As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune – starting with entertainment programmes Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television. That’s why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It’s why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it’s why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek “What IS this crap?”, we can all feel proud. That’s our crap, America. Ours. Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn – but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like – and many, many people do – but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he’d weep. Creatively they’re berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we’ll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions , pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It’s as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas. Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter – not to mention Guardian liveblogs – has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again. But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year’s final, 19.4 million people were watching ). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn’t hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see. For instance, we still don’t have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he’ll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you’ll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music. Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop – but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don’t Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated. And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn’t mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek “What IS this crap?” during that, it might be best to keep schtum. The X Factor Television Entertainment Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune – starting with entertainment programmes Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television. That’s why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It’s why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it’s why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek “What IS this crap?”, we can all feel proud. That’s our crap, America. Ours. Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn – but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like – and many, many people do – but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he’d weep. Creatively they’re berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we’ll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions , pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It’s as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas. Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter – not to mention Guardian liveblogs – has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again. But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year’s final, 19.4 million people were watching ). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn’t hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see. For instance, we still don’t have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he’ll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you’ll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music. Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop – but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don’t Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated. And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn’t mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek “What IS this crap?” during that, it might be best to keep schtum. The X Factor Television Entertainment Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune – starting with entertainment programmes Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television. That’s why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It’s why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it’s why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek “What IS this crap?”, we can all feel proud. That’s our crap, America. Ours. Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn – but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like – and many, many people do – but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he’d weep. Creatively they’re berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we’ll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions , pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It’s as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas. Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter – not to mention Guardian liveblogs – has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again. But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year’s final, 19.4 million people were watching ). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn’t hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see. For instance, we still don’t have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he’ll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you’ll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music. Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop – but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don’t Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated. And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn’t mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek “What IS this crap?” during that, it might be best to keep schtum. The X Factor Television Entertainment Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …As BBC director general Mark Thompson discusses cuts, this week we ask whether British TV is in rude health or in need of a prune – starting with entertainment programmes Entertainment programming makes up some of the most watched, most profitable, and at times most controversial television on British screens. Like them or not, our noisy, trashy, shiny-floored shows bring huge ratings and have helped transform Saturday night television. That’s why America bought Pop Idol and turned it into American Idol. It’s why America bought Strictly Come Dancing and turned it into Dancing with the Stars. And it’s why, later this year when millions of Americans turn to each other during US X Factor and shriek “What IS this crap?”, we can all feel proud. That’s our crap, America. Ours. Once we were content to spend our weekends watching Ted Rogers hand over boxes of steak knives to badly permed women from Runcorn – but no more. Now entertainment shows are all about size and spectacle. I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! is