Open Editorial Meeting
Tuesday 6th April - to finalise the next edition, and to discuss further the development of the project.
6pm at the Sumac Centre, 245 Gladstone Street, Forest Fields, Nottingham. (directions here).

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New one stop health and social care centres will be blooming over Greater Nottingham in the near future. One of the biggest developments will be on the site of the Mary Potter Centre in Hyson Green others are in Carlton, Stapleford, West Bridgeford and Clifton. Many more are in the pipeline. These new centres will signpost the new modernised Health Service, free at the point of use (at least for the first six weeks of care) but operating under an increasingly privatised regime with a keen eye on the bottom line. The developments will be co-ordinated by the latest flowering of New Labour and private enterprise – the LIFTco (Local Improvement Finance Trust company).

Improving health and social care through new working relationships and working from new buildings is fair enough and just the sort of thing that we might expect from a well funded National Health Service. Providing these through local primary care trusts (PCTs) ought to mean more local control to meet local needs – great. As new health technologies and procedures become available we can expect to these new localised services to become even more responsive, capable and effective.

Currently the only services to be delivered by LIFT are building, refurbishment and maintenance of premises. It may be possible for other private services to operate from the same buildings as the public health and social care services – private healthcare insurance and services, privately purchased medical equipment, health and social care agencies etc. Excellcare have been placing advertisements in the Guardian to recruit health and social care managers. A senior DOH official has stated that “In principle there is no impediment to other services such as clinical services being provided by a LIFT company (but additional services would clearly have to be part of a separate procurement)” ref: Unison – LIFT What you need to know and what you need to ask.

• the private partner landlord does not have to stump up the capital to purchase exist sites and premises which are provided to the LIFTco by the PCTs

• the inflation in values of the properties go to the LIFTco and enable debt financing

• there is a guaranteed income stream from the tenants (currently public sector) over a long period

• they are well placed to exploit opportunities arising from service development and delivery

• there may be lots of opportunity for international growth through acquisitions thanks to GATS. [The General Agreement on Trades in Services (GATS) is currently a hot issue for world trade negotiators and is seen by many as the gateway for large corporations to control global trade in health and other services. As such GATS is cited by NGOs as the major threat to public services around the world. We could view LIFTcos as the thin end of the wedge of a giant corporate take-over of our (and other peoples) health service.]

If you don't happen to be a private company concerned with maximising profits and shareholder value, but rather see LIFT from the perspective of a service user or care worker, then the long term prospects may not be so rosy. When establishing the National Health Service Aneurin Bevan wanted to protect ordinary people from the fears and uncertainties of private medicine. The current New Labour vision is less concerned with equality, or the values and principles of the welfare state. It appears to have some sort of fundamental evangelist faith in the virtues of private enterprise and it's capacity to deliver 'modern services to customers' (patients/pupils/families) who are supposed to be able to exercise choice as to their future well-being. LIFTcos appear to embody the New Labour ethos perfectly and may be leading us back to a pre-Bevan future.

The one-stop care centres will no doubt be welcomed by the people who use them, they deserve better buildings and modern care services. There have apparently been opportunities for local people to become involved in the LIFT development process and they say that they want the new centres to be at the heart of communities. However, we must look beneath the skin of the new buildings and the engaging smiles of consultation facilitators to see the new structures and relationships that are bringing them into being. We need to look to the longer term and judge the transformations taking place in terms of what they will mean to future generations. We should not allow others to 'act (on our behalf) in haste and (leave us) to repent at leisure'.

Please contact Nottingham Alternative News if you have any further information on the development of Greater Nottingham LIFT.

By a Health Correspondent

There are local fora presently established across the country in:

• London [http://www.londonsocialforum.org/FrontPage]

• Manchester [http://www.manchestersocialforum.org.uk/]

• Cardiff [http://www.cardiffsocialforum.org.uk]

• Sheffield [http://www.sheffieldsocialforum.org/]

• Durham [http://www.dur.ac.uk/durham.socialforum]

• Leeds [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LeedsSocialForumUpdate/]

• ... and there are certainly more with the number of them growing.

It has given rise to a great deal of distrust and apprehension in the international fora process, with their effectiveness and lack of democratic functioning coming under severe questioning.

