2008 political blog

Residents forced to pay Canal Fee

2008-04-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

Enraged residents of Shelley Road, Preston, have rejected expensive garden licence agreements.
British Waterways North West is charging those who live on that Lancaster Canal embankment over £100 a year as standard rent for occupying the land between the residents’ property and the canal.

Miss Caroline Hamer, of 67 Shelley Road, Ashton-on-Ribble, said: “This is absolutely appalling. There’s not a single person happy with North West Waterways’ decision.”

In their letters to Shelley Road, British Waterways North West wrote: “As required by our Government, we are required to ensure that anyone who is using our land pays an open market rent for it.”

Of the people living on Shelley Road, around half of them own the deeds to their homes. They are the ones who will not have to pay anything extra.

However, Miss Hamer argues there are those who rent who have been using the land between the canal and their homes for several years, and it wasn’t an issue beforehand.

The 19 year old sales assistant said: “It’s only because the canal was sold. We have to pay over a hundred pounds plus VAT, and a payment of £75.00 plus VAT to the solicitors handling this problem, MB Hodgson & Son.

It might not seem like a lot of money to some people but it is to others. We have pensioners who live here as well.

Everything has become expensive these days, and little by little it does add up.”

And it is not just Shelley Road residents who are against this annual rent fee.

Mr John Williams, of Blackpool Road, Preston, said: “I have family living on that canal; they’ve lived there their whole lives and never had to pay a canal renting fee. They say it’s to benefit the canal, but its just greed.”

The 74 year old pensioner said meetings have been set up with their local MP Mark Hendrick.

“They’ve been advised to seek professional advice or speak to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. It’s not fair at all. Why should anyone pay to live at that canal terminal when it looks like a tip.”

Locals have complained that the beginning of the canal there has been used a waste land. Numerous complaints have been made to the council to clean up the grotty area but it seems they have fallen on deaf ears.

North West Waterways business development manager, Alan Carter is aware of the concern this action has caused, and has met with Mr Hendrick.

They have agreed that the annual rent paid by those with agreements already is to be reviewed to current market levels, as required by the government.

Mr Carter has acknowledged in his letters that the increase in annual payment could cause some short term financial difficulty.

“Accordingly we are willing to consider a phasing in of any increase as circumstances require and will seek (your) agreement to any increase before invoicing (you) for the same.”

However, some locals feel that this problem could have been avoidable if the central government had not cut its grants to British Waterways.

Join the debate:

Do you think Shelley Road residents should pay the canal fee?

Click below to watch why residents feel they shouldn't have to pay extra:

Futuristic waterway could soon be a reality

2008-04-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

The resurrection of the long forgotten Lancaster Canal route waterway system may be behind the Shelly Road fees.

A visionary £800 million re-development project of the city’s famous old waterways could see river taxis’ and boats floating above pedestrians in Preston city centre as early as 2012.

The project has the backing of the Canal Trust, Preston council and British Waterways, who maintain the country’s canal systems. The Preston City Link Canal Trust was founded in 2003 with the intention of restoring the Lancaster Canal. However, actually construction won’t begin until around 2009.

Currently, the terminus is in Shelley Road, in Ashton. The plans would restore the canal section to a new marina within the Maudland area, next to the Maudland building of the University of Central Lancashire.

In an interview with the Lancashire Evening Post, Lancaster Canal Trust chairman Colin Barnes, of Victoria Road, Fulwood, said: “The journey starts at Ashton Basin and follows the old route right into the city as far as Maudland Bank.”

The original aqueduct was knocked down in 1964, so a new one would have to be built over Aqueduct Street. From the duct boats would wind their way under Fylde Road to Miley Green and onto the land between Maudland Road and Cold Bath Street were hopefully the new marina will be housed.

The multimillion pound project also aims to regenerate the derelict Preston to Longridge Rail Line which architects envision to pass over the new marina via a bridge. The rail line would travel as far as Garmull Lane where it will connect with Park and Ride facilities. There are plenty of utilities within Preston to exploit in order to make this project a huge success, such as the Ribble Link and the Preston Docks.

The Lancaster Canal was originally put forward as way to link Lancaster with Wigan. The 75 mile long waterway system has a tunnel at Hincaster, Cumbria, as well as two river crossings at Lune and Ribble.

