The Bristol Cable - Edition 11

Investigations | Infographics | People’s Histor y | Illustrations | Voices Spring 2017

the BRISTOL CABLE A media co – op

THE SCOOP: ICE CREAM WAGE SCANDAL Taking mental health out of the dark When Totterdown got demolished Bristol’s nuclear boom Justice for Judah: After the media storm Tearing up Asda car park And much, much more...

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Contents 4-5 Will you stand up for an essential public service?

Credits As always, a huge thanks is due to our 1,600+ members, and the contributors, sources and contacts credited throughout the magazine. Without you all, none of this would be possible!

Operations coordination: Alec Saelens Alon Aviram Adam Cantwell-Corn Media coordination: Adam Cantwell-Corn Alon Aviram Lorna Stephenson Koel Mukherjee Sid Ryan Alec Saelens Subeditors: Alex Turner Arvind Howarth Lorna Stephenson Proofreaders: Lucas Batt Andrew Binnie Zoe Johnson Catherine O’Connell Zoe Johnson Lorna Stephenson

Design coordination: Adam Wilkinson amwilkinson1984@gmail.com Design and Layout: Adam Wilkinson amwilkinson1984@gmail.com Anna Basso de Marc as.bassodemarc@gmail.com Chris Woodward chriswoodwarddesign.co.uk Lucy McArthur lucyamandamcarthur@gmail.com Web coordination: Mat Alborough - de-mystify.co.uk Marcus Valentine - xtreamlab.net Lucas Batt Will Franklin With special thanks to Aoife Comey and Sanjay Mistry for their web development work.

Social media coordination: Isobel Tarr Membership administration: Dean Ayotte Finance coordination: Bea Oliver Advertising coordination: Gay Darke (EMSM) Extra thanks to: Bristol Cable Media Lab 2016/17 participants 10th edition distribution team

Directors: Mike Jempson Abdi Mohamed Tessa Gleeson Vince Baidoo Noelle Rumball Joanne Ball Delroy Hibbert Elizabeth Mizon Drew Rose Matthew Strange Robert Triggs Front page photo: Patch Plumber patchplummer.co.uk Special thanks to the Reva & David Logan Foundation, Centre for Investigative Journalism and the Centre for Community Journalism for their continuing support.

The Cable is printed on 100% recycled paper fibre produced in King’s Lynn.

23 The scandalous privatisation of student debt

6-7 Exclusive: Ice cream wage scandal

24-25 The next stages of gentrification are upon Bristol

8-9 Is the mental health sector healthy?

26-27 In my view

10-11 The nuclear option 12-13 Free money for everyone: not such a wild idea anymore 15 Are you ready for a metro mayor?

29 Perinatal mental health in Bristol 30-31 Discontent, despair and anger: Responses to the Tasering of Ras Judah Adunbi

16-17 Pride against all odds

32-33 Shining a light on Bristol’s lonely

18-19 Tearing up Asda car park

34-35 The community razed to the ground for a road that was

20-21 The Bearpit: pulling in different directions

never built

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

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Exclusive: Ice cream wage scandal

Wage theft at Lopresti ice cream UNDER PAYMENT TO CABLE UNDERCOVER REPORTER

Investigation into prominent local business

£92.30 TOTAL WAGES RECEIVED

WORDS ADAM CANTWELL-CORN, ALON AVIRAM AND ALEC SAELENS ILLUSTRATION PATCH PLUMMER DESIGN ANNA BASSO DE MARC

a tip off about exploitation at Lopresti’s. Statements from three former workers, employed at various times over a two-year period, confirmed allegations that cash-in-hand wages were well below the national minimum wage. They alleged that their wages averaged £2.50 an hour, taking home as little as £25 for working up to tenhour days.

Competitive pricing

Each individual provided details of poor working conditions. Allegations include that they were provided with just one bottle of water per 8-10 hour shift, routinely shouted at and refused breaks by their boss Sam Lopresti.

“We work hard to ensure that our pricing is extremely competitive”. SM Lopresti Ice Cream website.

Average wages: £2.50 p/h Wage theft and abuse allegations Following a 2014 investigation into working conditions in Bristol’s catering sector, the Cable received

One worker recounted an altercation with the boss: “It was a cold day and there weren’t any customers around so I closed the sliding window. Sam Lopresti arrived and was not happy that I shut the window. He started shouting at me and told me to ‘sit down’. There was nowhere to sit other than on the floor of the trailer so I said, ‘No, I’m not going to sit down, I’m not your dog. I’m not your slave’. He gave me more orders to sit down on the floor which I refused. His son Robert Lopresti arrived and defused the situation by telling Sam Lopresti to ‘calm down’ and that I was a good worker.”

Another worker spoke of similar circumstances:

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£208.28 Wages due (£7.20 p/h + 5% of sales made)

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“He would just shout at you all the time... and have a go at you for every little thing. He shouted at me once, and asked ‘Where were you?’

And I was like, ‘I just went to the toilet.’ [He said,] ‘Yeah well couldn’t you go earlier? There were people here’ - ‘Yeah, but I needed to go to the toilet.’

He was like, ‘Why are you answering back?’”

In an effort to corroborate these allegations, a Bristol Cable journalist worked undercover at the business over a period of two weeks in ice cream vans at sites such

as Clifton Suspension Bridge, outside M Shed, Greville Smyth Park and Ashton Court.

The journalist witnessed intimidating behaviour from Sam Lopresti and recorded cash-in-hand payments averaging £3.42 an hour, less than 50% of the £7.20 per hour national minimum wage. Business owners and managers, Sam Lopresti and Robert Lopresti, told the Cable’s undercover reporter that

this figure also included a 5% commission on sales of ice creams and refreshments.

According to HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) it is “a criminal offence for employers to not pay someone the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage, or to fake payment records”.

The Lopresti website states that the family-run business has been around for more than 45 years and supplies hotels, shops and restaurants as well as operating roadside ice cream vans. Sam Lopresti had been nominated as Chair for the South Division of the Ice Cream Alliance since 2010. The Lopresti website also states that they “work hard to ensure that [their] pricing is extremely competitive”.

When the Cable put these allegations to SM Lopresti & Sons they declined to comment.

patchplummer.co.uk

Jack Lopresti, who worked at the business for ten years prior to becoming an MP and before the period of this investigation, was not available for comment on the claims made about the family business.

The Bristol Cable will continue in its efforts to expose wrongdoing in Bristol, and is keen to hear from anyone with evidence to substantiate their claims.

ConfidentialIty will be respected and whistleblowers will be afforded the protection they deserve.

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

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long term Bristol Cable investigation drawing on undercover research, tip offs and multiple interviews has unearthed serious underpayment of the minimum wage at prominent local business, SM Lopresti & Sons. The ice cream vendor based on Bedminster Parade is owned by the family of Jack Lopresti, the Conservative MP for Filton and Bradley Stoke, who also operate a property business.

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Five months and 11 sessions later, the Bristol Cable Media Lab 2016/17, our freeto-access training course endorsed by the Centre of Investigative Journalism, has now finished. But for the 15 Bristolians who took part the journey is just beginning.

• Published stories on housing developments in Bristol and successfully campaigned for the council to release controversial documents kept secret by developers.

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the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

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Is the mental health sector healthy?

Mental wellbeing is finally getting recognised as being as important as physical health. Squeezed budgets mean progress isn’t easy, but there are positive steps being taken in Bristol.

WORDS SID RYAN

Although Jeremy Hunt pledged in 2015 to make clinical commissioning groups spend more on mental health, and in January Theresa May lamented the ‘dangerous disregard’ shown to services, many involved in the sector feel that this is just empty rhetoric.

Mental health still has a lot of catching up to do, but it’s struggling just to keep pace.

Where we’ve come from Not that long ago, in 2014, the sector was shaken up to move away from siloed services treating specific conditions, and towards a rounded and cohesive service. Funded by Bristol Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), and with the majority of services provided by Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership, the new system puts all of the assorted public sector and charitable organisations under the umbrella of Bristol Mental Health. This semi-

formal partnership works to design the services and make sure they all link up together.

Dr Will Hall is a consultant psychiatrist two days a week, but also leads the system leadership team for Bristol Mental Health. “We had to develop models of care that could win in a competitive tendering service.

One the one hand, we’re writing specifications about what conditions are to be treated and the ‘must-dos’ and ‘should-dos’. On the other, we’re asking how we can do that within the budget commissioners want to spend on mental health.”

That budget is far smaller than anyone would like. Research by the BBC and social care news site Community Care showed that between 2010 and 2015, national funding for mental health dropped by 8.25%, almost £600m.

Only recently, a leaked letter from NHS England’s finance chief indicates that a promise of £800m funding is going to be diverted to bail out struggling NHS trusts.

“I don’t think it’s unusual to say that mental health services have been underfunded for very many years,” says Dr Hall. “There’s a need to provide more services to more people.

There isn’t more money coming into the NHS. We’re overspent and it’s tough to see how we can continue doing what we do now. So finding new models of doing that, that can

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be afforded, is the reality.”

In effect, the big reorganisation that started in 2014 has never really stopped and work is always underway to keep improving.

But after such sustained underfunding there is a lot of catching up to do, and while both patients and providers are dreaming of expansion, the budgets are contracting.

Under pressure The most immediate consequence of this lack of funds is the daily struggle to

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Health Network. “Pressure is services not being delivered, or not being delivered as well. It can also be about ‘gatekeeping’, where people are stuck and can’t be referred forward to the further services they might need.”

Service users the Cable has spoken to say that the wait in Bristol can be 12-15 months before they can actually get an appointment with the ADHD assessment service, and that the waiting list is around 600 people. While it’s not great for anyone to be waiting that long for their treatment, living for a year with an untreated disorder can have devastating effects on the health and wellbeing of that person, along with their friends and families.

He also says that staff are being put into increasingly compromising positions. As caseloads increase staff find that even when there’s just enough time to treat their patients, finding time to complete the case notes and care plans is a real struggle: “This is where you start having problems missing things that turn out to be crucial. This is where incidents happen, and where serious case reviews come from.”

Richard Lyle, programme director for Bristol CCG, thinks that services like the adult ADHD clinic, which he helped set up 10 years ago, are almost victims of their own success. “We set this clinic up based on the number of younger people graduating from the children’s service, so they could get some continuity of care. But with the massive increase in awareness and visibility, more and more people were being diagnosed. We’ve been able to increase the funds to the clinic over the years but it’s not been able to keep pace. Demand has outstripped supply.”

