He added that the review of litter bin locations, the council’s favoured euphemism for removing a service, was about ‘saving the time of officers who have to empty these bins, as we will have a reduced workforce’. The remaining staff would then be freed up to do other jobs such as ‘litter picking and tackling fly-tipping’.
Yes, you did read that last line right because it was written how Councillor Jellyman said it, getting rid of litter bins will free up council staff to pick up the litter people would have put in the bins that aren’t there anymore. If someone who employs that kind of logic ever comes to ‘save’ your village it might be a good idea to start worrying about just how they’ll do so.
It must be endlessly frustrating for the council to send staff out to empty litter bins that aren’t used because there is little or no footfall in the areas where they are placed. The solution to this problem though is relocation; not removal.
A city that starts taking away litter bins from public places, sadly I fear removing a third this time will be only the start, is inviting problems. They may be doing so, mostly, inadvertently, but they are doing so all the same.
Litter blowing free in the streets is the first sign of a city in decline, followed soon afterwards by graffiti and fly-tipping. How on earth does this square with the narrative about Stoke being a ‘city on the up’ trumpeted by council leader Abi Brown at every opportunity?
To any objective understanding it simply doesn’t and never can do so. The message, again maybe partially inadvertently, sent is that Stoke-on-Trent it a city that doesn’t care about itself. Given that we are in a constant battle with our own inferiority complex and the lazy preconceptions of metropolitan outsiders that can only ever be disastrous.
You don’t need to be an expert in the dark arts of urban regeneration to know that if potential investors see litter blowing down the pavements of streets that are gridlocked with traffic, they will like as not go elsewhere.
This simple truth seems though to be entirely lost on a council leadership that has been blinded by its adventures in property development to its more mundane responsibilities. All those shiny new hotels and apartment blocks in Hanley are at risk of looking like isolated specks of light in the wider darkness of urban blight.
Not for the first time for the want of the horseshoe of having the common sense to see that they should be moving not scrapping bins the council are risking losing the battle to build a more prosperous future for this city.
Wednesday 16 October 2019
Here Comes Bod
Not so far back in the long-ago railway catering was the stuff of comedy, the merest mention of wilted ham rolls on a BR buffet could wrong a laugh from even the toughest audience.
Even after the last dining car had been shunted into the sidings rail travel seldom involved a voyage of culinary discovery. The larger stations offered a parade of fast food chains, the smallest a kiosk flogging family size bars of chocolate at the sort of prices you charge when you have access to a captive audience.
How things have changed. Now even provincial stations are home to burger joints that can use the word gourmet in their name with irony coming into play.
They are increasingly home to their own 'tap' too, marking a renaissance for the old platform bars that used to be the haunt of stag parties and seedy salesmen. A prime example of such a venue is this excellent little watering hole that opened at Stoke Station a year or so ago.
The bar is part of s new chain opened by local brewery Titanic and is designed to appeal to a more metropolitan clientele than their real ale orientated pubs. The décor had the shabby chic look you'd expect but done well enough for it not to look like it's come out of a box.
The important thing, the beer, is up to their usual high standard and there is a small, but we'll curated menu of spirits. Remarkably for a place that bye to its purpose to cater for an almost exclusively passing trade the bar had a friendlier atmosphere than I have found in many, so called, community pubs.
Quite why Titanic have chosen to name this new brand after an obscure character from seventies children's television eludes me. It is something I shall ponder over on frequent return visits.
Bod
Stoke-on-Trent Railway Station
Station Road
Stoke-on-Trent
ST4 2AA
If you enjoyed this article please consider giving a small donation to the appeal for a defibrillator in Penkhull village by following this link https://www.aeddonate.org.uk/projects/aed-for-penkhull-village-s1k/
How things have changed. Now even provincial stations are home to burger joints that can use the word gourmet in their name with irony coming into play.
They are increasingly home to their own 'tap' too, marking a renaissance for the old platform bars that used to be the haunt of stag parties and seedy salesmen. A prime example of such a venue is this excellent little watering hole that opened at Stoke Station a year or so ago.
The bar is part of s new chain opened by local brewery Titanic and is designed to appeal to a more metropolitan clientele than their real ale orientated pubs. The décor had the shabby chic look you'd expect but done well enough for it not to look like it's come out of a box.
The important thing, the beer, is up to their usual high standard and there is a small, but we'll curated menu of spirits. Remarkably for a place that bye to its purpose to cater for an almost exclusively passing trade the bar had a friendlier atmosphere than I have found in many, so called, community pubs.
Quite why Titanic have chosen to name this new brand after an obscure character from seventies children's television eludes me. It is something I shall ponder over on frequent return visits.
Bod
Stoke-on-Trent Railway Station
Station Road
Stoke-on-Trent
ST4 2AA
If you enjoyed this article please consider giving a small donation to the appeal for a defibrillator in Penkhull village by following this link https://www.aeddonate.org.uk/projects/aed-for-penkhull-village-s1k/
Thursday 3 October 2019
TUC calls for Working Class Power Revival
The Trades Union Congress (TUC), the body bringing together all the UK's trades unions has issued a call for the political power of the working classes to be rebuilt.
The TUC was founded more than a century ago to 'advance the general interests of the working classes', a mission it still adheres to today.
These are difficult times for the union movement in the UK, figures published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in 2017 show that membership has risen slightly with 6.2 million workers being union members, a huge fall from a peak of 13million in 1979.
Union membership is ageing too with members over the age of first outnumbering younger members. Once a bastion of blue-collar solidarity there are now more union members in professional jobs (37.9%) than those described as 'routine ' (20.8%).
This fall in membership among members of what were in simpler times called the 'working class’ comes at a time when more UK workers are defining themselves by class. Research published in 2015 showed 60% of UK workers defining as working class, including 47% engaged in job roles classed as being managerial.
For the lowest paid workers, those in most need of unionization these are difficult times. Data produced by the Social Metrics Commission in 2017 show that 22% of the UK population were living on relative low incomes, meaning their income is below the national average. Increasingly people in this situation are in full time work, giving a hollow ring to government claims that it can end inequality just by getting more people into work.
Work itself is becoming harder for those in 'routine ' occupations, mostly in the retail and service sectors. These jobs are frequently done by women and members of the BME community, hours are usually long and unsociable with little compensation in terms of pay.
To the existing discrimination around race and gender the TUC argue that discrimination on the grounds of class should also be considered and is calling on the government to act.
Among the recommendations made in the report the TUC wants new powers for workers to negotiate better pay and conditions through collective bargaining. They also call for the rebuilding of public services that have been decimated by a decade of austerity.
The most interesting and potentially challenging recommendation is that employers should be required to publish data on class related pay gaps. This would be paired with the introduction of legislation to tackle class discrimination.
There is no disputing the fact that since 2010 the coalition and then Conservative led governments have got more people into work; the evidence for their claim to have made work pay is much harder to find. In fact, their policies have contributed to the return of a growing cohort of the 'working poor ' for the first time in decades.
Calling for action to address the inequalities that are causing so much harm to the most vulnerable members of society is something that accords with the traditional role of the TUC. As is attempting to revive political activity in workplaces and marginalized communities.
Aspirations and achievements, however noble, are quite different things; the latter must climb the steep hill of real-life conditions and for reviving working class political power the omens are not propitious.
Working life is more frantic and fragmented than it was even a decade ago, people in short term insecure jobs don't put down roots long enough to learn the names of their co-workers, never mind develop a collective political consciousness. Unions, despite their best efforts to claim otherwise cast a much smaller shadow than they did in 1979, with many members seeing them more as an insurance policy than a political organization.
The biggest barrier though to rebuilding working class political consciousness is the all-pervasive grip of our consumer society. Even those who have the least capacity to do so are enlisted into a wild hunt after the brass ring of affluence.
The TUC deserve credit for trying to turn the tide of apathy and for seeking to place class discrimination alongside the other forms we have rightly learnt to abhor. They can't do so alone though; they need to operate within a political system that looks outwards to a society in which participants want to do good; not inwards to their own personal rivalries.
The TUC was founded more than a century ago to 'advance the general interests of the working classes', a mission it still adheres to today.
These are difficult times for the union movement in the UK, figures published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in 2017 show that membership has risen slightly with 6.2 million workers being union members, a huge fall from a peak of 13million in 1979.
Union membership is ageing too with members over the age of first outnumbering younger members. Once a bastion of blue-collar solidarity there are now more union members in professional jobs (37.9%) than those described as 'routine ' (20.8%).
This fall in membership among members of what were in simpler times called the 'working class’ comes at a time when more UK workers are defining themselves by class. Research published in 2015 showed 60% of UK workers defining as working class, including 47% engaged in job roles classed as being managerial.
For the lowest paid workers, those in most need of unionization these are difficult times. Data produced by the Social Metrics Commission in 2017 show that 22% of the UK population were living on relative low incomes, meaning their income is below the national average. Increasingly people in this situation are in full time work, giving a hollow ring to government claims that it can end inequality just by getting more people into work.
Work itself is becoming harder for those in 'routine ' occupations, mostly in the retail and service sectors. These jobs are frequently done by women and members of the BME community, hours are usually long and unsociable with little compensation in terms of pay.
To the existing discrimination around race and gender the TUC argue that discrimination on the grounds of class should also be considered and is calling on the government to act.
Among the recommendations made in the report the TUC wants new powers for workers to negotiate better pay and conditions through collective bargaining. They also call for the rebuilding of public services that have been decimated by a decade of austerity.
The most interesting and potentially challenging recommendation is that employers should be required to publish data on class related pay gaps. This would be paired with the introduction of legislation to tackle class discrimination.
There is no disputing the fact that since 2010 the coalition and then Conservative led governments have got more people into work; the evidence for their claim to have made work pay is much harder to find. In fact, their policies have contributed to the return of a growing cohort of the 'working poor ' for the first time in decades.
Calling for action to address the inequalities that are causing so much harm to the most vulnerable members of society is something that accords with the traditional role of the TUC. As is attempting to revive political activity in workplaces and marginalized communities.
Aspirations and achievements, however noble, are quite different things; the latter must climb the steep hill of real-life conditions and for reviving working class political power the omens are not propitious.
Working life is more frantic and fragmented than it was even a decade ago, people in short term insecure jobs don't put down roots long enough to learn the names of their co-workers, never mind develop a collective political consciousness. Unions, despite their best efforts to claim otherwise cast a much smaller shadow than they did in 1979, with many members seeing them more as an insurance policy than a political organization.
The biggest barrier though to rebuilding working class political consciousness is the all-pervasive grip of our consumer society. Even those who have the least capacity to do so are enlisted into a wild hunt after the brass ring of affluence.
The TUC deserve credit for trying to turn the tide of apathy and for seeking to place class discrimination alongside the other forms we have rightly learnt to abhor. They can't do so alone though; they need to operate within a political system that looks outwards to a society in which participants want to do good; not inwards to their own personal rivalries.
Monday 23 September 2019
Trussell Trust: Government Missed Opportunity to Help People on Low Incomes.
A report written for the Trussell Trust, the charity providing many of the UK’s Food Banks, highlights the continuing problems with the roll out of Universal Credit.
The report # Five Weeks Too Long, written for the charity by Ellie Thompson, Abby Jitendra and Sami Rabindrakaman, is based on evidence provided by several organisations working with people living in poverty. These include Centrepoint, The National Housing Federation, The Salvation Army and social housing provider The Riverside Group.
Evidence cited in the report shows that in areas where Universal Credit has been in place for at least a year there is a 30% increase in Food Bank use. After eighteen months the usage rises by 40% and after two years by 48%.
Although attempts have been made by the government to find solutions to the problems that have beset its flagship welfare reform policy. The five-week wait for new claimants before they receive their first payment continues to cause problems.
The availability of government loans to cover the shortfall in payments when moving onto Universal Credit, the report says, has only helped to push people into debt.
