The Mighty Fallen

There were a number of things I planned to blog about this evening:-

1. My sister and her limitless talent as an urban artist has once again caused some controversy following a newspaper article about her role teaching young people from sheffield how to "do graffiti". I think controversy is good when it comes to publicity, but I really do wish she would make more use of her free of charge PR guy brother before she jumps in with these wet behind the ears, out for a scoop journo's working the local rags (learn to take a hint sis).

2. The rugby team I play for each Saturday conceding its ninth consecutive defeat was also high on my list. The Didsbury 3rd team seem to be having less luck than a final destinaton movie, and I have sore shins.

3. The fact that I have become completely and utterly obsessed with this years X Factor, mostly because of our home girl from Blackburn Diana Vickers, but also because I simply love to watch the way they run things. The PR stunts, the media scandals, the emotive editing. They must be making a bloody fortune.

4. The entire staffteam of numpties who work at the Vodafone store on Market Street in Manchester. It seems a maximum IQ of 49 and a fancy hairdo are the only pre-requisites to employment there.

But then I watched The Fallen, a feature length docufilm that provides a candid and often brutal insight into the lives of the families who have been left behind following the deaths of their loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq. I could not help but feel a pang of dissapointment in myself for being so self concerned and ignorant, shouting insults at the X factor whilst kicking back and enjoying a few cheapo Asda beers and feeling sorry for my lightly bruised rugby shins whilst wondering whether my housemate Greg will notice that I nicked one of his Rocky Robins.

I know a lot of lads who are completely Army Barmy. They know that when they go into the theatre of conflict they are at risk of injury or death. Some enjoy the thrill, some just want to survive and come home. Yet there is an amount of the "it wont happen to me" ideology that exists amongst them. It was truly heart wrenching to delve into the lives of the surviving families and to see how they handle the flood of emotion that wells up within them when they talk of their fallen sons and daughters. This was a film that truly needed to be made. When we see the news of another soldier dead in Afghanistan, there is little we can do to relate or associate oursleves with their life. We often fail to realise or understand the enourmosity of their death. A name, a rank and regiment, their age, perhaps the name of their hometown. Then we close the page and go back to our spreadsheet or overpriced coffee.

What we dont see is the shot that enters through the side of the flack jacket, into the kidneys and up through the spine and into a lung. We dont see the desperate attempts of close friends to fashion a stretcher from combat jackets and branches. We dont see the team of medics battling on the Chinook elbow deep in blood to save a 19 year old life that they watch ebb away. We dont think about the mental trauma that being part of this brings to his fellow infantrymen. We dont think about how the family accept the news. We dont think about the empty bedroom their son wont come back to or how a widow comes to terms with sleeping alone in a double bed.

I am guilty of turning the page and moving on. Almost a year ago to the day I was in the front rank of the Duke of Lancasters Infantry Regiment parade on Rememberance Day. As we marched off the square following the service the hundreds of people in attendance began to applaud and cheer. It was at that point I realised that we turn the page not because we dont care, but because we simply struggle to relate and because we are pretty powerless to do much else.

So The Fallen was a very appropriate film, because it allows us to relate to the realities of what happens to the soldiers of the British Army and their families. The next time I see a story of another soldier dead in Afghanistan or Iraq I will certainly take a moment to reflect on just how lucky I am before going back to my spreadsheet.

The Mountain of Martin

At 4am this morning Barack Obama reached the summit of the proverbial mountain that represents the struggle that has befallen the black people of the United States throughout that countrys history.

This afternoon I crossed the road to visit the Urbis museum in Manchester to find a group of school children winding their way through an exhibition that tells the complex and violent story of the Black Panther movement of the years gone by. The lives of Malcom X, Martin Luther King, John and Edward Kennedy -all advocates of black rights in the United States - which were taken so violently and tragically can now be remembered as the true and real foundations for what has happened in the United States within the last 24 hours. In 1963 Martin Luther King conveyed his dream that his four little children would one day live in a world where they would be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. Today his only surviving daughter Bernice sat and wept as she saw elected the first black president of the United States.