The local fora may give an opportunity for activists who feel excluded from the process to make their influence felt when the ESF arrives in Britain.

Moreover the local fora may provide a means for diverse concerned groups and individuals in an area to come together and further the development of grassroot networks and communities. They could be a space for contact to be made, information to be shared, resources to be pooled, and mutual support to be given. So far, word of the formation of such a forum in Nottingham has reached few ears.

It is hoped that interested persons and groups will attend a presentation that is to be given at the Sumac Centre (probably on Tuesday 6th April) at which a report will be given by Jasmine, a visitor to Mumbai, India, on the recent World Social Forum held there.

This will hopefully be followed by a talk given by a member of the Manchester Social Forum on the pros and cons of local fora. It is intended that this should provide a good base for people to congregate and begin to decide if such a forum would be suitable here.

So, if you are interested, keep your eye out for the presentation date to be confirmed on the Sumachian Diary (at http://www.veggies.org.uk/diary.htm), and also please inform other persons in the area who you think may also like to be involved.

There is also to be a World Social Forum film show and discussion on Tuesday 30th March at 7.30pm at Broadway Cinema, Broad Street, Hockley with a film by a local activist who attended the World Social Forum in Mumbai.

If in the meantime you would like to discuss ideas about how such a forum may function, where it may be held, who should be involved, or any other related issues, please visit http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/nottinghamsocialforum.

Reg Platt

The main problems were:

The Thomas Hurndall Fund intends to support a proper legal investigation and campaign to ensure that those responsible for the unlawful shooting of Tom are prosecuted. They are intent on making those responsible for the shooting of Tom accountable for their actions through the courts under International Law. This is likely to require a series of costly legal actions and one of the aims of this festival is to raise funds for this campaign.

The Thomas Hurndall Charitable Trust has been set up to provide a long-term support network to those most vulnerable from the effects of this war. There is a pressing need for a humanitarian programme within Israel, Palestine and the Middle East, in particular for the children in areas like Rafah, where Tom was shot. The charity's aims are to relieve poverty & injustice and to assist in the provision of educational resources in these areas with particular focus on the needs of the people of Gaza and The West Bank.

The festival will be a celebration of the spirit in which Tom lived his life. The day will be a vibrant mix of open ideas, music, poetry, food, and expression. The festival will kick off at 2pm with a massive release of balloons taking messages of peace across the UK and possibly beyond. Various charities and humanitarian organisations will be represented on stalls around the hall for the open spread of information about what is happening in Nottingham, the UK and the World at large. In a separate room there will be space for Holistic healers and teachers as the festival recognises, as Tom did, the importance of inner peace for world peace. There will also be an all day café in which various Nottingham based ethical caterers could make available food and drink to the masses.

The headlining act will be Skinny Sumo, one of Nottingham's most popular bands who are sure to pull in a large crowd.

The hall is in the Portland Building of the University of Nottingham, situated right next to the student bar it is bound to attract a large crowd throughout the day. There will be no charge on the door, but a voluntary donation of what ever each individual can afford will be asked for. Any businesses attending who are taking profits will be asked for a 15% donation from their earnings.

We are friends of Tom's, and are very eager to hold a celebration of his life and to put forward a message of peace and hope. If you are interesting in being a part of the festival then please take the time to read the attached plan. Let us know if you have any other questions.

We are contactable via phone or email, and please do not hesitate to get in touch. In the meanwhile, have a look at the Thomas Hurndall website: http://www.tomhurndall.co.uk/

Yours truly,

You have joined us in some or all of these activities as part of the biggest mass movement in British history. The struggle continues against the War on Terror, this Government's continued deception and it's attack on civil liberties at home and abroad.

We have to date managed to be financially self-sufficient, collections and ticket sales covering the costs of the vast majority of our activities.

However we are now in desperate need of financial help. The costs of producing tens of thousands of leaflets, hiring scores of coaches and payments for numerous venues and halls has taken its toll and we now have no choice but to appeal for donations.

If everyone who went to London on the 15th February last year on the buses that we organised from Nottingham, gave £1 we would have £2,500 in our account to cover the activities we plan to keep the pressure on this Government.