In a press statement Trussell Trust chief executive Emma Revie said, ‘Universal Credit should be there to anchor any of us against the tides of poverty, but the five-week wait fatally undermines this principle, pushing people into debt, homelessness and poverty’.
Hugh Owen, Director of Strategy and Public Affairs for the Riverside Group said the evidence given in the report shows rent arrears amongst their tenants had risen for Universal Credit claimants since 2015.
He said that along with the Trussell Trust they were calling on the government to ‘end the five-week wait because increasing numbers of out tenants are experiencing poverty whilst waiting for their first payment’.
Emma Revie said the government had ‘lost the opportunity to help people on low incomes in the recent spending review’, she called on prime minister Boris Johnson to ‘end this wait and help prevent more of us from being swept away by poverty’.
The report also draws attention to the impact the five-week wait for payment has on the physical and mental health of claimants.
Emma Revie concluded by saying that in a society ‘that believes in justice and compassion’, the five-week ‘just isn’t right’.
Adding that ‘it is something that can be fixed, Universal Credit was designed to have a wait, five weeks is too long, and we must change the design’.
The report # Five Weeks Too Long, written for the charity by Ellie Thompson, Abby Jitendra and Sami Rabindrakaman, is based on evidence provided by several organisations working with people living in poverty. These include Centrepoint, The National Housing Federation, The Salvation Army and social housing provider The Riverside Group.
Evidence cited in the report shows that in areas where Universal Credit has been in place for at least a year there is a 30% increase in Food Bank use. After eighteen months the usage rises by 40% and after two years by 48%.
Although attempts have been made by the government to find solutions to the problems that have beset its flagship welfare reform policy. The five-week wait for new claimants before they receive their first payment continues to cause problems.
The availability of government loans to cover the shortfall in payments when moving onto Universal Credit, the report says, has only helped to push people into debt.
In a press statement Trussell Trust chief executive Emma Revie said, ‘Universal Credit should be there to anchor any of us against the tides of poverty, but the five-week wait fatally undermines this principle, pushing people into debt, homelessness and poverty’.
Hugh Owen, Director of Strategy and Public Affairs for the Riverside Group said the evidence given in the report shows rent arrears amongst their tenants had risen for Universal Credit claimants since 2015.
He said that along with the Trussell Trust they were calling on the government to ‘end the five-week wait because increasing numbers of out tenants are experiencing poverty whilst waiting for their first payment’.
Emma Revie said the government had ‘lost the opportunity to help people on low incomes in the recent spending review’, she called on prime minister Boris Johnson to ‘end this wait and help prevent more of us from being swept away by poverty’.
The report also draws attention to the impact the five-week wait for payment has on the physical and mental health of claimants.
Emma Revie concluded by saying that in a society ‘that believes in justice and compassion’, the five-week ‘just isn’t right’.
Adding that ‘it is something that can be fixed, Universal Credit was designed to have a wait, five weeks is too long, and we must change the design’.
Thursday 19 September 2019
Suicides Among Young People in the UK Show Worrying Rise Says the ONS.
Figures produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show a rise in the number of people in the UK committing suicide. The increase has been particularly significant among young people with self-harm and exposure to harmful content online cited as contributing factors.
The figures are based on data from 2018 and show that 6507 people committed suicide last year, a significant rise on 2017. The majority (4093) involved males with the 45-49 age group most affected.
Suicides of people under the age of 25 rose to their highest level since 2012 with females aged between 10 and 24 most affected, with the rate rising by 83%, suicides among males of the same age also rose by 25% based of 2017 figures. In a blog post written for the ONS Ben Windsor-Shepherd, Head of Lifestyle and Risk Factor Analysis says the figures show that 'something has changed for young people'.
He adds that the statistics will be 'painful and personal for many people, behind every statistic is an individual, a family and a community devastated by their loss.
This latest demonstration of a growing alienation felt by young people in the UK follows on from the findings of a survey conducted for the Princes Trust in February, in which a significant proportion of the 2162 respondents said they did not feel life was worth living.
Speaking to the Guardian Nick Stace, UK chief executive of the Princes Trust said that young people were 'critical to the success of this country', but that they would only attain their full potential if they believed in themselves.
He added that it was 'a moral and economic imperative that employers, government and charities put the needs of young people centre stage'.
Suicide can be caused by a wide range of factors including stress, adverse past experiences and traumatic life events. The ONS statistics suggest that self-harm, levels of which among young people have risen by 13% since 2014 and harmful online experiences such as cyber-bullying may be contributing factors.
Ben Windsor-Shepherd 'while we don't know enough about why rates are increasing, there are some new challenges that may provide an explanation'.
Responding to the ONS figures Ann John, an advisor on suicide to the Welsh government said they were 'a concern and something we need to understand '.
Tom Madders, campaign director at Young Minds told the Independent they 'rang alarm bells,' he called for a strategy from government to address ' the factors fueling the crisis in young people's mental health '.
If you found this article helpful, please consider giving a small donation to the appeal for a defibrillator in Penkhull village by clicking this link: https://www.aeddonate.org.uk/projects/aed-for-penkhull-village-s1k/
The figures are based on data from 2018 and show that 6507 people committed suicide last year, a significant rise on 2017. The majority (4093) involved males with the 45-49 age group most affected.
Suicides of people under the age of 25 rose to their highest level since 2012 with females aged between 10 and 24 most affected, with the rate rising by 83%, suicides among males of the same age also rose by 25% based of 2017 figures. In a blog post written for the ONS Ben Windsor-Shepherd, Head of Lifestyle and Risk Factor Analysis says the figures show that 'something has changed for young people'.
He adds that the statistics will be 'painful and personal for many people, behind every statistic is an individual, a family and a community devastated by their loss.
This latest demonstration of a growing alienation felt by young people in the UK follows on from the findings of a survey conducted for the Princes Trust in February, in which a significant proportion of the 2162 respondents said they did not feel life was worth living.
Speaking to the Guardian Nick Stace, UK chief executive of the Princes Trust said that young people were 'critical to the success of this country', but that they would only attain their full potential if they believed in themselves.
He added that it was 'a moral and economic imperative that employers, government and charities put the needs of young people centre stage'.
Suicide can be caused by a wide range of factors including stress, adverse past experiences and traumatic life events. The ONS statistics suggest that self-harm, levels of which among young people have risen by 13% since 2014 and harmful online experiences such as cyber-bullying may be contributing factors.
Ben Windsor-Shepherd 'while we don't know enough about why rates are increasing, there are some new challenges that may provide an explanation'.
Responding to the ONS figures Ann John, an advisor on suicide to the Welsh government said they were 'a concern and something we need to understand '.
Tom Madders, campaign director at Young Minds told the Independent they 'rang alarm bells,' he called for a strategy from government to address ' the factors fueling the crisis in young people's mental health '.
If you found this article helpful, please consider giving a small donation to the appeal for a defibrillator in Penkhull village by clicking this link: https://www.aeddonate.org.uk/projects/aed-for-penkhull-village-s1k/
Friday 13 September 2019
From Caesar to Clown, the Unmaking of Boris Johnson
Has any political career fallen apart quite so quickly as that of Boris Johnson? Even if you follow the line that most end in failure sooner or later his decline is remarkable.
In early July he was installed in Downing Street following a leadership election within the Conservative Party that played out like a general election. One where Johnson was so certain of victory, he didn't bother turning up for most of the debates that whittled the field down to a race between him and then Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Even this was a slam dunk for Johnson. Pit a politician popular enough to be known to press and public alike by just his first name against one with a second name that invites the inevitable play on words and there can only ever be one winner.
Taking office in that sunny Wednesday Johnson did look, if only momentarily, like the coming man, even to those of us who never bought into his mystique.
Here was mercurial energy after three years of leaden plodding; affable spontaneity after years of dutifully over rehearsed dullness. Epic promises were made, the Minotaur of Brexit would be slain by a hero without a comb.
Spin forwards two months and those epic promises have turned into a failure of epic proportions.
In short order Boris Johnson has lost six major votes in a row and stoked the fires of a constitutional crisis by suspending parliament for five weeks. Allegedly so to allow for a Queen's speech to be prepared this was a crude tactic to stifle debate on a Brexit deal ahead of our exit date at the end of October.
As a piece of political game playing this has been the opposite of a roaring success. One of those six lost votes means that attempting to push through a no desk exit, his only hope of keeping the ERG onside, could see him in court; the other two denied him the election that might have given him a mandate.
Johnson hardly helped himself by removing the whip from twenty-one of his own MPs for voting against the government, wiping out his majority and creating a stage army on the back benches with axes to grind and nothing to lose.
He also turned in a performance at the despatch box that saw the mask of bumbling amiability slip showing a less pleasuring face underneath. Thwarted entitlement is seldom pretty to behold; on that occasion it was downright ugly.
Where did it all go wrong? How did someone who has traded on his ability to read the public mood get things so wrong and end up alienating pretty much everyone?
The fault lies, as ever, with the person at the centre of the drama; the enigma in his own imagination that is Boris Johnson.
He is a man born to good fortune, not just in the material sense, though going to Eton then Oxbridge helped to shape his view of himself as born to rule. It also gave him a contacts book to die for, allowing him to flit through careers in the media and politics taking on plum jobs and when through a mix of boredom and over confidence he messed up to step from one to the next without serious consequences.
Boris Johnson has carried this expectation through into the highest political office in the land. As when he was mayor of London his modus operandi is to racket about from one photo opportunity to the next firing off scatter gun quotes to the assembled press pack.
What he has failed to realise is that that no longer works, in the past there was always someone above to deal with the fallout from his inevitable gaffes. Now he's the grown up and had to take responsibility for a whole government a big ask for a man who has never really taken responsibility for himself.
In his shirt tenure as prime minister Boris Johnson has proved to be the exact opposite of everything we need in a leader at this difficult time.
Where we needed calm, he has brought chaos; where we needed mature capability, he has brought adolescent self-indulgence. Where the country needed healing and a period of clam; he has brought division and, maybe, disorder.
It is hardly unusual for politicians who believed in their personal destiny to lead to be tripped over by the grind of what happens to happen; few have been so rapidly and fully undone by their own failings.
In 3016 the Brexit referendum changed British politics forever, even though it is certain to be delayed until January our exit from the EU will happen. The aftermath will, if hopefully not so horrific as the reluctantly released government papers about Operation Yellowhammer suggest, will surely present huge challenges.
They will need to be met by a very different kind of leader, one who operates from a basis of pragmatism, seeking to build consensus rather than trying to force things through by the faulty magic of personal charisma.
In his short time in office Boris Johnson has proved without question that he is not the type of leader we need. Discovering who is could be the most important question of our time.
In early July he was installed in Downing Street following a leadership election within the Conservative Party that played out like a general election. One where Johnson was so certain of victory, he didn't bother turning up for most of the debates that whittled the field down to a race between him and then Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Even this was a slam dunk for Johnson. Pit a politician popular enough to be known to press and public alike by just his first name against one with a second name that invites the inevitable play on words and there can only ever be one winner.
Taking office in that sunny Wednesday Johnson did look, if only momentarily, like the coming man, even to those of us who never bought into his mystique.
Here was mercurial energy after three years of leaden plodding; affable spontaneity after years of dutifully over rehearsed dullness. Epic promises were made, the Minotaur of Brexit would be slain by a hero without a comb.
Spin forwards two months and those epic promises have turned into a failure of epic proportions.
In short order Boris Johnson has lost six major votes in a row and stoked the fires of a constitutional crisis by suspending parliament for five weeks. Allegedly so to allow for a Queen's speech to be prepared this was a crude tactic to stifle debate on a Brexit deal ahead of our exit date at the end of October.
As a piece of political game playing this has been the opposite of a roaring success. One of those six lost votes means that attempting to push through a no desk exit, his only hope of keeping the ERG onside, could see him in court; the other two denied him the election that might have given him a mandate.