“With more money we could provide more access,” says Lyle, but what’s holding the service back often isn’t just cash. “If you’ve got a waiting list you’ve probably got one of a few problems, one would be access to clinicians. Even if you have the money you don’t have the people.”

Just finding a place to hold a clinic can also be an issue.

Another major concern is the capacity for inpatient and recovery beds.

When someone is in crisis and they need to be admitted, there is rarely a place to put them. So if a bed is to be freed up then someone needs to go home, that is if there’s even a home to go to. Although the CCG has opened 10 extra beds in Callington Road Hospital, the pressure to admit only the most critical patients and discharge people before they’re totally ready remains.

“The pressure on assessment and early intervention services is huge at the moment,” says Tom Renhard, the secretary for local service user group Bristol Independent Mental

A new way of working Although there are many problems with the current services, it would be unfair to suggest there’s been no progress. Although Dr Hall says that Bristol Mental Health’s early efforts “weren’t very sophisticated”, it is putting a lot of work into coproducing the service specifications with users, clinicians and the voluntary sector, and trying to develop a more rounded service.

When someone is in crisis and they need to be admitted, there is rarely a place to put them.

What’s come out of this exposure to the wider world is a ‘social model for mental health’, the idea that few people become depressed without external factors – and that it’s the stresses and strains of modern life that make us that way. This means that now there is a lot more work with groups providing housing, financial advice and community work. Missing Link provides support and housing for women with mental health problems, Nilaari works in BME communities tackling mental health and substance abuse, and Second Step provides housing and works with homeless people.

Off The Record, a small Bristol-based charity helping young people, is emblematic of this shift in emphasis.

Dr Nicklas Serning, a psychotherapist and the organisation’s clinical director says: “On one hand we have a medical model, the service, the NHS. Where

you are broken in some way. [People see it as] you can break your leg or you can catch depression. So people come in and say ‘I’m suffering from depression. Please fix me.’ On the one hand, OTR has to accept that. That’s your story and we work with that.”

But, Dr Serning adds, it’s important to recognise that because “life sucks sometimes”, feeling down is natural – so to avoid outcomes like self-harm, people need coping mechanisms.

Off the Record spend a lot of time teaching children ‘basic intellectual self-defence’, a missing part of the traditional curriculum. But it’s what happens next that excites Dr Serning: “Then we start looking at the big picture and thinking: ‘Yeah, its pretty fucked up that neither you or I have a job that we’re happy with and we don’t have a meaning in our lives. What are we going to do about it?’” In that way, the self-harm becomes a relatively inconsequential part of a bigger question: How do I find a purpose in life?

The purpose that a lot of Off The Record members find is in political action, feeding their experience of using the mental health services back into the co-production of a better version. “Where we’re moving towards,’ says Dr Serning, “is that you’ve got your tools, and your mates and you feel normal. Now let’s mobilise. Let’s get some community action. For me, the best parts are when we’re doing something useful, when we feel like a progressive movement.

When we’re fucking shit up.”

So even if the mental health sector needs a lot of work itself, at least there are growing numbers of people working towards making it better. They might be clinician/ commissioners like Dr Hall, patient representative groups such as Bristol Independent Mental Health Network or the young firebrands from Off the Record – or perhaps even you…

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the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

M

ental health services in Bristol are about as complicated as the human minds they treat. The array of different providers have to cope with people who’re feeling depressed and anxious, people with long-term conditions they need help managing like autism, ADHD or dementia, right up to people who are in crisis, where providers may work with the police and A&Es.

manage the stream of people seeking help. For instance, people with ADHD can go to their GP and be referred onwards fairly quickly. But the time between referral and treatment can be far, far longer.

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The nuclear option Bristol and the South West are gearing up to be a hub of the revived UK nuclear industry. But is there more to the ‘nuclear renaissance’ than low carbon power?

Babcock international Office locations in Bristol: Stoke Gifford plus others.

Civil: Wholly-owned Babcock subsidiary Cavendish Nuclear is part of a joint venture which has contracts in mechanical works on Hinkley’s ‘Nuclear Island’.

Defence: Babcock is a key industry partner for the MoD, maintains the UK’s nuclear submarines, and is working on the new Dreadnought class submarines.

Jacobs Engineering Office location in Bristol: Stoke Gifford.

Civil: Jacobs has a project management contract for building and civil work at HPC. Defence: Jacobs, along with Serco Group and Lockheed Martin, is part of the consortium of commercial partners that manage the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). The UK’s Trident nuclear warheads are designed, manufactured, maintained, and dismantled at the AWE sites in Berkshire. A major investment programme is currently under way at AWE, with around £1 billion per year scheduled for spending at AWE over the remainder of this decade.

WORDS LORNA STEPHENSON DESIGN ADAM WILKINSON

The Hinkley Point C Saga

AVONmouth

EDF financial officer Thomas Piquemal quit in March 2016, worried the project would sink the company. EDF, under May’s deal, has been guaranteed £92.50 for every megawatt hour of electricity produced, rising with inflation, for 35 years. That’s more than twice the current wholesale price of electricity. The National Audit Office has estimated consumers will end up paying almost £30bn in subsidies to EDF over the contract. Meanwhile, investment and government subsidies in promising advancements in renewable and battery storage technologies have stalled.

Then there’s Hinkley’s older brother, the French nuclear new build at Flamanville, which shares Hinkley’s model and is seen as a test run. It’s more than three times over budget and years behind schedule, while France’s nuclear safety authority has discovered faults in the reactor steel. The UN recently warned that construction at Hinkley should stop as the government has not adequately consulted with neighbouring countries for plans in the event of an incident at the plant. Bodes well.

The government’s nuclear power aspirations don’t begin and end with Hinkley Point C. The new Somerset reactors are the first nuclear newbuilds in two decades and estimated construction costs alone are £18bn.

Hinkley Point C is advertised as a vital low-carbon power source, necessary to provide 7% of UK electricity needs.

After years-long wrangling between the government and EDF Energy, and more lately with Chinese state-backed newcomer CGN, Hinkley’s construction is finally in process. There are also plans for a national fleet of smaller reactors, including a plant proposed for Oldbury, South Gloucestershire – 13 miles outside Bristol.

The city’s location means it’s poised for a central role in the so-called ‘nuclear renaissance’. Companies have flocked here to open offices, while huge concrete shells for Hinkley’s construction will be built at Avonmouth, which is also the endpoint of a new 400,000V overhead power line from Hinkley Point. Bristol Port Company is in line for two multimillion pound contracts from Hinkley for ‘marine services’.

Local authorities and local enterprise partnerships are working to harvest as much dosh from the mega-project as possible. Public-private partnership Nuclear South West was set up “in recognition of the area’s unique potential for transformational growth through the nuclear sector”, which offers “£50 billion of investment on our doorstep”, and Somerset Chamber of Commerce, backed by EDF, is leading the Hinkley Point Supply Chain portal to connect local businesses to the project. Hinkley Point C itself is expected to employ 25,000 people and to provide £100m a year to the regional economy.

What’s under the surface?

So far, so lucrative. Yet the bigger questions around nuclear remain as controversial as ever. Successive UK governments have been unusually attached to the nuclear industry, and its revival, despite worldwide trends towards investment in renewable technologies in recent years. Nuclear power is becoming increasingly expensive, while the costs of other options are falling – and with no new reactors built since the 90s, the sector

had faced a retiring workforce.

The government’s fixation therefore seems, like much of its energy policy, perplexing. The mysterious question of ‘why?’ was the basis of research published last year by three academics at Sussex University: Andy Stirling, Philip Johnstone and Emily Cox. Their answer? “The unusual intensity of UK commitments to civil nuclear power are especially understandable in light of a parallel but distinct policy aim that also deeply pervades elite British political cultures. This is the goal of maintaining national capabilities to build and operate nuclear-propelled submarines” (emphasis added).

The UK government has been steadfastly determined to maintain the Royal Navy’s fleets of nuclear-propelled submarines and the Trident nuclear missile deterrent. To keep the show on the road, the Sussex academics argue, you need a solid nuclear-industry supply chain that spans auxiliary tasks from transport to engineering, a specialist workforce, and more contracts that businesses can work on between military jobs.

The evidence is compelling, not least when you consider the sheer scale of the military nuclear sector and its supply chains, which according to the government support 30,000 jobs. Currently under construction are Astute-class submarines, four of which have now been built of a total of seven, at a cost of £1.2bn each. In late 2016 construction also started on four new Trident-armed Dreadnoughtclass submarines, at a cost of £31bn in construction alone (plus £10bn contingency). The Telegraph reports (albeit in content sponsored by submarine builder BAE Systems) that the programme will involve a UK-wide supply chain of up to 1,000 companies.

LAWRENCE WESTON WESTBURY ON TRYM

Unseen links As Stirling, Johnstone and Cox outline, linkages between the civil and defence sectors are almost invisible in energy policy documentation, but are more forthcoming from the military side.

In Parliamentary select committee evidence from 2006, for example, a Dr Jeremy Stocker of the International Institute for Strategic Studies states that the British submarine force may not remain large enough to support submarine building capacity, and that “this will especially be so if, despite renewed calls for them, a new generation of civil nuclear power stations is not constructed”.

Similar sentiments are expressed in Parliamentary and industry documents from major companies such as Rolls Royce and BAE Systems.

In the South West, more obvious links can be made, probably because of the defence industry’s prominence in Bristol, and the 7,000-plus Defence Equipment & Supplies workforce – the MoD’s procurement arm – up in Abbey Wood, where the submarine programme is being contracted from. Nuclear South West hasn’t been shy about adding a reference to ‘defence’ as an offshoot opportunity for supply chain companies, but hasn’t belaboured the point.

Of course, bringing the question of military nuclear into the limelight raises questions that the government might prefer not to answer. £50bn, the rough combined costs of the Astute and Dreadnought submarine fleets, could buy the Crossrail project, the most expensive infrastructure project proposed in recent years, almost three and a half times. It’s 137 times Bristol City Council’s 2017-18 budget.

In February the British Medical Association said the NHS needed a comparatively small cash injection of £9.5bn to secure its future. What,

Horfield fishponds

HENLEAZE

MONTPELIER

University of Bristol Location in Bristol: Centre Civil: The University has a joint venture with Oxford University in its Nuclear Research Centre. The NRC’s areas of research span all aspects of civil nuclear systems.