It's not only the fact that Barack Obama is black that is important - that issue sits to serve as a contrast between the social constructs of modern america and the america of decades gone by - but it is the fact that he bears such inspiration, vigour, youthfulness, appeal and grit that matters the most. I will certainly be watching his progress with great interest. Well done the Democrats.

In other news, a 50 foot high effigy of Jonothan Ross and Russel Brand will be burned this weekend in response to their recent faux pas on BBC Radio 2, and here I am talking about civil rights and humanity in modern times.

God bless public transport

Manchester will soon have a referendum on whether to introduce a congestion charge for traffic coming into our fair city. I just spent 1 hour and 15 minutes on an early morning bus which brought me 6.8 miles into work on a road which seemed totally bare of cars. I would like to write more but I cant, because I'm late. God bless public transport.

The Bravery of Tom Buckley

3 years ago I had a phone call from my tearful and nervous mother, my little sister Sarah had been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, aged 18. After a fourth demand, a local GP had finally agreed to give my sister a blood test to try and explain her lethargy. A day later she was admitted to the Christie Hospital Young Oncology Unit as an inpatient, she would end up staying there for six months. This aggressive cancer of the blood had ridden my sister of her immune system and loomed ominously over her life. Having lost our Grandfather to Cancer just months before we were nervous about the prognosis. My sister, it seems, is a fighter (she obviously learned a lot from her brother) and she responded very well to her treatment with an attitude that would make Lance Armstrong proud. Today she is well on the road to recovery has become such an infamous street artist that she competes with Banksy. My sisters story however, is not the one I intend to tell today.

During that time at the Young Oncology Unit at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, we became involved with the people there. We ran fundraising campaigns and became friends with the nurses who cared so well for my sister. My sister established lasting friendships with the other young people on the ward, all members of families undergoing the turmoil that comes with addressing the mortality of a loved one, particularly at a young age. One such individual was a young man by the name of Tom Buckley. After four years of treatment, countless operations and a great deal of hope, he has this month been told that he has less than a year to live. So with one false knee and a declining level of health he has decided to complete the most difficult task he could think of and will walk from one coast of the UK to the other next month. All proceeds going to the Young Oncology Unit that has cared for him.


If you want to support Tom Buckley in achieveing his goal, go to:- http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.justgiving.com%2Fthebuckers&h=17fd8244b725e74945b655e27cc6b291

A humble homecoming!

About a month ago I had a meeting with the Events and PR manager for Manchester City Council. I had heard on the grapevine that the council were planning an Olympic homecoming celebration for the North West members of Team GB who performed so well this summer in Beijing. Having watched the Olympics with a great deal of pride for our athletes, I wanted to get involved in making this event a success. So, I offered to run a month long direct email campaign that would target 10,000 employees in the Manchester City Centre area. Since the event was to be at 6pm, they would make an ideal audience for the celebration, people being able join the festivities directly after work. This would normally cost several thousand pounds, but I convinced the company I work for that it was a public service and that we should do it for free.

My contact at the council loved the idea and could not thank us enough. She felt that she needed all the support she could get due to her limited budget and resources. We struck the deal and went to work. Two days later, whilst our programmers and designers were working on the first part of the campaign, I received a regretful call saying that unfortunately Manchester City Council would not be taking advantage of our services. It seems that the beurocratic machine of the public sector had once again ploughed progress to a stop. Our plan needed to be agreed by "the partners" of the event and it seemed someone thought they could handle it on their own.

I don't like to say "I told you so", but last night I wondered down to Albert Square in Manchester to watch the event and was quietly satisfied to see the area that easily held 9000 Glasgow Rangers fans earlier this year playing host to no more than 150 attendees of the Olympic Homecoming Ceremony, most of which were the families and friends of the athletes themselves.

Our athletes in Beijing did a fantastic job and their success deserves to be celebrated. This event could have been a huge success, yet the council chose to assume that people would turn out merely through word of mouth. The dissapointment on the faces of the athletes was obvious to see when they realised just how few had turned out and I felt like telling them that it is not apathy of the people of the North West that caused this but red tape, bad organisation and most importantly, a real lack of effective communication on behalf of Manchester City Council.

