Time To Get On The Bus For Rural Communities

 

Green Party members in North Staffordshire and candidates representing the party at the county council elections have joined the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) to call for better bus services for rural communities.

 

Green Party candidates at the 2021 local elections across Staffordshire are standing on a manifesto pledging to improve bus services and to give councils and communities a greater role in how they are run.

 

These include improving the connection between bus travel, the rail network and opportunities for people to walk or cycle.

 

The party will also be campaigning for public transport providers and the County Council to move their fleets to using electric vehicles.

 

A party spokesperson said, ‘we are committed to working to create a public transport system that is fit for the twenty first century and busses in rural areas are a major part of that’.

 

Adding that this is particularly important in Staffordshire where ‘many of our rural communities have languished in bus deserts for too long. It is time they had access to decent, affordable public transport and we are committed to making that a reality’.

 

The charity published their Every Village, Every Hour: A Comprehensive Bus Network for Rural England report earlier this month.

 

The report highlights the poor condition the bus network was in before the pandemic following a decade of austerity and the even bigger hit it has taken since March last year.

 

Drawing on examples from Germany, Austria and other European countries the report shows how an integrated rural bus service could be run every day of the week for a cost of £2.7 billion.

 

The report also calls for access to public transport to be a universal basic right for every citizen and for stronger regulation of bus services under regional transport authorities.

 

Launching the report Crispin Truman, chief executive of CPRE said that rural communities ‘know from painful first-hand experience the impact of underfunding bus services’

 

He went on to talk about how individuals and communities suffer when they are trapped in ‘transport deserts’ where anyone without a car is in effect stranded.

 

Investing in better bus services was, he said, a ‘no brainer’ since good transport links can help to cut pollution, improve social mobility and bring trade to struggling local high streets.

 

It is cost effective too, bus services could be transformed redirecting just a portion of the funding planned for the government’s £27 billion road-building schemes.'

 

The party’s spokesperson said ‘CPRE make a compelling case for building the sort of interconnected transport system our European neighbours have enjoyed for decades, it is time people in England did so too’.

 

A Green Recovery from the Pandemic Means Building an Economy That Works for Everyone.

 

Recovering from the economic impact of the pandemic means changing the way we work, moving away from old, polluting, industries and towards newer more sustainable ones.

 

The Green Party have called for a Green New Deal to transform the UK’s economy as we begin the road to recovery. This would involve work to make homes more energy efficient, the roll out of renewable energy schemes across the country and increased investment in public transport.

 

Green Party elected mayor candidate for West Yorkshire Andrew Cooper said, “We know that underpinning any economic recovery must be the aim to create a greener job sector which has sustainability at the heart of every process.”

 

Adding that, “However, the government is categorically failing to invest sufficiently in the Green sector”.

 

As they campaign for the 2021 local elections the Green Party are running on a manifesto that includes investing £2billion every year in training and apprenticeships to help people find jobs in green industries; retrofitting homes, businesses and public buildings across the country in a move away from new builds and using a carbon tax to fund the transition to renewable energy.

 

Training and skills would be prioritised in and investment directed towards those regions that were struggling economically before the pandemic and have suffered most since it began.

 

This would be assisted by giving local authorities greater powers to direct newly created training and skills programmes and to decide how related funding is spent. A network of regional mutual banks would also be created to start-up companies, particularly those run on a cooperative, community interest or not-for profit basis, that develop technologies to decarbonise the economy.

 

The party would also use a Universal Basic Income to tackle job insecurity, making it easier for people to train for new jobs or return to education and move from ownership to usership through initiatives such as car sharing and neighbourhood libraries for things like tools and equipment.

 

Green councillors have already played a key role in moving the UK economy to a more sustainable model, Andrew Cooper said: “Since our record results at the last local elections we have seen Green Party councillors up and down the country making real change in their communities. Whether it be motions to create thousands of jobs in retrofitting homes in Norwich, or my Green Building Fund proposal which will ensure all new builds are built to the highest specification with ultra-low energy demand, Greens know exactly what it takes to make sure we recover from this pandemic in a way that will offer a better future for all”.

