General News

Devastated

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Tower Bridge

I’m writing this on the morning that a majority of British voters chose to leave the EU. Having stated my position as ‘remain’ and voted that way (as did Christine), I’m devastated to say the least, and terrified of what happens next.

It’s worth bearing in mind that I’m writing this having been awake since 3am, five days into a six day working week.

I’m feeling similar thoughts to 2011, when we as a country rejected a change to our voting system. I backed the change to AV, but a majority preferred to stick with the existing first-past-the-post system. But at least that was maintaining a ‘status quo’ – with the EU referendum, I fear the choices were ‘the same’ and ‘worse’, and not ‘the same’ and ‘better’.

And it’s bringing back memories of 2015, when the Conservatives unexpectedly won a majority in the General Election, and 2004, when George W Bush was re-elected as President of the USA.

What will take place over the coming days, weeks and months remains to be seen. The referendum result is not legally binding, and so the government and/or Parliament could choose to ignore it. I think one of the two following scenarios will play out.

Scenario 1: We leave the EU

The key thing to watch out for is invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. This is like giving notice on your job – it tells the rest of the EU nations that we will leave, and gives us two years to sort things out. At the end of that two year period, we will cease to be an EU member state, unless we can get every other EU member state to agree to stop the process, or grant us an extension.

I don’t expect Article 50 to be invoked straight-away, because two years isn’t very long to unpick all of the legislation linked to Europe and implement new trade deals with every other country in the world. I’ve heard that those leading the leave campaign want to wait until 2018, with the aim of completing the Article 50 process by 2020, when the next general election is due to take place.

Whilst I think we will lose out by leaving the EU, I expect any changes to be slow – although the biggest ever fall in the value of the pound may imply that things are about to get very hairy very quickly (and probably wipe out any savings from leaving the EU). In any case, I expect many of those who voted to leave will be disappointed that leaving the EU won’t bring about the massive changes that they expect. A major claim by Vote Leave was that the £350 million that we spend each week on EU membership (which is actually much less thanks to a rebate) could be spent on the NHS, but within hours of the result Nigel Farage has said that’s unlikely.

My big worry is therefore that ‘leave’ voters will feel massively let down and disenfranchised by the whole thing – leaving the EU won’t have been the panacea promised, and their trust in the political system will disappear.

A majority of Scottish and Northern Irish voters chose to remain, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a second referendum on Scottish independence in the coming years. I was neutral on the previous referendum, but I’d be very understanding if Scotland voted to go independent to re-join the EU as a new member state. As for Northern Ireland, I fear that the years of calm since the Troubles subsided could be over, especially as the Republic of Ireland remains an EU member state.

Scenario 2: The referendum result is ignored

Because the referendum isn’t legally binding, the government and/or Parliament may choose to ignore it, and not invoke Article 50. Whether this happens now, or in a couple of years when people realise what a mess we’ve got ourselves into, remains to be seen. I would naturally prefer this to happen, seeing as how 16 million British voters wanted to remain in the EU, but it is also not without caveats.

Those who voted leave will, understandably, be annoyed, and will feel massively let down and disenfranchised by the whole thing. I know, I’m repeating myself, but I genuinely think a lot of good, honest people, were convinced to vote leave on the basis of lies and false promises. But what makes this worse than the scenario above, is that these voters will struggle to find any political parties to turn to. After all, out of the 7 major British parties – Conservatives, Labour, Scottish National Party, Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, Green Party and UK Independence Party – only the latter officially supported leaving with minorities of the largest two. Of course, that assumes that this won’t result in parties splitting apart – and neither Labour or the Conservatives are particularly united at the moment.

The big issue is that no-one knows what’ll happen

What scares me most about the whole thing is all of the uncertainty. Staying in the EU would have, for the most part, been business as usual. But by voting to leave, we’ve opened a massive Pandora’s Box, and who knows what we’ll find.

I really hope that my worst fears are not realised. If they are, then at least I’ll be able to tell my daughter that I voted for what I thought was the right thing. And I apologise now if, in the coming months and years, I keep saying ‘I told you so’.

