Is Victims’ Champion scheme an admission of city failure?

Tackling anti-social behaviour seems to be flavour of the month in Nottingham at the moment.

First the Evening Post reports reported yesterday that ‘Street Pastors’ will soon be appearing in Nottingham city centre and on Friday, Gordon Brown (without a hint of electioneering, of course) stressed his government’s commitment to help people suffering anti-social behaviour by announcing a  ‘Victim’s Champions’ Scheme.

Anti-social behaviour: Perpetrators or victims?

Apparently this new scheme will be introduced in hot spot areas of anti-social behaviour and Nottingham will be one of the first councils in the country to have one. It seems to involve recruiting a band of  experts who ‘ tell people about their rights and bring police and councils together to solve problems’.

I have no objections to the first part of this. Many people don’t understand their rights and entitlements and recent cuts to advice services mean that it’s not always easy to know what public bodies could, or should, be doing to help you in a whole range of difficult circumstances.

However, as for bringing together police and councils (the City Council, presumably, in this case), do we really need anyone else to do this in Nottingham?

We have the Crime and Drugs Partnership (the ‘partnership’ bit of their name seems to indicate that they do – or should do - some degree of ‘bringing together’) and we are supposed to have Neighbourhood Policing, which involves the police working more closely with local people and with other public bodies to make policing more responsive and effective. In addition to this, the City Council employs, in each of its nine administrative areas of the city, a Neighbourhood Manager, whose job (you’ve guessed it…) is to bring people together to tackle issues like… crime and anti-social behaviour

And, as if that isn’t enough, we have Victim Support, a national charity which lists, amongst its various services to victims of crime: information on police and court procedures, help in dealing with other organisations and links to other sources of help.

The introduction of a Victim’s Champion would seem to suggest that crime and anti-social behaviour are now beyond the control of these organisations or that they simply don’t work.

Gordon and his gang on Nottingham all-dayer

There must an election on the horizon… Why else would Gordon Brown and his band of not-so-merry men grace Nottingham with their presence for a whole day?

The PM used the opportunity to have a go at the County Council and to suggest that the public service cuts about to happen in Nottinghamshire will happen all over the country if the Tories are elected in the general election next year. He said: ”The council has made these cuts simply because it’s their ideological position.” – an analysis that he actually got from this blog.

Gordon Brown having just heard that Kay Cutts intends to erect a statue of herself on the embankment

Predictably, Ken Clarke then defended the County Council and justified the cuts… and so the merry-go-round goes on.

And this political merry-go-round, with its squabbling, self-absorbed, out-of-touch riders seems to be gathering speed, the MP’s aboard it waving  cheerily to the public as they leave us standing open-mouthed without the fare to climb aboard.

Again, we get promises of initiatives and money to tackle anti-social behaviour – announced in Aspley; parents are patronised in Bulwell where Gordon tells them his son plays with Lego (really… like normal kids?) and Ed Balls and Vernon Coaker try the common touch by revealing that they went to school in Nottingham and then cross swords with some trainee Conservative cabinet ministers at Nottingham High School. The grotesque pantomime would have been complete if they’d only actually kissed some babies.

So we have rampant, cold-blooded, doctrinaire Tories running the county (into the ground, probably); a dishonest, conniving, incompetent Labour group running the city and a clueless, bankrupt, promise-you-anything-if-you-vote-for-us government running the country. Her Majesty’s opposition consists mainly of old Etonians and chinless wonders who, like all oppositions, can just stand in the wings waiting to lob bricks at Gordon or trip him up as he stumbles from the Commons chamber.

And whilst all these politicians bicker with each other and attempt to score the points needed to boost their swollen egos, the BNP sneak in to more and more people’s lives, leaving only a trail of fascist slime to signify their presence… until those people go to the polling stations next spring.

Research suggests that people are disillusioned with politics and politicians. Not me.

Animal experiments in the frame

The University of Nottingham website reports on the 40th anniversary of the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (FRAME).

FRAME was established to carry out research to find ways to reduce, and eventually phase out completely, the use of animals in medical experiments. Their long-term aim is the total elimination of the need for any laboratory animal procedures, through the development, validation and acceptance of replacement alternative methods.

The charity has had a laboratory at the University for 25 years.

Tomorrow speakers from the US Food and Drug Administration, the Universities of Oxford, Manchester, Liverpool, Imperial and Nottingham will gather at the Royal Society for a symposium marking this important milestone in the charity’s history.

Speaking about the latest developments in the search for alternatives to using animals, Professor Dave Kendall, of the University’s School of Biomedical Sciences said: “These developments have highlighted the sometimes subtle, but often crucial, differences between human and animal responses to pharmacological intervention, and make the requirement for drug testing based on human systems an increasing necessity.”

Apart from the fact that these new techniques offer the chance of better results in the development of new drugs and medical techniques, they will also reduce the number of animals that suffer and die in the cause of medical research – currently around three million every year.

In a world that is increasingly hostile to animals (with global meat consumption rising and many species on the edge of extinction), it should be a source of some pride for Nottingham that one of our universities is supporting such a worthwhile and forward-looking charity.

County Council should rethink Child Migrants decision

When I wrote my original post in September about the County Council removing an information board about the sorry saga of child migrants, I was picking up a story in the Nottingham Evening Post that gave the decision for the removal of the board as being its ‘deterioration’.

However, in a written answer to a question from the Labour group, Coun John Cottee, portfolio holder for culture, has now revealed the real reason; the board wasn’t sufficiently positive enough to fit with the new image the incoming Tories were keen to promote. Coun. Cottee said: “The new administration is keen that the Embankment and the general environment of County Hall are used to communicate positive messages about our pride in this county and country. It was felt that the heading, ‘Britain’s Shame’ on the panel, while carrying an important message… was somewhat out of context with the positive theme.”

Is the new administration so insecure that they feel they have to create a positive atmosphere around County Hall at the expense of an honest acknowledgement of an important part of Nottingham’s – and the UK’s - history and by seeking to hide the national shame of this dreadful episode? And do they have so little faith in the people of Nottingham that they doubt their ability to read this information and understand it in its proper historical context?

The answer to both questions seems to be yes.

They should apologise now for what was clearly an error of judgement and return the child migrants information board to its rightful place.

Governments’ shame over child migrants finally acknowledged

I’d like to offer my congratulations (together, I’m sure, with those from many people around the world) to the Child Migrants Trust and particularly to its founder, Nottingham social worker, Margaret Humphreys, for finally winning an apology from the Australian Government for their part in this scandalous episode in British colonial history.

Apparently, Gordon Brown intends to follow suit with a similar apology on behalf of the UK government next week.

I only found out about the work of the Child Migrants Trust when I researched its origins during the writing of a post here in September. This concerned the decision by Notts County Council to remove an information board on the trust’s history from County Hall .

It is clear that Ms Humphreys has worked tirelessly on behalf of all those children caught up in this bizarre experiment in social engineering and that her dedication and committment have finally paid off.

Apologies won’t repair the untold damage that many of these children have suffered but at least they are a public admission of the respective governments’ culpability and of their regret. This may be of some comfort to those living with the legacy of enforced child migration… and, I hope, to Margaret Humphreys.