 

 

Green Party activists in Staffordshire have been working to promote a green recovery ahead of the launch of their county council election campaign.

 

A party spokesperson said ‘building a green economy is hugely important to our members and supporters, many of whom run small enterprises in the creative or technology sectors and want to build their businesses in a sustainable and socially responsible way’

 

The spokesperson added that ‘the Green Party offers the only realistic and responsible plan for rebuilding our economy and society after the difficult and for many heart breaking times we have all been through’.

 

 

Describing the role party members have already played in transforming the economy of their area to make it more sustainable Andrew Cooper said “It is Green councillors and activists on the ground, working with local communities up and down the country, who are picking up the slack and doing what they can to ensure a green recovery for all.”

Protecting Parks from Development Will be Key to a Healthy Recovery for More Than Just the Economy.

 

After a year of being hefted to at best a short walk from our homes we have all come to realize that green spaces are key to our health and wellbeing.

 

In what acting mayor Councillor Wendy Simon described to the media as ‘a ground-breaking, forward-looking approach to protecting our green spaces’ Liverpool City Council have joined in partnership with Fields in Trust to preserve the city’s parks and green spaces for future generations.

 

Earlier this month the council cabinet voted to support a motion that will protect 100 green spaces, equivalent to 1000 hectares of land from development in perpetuity. This will initially apply to 20 sites in areas deemed in most need of having their green spaces protected due to deprivation and will then be extended across the city.

 

Acting Mayor Wendy Simon said in a press statement ‘Liverpool is blessed to have so many stunning green spaces, and this new initiative means we can ensure everyone has access to free, local, outdoor spaces for sport, play and recreation forever’.

 

In a city like Liverpool access to green spaces is linked to public health, residents have access to 25.3 square meters per individual, which is lower than the national average. In addition, 16% of residents have no access to a private garden compared to a national average of 12%. Previously only 4 hectares of the city’s parks were protected from development, now sites in all 30 wards will be protected, massively improving access. This is particularly important as the city’s population is predicted to grow by 10.3% over the next twenty years.

 

Liverpool, like many other cities in the North has been hit hard by the pandemic with infection rates higher than the national average and rising levels of reported stress and anxiety among residents corresponding to lockdown measures.

 

Mayor Simon said about the city’s parks that the ‘health and wellbeing benefits these locations deliver are priceless’, adding that ‘access to green spaces improves our neighborhoods, tackles climate change and supports economic growth’.

 

Speaking about the decision made by Liverpool Council Fields in Trust chair of trustees Jo Barnett said the city had made a ‘pioneering commitment’ to protect parks that are ‘valuable places where we can move, breathe, run and play’, adding that in a national context ‘we need to champion and support these precious spaces by protecting them for future generations to enjoy’.

 

The pandemic had, she said, caused us to realize ‘how valuable parks and green spaces are to our health and wellbeing, yet across the UK only 6% are protected from development and access to them is not always equitable’.

 

Hyperbole is the currency of press statements, particularly those emanating from local government, even the most timidly mundane decision ends up being recase at a great leap forwards when it passes through the press department. What Liverpool council has done is genuinely pioneering, meaning it involved thinking further ahead than the current political cycle.

 

Parks are hugely important component parts of the modern city, not just because trees are nicer to look at than concrete, though they unquestionably are. They provide corridors for nature squeezed by urban sprawl and help to clear the air of pollution; more importantly they make available to everyone, regardless of income or community, a little of the tranquility and leisure the wealthy have always taken for granted. In an ever more divided and fractious society where the fissures between classes are likely only to grow wider, that alone should make them a vital national resource.

 

Yet even though there is probably one on most of our doorsteps they are something we tend to ignore. This is something that struck me when I read Powering Up Stoke-on-Trent the glossy ‘brochure’ put out by the council in my hometown describing how we are going to leapfrog over our current troubles into a brave new world of productivity and prosperity.