I’m voting Remain

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Tomorrow, the electorate of the United Kingdom goes to the polls for a referendum, where we’ll be asked whether we want to vote to remain a European Union member state, or leave.

I’m voting ‘Remain’, and this has always been my intention. I think we have far too much to lose by leaving, and precious little to gain. But I’m also voting for various friends and colleagues of mine, who are EU nationals living here in the UK, and who would face a potentially uncertain future if we leave.

I could spend hours going through exactly why I’m voting the way I am and why a vote to leave would be potentially catastrophic, but ultimately it comes down to ensuring that people who matter to me have a future in this country.

If you’re undecided about how you’ll vote, I’d suggest sticking with the status quo, and choosing Remain. If we leave the EU, then we may never be able to return. If we stay and things get worse, then another referendum could be called. The EU is not perfect, but I hope that by staying, we can influence it, rather than grumbling from the sidelines.

The polls are open from 7am until 10pm tomorrow – make sure you use your vote.

Tell me why, I don’t like Mondays

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Does anyone remember a channel called Sky Travel? It was a satellite TV channel in Britain that showed various documentaries and advertisements for travel destinations, which ran between 1994 and 2010.

Why am I mentioning this? Around 10 years ago, Sky Travel commissioned a dubious piece of ‘research’ to find ‘the most depressing day of the year’. Which turns out to be the third Monday of January, and that’s today. It’s been called ‘Blue Monday‘. Ben Goldacre calls it ‘churnalism’.

Note, this blog post used to be longer, but the original version was lost and isn’t in the Web Archive.

Flooding in Sowerby Bridge

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Yesterday, saw some of the worst flooding in living memory in our home town of Sowerby Bridge. This report from the BBC shows some photos, and the Sowerby Bridge photo is taken from the flats in which Christine and I lived in until we moved in September. We lived in a third-floor flat, and so we would not have been directly affected, but the plant room for the apartments was flooded and that might’ve knocked out our electrical supply. The car park was almost completely submerged as well, so if our car had been parked there it would have almost certainly been written-off, as it would have been inundated by the flood waters.
Fortunately, our new home is on significantly higher ground and so isn’t at risk of flooding.

The main roads in and out of the town were blocked due to the flood waters, and so we had to drive along the back roads to get out. And although the rain has now stopped, I expect it’ll be some time today before the water recedes. There will be many people whose homes will have been flooded, and some businesses will have a race against time to re-open for the new year.

Elsewhere, Hebden Bridge has been badly hit again, after sustaining devastating floods in the summer of 2012. It’s going to be a grim new year for many in the Calder Valley.

You can donate to the Calder Valley relief fund here.

No, Bradford is not the worst place to live in the UK

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Bradford Town Hall

Yesterday’s newspapers covered the results of a ‘quality of life’ survey that stated that Edinburgh is the best place to live in the UK, and Bradford is the worst. Whilst I’ll agree that Edinburgh is a wonderful (if expensive) city, there is no way that Bradford is the worst place in the UK. And I’m speaking as a former Bradford resident who still works there and travels to the city at least five days a week.

The survey came from a press release put out by uSwitch.com. uSwitch is not a thinktank, local authority or university, or indeed any kind of organisation involved in research. It’s actually a price comparison web site, designed to help you find cheaper deals on phone, internet and energy contracts. So clearly, this ‘survey’ is about getting publicity and press coverage, rather than a serious piece of research.

Bradford is apparently “let down by low disposable income, low employment, high rent and crowded schools”, according to the press release. There are issues with schools in Bradford – as someone who works in education, I’m very much aware of this. But I dispute the high rent claims. uSwitch claims that average rents are £92.60 per week, but a few minutes on Rightmove showed a wide range of properties for less than half of this.

Whilst disposable incomes may be low, so is the cost of living – food is cheap, as is public transport.

Next month sees the long-awaited opening of Westfield’s Broadway shopping centre, which will bring hundreds of new jobs to the city. So hopefully the unemployment rate in the area will continue to fall as it has been doing recently.