We are asking you to make a donation of £5 or £10 - more if you can afford it to Nottingham Stop the War and this will help enable us to keep up the fight.

Cheques can be made out to Nottingham Stop the War and sent c/o Sulma Mansuri, 6 Wood Street, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, NG18 1QA.

If you are able to make a regular contribution through a standing order go into your bank and ask for a standing order mandate made payable to Nottingham Stop the War Coalition, Royal Bank of Scotland Sort code 16-25-17 Account number 10103723

You have already made a huge difference, you have already saved lives, please continue to help.

Many thanks and kind regards

Treasurer Nottingham Stop the War Coalition

Nottm Stop The War Coalition - http://www.nottmagainstwar.org.uk/.

Resolution to support Nottingham Stop the War Coalition

1.      Supports the demand to end the occupation of Iraq

2.      Supports the national demonstration called by the Stop the War Coalition for 20th March 2004 and we call on our members to attend.

3.      Agrees to donate £50 / £100 / £          to Nottingham Stop the War Coalition.

It includes a one-day Sustainable Woodland Conference on Friday 4th June, and a Woodland Fair open to the general public on Saturday 5th. Subjects covered will range from organic forestry over timber and non-timber products, woodland-farm integration and sustainable livelihoods to community involvement, education, marketing and funding for woodland projects. presentations, discussions, demonstrations, displays and trade stalls will show the full spectrum of woodland related activities.  

Because of his fall Rob has suffered multiple injuries including broken bones and organ damage and he needed an emergency operation.

Rob's friends say "Rob has never really been accepted or felt part of anything in his entire life, he has spent much of his life being the victim and was so keen to feel or be a part of something he took extraordinarily brave risks in helping to make the site more secure."

Rob's friends are urging people around the world to swamp Rob with letters and e-mails of support whilst he is in hospital to wish him a speedy recovery.

Stop Press
Rob is now out of hospital and back on site. Please sent get-well cards and messages to:

Rob
Debdale Lane Tree Protest Camp,
Sherwood Rise,
Mansfield Woodhouse,
Notts.

or e-mail C_o_l@btopenworld.com and Rob's supporters will make sure the e-mails are passed onto him.

An equally important way to show your support is to visit the camp, to join the eviction alert phone tree and to pledge to get there asap when the call goes out that the eviction has started.

Stop Press
The campaign has forced the District Council to promise an independent inquiry that should hold off the eviction threat until mid-April.
However, it would still be a good idea to visit the camp and to call Sumac Centre on 0845 458 9595 to join the eviction alert phone tree.
See full details, including directions, at http://www.veggies.org.uk/sherwood

If quarrying goes ahead at the Nine Ladies site in the Derbyshire Peak National Park a 100m deep scar will blight a beautiful, and well loved landscape, to produce profit from the sale of building materials. The protest camp has been protecting the site since 1999. People are needed urgently to help with defences, and resist the eviction.

The Peak Park Planning Board are curently consulting on the HOW not and not WHETHER Lees Cross and Endcliffe Quarries are worked again. Unfortunately they do not have the power to stop the application themselves. To quote the PP chairman, "Whatever the outcome of this legal issue people should be aware that it is not within our power to refuse permission for the quarries to reopen, as the site already has permission. Our role will be to approve a set of modified conditions for working the site in an appropriate way."

It is also not worth talking to Stancliffe, they have now been taken over by Marshall's Stone Products who are only in business to quarry and distribute stone, so they aren't likely to change their minds. There are only really 2 remaining hopes of getting the quarrying stopped all together:

• 1.. Write to The Secretary of State for the Environment and Transport, DETR, Eland House, Bressenden Place, London SW1E 5DU requesting that the application be "called in" and stressing that this is a national issue affecting a National Park.

  Ask your own MP to raise the issue in Parliament.

  
  

• 2.. Write to Mr J Margesson, Estate Office, Haddon Hall, Bakewell requesting that the Estate reconsider the lease on Endcliffe and Lees Cross quarries. They are the land owner and stand to make a disgusting profit for just sitting back and letting the land be destroyed.

In the meantime they still require food, rope and tools or money to buy them and if anyone can visit the site and give them moral support it is much appreciated. (There are now over 80 people living there).