 

It is packed full of infographics and photographs of young people operating bits of technology as council leaders and businesspeople look on approvingly mixed in with soft focus shots of the luxury hotel that was set to open in the city centre before the world slammed on the brakes. On one level it is a welcome change to see the council planning for a future where the phrase ‘managed decline’ has been cut from the lexicon, on another though you feel inclined to call for a large pinch of salt as you start reading. Similarly, optimistic plans have been put forward before, only to run into the sand sooner rather than later.

 

To be fair Powering Up Stoke-on-Trent sets out its case in a commendably even-handed way. Drawing attention to how, pre pandemic, the city had one of the fastest growing economies in the West Midlands with wage levels going up by 11.7% between 2015/18 and 8000 new jobs being created over the same period. At the same time, it does not shy away from the city’s problems, these include a higher-than-average number of people aged 16-64 who are economically inactive (29% of the population compared to a national average of 21.5%) and historically low levels of educational attainment, only 22% of local workers have qualifications above NVQ Level 4.

 

The ‘brochure’ offers a set of proposals for addressing the social and economic problems the city faces. These range from the grandly ambitious, creating a ‘silicon Stoke’ primed to tap into the green industrial revolution; to the resolutely practical, including improving the city’s notoriously poor transport system. Other plans have about them the dead hand of government targets and things that are ‘done’ to communities for their own good, including setting up a Health and Work scheme to tackle long term health related unemployment and making Stoke a Mental Health City, which seems to be a euphemism for yet another ‘integration’ of services.

 

All this is, no doubt, necessary; but unless you are going to be sipping cocktails in the Holiday Inn in some brighter future just around the corner, it all sounds a bit grim.

 

Surprisingly since the city council lists 87 sites officially designated as parks on its website the brochure does not mention any of them. More to the point it ignores their social utility, although it does list 14% of the local population being treated by their GP for anxiety or depression amongst the city’s health challenges.

 

Green spaces are inextricably linked to our wellbeing, the more access we have to them we have, the better we feel. Simples; as those annoying Russian meerkats say, so why can’ Stoke-on-Trent council seem to see it?

 

Perhaps its that parks are always there, the place just at the end of the street where we used to ride our bikes when we were kids, where we moped about as teenagers and probably where we will do so again as pensioners if we are spared. They are something we take for granted and as such we are always at risk of losing.

 

Where you or I might see a patch of green soaked in memories and associations a developer sees the perfect plot to build ‘executive’ homes, a council squeezed for funds before the pandemic and all but broke now might see a pot of gold. Resisting the imperative to know the price of everything and the value of nothing is what makes the decision taken by Liverpool council genuinely ‘pioneering’.

 

If they want their plans to ‘power up’ the city for a future that cannot stay on hold forever, then Stoke-on-Trent City Council must do the same.

 

 

 

 

 

The Shocking Death of Sarah Everard Highlights the Sickness in the Heart of Orthodox Masculinity that can No Longer be Ignored.

 

Even in a society that is often has a fascination with the darker areas of human nature that borders on the unhealthy some events cause genuine shock and, maybe, prompt self-reflection.

 

That has been the case with the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard, a crime that has exposed the grinding daily experience of harassment, abuse and all too often violence faced by women in the UK.

 

The 33year-old marketing executive disappeared near to Clapham Common in South London on a Monday evening in early March. Two days later remains found in woodland in Kent were identified as being those of MS Everard.

 

Wayne Couzins, a serving officer with the Metropolitan Police, has been charged with her murder. An unnamed woman arrested on suspicion of aiding him to conceal the crime has been released on bail.

 

The murder has prompted an outpouring of grief across the country with many women speaking out about the abuse they have faced and the attitudes they meet when seeking help from the authorities.

 

An example of this is the advice for young women to avoid going out after dark in the interests of safety issued by the Met. To which Green Party life peer Jenny Jones responded in a House of Lords debate by suggesting that an alternative approach could be to impose a six o'clock curfew on men. A comment that neatly exposed official hypocrisy and ignited a storm of protest on social media.