Johnson hardly helped himself by removing the whip from twenty-one of his own MPs for voting against the government, wiping out his majority and creating a stage army on the back benches with axes to grind and nothing to lose.
He also turned in a performance at the despatch box that saw the mask of bumbling amiability slip showing a less pleasuring face underneath. Thwarted entitlement is seldom pretty to behold; on that occasion it was downright ugly.
Where did it all go wrong? How did someone who has traded on his ability to read the public mood get things so wrong and end up alienating pretty much everyone?
The fault lies, as ever, with the person at the centre of the drama; the enigma in his own imagination that is Boris Johnson.
He is a man born to good fortune, not just in the material sense, though going to Eton then Oxbridge helped to shape his view of himself as born to rule. It also gave him a contacts book to die for, allowing him to flit through careers in the media and politics taking on plum jobs and when through a mix of boredom and over confidence he messed up to step from one to the next without serious consequences.
Boris Johnson has carried this expectation through into the highest political office in the land. As when he was mayor of London his modus operandi is to racket about from one photo opportunity to the next firing off scatter gun quotes to the assembled press pack.
What he has failed to realise is that that no longer works, in the past there was always someone above to deal with the fallout from his inevitable gaffes. Now he's the grown up and had to take responsibility for a whole government a big ask for a man who has never really taken responsibility for himself.
In his shirt tenure as prime minister Boris Johnson has proved to be the exact opposite of everything we need in a leader at this difficult time.
Where we needed calm, he has brought chaos; where we needed mature capability, he has brought adolescent self-indulgence. Where the country needed healing and a period of clam; he has brought division and, maybe, disorder.
It is hardly unusual for politicians who believed in their personal destiny to lead to be tripped over by the grind of what happens to happen; few have been so rapidly and fully undone by their own failings.
In 3016 the Brexit referendum changed British politics forever, even though it is certain to be delayed until January our exit from the EU will happen. The aftermath will, if hopefully not so horrific as the reluctantly released government papers about Operation Yellowhammer suggest, will surely present huge challenges.
They will need to be met by a very different kind of leader, one who operates from a basis of pragmatism, seeking to build consensus rather than trying to force things through by the faulty magic of personal charisma.
In his short time in office Boris Johnson has proved without question that he is not the type of leader we need. Discovering who is could be the most important question of our time.
Thursday 5 September 2019
Palliative Care May be the Only Option for Bird Species Hit by Climate Change.
A third of bird species in the UK could be negatively impacted on by climate change according to research conducted for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO).
The research is based on a regional survey of 68 species based on population change and the impact of climate change on routes to the UK taken by migratory birds and uses data gathered by the BTO since 1966.
Science Director at the BTO Dr James Pearce Higgins told the BBC ‘we can see from our evidence a reshuffling of bird species’ in which there are ‘some winners that are doing better and some losers that are not doing so well’.
Losing out in this climate lottery are migratory birds, the number of cuckoos visiting the UK has dropped by 80% over the past thirty years, other migratory birds such as swifts and turtle doves have also suffered.
Birds common to the northern uplands are also vulnerable, with the golden plover expected to be extinct in the Peak District by the end of the century.
The winners are birds that can benefit from the UK having warmer winters in recent years. These include buzzards and common garden birds such as robins and blue tits.
The decline in migratory birds is thought to be due to warmer summers meaning there are less invertebrates for them to feed on, the impact of climate change on the countries they visit on the way to the UK is also believed to be a contributory factor.
Speaking to the BBC naturalist Nick Baker said that birds are ‘amazing creatures, adaptable and resilient; but only up to a point’. He called for their habitat to be safeguarded to give them a ‘fighting chance’ at long term survival.
Also speaking to the BBC Dr Alex Bond senior curator of birds at the National History Museum suggested that other issues including ‘habitat fragmentation’ may have impacted on the decline of some species, but climate change was clearly ‘the big one’.
Going on to say that habitat restoration and conservation would help redress the balance; but warned many species may be in a ‘palliative care state’ because the ‘stopping climate change ship has more or less sailed’.
Birds and humans have coexisted for thousands of years winding their way into our art and culture from high poetry to cheery images of robins on Christmas cards. The findings of the BTO show they are also a useful barometer of the harm we are doing to the climate.
Those species that are under threat have been put in that situation by climate change created by humans. Ironically those that are thriving do so because we feed them in return for having them hopping about on our suburban lawns.
I would like to hope that these, as Nick Baker puts it ‘adaptable and resilient’ creatures can survive because our efforts at conserving their habitat will prove to be more than just palliative care.
The message behind the BTO research though is painfully clear, another reminder that time is running out to act on climate change. If we don’t then Spring and every other season may be silent.
The research is based on a regional survey of 68 species based on population change and the impact of climate change on routes to the UK taken by migratory birds and uses data gathered by the BTO since 1966.
Science Director at the BTO Dr James Pearce Higgins told the BBC ‘we can see from our evidence a reshuffling of bird species’ in which there are ‘some winners that are doing better and some losers that are not doing so well’.
Losing out in this climate lottery are migratory birds, the number of cuckoos visiting the UK has dropped by 80% over the past thirty years, other migratory birds such as swifts and turtle doves have also suffered.
Birds common to the northern uplands are also vulnerable, with the golden plover expected to be extinct in the Peak District by the end of the century.
The winners are birds that can benefit from the UK having warmer winters in recent years. These include buzzards and common garden birds such as robins and blue tits.
The decline in migratory birds is thought to be due to warmer summers meaning there are less invertebrates for them to feed on, the impact of climate change on the countries they visit on the way to the UK is also believed to be a contributory factor.
Speaking to the BBC naturalist Nick Baker said that birds are ‘amazing creatures, adaptable and resilient; but only up to a point’. He called for their habitat to be safeguarded to give them a ‘fighting chance’ at long term survival.
Also speaking to the BBC Dr Alex Bond senior curator of birds at the National History Museum suggested that other issues including ‘habitat fragmentation’ may have impacted on the decline of some species, but climate change was clearly ‘the big one’.
Going on to say that habitat restoration and conservation would help redress the balance; but warned many species may be in a ‘palliative care state’ because the ‘stopping climate change ship has more or less sailed’.
Birds and humans have coexisted for thousands of years winding their way into our art and culture from high poetry to cheery images of robins on Christmas cards. The findings of the BTO show they are also a useful barometer of the harm we are doing to the climate.
Those species that are under threat have been put in that situation by climate change created by humans. Ironically those that are thriving do so because we feed them in return for having them hopping about on our suburban lawns.
I would like to hope that these, as Nick Baker puts it ‘adaptable and resilient’ creatures can survive because our efforts at conserving their habitat will prove to be more than just palliative care.
The message behind the BTO research though is painfully clear, another reminder that time is running out to act on climate change. If we don’t then Spring and every other season may be silent.
Monday 26 August 2019
Has the private car come to the end of the road?
Last week a commons select committee reported that if we're serious about tackling climate change then it could be time to give up driving. Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
White van man and his brothers and sisters in petrol were not happy. If the racket on the internet and radio talk shows is any guide, they will only surrender their steering wheels when someone prizes their cold, dead arm away from the open driver's side window.
Their anger is based in the fact that the private motor car has been sold to them as an icon of personal freedom for more than a century. The nagging question is though, have they and the rest of us been sold a massive and poorly house-trained pup?
My hometown of Stoke-on-Trent is a, mostly, linear city made up of six individual towns, it should be the ideal setting for a first-rate public transport system. What it's got though is an embarrassingly awful one, faced with that it is hardly surprising that driving looks like the best option nine times out of ten.
In many ways though it really isn't. Over its short history the private motor car has filled the atmosphere with pollution, caused us to cover ever more land with tarmac and contributed to rising levels of obesity.
In addition to all that having to own a car has saddled families that are struggling to make ends meet with another expense.
The truth is we might well all be a lot happier, healthier and maybe richer too if we consigned the privately-owned car to a museum. In which case why don't we?
There, as Shakespeare might have put it lies the rub!
Part of the problem is that we haven't yet properly grasped either the size of climate emergency waiting in the wings, or the radical measures needed to deal with it. Rather like the residents of Pompeii we keep telling ourselves that even though the volcano is smoking it hasn't erupted before, so it won't erupt now. Things didn't end well for them; they won't for us either.
There is also a staggering lack of imagination on the part of local and national government. Building a decent public transport system is undeniably costly in the short term and usually requires a significant leap of faith.
In a political culture where playing it safe is the order of the day and the accountants tend to hold the whip hand progress is often sluggish at best and sometimes nonexistent.
A sizable slice of blame has, alas, to rest with my own team, the environmental movement. Too often we talk in terms of what people mustn't do, demanding that the dress code for the promised land requires we all wear a hair shirt.
The fantasy world of autonomous ‘pods’ that replace the petrol hungry tin box on the average suburban drive might always be slightly out of reach. Even if it did come about knowing this country’s talent for making chaos out of the mundane it would only be a matter of time before the whole system was brought down by the wrong kind of snow or leaves on the line.
The truth is that though things are looking had humans have the intelligence and the resilience to turn the situation around. We are more than capable of creating a society that is greener fairer and better for everyone.
As it happens, I don't own a car; but it I did that is the sort of world I'd happily give it up to build.
White van man and his brothers and sisters in petrol were not happy. If the racket on the internet and radio talk shows is any guide, they will only surrender their steering wheels when someone prizes their cold, dead arm away from the open driver's side window.
Their anger is based in the fact that the private motor car has been sold to them as an icon of personal freedom for more than a century. The nagging question is though, have they and the rest of us been sold a massive and poorly house-trained pup?
My hometown of Stoke-on-Trent is a, mostly, linear city made up of six individual towns, it should be the ideal setting for a first-rate public transport system. What it's got though is an embarrassingly awful one, faced with that it is hardly surprising that driving looks like the best option nine times out of ten.
In many ways though it really isn't. Over its short history the private motor car has filled the atmosphere with pollution, caused us to cover ever more land with tarmac and contributed to rising levels of obesity.
In addition to all that having to own a car has saddled families that are struggling to make ends meet with another expense.
The truth is we might well all be a lot happier, healthier and maybe richer too if we consigned the privately-owned car to a museum. In which case why don't we?
There, as Shakespeare might have put it lies the rub!
Part of the problem is that we haven't yet properly grasped either the size of climate emergency waiting in the wings, or the radical measures needed to deal with it. Rather like the residents of Pompeii we keep telling ourselves that even though the volcano is smoking it hasn't erupted before, so it won't erupt now. Things didn't end well for them; they won't for us either.
There is also a staggering lack of imagination on the part of local and national government. Building a decent public transport system is undeniably costly in the short term and usually requires a significant leap of faith.
In a political culture where playing it safe is the order of the day and the accountants tend to hold the whip hand progress is often sluggish at best and sometimes nonexistent.
A sizable slice of blame has, alas, to rest with my own team, the environmental movement. Too often we talk in terms of what people mustn't do, demanding that the dress code for the promised land requires we all wear a hair shirt.
The fantasy world of autonomous ‘pods’ that replace the petrol hungry tin box on the average suburban drive might always be slightly out of reach. Even if it did come about knowing this country’s talent for making chaos out of the mundane it would only be a matter of time before the whole system was brought down by the wrong kind of snow or leaves on the line.
The truth is that though things are looking had humans have the intelligence and the resilience to turn the situation around. We are more than capable of creating a society that is greener fairer and better for everyone.
As it happens, I don't own a car; but it I did that is the sort of world I'd happily give it up to build.
Thursday 15 August 2019
New group encourages men to speak about their struggles with mental health issues
“We’re nobody special, just two blokes who are tired of seeing men killing themselves”.
I’m sitting in an upstairs room at the base of Changes, a charity offering peer support to people living with mental health issues in my hometown of Stoke-on-Trent. Gathered around on the sagging sofas are half a dozen other men, all of them, like me sipping coffee and looking a little uncomfortable.
