This Cotton-Built Town by Trevor Hoyle

[after Betjeman. A long way after]

It once were great, this cotton-built town

A grand night out for half-a-crown,

Go out now you get knocked down

Or summat worse

We had cobbles and ginnels and gaslit streets,

A clip round th’ear from bobbies on beats.

No muggers or druggies, no benefits cheats,

Our nation’s curse.

Gradely folk they were back then

Slogged all week at mill for six-pound-ten:

Lancashire’s best – la crème de la crème,

Gone and forgot.

Walk down Drake Street now and weep

For Ivesons, Fashion Corner, the Carlton creep,

The legacy of civic pride sold cheap.

Who gives a jot?

It’s council top brass in the main

Who’ve least to lose and most to gain.

(1st class seats on the gravy train!)

Just hear their cries:

Sack the workers but keep the bosses!

That’s the way to cut the losses!

And round our necks like albatrosses

Hang the PFIs.

And where do all our taxes go?

You must be joking – don’t you know?

On bods with clipboards on go slow,

On Manchester Road –

Where roundabouts once did the job

The planners have incensed the mob,

Who write in fury to the Ob:

“Stop this load

Of nonsense, quick, it’s puerile,

Are they trying to compete in style

With illuminations on’t Golden Mile

And make things worse?”

Come, gentle Kong, and dump on Dale

Bury it deep so it can’t inhale.

Beyond a joke, beyond the pale,

Armpit of the universe.

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Risks of Shopping & Government Guidelines

 by John Wilkins

I MUST admit I was a little slow to understand the risks of continuing to shop myself initially because my wife is 77 with underlying health conditions so although I might be fit enough to overcome the infection she would be far, far more susceptible. So either drop shopping at the door for mum or if that is difficult for her, obviously keep the 2 metre gap and wear gloves when handling objects.

 I agree that the message is loud and clear now but appeared contradictory a few weeks ago and that gave some people justification for over shopping, but we have seen sections of the public react like that before. We as a nation are far more self centred as can be seen by people's driving habits, queue jumping (unheard of as queuing was a national pastime once) and living beyond our means. Perhaps our generation benefited from the rationing after WW2 and understand the need to work through difficult times collaboratively. Supermarkets could have done more to restrict people stockpiling at unprecedented levels and the Government were slow to response also. One hopes as they are one of the few beneficiaries from this crisis they will cut back on misleading prices on offers thus ripping customers off who in their haste do not check their bills. 

 On the issue of the Government's response it is probably not the right time to scrutinise it at the moment but it does confirm our fears that our health service, social care, education, police and indeed almost all public services have been so underfunded for a long time and sometimes farmed out to some, not all, incompetent private providers.

 Some statistical evidence published in The Guardian and Daily Mirror on provision of hospital beds, doctors and critical care beds per 100,000 shows the following: Critical care beds 23/29, hospital beds 29/29, doctors 25/26 (only Ireland worse). This shows how unprepared we were prior to the pandemic but also how unbelievably hard our health and care workers have responded with a comparative lack of PPE and testing kits etc. Questions need to be asked of successive governments about not just the amount of spending on public services but HOW it has been spent. I only need to mention the Tory policy of PFI which Blair's Government engaged with so emphatically.

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CARILLION: Tale of Two Towns

ROCHDALE & TAMESIDE COUNCILS

LAST January, when it collapsed CARILLION had an ongoing contract with Rochdale council to provide around £17m in facilities management in a contract which required them to build a further 12 new schools.

At that time in a statement, Rochdale Council said: “We have been in discussions with key organisations since late in 2017, following the profits warning issued by Carillion. We have been preparing for such a possibility through the development of contingency plans.
"We are working closely with relevant schools to make sure disruption is avoided and we welcome the reassurance offered by the government today that public services will be protected.
"We recognise that this is a difficult and unsettling time for organisations working with the company and in particular for the employees of Carillion and offer our thanks for their continued commitment.”

Tameside schools

At the same time Tameside MBC which under its Labour controlled council had long been up the backside of the now disgraced company, Carillion, was involved in building five secondary schools - Isca, St Peters, St Lukes, St James and West Exe and all were completed by 2006.

But up to stage Carillion had also provided services including cleaning, catering, building and grounds maintenance for the PFI scheme.

A spokesman from Tameside council said:  
“At present we are in the business continuity phase and it is reassuring to be able to report that services provided by Carillion staff are operating as normal – all buildings are open for staff and the public, all school catering is in place and all ancillary services such as cleaning are operating.

“Tameside council and its partners in the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) are drawing up plans to ensure this remains the case going forward.

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Protesting the Chop & Sheffield's Trees

Labour Council outsources tree felling to Amey / Ferrovial*

The outsource companies currently contracted to Sheffield City Council include:

• Amey manage the city's 'Streets Ahead' project including management of highways.
• Kier Sheffield maintains and repairs the social housing stock.**
• Veolia manages household waste disposal.
• Capita provides HR, payroll and IT services for council employees. ***

*       Amey, is a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company grupo Ferrovial
**     Kier is one of the seven companies that in 2015 admitted to blacklisting building workers.
***  Capita has been compared to Carillion, and its share price has plunged from around £11 to £2 in just two years and it dropped out of the FTSE 100 last March.