 

It is a cruel coincidence that the murder of Sarah Everard coincided with the annual parliamentary debate held in honour of International Women's Day.

 

This year Jess Phillips, who speaks for Labour on domestic violence, opened the debate by reading out the names of 118 women who have been murdered in cases where a man has been convicted or charged with the crime.  In her speech she went on to say that violence against women was 'a thing we've all just accepted as part of our daily lives'.

 

Responding to claims made earlier by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick that crimes such as the murder of Sarah Everard were rare Jess Phillips said 'killed women are not vanishingly rare. Killed women are common.

 

Statistics for violence and other crimes committed by men against women are truly horrifying.  Over the course of their lifetime 1in 4 women will experience domestic violence and 1in 5 will be sexually assaulted, 83% of these women will not report the crime to the police (source: The Home Office).

 

These figures relate to pre-Covid times, since the start of the pandemic things have got worse, between March and June last year there was a 7% rise in  reports of domestic violence made to the police, the number of incidents that actually took place will be much higher with many victims being afraid of unable to seek help (source: ONS).

 

Women's rights campaign group Reclaim These Streets announced plans to hold a vigil in memory of Sarah Everard on Clapham Common on Saturday evening, this was later cancelled due to concerns about a possible breach of Covid rules.

 

 An unofficial vigil did take place on Saturday evening and was broken up by the police. The resulting scenes of male police officers arresting, often with the use of force, female protesters were broadcast by news stations around the world.

 

Two hundred women and representatives of campaign groups signed letter highlighting how 'women are still at risk doing the most-simple of things', such as using public transport and calling for a 'firm commitment ' from the government to take action.

 

Responding to public concerns prime minister Boris Johnson told the BBC he was 'shocked and deeply saddened' by what had happened to Sarah Everard, adding that 'we must all work to find the answer to this horrifying crime'.

 

Also speaking to the BBC Labour leader Keir Starmer said the case must be a 'turning point' in how our society treats violence against women.

 

That something must change is all too clear, the untimely death of a young woman living a normal, quiet, life had shone an unforgiving light on things we always knew were there; but chose to ignore. For decades women have spoken up about a culture that turns a blind eye to casual sexual harassment and worse, only to be dismissed as hysterical or lying.

 

Now in this moment of shock and anger we know that not to be true and, as is the often the case we demand that something be done. There is a lot that can and should be done.

 

We need, for example, invest in funding women's refuges  and to end the disgraceful practice where when a woman has the courage to bring her abuser to court she is then doubly traumatized by being quizzed on the stand about whether her behaviour in some way provoked what happened.

 

To date successive governments have proved to be willing to say the right things about violence against women, but decidedly slow when it comes to acting. An example of this being the signing of the Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence put forward by the  Council of Europe in 2011 by the Cameron government, a decade on it still hasn't been ratified by parliament.

 

If, as the prime minister says, we are going to 'find the answers to this horrifying crime ', then we, meaning men, will have to take a close look at ourselves.  As the letter written to the government by women's rights groups makes clear ' something has to change and it cannot be on women, the victims in this, to lead that change'.

 

What we need to look closely at is the culture of masculinity and whether in its current form it is fit for purpose in the twenty first century. On the evidence available that does not seem to be the case.

 

What it means to be a man  in modern Britain is based to a worryingly large extent on a tightly circumscribed set of attitudes and behaviours, such as not showing your emotions or asking for help, that men are conditioned to 'perform' from childhood. This creates what Paul Kievel of the Oakland Men's Project and others have termed as the 'man box', a harsh orthodoxy where fear and shame are used to police behaviour.

 

 

 

This has a damaging impact in the physical and emotional health of many men. Evidence of which can be seen in, for example in men being 14% more likely than women to develop cancer and 37% more likely to die if they do (source: Cancer Research). Men are three times more likely to commit suicide and report lower levels of life satisfaction (UK Government Wellbeing Survey/ The Mental Health Foundation).

