Leeds

UDI for the North gets ever closer

UDI

As the Scots get ready to go to the polls to decide if they want total independence from the UK, or simply accept a generous additional devolution package that is on offer, the North of England continues to lobby Westminster in the hope that we can get some extra crumbs from the table that doesn’t include multi billion pound infrastructure schemes that, though much needed and long overdue, are at least a decade away from completion.

Local government cuts may have been necessary five years ago, but it is fair to say that those cuts were not imposed in an equitable fashion across the country, and cities like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds; and indeed counties like Lancashire, have been tasked with taking more than their fair share of the pain since 2010.

Had the austerity programme been evenly distributed across the country then Manchester would be £1million a week better off. Similar statistics are also true in other northern regions.

But it is not only cash but power and responsibility that the north has been starved of. The Scottish parliament has enjoyed a huge amount of autonomy since 1999, whilst even the Welsh Assembly, representing a population that is fewer than Greater Manchester and many other English city regions, have more say over their nations affairs than we do here.

Downtown has long argued that structural reform of local government is vital. However, with that reform must include genuine decentralisation of real additional powers, not least the ability to raise and spend local taxes, greater planning and regeneration autonomy and the opportunity to spend education, training and employment budgets in a more locally relevant fashion.

These ‘asks’ have been made in a rather hopeful, half hearted way in the past; but the Scottish situation means that English devolution is right back on the agenda and this time political and business leaders mean business.

Already the mainstream political parties are talking far more seriously about how a new English devolution settlement can be progressed post the next election. The job now is to turn talk in to action, and once and for all give big northern cities the chance to shape their own destiny.

Tragedy Highlights Public Sector Muddle

Rotherham

The revelations from Rotherham this week are beyond shocking. Sadly they are the latest in a series of exposes that have been unearthed in recent years, including the appalling cover up’s in Rochdale that allegedly involved the town’s former MP Cyril Smith.

Over the many years that I have been involved in scrutinising the care and welfare of children, firstly as a politician and latterly as a non executive director of an NHS Trust, it has struck me that the multi agency approach we have to childcare and child protection is inefficient and confusing, and allows a relatively easy way for those managing children’s lives to ‘pass the buck’.

I have challenged this on more than one occasion, and although there was some tinkering at the edges, there was little appetite among senior officials for the radical overhaul that is clearly needed in this arena. This isn’t because they don’t care, or see the sense that the potential changes could bring; more often it is the lack of resource and capacity to tackle the established status quo, or a fear that there own organisations position may be compromised.

All agencies will claim to collaborate and say that they are willing to ‘give up’ certain powers and responsibilities for the greater good of the community – but I am yet to meet any that will genuinely concede in areas that will see their own resource, influence or ‘empire’ reduce.

We have too many social services departments; too many health agencies and hospital management structures; too many policies and policy changes and too many chiefs!

Streamlining the public sector, not only in the childcare sector but right across the board, is something all governments say they are in favour of. But without exception all government’s bottle out of implementing anything that is radical, falling back on the hugely false ‘democratic’ argument that local people must decide how they are governed.

In reality this means local council’s or health organisations ‘consulting’ with a small number of residents, and then reporting that the status quo is backed by all of us.

Turkey’s don’t vote for Christmas, so we will never have councillor’s supporting calls for their local authority to be merged with another, scrapped or even downsized. Similarly, why would a board of directors of a health agency vote for their own early demise by supporting the streamlining of management structures, or merging hospital management administrations?

This is at the core of the failure of our public sector to deliver effectively across a whole range of services – highlighted by yet another scandal in the most sensitive of all provisions, children’s welfare. Will the latest revelations change the resistance to change? I’m not holding my breath!

FOOTNOTE: Any senior public official that has been named and shamed in the Rotherham report, most particularly the crime and police commissioner, should be writing their resignation letters over the weekend.

A new chapter for Leeds United?

Leeds united

The new Premier League football season kicked off last weekend, with all the usual hype and wall-to-wall media coverage that the Sky driven sporting extravaganza attracts nowadays.

For all the moans and groans from traditionalists such as myself, there is little doubt that the Murdoch money, as well as feathering the nests of many hundreds of footballers and many thousands of their hangers on, has also made the game a more appealing, family friendly sport.

Indeed, as an export, the Premier League is England’s most successful product, and as a competition it is, globally, football’s most exciting, and most watched.

Not that long ago the brand Leeds United was synonymous with top flight football, weather that be the old First Division or the new promised land of the Premier League. Indeed, it was as a result of chasing the ultimate fantasy of Champions League football that has arguably left United in the mess that its most recent history has been and to which I wrote about HERE.

Indeed a far more heartfelt and comprehensive ‘diary’ of the rise and fall of this great footballing institution can be found in the latest issue of men’s magazine Esquire in an excellent feature written by Leeds supporter Richard Benson. (http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/sport/6825/the-fall-and-fall-of-leeds-united)

He paints a dire picture and seems to be as pessimistic about the clubs immediate prospects as any fan could be. To be fair, given the false dawns, broken promises and downright failure of all associated with Leeds in recent times, one can hardly blame him.

