Not one UK company is bidding for the HS2 contract. Bidders are from France, Canada, Japan, Spain and Germany:
Daily Archives: 2 Nov 2017
“How a city is tackling poverty by giving a voice to its poorest citizens”
Can’t see this catching on in East Devon, more’s the pity!
“It’s time to change politics,” says the Mayor of Salford, at a packed meeting of the Truth Poverty Commission in his home city. “Either politics is done to us, or we shape it.”
Since being elected a year ago, Mayor Paul Dennett has been radically reshaping the way things are done in Salford.
Last month he gave care workers a 10.7% pay rise. His town hall has given the go-ahead for seven new library sites at a time when many councils are closing them.
As other parts of the UK face maternity unit closures, the council has stepped in to ‘Keep Babies Born in Salford’ by opening a new midwife-led unit where 300 babies may now be delivered each year.
Salford has also invested £2million into a development company – in order to kickstart building of social housing that won’t fall under the government’s new Right To Buy policy. The company is called Derive – named after a joke involving revolutionary Italian situationists.
All of which looks like a blueprint for a Labour government, or what unashamedly interventionist Dennett calls “sensible socialism”.
The 36-year-old mayor is passionate about using his £200million budget to end poverty , partly because he has never forgotten what it feels like to come up the hard way, through a childhood he describes as at times “horrific” and something “I wouldn’t wish on anyone”.
Scarred by domestic abuse and his younger brother’s fight against leukaemia, he failed his GCSEs and A-levels and by 18 was working in a “sweat shop” call centre.
“I had an interesting journey,” he says wryly, at his offices in Swinton. “I grew up in a family where there was traumatic violence and abuse. My dad became an alcoholic and I struggled at school in my early teens.”
A power station fitter by trade, Paul’s dad went on to manage The Engine pub in Liverpool’s Prescot area, where his alcoholism began. Paul’s mum, a cleaner, ran the pub as her marriage disintegrated.
Later in life, Paul won a place to study International Business at the University of Ulster, where he achieved a first-class honours degree. He went on to Manchester Business school before doing a PhD at Manchester Met, working as a civil servant and then for a utilities company.
Now living in Salford – where he became a tenants’ leader and then a local councillor – as council leader he sees the Truth Poverty Commission as part of a new way of doing politics, with people’s consent.
Based on a model that has been used in Glasgow and Leeds, the Commissioners include people with experience of poverty.
“Consultation usually means organisations telling you about their plans,” says community worker Jayne Gosnall, 54, who is recovering from alcohol addiction. “This is about really listening to people with experience.”
The Commission is independent but supported by Salford City Council, the Mayor and the Bishop of Salford, and facilitated by Church Action on Poverty and Community Pride. It has led to the council bringing in a raft of measures that will transform lives – from waiving birth certificate fees for homeless people to changing the way the council chases debt.
Debbie Brown, transformation director at Salford City Council, says: “We come into these meetings and we hug each other – that’s not what normally happens in council meetings,” she says. “But the other thing that stopped me in my tracks was the City Council being identified as a cause of poverty.
“We heard stories about what it was like for people hiding from council tax collection agents, people being afraid, and that’s not a city I recognise.
“We’re changing a lot already. We’re going back to the personal, identifying people who are struggling to pay and looking again at what we can do.
“We won’t be using bailiffs for those in receipt of council tax reduction and young care leavers are exempt.”
Laura Kendall, 33, a mum of two and a youth worker, suffered undiagnosed mental health problems as a teenager and was placed in care.
“Sharing my story for this project was difficult but very powerful for me,” she says. “I want people to know their voices will be heard, that a child growing up in the care system can have a better chance.
“I’d spent my whole life trying to get people to listen to me and got used to being rejected. This area has been written off so many times but it’s full of people with something to add.”