Defence: The university has a ‘strategic alliance’ with the Atomic Weapons Establishment. In 2014, the only year for which figures are readily available, Bristol received £1.3 million from the AWE. The weapons builder spent about £8 million that year on its strategic alliances with universities (Bristol and five others).

Whitehall

clifton BRISTOL

BArton hill

brislington

BEdminster

Bishopworth

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

Unless you’ve already been hiding in your bunker, you’ll probably have heard about the problems that have beset Hinkley Point C since it was proposed 10 years ago. To recap:

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hengrove

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Rolls Royce Location in Bristol: Not Bristol, but up the road in Gloucester.

Civil: Rolls Royce is working on designs for new types of ‘small modular reactors’ (SMRs) of the type that are proposed for Oldbury.

Defence: Rolls Royce is a key industrial partner delivering the MoD’s Dreadnought submarine programme.

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Free money for everyone: not such a wild idea anymore The idea of a no-strings income for all citizens is making waves in the UK and beyond – we asked a leading Bristol academic why the time may be right for a universal basic income WORDS ADAM CANTWELL-CORN ILLUSTRATION LISA HARPER DESIGN ADAM WILKINSON

To find out more we caught up with Stewart Lansley, a proponent of the idea and a researcher of poverty and inequality. Lansley is a visiting fellow at the University of Bristol and is the author of A Sharing Economy, (Policy Press, 2016) and co-author with Howard Reed of a report that models different universal basic income schemes – called A Universal Basic Income: An idea whose time has come? and published by the Compass think-tank.

The idea has begun to catch fire in the UK because it offers much improved social protection in today’s increasingly fragile economy.

At its core, what is the universal basic income and how would it work?

A universal basic income would provide all citizens with a guaranteed, no-strings weekly payment. It would be paid to all, with the amount varying by age. While some people dismiss the idea as pie-inthe-sky thinking, the principle of making payments to citizens as a matter of course already exists. Both child benefit – in essence a very modest basic income for children – and the new flat-rate pension system bear some comparison with how a UBI would work.

The idea has been around for generations and gained support from people as diverse as Martin Luther King, the right-wing economist Milton Friedman and the founder of eBay. Now sections within the Lib Dems, the SNP, the Greens and Labour are flirting with the idea. Why has this idea had lasting appeal across the political spectrum, and what has led to an apparent resurgence in the past few years?

The idea has begun to catch fire in the UK because it offers much improved social protection in today’s increasingly fragile economy. Rising numbers are trapped in low-paid, insecure jobs, bringing a surge in the level of in-work poverty. These risks will rise as the ‘new machine age` slowly automates great chunks of service and manufacturing industries. Although experts are divided on the full impact of the new robotic revolution, what is certain is that workplaces will be transformed, displacing jobs, further widening the pay gap, and bringing widespread disruption to livelihoods. The benefit system – intrusive, harsh and patchy – is ill-equipped to deal with the increasingly precarious world of work.

Even a modest basic income would strengthen the universal element of benefits, offer a more robust safety net and cushion the impact of inevitable economic upheaval.

In your report it states that a UBI would create a society where “all lifestyle choices are equally valued”.

What is your response to people who have attacked UBI as “promoting an ideology of idleness”? If given free money, isn’t it naïve to think that a lot of people won’t just sit about? Would that be a problem?

Another strength of a UBI is that it offers a new charter of freedom between work, leisure, education and caring. For the first time, a UBI would both acknowledge and provide financial support for the mass of unpaid caring work, disproportionately undertaken by women.

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Weekly payment to all citizens, based on the most viable model set out in the Compass report.

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The outcome of a February 2017 European Parliament vote whether or not to explore the viability of a universal basic income.

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Number of Scottish councils (Glasgow and Fife) that are exploring the feasibility of implementing a universal basic income scheme.

Over time, a UBI would change behaviour. Some might choose to work less, take longer breaks or start businesses. By encouraging volunteering, caring and entrepreneurship these additions to choice have the potential to produce more value to society than large areas of traditional paid work. A guaranteed income – even at an initially modest level – would boost the heavily depleted bargaining power of workers, offering more choice over what jobs to take, and creating a fairer balance of power between employers and workers. Contrary to the claims made by some critics that a UBI will promote ‘idleness’, the overall effect, supported in part by evidence from earlier studies, is more likely to promote than weaken the incentive to work.

The acute problems with the introduction of Universal Credit have weakened the argument for a comprehensive replacement of the existing system in one go. That’s why there is a strong case for an incremental approach. One possibility, for example, would be to start with a scheme for children, that would initially leave some of the present system intact but which could be gradually improved over time.

Over the past few years the public has been whipped into a frenzy around

A universal basic income would both acknowledge and provide financial support for the mass of unpaid caring work, disproportionately undertaken by women.

welfare recipients and the ‘something for nothing’ culture. You’re advocating giving the same amount of money to everyone, billionaires as well as the homeless. Why? The same arguments have often been made against other universal benefits such as child benefit. By providing the same to everyone, you secure public acceptance – all citizens participate – while avoiding the problems of stigma, of scroungers vs strivers.

Also you remove the way in which the current benefits systems actually disincentives work by punishing those who try to work as well as receive some benefits. As shown above, the

net effect of an incremental scheme would be politically and economically progressive, as simultaneous changes in the tax system would ensure that the rich pay more additional tax than they receive in benefit.

Experiments in UBI or guaranteed income have or are being explored by governments in parts of the USA, Canada, Finland and the Netherlands.

Now, Glasgow and Fife councils are considering variations on the idea.

Could it be something that could be tried by Bristol council, and what would it take to make it happen here?

Ultimately, a real test of how such a scheme would work in the UK requires a proper, lengthy and adequately sized pilot with a control group. Glasgow is set to launch a feasibility study this spring, and may well be the first UK city out of the starting blocks with a local trial. While there is no reason why Glasgow could not be joined by one or more cities, including Bristol, it is also time that the government took a lead and joined other countries in planning its own trial.

A UBI is being advocated by groups from both the right and left. How do their approaches differ?

The right – including a number of Silicon Valley enthusiasts – favours a basic income as a way of achieving a smaller state, of sweeping away a range of other forms of social protection. The left views it as part of a strong state, as a supplement to the wide public provision of services and not as a substitute. For them it is a profoundly democratic concept that promotes security, greater personal freedom and equal citizenship, recognising that all citizens have the right to some minimal claim on national income.

Who would be the winners and losers of such schemes?

There are a variety of possible schemes.

Some advocates want ‘big bang’ reform that sweeps away the existing system in one go. However, the most workable option would be a more gradual approach. This could start with modest payments – around £70 a week for an adult of working age – while leaving existing means-tested benefits in place, but as a stepping stone to a fuller scheme over time. The simulations in the Compass report show that such a scheme would offer substantial gains: a sharp increase in average income among the poorest; a cut in child poverty of 45%; a modest reduction in inequality, and a reduction in reliance on meanstesting. These are significant gains and they are affordable. They involve a manageable cost of around £8bn, just under 0.5% of total national income.

Finally, what do you think is the chance of a UBI being implemented in the UK ?

One of the key arguments advanced in favour of the UBI is that it will reduce the welfare bill and associated administration costs by scrapping means testing. However, the Tories have already chopped billions off the welfare bill and introduced Universal Credit with the aim of reducing admin costs – why should lisaroseillustration.com

Even a year ago, the idea of a UBI was seen as pretty wild. Today, it is being taken much more seriously. A UBI is not a silver bullet, but it would be a crucial element of a new programme of radical reform aimed at creating a fairer and more stable economic and social system. While a UBI scheme is undoubtedly a long way off in the UK, and cannot be introduced without a much deeper public debate, the various pilots being launched across the globe are already adding momentum to the pressure for a more effective system of income support. If the various trials are a success, providing positive answers about the actual effects, some kind of permanent scheme becomes more likely. And once one country jumps, others will surely follow.

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

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o-strings-attached payments to every single citizen, with no means testing involved. That is the basis of a universal basic income (UBI) – an idea that’s not new but is increasingly making its way into the mainstream. Some see it as a way to redistribute wealth, fend off the worst effects of an unstable economy, reduce inefficiencies in the benefits system, enable people to take risks, and ensure that the gains from the so-called ‘robot and artificial intelligence revolution’ are shared fairly in our society. Others think such a policy would incentivise daytime TV binging and be a huge and unjustifiable drain on the public purse.

Conservative voters buy this line of argument?

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Are you ready for a metro mayor?

We have voted for devolution and with it comes a new leadership role. But what is a metro mayor and who is in the running to be ours?

WORDS SID RYAN

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would cost £5-6m. They don’t have enough to fund the roads or the buses already, let alone build anything new.”

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ast summer, Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire councils voted in favour of devolution, or shifting power from central government to a more local level. A side effect of this has been the creation of the role of ‘metro mayor’, a new elected leadership position for these areas. But so far, the roll out of these plans has not been smooth and in fact, may also have passed many by.

Much like the ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plans’ currently rocking the NHS, devolution and the metro mayor it will bring seem like good ideas on the surface, but are they actually of any benefit to Bristol? With metro mayoral elections on the 4th of May approaching fast, there’s not much time left to figure out how these plans will affect the city and the region.

The metro mayor will be the chief of a new West of England Combined Authority (WECA), responsible for housing and infrastructure development, transport, adult education and attracting foreign investment. In effect, it will be a decision making panel chaired by the new mayor and made up of the elected leaders of each of the three councils, Marvin Rees (L) for Bristol, Tim Warren (C) for Bath and North East Somerset and Matthew Riddle (C) for South Gloucestershire.

“This is an opportunity to break down some of the boundaries that haven’t

This means that a large part of the organisation is still leashed to central government, spending a lot of time bidding for assorted pots of funding for national infrastructure. But devolution could mean the region benefits from a second devolution package further down the line, on top of the £30m a year it’s set to receive under current plans.

helped us in the past,” said Marvin Rees at the first meeting of the Combined Authority, held in the Watershed. “There’s not unqualified love for the model we’ve been presented with, but we recognise the reality that government needed this structure, and we need it to have a national voice.”

What will it do?

Working from the existing ‘Joint Transport Plan’ and ‘Joint Spatial Plan’, the Combined Authority will mostly be reviewing assorted financial projections, loan agreements, bidding documents, and reports from consultants and deciding where to spend the money.

Dave Redgewell from the South West Transport Network thinks that the Combined Authority will have a hard time choosing what to do with its budget of only about £30m per year.