Out of more than six thousand suicides recorded in 2013 78% involved men, according to the 2014 Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey one in eight males in the UK, 12.2% of the population, showed symptoms of a common mental health problem (source: The Mental Health Foundation).
Despite the size of the problem and its obvious social impact it isn’t something we talk about. Thanks to generations of social conditioning out stiff upper lips stay firmly closed.
This is something Ron and Craig, the likeably blokish duo behind Men Unite, a support network that began on Facebook and is now expanding into the real world want to change.
They might just do it too; in a matter of months their group has grown from a handful of friends to more than a thousand members in sixty-seven countries.
Both men spoke with genuine honesty about their own brushes with mental distress.
Craig talked about struggling with drug addiction and the troubles that follow on from it, debt, deceit and, for him, a short spell in prison. He has since rebuilt his life and career.
Ron, the owner of a successful construction business, spoke about how earlier this year he had found himself standing on a bridge next to the nearby Britannia Stadium on the point of jumping. “Best f*****g view in the city” he jokes, an example of the gallows humour men are programmed to use to mask their emotions.
What he says strikes a chord with Chris*, a softly spoken man who, until tonight has never spoken openly about his struggles with mental distress. He describes how despite having a good job and a happy family life depression hit him with a sucker punch a little over a year ago.
Sam*, spoke about how he had ‘struggled with depression’ all his life and as a result been bullied at school. Through volunteering with Changes, he has found recovery and a way to help others.
The message behind the Men Unite ‘project’, if it can be call that, it is early days and both Ron and Craig would, I’m sure, be the first to admit, are still very much flying by the seat of their pants, is one of solidarity. They don’t want to be victims whining about their troubles; they want to find a way to live with them without being overwhelmed.
That is why they are working with Changes, MIND, Staffordshire Police and the NHS to help men develop ways to be open about the challenges they face and of supporting each other to move on into recovery.
Later over coffee I speak to Sue*, a full-time worker with Changes, “things would be so much easier if men spoke about their feelings” she says, adding, “maybe the people here tonight will start that process”.
She has a point, author Mark Green writes about the ‘man box’, the tight space cultural expectations require men to pack their emotions into allowing them a drastically limited range of expression
This has serious consequences for our physical and mental health, leading to addiction, depression, violence and social isolation. The impact of these can be seen on a societal level too, with men transferring the emotional pain they cannot express into crime, domestic violence and suicide.
Men Unite is still in its salad days, when attracting members is easy and anything seems possible. Being viable in the long-term is a more difficult road paved with bureaucracy and potential disappointment as the pace of growth inevitably slows down to something more manageable.
Their aims are honest, even noble, ones and they are seeking to attain them with a cheerful irreverence that is manly in the best possible way. For the good of half the population in need of a voice to speak about its pain it is to be hoped they succeed.
*Some names used in this article have been changed in the interests of confidentiality.
Thursday 8 August 2019
The gamble made by the council in becoming a property developer might not be a game worth the candle.
Two events over resent weeks have demonstrated the disconnect between the ambitions of those holding power inside the Civic Centre and the experience of ordinary citizens.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council recently announced plans to demolish Gordon House on Kingsway in Stoke town centre. The land it occupies will then be turned into a courtyard enhancing the entrance to the nearby Spode site.
Earlier this week Pochin, the company building the Clayworks apartment block and the Hilton Garden Inn in Hanley went into administration. Work on both sites has been halted, Richard Ingram a partner at developers Genr8 told the Sentinel on Tuesday the company was ‘implementing a plan to ensure the successful delivery of both sites’
How long it might be before work resumes is up there with the length of a piece of string as one of life’s great imponderables.
The decades immediately after the war were not glorious ones for the design of British cities. Grand statements of civic pride built by industrialists during the Victorian era were swept away by a tide of modernism, along with whole neighbourhoods built to house their workers.
In their place came a townscape of concrete blocks, some reaching for the sky, others squatting close to the ground under flat roofs. The results were seldom happy with shoddy workmanship and a lack of consideration for the people who would live in them causing problems almost from day one.
Tower blocks weren’t the ‘streets in the sky’ their architects imagined, instead they became breeding grounds for alienation and social division. Shopping centres built from concrete crumbled into dereliction becoming eyesores avoided by all but the dispossessed.
It is hardly surprising that Ian Fleming named the villain in one of his James Bond novels after Arno Goldfinger, a leading advocate of high rise living. Locally it doesn’t cause you to do a double take to find out that the former Hanley bus station opened in 1967 ended its days as the set for a zombie film.
It is ironic then that the fate of Gordon House, an undistinguished bit of sixties architecture, should be so significant. In other circumstances its demise would be if not something to celebrate, then certainly no cause to mourn.
As it happens though Gordon House is home to several successful businesses, the council has offered to help them relocate to other sites in Stoke town, but the owners fear they won’t survive the move. They have good reason to be apprehensive, Kingsway is one of the few parts of Stoke where there is a guarantee of passing trade.
The ongoing tribulations up at Smithfield are a reminder of the risk the council took when it decided to dip not so much a toe as a whole leg into the murky waters of property development.
The council put down £6.9 million of its, meaning our, money down in the form of a loan to developers Gener8 to build the Hilton Garden Inn. Ever ebullient council leader Abi Brown told the Sentinel that despite the current difficulties the council ‘expect the final works to be completed and for the two sites to be fully delivered’.
Optimism can be a dangerous thing when it is applied without thought. Anyone who knows about the travails of the nearby bus station site, or who has seen the half-built student flats next to the Jubilee Baths in Newcastle will be aware that when property developments go wrong; the tend to go massively wrong.
By investing so much public money in a single project the council have behaved with worrying naivety. Their actions are like those of a novice player with a large bag of money sitting down at a table of card sharps hoping to learn about poker.
Two things are worryingly likely to happen. The council will force the businesses trading from Gordon House to move and probably bring about their closure in the process. A cash funnel will be set up to get things moving again up at Smithfield with we the public promised that short term financial pain will bring long term gains, with the payment date set for the twelfth of never.
If so, the council will be acting rather like those sixties believers in a ‘brave new world’ who covered so much of the real one with concrete. Their vision, be it of building utopia or making a killing on the property market, has blinded them to harsh reality.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city with serious social problems that it is struggling to overcome, as I wrote last week, we need to do so by fixing problems like the lack of a decent public transport network first. This isn’t glamorous and it certainly won’t be quick; but if we don’t success will always be just out of reach.
Only when they have finally done so should the council be thinking about building luxury hotels. Even then they should still go into the process with their eyes open and a firm grip on the purse strings.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council recently announced plans to demolish Gordon House on Kingsway in Stoke town centre. The land it occupies will then be turned into a courtyard enhancing the entrance to the nearby Spode site.
Earlier this week Pochin, the company building the Clayworks apartment block and the Hilton Garden Inn in Hanley went into administration. Work on both sites has been halted, Richard Ingram a partner at developers Genr8 told the Sentinel on Tuesday the company was ‘implementing a plan to ensure the successful delivery of both sites’
How long it might be before work resumes is up there with the length of a piece of string as one of life’s great imponderables.
The decades immediately after the war were not glorious ones for the design of British cities. Grand statements of civic pride built by industrialists during the Victorian era were swept away by a tide of modernism, along with whole neighbourhoods built to house their workers.
In their place came a townscape of concrete blocks, some reaching for the sky, others squatting close to the ground under flat roofs. The results were seldom happy with shoddy workmanship and a lack of consideration for the people who would live in them causing problems almost from day one.
Tower blocks weren’t the ‘streets in the sky’ their architects imagined, instead they became breeding grounds for alienation and social division. Shopping centres built from concrete crumbled into dereliction becoming eyesores avoided by all but the dispossessed.
It is hardly surprising that Ian Fleming named the villain in one of his James Bond novels after Arno Goldfinger, a leading advocate of high rise living. Locally it doesn’t cause you to do a double take to find out that the former Hanley bus station opened in 1967 ended its days as the set for a zombie film.
It is ironic then that the fate of Gordon House, an undistinguished bit of sixties architecture, should be so significant. In other circumstances its demise would be if not something to celebrate, then certainly no cause to mourn.
As it happens though Gordon House is home to several successful businesses, the council has offered to help them relocate to other sites in Stoke town, but the owners fear they won’t survive the move. They have good reason to be apprehensive, Kingsway is one of the few parts of Stoke where there is a guarantee of passing trade.
The ongoing tribulations up at Smithfield are a reminder of the risk the council took when it decided to dip not so much a toe as a whole leg into the murky waters of property development.
The council put down £6.9 million of its, meaning our, money down in the form of a loan to developers Gener8 to build the Hilton Garden Inn. Ever ebullient council leader Abi Brown told the Sentinel that despite the current difficulties the council ‘expect the final works to be completed and for the two sites to be fully delivered’.
Optimism can be a dangerous thing when it is applied without thought. Anyone who knows about the travails of the nearby bus station site, or who has seen the half-built student flats next to the Jubilee Baths in Newcastle will be aware that when property developments go wrong; the tend to go massively wrong.
By investing so much public money in a single project the council have behaved with worrying naivety. Their actions are like those of a novice player with a large bag of money sitting down at a table of card sharps hoping to learn about poker.
Two things are worryingly likely to happen. The council will force the businesses trading from Gordon House to move and probably bring about their closure in the process. A cash funnel will be set up to get things moving again up at Smithfield with we the public promised that short term financial pain will bring long term gains, with the payment date set for the twelfth of never.
If so, the council will be acting rather like those sixties believers in a ‘brave new world’ who covered so much of the real one with concrete. Their vision, be it of building utopia or making a killing on the property market, has blinded them to harsh reality.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city with serious social problems that it is struggling to overcome, as I wrote last week, we need to do so by fixing problems like the lack of a decent public transport network first. This isn’t glamorous and it certainly won’t be quick; but if we don’t success will always be just out of reach.
Only when they have finally done so should the council be thinking about building luxury hotels. Even then they should still go into the process with their eyes open and a firm grip on the purse strings.
Thursday 1 August 2019
Stoke needs to put all the pieces in place to complete the regeneration jigsaw.
Hanley park is set to benefit from a multi-million-pound makeover with improvements to the pavilion and boathouse and the conversion of a former bowls pavilion into a cafe.
Louise Hodgeson of Caterleisure Group, the company behind the project, told the Sentinel " we are delighted to be coming to Hanley Park, which is a fantastic venue with enormous potential".
As someone who has known and enjoyed Hanley Park since childhood, I'm quite pleased to see them pitch up myself.
Like many people born in the surrounding area I have fond childhood memories of what we always called 'the big park'. Sunny seventies afternoons spent splashing about in the paddling poor or riding in a cart pulled by a friendly shire horse called Samson. An adventure that is, sadly denied children growing up in our health and safety conscious world.
I also have less happy memories of the thirty years of neglect that turned the park into a place you sometimes wouldn't want to visit in daylight. Things have improved over the past decade, but this is the extra push the park needed to get back to its best.
I feel a little less certain about the new hotel and apartments being built just up the road on the Smithfield site. While it is an undeniably positive sight to see cranes on the city's skyline, property speculation is a dangerous game for a local authority to be playing.
Things are looking more hopeful than they did a few years ago, although I can't share the Tigger style enthusiasm of council leader Abi Brown as she repeatedly claims that 'Stoke is on the up'. We are moving in the right direction, but there are still some important pieces missing from the regeneration jigsaw.
The largest and most important of these is the absence of a decent public transport system. Without one the newly refurbished Hanley Park could end up being an island in a sea of congestion; building a luxury hotel is all very well, but the people the council want to stay there will not welcome being stuck in a big-standard traffic jam whenever they step outside.
The message that without a decent transport system Stoke will stay forever on the edge of the prosperity party never quite makes it through to the incumbents of the Civic Centre.