Construction first began in 1792 and by 1819 all but the duct across the Ribble has been completed. Unfortunately money ran out and a tramway was introduced as a replacement instead. That later closed in 1857.

The canal has never had to opportunity to live up to its potential, until now.

Chairman Colin Barnes found the original plans and drawings by the original canal architect John Rennie, who also built Waterloo Bridge and London Bridge, in an old sea chest, and wanted to make his vision a full reality.

He said one of the main aims of this project is to make sure people benefit from the expansion. Preston City Council believes that a water based transportation network could also help ease the high levels of congestion, especially within the city centre.

After all, having such unique concepts such as floating boats or water taxis and buses will defiantly push Preston to the forefront within the Lancashire region, as well as help put the city on the map as an upcoming area in England as a whole. That in itself would be a great boost for the local economy just from a tourism and attraction standpoint.

Just as Manchester is known for its trams, soon Preston will be renowned for its waterways.

* The historic canal drawings by John Rennie are on display for the first time in 300 years at the Lancaster’s Martime Museum.

Have your say.

HOW DOES THE WEB DEFINE THE DIGITAL NEWSROOM?

2008-04-02T10:15:00.000-07:00

“Defining digital: Does the type and style of coverage of news on the web help us define the digital newsroom?"

This is the question put to my digital newsroom class. Its actually quite an interesting topic as a first assignment, especially since the class consists of nothing but "digital natives." By this im referring to the fact that we all belong to a technology adept generation, (one very much used to accessing the web from computers, laptops, phones i.e. Nokia N95 etc) and we all actively question, probe and seek out different angles in news online.

Due to the progress of technonlogy over the past decade, the way we view and access news has changed. We are no longer constrained by the print medium and its limitations in breaking news, the internet's immediacy curred that - how many people found out about 9/11 or Prince Harry's covert assignemnt in Afgahinstan via the internet?

The important thing to remember here is not just were the news is accessed but how it Is accessed. Despite there being numerous fantastic news sites such as the http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/, software advancement has opened a new portal of news consumption. At the annual meeting of the ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors), media mogul Rupert Murdoch (News Corporation) said:

"we need to realise that the next generation of people accessing news and information...have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get," this includes in turn "when and how they get it, where they get it from, and who they will get it from."

Murdoch is right in saying this. A revolution is taking place in an industry where the most sought after readership target audience (late teens till mid twenties) are technology savvy people who are increasingly turning to the web as their number one choice for news. Internet portals like Yahoo!, MSN and Google are among the top favourite destinations for news.

And it does not end there. Podcasts and blogs have become a favourite haunt too, and not just with the younger generations either. Many political journalists now have their own blogs on their respective newspaper sites. These blogs are an excellent example of how the gap between the inital idea of the read/write web is being bridged.

Blogs are an advancement in the interaction section between journalists and the wider public. As news seekers we now have more freedom and control over what we wish to read, hear or see. We do not need to rely on some god like figure who tells us what to consume and how or what order it should be in. Not only can we easily choose what information we want, we can also choose various multimedia in which to consume it in-whether it be text, audio (podcasts), slideshows with audio, video or simpley pictures with captions. In other words multimedia has allowed users to control the flow of information, not be controlled by it. The impact of blogs are a good example of this. People need news which is continously updated and a point of view that doesn't just explain what has happened but why its happened. Blogs also speak on a more personal level, frankly they are more opinionated- thank you freedom of speech!

In his book "Online News", Stuart Allan argues that by acting as "unofficial news sources on the web, blogs are linking together information and opinion which supplement the original coverage provided by "offical" news outlets. The genius of blogs is that their publishers pull together their resources from a diverse array of other sites which "resituate a given news event within a larger context so as to illuminate multiple angles."

In February 2002 Jeremy Wagstaff, of the Wall Street Journal, wrote how he could forsee a future where “the editor that determines the content of our daily read may not be a salaried webmaster or a war-weathered newspaper editor, but a bleary-eyed blogger in his under shirt willing to put in the surfing time on our behalf.”

