Putting Margaret in prison will only make her problems worse.

A little over two weeks ago Margaret Wooliscroft was jailed for twenty eight months for breaching an ASBO placed on her five times. The front page article in the Sentinel telling her story sprinkled with claims by neighbours that she had led a 'reign of terror' around Brindley Ford as part of an ongoing dispute over use of the lane by her farm. It also contained the none too flattering comment made by her barrister that she was a 'disagreeable old trout.'

It could have been any tale of a neighbourhood dispute gone too far, the sort of thing that is the stock in trade of any provincial newspaper. I happened though to meet someone a few days after reading the story who has known Margaret for most of her life, the version of events she told me changed my perspective.

Margaret Wooliscroft has suffered from serious mental health problems for many years and has lived a life of frugal isolation on the smallholding left to her by her father that belongs to the century before last, or earlier.

The setting may be modern; the basic scenario though could have been lifted from the pagers of a novel by Thomas Hardy. Not for the first time an awkward outsider has ended up on the wrong end of a serious injustice.

There is no doubt that Margaret could be 'difficult' and would be unlikely to 'engage' with social services of her own volition. That is no excuse though for the way she has been allowed to fall though the cracks of a system that should have done more sooner to help her.

Her conviction and subsequent imprisonment are all to sadly symptomatic of a system that seems to be going back to the values of Victorian times. These, despite their Middle England friendly image, are unthinkingly harsh and show little compassion to anyone who differs from a tightly defined norm.

Their first, last and most powerful instinct when faced with a lifelong member of the awkward squad like Margaret is to hand out punishment. Even though in most cases; and certainly in this case, finding an alternative solution would be fairer for all concerned in the longer term.

Fairness is a term that has assumed an almost totemic stature for we Britons, yet as a society we seem to be fast losing sight of its true meaning.

Margaret Wooliscroft may have been a 'difficult' person, but anyone with even the most basic understanding of mental illness knows that those people who present with the worst behaviour are often the most in need of help. As for the dispute over access to the lane she had come to see as her property that could have been resolved through restorative justice, something Staffordshire Police endorse, in a way that allowed all parties to have their say and sought to find a workable compromise.

All handing her an ASBO and now sending her to prison has done is further entrench Margaret's feelings of alienation and insecurity, feelings she expressed through antagonism. The actual dispute at the heart of this sorry story remains unresolved, in fact it has probably been made worse.

We talk endlessly about the importance of fairness, yet only want to practice it when doing so requires no effort. That makes a mockery of the whole concept; to mean anything fairness must be applied to the most troubled people, not just those who know how to flatter the egos of those handing out the help.

This skewed view of fairness also sets us up as individuals for the fall that lurks at the edge of every life. It takes only one wrong turn, one of the cruel prat-falls life delights in inflicting on the unwary, to put any of us in Margaret's shoes.

Adrift on a sea of troubles and faced with a bureaucracy that has been made hard by having to meet ever more confusing targets and distracted by boxes hungry for ticks. If that happened wouldn't we want to be treated with real fairness by a system that's first instinct was to help not punish?

The answer is yet; so doesn't an awkward woman like Margaret Wooliscroft deserve the same?

A threat to the NHS too dangerous to be kicked into the long grass.

The City Independents have made their first political mistake since taking control of Stoke-on-Trent City Council in May. As is the way with such things it is a biggie; perhaps the biggest and most dangerous one they could have made.

This week Labour tabled a motion calling on the council to oppose plans by Stoke-on-Trent NHS Clinical Commissioning Group to allow private companies to tender for a contract to provide cancer and end of lifer services worth £1.2 billion.

Thanks to a successful intervention by Independent cabinet member Ann James the motion was amended so that the issue will simply be referred to the relevant overview and scrutiny committee. A small victory for her, a bis mistake for everyone else; positively huge in fact.

The threat this thinly veiled assault on the existence of a free at the point of delivery health service are many and various. Introducing competition to NHS contracts will have a huge impact on how decisions are made, visiting upon the health service 'predatory pricing', where companies underbid to win a contract, shutting out small local companies and charities who cannot afford to take the short term losses and leaving the field open to the big outsourcing companies. Capita, Virgin, and all the other usual suspects who have brought us countless disasters involving public services that have been sold off.

This freeze out happened to the Douglas Macmillan Hospice and St Giles Hospice when they tried to make a joint bis to deliver cancer and end of life services, they were ejected at the first stage without explanation. Prompting Dougie Mac chief executive Michelle Roberts to say the plan was 'undoubtedly a privatisation of a service and we cannot support such as move due to the serious damage it could inflict on the care we are able to provide.'