They are massively proud of having secured millions of pounds in government funding to refurbish the area around Stoke station, but this does nothing to improve bus and train services that don't play nicely together. During the recent local elections, a prominent Tory councillor told me that it would be nice to have an integrated transport system like Nottingham, but Stoke is a poor city and businesses couldn't, meaning wouldn't, stump up the cash.
I'd say that's exactly why we need one, the current outdated shambles actively discourages investment. As for businesses stumping up their share of the cost. There will be complaints at first, as there were in Nottingham and other cities, until they realized what a good job it does of attracting investors and customers.
Logistically building an integrated public transport system in Stoke-on-Trent is entirely possible. In fact, as a linear city you could say we have the ideal conditions for building one. The vital element missing is a little imagination on the part of the council.
Building an integrated public transport system would also help to slot into place another piece of the regeneration jigsaw, giving all six towns a slice of the prosperity pie. At present the rising tide lifts only the good ship Hanley, leaving the rest of the fleet pretty much beached.
Better busses and trains and the eventual return of trams to the city’s streets wouldn’t just bring in visitors and investment, it would make it easier and cheaper for local people to get around too. This would leave them with more money in their pockets that could be spent with local businesses.
Sprucing up a much-loved local landmark is a good thing for the council to be doing, particularly one that allows people to enjoy nature in the heart of the city. Building hotels and fancy apartment blocks is a brave statement of optimism about the future.
Any jigsaw though is the sum of all of its pieces, not just the shiny ones that most easily catch the eye. The dull grey-blue ones making up the sky or the sea are just as vital, because without them the full image can never be realized.
The same is true when it comes to regeneration. Until we have a public transport system fit for the twenty-first century Stoke-on-Trent will only ever be halfway towards really being ‘on the up’.
Louise Hodgeson of Caterleisure Group, the company behind the project, told the Sentinel " we are delighted to be coming to Hanley Park, which is a fantastic venue with enormous potential".
As someone who has known and enjoyed Hanley Park since childhood, I'm quite pleased to see them pitch up myself.
Like many people born in the surrounding area I have fond childhood memories of what we always called 'the big park'. Sunny seventies afternoons spent splashing about in the paddling poor or riding in a cart pulled by a friendly shire horse called Samson. An adventure that is, sadly denied children growing up in our health and safety conscious world.
I also have less happy memories of the thirty years of neglect that turned the park into a place you sometimes wouldn't want to visit in daylight. Things have improved over the past decade, but this is the extra push the park needed to get back to its best.
I feel a little less certain about the new hotel and apartments being built just up the road on the Smithfield site. While it is an undeniably positive sight to see cranes on the city's skyline, property speculation is a dangerous game for a local authority to be playing.
Things are looking more hopeful than they did a few years ago, although I can't share the Tigger style enthusiasm of council leader Abi Brown as she repeatedly claims that 'Stoke is on the up'. We are moving in the right direction, but there are still some important pieces missing from the regeneration jigsaw.
The largest and most important of these is the absence of a decent public transport system. Without one the newly refurbished Hanley Park could end up being an island in a sea of congestion; building a luxury hotel is all very well, but the people the council want to stay there will not welcome being stuck in a big-standard traffic jam whenever they step outside.
The message that without a decent transport system Stoke will stay forever on the edge of the prosperity party never quite makes it through to the incumbents of the Civic Centre.
They are massively proud of having secured millions of pounds in government funding to refurbish the area around Stoke station, but this does nothing to improve bus and train services that don't play nicely together. During the recent local elections, a prominent Tory councillor told me that it would be nice to have an integrated transport system like Nottingham, but Stoke is a poor city and businesses couldn't, meaning wouldn't, stump up the cash.
I'd say that's exactly why we need one, the current outdated shambles actively discourages investment. As for businesses stumping up their share of the cost. There will be complaints at first, as there were in Nottingham and other cities, until they realized what a good job it does of attracting investors and customers.
Logistically building an integrated public transport system in Stoke-on-Trent is entirely possible. In fact, as a linear city you could say we have the ideal conditions for building one. The vital element missing is a little imagination on the part of the council.
Building an integrated public transport system would also help to slot into place another piece of the regeneration jigsaw, giving all six towns a slice of the prosperity pie. At present the rising tide lifts only the good ship Hanley, leaving the rest of the fleet pretty much beached.
Better busses and trains and the eventual return of trams to the city’s streets wouldn’t just bring in visitors and investment, it would make it easier and cheaper for local people to get around too. This would leave them with more money in their pockets that could be spent with local businesses.
Sprucing up a much-loved local landmark is a good thing for the council to be doing, particularly one that allows people to enjoy nature in the heart of the city. Building hotels and fancy apartment blocks is a brave statement of optimism about the future.
Any jigsaw though is the sum of all of its pieces, not just the shiny ones that most easily catch the eye. The dull grey-blue ones making up the sky or the sea are just as vital, because without them the full image can never be realized.
The same is true when it comes to regeneration. Until we have a public transport system fit for the twenty-first century Stoke-on-Trent will only ever be halfway towards really being ‘on the up’.
Thursday 18 July 2019
Local government is eight electoral cycles away from achieving gender balance.
A century on from women winning the vote local politics in England is still a long way away from representing both genders equally.
At the local elections held in May this year 8410 councilors were elected in England, just 34% of these were female. On 14% of councils female councilors are outnumbered three to one by male colleagues.
There has been a small increase in representation since the 2015 local elections. Out of the three main parties the percentage of female Labour councilors has risen to 40% from 37%; for the Tories the number has gone up from 26% to 30%; the Liberal Democrats remain unchanged on 33%.
Smaller parties also show variable levels of representation, 44% of Green Party councilors are women, compared to 20% for Ukip. Out of 2686 Independents elected 28% are women.
The Fawcett Society, a leading campaign group on women's issues, has published data suggesting it could take another 32 years to achieve a gender balance.
Over the past two years the Fawcett Society has worked with the Local Government Information Unit and Women2Win to produce three reports on local government reform. This latest report was produced in partnership with Democracy Club.
Democracy Club is an online based organization that works to improve access to information about the democratic process and identify ways of improving voter engagement.
All three reports found that female councilors are held back by structural and cultural barriers within the local government system as currently organized.
Fawcett Society chief executive Sam Smethers said that although national attention was currently focused on Brexit a shortage of women on local councils meant 'vital issues like cars for older people, planning decisions and council tax will continue to be decided by men'.
The Fawcett Society is calling for the three main parties to do more to engage women in local government by setting targets to improve representation. They also want to see more data gathered on candidate diversity and better availability of childcare and disability support.
Sam Smethers said that with most seats going to incumbents at the last election 'the space for change is limited, all of the parties need to set out their plan of action to change this; now'.
At a time when the protracted dispute over Brexit and rising levels of inequality are creating social and political tensions it is more important than ever that local and national government is representative.
The findings of the Fawcett Society, backed by those of other campaign groups, show that that is far from the case.
This, as Sam Smethers says means decisions that impact on the lives of everyone are taken disproportionally through the viewpoint of a single gender. The result can only ever be an increase of the structural inequalities that are proving so dangerously divisive.
There is also a case to be made that a more gender equal legislature in both local and national politics would change the way the system operates. Hopefully this would see a change in the language of politics away from conflict towards conciliation and reasonable compromise.
The benefits of change are clear; as are the risks inherent in retaining a status quo that has outlived its relevance. What is much less clear is how a local government system battered by austerity and where parties often struggle to find candidates of either gender can find the impetus to bring it about.
At the local elections held in May this year 8410 councilors were elected in England, just 34% of these were female. On 14% of councils female councilors are outnumbered three to one by male colleagues.
There has been a small increase in representation since the 2015 local elections. Out of the three main parties the percentage of female Labour councilors has risen to 40% from 37%; for the Tories the number has gone up from 26% to 30%; the Liberal Democrats remain unchanged on 33%.
Smaller parties also show variable levels of representation, 44% of Green Party councilors are women, compared to 20% for Ukip. Out of 2686 Independents elected 28% are women.
The Fawcett Society, a leading campaign group on women's issues, has published data suggesting it could take another 32 years to achieve a gender balance.
Over the past two years the Fawcett Society has worked with the Local Government Information Unit and Women2Win to produce three reports on local government reform. This latest report was produced in partnership with Democracy Club.
Democracy Club is an online based organization that works to improve access to information about the democratic process and identify ways of improving voter engagement.
All three reports found that female councilors are held back by structural and cultural barriers within the local government system as currently organized.
Fawcett Society chief executive Sam Smethers said that although national attention was currently focused on Brexit a shortage of women on local councils meant 'vital issues like cars for older people, planning decisions and council tax will continue to be decided by men'.
The Fawcett Society is calling for the three main parties to do more to engage women in local government by setting targets to improve representation. They also want to see more data gathered on candidate diversity and better availability of childcare and disability support.
Sam Smethers said that with most seats going to incumbents at the last election 'the space for change is limited, all of the parties need to set out their plan of action to change this; now'.
At a time when the protracted dispute over Brexit and rising levels of inequality are creating social and political tensions it is more important than ever that local and national government is representative.
The findings of the Fawcett Society, backed by those of other campaign groups, show that that is far from the case.
This, as Sam Smethers says means decisions that impact on the lives of everyone are taken disproportionally through the viewpoint of a single gender. The result can only ever be an increase of the structural inequalities that are proving so dangerously divisive.
There is also a case to be made that a more gender equal legislature in both local and national politics would change the way the system operates. Hopefully this would see a change in the language of politics away from conflict towards conciliation and reasonable compromise.
The benefits of change are clear; as are the risks inherent in retaining a status quo that has outlived its relevance. What is much less clear is how a local government system battered by austerity and where parties often struggle to find candidates of either gender can find the impetus to bring it about.
Wednesday 10 July 2019
Stoke council voters to back a climate emergency motion, but is it too little too late?
Members of Stoke-on-Trent City Council approved a motion to declare a Climate Emergency at the meeting of the full council held at the Civic Centre on 4th July.
The motion was proposed by Labour members Candi Chetwynd and Jane Ashworth and called on the council to take clear steps to address the climate crisis.
These included setting up a Climate Change Liaison Group, divesting pension funds held by the council from investments in fossil fuels and working with neighbouring authorities on carbon reduction projects.
The motion also called for the council to take ‘proactive steps to include young people and the public’ in developing a plan of action.
The point about the necessity of tackling climate change now was made with customary eloquence by environmentalist Sir David Attenborough from the stage of the Glastonbury festival the weekend before.
Unsurprisingly for a national treasure expounding on one of the hottest topics of the day he got an ovation louder than the one given to Kylie. Louder too than the one Jeremy Corbyn got in 2017.
There rests the problem, just because an issue is at the forefront of the public consciousness at a given moment, it doesn’t always follow that something will get done about it.
What Labour were doing on that scorching hot Thursday afternoon last week was to introduce a motion that would bring the council, business, campaign groups and most importantly, the public together to tackle climate change.
Moving the motion Councillor Ashworth said that the city and the rest of the country had to ‘listen to scientists’ when they warned about the dangers posed by climate change or risk ‘spiralling into a climate catastrophe’.
Seconding Councillor Chetwynd said that climate change was a ‘monster of our own making’, posing the greatest threat to our society and that the ‘time for action is now!’
Who could disagree with that? The ruling Conservative and Independent group, that’s who.
They went about if not killing the motion, then certainly robbing it of some much-needed oomph through a few, seemingly minor, but strategic changes of wording in an amendment tabled by Councillor Daniel Jellyman.
He spoke about the need to meet the twin challenges of growing the local economy and protecting the environment. The changes he proposed included re-naming the liaison group to make it a ‘commission’ that would ‘hear evidence’ from the public and removing the call for the creation of a plan for Stoke-on-Trent to become carbon neutral in favour to one for ‘addressing climate concerns’.
Despite disapproving looks from several on the Labour benches, including the proposer, the motion was duly passed.
That, you might be tempted to say is a good thing. After all, isn’t it more important to act on climate change than worry about the wording of the call to do so?