Salford’s mayor is determined to listen. “This is about working-class communities coming together and a spirit of solidarity,” Dennett says. “It’s the spirit of Salford in action.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/how-city-tackling-poverty-giving-11457050
MPs fiddle while the UK burns
“Keep calm and party on” is the Daily Mail’s headline for a 5-star party for MPs last night, with some photographs that are now etched on Owl’s eyeballs:
“Councils embracing commercialisation, says survey”
Do you agree that your council tax should fund EDDC as a “commercial enterprise”?
Bear in mind as you think about this and read below, its HQ move has gone up from “cost neutral” to the most recent estimate of around £10 million.
And ask yourself: how many of our councillors (town, district and county) would you trust to run your local sweet shop? And is this all academic anyway when increasingly the purse strings are being controlled by our Local Enterprise Partnership?
“Commercialisation has become the most talked about topic in councils this year, with some seeing turnover equivalent to a FTSE 250 company, according to research gathered by Zurich Municipal.
The insurer conducted in-depth interviews with 22 council chiefs across England and Scotland gathering findings into the Why are we here? The 2017 Senior Managers’ Risk Report (link below).
This revealed that many councils are embracing the opportunity to become commercial entities with one council chief interviewed by Zurich admitted to turnover of £1.5bn.
“Commercial income generating projects are the new norm for local government, with some competing against one another to buy and build hotels, harbours, piers, cinemas, university campuses, and science and research parks,” the report – released at the Solace Summit in Manchester yesterday – stated.
Many see the potential for commercially generated revenue to be re-invested in local communities, however, some spoke of the need not to stray to much into private sector disciplines, while others said it should not be pursued at any cost.
However, austerity is still seen as an ongoing challenge, with some councils saying that services cannot be cut any further.
Funding issues are also harming relations with central government, the research revealed.
One council chief executive said: “We need a frank discussion with government. We can’t carry on doing everything we do.”
Rod Penman, head of public services at Zurich Municipal said: “Councils are facing challenges from all sides, and many are employing commercial ventures to mitigate some of the lasting effects of austerity.
“This approach is not without its challenges, however. There is the growing potential for moral and commercial dilemmas at almost every turn, and it is clear that council chiefs are concerned about the long-term relationship between national and local government.”
Another theme to emerge from the study is the perception of councils following the Grenfell fire.
Council chiefs said they felt the tragedy marked a watershed in how local government’s purpose and remit is viewed.
One commented: “The Grenfell Tower disaster means we will take more consideration of community discussions.”
Penman added that councils needed to “improve the narrative” about the choices they take, especially in a more commercial environment.
“Framing decisions in a purely commercial light simply isn’t an option when the social value of public bodies and services has to be factored in,” he said.”
The full report is here:
http://newsandviews.zurich.co.uk/expert-lab/balancing-priorities-are-councils-facing-an-identity-crisis/
“Child poverty in Britain set to soar to new record, says thinktank”
6th richest country in the world fails the most vulnerable and powerless in its society – shameful.
Here is a picture of socialite Tamara Eccleston’s London home decorated for Halloween for her children:
“The number of children living in poverty will soar to a record 5.2 million over the next five years as government welfare cuts bite deepest on households with young families, a leading UK thinktank has said.
New research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts an increase of more than a million in the number of children living in poverty, more than reversing all the progress made over the past 20 years.
The IFS said freezing benefits, the introduction of universal credit and less generous tax credits would mean a surge in child poverty and that the steepest increases would be in the most deprived parts of the country.
“Across all regions, relative child poverty is projected to increase markedly,” the IFS said. “The smallest increases are in the south, but even there relative child poverty is projected to rise by at least four percentage points. The northern regions, the Midlands, Wales and Northern Ireland are projected to see increases of at least eight percentage points.”
The report’s findings, which also predict a widening of the gap between rich and poor and four more years of weak income growth, pose a direct challenge to Theresa May, who arrived in Downing Street pledging to help those “just about managing”. …”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/02/child-poverty-britain-set-to-soar-to-new-record-ifs
East Devon Watch 