Further details and directions at http://www.nineladies.uklinux.net/

Recent news at http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2004/01/284233.html

Lord Biro's account of the Sherwood Bye-election.

At the last editorial meeting of the NAN, Lord Biro was so eloquent on his experiences during the Sherwood By-Election we asked him to write them down for this issue. Here's his account - BD

Tory Councillor Kate Baxter resigns her seat in Sherwood and a bye-election is called for November 20th 2003. I have a quick meeting with the Militant Elvis focus group and decide to stand.

The campaign gets off to a slow start. I scan the other candidates leaflets. Crime and Punishment are the big issue. Put more bobbies on the beat, neighbourhood watch schemes etc. Nobody blames the worship of money or the glamorisation of violence. The newspapers are full of adverts for “Bad Boys II”. Mean looking blacks guys with guns stare menacingly from the pages. Meanwhile the new governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger grins on the TV news. He didn't get elected for playing Jesus or Gandhi, that's for sure.

I go up to the City Hospital with a campaign poster of Elvis dressed as an Arab. I want to put it up in the nurses hostel. The people in charge won't let me. It might offend ethnic minorities. They say they'll consider one of Michael Howard looking like Dracula. Political correctness obviously doesn't extend to upsetting vampire nurses (yet). In the end, he doesn't go up either. Only laminated posters are permitted on the notice board and the lady who does the laminating is on leave. My campaign programme torpedoed at every turn. I bet the Terminator didn't get any of this, the muscle-bound lunkhead.

My red Elvis jump-suit arrives and the campaign starts to liven up. I go into the 'Five Ways' pub. People ask me for leaflets, “might as well vote for Elvis, he can't be any worse than the others”. A bloke shouts “get rid of all the blacks and I'll vote for you”. “What all the blacks, even the old ones?”. “No just the ones in hoods”. “You said all of them”. He flings my leaflet back at me, “you're just a typical politician like all the rest”. I drink up and think “bollocks”.

I go up to the Longdale estate, former home of Nottingham icon Harold Shipman to do some leafleting. The Council ought to put up a statue of him next to John Heppell's house. It would attract the tourists and empower Nottingham's 'contemporary cultural image'. A grim siege-like atmosphere hangs over the place. Every house seems like Fort Knox, more guard dogs than geraniums. Thatcher and Blair told everybody to go out and get rich and now they're all frightened it's going to get nicked by the boy next door. A society whose main occupation seems to be getting it's nose in the trough shouldn't be surprised when some of it's offspring turn out to be piglets. Nasty ones too. I walk past a bunch of white schoolgirls, they give me a funny look. “What pop star do you like?”, I say. “Britney Spears”, says one. “I hope you're still a virgin like she is”, I reply and move off swiftly before she tries to sue me for character defamation. A group of black schoolgirls start giggling so I sing them an Elvis song. One shouts, “You don't sound like Elvis”, I think of a sarcastic reply but say nothing. “Elvis Impersonator Kicked to Death by Black Girl Gang” might look good on the front page of the 'Nottingham & Long Eaton Topper' but I want to be alive when my 15 minutes of fame finally arrives. As I walk into Sherwood some lads on the top of a bus are chucking rubbish out of the window onto passers by. They see me and start waving and smiling. Thanks Elvis jumpsuit, the culture of celebrity has it's uses.

I go into 'The Sherwood' pub. A couple of builders stand at the bar. I give them a leaflet, it's starts again. “Get rid of the niggers and we'll vote for you. Lots round here will, we hate them, breaking into our houses, mugging old people. We hate the Pakis too, moving into our shops. It ain't England any more, it ain't our culture any more”. “Pounds shillings and pence was part of our culture once”, I reply, “But the Tories got rid of them without a referendum. That made me mad and still does. I used to campaign on the issue; Centimetres, Millimetres, OUT OUT OUT”. “That's progress” says one. I could mention the old pubs turning into Australian Oz bars, Halloween becoming 'Trick or Treat' and transport cafes re-vamped as McDonalds 'Drive-Thrus' serving 'truck drivers' in the ubiquitous baseball-cap, but presumably that's progress too. The white working class have turned themselves into victims, the bottom of the heap. If I said “Vote for me and I'll change your skin colour and religion”, I wonder what they'd do? Racists jokes start flying around the bar. Shall I tell a few and maybe get their vote? They're too sharp to fall for that. Fuck 'em, I'm off.