The clinical commissioning group has defended the plan on the grounds it will consolidate cancer and end of life services, improving how they are delivered. Possibly, but if it turns out to be a mistake, and the omens aren't good, we're stuck with it because the contract would be essentially unbreakable.

The cancer care contract has yet to be awarded due to ongoing difficulties, at present only the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust still in the frame. No shortlisted bidders have been announced for the end of life services contracts, although at least seven companies may be in the race.

An answer is expected over the Christmas period, a fact that should set a fire station filled with alarm bells ringing. Politicians like nothing better than announcing burying bad news whilst we the voters are all busy jingling bells under the Christmas tree.

It is hard to disassociate the plans to sell off cancer services with another and even more serious threat to the survival of the NHS as we know it, the silent approach of the Transatlantic Trade and investment Partnership (TTIP). This shadowy deal between the US and the EU hasn't registered on the domestic political radar, but could radically change our public services and not for the better.

Under the provisions of TTIP large corporations, just the sort of businesses who will be bidding for this contract and the others that will follow, will be able to sue anyone, councils, the NHS even the government, they feel has damaged their profits.

You can all too easily imagine a scenario where an NHS trust trying to protect services from cost cutting that may be good for the corporate balance sheet; but a disaster for the staff who work their and the patients who depend on it finding itself in court. Even is a trust won its case in the wonderful world of TTIP they would have no recourse to damages or ability to recoup their legal costs.

This could tie the hands of cash strapped public services, erode the employment rights of their staff and, in the case of the NHS, result in a debacle that makes the sorry events in South Staffs look minor. The big beasts of the corporate jungle would have power without responsibility or accountability; that never ends well.

Councils, trades unions and anyone else who can make a noise need to send a clear message to the decision makers in Brussels that they are not going to stand by and see vital services sold off to corporate asset strippers. By not doing so and instead kicking the issue into the long grass the Independents have done themselves and the people of this city few favours.

Since May they have managed, more by luck perhaps than design, to retain a surprising amount of public good will, mostly by not being Labour. That will dissolve entirely if they persist in ignoring a dangerous policy backed by a government that pours honeyed words over the NHS, then deprives it of money and puts its continued existence in danger.

TTIP- a disaster in the making we should all be worried about.

Last night members of North Staffs Green Party met at Hanley Fire Station to discuss how the party should respond to the threat posed by the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

TTIP is a proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, the negotiations to set it up have been shrouded in secrecy with parliamentarians across the EU being given only limited information as to what it will entail.

In a speech made in 2014 Green Party leader Natalie Bennett said TTIP, if it were to be implemented would 'blow apart the power of our democratic decision making,' adding that it posed a huge threat to worker's rights, food safety and environmental protection.

Last night's meeting took place ahead of a debate on TTIP to be held in parliament on Thursday, the first to have taken place since the mostly secret negotiation on the agreement began.

TTIP, members heard, represents a direct challenge to the authority of councils, public services such as the NHS and the UK government to take decisions that could be perceived by large, mostly US based corporations as posing a threat to their profits.

Large corporations would be able to sue for compensation on these grounds and even if the organisation being sued won its case it would have no right to claim compensation.

An example of this given at the meeting was that of tobacco company Philip Morris, who took the Australian government to court over their plans to introduce, for public health reasons, plain packaging for cigarettes. This happened under the provisions of the Pacific Rim Agreement which is identical to TTIP, although the Australian government won its case it received no compensation and was left with a massive legal bill to pay.

When the UK government was considering introducing plain packaging for cigarettes it is thought that covert pressure from the tobacco lobby was partly to behind the eventual decision to drop the policy.

It is feared that the legal costs of fighting even a successful case against a large corporation backed by TTIP could shrink further already diminished budgets for public services, inhibiting the willingness of parties to take action and placing big business above the law.

This, one member said, would 'play into the hands' of the 147 mostly US based corporations who exert an 'unnatural' degree of influence over the world economy and have been implicated in dubious business practices. Giving them the power enshrined in TTIP had about it, he said, 'the makings of a real disaster.'

Locally MPs Rob Flello and Paul Farrelly, representing Stoke South and Newcastle respectively, are believed to be opposed to TTIP, Stoke Central MP Tristram Hunt and Stoke North's Ruth Smeeth have not expressed an opinion. Labour members of Newcastle Borough council are also believed to be opposed to TTIP.