Journalist Scott Rosenberg observed that weblogs "would barley be able to get by without the information fodder provided by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, time strapped reporters and editors in downsized, resource-hungry newsrooms are increasingly turing to blogs for story tips and pointers. No one has enough time to read everything on the web; blogs offer a smart reader the chance to piggyback on someone else’s reading time." (2002)

While reading "Grassroot Journalism" I came across a good point worthy of mention. The author wrote "bloggers and operators of independent news sites already do a respectable job of scanning for and sorting news for people who want it" (they are virtual editors.) "The editorial function has been adopted not just by bloggers, but by a host of new kinds of online news operations."

Due to the demand for "new news" we cannot afford to just stick to traditional journalistic methods in gathering data and assembling it. The web offers a solution for this - there are various sources from which to gather information and quickly! Blogs are an example for this and how we can showcase journalism's transformation from a twentieth century mass media structure to somehting more profound and democratic - a sort of cyber-liberty. With software companies providing us with the communications toolkit that allow anyone to become a journalist at no cost, this current revolution is just one chapter in the never ending evolutionary technological story. One which has made global reach possible.

What planet are we on?

2008-03-27T09:45:00.000-07:00

Yet again polls' portral of Brits is (how shall i put this delicately)...rather worrying. A poll commissioned by children's TV channel Jetix has revealed some rather interesting facts which have obviously been recorded as wrong in history - according to a third of school children. I mean who doesn't know that Winston Churchill, one of this country's greatest war time leaders and arguably the most clebrated British Prime Minister of the 20th century, was leading a double life as an astronaut.
One in three young people belive that he was the first man to walk on the Moon. Forget his defining "we will fight them on the beaches" speech. Instead he shall be remebered for taking "one small step for man, (and) a giant leap for mankind."
As if mixing up Churchill with Armstrong wasn't bad enough, the poll also showed that 72% were unable to identify the Moon in a series of pictures. (I mean, would you like me to draw you a picture? No wait....we already did that!) Of the 1,400 children polled online (aged 6-14), only 44% could identiy Saturn by its giveaway rings, two in five think that Mars is just a chocolate bar (get your minds out of your stomach) and a third thought its surface was blue. And when it comes to naming the planets in our solar system almost 60% didn't have a clue and less couldn't name them in order.
Despite this, there was some good news......nearly three quarters of children polled wanted to learn more about astronomy. See, its not a lost cause yet.
But seriously, putting aside my sarcasm for just a moment, it is worrying that a third of those children didn't even know Earth is an official planet! What exactly are they teaching young people these days? Is the educations department even aware of this? And exactly were does all the governments money for education go, because obviously it isn't in science.
(Originally posted March 20, 2008)

Privacy violations at an election..What else is new?

2008-03-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

News that the American presidential candidates passport files have been breached comes as no shock really, despite the screaming headlines of practically ever national paper. Do people really think that this elections drama has already played out? Certainly not, the Americans never fail to surprise with what new depths (or rather lows i should say) that some people are willing sink to in attempts to try and disrupt an election.
The announcement that the breachs occurred only surfaced after two State Department workers had been dismissed and a third was disciplined for improperly accessing Mr Obama's passport file on three occasions this year. But he wasn't the only victim here, Hillary Clinton and John McCain were also under close scrutiny. The fact that the presidential hopefulls are under close watch is not new news, however the apparent lack of security in the State Department, especially at a highly politically charged moment as this, is.
These revaltions raise questions not only of security but whether they were politically motivated actions, and if so then why it took anybody so long to find out about it. The first time when Obama's file was accessed was January 9th - that's 71 days before any senior officials were even alerated. As if that wasn't bad enough for the State Department to deal deal with, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, announced that Hillary Clinton's files were also "improperly" accessed last year as well.
All i can say is that if its so easy to access private files and go undetected for so long then we should all be worried about the lack of security were other private and sensitive data is concerned at the State Department.
It's also satisfying to know that the braches were only spotted by Dr Rice's office because of a journalist's enquiries on thursday afternoon. The Secretary of State told reporters that she telephoned Mr Obama to apologise herself due to the frequency of breaches concerning his files. Bill Burton, a spokesperson for Barack Obama, has called for a series investigation into the matter. (Hmmm, wonder how long this one will take!)
While making the usual rounds on news sites i came across the Online Times' covergae of the whole affair(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3598509.ece). If you go to the end of the article they have his break out describing other times when the State Department has been breached concerning presidents. After reading it i realised that unauthorized access to private files seems like an everyday occurrence across the water. Reminds me of our dear governments incompetence concerning private data leaks a while back.
(originally posted March 22, 2008)