It's the last day of the campaign, I walk down Mansfield road towards the Grosvenor, a gang of youths drive by in a car. “what the fuck are you dressed like that for?”, one shouts. “I thought dressing like Michael Jackson might be a vote loser”, I reply. They drive off smirking.

My manifesto seems to have gone down well with the voters. Give Blair an Oscar for his acting performances. Youths caught with guns to be drafted to the Sherwood Martyrs Battalion and sent to Iraq where they can wave their 'fashion accessories' at Saddam's guerilla army. Anyway we shall soon see.

That night my friend Ray goes to the count. I walk in at about 10pm, he looks glum. I go and sit in 'The Sherwood'. He walks in with a member of the focus group at about 10:30pm, “You got 36 votes”. “Is that all”, I curse and order a bottle of sour grape wine. I must use more hair dye next time and stop telling Harold Shipman jokes. The Greens and Socialist Alliance do badly too so I cheer up a bit. Not for long, a bloke comes over to commiserate and gets into a row with Ray over Michael Jackson, paedophiles, perverts etch etc. I clear off to the 'Punch and Judy' looking for a bit of peace. It's full of black guys and white women, the music is blasting out. I get into another row with a Rasta because I called him “a pain in the arse” about ten years ago and now he's caught up with me. It ain't my night for sure, I think I'll head for home.

If Robin Hood could come back, I wonder what he'd think to the guys in the hoods, the new outlaws? Would he be on their side or the Sheriffs? After talking to his descendants in “The Sherwood” I'm pretty sure what the answer would be.

- except environmental ones

At the very same time that we are reading in the national newspapers that the government might be starting to move away from management by performance target for health and education services, in Nottingham's localities, they are just being introduced. Our neighbourhoods are to be improved by actions whose success or failures will be measured by performance indicators.

Throughout the winter officials have been busily working away compiling statistics for the different localities in Nottingham about unemployment, educational achievement, crime, health, housing and 'the living environment'. The purpose is to compare local Nottingham measures of neighbourhood problems against figures that the national government has decided should be regarded as minimum standards - the so called 'national standard floor targets'. When the local measured targets fall below the national standards, then activities in the 'Area Action Plans' will, it is hoped, get them improved. Local “stakeholders” have been roped in to set locally appropriate targets to help make this happen. Small pots of money are to be made available to fund the actions that will bring things up to scratch – with some money from central government.

You can say things in favour of performance indicators. Until you start counting, putting figures on a problem, then not a lot tends to be done about it. What counts is what is counted. You can only 'take something into account' when you take it into a count. So, to make what happens in neighbourhoods count, you have to start counting what is happening in them – collect local statistics of educational achievements, joblessness, housing conditions, crime etc.

But there are no panaceas in this world – and that's true for counting too. Happiness is not achieved by trying to hit the greatest number (or smallest when you counting problems). This is why the government are now retreating from reliance on measures and targets in the education and health sectors.

For one thing it isn't always easy to pin down the things that are really important to count in the first place. And if you count some things, and not others, then what tends to happen is that time, effort, resources and money is taken away from the things that are no longer taken into account, and devoted to the new policy priorities that are. Things deteriorate on the things that don't count – but only the people immediately effected are noticing the things that no longer “figure”.

For example, in recent years the targets in schools have been heavily focused on literacy and numeracy – and, as a result, many features of an all round education have deteriorated (physical education, music, the arts etc). Or to take examples from the health sector. Hospital waiting lists have improved – but that's partly because simple easy operations are undertaken to get waiting lists down at the expense of difficult operations. And, when hospital league tables of deaths were first published, consultants warned that administrators would be reluctant to take difficult complicated cases.

It remains to be seen what the downside of the local targeting will be. But it's already clear that some things don't count for very much in these neighbourhood plans.

