Hope amongst difficulty at a food bank this Christmas.

'We haven't seen anything like this since Harvest Festival, ' I'm standing in the food bank distribution centre in Blurton a down at feel neighbourhood in my home town of Stoke-on-Trent.

It is a few days before Christmas and I am with one of the small army of volunteers who run the centre watching a seemingly endless stream of donations arrive. Almost every inch of space is crammed with bags and boxes of food, the whole thing looks like total confusion fuelled by coffee and good will.

The centre is located in a former Methodist church on the sort of estate that film makers and journalists who arrive in town with preconceived opinions to confirm are drawn to magnetically. All the better to portray urban decay and, of the mood takes them, stroke their beards whilst musing about how people have abandoned the community the church used to represent in favour of football on a big screen TV at the pub down the road.

The reality is, as always, more complicated and rather more hopeful.

The problems the city faces are undeniably large, over the past forty years Stoke-on-Trent has seen the industries that put it on the map collapse on after another. First to go was the steelworks, closed in the late seventies, the eighties and nineties saw the coal mines shut one after another; last to go was the pottery industry done to death by cheap imports.

Call centres and warehousing provided a lifeline for many people, despite this whole communities were left without jobs or purpose. This is reflected in the rise of food bank use in the city, in 2916/17 10,330 three-day parcels were provided to struggling families.

Across the UK according to the Trussell Trust, the charity which runs 428 food banks across the country, December 2017 was their busiest month ever, showing a 49% rise in the number of users. The charity provided 159,388 three-day parcels, 65,622 of which went to children and need is expected to continue rising.

Data from Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty shows that half a million people in the UK are reliant on food parcels, one in six parents regularly go hungry to feed their children and more than a quarter of the people the charities interviewed were one unexpected bill away from hardship.

According to the Office for National Statistics the UK has the thirteenth highest poverty rate in Europe with 7.3% of the population (4.6 million people) are living in poverty with 35% reporting high levels of anxiety and ill health as a result.

The Trussell Trust cite cold weather, high living costs and benefit sanctions as driving people to use food banks. shortly after my visit to the Blurton centre a spokesperson for the local branch told the media he feared that usage would rise further with the roll out of Universal Credit.

Emma Revie, chief executive of the Trussell Trust said in a press statement earlier this year that the benefits system was ' supposed to protect us all from being swept into poverty, but what we are seeing is people struggling to heat homes and put food on the table because they simply cannot afford the basics'.

She added that the charity was 'urging' the government to ' ensure benefit payments reflect the cost of living to help ensure we are all anchored from poverty'.

Statistics tell only part of the story, the part that has little hope of an easy solution. There is another story that is more hopeful, if the solution is still achingly distant.

It is the one where people from all works of live come together to help other. On the day I volunteered there were people helping out from a major bank, one of the local evangelical churches and a logistics company.

There are, of course, food banks and similar charities run by other faiths and there is no hint of seeking to 'convert' anyone who volunteers for or uses a food bank; but faith is very much in the room. This is a surprise in a Britain that often gives a convincing impression of having abandoned such communitarian values in favour of endless shopping.

This perhaps holds the answer to reversing four decades of growing poverty and inequality and the political thinking that brought us to this place. People want to help others, through physically doing so or, maybe not getting a tax sweetener in every budget.

Maybe those thoughts are prompted more by a flash of the Christmas spirit that practical political understanding. Then again, the endless stream of donations flooding through the doors of the Blurton centre were real, so is the generosity they represent.

At a time when we give in too often to excess another, older and more powerful one is getting through too.

Public transport is the missing piece in the regeneration puzzle.

First Potteries, a bus company with an approach to PR that leaves almost everything to be desired, have announced that ticket prices are to rise.

Fares are set to go up by between 10p and £1 on 9th December, passengers using the mTickets phone app will not be affected. The fare paid by holders of concessionary passes using the bus before 9:30 will also rise from £1.60 to £2.00.

Speaking to the Sentinel Sarah East, director of operations for First said that although some dates have been ' revised' the day ticket offered by the company was still value for money and that there were improved discounts for travellers under 16.

She was at pains to extol the virtues of the ticket app, saying that it is ' easy to download, fill in a few details and away you go'.