broadcast live from the other side of the world. The X Factor is like being punched in the face by an exploding petrol tanker for three months at a time. Question the content if you like – and many, many people do – but these shows are the Clifton suspension bridge of their days. If Brunel could see the engineering that goes into making them, he’d weep. Creatively they’re berserk, too. A woman who inspects poo for a living being trapped in a rat-filled coffin until she faints. Members of the public compete against a 4x4x4 metre Perspex cube. Soon we’ll be watching a show called Sing If You Can where, judging by the international versions , pop stars will belt out tunes while being mauled by a dog. It’s as if production companies have started to plunder avant garde foreign-language horror films for ideas. Of course, the internet has helped. Previously, Saturday evening telly was something you watched alone when everyone else was out having fun. But thanks to Twitter, the world has been transformed into one big living room, where people trade quips and make buzzer noises whenever a Take Me Out contestant drops below their desired level of acceptability. Twitter – not to mention Guardian liveblogs – has made entertainment TV a communal pursuit again. But there is a sense that we might be riding the crest of a particularly perilous wave. Every year The X Factor gets bigger, and every year its ratings swell to ever more ridiculous heights (at one point during last year’s final, 19.4 million people were watching ). But one day, maybe soon, The X Factor will inevitably go in to decline. Perhaps it will finally become too off-puttingly ridiculous for public consumption. Perhaps when the first episode of the next series is broadcast, ITV will realise that it still hasn’t hired any judges. But it will happen. And when it does, the flaws in our entertainment television will be exposed for all to see. For instance, we still don’t have a definitive chatshow. Product-plugging celebrities currently only have the choice of Piers Morgan (unappealing because he’ll make you cry), Top Gear (unappealing because Jeremy Clarkson will berate you for owning a Nissan Sunny once), Graham Norton (unappealing because you’ll just sit quietly for the whole show while he giggles at cat videos on the internet), Alan Carr (unappealing because it takes place in a room that looks like it was used to host wife-swapping parties in the 1970s) and The One Show (unappealing). The UK sorely needs a Letterman-style nightly talkshow that mixes comedy, guests and music. Also, there are a fair few horrors among the hits. Channel 4, for instance, might be the home of The Million Pound Drop – but then it also broadcast the risible Famous and Fearless, a show that assumed that people wanted to see Rufus Hound cycle around a convention centre. While Sky1 has Got To Dance, the nightmare that was Don’t Forget the Lyrics! should never be repeated. And just because we can sell international rights to everything we make, it doesn’t mean we should. America will soon be confronted with 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow, a remake of a tedious BBC1 misfire from last summer. If any Americans happen to shriek “What IS this crap?” during that, it might be best to keep schtum. The X Factor Television Entertainment Stuart Heritage guardian.co.uk
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• Chief executive blames ‘fragile consumer sentiment’ • UK demand lagging European neighbours • Tour operator cutting capacity • £20m bill from Middle Eastern unrest Demand for foreign holidays has fallen sharply in the UK in recent months as weak consumer confidence continues to bite, Thomas Cook warned on Tuesday. The holiday group said that Britain was lagging behind other European countries, with the rate of bookings for summer trips “slowing noticeably” in the UK this year. This has forced Thomas Cook to cut the number of holidays it offers UK customers. “Summer holiday bookings are ahead of last year across most segments, with particularly strong growth in our German tour operator and airline, as well as in northern Europe,” said chief executive Manny Fontenla-Novoa. “It is a weaker picture in the UK where recent trading has also been affected by fragile consumer sentiment. In response, we have taken a more prudent approach to capacity.” Although the UK recession officially ended more than a year ago, consumer confidence has slumped to its lowest level in nearly two years – due in part to growing inflationary pressures and austerity cutbacks. Economists have warned that this means many “big ticket” purchases are being shelved. Thomas Cook reported on Tuesday that it has sold just 1% more holidays for summer 2011 to UK customers than at the same stage a year ago. On 8 February it told the City that bookings were 6% higher than in 2010, indicating a sales slowdown during the last two months. This followed a 5% drop in cumulative bookings from the UK for winter breaks. Trading is stronger in central Europe. Sales to Germany, Austria and Switzerland are 4% higher than a year ago. In northern Europe, including Sweden, sales of summer holidays are 11% higher. The ongoing unrest in the Middle East has also caused disruption for Thomas Cook and left it with a £20m bill . It spent £5m repatriating holidaymakers early, and also lost another £15m of potential profits due to travel restrictions. A total of 150,000 holidays to Egypt and Tunisia were cancelled. Most restrictions on flights from Europe to the Middle East and North Africa have now been lifted, and Thomas Cook reported that hoteliers are offering “attractive discounts to rebuild confidence in the area”. Thomas Cook Travel & leisure Arab and Middle East unrest Consumer spending Economics Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