“A new railway line would cost around £80m and the MetroBus between Cribbs Causeway and Aztec West is about £30m. Even smaller things like a new bus route or a new train station

Gloucestershire to victory. That would make South Gloucestershire councillor Tim Bowles, a business manager for RTH Plc, a company which designs events and exhibits for modelling the latest jet engines and missile systems, the new metro mayor.

However, with turnout for the elections expected to be so low, there’s still a chance for upset if one side can encourage more voters to the polling station. The risk will be that the left wing candidates neutralise each other’s votes, so the second preferences could be crucial. Ladbrokes tips Lib Dem former MP for Bristol West, Stephen Williams, as a narrow winner. Labour’s Lesley Mansell, a Corbyn-leaning equalities and diversity manager at Southmead Hospital, could also get a good look in if more centrist Labour voters choose to offer their support.

Adding to the problems is North Somerset which was supposed to be the fourth member of the Combined Authority but rejected the deal. This was intended as a tactical withdrawal to force concessions out of the government. But the bluff was called, and now the county is locked out until the next metro mayoral elections in 2021. Despite the Combined Authority being designed to avoid this, it’ll now have the complication of having to commission bus routes that start in one region and end in another.

Darren Hall, who appeared on the Bristol West ballot papers in the 2015 general election, is running for the Greens. The nominally independent (but widely considered centristLabour) candidate Dr John Savage, current chairman of University Hospitals Bristol Trust, might not find an immediate use for his knowledge of NHS bureaucracies, but considering that plans are afoot to integrate health and social care within the next few years, his skills could become essential before too long.

Who will win?

Whoever ends up metro mayor will have a diverse set of objectives and limited resources. It will be difficult to satisfy the responsibilities for housing, transport, skills and investment simultaneously. Will they try to forge the area into a self sufficient city-state?

Will we become a major metropolis, with new road links to Bath and beyond and satellite towns to fill out the green belt? Or will it be the laissezfaire approach: companies bring jobs, jobs bring growth, and growth brings happiness?

It seems likely that the Conservative candidate will ride the tide of Conservative voters in Bath and North East Somerset and South

Although most of the candidates have declared themselves in the local papers, the official list of candidates can only be announced once the application window closes on April 4th. That leaves voters a week to get registered if they’re not already, and then just a month to discuss and debate the issues.

It’s quite sad that the timing of the election means the candidates have barely got time to put together their platforms, and communicate them to almost a million voters. What could have been a vibrant campaign about deciding the future for the South West threatens to be rather damp: ‘Let’s pick a colour and wait and see.’

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the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

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Pride against all odds A culture of disbelief towards LGBT asylum seekers means the safety and acceptance provided by support groups like Bristol Pride Without Borders is vital.

WORDS AMANI OMEJER

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Amy’s experience is far from unique. Being LGBT+ is in many countries either illegal or a source of persecution, and the risks faced

by LGBT+ people include death, imprisonment and violence. Sexual and gender identity is therefore one of many reasons people might be claiming asylum in the UK or elsewhere. There has been a more than 400% rise in people claiming asylum based on sexuality in the last five years – in the most recent figures released by the Home Office (from 2014), 1,115 people cited sexuality as their reason for seeking refuge, whereas in 2009 there were just 200 cases relating to sexuality, according to the website PinkNews.

“Bristol Pride Without Borders has given me back my dignity. I have not felt as safe in such a long time.”

To address the need for support systems for people in Bristol who are both asylum seekers and lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, Bristol PWB was set up in September 2015 by two local charities, Borderlands and Bristol Refugee Rights. The group has been meeting every two weeks since.

“It was needed because there was no safe space for LGBT+ refugees and asylum seekers where it was safe to be open about their identity and history. These people are exceptionally marginalised and we felt that the existing community groups were not meeting their needs,” says Tom Daly, who co-facilitates the group. “[Bristol PWB] provides a non-discriminatory

and non-judgemental space for LGBT+ asylum seekers and refugees to talk about their experiences and feelings with people from a similar background.”

Bristol PWB has links with other local meetups such as walking group LGBT WalkOut and the self-explanatory LGBT Brunch, and keeps its members informed about opportunities to engage with their activities.

“Our coordinator is understanding, helpful, and has been very resourceful.

We meet and share what we’ve each been doing. He has taken us to film shows, attended an AGM for LGBT Bristol, and joined others in a solidarity march and panel discussions to learn about the wider picture of human rights and LGBT rights,” says Amy. “This group is for asylum seekers like me who come here with so many worries and problems, with a main one being how they will be received because of their sexual orientation.

But with PWB we have been welcomed,” she adds. “Bristol PWB has given me back my dignity. I have not felt as safe in such a long time. For the first time I feel I can be myself as I share the friendship of others in my social group.”

The struggle for recognition LGBT+ asylum seekers typically find the asylum process extremely difficult, with the Home Office using systematic barriers to deter and reject asylum claims made on the basis of sexual orientation.

“The asylum system is harsh and difficult for anyone to pass through, but for those people whose claim for protection is based on their sexual identity, it is doubly so,” says Daly. “Asylum seekers are rigorously questioned in an ordeal lasting between four and eight hours. The

Home Office routinely refuse claims and demand that people prove their sexual orientation.

As well as being humiliating and

These hostels aren’t always safe spaces for people to be either. “Being placed in a hostel with a bunch of people who are possibly holding discriminating beliefs from their country of origin is really stressful and often dangerous for people,” says Joey of UKLGIG. The organisation is working for safer accommodation for LGBT+ asylum seekers, and a less traumatic process for them to go through. In Berlin, meanwhile, the first-ever hostel specific to LGBT asylum seekers recently opened.

“We are positive things are changing, and we have already seen conditions improve – especially within the area of detention of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers – but there’s still a lot that needs to happen,” Joey adds.

Finding pride

dehumanising to have to relay your personal life for scrutiny in a courtroom, it is also very hard to prove.”

The Home Office has changed its approach to assessing these claims in recent years. In 2010, a research report by UKLGIG (UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, a charity promoting equality and dignity for LGBT+ people seeking asylum in UK) found 98-99% of asylum claims made

by LGBT+ people were rejected in the first instance, compared with 73% of other asylum claims. Back then, the rejections were justified by the Home Office on the basis that people could return to their home country and “live in discretion and to have relationships in secret”, Daly explains.

Later the same year, it was finally acknowledged that this method of refusal was denying people Article 8 of the Human Rights Act — the right to a private and family life. It was also putting people in significant danger.

The Home Office mostly changed its tactic to asking people to “prove” that they are LGBT+, instead. Numbers of approvals have improved, with now roughly 60% of asylum seekers being refused at their first claim. Of those rejections, 90% of the time the Home Office says, “We accept that you

have the right to live and express your sexuality, but we don’t believe you’re gay,” says Daly.

“The Home Office must know they are refusing cases that are genuine, but it’s because they have this political motive to reduce immigration numbers.”

LBGT+ asylum seekers often find their stories are interpreted according to stereotypes and false assumptions from heterosexual officials. Further issues can be caused by the reliance on interpreters during questioning, who may come from the very community the individual is fleeing, leading the applicant to fear that they may harbour the same prejudices.

“Many of those who are initially refused are later recognised as refugees by a higher court after waiting several more years,” says Daly. For people to have to go to appeal, and have the court overturn the Home Office’s decision, is not only an incredibly stressful and lengthy process for the individuals, it’s also “a massive waste” of money and time, he adds.

For now, groups such as Bristol Pride Without Borders provide vital emotional support. As Amy points out, attending the group may be the first time a participant feels that they’re in a safe place, where they can relate to others without fear of judgement.

“People should know that LGBT asylum seekers are people who have been persecuted and are afraid,” says Amy. “Being open is a very new experience to us, but bit by bit we are getting used to it and liking it. We just need to be accepted without always having to answer questions or made to feel guilty because of who we are.”

“It is heartwarming to see how the members in this group look out for each other and the room is often filled with laughter,” says Daly. “We have spent hours talking about the challenges of reconciling sexual identity with religion and culture.”

Reporting on the issues that matter and sparking change Only with your support

“Nobody can be in my situation because everyone is different,” concludes Amy. “But if they need company they should join PWB.” *Name has been changed.

If you are LGBT+ and an asylum seeker or refugee, and are interested in going to the group, please contact Tom Daly on 07856 672351 or tom@refugeerights.org for more details. The group meets every second Wednesday from 6pm-8pm.

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“We are hopeful that more and more people will be granted at first instance – it would benefit everyone,” says Joey, an assistant at UKLGIG. While waiting to be interviewed, asylum seekers are not allowed to work – “they are forced to wait and are blocked from integrating or contributing,” explains Daly. “They are housed in hostels where they share

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Watercolour, spray paint and collage on paper.

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the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

here I come from, being in a same-sex relationship is a taboo, and a criminal offence,” explains Amy*, a member of the Bristol Pride Without Borders (PWB) group. “If caught, you face mob violence. I was. I am fortunate to have lived.”

low quality housing and scrape by on £37 a week.”

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Tearing up Asda car park

The Asda GTI Turbo

Tokyo, L.A, Cribbs Causeway: the cruiser scene is alive and well in Bristol PHOTOS NORBERTO FERNÁNDEZ SORIANO NORBERTOBERTO.TUMBLR.COM

WORDS ADAM CANTWELL-CORN DESIGN ANNA BASSO DE MARC

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

You might think Asda car park, Cribbs Causeway, on a wet night in March is about as dull as it gets. But, add to the scene hundreds of petrolheads, speakers the size of hubcaps, the stench of tyre smoke and the real possibility that the police may show up - and you’ve got a good night out. Alongside the boy-racers are families, teens and a significant number of girl-racers, firmly challenging this subculture’s stereotype of lads in souped up Peugeots. Apart from when people started to run back to their cars because someone shouted ‘police!’ (it turned out to a blue-light prank) the whole night had a feel of just another community getting together; to show off their cars, have a chat, burn some rubber and raise money for the Homes4Veterans, a charity supporting homeless ex-service people.

“When guys judge us, we tell them to piss off. And now we’re getting respect”

“This is getting raffled – all proceeds to MacMillan Cancer charity”

“Can you get it from the front? The side has a big dent”

“If I had money for tyres I’d be here all night bruv”

“That’s gonna be a sick photo”

What’s under that bonnet?!

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The Bearpit: contested hub of struggles for Bristol

Controlling environments?

Changes in the area may have helped make some of those incidents more visible. Neighbouring St Pauls is now undergoing extensive regeneration – or gentrification, depending on your viewpoint – including large-scale student accommodation being built in a road next door to Brunswick Square.