 

The fact that many men feel boxed in by self-imposed expectations and attitudes is damaging for wider society too. Men are more likely to be victims perpetrate and be victims of violent crime, not least because they are also more likely to try and mask the feelings they have been taught are awkward and shameful through substance abuse (source: The Mental Health Foundation).

 

The tight squeeze of the 'man box' makes men reluctant to call out colleagues who say or do things that are inappropriate for fear of being ridiculed or thought not to be 'one of the lads'. As a result, toxic attitudes, towards women, people of colour, or anyone who just presents as even mildly 'different' are normalized along with a dangerously unjustified sense of entitlement.

 

Many men will have read the paragraphs above and told themselves that it does not apply to them, or to their friends. That is what we all say and what we like to think; it is a dangerously comforting fiction.

 

To prove the point try a little thought experiment, you're with friends in a pub and one of the group says something derogatory about a woman across the room, or implied that one of the other guys is somehow effeminate for being on soft drinks,  do you call him out? I know what I would most likely do; and it does not make me feel proud of either myself or my gender.

 

Sadly, fear that I would keep quiet and dismiss it as just 'banter', drink talking; anything really than some of the things it might be. Maybe my hypothetical friend is just blowing smoke, saying things he doesn't mean to try and fit in; then again maybe he means what he says and that masks darker intentions.

 

Being trapped in a choke hold by outdated cultural norms does not excuse male violence, either against women or other men. The harm it does to us, and others should be a spur to break free. Doing so will not be easy, it will require imagination and emotion courage. It will require something else too, time, a lot of time, more than is available in a political cycle where two weeks is seen as an eternity.

 

It will be made that much harder by the extent to which orthodox masculinity is embedded in our political, economic and social life. You can see its workings in the hostile takeover that costs thousands of people their jobs; in the political 'debate' that turns into a shouting match.

 

Most of all it can be seen in the awkward silenced when we know we should have said something; but too the easy option of staying quiet. Fault, we must realize, lies in what we did not do as much as what we did.

 

The murder of Sarah Everard is a crime that has shocked our nation to its core, that is right we should be shocked at such a waste of life, hope and innocence. It should  also be for men a moment for real change, a time to think difficult thoughts  and do difficult things; not because that will make us feel better, but because  they are the only real way to make sure this never happens again.

 

 

 

 

Newcastle Needs to Move to a Zero Waste Policy to Beat the Stink.

 

Over recent months the smell from a landfill site, described as being ‘like rotten eggs’ has become an issue of concern for people living in and around the Staffordshire town of Newcastle-under-Lyme.

 

The smell has been produced by a landfill site at Walley’s Quarry near to the village of Silverdale operated by Red Industries.

 

The site was opened for use as landfill in 2007 and with a permit to handle 250,000 tons of waste a year. This was controversially increased to 400,000 tons in late 2020, by which time residents nearby were already reporting problems.

 

In an article ‘Newcastle-under-Lyme A Very Bad Smell North Staffs Green Party member and local resident Steve Jones calls for the adoption of a ‘zero waste policy’ to address the problems caused by landfill.

 

Quoted in the article one local resident describes feeling ‘embarrassed’ at having to explain the origin of the bad smell to visitors and talks about neighbours moving away to escape it.

 

Steve Jones writes that ‘the health and living standards’ of Newcastle residents being severely impacted by the stink from the quarry.

 

He adds that ‘as a community and a country we need to go to zero waste as a matter of urgency; the health of people and the planet are relying on us’.

 

This, he concludes, will be difficult and may require some significant changes to how we live, but he believes that ‘together we can make change happen before it is too late’.

 

North Staffs Green Party have been actively supporting the campaign by residents for the quarry to be capped for over a year. In this time, they have had extensive communication with Red Industries and Newcastle MP Arron Bell.

Local party Coordinator Jade Green said that ‘Newcastle-under-Lyme council need to sort out their waste issue’, adding that Red Industries ‘cannot cut corners’ when it comes to capping the site.

 

The full article by Steve Jones can be read at https://northstaffsgreenparty.blogspot.com/2021/02/newcastle-under-lyme-very-bad-smell-by.html