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• Target to inspire one million adults will be dropped • Olympics secretary signifies strategy shift for Sport England The government is preparing to turn its back on one of the key legacy aims for the 2012 Olympics – the pledge to inspire one million adults to play more sport. It is understood that key participation targets bequeathed by the previous administration, towards which only negligible progress has been made, will be dropped. Jeremy Hunt, the Olympics secretary, has also indicated a significant strategy shift for Sport England, the grassroots funding agency that will merge with elite funding body UK Sport after the Games. Both have had their funding protected through to 2015, thanks to a change in the way Lottery income will be distributed. But Hunt indicated that from 2013, Sport England would concentrate its strategy on school-leavers and young adults. “I do think it’s reasonable to ask whether, with resources as constrained as they are, if it’s an appropriate use of taxpayers money to be focusing on adult participation when really what we want is to be getting young people into a habit for life,” he said. “We are looking very closely at whether we should target our resources more effectively in that respect. That would be a very significant shift that we’re actively talking to them about.” Through the shift, it is hoped that older teenagers and those in their early twenties will get into the habit of playing sport and it will ultimately drive up adult participation figures in a more effective manner. A total of £480m is invested through governing bodies under the current Whole Sport Plan to 2013, but it remains to be seen whether that total is maintained in the next four-year cycle. Shortly after London won the right to host the 2012 Olympics, Labour pledged to use the power of the Games to inspire a million more people to play sport three or more times a week. A second pledge, to be delivered through the Department of Health, promised to get a million more people doing more general physical activity, a broader definition that included decorating and gardening. In an interview with the Guardian, Hunt confirmed the second target had been quietly dropped shortly after the coalition government came to power. The first target, towards which the sports have made only glacial progress, nominally remains in place for now but it is understood that it too will shortly be dropped in favour of a “more meaningful” national measure. It is likely to be designed to keep up the pressure on governing bodies to improve participation figures ahead of 2012, while also preparing the ground for the shift in strategy after the Games. “It’s pretty hard to justify, in the current environment, Sport England funding office workers to try and encourage them to go to the gym more often. I’d rather encourage young people to get into sport for life,” Hunt said. He said some studies showed the number of children playing sport dropped by two-thirds when they left school. The new School Games should provide a framework for “much closer links” between schools and governing bodies, he said. Figures published last week by Sport England showed barely any progress was being made towards the target of 7.815m people playing sport three or more times a week by 2012-13. Its latest quarterly Active People survey showed the figure stood at 6.881m, only a marginal increase on the 2007/08 baseline of 6.815m. Over the four-year period football gets more than £25m, tennis more than £26m, cricket more than £38m, badminton more than £20m, rugby union more than £31m and rugby league more than £29m. Sport England has been forced to warn sports that their funding could be cut if their participation figures don’t improve. The government is believed to be keen to ensure that the shift in strategy doesn’t let governing bodies off the hook. A total of 17 sports have seen a decrease in the number of people participating once a week since 2007/08, while just four (athletics, mountaineering, netball and table tennis) have recorded an increase. Basketball England this week became the first governing body to suffer a cut in funding. It was docked £1.2m as Sport England attempts to get tough over the issue. Meanwhile, the sports minister Hugh Robertson will meet British Olympic Association chairman Lord Moynihan on Tuesday in a bid to find a solution to its ongoing contract dispute with the London Organising Committee over any potential surplus from the 2012 Games. The embarrassing dispute, which the BOA is taking to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, comes as the International Olympic Committee’s inspectors arrive in London to check on progress. The BOA insists that the Olympics would yield a substantial surplus of up to £400m if all costs associated with the Paralympics were stripped out. But Locog believes the two events are part of an integrated whole and have budgeted to break even. The government, who believe they have first call on the first £63m of hypothetical surplus in any case, and the IOC back Locog’s view. Moynihan will meet with Robertson, who has been trying to mediate between the two sides, ahead of a meeting of all the Olympic sports represented by the BOA. “Good progress was made over the weekend and at our request the government has agreed a meeting to discuss an amicable resolution to the current contractual dispute,” said Moynihan at a press conference to unveil a cast of British Olympic legends who will provide motivational, practical and fund raising support to Team GB. Olympic Games 2012 Jeremy Hunt Owen Gibson guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Elizabeth Taylor is famed for becoming a bride eight times over, but more than 60 love letters reveal a romance that predated all of those: Unpublished letters written by a 17-year-old Taylor to her first fiance will be auctioned in May. The young starlet wrote to William Pawley on pale…
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Royal to endure temperatures down to -45°C, sleep on the ice and drag a 100kg sled on trek for charity Prince Harry is en route to the Arctic where he will join a group of wounded servicemen in training before taking part in the first five days of a trek to the north pole. The 26-year-old is expected to play a full part in the team’s final preparation for the expedition, including sleeping out on the ice, dragging a 100kg (220lb) sled, and attending daily briefings. He is patron of the Walking with the Wounded charity, which is aiming to raise £2m from this unaided trek to help other injured service personnel find work, peace of mind and security. Harry will meet up with the team of four injured soldiers, two charity founders and a polar guide in Longyearbyen in Norway, which is considered the best place to train for treks to the magnetic north. With temperatures set to plummet to -45°C the third in line to the throne will endure extreme conditions in one of the world’s most inhospitable regions. On Friday, after completing an intensive course of training on the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago, the prince will fly with the team to the Borneo ice airfield, where he will spend five days with the men on their 200-mile (320km) challenge. All four servicemen sustained their injuries fighting in Afghanistan. Captain Martin Hewitt was left with a paralysed right arm after being shot, while Captain Guy Disney had his right leg amputated below the knee after he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Private Jaco Van Gass had his left arm amputated and was left with significant tissue loss to his left leg when he too was hit by an RPG and Sergeant Stephen Young suffered a broken back after his vehicle was blown up by an improvised explosive device. They will be joined by Simon Dalglish and Ed Parker, who co-founded Walking with the Wounded, and Inge Solheim, a polar guide. Each team member will haul a sled, known as a pulk, which weighs around 100kg and is packed with everything they will need on the trip, including 40kg (88lb) of food, clothing and personal kit, a share of the cooking equipment, fuel for their stoves, tents and communications equipment. Prince Harry Monarchy Military Charities Voluntary sector Arctic guardian.co.uk