Up to a point, however in politics language is hugely important and can often be a barrier to turning good intentions into constructive actions.
Anyone who has ever been involved with a public consultation knows that the gulf between those running it ‘hearing’ evidence from the public and listening to what they say is huge. Particularly if what the public has to say is likely to make things awkward for major corporations with campaign donations to invest.
Addressing climate concerns, rather than coming up with a plan of action allows enough wriggle room to see that nothing beyond publishing a report few people will bother to read gets done.
It is one of the quaint traditions of local government that each meeting of the full council begins with prayers. Last week the cleric leading them called on councillors to act with responsibility on climate change because we hold this world in trust for future generations.
Even allowing for hyperbole if half of what scientists say about the speed and severity of climate change is true; then the time for such self-serving foolishness is long past.
In these doubting days I’m not sure how many people in the chamber last Thursday believe in a higher power. I for one though would say amen to that.
The motion was proposed by Labour members Candi Chetwynd and Jane Ashworth and called on the council to take clear steps to address the climate crisis.
These included setting up a Climate Change Liaison Group, divesting pension funds held by the council from investments in fossil fuels and working with neighbouring authorities on carbon reduction projects.
The motion also called for the council to take ‘proactive steps to include young people and the public’ in developing a plan of action.
The point about the necessity of tackling climate change now was made with customary eloquence by environmentalist Sir David Attenborough from the stage of the Glastonbury festival the weekend before.
Unsurprisingly for a national treasure expounding on one of the hottest topics of the day he got an ovation louder than the one given to Kylie. Louder too than the one Jeremy Corbyn got in 2017.
There rests the problem, just because an issue is at the forefront of the public consciousness at a given moment, it doesn’t always follow that something will get done about it.
What Labour were doing on that scorching hot Thursday afternoon last week was to introduce a motion that would bring the council, business, campaign groups and most importantly, the public together to tackle climate change.
Moving the motion Councillor Ashworth said that the city and the rest of the country had to ‘listen to scientists’ when they warned about the dangers posed by climate change or risk ‘spiralling into a climate catastrophe’.
Seconding Councillor Chetwynd said that climate change was a ‘monster of our own making’, posing the greatest threat to our society and that the ‘time for action is now!’
Who could disagree with that? The ruling Conservative and Independent group, that’s who.
They went about if not killing the motion, then certainly robbing it of some much-needed oomph through a few, seemingly minor, but strategic changes of wording in an amendment tabled by Councillor Daniel Jellyman.
He spoke about the need to meet the twin challenges of growing the local economy and protecting the environment. The changes he proposed included re-naming the liaison group to make it a ‘commission’ that would ‘hear evidence’ from the public and removing the call for the creation of a plan for Stoke-on-Trent to become carbon neutral in favour to one for ‘addressing climate concerns’.
Despite disapproving looks from several on the Labour benches, including the proposer, the motion was duly passed.
That, you might be tempted to say is a good thing. After all, isn’t it more important to act on climate change than worry about the wording of the call to do so?
Up to a point, however in politics language is hugely important and can often be a barrier to turning good intentions into constructive actions.
Anyone who has ever been involved with a public consultation knows that the gulf between those running it ‘hearing’ evidence from the public and listening to what they say is huge. Particularly if what the public has to say is likely to make things awkward for major corporations with campaign donations to invest.
Addressing climate concerns, rather than coming up with a plan of action allows enough wriggle room to see that nothing beyond publishing a report few people will bother to read gets done.
It is one of the quaint traditions of local government that each meeting of the full council begins with prayers. Last week the cleric leading them called on councillors to act with responsibility on climate change because we hold this world in trust for future generations.
Even allowing for hyperbole if half of what scientists say about the speed and severity of climate change is true; then the time for such self-serving foolishness is long past.
In these doubting days I’m not sure how many people in the chamber last Thursday believe in a higher power. I for one though would say amen to that.
Friday 28 June 2019
We need a prime minister committed to tackling inequality; the current race suggests that isn't what we're going to get.
The number of people who are in work but still living in relative poverty has risen according to a report published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
The report, written for the ITS by research economist Xiaowei Xu, found that between the mid-nineties and 2017 the percentage of households living in-work poverty rose from 13% to 18%.
The report's author describes the rise in working households living in poverty as being the result of 'complex trends', these include high housing costs and rising incomes for pensioners pushing up the line for relative poverty.
The report found that individuals are still, broadly better off in work and that material poverty, being unable to afford basic expenses had declined over the period covered.
These limited gains are overshadowed by increased incomes inequality pushing 600,000 more people into poverty and high private rents and changes to the benefits system since 2010 putting pressure on low income households.
Senior research economist for the IFS Tom Waters said that although the report suggests overall levels of material deprivation have fallen 'severe poverty is a clear policy concern, but it is hard to measure '.
He added that the report, which looked at levels of severe poverty does not 'tell us what has happened to the frequency of destitution, such as rough sleeping'.
Responding to the publication of the IFS report Campbell Robb, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation told the BBC 'our economy should work for everyone, but the rise in working poverty across the UK shows that success in increasing employment isn't always a reliable route to a better living standard'.
He added, 'our next prime minister should bring forward an ambitious plan to re-balance our economy by investing in places where low employment and widespread low pay trap people in poverty'.
Quite so, but do you think that is what we are going to get? If you do, then possess an innocence usually associated with sainthood.
One week into the business end of things and the contest between Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson to be leader of the Conservative Party and by default the next prime minister looks painfully insular.
Neither candidate has said anything of note about the inequality that overshadows not just the 'working poor', it is increasingly a nightmare that haunts people who used to think of themselves as middle class too. Instead we have had predictable promises of tax cuts for the rich and a lot of faux macho chest beating over who is or isn't brave enough to take part in one TV debate or another.
Their silence on this issue is firmly located in willful ignorance of the fears keeping so many people awake at nights in the country they aspire to lead.
They do not know and will never understand the jeopardy constraining the lives of so many people living in what members of the political class patronizingly call 'alarm clock Britain.
Whichever one loses, most likely Hunt, will stroll into a plum job in government, it's always wise to keep your friends close and your rivals even closer. If they don't fancy that they could snap up a few non-executive directorships in the City or maybe write a book. The latter will, of course be published by an old school friend and given glowing reviews by the sort of people they meet at dinner parties.
At no stage will they lie awake wondering how they're going to pay the rent or find themselves queuing up at the local food bank.
Both Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson live in a gilded bubble immune from the stresses of daily life. Its thick fabric of entitlement muffles the growing growl of discontent into a distant and easy to ignore drone.
When power becomes a toy to be passed from one member of a disconnected elite to another a county has serious problems. The UK reached that point in 2016, the Brexit vote and all the upheaval that has followed is the building up of a thunderhead of resentment against the political elite.
The resolution of the egg and spoon race to Downing Street, which to the surprise of nobody will see a white man who went to public school take the reins of power, could be the moment when it finally bursts.
The report, written for the ITS by research economist Xiaowei Xu, found that between the mid-nineties and 2017 the percentage of households living in-work poverty rose from 13% to 18%.
The report's author describes the rise in working households living in poverty as being the result of 'complex trends', these include high housing costs and rising incomes for pensioners pushing up the line for relative poverty.
The report found that individuals are still, broadly better off in work and that material poverty, being unable to afford basic expenses had declined over the period covered.
These limited gains are overshadowed by increased incomes inequality pushing 600,000 more people into poverty and high private rents and changes to the benefits system since 2010 putting pressure on low income households.
Senior research economist for the IFS Tom Waters said that although the report suggests overall levels of material deprivation have fallen 'severe poverty is a clear policy concern, but it is hard to measure '.
He added that the report, which looked at levels of severe poverty does not 'tell us what has happened to the frequency of destitution, such as rough sleeping'.
Responding to the publication of the IFS report Campbell Robb, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation told the BBC 'our economy should work for everyone, but the rise in working poverty across the UK shows that success in increasing employment isn't always a reliable route to a better living standard'.
He added, 'our next prime minister should bring forward an ambitious plan to re-balance our economy by investing in places where low employment and widespread low pay trap people in poverty'.
Quite so, but do you think that is what we are going to get? If you do, then possess an innocence usually associated with sainthood.
One week into the business end of things and the contest between Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson to be leader of the Conservative Party and by default the next prime minister looks painfully insular.
Neither candidate has said anything of note about the inequality that overshadows not just the 'working poor', it is increasingly a nightmare that haunts people who used to think of themselves as middle class too. Instead we have had predictable promises of tax cuts for the rich and a lot of faux macho chest beating over who is or isn't brave enough to take part in one TV debate or another.
Their silence on this issue is firmly located in willful ignorance of the fears keeping so many people awake at nights in the country they aspire to lead.
They do not know and will never understand the jeopardy constraining the lives of so many people living in what members of the political class patronizingly call 'alarm clock Britain.
Whichever one loses, most likely Hunt, will stroll into a plum job in government, it's always wise to keep your friends close and your rivals even closer. If they don't fancy that they could snap up a few non-executive directorships in the City or maybe write a book. The latter will, of course be published by an old school friend and given glowing reviews by the sort of people they meet at dinner parties.
At no stage will they lie awake wondering how they're going to pay the rent or find themselves queuing up at the local food bank.
Both Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson live in a gilded bubble immune from the stresses of daily life. Its thick fabric of entitlement muffles the growing growl of discontent into a distant and easy to ignore drone.
When power becomes a toy to be passed from one member of a disconnected elite to another a county has serious problems. The UK reached that point in 2016, the Brexit vote and all the upheaval that has followed is the building up of a thunderhead of resentment against the political elite.
The resolution of the egg and spoon race to Downing Street, which to the surprise of nobody will see a white man who went to public school take the reins of power, could be the moment when it finally bursts.
Friday 21 June 2019
The bill to improve children's services is unjust and counterproductive.
The Department for Education (DfE) have appointed Elenor Brazil to turn around the city's troubled children's services department after a damming Ofstead report.
MS Brazil has a reputation for turning around failing council departments, including those in Haringey and Birmingham. She will be employed by the city council until 9th September, the bill for her services will be £34,400.
This works out at some £800 per day, nice work if you can get it about which James O'Connell of the Taxpayers Alliance, quoted in the Sentinel, said 'taxpayers will hold that by paying such a large amount in fees for outside expertise, they will get good value for money'.
Mr. O'Connell is almost certainly unaware of the unhappy history this city has of paying huge sums for advice from experts. During the Labour years the Civic center seemed to have a revolving door delivering a succession of advisors and consultants and then sending them on again with their pockets jingling.
This time the appointment has been commanded by the DfE and seems particularly unjust. However good her record it hardly seems like value for money to pay MS Brazil, or any other official £800 a day for their services.
Imposing such a cost on a city like Stoke-on-Trent where a decade of austerity has seen services cut to the bone. The £34,000+ involved would be better spent on improving services.
Get again central government has proved to be dangerously out of touch with the concerns of cash strapped councils. They demand the purse strings to be tightened like those of a violin, whilst at the same time force councils to spend like sailors on shore leave on outside advice.
Hopefully some good will be done, but the cost will inevitably lead to other services suffering as a result.
Hail to the Tweet.
US President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to criticize London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the capital's problems with knife crime, describing him as a 'disaster '.
There is no question that London, and many other UK cities have a problem with knife crime that needs to be addressed. It pales into insignificance though compared to the epidemic of gun violence that has swept America from sea to shining sea leaving a trail of misery in its wake.
Perhaps Mr. Trump should be using his power to take on the gun lobby, don't hold your breath waiting for him to do it through. Upsetting a group that wields such political clout in the name of a higher good would require the sort of courage befitting a leader of the free world.
Sending snarky tweets though, any tiny handed man-child can do that. The faces carved on Mount Rushmore must be turning away in shame.
Noise but no signal.
Like Boris Johnson I missed the first debate between the candidates for the Tory leadership. Unfortunately, I caught the radio broadcast of the second and found it a disappointment.