In 2007, Bradford was named Britain’s greenest city and is home to several large public parks, including the award-winning Lister Park, Horton Park, Peel Park and the new City Park in the city centre. You can get out into the countryside quite quickly, unlike in many other cities. And my employer, the University of Bradford, recently won a Green Flag award for its campus.

Just this week, Bradford was named Curry Capital of Britain for a record fifth year in a row.

Hull also did poorly in the ‘survey’, coming second from bottom. This is despite it being named City of Culture 2017.

In essence though, is there really anything to be gained from highlighting the ‘worst’ cities in the UK? Sure, it gets a bit of publicity for the company releasing the survey. But it then leaves those cities and its employers and representatives with the job of mopping up the damage to their reputation. It’s rather mean of companies like uSwitch to publish these ‘surveys’, especially when they don’t seem to understand the implications for the cities named.

In any case, the ‘best’ or ‘worst’ city to live in depends on a lot of factors, some of which will be unique to each person. Given the choice between Bradford, and, say Bracknell in Berkshire, I’d happily choose Bradford. But there are also places like Sowerby Bridge, where I now live, that now meet my needs better than Bradford does. A survey based on a few generalised measurements isn’t actually all that helpful.

Le Tour de France comes to Yorkshire

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Penny Farthing

Tomorrow is the Grand Départ of this year’s Tour de France cycle race – probably the world’s best known cycling event – and it’s taking place in Yorkshire. Although it’s a French race, with most of the stages taking place in France, the first stages are sometimes held in other countries. The local tourist board, Welcome to Yorkshire, put in a successful bid to host the first stage, beating other bids. The first two days, Saturday and Sunday, are in Yorkshire, and a third day will see riders bike from Cambridge into London.

The Grand Départ – the start of the first stage of the race – is in central Leeds on Saturday. Initially heading to Harewood House and Otley, the riders will then cycle up the Wharfe Valley up to Skipton, then through Grassington and across the Yorkshire Dales National Park to Hawes (home of Wensleydale Cheese), around to Leyburn, on to Masham (home of the Black Sheep and Theakstons breweries), around the Ripon bypass, and ending up on The Stray in Harrogate. The teams will move overnight to York.

On day two, they will start from the Knavesmire, home of York Racecourse, and head back through the centre of Harrogate before passing through the amusingly named village of Blubberhouses. They will drop down into the Aire Valley to pass through Addingham and Silsden, and onwards to Keighley, before following the Worth Valley to Haworth, home of the Brontë sisters. They will then climb up onto Oxenhope Moor, drop down into the Calder Valley at Hebden Bridge, and then ride up again along Cragg Vale. A sharp left turn will bring them down into the Ryburn Valley at Ripponden, just down the road from where I live in Sowerby Bridge, before again going back up on the moors to cross over to Elland. They will pass under the M62 and go through Huddersfield, and onwards to Holmfirth, where Last of the Summer Wine is set, and then to Woodhead Reservoir on the Yorkshire-Greater Manchester border. Entering South Yorkshire, the riders will then make their way to the end of the stage in Sheffield, near the Don Valley Stadium.

Unlike when London hosted the Olympics in 2012, there hasn’t been much controversy about hosting the Tour de France. This is probably because hosting the Tour de France will cost a few tens of millions, rather than billions of pounds, and the expected economic gain from increased tourism during and after the event is likely to be four times more than the cost. The main controversial issue has been the necessary road closures, but at least these are just for two days and not for several years.

And the event has enjoyed great community support. Most of the shops on the high street in Sowerby Bridge (which isn’t actually on the route) have yellow bikes in their displays, and this is a trend repeated across the county, especially in towns on the route. Various arrangements have been made to transport spectators where the roads are shut, including a 50% increase in train capacity, and high numbers of visitors are expected.

Normally I’m not interested in sport but I’m looking forward to the Tour de France this year, if only to see the places I recognise on TV. Yorkshire is home to some wonderful countryside and it’ll be great to see it broadcasted to the world. Of course, it being Yorkshire, it’ll probably rain this weekend, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed for nice weather.