The environment, for example, has barely had a look in. To be sure you will find some actions focused around recycling in the area plans but it's all pretty small scale stuff – and a big step back from the focus of a few years ago, when the policy fashion, after the Rio earth Summit was Local Agenda 21 and local sustainability.

Most people have probably heard the slogan “Think Globally, Act Locally”. But in the local area action plans there is no real sense of connection between the local problems and the global ones. The fact that the local drug problems largely originate in Afghanistan – where the British and American armies are turning a blind eye to the drug barons that they put back in power, in order to fight the Taliban – this isn't on the agenda for discussion. More to the point, crucial questions of environmental and energy politics need to be addressed at a local level in an integrated way. But you'll not find this agenda here.

In the early 1990s ideas about ecological cities took up the neighbourhood focus in a different way. In some places experimental ways were pursued to develop urban and rural designs and buildings that would economise on energy and water. The neighbourhood agenda had an ecological dimension. It was recognised that extensive local involvement was needed to make settlements and lifestyles less damaging to the environment. This also involved thinking about how buildings and spaces were designed – e.g. the lay out and use of green spaces for urban cultivation projects.

A number of years ago I was a real enthusiast for development focused on “habitat” and neighbourhood and I still am. I think that the home and neighbourhood can be the focus for a different kind of development addresses crucial ecological issues (home energy efficiency, community gardening and food projects etc). As I saw it then, and as I still think now, sustainability is not simply a little bit more energy saving, a little bit more recycling, a little bit more organic food – but a different lifestyle package.

We cannot compete with the supermarket economy, that is destroying our planetary ecology, in the realms of price, product packaging and its high gloss pr-spin culture. In fact the start needs to be with the losers of that economic system. The ecological agenda has to be combined with the social and community regeneration ones and tried to offering isolated and vulnerable people support and conviviality – a way of overcoming their isolation through involvement in ecological activities like community gardening – and saving on energy and resources by sharing and working together. Many of these losers are isolated, inactive, living lives without direction, hope, support and meaning. These people must first stabilise chaotic lives in their domestic and personal relationships before they can become more integrated into the wider economy and employment.

But for this much bigger process to happen you also need a great deal of political understanding and leadership from local and national politicians, as well as from local officials. At the moment there isn't much of this understanding around.

Certainly, in the Labour Government's agenda for neighbourhoods, the broader environmental issues appear to count at all. You can see this in the measures and targets chosen for the Nottingham Area Action Plans. “Environmental” targets hardly figure – at best there are small projects around recyling. The environment has become a sub category of the “Respect Nottingham” political agenda – it's about litter and graffiti with a few token gestures to recycling.

Perhaps the issues are too big for politicians to dare to take up when they are in office. Perhaps its impossible for mainstream politicians to deliver any solutions.

So be it, the message must be said anyway. In a few years enormous global problems will crash over every city, town, village and home, over every inhabitant of the planet in the form - either of catastrophic climate change and/or the consequences of shrinking oil and gas supplies. The global will impact on the local and on the neighbourhood in spectacular ways.

In the news we have the revelation that the Pentagon sees global climate change as more threatening than the war on terror. According to last Sundays Observer “Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us” The Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war. Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years. And the threat to the world is greater than terrorism.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1153513,00.html

Meanwhile, “ The World finds less than one barrel (of oil) for every four it consumes, having been in deficit since 1981. It should surprise only the flatest of the flat-earth economists that the peak and decline of corresponding production is now here or imminent. Perceptive analysts may reasonably conclude that this spells a deep and possibly permanent economic recession, given the World s dependence on cheap oil-based energy. The scale of this transition from growth to decline is monumental as the financial system depends on growth for survival, and everyone's mindset is conditioned to the objective of earning, spending and consuming more.” (ASPO Newsletter 39)

 http://216.187.75.220/newsletter39.pdf

Actually, this political crisis has already begun. There has always been lots of evidence that a principle reason for the Iraq war was for the US to secure a stronger position in relation to middle eastern oil, Iraq having the second largest reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia. Underneath the war on terror is a hidden conflict between oil consuming and importing countries and oil exporters. Arguably the war on terror will make things far worse – because it sharpens conflicts rather than reducing them.

