“A perfect storm.” That’s how Laura Chalmers, Yorkshire regional director of the Trussell Trust, who run 29 foodbanks in the county, describes the situation in Yorkshire. According to a study carried out on the 28 March by the Food Foundation, 12 per cent of people nationally are feeding families by breaking the lockdown to go […]
A toddler from West Yorkshire was left in intensive after being diagnosed with Kawasaki disease. This followed her apparent recent recovery from Covid-19, which she contracted five weeks ago. Scarlett Roberts, from Wakefield, was admitted to Pinderfields hospital with a high temperature and nausea and then transferred to an intensive care unit at Leeds Children’s […]
Last Wednesday an amendment to the Agriculture Bill came before MPs. It would have prevented the government agreeing any free trade deal that allowed the import of lower-quality agricultural and food products into this country. Amazingly, the amendment was defeated by 328 to 277. Some 19 MPs from the Yorkshire and the Humber region, all […]
“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. It’s the voice of people who aren’t listened to,” said street artist Banksy in 2001. In his book Banging Your Head Against a Brik Wall Banksy encapsulates what it means to empower people through street art. Now, almost two decades on […]
Wednesday 13th May 2020; it was my mum’s funeral today. Nine people were allowed to attend. She died of Covid-19 one month ago in her care home in Wakefield; she was 93 years old. Don’t tell me “she’s done well”; don’t say “she’s had a good innings”. I do not want to hear that! Two […]
With the Covid-19 virus leading universities to shut their doors and move teaching online, many students worry about the impact on their grades of not having face-to-face contact with their lecturers. The week the government announced lockdown, the universities of Liverpool and Sheffield announced a ‘safety net’. The University of Leeds followed one month later […]
The prime minister does not speak for ordinary Conservatives 12 September Dear editor, I am deeply concerned by the government’s plan to break promises made in the Withdrawal Agreement; an international treaty signed less than a year ago. The Northern Ireland secretary admitted this would break international law. The internal markets bill would renege on […]
Do you get those ‘Rediscover your day’ photo alerts on your phone? The other week I had one for an event I’d attended just over a year ago in Pontefract, in those ‘carefree’ days of March 2019, where a cookery book was awarded a blue plaque. It was unveiled by local MP, Yvette Cooper. ‘English […]
Covid-19 doesn’t have to infect you to affect you. As the side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic begin to manifest themselves in the form of anxiety and stress, recognition is growing of the toll this is taking, particularly on key workers. Organisations in the NHS, public health and the third sector – that reeled like […]
Improvisation has replaced ritual for those whose job is to help us at times of grief. Locked down, we are robbed of our perspective. Some things become invisible. A few days ago outside a funeral directors in Wakefield, there was a sparse gathering, mainly dressed in black. They loitered: maintaining social distance, but unsure; their awkward body language […]
Charlie McCarthy argues a citizens’ assembly for Yorkshire would help revitalise and level up the region as we emerge from the coronavirus lockdown. Brexit has already cost the UK economy £130 billion, shrinking three per cent since the referendum. Putting this into figures we can more easily relate to: EU membership cost 34p per person […]
How Seacroft’s Shopping Forecast is helping locals get their daily bread. Tesco Extra has plenty of everything today. Except flour. How do we know this? Because every day, Elliott Moon from East Leeds FM’s Keeping a Distance, Staying Close programme asks locals to text and phone in while they’re shopping. In fact, the other day, […]
Universal Basic Income. At last year’s G8 summit, those three words were the big story. They came from UBI proponent Rutger Bregman, whose Taxes! Taxes! Taxes! speech was all over social media. UBI is a simple idea. You address inequality and poverty by giving every adult free money, with no conditions. That’s it. Coronavirus has brought UBI […]
Lockdown. 2020’s word of the year. The word that sent us into a toilet-roll stockpiling frenzy. The word which has brought the entire world to a standstill (apart, it would seem, from football in Belarus). Lockdown, which began the week before the first national organising training of Green New Deal UK. One might expect a […]
“Individually we are one drop, together we are an ocean!” Ryunosuke Satoro (Japanese poet) What a strange Easter weekend we’ve all had. With everything that’s happening in the world today, it would be all too easy to focus on the constant stream of tragic stories, negativity and division. We could spend each day reporting our […]
It is difficult, at this stage, to get a handle on how much the COVID-19 pandemic might actually cost us. We face, what could possibly morph into, the worst recession since the Second World War. The lockdown is leading to a fall in the UK’s economic output of approximately 31 per cent according to the […]
Yorkshire faces up to three winters in a row I always enjoyed history lessons at school. One of the lessons that made the greatest impression on me was the struggle farmers faced throughout history to gather enough harvest and make it last through to have enough to start again the following spring. Winters were lean […]
This is the fourth week of the national lockdown. These are unusual times, desperately sad for those who have lost loved ones. However, our circumstances give us many opportunities to think about what kind of future we want to build out of the ashes of the past. As I write on the morning of 1 […]
The importance of freedom of movement for working musicians 3 chords and the truth. According to music legend, that’s all you needed. For Huddersfield Alt-folk artist Johnny Campbell, it’s held true for the last seven years as a pro musician. Touring on trains and coaches all over Europe and the USA, guitar in one hand, rucksack of […]
Nigel Adams told his constituents the EU was responsible for a policy his own government supported and voted for. Adams, Conservative MP for Selby & Ainsty and now Minister of State at the Foreign Office, is the epitome of those MPs able to face several different ways at once, certainly as far as EU law […]