Save The New Bradford Playhouse

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It seems like Bradford can’t go any length of time without its cultural institutions being threatened with closure. There’s the long-running saga of the old Odeon cinema, now subject to two rival regeneration plans, last year’s threat to close the National Media Museum, and now The New Bradford Playhouse is at risk.

The Playhouse has had something a troubled history. I first became aware of it as The Priestley Theatre, which had recently re-opened following a fire and subsequent extensive refurbishment. That closed down and a few years later was reborn as the Bradford Playhouse, but that too failed financially.

More recently a company called Takeover Events & Theatre Ltd, trading as The New Bradford Playhouse, has been running the theatre as a going concern, as tenants. However, the building’s owner has gone into liquidation, and so the theatre will be sold at auction next month. And there’s a real risk that whoever buys it will want to convert the building into something else.

This would be a terrible shame as the theatre still has many of its original features despite the fire damage. It’s Bradford’s only medium sized theatre, seating 290 people, and also houses a small studio space. I’ve been privileged to be able to help out with some of the shows there, such as Little Shop of Horrors which Christine performed in earlier this year. The operating team is well-connected and has been able to draw upon a lot of goodwill to get the theatre to where it is now, and it would be a huge shame if their hard work came to nothing. Especially as they have some ambitious plans to re-invigorate the theatre, with a new entrance, wheelchair access and a proper café or restaurant on site, subject to funding.

If Takeover Events can buy the theatre outright at the auction, then I’m sure it will have a bright future – I personally trust them to be able to turn it around and break the vicious cycle that has seen it closed down so many times in the past. But my worry is that it will end up being sold to someone else who will turn it into flats or offices, and an important part of Bradford’s cultural heritage will be gone for good.

So, here’s what you can do to help. If you can spare some money, please contribute to the Indiegogo campaign. They need £125,000 in less than three weeks, to be able to buy the building at auction. Also, simply buying tickets and going along to their shows will help.

If you have no money to spare, then please sign this petition to Bradford Council, asking them to refuse planning permission to anyone wanting to change the use of the building. That way, if another company buys it, there is a reduced risk of it being converted into anything other than a theatre. And if you’re local to Bradford, get in touch with the people running the theatre to see if you can volunteer any of your time to cut down on their running costs in the meantime.

With the new Westfield shopping centre opening around the corner from the Playhouse in less than two years’ time, the theatre could have a really bright and sustainable future for the first time in many years. So it’s critical that the theatre is saved. It will be such a massive shame if it isn’t.

Update: Some coverage from the local paper. With two and a bit weeks to go, they are unfortunately a long way from their target.

Disconnecting from work email

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iPhone 4

When I first got my iPhone in 2010, I very quickly set up my three most-used email accounts on it – my personal account at this domain, my Gmail account, and my work email account. Soon, every time I got an email on any of those accounts, no matter what time of day it was, my phone would duly ping me.

At weekends, when going through the unified inbox overview of all three, I’d duly delete the ‘calls for papers’ that various conferences send me (because they assume that anyone who works at a university is an academic) and carefully flagged up the emails that needed action for when I got back in the office on Monday. I thought I was being more productive this way, but actually, all I was doing was spreading what would be a five minute task at work throughout my weekend, when I should be relaxing.

More to the point, it was making it harder to switch off from work, and making checking my personal accounts more difficult as I had to wade through work emails to get to them.

It took until the start of 2012 before I finally decided that this was a silly way to do things. I was off work for two weeks – I’m lucky enough to work for an employer that gives everyone time off between Christmas and New Year, and I had some annual leave in early January. I was getting notifications of work emails, but it would be more than a week until I would be back in the office in order to actually do anything about them. So, I deleted my work email account off my phone.

In the time since, I have kind-of added it back. I use the now abandoned Sparrow client to access my work email on a purely ad-hoc basis, if required, but it’s kept separate from my personal email accounts (in the stock Mail app on my iPhone) and I don’t get notifications for it. So it’s there if I do need to access it – usually if I’m at work but away from the office – but I can’t be disturbed by work emails when I’m not at work.