Bristol’s infamous Bearpit has undergone an image change in recent years – but rising homelessness means it’s now a site of conflict between wealthier incomers and some of the city’s most vulnerable people.

WORDS & PHOTOS ALEC SAELENS DESIGN ADAM WILKINSON

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Empty properties that have historically been squatted and provided temporary homes for people are being redeveloped, Telfer points out. The eviction of a squat near Brunswick Square in 2015 saw around 60 people left scrambling to find shelter. “It’s like a balloon,” Telfer says. “If you squeeze the air out of one bit of it, it’ll pop back out elsewhere. Moving people from A to B is not an enduring solution.”

ristol’s Bearpit, long an infamous place that pedestrians might think twice before passing through after dark, is now both a cherished hub for political artwork and, increasingly, a site of successful independent trade.

Delroy Hibbert, a longstanding St Pauls community member, says he has “sympathy for some of the people because they are vulnerable and struggling with addiction”. But, as a former local youth worker, he adds that “there are a lot of people who are young and alienated and get drawn into this kind of thing, and they are not homeless”.

Will Mathieson

Heading out from the other side of the roundabout, within a couple of minutes’ walk, six companies run student-focused lettings businesses in eight large buildings that provide beds for almost 2,500 short term renters.

Renting one of those flats in the luxury category for 51 weeks can cost more than £13,000 a year. The smallest building will take a minimum revenue of above £2m.

The group set out to reshape the space incrementally through public art, play, greening, physical redesign and the reintroduction of trade to a part of the city that had historically been a marketplace.

But over time, cracks emerged. As Miriam Delogu, speaking on behalf of the traders in the Bearpit, recalls, “We all had a common vision at one point, but over the years that has changed.” She adds that different members of the original BIG collective had different priorities around how the space should be managed, with the traders’ focus being – understandably, perhaps – on protecting their livelihoods.

Yet amid fast-paced urban development, private wealth sits in marked contrast with a population of some of the city’s most vulnerable. The arena-like space can be seen as an exaggerated microcosm of some of the city’s growing social divisions.

The group of independent traders eventually broke from BIG, and in late 2016 received a new license from the council to operate autonomously as the Bearpit Bristol CIC (community interest company).

It obtained a £112,000 loan from Resonance, a ‘social impact investment company’, to create a “safer and more welcoming environment” by increasing trade, footfall and profitability – and delivering a training programme for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Battle for the Bearpit Over the past few years, millions of pounds have poured into regenerating the Bearpit’s physical environment. The council injected the most money, whilst various groups contributed through smaller initiatives.

In 2010 the Bearpit Improvement Group (BIG), which formed out of meetings between residents, local groups, the council and police representatives, was granted a license by the council to run a ‘community action zone’. Its mission was to improve the image, atmosphere and use of the space by making it “welcoming, safe, diverse and inclusive”.

The Bearpit’s unsavoury reputation had been on the wane since the formation of BIG. But in 2015 a stakeholder group with interests in the Bearpit was created to tackle rising anti-social behaviour, following numerous incidents of harassment. This new group comprises of representatives from the traders, the council, the police, the surrounding hotels, city marketing agency Destination Bristol, local drug and homeless support services and BIG. On the margins, in the centre Most of the trouble has stemmed from drug and alcohol use associated with homelessness. Along with other public spaces in the area, which is home to many support services, the Bearpit has long acted as a meeting point for some of Bristol’s most vulnerable people.

staying a stone’s throw from the Bearpit at the Compass Centre. “There is nowhere where you belong.”

Nationally, estimated rough sleeper numbers have risen 132% since 2010. While Bristol’s figures have fallen from 97 to 74 in the year to December 2016, the city still has one of the highest rates in the country. Last year the outreach team from charity St Mungo’s supported over 1,000 people at risk of rough sleeping in the city.

“A very significant proportion of people who are homeless have alcohol and/or drug problems,” says Maggie Telfer, the chief executive of Bristol Drug Project (BDP). “If you have nowhere to live, getting treatment will not be top of your list.” A November 2016 Bristol council report says 36% of people in homelessness support services also have substance misuse support needs, with less than half of those actually engaging with drug services. Conversely, many people are refused homelessness support due to problems of substance misuse.

Another 2016 report from the council shows Bristol still has the largest estimated rate of opiate and/ or crack users of England’s ‘core cities’, and drugrelated deaths have been rising. While Telfer says that, increasingly, alcohol is the sole reason for referrals to BDP, drug issues in the city have also been complicated by the rise of synthetic cannabinoids, such as Spice. Whilst the strong, cheap and addictive drugs were outlawed under a government ban on socalled legal highs in 2016, use among street homeless people is rife in cities across the country. More than 120 incidents of anti-social behaviour and public disorder around the Bearpit were recorded by the police in 2016.

Strategies proposed by the Bearpit stakeholder group have included an increase in policing and the banning of individuals from the Bearpit.

However Danny Kushlick, head of external affairs at Transform, a Bristol-based advocacy group for the legalisation of drugs, raises concerns: “There is a long-term historical problem because both problematic drinkers, but more so people who use illegal drugs, are being stigmatised, and that comes with the territory.”

The idea of safe and welcoming spaces, together with policing, have led some to draw parallels with the

But Mathieson says those simply condemning the sanitisation of space are off the mark. “I belong with the traders and the people who are trying to improve the Bearpit,” he says. “I’m factually with the homeless population but I don’t use smack or crack.” He goes on to criticise the ways that local support services operate, claiming that providing free food and shelter in the area simply helps to perpetuate problems.

The council has put forward plans to improve coordination of homelessness and drugs misuse support services as part of its next round of commissioning in October 2017. But budget reductions of 12% will affect the capacity of these services. The number of contracts for drugs and alcohol support services in the city already fell from 16 to 5 back in 2013, leaving services in the outskirts of the city and directed at minority groups to find alternative sources of funding or close down.

Kushlick says he’s concerned about the struggle to deliver more services in times of budget restrictions.

For now, then, the Bearpit looks set to continue as an uneasy meeting point between inner-city Bristol’s growing wealth and its increasing social exclusion. Addressing the broader issues affecting the locality, Kushlick highlights “the pragmatic challenge of enabling good relations between business people, capitalism, and people who exist on the margins of society”.

“That isn’t a relationship that is easily held together,” he adds.

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the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

Marking the entrance to the city at the end of the M32, tall buildings of corporate hospitality and retail’s big players look down on it: Holiday Inn, Debenhams, Primark, Premier Inn. Across the way is Cabot Circus, 14 hectares of privately owned shopping space strapped in a network of CCTV and policies banning all sorts of outdoor activities. Its owner, Bristol Alliance Limited Partnership, backed by the Chinese state’s own capital and using the tax haven of Luxembourg, now plans to expand into Broadmead with residential units - none affordable.

discredited ‘broken window’ theory that informed mayor Rudy Giuliani’s approach to dealing with crime in 1990s New York. The premise was that removing visible signs of social and environmental dereliction in spaces helps to reduce these same problems.

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The scandalous privatisation of student debt will affect us all, not just graduates

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The government is about to sell off huge portions of student debt to corporations at a discount.

It’s one more step along the road towards privatising higher education.

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W

ith more than 200,000 degreeeducated residents, Bristol boasts a greater percentage of ex-students (46%) than most other cities. There are also around 52,000 current students at the city’s universities. Each new intake’s debt increases. Before 2012, average debt on graduation was under £25,000 per student; now it’s reckoned by the Institute for Fiscal Studies to be a whopping £44,035.

If you’re a graduate, you probably prefer not to think about this.

Repayments usually come straight out of your wages and the money goes to HMRC, via the Student Loans Company, to pay for schools, roads, the NHS and so on. The SLC paid your university the tuition fees when you started; it administers the repayments when you leave.

‘‘No longer will your student loan repayments go towards the state institutions most of us value.’’

But whether you’re a graduate or not, the deal just changed in favour of corporations, and at our expense.

Student loans are in the process of being sold off to banks to be traded as ‘securitised assets’. No longer will your student loan repayments go towards the state institutions most of us value.

Now they will go to banks like Credit Suisse, Lloyds and JP Morgan, or

whichever corporate investor owns your debt at that time. Put simply, private companies will profit hugely from UK higher education.

How is this happening?

Understanding how exactly this all works is difficult – in fact, boring or confusing the public could well be part of the government’s strategy in how it makes these sorts of unpopular announcements.

But the devil is in the detail. Unlike previous selloffs of student loan debt, which had a fixed value, the latest one is made up of loans that are incomedependent, and no one has any real idea what they’re worth. That factor is hardly likely to improve the package’s sale price.

The debts of students who completed their degrees in 2002-2006 make up the first batch being sold off in an auction of all student debt up to 2012. That first batch’s face value is £4bn, with a total of £12bn predicted to be raised by the exchequer over the next few years – but these are rather meaningless figures.

What matters in a loan is the amount reasonably expected to be repaid.

Obviously, as time passes, more repayments come in to HMRC. Although these fluctuate with the economy, unemployment levels, wage levels and so on, they represent a long-term and growing – albeit unpredictable – income for the country.

And that’s why it’s crucial we care: the government intends to sell off a huge

chunk of the country’s future income at a price discounted to the point where banks will buy them. Yes, no one quite knows what they’re worth, but what that means for the banks is a huge discount.

Jo Johnson, minister for universities, science, research and innovation said in the announcement in February: “The government’s policy is to sell assets where it is value for money to do so and where there is no policy reason to continue to own them.” The key phrase is ‘value for money’. In simple terms, ask yourself: what investor would buy anything of uncertain value unless it is very cheap?

The government will say it’s a great deal when the final announcement is made (after deals behind closed doors), but this will just be hogwash. The student loan book will only sell at all if it is hugely discounted. Banks are not stupid. It’s obvious economics.

A bad deal Financial journalists from the Financial Times to the Economist all state it will represent a bad deal for taxpayers.

Bristol Students’ Union is against it, saying it is “a short-termist approach to state finances – swapping long term loan interest payments that should be invested into public services for smaller short-term cash injections.” Nationally 64% of the population, graduate or not, are against it. So why is it going ahead?

There is only one reason to make such a bad deal: because short-term cash is valued over long-term income.

As Johnson stated pretty clearly, the

Tories are aiming to sell off public assets wherever possible. (And it’s not only the Conservatives: Gordon Brown famously sold off tonnes of the country’s gold reserves at a terrible price. He also enacted the first student debt selloff in 1998, which lost the public purse £240 million – and created the means by which the current process is happening.)