Adding that buying tickets in this way ' makes using the bus not only cost effective, but also more convenient and helps quicken up journey tines'.

There is a case for saying that whatever end of the stick bus passengers are given it tends to turn out to be the dirty one. Every so often, just to break the monotony, it gets used to cash them over the head too.

If you look past the bright talk about apps and promises of a discount here and an allowance, there this looks like another instance of an all too familiar story.

Public transport in this city has been stuck in a time warp for decades, with often third hand buses rattling around the six towns following routes that get cut in an annual sacrifice to the cruel god of efficiency.

It doesn't have to be like this; if we want regeneration to be a reality instead of a pipe dream something has got to change.

Since 2015 the City Independent led coalition has talked a good game about changing the city's image and with it our fortunes too. Bidding to be the UK City of Culture or home and the new home of Channel 4 have, though both were unsuccessful, paid a dividend in positive PR.

That Stoke-on-Trent hasn't got an integrated public transport system as the twenty first century trundles into its second decade is the missing piece in the regeneration puzzle.

Other cities, Nottingham for example, manage the trick of getting busses and trains to link up and have revived team systems that vanished years ago. Why can't we do the same?

Part of the problem is a lack of leadership, Labour took the city's voters for granted for too long, meaning they had no incentive to do anything other than what they'd always done. Since 2015 the City Independents have consistently put the cart before the horse, getting distracted by projects like building luxury hotels and apartments for young professionals that won't work without a decent transport network bring in place first.

Nationally things have been no better, public transport hazardous never had a minister with the vision and strength of character necessary to drive through modernisation. The current incumbent, Chris Grayling, is a politician so shockingly inept it is a wonder his antics aren't accompanied by a laughter track.

North Staffs Green Party has consistently spoken about the need to build an interconnected transport system for Stoke-on-Trent. We have worked with partners including the Pensioners Convention to put forward a workable plan for building one

Recently other parties have expressed similar aspirations, there is truly more rejoicing over one MP who repents than a dozen candidates who believed all along, so we welcome their joining the fight. This is an issue too important to be bound up in partisan infighting.

The difference is we will continue talking about how we need trains, busses and trams that work together; safer cycling routes and more opportunities to walk instead of drive long after the political agenda has moved on.

We know that it is more important to do what is right and necessary than what gets you a headline in tomorrow's papers. That is why we will stick with the fight to improve local transport infrastructure until Stoke has the quality network it deserves.

The world's oldest rebel should be an inspiration to us all

This week a good man died after a long life lived well through helping others. His name was Harry Leslie Smith and for the fans he achieved late in life was built on the noble art of speaking truth to power.

He spoke with the honesty and simplicity of lived experience about the experience of growing up in grinding poverty and the fears of an old man that the mistakes of the past are about to be repeated.

This had always been a powerful message, particularly in a country where those who hold power believe that inequality validates their economic thinking.

I had the privilege of heating Harry speak only once, at a rally held in my home tot of Stoke-on-Trent during the 2015 election.

It was one of those dispiriting events that pepper a campaign. A grey spring afternoon spent listening to speakers rehash lines they've used a dozen of more times before.

The star turn that day was Tristram Hunt, at the time the MP for Stoke Central, his speech was an exercise in bored enticement. No phrase cliché went unused and the delivery made that of a broken speak your weight machine sound like Lawrence Olivier playing Henry V.

He was followed on the under card by two trades union officials, about whom the kindest thing to be said was that their oratory style was based on volume rather than content, or coherence.

Then came Harry Leslie Smith, a speaker of a different and, to this jaded listener anyway, much higher order. He didn't deploy the tricks of rhetoric or the dark areas of public relations training. He spoke quietly and simply from the heart about the horrors of growing up in the hungry years between the wars.

What he said mirrored the stories my late father used to tell about the whole family having to pawn their best clothes on Monday in the hope of being able to afford to get them out of hock in time for church on Sunday. All too often they and most of their neighbours couldn’t.

As someone who studies society at a university I get to see the data about inequality, poverty and destitution in this the fifth richest country in the world. Time and again I am shocked by the similarity between the Britain of 2018 and the one of the 1930’s recalled by Harry in his speech that day.