Keen teenagers, gruff passion and a personal appeal

On Sunday I was fortunate enough to be in the live audience for the Politics Show debate at the Labour Party Conference. John Prescott and Charles Clarke were the heavyweight (no pun intended) politicians on the panel, accompanied by Polly Toynbee from the Guardian, who - being a liberal - sat well and truly on the fence throughout the debate and did a good job of plugging her new book. Having spoken at length with the shows producer earlier in the week, he obviously saw fit to plonk this born and bred labourite in the back row in case I was in any danger of spouting left wing propoganda from the front row. I didn't get to heckle Charles Clarke for sounding like a Tory, but I was fortunate to be sat next to a proud dad who had driven his 16 year old daughter to Manchester from Northampton that morning to support her in her love of politics. After spending the last 3 years working with a mixture of dissassociated youths and angry-at-the-system prisoners it was hugely refreshing to speak to this passionate young woman who undoubtedly has a bright future ahead of her. It was also refreshing to watch John Prescott bare down on a Daily Mail journo in the front row (complete with flimsy flop haircut and rah rah rah accent) for mentioning the current employment situation. A quick rebuttal from good old John on 3 million unemployed under the tories seemed to do the trick. It's good to see a politician with some gruff passion, others might call it aggressive and uncouth, I call it ballsy and true. Maybe its just the way we do things in the North.

In other news, I must congratulate my friend Greg Holt. After three years of hard slog he has at last signed the lease on his first office/studio and will be tackling the TV industry head on as a camera operator/editor in the months and years to come under the banner of Bridgewater Media (if he hasnt changed his mind on the name yet). On a similar vane, I am hereby appealing for a new drinking buddy, applications on a postcard please.

Justice at its best?

As a young man in Blackburn I used to knock around with a lad called Anthony Rigby. As teenagers we rode our bikes to Darwen Tower. We went swimming together at the Disco night in the baths in Blackburn. Anthony helped me get my first ever kiss from a girl who bore the radiant smell of cigarettes and Lemon Hooch at the West End Community Centre.

On the morning of January 7 2002, aged 18, Anthony was shot in the back of the head in his own apartment. Four days later he died in hospital. Mark Harrington was the man responsible for the crime. He too was someone I was familiar with. I had asked him to join the college rugby team because we needed the players. Little did I know he had a long standing history of paranoid schizophrenia and the tendancy to be violent. Soon after my encounter with him he was expelled from college for intimidating fellow students. He was sectioned, then released, then he wrote a "death list" which featured several of my friends. Anthony was at the top. Luckily the police caught up with him before he could do any more damage.

Harrington was found guilty of manslaughter through diminished responsibility and was taken into custody indefinately. 6 years on, an old school friend informs me that Harrington will soon be back on our streets and I am struggling to understand the logic behind the decision to let this man walk free.

A man serving time for murder once told me that prison is "a university where you can get a degree in crime. Rehabilitation is a figment of the politicians' imagination". It worries me that such a short period of time may not be enough for someone who never showed any remorse for his actions. When teaching in the prison system I met two former soldiers who had both served three tours of Afghanistan before coming home and stealing a cab drivers car keys and putting them down a drain because of a discrepancy with the fare. They were both sentenced to two years in jail and were dishonorably discharged from the armed forces. I remember that they were frustrated at the length of their sentence in comparison to a sex offender who was sentenced to six months for indecently assaulting a child, and I agreed with them.

I have recieved comments on my previous blogs about making prison a more severe place to be. Im not sure whether I agree with that, but one thing is for sure, and its that a real and practical review needs to be made of the sentencing and parole policies in our justice system. I will be in the audience of the politics show this weekend in Manchester, maybe its one of the issues I will throw at the politicians while I am there.

Dr. Campbells Dead: Infrastructure breakdown, not financial neglect!

Dr. Derrick Campbell has taken a real slating in the press this week. The holder of a Phd in Theology and ordained minister suggested that the young black men of London are "being left to die" as a result of neglect on behalf of the government, namely through a lack of funding. Many have been quick to criticise government advisor Campbell, citing a cultural trend as opposed to a financial black hole as the main reason for the huge increase in knife and gun crime in our capital.