‘‘No one quite knows what the loans are worth, but what that means for the banks is a huge discount.’’

Ideological motivations aside, this scandalous deal highlights an age-old structural problem in British politics: the short election cycle favours discounted asset selloffs over long term investments. It’s bankers who rake in the chips. That needs to be fixed, no matter which party is in power.

But the Tories do seem on a oneway street to privatising education; student debt is merely one aspect.

The scrapping of the last maintenance grants last year and the increase of maximum debt amounts for students are all incremental steps along the same path. By using the now familiar strategy of making non-headlinegrabbing, rather dull-sounding changes that few fully understand, they are leading us towards the US system of private, for-profit education.

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

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The next stages of gentrification are upon Bristol But can we take inspiration from cities that are rebelling against it with creative solutions?

WORDS AJIT NIRANJAN ILLUSTRATION LISA ROSE HARPER DESIGN ANNA BASSO DE MARC

F

Property website Zoopla recently listed three of five Ashley neighbourhoods among its top ten “hipster hotspots” across the UK. St. Pauls, Stokes Croft, and Montpelier are now in the same league as infamously “trendy” parts of London such as Shoreditch and Dalston. In what is becoming a familiar sequence, these neglected areas have absorbed waves of artists and bohemians who settled in the cheap

properties, then hipsters and yuppies arrived with their bakeries and coffee shops, and the areas are now moving quickly into the overpriced era of luxury eating and accommodation.

But it isn’t fixed-wheel bicycles and flat-white coffees that define these ‘hipster hotspots’; instead, it’s the struggle to afford a home. Zoopla’s report ranks areas of the UK by their rises in property prices since 2011.

Those who made the area attractive and created value in the first place are being squeezed out.

London claims the top six spots. But Bristol fills the following three. House prices in parts of Ashley have risen by more than 35% in the last five years.

Similarities with the capital should set alarm bells ringing across Bristol.

London’s housing bubble means even the middle-classes struggle to live near where they work. The unemployed, and those earning poverty wages, are at the whim of unscrupulous landlords offering regular rent hikes and unfair evictions. Owning a home is a fantasy for all but the richest.

Such a trend is well under way in Bristol. Since 2001, home ownership among 25 to 39-year-olds has sunk by a quarter in the West of England.

The market share of private tenancies, meanwhile, has doubled. A typical two-bedroom flat in Bristol will set you back by a staggering £1,000 a month.

Though housing costs have ballooned, pay packets have shrunk – a lot. The median (middle) wage in the West of England is still £1 an hour lower today than in 2010. This has pushed house prices to about ten times local salaries.

Austerity policies such as benefit caps mean fewer people have a place on the property ladder. And those

The world’s urban population is growing, and as demand for inner-city housing rises, the poorest are being displaced – a problem across the globe. Stopping this trend is tricky, though. What works for one city may not be appropriate for Bristol. Here are a few possible approaches.

Rent caps in Berlin, Germany

In Berlin, where renters outnumber home-owners, the solution is regulation. Rent caps were introduced in 2015 in order to slow rocketing property prices, by forbidding landlords from charging new tenants more than 10% of the local market value. This has helped provide housing stability, but not by much. The law is only enforced if tenants sue their landlords. That costs thousands of euros – the sort of money that the victims of gentrification rarely have. In March this year Bristol mayor Marvin Rees suggested a rent cap could be suitable for the city, but currently central government holds the key to this power.

A gentrification land tax House prices in Ashley have risen by

35%

As an area becomes more attractive and expensive, mostly due to the work of its inhabitants, the land itself becomes more valuable. Usually the windfall of this increase falls to the landowner, often totally unearned. A tax on this land would ensure that some of the increase in land value would return back to the community that created the value in the first place.

No more cafes in Montreal, Canada

Canadians are trying a different tack. In Montreal, where run-down districts are peppered with high-end restaurants, the local government has introduced a by-law to slow the rise of hipster cafes. No more than one in six businesses can be a restaurant; new eateries are forbidden from opening within 25m of an existing one.

Montreal fears the fate of its bigger neighbour, Vancouver, where foreign investors have forced huge property price spikes. The result is a housing bubble even worse than London’s. In 2016 Vancouver introduced a 15% tax on all property purchases by non-Canadians to try and catch the bubble before it bursts. This goes beyond similar stamp-duty measures in Sydney (4%) and Melbourne (7%).

Genuinely affordable housing, around the world

in last five years who have fallen off have little chance of climbing back on.

In areas such as Ashley the pace of change is rapid. Stokes Croft and St. Pauls, long demonised as crimeridden drug dens are now marketed as “edgy” and “Bohemian”. Estate agents from outside the city brazenly play on Ashley’s alternative culture to target middle-class renters and buyers. In March St Pauls was named as one of the coolest places to live in the UK...by The Times.

This is perverse for two reasons.

Firstly, the established communities and artists who created the area’s alternative charm (and value for property developers) can now scarcely afford to live there. In short, those who made the area attractive and created value in the first place are being squeezed out. Secondly, the history: the grand terraces that make up St. Pauls were built by slave-trade era ‘merchants’, abandoned after the Blitz, then repopulated by immigrants from Britain’s colonies. They settled in the dilapidated townhouses that richer white people had fled. The “urban blight” that scoured this part of Bristol was inflicted by lax landlords who left properties to rot – not the immigrants who tried to patch it up as best they could.

Today, their descendents are struggling to cope with an influx of affluent white newcomers, many of them Londoners fleeing their own housing crisis, bringing with them higher incomes and expensive tastes. To some locals they are responsible for driving rents up and residents out. Those who can stay must pay a hefty price.

francescahooper.net

Gentrification: what can be done?

The most obvious way to prevent regeneration from dispossessing communities is to have genuinely affordable housing. The first step towards this is to force developers to do their bit. Second is to create genuine alternatives, such as Bristol Community Land Trust, or even the council itself, who plans to launch its own building company for both market rate and affordable homes.

DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE IDEAS ON HOW TO TACKLE BRISTOL’S HOUSING CRISIS? LET US KNOW ON TWITTER @ THEBRISTOLCABLE OR EMAIL CONTENT@THEBRISTOLCABLE.ORG ADVERTISEMENT than 100 people are reckoned by the Felix Flicker, a physicist who lived council to be sleeping rough in the in St. Pauls until 2015, was served a city on any given night. A local Big “Section 21” notice by his landlord Issue seller points out this is just the each of the four years he lived there. tip of the iceberg, with many more These notices allow landlords to begin hidden homeless spending nights on eviction procedures, but can be a ploy friends’ sofas, or in their cars. to increase rents: Flicker received each notice alongside tenancy-renewal There can be benefits in a gentrifying offers setting rent at a higher price forpeople a homeowner whose property than the previous year. The message As more and area: more choose value rises, or a resident who has was simple: pay more, orto clear out. live their lives without religion, less fear of street muggings.

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There were lots of tears, laughter and joy! Everyone ‘got’ what we did and were very impressed.

We were so lucky to share it all with our friends and family.

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BRITISH HUMANIST ASSOCIATION for the one life we have BRITISH HUMANIST ASSOCIATION for the one life we have

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01/07/2014 10:31:02 01/07/2014 10:31:02

For more information and to find your local celebrants visit: humanistceremonies.org.uk

2014 New Statesman advert (1).indd 1

01/07/2014 10:31:02

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

or all the subversive street art in Bristol’s Ashley ward, the two most common words on view must surely be “for sale”.

Squats that recently housed the city’s riotous subcultures now have estate agents knocking on their doors.

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IN MY VIEW…

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IN MY VIEW…

Dont knock EastEnders, it has important lessons for us all A social worker justifies their not-so-guilty pleasure.

WORDS ANONYMOUS So Bex and Shaki used to really like each other, but now, since the naked selfie got sent around school, they can’t trust each other anymore and they’re both really upset. It doesn’t seem like they’ll ever be friends again, while the other kids are just laughing about it...

Working isn’t working WORDS DEBBIE PORTEOUS Karl Marx once described work as “a life affirming activity that unleashes our creativity”. How many of us are lucky enough to say this about the work that we do? Working as a counsellor, I do feel this about my work. It’s amazing to be able to work alongside another person with an emerging expansive purpose, always unique, and led by the clients direction, pace and needs.

But currently, in government-funded talking therapies, there are more and more boxes to tick, goals to achieve, and not necessarily the goals of clients – the government agenda is intruding on the therapeutic space in an alarming manner.

Now, the government are rolling out their national Work and Health Programme, which is due to launch in autumn this year. In order to do it, they’ve made the implementation of the programme part of the West of England devolution deal. This welfare-to-work programme targets people with health conditions or disabilities and people who have been out of the job market for a long time.

A lot of us are by now all too familiar with the situation with benefit sanctions and the distressing Work Capability Assessments and withdrawn disability support, either because of the experiences of friends or family or from following the experiences of Daniel Blake. Let’s not forget the United Nations Human Rights Committee findings published November 2016 of “grave or systematic violations of rights of people

with disabilities” and the increasing evidence of death by welfare reform.

Therapy is now being used to get people into work under the guise of a health intervention: DWP in health centres and therapists in job centres. An analysis of the problems with this not-so-subtle coercion has been dubbed “psychocompulsion”, in which all of the problems of health and society are located within the individual, ignoring the current political and economic context.

Reading about the Work and Health Programme, I see at the centre an ambitious statement. The government want to start “a wide-ranging debate about recognising the value of work as a health outcome, to change perceptions and culture around health, work and disability” (emphasis added).

It’s the polar opposite of the inspiring Marx quote where work is itself a healthy life affirming activity.

The World Health Organisation define health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being”. It’s impossible to square this with the types of jobs the government want people who are coming off benefits to do: zero-hours contracts, minimum wage, no job security. Indeed it is fair to say that the conditions of work itself are increasingly something that is causing ill health and distress. To borrow a phrase I’ve seen on placards from the Mental Health Resistance Network, ‘working isn’t working’.

“ Some of the most amazing work I know is unseen and unheard, part of a different value system outside of the neo-liberal ‘no such thing as society’ dogma”

It’s time to question what ‘work’ really is. Is it being a part of the labour force, the labour market, part of the means of production of GDP? Some of the most amazing work I know is unseen and unheard, part of a different value system outside of the neo-liberal “no such thing as society” dogma: caring for people young and old, working for family, education, justice, creating art, community...