Local Green Party members have been active in protesting against TTIP, in October they took to the streets of Newcastle to raise public awareness. Over the next few months they will be in action again with campaign activities planned including a petition to Stoke-on-Trent City Council and the possible tabling of a motion on TTIP by Keele Green councillor Wenslie Naylon.

TTIP is one of the defining political issues of our time, it could, if implemented, shatter irrevocably employment rights and laws protecting the environment that have been hard fought for over decades.

There is also a real risk that TTIP could do lasting damage to the local, national and European economy by squeezing out the small and medium size enterprises that drive innovation and create the jobs of the future.

TTIP is a complex issue and doesn't fit easily into the bite-sized, information-lite format followed by much of the news media. It requires close examination of the facts, figures and potential risks along with a serious debate about the sort of economy and society we want to hand on to our children.

Hard though it may be this is a discussion we need to have before it is too late and the freedoms we value but too often take for granted are either diluted or lost altogether.

Braving a night out in the cold to highlight the problems faced by the homeless.

North Staffs Green Party coordinator Sean Adam will brave a night sleeping out in the cold this weekend to highlight the challenges faced by homeless people across the city.

The sleep-out will take place at a yet to be disclosed location.

Sean said: I'm sleeping rough to bring to attention to the issues of homelessness here in Stoke on Trent and North Staffordshire.'

He went on to comment on the wide range of people driven into homelessness by circumstances often beyond their control, including many ex-servicemen and the impact of government attitudes towards homelessness, saying 'government policy should not be putting people on the streets to live. When is the government going to realise this a wake up to it. Yes there are those 'ladies & gentlemen of the road' but these are a minority of the homeless. Even with some of young people sofa hopping there are still times when the only bed they can find is under the stars.'

Amongst the issues Mr Adam wishes to draw attention to is the possible use of Public Space Protection Orders, introduced under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, which could be used to criminalise homeless people.

He also wishes to draw attention to the impact of homelessness on young people, a Freedom of Information request made to local authorities by homelessness charity Centrepoint revealed that 136,000 young people asked for help because they were either homeless or at risk of homelessness in 2014/15, with 15,000 being assesses as eligible for support.

The Green Party has a number of policies aimed at redesigning the housing market to make it fairer and more sustainable, these include:

Building 500,000 rented social homes and ending the 'right to buy' scheme; devolving control over Housing Benefit budgets to local authorities, allowing for more flexibility and restoring entitlement to Housing Benefit to people under the age of 25.

North Staffs Green Party Campaigns Coordinator Adam Colclough said ' this is a hugely important issue that goes to the very heart of the government's austerity policies and their impact on the lives of real people. We are fully behind Sean's campaign.'

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The cruelty of WCA shows that Tory leopards never change their spots.

Researchers from Oxford and Liverpool universities have analysed data from five years of the government's Work Capability Assessment (WCA) programme and found that it could be linked to nearly six hundred suicides and a rise in mental health problems.

The WCA was introduced by Labour in 2008 as a way of helping people on sickness benefits back into work, under the coalition government its remit was expanded as part of Iain Duncan Smith's assault on the welfare state.

Out of every 10,000 people subjected to WCA 2700 reported mental health problems and six may have been driven to commit suicide by the experience, there was also a marked rise in the number of people being prescribed anti-depressants.

Tom Holland, campaigns manager for mental health charity MIND told the BBC on Tuesday the report shone a 'light on the damaging impact WCA's can have on peoples mental health.'

Also speaking to the BBC shadow health minister Luciana Berger said it was 'unacceptable to have a system that causes vulnerable people anxiety putting their health at further risk.'

A spokesperson for the Department of Work and Pensions said the report was 'wholly misleading' and that no direct conclusions could be drawn from the evidence presented about cause and effect.

Professor Tom Baguley of Nottingham Trent university, again speaking to the BBC, said the evidence presented in the report went 'beyond merely establishing a correlation but falls short of establishing a causal link.'

He added that the study 'provides evidence that the specific application of this policy increased the suicide rate and outcomes associated with adverse mental health in those people affected.'

I'll leave the academics to argue about the methodology, what it abundantly clear is that someone has been 'misled' over the impact of WCA and it is we the public.

Since 2010 the government has sold us the us the line that it isn't seeking to punish people who are can't work due ill health, it is trying to help them recover their independence and sense of purpose; how wrong can anyone who believed that have been.

