Is the UK really like The Wire?

The shadow home secretary Chris Grayling has grabbed the headlines this week with his claim that some inner city areas in the UK resemble The Wire, the cult US TV show about crime in Baltimore. In a speech yesterday, Grayling said: "The Wire used to be just a work of fiction for British viewers. But under this Government, in many parts of British cities, The Wire has become a part of real life in this country too."

In his speech, Grayling cited an analysis carried out by the Conservatives, which according to their own press release, shows that "crime is now at its worst in Britain's poorest communities". The research, according to the press release, shows that "all of the top 20 most deprived areas in Britain are in the top 10 per cent for crime, and within individual local authorities the poorer parts are experiencing much more crime than the prosperous parts".

Inner city areas in the UK do have their problems - often serious problems - with crime and antisocial behaviour. But take a look at figures from Baltimore, where The Wire is set, and it is clear that the US city's problems are in a different league. Guardian blogger Misha Glenny points out that in 2008, 234 murders were recorded in inner city Baltimore, which has a population of roughly 630,000. England and Wales, with a population of more than 52 million, recorded 624 violent deaths in the year to March 2009, Glenny says. Baltimore, the blogger concludes, has just over 1 per cent of England and Wales' population, but over a third of the two country's murder rate. The BBC, meanwhile, points out that murder rates in Manchester and Liverpool are around a tenth of Baltimore's. And in London, with a population around 10 times higher than Baltimore's, there were 128 murders in the year to July 2009.

Meanwhile, Grayling's figures showing a link between disadvantage and high rates of crime will come as no surprise to regeneration practitioners. This correlation will have been clear from any of the last three versions of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation - it surprises me that the Conservative Party is portraying this as a new revelation.

Grayling may have succeeded in scoring a few cheap political points with his comments, but has missed an opportunity to sensibly discuss the link between deprivation and crime.

University challenge

Telecoms firm BT has closed its doors to university leavers by withdrawing its graduate recruitment scheme. This is significant news. If Britain’s ninth largest employer is barring entry to university graduates it is clear that the outlook for the thousands of young people finishing university this summer is far from rosy.

Tony Blair envisaged a Britain where one in two young people didn’t complete their education until they had a degree under their belt and recently Gordon Brown has come under fire for letting this ideal slide. Some commentators believe that the Government should magic up extra funding to pay for an increase in the number of sought-after university places. But is encouraging more young people to study increasingly worthless degrees and accumulate vast piles of debt really a sensible way forward? It might keep them out of the job market (and away from the unemployment statistics) for a few years but it’s debatable whether the investment will reap the rewards that a tertiary education used to bestow not so long ago.

The government recently launched a Backing Young Britain campaign in an attempt to avert the crisis of youth unemployment. It targets not just the growing number of unemployed graduates but all young jobseekers – whose numbers now reach 928,000, nearly one in five of all 16 to 24 year olds, according to the latest figures.  This campaign urges businesses to provide work experience, voluntary places, internships or work trials. But news concerning a forerunner to this campaign doesn’t augur well. In a scheme which sought to give work trials to the unemployed, only one in every 10,000 jobseekers allowance claimants actually participated in the scheme due in no small part to disinterest on the part of employers.

But even if a majority of firms get involved in these types of schemes there’s no guarantee of permanent paid employment when placements end – leaving the Government open to criticism that this campaign simply encourages employers to exploit young people by getting them to work for little or no pay with scant prospect of a proper job offered in return.

The focus in these debates too often examines the supply side but it’s no use upskilling young people – graduates or otherwise - if there are no jobs for them to take when they complete their college or work placements. Concentrating investment first and foremost on bolstering the UK’s beleagured manufacturing industry and nascent digital industries might make more sense.

Beanz Meanz Wigan 2

News reaches us today that Heinz has rejected calls for 'Made in Wigan' labels to be put on its baked bean tins.

Wigan's deputy council leader David Molyneux has been leading a campaign to lobby Heinz to print 'Made in Wigan, England' on its baked bean tins in a bid to gain global recognition for the town. 

Wigan's Kitt Green plant has been manufacturing beans for the past 50 years. But baked bean tins are currently stamped 'Made in Hayes, Middlesex', as the town - near Heathrow Airport - has a separate plant.

Bosses of the food giant said today that it would not go ahead with the plan due to financial constraints and a recent label change. A spokesman told Manchester Evening News: "We have taken a good look at changing our famous bean labels to include 'Made in Wigan'. But for now it is difficult to justify the cost of making a change to over 40 different sized and variety labels, particularly so soon after we updated the labels last year to say Heinz Beanz."