Politicians don’t talk about this nearly enough, when they do so they either stigmatise people who are struggling to survive, setting up a false conflict between ‘strivers’ and ‘skivers’. The truth, as Harry knew so well, is that to survive at the bottom of society you must strive harder than any minister or captain of industry.

The other stock response of a political class distant from the concerns of everyday Britons, is to talk about poverty and inequality as abstractions, hedging them around with statistics and theories. Their actions may be well meaning, but seldom reach out beyond the ivory towers of academia into the confusing world of reality.

Dylan Thomas didn’t, due to his dissipations, live to see old age, but he wrote powerfully about how it should ‘rage, rage against the dying of the light’. Not just in this instance against the dying of that of reason as an amnesiac generation stumble towards the precipice their elders nearly fell over into disaster.

In Harry Leslie Smith the rage of the old burnt with the focus and intensity to a welding torch. Now he is gone those of us who are younger should try to catch its embers and fan them into a flame of our own.
We should honour his passing as that of a man of honour who fought the good fight to the end. Then as his memorial take up the cudgels and wage it ourselves.

Union battling to keep crown Post Offices in public hands

Selling off the Royal Mail was a privatisation too far, even for many Tory advocates of the free market. Margaret Thatcher, the patron saint of shrinking the state by selling off its assets, believed to Royal Mail should be publicly owned.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is fighting to keep 74 crown Post Offices, which remained in public ownership when the Royal Mail was privatised, from bring 'franchised'; meaning sold off, to WH Smiths.

The union fears for the jobs of the 800 workers employed on the post offices and that services to communities will be hit.

CWU general secretary Dave Ward said: ' at a time when the government is claiming to be on the side of workers, it is an outrage that it is allowing well rewarded jobs to go from a public service.'

He added that the jobs were at risk of being handed over to a 'second rate employer', that had been 'recently rated as the worst retailer on the high street' who would ' undoubtedly provide a significantly inferior service'.

W H Smith has been ranked as one of the UK's worst retailers in a survey run by consumer organisation Which for the past eight years. Complaints from disgruntled customers included stores with 'wonky' shelves and badly timed promotions.
(Source: BBC News)

The Green Party has opposed the privatisation of the Royal Mail since the idea was first mooted under New Labour.

In 2009 prospective MEP for the Eastern Region described the Royal Mail as a 'cherished and trusted national institution'.

He added that privatisation would benefit ' big business, not consumers, we have seen this in the NHS, BT and the railways'.

In 2013 the Greens supported the CWU in their campaign against privatisation, during which a party spokesperson said: 'privatisation of the Royal Mail will only lead to rising prices, worse conditions for postal workers and a declining service in rural areas'.

Adding that the party stands ' firmly on the side of public ownership, in line with our commitment to bringing rail, energy and other privatised utilities back into public hands'.

The CWU has launched a dedicated website for the campaign at www.saveourpostoffice.co.uk through which members and supporters can sign a petition calling on Greg Clarke, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to call a halt to the sell off .

Campaign Coordinator for North Staffs Green Party Adam Colclough said: 'privatisation of the Post Office and other services has been a disaster for communities'.

North Staffs Greens have written to Greg Clarke asking him to stop the sale of crown post offices and have signed the CWU petition.

He added that the party was ' entirely committed to returning postal services, railways and utilities to public ownership.'

The government needs to make nursing higher education a priority.

The Royal College of Nursing, the body that speaks for nurses in England has described the current system for training nurses as 'broken'.

They are calling on Health and Social Care Minister Matt Hancock and NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens to set out a long-term plan for funding nursing education.

There are currently 42,000 unfilled nursing vacancies in England, this could rise to 48,000 over the next five years if the government does not act.

Since the removal of bursaries for nursing there are, the RCN says, 1800 fewer nurses in training.

This is due to nursing students doing placements with hours that prevent them from being able to work to support themselves, leaving many struggling financially.

In a statement on its website the RCN says, ' nursing students are on their courses to learn, but they are being used to fill gaps in the workforce and caring for patients before they are ready'.

They add that this ' isn't fair to nursing students and isn't safe for patients'.

In a speech made at St Mary's Hospital on the Isle of Wight during the 2017 general election Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said the government was using funding cuts to put the NHS 'through a cruel form of shock therapy'.

She went on to say that. The sign of a 'confident and caring country' was that it provides 'people the health care they need free at the point of use'.