Actually you don't need a report stuffed with graphs and statistics to see that the WCA system isn't helping the people it was set up to, in fact it is exposing some of them to mortal harm. Look at your local paper any day of the week and you will come across stories of people who have been hounded mercilessly by a system that refuses to believe, even when it is backed up by medical evidence, that they are unfit to work.

Lets be clear about this, nobody chooses a life on sickness benefits because it is easier than working; it demonstrably isn't, if they're lucky claimants have just enough money to survive and no more. That they have to deal with a suspicious and prejudiced system only serves to make a bad situation even worse.

The government seems to operate in relation to what remains of the welfare state on a moral level handed down by the Victorians. People in what they are careful not to call 'the lower orders', but evidently think of in those terms are fundamentally feckless, if they aren't working its usually because they just don't want to, therefore any benefits they receive should be meagre and the process of claiming them difficult.

Added to this ludicrous prejudice in this instance is another and equally ancient one, that against people with mental health problems. If someone needs a stick to help them walk then even the dimmest blimp in the smoking room can see they might genuinely be too ill to work. Someone with depression say probably doesn't show any outer symptoms and so to those afflicted with smaller than usual minds they can't be ill.

Only, of course, they can; so ill in fact that they are unable to face the struggle of wrestling with the complexities of the benefits system and so it rolls over them like a runaway train. In the worst cases the result can be, as this report shows, suicide.

Since 2005 David Cameron and his cabal have been on a mission to persuade us that the Tories have changed and learnt the value of compassion, policies like this prove that to be a lie. They are still the same elitist, selfish and sometime openly cruel party they have always been; they really do believe there is no such thing as society.

Political leopards are no more likely to change their spots than the ones in the zoo are. That it a terrible thing to find out, as many people are doing to their cost, at the most vulnerable time of your life.

Hope, Recovery and Crocodile Bob.

On Wednesday night Stoke based mental health charity Changes held its annual general meeting at the Hope Centre in Hanley. In attendance were around a hundred members and a small stuffed crocodile called Bob.

Quite what role Bob played in proceedings wasn't made clear, apart, perhaps from serving as a metaphor for how the risk of experiencing mental distress can lurk under the surface of the most placid seeming lives.

The meeting took place as concerns were being expressed locally about an acute shortage of psychiatric staff as the Royal Stoke University Hospital. Nationally think tank the King's Fund were quoted as describing cuts to NHS funding for mental health care and the increasing replacement of clinical treatments with cheaper and largely untested self help alternatives as a 'leap in the dark.'

For its part the government has since the election continued to make comforting noises about 'parity of esteem' for people with mental health problems with that of those with physical ones, meanwhile the same old situation pertains on the ground. Age old prejudices collide with paltry funding and the politics of austerity to create a bleak landscape for service users.

Increasingly charities like Changes are having to step in to plug the gap in services, providing mutual support, the group is, uniquely, run by people with first hand experience of mental distress; and surprisingly often a real opportunity for recovery and hope.

Chairman John Irons alludes to this in his review of the year saying Changes has continued to provide a 'supportive environment' and to help members play to their strengths rather than be limited by their problems, despite operating in a 'harsh' financial environment.

The work done by what is a, comparatively, small charity is truly impressive, over the past year it has delivered 34,104 contact hours, every week Changes volunteers have clocked up 540 hours of unpaid work with a value of £300,000 for the year as a whole.

Through an impressive array of projects the charity has delivered mutual support groups in prisons, offered training to members helping them to understand and develop tools to cope with their experience of mental distress and worked to help whole communities to improve their surroundings and quality of life.

About the only thing more remarkable than how much good Changes does in the local community is how little said community knows about it. Perhaps because they are used to having to fly under the radar to avoid prejudice people successfully living with mental illness who refuse to be defined by their condition are reticent about celebrating their achievements.

That is a great pity because it means some truly inspiring stories are never heard by the larger audience they deserve, stories like that of Matt. He is one of the 569 people Changes helped last year through its One Recovery drug and alcohol addiction project.

On Wednesday night he took to the stage to tell the story of how through the pressures of his job as a chef he had become first a heavy drinker and then a full blown alcoholic. Despite having tried to find sobriety before it was only when he discovered Changes that something 'clicked' and recovery became first a possibility and then a reality.

Now a year or so later he had found a new life, not one that was always easier than it had been before, but now it was one that contained genuine friendships, a sense of purpose and hope for the future. There was no contrition or victimhood here; no sense of an individual having been flattened into numbed stasis by a system that puts paperwork ahead of people, just quiet and hopefully lasting strength.