I love how young singer songwriter Grace Petrie captures this in her lyrics, “..we’ve been told, since we were four years old, that employment is the goal, fill your wallet not your soul, use your life to gather gold”.

I’m concerned how all this will unfold in Bristol and the West of England as part of the devolution deal. There’s an opportunity to limit the damage, I believe, if we vote in Lesley Mansell, a socially-aware metro mayor candidate on 4 May. And we all need to be aware how this is being framed. This is not just about what it means to be healthy.

As disability and mental health activist Denise McKenna puts it: “..I am also fighting for what it means to be human and to be civilised, for how we value ourselves and each other.

I am fighting against the lie that the only value to be found in our lives is as workers making the rich even richer. We have higher purpose than that.”

Debbie Porteous is a Cable member and works as a counsellor in East Bristol, and is a member of the Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

At the age of 27 I am already unbelievably out of touch with what is going on for teenagers who have endless options for communication and social media just sitting in their pocket.

But by using the Bex and Shaki ‘sexting’ saga in EastEnders, we’re able to have a meaningful conversation about people we both know. We use the soap to talk about a situation that is without doubt directly applicable to this girl’s life.

The storyline can be used further, to talk about how the adults are out of touch with the younger characters, for example, or the complexity of trust and relationships in your teenage years.

Through EastEnders we find a world that both I and the girl I’m talking to inhabit, and where characters provide the third person scenario so often needed when talking about difficult and personal topics.

EastEnders is viewed by between 5 and 20 million people four nights a week. Since I started watching as a nine year old it has taught me, from the comfort of my sofa, about many complex issues: Living with, and myths around, HIV; young girls being groomed in their homes without anyone noticing; the difficulties and joys of having a child with Down’s syndrome; coming out as gay to a homophobic family; and postpartum depression, to name just a few.

Currently, I’m seeing a loved and active member of the Albert Square community getting older and becoming isolated, as those around her are wrapped up in their own hectic lives. I’m watching as two adult sisters try to juggle caring for their mum as her dementia worsens. I’m seeing a young man get caught up in repayments of pay day loans. I’m willing Whitney not make excuses for her husband hitting her, while knowing the stress he is currently under as a veteran, struggling to readjust to civilian life and the expectations on his macho identity. These are fictional characters, playing out very real issues.

“Since I started watching as a nine year old it has taught me, from the comfort of my sofa, about many complex issues.”

Right now women’s support services are being drastically cut, despite just 5.7% of reported rape cases resulting in conviction, according to Rape Crisis England and Wales. So watching a strong character who I respect have nowhere to turn after she is raped by a family member, her pain and distress of being interviewed, having to face her perpetrator, and then be told there isn’t enough evidence, is haunting. We were there, we saw it happen. We totally understand her decision making process and why she acted as she did. And yet, nothing happens. And life goes on. On screen, as in life.

A couple of weeks ago, a Polish-themed night at the Queen Vic resulted in the pub being vandalised with antiPolish graffiti. The residents of Albert Square casually discussed this and set about scrubbing it off as a community, apologising to their new Polish friend.

Without a fuss, and without telling people what to think, this subtle demonstration of community action was beamed into millions of living rooms.

When thinking about this article I Googled ‘best EastEnders storylines’. In a list put together by the Daily Telegraph, the top ten are the dramatic shootings, the pushing over cliffs, the car accidents, explosions and affairs. These are the scenes people are thinking about when they dismiss soaps as a sensationalist and miserable portrayal of the darkest depths of human life. And maybe it is these storylines that provide the entertainment and keep people watching.

But underneath that are the constant portrayals of contemporary and relevant issues, a window into a private struggle you don’t see often in real life.

It may not be considered ‘high culture’ like art house cinema or theatre, but the stories in EastEnders often reflect the realities of life in the UK today.

In this way it helps us empathise with experiences we don’t have and people we don’t know, as well as providing a way to talk about the issues we may face on a daily basis.

And that’s why I watch EastEnders.

At least that’s what I tell my snobby housemates.

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

A counsellor challenges the current political agenda on work and the government push to get people into jobs under the guise of a health intervention.

I’m not chatting at the water cooler, or on the phone, or even tweeting about what I’ve seen on EastEnders last night.

I’m a social worker, in a school, trying to talk to a teenager about why sending and asking for naked pictures might not be a good idea.

For me this is also another perfect example for the argument I have been on a bit of a soap box about for years, particularly when mocked by my educated (and frankly snobby) housemates about my committed EastEnders viewing.

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the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

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31

Discontent, despair and anger:

responses to the Tasering of Ras Judah Adunbi Desmond Brown encountered strong feelings when he asked local people to respond to the Tasering of Ras Judah, a 63-year-old black race relations adviser in Easton. Now he’s on a mission to get those voices heard and inform people of their rights.

Not long after the controversial police Tasering of Ras Judah in January, I was on my way to meet Desmond Brown, one of the Justice for Judah campaigners. He’d recorded local people’s views on community-police relations, and wanted the Cable to hear them. Then, coincidentally, as I was walking through St Pauls for the meeting, I encountered firsthand the kind of harmful local policing that has been thrust into view by the incident.

I saw a young black man chased by police, apprehended and handcuffed down a St Pauls side street. He looked no older than 25 and was shaking with anger. When he demanded to know why he’d been arrested, no answer came. It was a familiar scene, played out daily across towns and cities.

Who was he and why was he detained?

The facts did not become clear. But while I watched, police chased, handcuffed, and then eventually released the young man with a casual apology and no charges.

Incidents like these, regardless of legality, etch a deep impression on those affected, and do nothing to improve the police’s reputation.

For every anecdote like this there are plenty more left unheard, and that’s why Desmond was so keen to make and share his recordings.

Desmond Brown encountered discontent, despair and anger in his interviews

Collecting voices A little later at the St Pauls Learning Centre, Desmond handed me a USB stick full of audio files documenting local people’s reactions to the Tasering of Ras Judah. He’s made it his mission to collect personal testimonies, including not only responses to that incident but also firsthand experiences of policing in Bristol.

The footage made international headlines and went viral. Community meetings were organised. A campaign group, Justice for Judah, was formed.

And in February, with pressure mounting, the IPCC (the Independent Police Complaints Commission) served the two Avon & Somerset police officers involved with gross misconduct notices as part of their ongoing investigation into what happened that cold January day in Easton.

Despite the fact that the officer who Tasered Ras Judah is still policing, campaigners have cautiously welcomed the IPCC’s investigation. It seems likely the outcome of the IPCC investigation will be limited to minor repercussions for the officers involved, as has happened in similar cases nationally.

Financial settlements may be reached between Ras Judah and the police, but that isn’t certain.

The Justice for Judah campaign seems to have become a little quieter for now, in part because of the IPCC’s slow bureaucratic process. But as Desmond and others in the campaign know, this is not about one incident, one man or just his experience with the police.

According to police data, last year there were 608 incidents when Tasers were used by Avon & Somerset police (the majority of these are when Tasers are drawn, aimed and not fired). This is down from 659 Taser incidents in 2015.

In total 94 people were actually Tasered

by Avon & Somerset police in 2016.

Photo © marksimmonsphotography.com

Behind these figures, there are broader historical tensions between parts of the local community and the police. Since the Judah incident, people are keen to speak, share their experiences and most importantly, to be heard. Desmond Brown encountered discontent, despair and anger in his interviews.

A multimedia piece including the testimonies will be featured on the Cable website soon. Here are a few snippets.

“I know he’s a lovely man.

I’ve grown up in Bristol most of my life, Judah was in the sports centre as a mentor for us as young people as we were growing up. I know Judah, I know he’s a nice person.

“Judah was a race relations officer for the city for many years. And if the police are going to Taser a pensioner in the face, that works with them, sits on boards, making decisions about how they should treat black people, it’s fucking disgusting.”

Claire

Afrika “I would have thought that somebody who is wanted, you would have some form of photograph or recognition of how the person looks.

“You’ve seen somebody from behind and presumed.

The gentleman is a respectable man in the community, I’ve known him through football when we were kids over in Cabot. He’s been doing many things in the community, and I used to go dog walking with him, with my dog. So when I saw that he got Tasered in the face, I just got to realise that there is no justice, for anybody with any ethnicity in this country or in lots of countries.

“We get harassment all the time, even when you’re doing nothing, you’ll get harassed.”

Leyton

“We want to start educating our community. So that they understand their rights and have a civic understanding of the law so that they can request that the police officers kind of raise their levels and realise that people in uniform won’t be able to take the mickey.

“They have to treat everyone they meet with dignity, integrity, transparency and accountability. We are asking everybody to film any engagement with the police.”

Desmond

“I know Judah quite well.

The police are coming out for the general public, you know that is what they’re there for.

“That’s people’s health we’re dealing about, their lives. That man could have died. Now what would the implications have been if he had died?”

Donna

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

WORDS ALON AVIRAM & DESMOND BROWN PHOTO MARK SIMMONS

A familiar scene: mistaken identity?

You probably saw the disturbing footage from January that showed Ras Judah, a 63-year-old grandfather, being Tasered in the face after refusing to give his name to officers who mistook him for a wanted man in Easton. To make matters even worse, this was the second time Ras Judah, who had worked as a race relations adviser for Avon and Somerset police, was targeted by the police in a case of mistaken identity.

“Why have we not seen the full body-cam footage for incidents that are serious? The police keep on talking about trust, integrity, accountability, responsibility, honesty, openness. To me, it’s just words that they keep on regurgitating, because they think that’s what the public wants to hear.

“Let’s be honest, they are trained to be suspicious, to suspect, to categorise, to tag, to label and to be wary of people, and untrusting. And that’s a problem, because people take offence to being treated like that in our communities, and don’t want to be treated like that.”

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Shining a light on Bristol’s lonely How local groups are bringing people out of this ‘silent epidemic’.

WORDS HANNAH VICKERS PHOTO SOUTHERN BROOKS COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS DESIGN ADAM WILKINSON

L

The national charity is one of 13 to have partnered with the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, launched in January. The cross-party Commission was set up to honour MP Jo Cox, murdered last year, and to continue her work. It’s the first time that MPs, policy makers and major charities have worked together on loneliness, the affliction Cox called ‘the silent epidemic’.

As bad as smoking Our understanding of loneliness’ physical, as well as psychological effects, has increased in recent years - and they are severe. Studies have found that chronic loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

It’s been linked to a variety of serious health problems, including increased blood pressure, dementia, alcoholism, depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide. Other studies have found that older people who self-report as lonely find daily tasks more difficult, have higher rates of declining mobility, and may even die sooner.