The Green Party is committed to spending on the NHS that meets the needs of communities, not artificial government financial projections, with funding raised through general taxation earmarked for this use

The party also believes that NHS staff have been undervalued for too long and supports improving their pay, training and working hours.

Campaign Coordinator for North Staffs Green Party said ' the RCN have thrown light on the shockingly poor treatment of student nurses. They are being placed in a position where they are being priced out of studying. If we want a strong NHS and a healthy country this cannot continue'.

He added that ' as a member of the Patient's Congress I will be raising this issue with the local CCG'.

The RCN are calling on the government and NHS England to set aside a minimum of £1billion to improve funding for nursing higher education as part of its ten-year review of priorities.

Petition aims to change the menu in the public sector.

Over the past four years the number of vegans in the UK has doubled and more people are choosing to eat a plant-based diet for health reasons.

Despite veganism given the same status as dietary choices associated with religious faith the public sector has been slow to respond to this change in eating habits.

Humane Society International have launched a parliamentary petition calling for the inclusion of plant-based options on public sector menus as standard practice

The petition refers to advice from the British Dietic Association and the UN that eating a plant-based diet is good for the health of individuals and the environment.

Information produced by the Vegan Society makes the case that avoiding meat and dairy can help to reduce the incidence of high blood-pressure, type2 diabetes and some cancers.

It can also have a positive impact on the environment, reducing the amount of land cultivated for animal feed and reducing food insecurity.

The Green Party supports a food and agriculture policy that is sustainable over the long term. This includes supporting animal welfare, fair-trade and supporting public sector caterers to make healthy and vegan options available.

Signing the petition on behalf of North Staffs Green Party campaign coordinator Adam Colclough said: ' It is vital for the environment that we change the way we put food on our plates', he added that it is also important 'to make healthy food choices easier and more appealing, the public sector has a huge role to play in that'.

The party have written to Stoke-on-Trent City Council calling on them to act on the call made in the petition

Humane Society International are also working with public sector caterers to help them change their menus.

A parliamentary petition that gathers 10,000 signatures will receive a response from the government, one that attracts 100,000 will be considered for debate in parliament

A link to the petition can be accessed here: https://action.hsi.org/page/33008/action/1?utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagingnetworks&utm_campaign=farm&utm_content=110118+UK+action+vegan+day+gg&ea.url.id=1564395&forwarded=true

Universal Credit is undermining government ambitions on mental health.

Mental health charity MIND has criticised the government's controversial roll out of Universal Credit for inversely affecting people with mental health conditions when they transfer onto the new benefit.

In an article on the charity's website Vicki Nash head of policy and campaigns at MIND writes that they have ' consistently failed' to recognise the damaging impact of debt and benefit sanctions on people struggling with their mental health.

MIND join the National Audit Office, MPs from both sides of the house and several other charities in criticising Universal Credit for its manifest unfairness. Even the' pause' rolling out the new benefit announced recently is unlikely to help the large number of claimants who will eventually be transferred over.

A YouGov poll of 2000 people with money problems showed that 65% had felt stressed due to their situation, 62% had experienced anxiety and 44% said that money worries had caused them to feel depressed.

Around half of adults in the UK with money problems also struggle with their mental health, this can cause them to engage in unhealthy behaviours such as drinking or smoking heavily.
(Source the Money and Health Policy Institute)

Commenting on the results of the survey Brian Dow, managing director of Mental Health UK said, 'these figures show just how vicious the cycle of money and health problems can be'.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Theresa May appointed Jackie Doyle-Price as the UK's first minister for suicide prevention. In, addition she pledged £1.8milkion to support suicide prevention work done by the Samaritans, saying she hoped this would ' end the stigma that has forced so many to suffer in silence'.

Taking up her new post MS Doyle-Price said she understood the. 'tragic devastating and long-lasting effect of suicide on families', going on to say that she wanted to put their needs 'at the heart of what we do'.
(Source BBC News)

In her article for the MIND website Vicki Nash writes that the first job of the new minister should be to urge the DWP to ensure that people transferring to Universal Credit who have mental health issues are given adequate support.

Under the current regime they can face losing money if they do not respond to letters sent by the DWP. She writes that 'the effects of benefits issues when they go wrong can be disastrous and even life threatening'.