Dr. Campbells comment, arguably sensationalised and appropriately angled specifically to grab the attention of the right people, might just have gone a bit awry. Many have accused Cambell of reverse racism, arguing that their white middle class daughter who attends non government funded cross stitching classes chooses not to go out and stab her peers to death. Others have said that as a career academic, Campbell has only his knowledge of ancient theology to label himself an expert, and ancient theology has nothing to do with knife crime and turf wars. Having worked both in an academic environment as an educator, and as a youth worker in a social enterprise, I can readily see how Campbells claims can be disjointed with reality. However, I am willing to place some faith in what Campbell has to say.

The critics are right when they say that the issue of knife and gun crime in London is a social problem. However, without the right kind of financial investment and infrastructure to support it nothing is going to change. A problem exists, it needs to be solved. That is what Dr. Campbell was trying to say, and we cannot deny that it is the young black men of London who are dying in gang related turf wars in London.

The outcry that Dr. Campbell has instigated originates in the collective opinion of our society that everyone should have access to a good level of provision for their young people, not just the trouble makers in London.

Within the last ten years the rural county of Cumbria has seen over 90% of its government funded non-formal education budget dissappear. Only a very small number of struggling, independently funded projects exist, and they are not enough to cater for the needs of that community. As a result of this, the majority of young people strive to leave the county for employment and education when they turn sixteen. This in turn affects the productivity and success of local business. Cumbria was the first county in the UK to go into economic recession this century.

The kind of funding that is required to tackle the social problems that exist in London, Cumbria and in all of our towns and cities is increasingly hard to come by. Winning grant or bursary approved money either from the government or other public funds often requires the commerical approach that a company would take to win a new business contract. You have to compete. This means that the large charities and NGO's are utilising money that the smaller and highly valuable projects do not have the professional ability to compete for. Instead, they rely on freelance, profit making fundraising professionals who will often take up to 30% of the money they bring in, which for a local group in need of £10,000 for a summer recreation project is a hugely substantial amount. There is a similar issue with private sector investors who offer support to the third sector as part of their corporate responsibility initiatives. Very often they will only support highly recognised, highly exposed charities, again leaving the smaller organisations making their applications in vein. Some of our own research last year showed us that up to 80% of the finance that goes through a large charity is spent on administration and human resources, meaning that the cold hard cash the community based initiatives see is actually just a fraction of the beneficiary charity's turnover. There are new formats of NGO that can kerb this trend, the arrival of social enterprises and Community Interest Companies for example. However, the use of these business formats is not yet rife enough to make any real sociological difference.

Dr. Campbell has a point, the black men of London are being left to die. However, so are countless NGO's, and third sector projects around the UK. There is a vast amount of money available to these causes, yet we have still to find a way to administer that money in a fashion which is sustainable and progressive.

More Wiff Waff from the Flimsy Flop

Wiff Waff is coming home as Boris Johnson so gracefully puts it. Isn't it fantastic that he mocks the Olympic sport of Table Tennis with such haste. Hoorah for Boris, he's made a funny again. We have come to expect this ridiculousness from the wiffle haired flimsy flop. Yet what was more dissapointing to see at the Olympic handover press conference on Monday was our stern faced Prime Minister and Sebastien Coe standing by his side while they scoffed and laughed uncontrollably at every one of his ignoramus remarks.

Seriously, after all the work Seb Coe has put into bringing the Olympics to London in 2012, you would think he would expect a bit more seriousness from the newly elected Mayor of London. I don't consider myself to be a drama queen or an antagonist, but surely I cannot be the only one who was dissapointed and embarrassed to be represented by Boris Johnson when he walked out in front of a global audience at the Birds Nest in Beijing for the closing ceremony on Sunday looking as if he had just been in a bout with one of the Khazak wrestling team. He was slumped, his jacket was open, his suit hung like a tent, he walked with a dithering and hesitant gait that screamed "Nincompoop" to the world. Frankly, stood next to his fellow respresentatives from the IOC and China he looked pretty darned unfortunate.

We all like to laugh at Boris Johnson and his canny approach to politics, because we expect it from him and we can try to understand it. The rest of the world however must have raised a very big eyebrow when it encountered him this weekend, much to our detriment. Gordon Brown should have been the man to wave that flag in the Birds Nest, at least we could have trusted him to look smart.