Affecting more than a million over-65s in the UK, loneliness is as prevalent as it is dangerous. Half of older people say that the TV is their main form of company and a new poll commissioned

by Age UK has found that half a million people in the UK spend most of the week completely alone.

Many assume that loneliness is a problem mainly suffered by the elderly, but a 2010 survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that it is a greater concern in the 18-34 age bracket than in over 55s, and more than nine million adults in the UK are estimated to be either always or often lonely. That’s 18 times the population of Bristol.

Social isolation in Bristol is above the national average and the council says that reducing this is one of the priorities in the city’s Health and Wellbeing Strategy. Research from Age UK Bristol estimates that 11,000 of Bristol’s 123,400 over-50s are lonely.

It’s affecting the younger population, too: around 20,000 18-64-year-olds in Bristol are estimated to be experiencing isolation, according to Bristol City Council’s latest Joint Strategic Needs Assessment.

Instead of providing someone with a temporary voluntary friend, the new scheme will empower them to form friendships and get involved in their community.

Making connections The Marmalade Trust is one of the organisations working to tackle Bristol’s loneliness crisis. It grew from a one-off event: a Christmas dinner that occupational therapist Amy Perrin organised for three elderly people in 2013.

“If you’re on your own on Christmas day, you really are lonely,” she says.

Ninety-seven guests attended last Christmas’ dinner and the Trust is now working on a new initiative to get older people out and about.

Amy, who runs the Trust in her spare time, says that the new scheme will be a markedly different approach to ‘befriending’, the matching up of lonely people with volunteers. The new scheme will empower them to form friendships and get involved in their community, she says.

“I’ve been volunteering for over 20 years and I’m really keen that we don’t give 87-year-olds another 21-year-old for a short period of time. Befriending is a great support for some people, but what we want to do is make sure people have their own peer support,” says Amy.

Men in Sheds group in Patchway

“There’s plenty going on in Bristol, it’s just a question of signposting what’s available and supporting people to get involved.”

their early 20s and late middle age.

Men are also more than three times more likely to commit suicide.

The newly launched Bristol Ageing Better, a partnership of individuals and organisations, is also rolling out a similar scheme. ‘Community Navigators’ will be trained to support isolated older people to connect with their communities and get involved with services and events.

Men in Sheds is one of the organisations working to address the issue of loneliness and associated poor mental health in men. It started in Australia but there are now more than 300 sheds in the UK, and half a dozen across Bristol. Mike Lewis, who founded the Filton Men’s Shed around three years ago, says that working alongside each other makes it easier for the taciturn to talk.

By 2020, Bristol Ageing Better aims to have made Bristol a more ‘Age Friendly City’. The partnership plans to collect data and use it to inform and influence Bristol’s decision makers, so that future services are “better planned and more effective in reducing loneliness and social isolation”. (Bristol Old People’s Forum, however, which has been active on the issue, has recently been denied money from the council’s impact fund.)

Another scheme, focused specifically on men, is Men in Sheds. Studies have shown that men are more likely to be lonely and not reach out for help. Research commissioned by the Movember Foundation in 2015 found that 2.5 million men ‘have no close friends’ and their chances of friendlessness almost treble between

“Men tend to talk shoulder to shoulder.

If you’re working together, you talk together. That’s the premise of the shed, just to provide a venue, a safe venue for men to meet,” he said.

TO FIND OUT MORE OR GET INVLOLVED, VISIT MARMALADETRUST.ORG, MENSSHEDS.ORG.UK AND BRISTOLAGEINGBETTER.ORG.UK

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

oneliness sucks the joy out of life and undermines our sense of self-worth. It can affect our mental, emotional and physical health and disconnect us from others,” says Caroline Abrahams, director of Age UK.

Information and ideas aren’t cheap. Do your bit for £1 a month.

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The community razed to the ground for a road that was never built

even if it was only an isolated incident, shows the council’s haphazard approach.

RESISTANCE Some disparaging comments in the local press at the time described the neighbourhood as a ‘slum’ that needed to be replaced - but those supporting the scheme were in the minority. The Atwells, while acknowledging small pockets of decline, remember the neighbourhood as still thriving, with most people as deeply attached to it as they were.

“Home of the defiant Henry Bradbeer, with two houses left on either side to hold it up (1981)” Photo: Stephen Dowle

I

“In the war, Churchill said ‘Fight!’, and we did,” he reflects. “But you didn’t perceive the same threat with the council as you did with Hitler, because Hitler was the enemy, whereas Bristol City Council was not supposed to be.”

n the early 1900s, the south Bristol suburb of Totterdown was a magnet for people from across the city. Shoppers flocked to the eccentric neighbourhood, where century-old businesses were crammed up and down the Wells and Bath Roads, alongside the homes of working class families who’d been there for generations.

That thriving mix of life and commerce no longer exists because the council knocked most of it to the ground, in what is arguably Bristol’s worst planning disaster.

WHAT THE PLANNERS DID In the 1960s, the planners of Bristol City Council had big dreams of an outer circuit road, a highway around the centre ploughing through several innercity suburbs, including vast swathes of Totterdown. The controversial scheme ultimately failed, but not before a painful mass eviction that still scars people and landscape today.

Demolished areas became a “wasteland” (1973) Photo: Stephen Dowle

Three Lamps Junction, 1968 Photo provided by Knowle and Totterdown Local History Society

compulsory sale of the family home was eaten up by a sales tax. The couple had to move to Hanham, where they struggled financially.

“They took all three houses,” she recalls. “We used to see each other every day, but then we were completely pulled apart.”

The disruption might have been bearable, if not for the chaotic and bureaucratic rollout of the demolition programme. In her 2006 book, Totterdown Rising, Kate Pollard documents how the plans went ahead without proper oversight or approval, leading to indecision and stagnation.

Brothers Paul and John Atwell, both now in their seventies and living in Keynsham and St George, have a similar story. Their father Reginald had planned for individual homes on his property, so his children could live nearby. “Family was very important to him,” reflects Paul. “He wanted us to stay close … we would have all been there together.”

In the space of less than ten years, more than 550 homes and businesses, including historic pubs and shops, were demolished, with 2,000 people evicted. Homeowners were served with compulsory purchase orders, tenants were moved to other areas, and business owners had to start again somewhere else. In a deeply rooted community where everybody knew each other, relationships suffered as the neighbourhood fell apart.

The family of Marilyn Webb, now 80, was split up. She had recently bought a house on the same street as her mother and sister. After their street was

knocked down her mother had to move to Brislington, her sister to Stockwood, and she and her newborn baby to a council house in Bedminster.

Three Lamps Junction, 2017 Photo: Ed Fielden

Worse, the family home was also their parents’ pension, a large house with space for flats that would have produced rental income for their retirement. Their sons say the demolition left the couple “devastated”.

It was tough for their father to restart his newspaper delivery business, and much of the money he got from the

In one instance, a mix-up led to the

“I’ll push them in the river sooner than move.”

demolition of an entire row of homes that didn’t need to be torn down. And Marilyn Webb ended up having to pay for her own house to be destroyed, a “heartbreaking” experience which,

Nonetheless, there are stories of determined individual resistance.

Elderly Totterdown resident Henry Bradbeer was the last person to move from the demolition area, defying the council to the end, and is still remembered with admiration today. Another was 74-year-old Jane Hopeson, featured in a 1969 Bristol Evening Post article as the ‘battling granny’, declaring ‘I’ll push them in the river sooner than move’.

By the early 1970s, local groups like the Totterdown Traders’ Association and the Totterdown Action Group (TAG) were formed. They were supported by city-wide opposition to the Outer Circuit Road and other planning projects from students, lawyers, environmentalists and engineers. But Graham Davey, who was there at the time, says the outsiders’ impact was marginal compared to the local campaigners like TAG and the residents at their public meetings.

The meeting that sticks out in Davey’s mind saw Tony Benn (then MP for Bristol South East) arriving to hear people’s concerns, but none of the councillors did. Frustrated Totterdown residents walked straight to City Hall to confront their absent local representative, F.E. Sprackling.

“He wrote a letter to the Evening Post protesting about this posse which had come up from Totterdown to get him,” says Davey. “But the approach had been made politely and courteously, from a

meeting where he ought to have been present!”

Davey believes the council saw Totterdown residents as apolitical and easily manipulated, never expecting resistance from defiant grandparents, let alone community organisers. The Bristol Evening Post also endorsed the anti-demolition campaign, keeping stories of resistance in the news and letting the locals write in to share their experiences and opinions.

THE END As the 1970s continued there were new politicians, new financial realities, and continuing indecision about the road plan. The demolished area sat blighted for years. Both local historian William Evans and Paul Atwell describe it as a “bomb site”, with those left unable to sell their homes. There continued to be public anger and demands for the council to do something with the land.

The council was soon under pressure from homeless charity Shelter to use the wasted area for accommodation as, even then, Bristol had a long waiting list for social housing.

In 1974 the new local authority of Avon took over some planning responsibilities from Bristol City Council. Eventually it became clear that the road was not going to happen - all that hurt and hardship had been for nothing. “Such a waste,” John Atwell laments. “Such an absolute waste of resources, of human life, of a community. Families who’d lived there generations.”

Both John Atwell and his father avoided driving through the area for years, so as not to be reminded of what they had lost. “I just felt so hurt,” says John. “I just couldn’t face it.” William Evans’ Totterdown in-laws eventually moved out of Bristol altogether.

Totterdown’s story didn’t end there, of course. Eventually building resumed, businesses came back, and the neighbourhood was revived. That said, there are still older people in the area who remember the demolitions of half a century ago and mourn close-knit, working-class Totterdown as it was.

It’s fitting that the neighbourhood revival is about both moving forward, and remembering. Part of the derelict land, known as Zone A, was gifted to the community as an acknowledgment of what was done to them. The active local residents’ association TRESA (Totterdown Residents Environmental & Social Action) has put down a mural there, honouring the families uprooted by the road scheme, and hoping the memory of the struggle still has a place in this resurgent community.

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

the BRISTOL CABLE | ISSUE 11

WORDS KOEL MUKHERJEE DESIGN LUCY MCARTHUR

The demolition was gradual, so organised resistance was too. The uncertainty of the situation inevitably left people disempowered. “It just wore you down in the end,” John Atwell explains. “People were just despondent, they didn’t have the life in them they used to have.”

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