Mental illness has, in one form or another, always been part of the human condition, the trade off we make for having brains that reason rather than follow instinct alone. What is clear though is that the atomised, aggressively materialistic and competitive nature of today's world has made it more prevalent.

There are few people who will not have it touch either their life or that of someone close to them and yet it remains something not to be spoken about. On the rare occasions when the subject is raised it is through a narrative of victimhood and intractable problems.

Wednesday night told, through the experience of Matt and many of the other people present, told another and more positive story. One about hard times overcome and a long road travelled to arrive at a better place.

It is a story that should be told openly and with honesty to give hope and courage to others who might be about to take their first faltering step.

The Bloody Ploughman returns to Penkhull- actually it probably never left.

'People get used to me suddenly shouting stop the car! whenever I spot something,' I'm standing in the large and surprisingly modern kitchen of Penkhull village hall talking to Jayne Fayre, a quietly competent woman with an interest in 'feral foods.'

These, she tells me are the fruit and vegetable varieties that have fallen out of favour in the decades since the supermarkets persuaded us that all apples have to look like the sort of thing Snow White gets fed by the wicked witch in fairy stories. They still exist in hidden corners, on the edge of town in the places people rush past in their cars on the way to somewhere else.

Places, Jayne tells me, like Sideway on the edge of Stoke, between the council incinerator and the Britannia Stadium, where she recently discovered fifteen apple trees, each one a different variety, growing a few feet away from the busy A 500.

The thing that has brought us both to Penkhull on a chilly Monday evening is the rare apple discovered in an until recently secret location in the village.

It is, she tells me, the product of someone grafting together a Bloody Ploughman and a type of French crab apple first brought to these shores by the chef to Henry VIII. The tree had gone undiscovered, largely thanks to being shrouded with ivy, on a piece of land off Trent Valley Road belonging to Western Power Distribution that was home to a pig farm some one hundred and fifty years ago.

The tree is in remarkably good condition given its age, and the fact that at some stage in its history someone took a hefty chunk out of it with an axe, the crown needs to be dropped, Ms Fayre says and the ivy wants cutting back, but it could be good for another century and a half.

Last year apples from the tree were used to make cider for the village's new years wassail and there are plans to brew up another batch for 2016. It should be an interesting taste experience for the discerning drinker since the small, dark red and unevenly shaped apples have a flavour all of their own; sharp and yet also sweet.

Later that evening the residents association discuss how the Penkhull apple could be part of a 'tree strategy' for the village, it will certainly feature in the 'feral foods audit' for the city being prepared by Jayne Fayre in partnership with Keele university. There is talk of selling cuttings for people to plant in their gardens and using the produce to make cakes and more cider for thirsty morris dancers.

I don't doubt that this and more will happen, Penkhull is a 'go ahead' sort of place. A village that has staged its own pantomime almost every Christmas since the thirties, puts on a mystery play every summer and is home to a brass band and a ukulele orchestra.

What stuck in my mind and is still there days later as I write this is the phrase 'feral foods', or rather the idea behind the term.

We have access to a stable supply of food that would have been the envy of even our recent ancestors and yet we are astonishingly poorly fed. Open your newspaper on any given day of the week and you will be met by a parade of stories about children (and not a few adults besides) growing obese on a diet stuffed with salt, sugar and chemical additives.

You will also be reminded of the growing politicisation of food, in a country with pretensions to be seated near if not at the top table of world powers there are food banks in every town and teachers worry about their students coming to school hungry.

Somewhere along the line we have lost touch with the value of food, with what it should mean as a part of our culture. Television presents it as an element of the lifestyle porn by which we are so obsessed; the right wing media uses it as a stick to beat parents struggling to raise a family on the minimum wage because they haven't the money or time to cook from scratch.

Like those 'feral' apple trees the idea that food is something that nurtures the body and the soul by bringing people together has been overgrown by the strangling ivy of hypocrisy and prejudice.

The audit of 'feral foods' being carried out by Ms Fayre is, I'm glad to say, more than just an academic exercise. When we met on Monday night she told me that her real passion was for using growing and cooking food to help people on low incomes regain control of their loves and a sense of purpose.

Perhaps the 'Penkhull apple', that unlikely splicing of the Bloody Ploughman and the crab apple brought over by the cook to a king famous for his feasting could be part of that process. Reminding people that apples don't have to be perfectly red and round whilst tasting like wet cotton wool.