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.

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
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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.

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’.

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 '.

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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.

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.