There was little to be learnt that we increasingly bemused observers of this fight between five bald men over a comb didn't already know.
Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt are both oilier than a can of sardines; Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid tend to bluster when in a tight spot. Pretty much all the candidates are determined to leave the EU on 31st October, deal or no deal. Although they're vague on how they're going to force Brexit through against the implacable opposition of parliament.
To his credit Rory Stewart tried to be a voice of common sense, but mostly got drowned out. He's likely to be out of the race after the second vote anyway.
As a guide to what any of the challengers might make of being Prime Minister at one of the most difficult times in our recent history, your guess is as good as mine.
And Another Thing:
Since writing most of this article the field in the Tory leadership race has been thinned down to a face-off between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. Two white upper-class men who both went to public schools and were chums at Oxbridge. How can they represent the diverse and divided Britain they are vying to lead? They can’t because they can’t even begin to understand it.
There is no question that Tory MP Mark Field was wrong to manhandle a climate change protestor out of the Mansion House banquet for having the temerity to interrupt Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s turgid speech this week.
He claims to have been reacting to the possibility she might have been armed, his facial expression caught by the news cameras says something different. This wasn’t someone reacting to a threat to life and limb; it was an alpha male taking the opportunity to assert his dominance over someone he deemed to be weaker.
Field has since been suspended from his job as a minister in the Foreign Office and has reported himself to the Cabinet Office for investigation. Both acts have been carried out under the unspoken understanding that he will get a slap on the wrist, then it will be back to business as usual.
That is nowhere near good enough; he should be hauled up before the courts.
MS Brazil has a reputation for turning around failing council departments, including those in Haringey and Birmingham. She will be employed by the city council until 9th September, the bill for her services will be £34,400.
This works out at some £800 per day, nice work if you can get it about which James O'Connell of the Taxpayers Alliance, quoted in the Sentinel, said 'taxpayers will hold that by paying such a large amount in fees for outside expertise, they will get good value for money'.
Mr. O'Connell is almost certainly unaware of the unhappy history this city has of paying huge sums for advice from experts. During the Labour years the Civic center seemed to have a revolving door delivering a succession of advisors and consultants and then sending them on again with their pockets jingling.
This time the appointment has been commanded by the DfE and seems particularly unjust. However good her record it hardly seems like value for money to pay MS Brazil, or any other official £800 a day for their services.
Imposing such a cost on a city like Stoke-on-Trent where a decade of austerity has seen services cut to the bone. The £34,000+ involved would be better spent on improving services.
Get again central government has proved to be dangerously out of touch with the concerns of cash strapped councils. They demand the purse strings to be tightened like those of a violin, whilst at the same time force councils to spend like sailors on shore leave on outside advice.
Hopefully some good will be done, but the cost will inevitably lead to other services suffering as a result.
Hail to the Tweet.
US President Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to criticize London Mayor Sadiq Khan over the capital's problems with knife crime, describing him as a 'disaster '.
There is no question that London, and many other UK cities have a problem with knife crime that needs to be addressed. It pales into insignificance though compared to the epidemic of gun violence that has swept America from sea to shining sea leaving a trail of misery in its wake.
Perhaps Mr. Trump should be using his power to take on the gun lobby, don't hold your breath waiting for him to do it through. Upsetting a group that wields such political clout in the name of a higher good would require the sort of courage befitting a leader of the free world.
Sending snarky tweets though, any tiny handed man-child can do that. The faces carved on Mount Rushmore must be turning away in shame.
Noise but no signal.
Like Boris Johnson I missed the first debate between the candidates for the Tory leadership. Unfortunately, I caught the radio broadcast of the second and found it a disappointment.
There was little to be learnt that we increasingly bemused observers of this fight between five bald men over a comb didn't already know.
Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt are both oilier than a can of sardines; Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid tend to bluster when in a tight spot. Pretty much all the candidates are determined to leave the EU on 31st October, deal or no deal. Although they're vague on how they're going to force Brexit through against the implacable opposition of parliament.
To his credit Rory Stewart tried to be a voice of common sense, but mostly got drowned out. He's likely to be out of the race after the second vote anyway.
As a guide to what any of the challengers might make of being Prime Minister at one of the most difficult times in our recent history, your guess is as good as mine.
And Another Thing:
Since writing most of this article the field in the Tory leadership race has been thinned down to a face-off between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt. Two white upper-class men who both went to public schools and were chums at Oxbridge. How can they represent the diverse and divided Britain they are vying to lead? They can’t because they can’t even begin to understand it.
There is no question that Tory MP Mark Field was wrong to manhandle a climate change protestor out of the Mansion House banquet for having the temerity to interrupt Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s turgid speech this week.
He claims to have been reacting to the possibility she might have been armed, his facial expression caught by the news cameras says something different. This wasn’t someone reacting to a threat to life and limb; it was an alpha male taking the opportunity to assert his dominance over someone he deemed to be weaker.
Field has since been suspended from his job as a minister in the Foreign Office and has reported himself to the Cabinet Office for investigation. Both acts have been carried out under the unspoken understanding that he will get a slap on the wrist, then it will be back to business as usual.
That is nowhere near good enough; he should be hauled up before the courts.
Friday 31 May 2019
Baddeley appointment plays to all the stereotypes a city like Stoke needs to avoid.
Choosing a mayor and deputy is usually one of the less controversial parts of the local government calendar.
A little harmless whimsy involving knee breeches, a tricorn hat and some serious civic bling. Not this year though, not here in Stoke-on-Trent.
The city council have appointed former BNP Councilor Melanie Baddeley as Deputy Lord Mayor, if tradition is followed, she will go on to be the city's first citizen in 2020/21.
Councilor Baddeley represented the BNP on the city council between 2008 and 2011, she also stood as the far-right party's candidate in Stoke North at the 2010 general election.
Since then Councilor Baddeley has, she says, renounced her former views and after joining the City Independents group returned to elected office in 2015 in the Abbey Hulton and Townsend ward.
Councilor Baddeley was after defeating Labour nominee for the Deputy Mayor post Candi Chetwynd by 22 votes to 16.
She was nominated by City Independents leader Ann James, who praised her community work and later told the Sentinel that she was 'confident that she will do a fantastic job in representing the city'.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city with a serious and largely undeserved image problem, appointing an, admittedly repentant seeming, former member of the BNP as its first citizen a year from now will not help matters.
A media that seldom strays far from London and the Home Counties uses Stoke as shorthand for urban decay. To them our city, which most of their number haven't visited is a decrepit theme park where their favorite folk devils roam free.
The way they have gone about doing so, by becoming property developers building apartments for 'young professionals', may be open to question; but the council have made a determined effort to change the city's image.
That is what makes the decision to endorse the appointment of Councilor Baddeley so frustrating.
The motives behind it are both clear and disappointing, the ruling Tory/City Independents coalition rejected the more suitable Labour candidate to score points against the opposition.
A neat little move when the leadership are in a tight place over Solarplicity failing to deliver. New leader Abi Brown is fast finding out that the Tories second term in coalition might be a lot tougher than the first.
Short term gain has been allowed to trump long term cost; an outcome that always has unpleasant consequences. In this instance these are likely to be both social and economic ones.
A key feature of the council's regeneration strategy since 2015 has been attracting investment to the city based on building 'executive' housing from to attract potential investors. These are exactly the people likely to be put off by the thought of living in a town that has made someone even loosely associated with the BNP one of its most senior political figures.
This could be damaging, property developing is a gamble at the best of times. In a crowded field where a lot of post-industrial towns are chasing after the same cohort of 'professionals ' it takes only a single card to turn a playable hand into a heap of dust.
Socially appointing Councilor Baddeley as Deputy Mayor is even more problematic, Stoke has an unfortunate recent history of far-right involvement in its politics. A little over a decade ago there were six BNP members sitting on the council, in 2016 the city voted overwhelmingly for Brexit.
Neither of these outcomes are surprising in a city that struggles with high levels of deprivation. People with nothing to lose are the target audience for extremists, not least because they are open to adopting any scapegoat offered to them.
Easy answers offered up by political groups with extremist agendas create more problems than they solve. Embracing them traps cities like Stoke in a miserable stasis of managed decline. A vicious circle the ruling City Independents, Labour and anyone with the city's best interests at heart is trying to break.
Councilor Baddeley claims to have changed her political views, if we accept that as being the case, then she must also accept the reality of her situation. By accepting the Deputy Mayor's chain, she will be doing serious damage to the people she pledged her oath to serve.
If she does then it will also be clear that she must think seriously about her position; and having done so resign.
A little harmless whimsy involving knee breeches, a tricorn hat and some serious civic bling. Not this year though, not here in Stoke-on-Trent.
The city council have appointed former BNP Councilor Melanie Baddeley as Deputy Lord Mayor, if tradition is followed, she will go on to be the city's first citizen in 2020/21.
Councilor Baddeley represented the BNP on the city council between 2008 and 2011, she also stood as the far-right party's candidate in Stoke North at the 2010 general election.
Since then Councilor Baddeley has, she says, renounced her former views and after joining the City Independents group returned to elected office in 2015 in the Abbey Hulton and Townsend ward.
Councilor Baddeley was after defeating Labour nominee for the Deputy Mayor post Candi Chetwynd by 22 votes to 16.
She was nominated by City Independents leader Ann James, who praised her community work and later told the Sentinel that she was 'confident that she will do a fantastic job in representing the city'.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city with a serious and largely undeserved image problem, appointing an, admittedly repentant seeming, former member of the BNP as its first citizen a year from now will not help matters.
A media that seldom strays far from London and the Home Counties uses Stoke as shorthand for urban decay. To them our city, which most of their number haven't visited is a decrepit theme park where their favorite folk devils roam free.
The way they have gone about doing so, by becoming property developers building apartments for 'young professionals', may be open to question; but the council have made a determined effort to change the city's image.
That is what makes the decision to endorse the appointment of Councilor Baddeley so frustrating.
The motives behind it are both clear and disappointing, the ruling Tory/City Independents coalition rejected the more suitable Labour candidate to score points against the opposition.
A neat little move when the leadership are in a tight place over Solarplicity failing to deliver. New leader Abi Brown is fast finding out that the Tories second term in coalition might be a lot tougher than the first.
Short term gain has been allowed to trump long term cost; an outcome that always has unpleasant consequences. In this instance these are likely to be both social and economic ones.
A key feature of the council's regeneration strategy since 2015 has been attracting investment to the city based on building 'executive' housing from to attract potential investors. These are exactly the people likely to be put off by the thought of living in a town that has made someone even loosely associated with the BNP one of its most senior political figures.
This could be damaging, property developing is a gamble at the best of times. In a crowded field where a lot of post-industrial towns are chasing after the same cohort of 'professionals ' it takes only a single card to turn a playable hand into a heap of dust.
Socially appointing Councilor Baddeley as Deputy Mayor is even more problematic, Stoke has an unfortunate recent history of far-right involvement in its politics. A little over a decade ago there were six BNP members sitting on the council, in 2016 the city voted overwhelmingly for Brexit.
Neither of these outcomes are surprising in a city that struggles with high levels of deprivation. People with nothing to lose are the target audience for extremists, not least because they are open to adopting any scapegoat offered to them.
Easy answers offered up by political groups with extremist agendas create more problems than they solve. Embracing them traps cities like Stoke in a miserable stasis of managed decline. A vicious circle the ruling City Independents, Labour and anyone with the city's best interests at heart is trying to break.
Councilor Baddeley claims to have changed her political views, if we accept that as being the case, then she must also accept the reality of her situation. By accepting the Deputy Mayor's chain, she will be doing serious damage to the people she pledged her oath to serve.
If she does then it will also be clear that she must think seriously about her position; and having done so resign.
Thursday 9 May 2019
Dangerous pavements are trapping older people in loneliness.
A YouGov survey carried out for campaign group Living Streets has found that older people find walking beneficial for their wellbeing. Poorly maintained and dangerous pavements are discouraging them from getting out, leaving many vulnerable to loneliness.