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• North-east Essex seaside resort tops deprivation table • Jaywick Sands belies north-south divide Neil Stock swings his Jaguar into the car park by the sandy south-facing beach and, with the sun beating down on what at first glance could be a bohemian seaside community, says: “It’s embarrassing isn’t it? We’re only 60 miles from London, in the affluent south-east and here we are in the most deprived place in the country.” Jaywick, a ward of Tendring district council in north-east Essex, has earned the unhappy distinction of being placed first in the dauntingly named Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2010. Using statistics for income, employment, health, disability, crime and living standards, the government report ranks 32,482 neighbourhoods by local authority area according to where they stand in a national poverty league table. At the opposite end of the scale, the Hertfordshire suburb of Chorleywood, where houses cost 30 times as much as property in Jaywick, is named least deprived. With its magnificent miles of golden sand it’s hard to imagine how Jaywick stumbled first on hard times and then disappeared into the abyss. Its chalets along the shoreline look satisfyingly weather-beaten, painted in bleached pastel shades. But take a few steps inland and gaps appear like missing teeth in a smiling face. In the Brookslands estate, the Mermaid Tavern has been torched and left as a blackened shell, as have numerous houses. Nearby, not a single shop remains open for business – even the whelks and jellied eels store on the promenade which used to cater for the summer day-trippers has gone. The locals are happy enough to talk but don’t want to give their names, “in case we get our windows put in”. Stock, the Conservative leader of the council, which is run from the town hall in neighbouring Clacton-on-Sea, looks somewhat out of place. “It is depressing being number one, because we do take this issue very seriously. It’s a problem beyond the scope of a district council. We need national and European intervention.” So how did Jaywick – or more specifically the Brooklands estate – get here, having overtaken Breckfield in Anfield, Liverpool? Despite its problems, Jaywick still possesses character. It’s the largest surviving example of the “plotlands” movement of the 1920s and 1930s, when land was sold off in little strips, usually to city dwellers longing for a piece of paradise. Jaywick Sands was built in 1928 as a resort by Fabian property developer Frank Stedman. He marketed them as “chalets” but people lived in their two-bedroom bungalows all year round. One local recalled his father had bought the house off-plan at an exhibition in London. After the second world war most plotlands were bulldozed but the Jaywick residents hung on, even going to court in 1970 and succeeded in preserving it. There is a proud tradition of self-reliance. But the area is relatively isolated and the properties have deteriorated. A total of 62% of working age residents receive benefits, compared with the national average of 15%. It is in a high-risk flood zone. Many of the roads are not maintained by the council and are narrow dirt tracks. Mains sewerage did not arrive until the 1980s and in some areas street lighting and pavements have never been installed. “Eight years ago Jaywick had the highest rate of outright property ownership in the area but that has gone into reverse,” said Stock. Four fifths of the housing stock is rented, with ownership concentrated in the hands of “one or two landlords” who rent out to housing benefit claimants. “The going rate is £450 a month for a two-bedroom house, which these qualify as. Because of their state of deterioration there’s no deposit required, so we are attracting people from miles away to live here,” he said. Those incomers aren’t necessarily what an old community like Jaywick needs. Anne Dewart moved here in the 1970s, paying £15,000 for her house. She wanted to escape London and found a job in a local factory making waxed-cotton jackets. “But when that closed down you had to go to Colchester to find work, which a lot of people didn’t want to do or couldn’t,” she said. “It’s like most places in that you get your good and you get your bad. But in every one of these streets there will be one person who thinks they own the road. “And for that reason a lot of the houses were going up in flames. The attitude was ‘If the police won’t do anything about it, we will’. But it does seem to have calmed down. The kids are destructive but to be honest there’s nothing for them to do and they get bored.” Anne strokes her Alsation pet dog ‘Fella’. “That’s why I’ve got him. Mind you, he was stolen from me as a puppy. The police knew which drug-dealer took him but they wouldn’t do anything. I only got him back because someone went round and said ‘Give him back or your legs’ll get broken’ and miraculously the next morning Fella reappeared. “I had a stone bench stolen from outside the house and nobody saw a thing, funny that.” Stock says it’s a housing problem. “The Guinness Trust came in and built some lovely new houses on the edge of the estate. “But as soon as they’d decanted families into the new homes the old ones filled up. I’m afraid the old ones have to be pulled down as they become vacant.” Communities Essex Local government United Kingdom Europe Poverty Social exclusion Social trends Unemployment Disability Health David Sharrock guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …President Obama made his case for the American intervention in Libya tonight at the National Defense University, reports Politico, citing the perfect storm of international support, Libyan rebels’ pleas, the United States’ ability to avoid committing ground troops—and its obligation to prevent genocide. Some highlights: On his decision: Obama…
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