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.
Friday, 31 May 2019
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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