North Staffs Green Party have given their support to a campaign calling for local authorities to take action on this issue.
The reasons the older people questioned said they valued walking included as a way of exercising (78%), an opportunity to get out of the house (67%) and being out in the fresh air (65%).
The government’s loneliness strategy published late last year recognises that it is important for people to stay active as they get older and walking is an excellent way of doing so.
The survey found that the older people questioned said they would walk more if pavements were better maintained (48%), with a significant number (31%) saying they were put off by cracked and uneven pavements.
Respondents also expressed concern about air quality, with 11% saying they were put off by the risks posed by pollution.
A recent survey for Age UK found that 1.4million older people report feeling lonely, this is set to rise to 2million within seven years.
Living Streets chief executive Joe Irvin said: ‘if we viewed our streets through the lens of an older person, a child or a wheelchair user we would soon begin to see how unfit for purpose a lot of them are’.
On average councils spend 12% of their local transport infrastructure on walking and cycling. As part of their #nine90 campaign Living Streets wan to see that raised to 15% and to highlight the need to design street layouts with 9 to 90year olds in mind.
Joe Irvin said: ‘having well maintained pavements will help older adults walk more, we want local authorities to be reassessing their streets to see how they could be made better for everyone’.
North Staffs Green Party have announced their support for #nine90, Campaign Coordinator Adam Colclough said ‘during the recent local elections the people we met on the doorstep told us how concerned they were about the state of pavements around the city’
He added ‘we are supporting the Living Streets campaign because we need to tackle the health problems caused by social isolation and to address the long-standing problems our city has had with poor air quality and public health’.
Wednesday 8 May 2019
Inequality is becoming entrenched as food bank use rises again.
At the end of April, the Trussell Trust, the charity running most of the UK’s food banks, published its end of year figures. They do not make for happy reading.
Over the year from April 2018 to March 2019 the trust has given out 1.6 million three-day food parcels, half a million of these went to children.
Amongst the reasons for having been referred to their local food bank given by users 33.11% said their income, even from full time work, was not enough to cover basic living costs.
Users also cited delays in payment of benefits (20.34%) and changes to the benefit system (17.36%) as reasons why they were struggling to make ends meet.
Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust Emma Revie said ‘what we are seeing year upon year is more and more people struggling to eat because they simply cannot afford food. This is not right.’
The biggest driver of the rise in food bank use has been the rollout of Universal Credit, with many claimants having to wait five weeks or longer for their first payment, leaving them without money for basic living costs.
As currently constructed Universal Credit was, Emma Revie said, ‘sweeping’ people into the poverty from which it was supposed to be protecting them.
These latest figures about the rise in food bank use were released just before the publication of the Social Mobility Commission’s sixth State of the Nation report.
Based on analysis of data produced by the Office for National Statistics this shows that inequality is becoming entrenched in the UK.
Among the report’s findings are that people from a better off background are 80% more likely to end up in professional jobs than those from a working class one. Social mobility has stagnated since 2014 something that has largely gone ignored as political leaders have become increasingly distracted by the protracted disagreements around leaving the EU.
Dame Martina Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, said ‘at a time when our country needs to be highly productive, we must find a way to maximise the talent of all out citizens, especially those that start the furthest behind’.
Just how far behind inequality forces some families to start behind is shown by the report’s finding that those most in need of the thirty hours free childcare offered by the government are the least likely to take advantage, mostly because they don’t know it is available.
Although there are more disadvantaged 16 to 18-year-olds in further education funding for colleges has fallen by 12% since 2012. Only 16% of students who had free school meals are achieving two A Levels by the age of 19, compared to 39% from other social groups.
The report recommends that the government increases spending on further education for 16 to 19-year-olds and pays a premium to support the most disadvantaged.
Almost half (49%) of adults from disadvantaged backgrounds have received no training since leaving school and are likely to be paid less than the living wage, the report found. This is the group that will be hit hardest by the increasing automation of many routine jobs.
Despite this funding for adult education has been cut by 62% over the past decade and many further education colleges are being forced to make yet more cuts to staff and courses.
The report calls for government departments to lead the way by becoming Living Wage employers. Director of the Living Wage Foundation Katherine Chapman said there was ‘cross party and public support for the real living wage, but there are still staff working in vital public sector jobs who are struggling to get by.’
She added that it was time ‘for our major public institutions to lead by example’.
Tackling endemic inequality isn’t just about making the UK more productive, important though that is. It is about bringing back basic fairness to our society and giving individuals the dignity that comes from having agency over their own lives.
As Emma Revie put it, nothing her charity does ‘can replace the dignity of having financial security’, which is why the Trussell Trust are using their #5WeeksTooLong campaign to call on the government to ‘ensure benefit payments reflect the true cost of living, to help ensure we are all anchored from poverty.’
Over the year from April 2018 to March 2019 the trust has given out 1.6 million three-day food parcels, half a million of these went to children.
Amongst the reasons for having been referred to their local food bank given by users 33.11% said their income, even from full time work, was not enough to cover basic living costs.
Users also cited delays in payment of benefits (20.34%) and changes to the benefit system (17.36%) as reasons why they were struggling to make ends meet.
Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust Emma Revie said ‘what we are seeing year upon year is more and more people struggling to eat because they simply cannot afford food. This is not right.’
The biggest driver of the rise in food bank use has been the rollout of Universal Credit, with many claimants having to wait five weeks or longer for their first payment, leaving them without money for basic living costs.
As currently constructed Universal Credit was, Emma Revie said, ‘sweeping’ people into the poverty from which it was supposed to be protecting them.
These latest figures about the rise in food bank use were released just before the publication of the Social Mobility Commission’s sixth State of the Nation report.
Based on analysis of data produced by the Office for National Statistics this shows that inequality is becoming entrenched in the UK.
Among the report’s findings are that people from a better off background are 80% more likely to end up in professional jobs than those from a working class one. Social mobility has stagnated since 2014 something that has largely gone ignored as political leaders have become increasingly distracted by the protracted disagreements around leaving the EU.
Dame Martina Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, said ‘at a time when our country needs to be highly productive, we must find a way to maximise the talent of all out citizens, especially those that start the furthest behind’.
Just how far behind inequality forces some families to start behind is shown by the report’s finding that those most in need of the thirty hours free childcare offered by the government are the least likely to take advantage, mostly because they don’t know it is available.
Although there are more disadvantaged 16 to 18-year-olds in further education funding for colleges has fallen by 12% since 2012. Only 16% of students who had free school meals are achieving two A Levels by the age of 19, compared to 39% from other social groups.
The report recommends that the government increases spending on further education for 16 to 19-year-olds and pays a premium to support the most disadvantaged.
Almost half (49%) of adults from disadvantaged backgrounds have received no training since leaving school and are likely to be paid less than the living wage, the report found. This is the group that will be hit hardest by the increasing automation of many routine jobs.
Despite this funding for adult education has been cut by 62% over the past decade and many further education colleges are being forced to make yet more cuts to staff and courses.
The report calls for government departments to lead the way by becoming Living Wage employers. Director of the Living Wage Foundation Katherine Chapman said there was ‘cross party and public support for the real living wage, but there are still staff working in vital public sector jobs who are struggling to get by.’
She added that it was time ‘for our major public institutions to lead by example’.
Tackling endemic inequality isn’t just about making the UK more productive, important though that is. It is about bringing back basic fairness to our society and giving individuals the dignity that comes from having agency over their own lives.
As Emma Revie put it, nothing her charity does ‘can replace the dignity of having financial security’, which is why the Trussell Trust are using their #5WeeksTooLong campaign to call on the government to ‘ensure benefit payments reflect the true cost of living, to help ensure we are all anchored from poverty.’
Wednesday 1 May 2019
Charity calls for rethink on delivering community mental health care.
The way mental health care is delivered in the community needs to be radically rethought.
This is the message sent by charity Rethink Mental Health in their response to the NHS Long Term Plan. The charity has called on providers to look beyond traditional treatment settings and to deliver more services in the community.
The report emphasises that although diagnosis and treatment are vital, they are only part of the story. There is a need for more support for service users around housing, work and other needs; this is too often unavailable.
Mental health charity MIND estimates that 1 in 4 people in the UK report experiencing a common mental health problem such as anxiety of depression every year. Out of this group 1 in 8 are currently receiving some form of treatment, usually medication.
Support services in the community for people living with mental illness have, the RETHINK report says, ‘been overlooked for decades in policy and practice’.
The charity are communities and organisations, including the NHS, to work together to provide a ‘world leading holistic and integrated model of care’ that is widely available to users.
RETHINK believe this can be done by focussing on issues such as reducing waiting times, social prescribing and better communication between clinical support teams and other agencies including local authorities and the DWP.
The report recognises the improvements that have been made in access to psychological therapy through the NHS and calls on ‘wider society’ to ‘match the NHS’s commitment to do things differently’.
Adding that the publication of the NHS Long Term Plan is a ‘once in a generation opportunity to ensure people most affected by mental illness get the support they need’.
Speaking at the launch of the report RETHINK chief executive Mark Winstanley told Mental Health Today that it is ‘all too easy to fall into the trap of believing’ that diagnosis and treatment are the end of a journey that requires a much wider social response.
He went on to say that he hoped the launch of this report would be ‘the first step’ towards bringing experts and service users ‘together to work towards a common goal’.
‘Care in the community’ has become a by-word for sometimes well meaning, other times less so, neglect. Either that or a cynical ploy to close services under the disguise of freeing patients from grim Victorian asylums.
That narrative now redundant, most of those buildings were either bulldozed or turned into expensive apartments a quarter of a century ago. Is it time then to look again at care in the community?
The answer is a cautious affirmative, the third sector has been delivering it effectively on a shoestring for years. There must though remain a significant caveat around funding, the current government has an unfortunate track record of promising investment then failing to deliver.
This is the message sent by charity Rethink Mental Health in their response to the NHS Long Term Plan. The charity has called on providers to look beyond traditional treatment settings and to deliver more services in the community.
The report emphasises that although diagnosis and treatment are vital, they are only part of the story. There is a need for more support for service users around housing, work and other needs; this is too often unavailable.
Mental health charity MIND estimates that 1 in 4 people in the UK report experiencing a common mental health problem such as anxiety of depression every year. Out of this group 1 in 8 are currently receiving some form of treatment, usually medication.
Support services in the community for people living with mental illness have, the RETHINK report says, ‘been overlooked for decades in policy and practice’.
The charity are communities and organisations, including the NHS, to work together to provide a ‘world leading holistic and integrated model of care’ that is widely available to users.
RETHINK believe this can be done by focussing on issues such as reducing waiting times, social prescribing and better communication between clinical support teams and other agencies including local authorities and the DWP.
The report recognises the improvements that have been made in access to psychological therapy through the NHS and calls on ‘wider society’ to ‘match the NHS’s commitment to do things differently’.
Adding that the publication of the NHS Long Term Plan is a ‘once in a generation opportunity to ensure people most affected by mental illness get the support they need’.
Speaking at the launch of the report RETHINK chief executive Mark Winstanley told Mental Health Today that it is ‘all too easy to fall into the trap of believing’ that diagnosis and treatment are the end of a journey that requires a much wider social response.
He went on to say that he hoped the launch of this report would be ‘the first step’ towards bringing experts and service users ‘together to work towards a common goal’.
‘Care in the community’ has become a by-word for sometimes well meaning, other times less so, neglect. Either that or a cynical ploy to close services under the disguise of freeing patients from grim Victorian asylums.
That narrative now redundant, most of those buildings were either bulldozed or turned into expensive apartments a quarter of a century ago. Is it time then to look again at care in the community?
The answer is a cautious affirmative, the third sector has been delivering it effectively on a shoestring for years. There must though remain a significant caveat around funding, the current government has an unfortunate track record of promising investment then failing to deliver.
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