Molyneux told the newspaper he was "extremely disappointed". He added: "We've been the official baked bean capital for more than half a century."

But I would argue that this is a luck escape for Wigan. I stand by my comments last month, when I asked, does it really want to be know as the "baked bean capital of the world"?

Mistaken identity

News reaches us of a blunder from north of the border, where residents of the tiny lochside village of Tarbet in Argyll and Bute were surprised to hear last week that they had been allocated nearly £1 million from the Scottish Government’s new Town Centre Regeneration Fund.

At the time of the announcement, James Fisher of Tarbet’s community council, said the cash would make a “massive difference”. But he admitted he did not know that the village – on the shores of Loch Lomond (pictured) – was in the running for the cash.

It later emerged that the Scottish Government’s press release announcing the recipients of the cash should have said that Tarbert – a town on the edge of Loch Fyne – was the successful applicant. (For a map showing the different locations of the two towns, click here). A Scottish Government spokesman admitted: “There was a mistake in the typing of the release.”

The Scottish Government should at least be thankful that it didn’t get as far as actually sending the cash to the wrong place. That’s what happened last February when the Department for Communities and Local Government overpaid Staffordshire market town Newcastle-under-Lyme £2 million of grants after mixing it up with the much larger Newcastle upon Tyne.

DCLG officials confused Tyne with Lyme as they calculated the amounts to be refunded under the Local Authority Business Growth Incentive (Labgi) scheme.

The new age of the train?

BEN COOK writes: So the Government has announced plans for a new 250 mph high speed rail link to replace domestic short haul flights, but what are the chances of these plans being implemented?

Very little, I fear. Any move to cut train journey times across the UK – as well as drastically reducing harmful carbon emissions caused by the over use of air travel – is to be welcomed. But the prospects of the Government fulfilling this promise are limited.

The public finances are in such a mess that the Department for Transport may be forced to pull the plug on a number of proposed schemes, including the much-vaunted Crossrail, so the prospect of the fledgling idea of a high speed rail link gaining momentum are, I would suggest, rather fanciful.

Only last week it was reported that the Department for Transport is set to cut its proposed spending by a third over the next decade – if true, several major transport projects could end up being shelved.

While the idea of a high speed rail link is an excellent one, the nagging feeling that this is merely an example of shameless government electioneering in the build up to a general election persists.



SAMANTHA THORP writes: Transport minister Lord Adonis has pledged to prioritise high speed rail travel in a bid to reduce our dependence on domestic and short-haul flights. In an interview with The Guardian he said it is “manifestly in the public interest” to replace short-haul aviation with a high-speed rail system that not only links our major conurbations, but also connects the UK to Europe.

The backlash from the airlines may have been predictable, but they are right to highlight the impracticalities of getting from many of Britain’s regions to European cities by train, even if billions were invested in high-speed rail links.

If the Government is genuinely serious about hitting the all powerful aviation industry where it hurts, better surely to first tackle the tax and pricing structure underpinning short-haul flights – that would be a simpler and more cost-effective way of curbing our appetite for cheap European flights.

And while a comprehensive high-speed rail network linking up the UK’s towns and cities is a utopian vision most in the regeneration sector would welcome, would it not make more sense to first invest in our existing rail infrastructure before we think about ploughing eyewatering sums into new headline-grabbing rail links?

The financial question marks looming over Crossrail that still threaten to derail one of the most significant transport projects and a failing franchise system, which saw the Government recently forced into taking over the East Coast mainline, are surely more pressing problems for Whitehall to consider before it starts contemplating making inroads into the supremacy of the budget airlines.

Johnson Vs Healey. Round 1

A war of words has broken out between Mayor of London Boris Johnson and housing minister John Healey. Johnson has accused Healey of “short changing” London by redirecting funds previously earmarked for expenditure on 100,000 poor quality social housing units across London to other regions. 

 

Such is his belief that London has lost out, Johnson has not only threatened legal action against the Government, but he has also asserted that he has the clout to reclaim the cash. To this end, Johnson has threatened to instruct the London branch of the Homes and Communities Agency, which he chairs, to channel funding back into London's affordable housing programme over 2009/10-2010/11. 

 

But Healey has also hit-back.  "There's no automatic claim as London might like to think it has to the lion's share of the funding,” he says. “I've made clear to the Mayor that London has to prove itself because I will be looking for those areas which will build the homes rapidly.”

Even the regions that stand accused of siphoning money away from London have piped up, with headlines in the local press in Plymouth reading: “Hands off our money”.

It's clear this will tussle be a interesting one to watch. After all, nobody wants to lose out on money they think it rightfully theirs. But, is Boris right to use his position with the HCA to win the fight?