I’m therefore pleased that, in France, there’s a new labour agreement to stop employees looking at work email after 6pm. France already has a mandatory 35 hour working week, meaning that French employees work shorter hours to improve their work-life balance. This goes further, and helps to prevent employees from doing work-related activities outside work hours.

If you are regularly checking work email when you’re not at work, I would recommend you to stop. It’ll help you disconnect from work and enjoy your free time more. And it often doesn’t save you much time at work either.

Marriage

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Penguin wedding cake toppers

On Saturday, Christine and I went to the wedding of a couple of friends we’ve known for a few years. Co-incidentally, Saturday was the first day that same-sex couples could legally marry in England and Wales.

A bill to change the law was passed last year, and on the 13th of this month, same-sex couples who had married overseas had their marriages automatically recognised as such here. At the same time unmarried couples were able to give notice and the first same-sex marriages happened just after midnight on the 29th March.

The wedding we went to was a mixed-sex marriage, but a marriage all the same. The only thing that was slightly different was that the registrar stated that a marriage was between ‘two people’ and not ‘a man and a woman’, as it was before and when Christine and I got married last year.

I’m really pleased that any two people who love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives with each other can now marry, regardless of their sexual orientation or genitalia. Though Britain has had a compromise of ‘civil partnerships’ since 2005 – offering the same legal status as marriage – it’s good to see that every couple can now be treated equally.

Well, mostly. Whilst same-sex couples should have no problems obtaining a civil marriage, religious marriages are only offered to same-sex couples by a small handful of religious groups – namely the Quakers and the Unitarians. Same-sex marriages are not yet available in Scotland, although the relevant legislation has been passed so it is only a matter of time before this changes. Northern Ireland, however, refuses to allow or recognise same-sex marriages. There are some other issues too.

And there are still changes to happen in wider society. Though a majority of people in the UK support same-sex marriages, around 20% of people would turn down an invitation to a same-sex wedding. But the tide of opinion is going in the right direction and, on the whole, I feel that British society is more accepting of LGBT people now than it has been for any time in history.

Dave Jennings – 1960-2014

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A photo of Dave Jennings at our wedding, holding a Mr Flibble penguin puppet

Last week I heard the very sad news that Dave Jennings, a very good friend of mine, had passed away from a heart attack outside his flat in Bradford.

I’ve known Dave for several years, initially through friends who were in the musicals society but since 2009 we have been on a regular pub quiz team together at the university.

Though originally from the Bradford area, Dave’s early career was in London, working as a music journalist for Melody Maker magazine. It was there that he reviewed a song by the band ‘Darlin’, which he described as a ‘daft, punky thrash’. Two of the former members of Darlin’, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, went on to form Daft Punk, and the rest is history.

Melody Maker closed in 2000 and Dave returned north, eventually enrolling as a mature student on a course at the University of Bradford where I work. He graduated with a first class honours degree in 2006.

During his time at the university he was involved in both the theatre group and later the musicals society. Indeed, he was due to play the role of Orin Scrivello, the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors, but sadly he passed away before the last dress rehearsal. Thankfully, another member of the society stepped up and the show was performed as planned.

Outside of the university he has been a regular extra in the ITV soap opera Emmerdale, often in the background of the Woolpack having a drink. His acting showreel from 2009 is here to watch. And recently he had made a return to music journalism, doing some freelance articles for The Girls Are, and has learnt to play the banjolele, as evidenced in this video.

Dave was also a big geek, like me, particularly when it came to Doctor Who. In fact he shared a birthday with John Barrowman (Captain Jack) and Alex Kingston (River Song). For our wedding, where the photo was taken, he had a Mr Flibble hand puppet commissioned for us, which I’ve been using as my Twitter avatar for some time.

There have been few times over the past six days when I have not been reminded of Dave and the things that he did. Whether it was constantly beating me on Words with Friends with his superior vocabulary, talking about music or the latest Doctor Who episode, or our mutual enjoyment of the Steampunk subculture. Dave will be very much missed by both myself and his large group of friends. He was such a lovely and friendly person and a real shame that his passing has come so soon.

His funeral will take place this Friday, at Nab Wood Cemetery near Bingley, at 3:20pm.