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OVER 5,000 trees have been cut down in Sheffield since 2012, as part the city council's £2bn Streets Ahead project with the excuse of improving roads and footpaths in the city.

The council, which is planting sapling trees after removing existing mature ones, insists the trees earmarked for felling are either 'dangerous, dead, diseased, dying, damaging or discriminatory'.

Yet it seems many of the trees condemned by the council as 'damaging' or 'discriminatory' are healthy specimens which campaigners say should be saved.  They say that alterations should be made to surrounding pavements and roads instead.

Today an event 'Get Off Our Tree!' is being held at Sheffield City Hall.  Also playing are local artists The Everly Pregnant Brothers, lead singer of Reverend and the Makers, Jon McClure, and former Pulp drummer Nick Banks and the Compare is Jason Cocker , who was interviewed on Radio Four's 'Today' program.

These are just some of Sheffield’s tree protesters, members of local groups coordinated by the Sheffield Tree Action Groups (Stag), which are claiming that this is another example of local government gone wrong.  Stag have made it their mission to protect the trees from council-backed felling crews in what is often hailed, with more than a pinch of Yorkshire hyperbole, as Europe’s greenest city.

Labour Council's PFI Contract

The fellings are part of a 25-year, £2.2bn Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract.  Signed in 2012 between the Labour-led council and a private company, Amey, the Streets Ahead programme is intended to upgrade 'the condition of our city’s roads, pavements, streetlights, bridges …'  –  no small feat in a place that was known as 'pothole city'.

The contract has serious implications for the city’s 36,000 roadside trees, which have in effect been privatised until the late 2030s. Amey, a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company Ferrovial, has so far removed around 5,350, including oaks, elms and limes. Alison Teal, a local Green party councillor, believes she knows why many were chosen:  'I can only assume that because it’s a 25-year contract, they’re felling mature trees because they are more expensive. They cause pavement and road disruption and a hell of a lot of leaves fall off them.'

Loose and wonky kerbstones and cracked pavements owing to tree roots are among the reasons given for the fellings.  But there is a belief among the Sheffield protesters that the 14 alternatives priced into Amey’s contract – from flexible paving to root pruning and pollarding – are being underused.

The council says it only resorts to removing trees if they are 'dangerous, dying, diseased, dead, damaging or discriminatory' (meaning that they damage pavements and potentially obstruct disabled residents).  Of the eight mature limes destroyed on Rustlings Road, however, the council’s own independent tree panel found that seven were in good condition with a good life expectancy.

The heavy redaction of the contract between Amey and Sheffield council doesn’t help clarify things.  With many details kept from the public in the name of 'commercial confidentiality', there is no way of verifying, for instance, the council’s warnings of “catastrophic financial consequences” if the fellings are delayed.  The gaps leave room for conjecture about why the PFI deal isn’t being called off, or its terms renegotiated.  Protesters think they have found legal reasons that would allow the council to annul the contract – a recent petition focuses on Amey’s alleged failure to disclose a 2011 health and safety conviction following the death of an employee.  A council spokesperson said it was aware of the death before the contract was awarded, but it failed to provide written evidence of that knowledge in response to Freedom of Information requests made by campaigners.

 Thatcherite Law Used by Labour Council

Many cite “the battle for Rustlings Road” as a turning point – following a pre-dawn raid and scenes that the former local MP Nick Clegg described as “something you’d expect in Putin’s Russia”, pensioners were arrested for peacefully protesting. Eight trees were chopped down.
It has been a long and gnarly road to today’s situation, with frustrations running high.  In 2016, arrests of peaceful protesters started under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, which criminalises anyone who persistently stops someone from carrying out lawful work – in this case, tree surgeons contracted by Amey.

'We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens,' says Ian Rotherham, professor of environmental geography at Sheffield Hallam university.  'Only about 30 years on from Orgreave, our local councillors seem to not see the bitter twist in all this.'

We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens.

None of those arrested have ever been prosecuted, however, with the Crown Prosecution Service saying there was insufficient evidence.  Then, last summer, the council brought an injunction against nine named protesters – including the Greens Alison Teal, and Brook, as well as 'persons unknown'.   It prohibits protesters from entering safety zones around condemned trees, or encouraging others to do so, either on social media or in person.

Labour's 'One Party State' !

In Ms. Teal’s opinion of local democracy is low – and no wonder, after a year in which the council on which she sits took her to court for breaking the injunction, only for the case to be thrown out.  'This is a one-party state,' she says. 'Sheffield has 84 councillors; 56 are Labour.  They can’t be outvoted.'  She mentions Nasima Akther, a Labour councillor who defied the whip to abstain on a vote about the fellings.  'For her courage she was suspended from the party.  It’s bullying and she subsequently resigned.'

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