Obama's saving grace

2008-03-25T06:36:00.000-07:00

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article3584393.ece)

Barack Obama's speech last tuesday in Philadelphia was reminicent of a man tierd of the usual political stirring and innuendo, and a man whose words relayed how desperate he was was to return the focus back onto his campaign, and brush aside once and for all the media speculation surrounding the controversial link between him and his former pastors "anti-american" sermons.

At the core his speech were two vital issues which surround this presidential election more than any of its predecessor's - race and equality, possibly because America has never had a presidential candidate who is the "son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas,"(Obama's opening speech) or speaks which such seemingly genuine conviction and passion. Not since the days of Bill Clinton has the world seen an American candidate who could easily woo a crowd of voters with mere words.

Don't get me wrong, i havn't made up my mind on which democratic i will keep my fingers and toes crossed for on election days (being pro republican simply being out of the question-we do not need another Bush administration in the White House), but i cannot help but be in awe of Obama.

He addressed the issue of race after the incendiary remarks made by his former pastor Rev Jeremiah Wright. The next day almost every newspaper and news site was caught up in praise for him and his "flat-out brillent speech" as it is being hailed. After watching it on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUn4ohZUGs0) i understood why. The importance behind the speech however is my interest here. The main reason why he did is is fairly obvious - he had to address the issue before his campaign took on any more water. Obama's strategy of dealing with his race identity is one of the most, if not the most important pillar of his entire campaign, and Rev Wright threatened it. Afterall,

Whites make up 73.9
Black or African American 12.4%
American Indian and Alaska Native 0.8%
Asians 4.4%
Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander 0.14%
Hispanic or Latino origin 14.8%
Other race 6.3%
Two or more races 2.0% (Source: US Census Bureau, 2006 (figures add up to more than 100 per cent because Hispanic is classified as origin, not race).

To say that Rev Wrights' remarks that:

"who cares about what a poor, black man has to face everday in a country and a culture controlled by a rich white people.....it just came to me in the past few weeks why so many folks are hating on Barack Obama. He doesn't fit the model. He aint white, he ain't rich, and he ain't privellaged. Hillary fits the mould..Europeans fit the mould, rich white men fit the mould. Hillary never had a cab whizz past her and not pick her up because her skin was the wrong colour, Hillary never had to worry about being pulled up in her car as a black man driving in the wrong ...Hillary was not a black boy raised in a single parent home Barack was. Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and culture that is controlled by rich white people.....I am so glad i have a God who knows what it is to be a poor black man in a country and a culture controlled by and run by rich white people. Jesus taugh me how to love my enemies...and not be reduced to their level of hatred, bigatory and small mindness."

are damaging to Obamas campagin is an understatement. (You can watch it on YouTube for yourselves and judge whether or not he seems as hypocritical to you as he does to me (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcOOSpvC2JI).

So you could probably see why Obama had to take control of the situation asap and turn a moment of great political importance into another landmark slide amongst supporters. He talks about the pitfalls in black and white mentality, and his love of the pastor but disagreeing with him on a crucial point - something which puts him in favour with the modern American - America can change! In true genius fashion he uses that point to sweep aside the intial issue of controversial racial remarks claiming that "race" is just a distraction and that for this election voters should see past it and not make the same mistake in his election.

The beauty of this speech is that its passionate and cleverly side steps the initial issue by making all those outraged feel guilty of having them in the first place. I think im right in saying that his speech will go down in presidential race history as one of the best speeches made. There was no theatricals or over exagerated or enthusiastic facial expresssionas or hand movements, just mere words empowered by one mans belief. However, whether he wrote this himself or it was the creative genius of his speechwriters remains uncertain. Nevertheless, Obama's tuesday speech is another victory over Clinton.

Some of you might be interested in Daniel Finklstein's guide to opinion on the web.

http://www.timesonline.typepad.com/comment/