However, new season brings new hope – and in Leeds’ case a new owner too. One swallow does not a summer make, but a single goal victory on Saturday over Middlesbrough, with a late strike from new signing Billy Sharp, gives all of us who are hoping for a return to the top division for the Yorkshire giants a tad more reason for optimism. To follow that result up with a tame home defeat at the hands of Brighton mid week was not great – but let’s stay as positive as we can for as long as we can and give the new Elland Road regime a chance.

New Italian owner Massimo Cellino may seem a little eccentric, but his apparent enthusiasm for the project and his direct and robust style might just be what the club needs.

Of course, it could all go horribly ‘Pete Tong’ again – but surely, in the words of Labour Party activists circa 1997, when incidentally Leeds finished the season a very respectable fifth in the Premier League * – ‘things can only get better’. Let’s hope so anyway!

*Leeds United finished 5th in the 1997/8 season. In the 1996/7 season they finished 11th.

One North

George Osborne

Another week, another major announcement by the chancellor about big investment into infrastructure projects in the North, as the cities of Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool joined forces to launch the ‘One North’ document, which was duly supported by George Osborne.

Cynics suggest that this series of recent announcements is simply electioneering; a way of convincing northern voters that the Tories have not forgotten them. In reality there are few votes for the Conservatives in Liverpool or Manchester- though in Lancashire and Yorkshire several seats will be keenly contested at next year’s General Election.

In truth, post recession, all the mainstream political parties have woken up to the fact that a UK solely reliant on the success of its capital city is not a sensible long term economic strategy. The huge gap between the South East and the rest of the country has needed addressing for generations, and the planned investment in ambitious transport projects, improving links between northern cities, as well as the much debated HS2 project which provides greater capacity for the routes to and from London are good first steps.

However, it is still in the area of governance that the north can and must make more immediate progress.

HS2, HS3 and the other potential investments into the road network are medium to long term initiatives. Greater power to our region can happen now. Our political leaders, backed by the business community, should demand we get on with it.

The best of times, the worst of times…

Women

On occasion I do get the strange impression that I have fallen in to a deep sleep only to awake in an episode of ‘Life on Mars’ as it becomes evident that twenty first century progress simply hasn’t reached some key, fundamental areas of society that by now ought to have been well sorted.

This week a couple of things came to my attention that made me angry and somewhat baffled as I travelled around the various ‘Downtown Towers’ across the North of England, where businesses are finally celebrating the end of the long, hard recession.

The first was the issue of domestic violence. This is a taboo subject that I got involved in many years ago as a councillor when I was part of an ultimately successful campaign to establish a women’s refuge in Skelmersdale.

I saw first-hand the devastation to families that ‘men’ bullying and battering their wives causes, and it is an issue I have remained concerned about and interested in for over twenty years now. The shame is that there is as much need for the Refuge in Skelmersdale now as there was back in 1989; and that there still appears to be a reluctance of police, courts and politicians to treat the beating of women as a serious criminal act.

It emerged this week that a majority of domestic violence offenders are more likely to be given a slap on the wrist and community service than serve a prison sentence. This is just not good enough. If you beat a woman up then a jail sentence ought to be the automatic penalty. Repeat offenders should be jailed for a significant period, named, shamed and put on a public register that can be viewed by the entire community.

The recent ‘docudrama’ screened by the BBC ‘I was Murdered by my Boyfriend’ was the true story of a young woman who was beaten to death with an ironing board in front of her young daughter by the man who ‘loved’ her . This programme should be an essential part of the curriculum for teenage boys and girls at school. It really is time to start to take this issue seriously, raise awareness and educate. We need to be closing Refuges in the years ahead because the need for them should be redundant in a modern twenty first century society. Sadly, I’m not holding my breath.

The other issue that had me shaking my head in despair was a reminder, via a tweet from a Liverpool Labour Councillor, that UK Plc, which currently boasts one of the fastest growing economies on the planet, has to stock food banks in order for some of its citizens to get a decent meal. If that doesn’t make you a little ashamed to be British, I don’t know what would.

We can argue all day long about the ‘scrounger’ culture, which is largely a fictitious account of millionaire benefit recipients, usually Eastern European immigrants, peddled by UKIP and some of the more unscrupulous sections of the media. But do we honestly believe that in 2014 kids and pensioners should be having to queue up at nineteenth century style food banks? I think not, and again until this is tackled and a fair welfare system re-introduced, then we cannot truly celebrate the economic ‘miracle’ that we are apparently witnessing.

Of course there are benefit cheats, just as there are tax cheats. But just as we wouldn’t penalise every successful billionaire entrepreneur for the sins of a few, we shouldn’t penalise those who have unluckily and reluctantly fallen on hard times through unemployment, disability or old age. We shouldn’t – but we do.

To end on a lighter note, because it is Friday and I am generally an optimistic, happy kind of guy, there was one other thing that made me truly believe that I had slipped into a coma, been thrown in to some sort of time machine and transported to a time man (and woman) forgot.

The news that Everton Football Club had smashed their transfer record and spent a staggering £28million on Romelu Lukaku was a genuine ‘back to the future’ moment. The first time I remember Everton smashing not only their own transfer record for a centre forward, but the country’s, was back in 1974, when we signed Bob Latchford from Birmingham for £350,000! Or, put another way, for what Lukaku will earn AT Goodison Park over the next six week’s!

It’s a funny old world – but sometimes it’s serious.