Climate change and/or oil depletion catastrophe – the outcome is the same – an urgent need to economise on energy – in space heating and homes, through changing what we eat (more local food supplies using less chemical inputs), through less wasteful and pointless consumption (more and more electronic toys tuned into the dream machine ) and though more pooling and sharing. Whichever way you look at it, the world is coming to a turning point - and it is by going back to basics – our homes, our kitchens, our neighbourhoods, and working together, that we will have to save energy, resources and materials and either survive or go down together like lemmings. That means combining the health, social regeneration agenda and ecological agendas - and subordinating the economic agenda to them. It means working as close to home as possible.

I'm sorry to say this but, against these necessities , Nottingham's neighbourhood strategy seems to me to be well....rather inadequate.

Brian Davey

Perhaps part of the problem here has been a failure of leadership – a failure to provide a bigger vision of what is possible in the long term – connected to very small beginnings that local people could get hold of and feel interested in and committed to.

Or perhaps what New Deal teaches us is that sometimes you can have too much money. It is simply corrupting if the local organisation, the skills and the visions for longer run development are not yet there. The New Deal will succeed or fail on whether the people in the area develop their ideas, their talents and their organisations. And for that they can only start from tiny beginnings and build up step by step – at a pace defined by their personal circumstances, not according to the pre-ordained milestones set by someone else. However NDC has been staffed by professionals used to working in large organisations who cannot adjust their thinking to the smaller scale and an organic process of development. Too much dependence has been put on highly paid professionals who don't live in the area, whose strategic plans have been too grandiose for local people to run with. Add to this the fact that all these officials are very generously paid – and you have a recipe for disaster. For what people chiefly see are not their neighbours getting involved out of any personal commitment to neighbours and community – a determination to get things improved for all – but a leadership of officials swanning around in nice cars, with nice salaries, and then opting out after work, and going home to comfortable places. Never mind what the policy papers say, the unspoken message is different.

As someone says in the last issue of the Force 7 newsletter , in a letter directed to the Director of NDC titled “Changing the Culture”:

“In your letter you state that, all the staff at NDC....'remain accountable to the people they serve'. What I cannot understand is why the NDC are paid such high salaries. Your recent advertisement to recruit the next permanent Chief Executive offers 'Up to £70k' and a 4 year fixed term contract. I think this sends out the wrong message. Why should someone be paid such a large fee, for what ought to be a privilege helping the poorer and disadvantaged in our society. I believe that large salaries and perks are really and insult to the community. Most of the NDC staff can afford to live outside of the area where they work and so so and have a modicum of contact with residents in the area. According to the Bible, Jesus said, 'The poor will always be with you..' A step towards this notion is to change the culture that supports 'the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate...' By changing attitudes and mind-sets. Reducing the new Chief Executives salary from up to £70k, to say, up to £40k, will go some way to achieve this and set the right example.”

£40k? I'd make it £20k if I had my way. It would solve any corruption problems at a stroke and not only that.

The truth is – well off professional people, used to working in large organisations, cannot solve poor people's problems. They usually don't understand these problems and their mind set is a large part of the problem. In the early stages of the New Deal I proposed a different way of doing and I still think it would have worked better. Some of the money should have been set aside for collective projects for the whole NDC area – as I argue above there needs to be a connection to a bigger vision and the global problems like energy and environment - but the rest should simply have been dispersed to anyone who was a permanent resident there, as individual grants.

Of course, I hear you saying that you couldn't do that - as some of the money might have been spent on fags, booze or drugs and these don't help an area regenerate.

But there could have been ways around that. For example – every permanent resident in the area could agree on an acceptable list of things that NDC money could be available for – e.g. Home insulation, childcare while doing vocational training, house improvements and repairs, solar water heaters, DIY and gardening equipment, kitchen equipment, computer equipment, art materials, musical instruments, business and/or project start up expenses. Then local people would get vouchers up to a certain value to spend on any allowable item if they could make out a case as to why it would improve their quality of life. There would also be a scheme to do checks that the money was spent on what people asked for, for the purpose they talked about, and to prevent abuse (e.g. Buying a computer and then flogging it to get the money to spend on fags).

That way the money would actually get to the people that needed it, passing the initiative to the ordinary people in the area to do the things that would improve their quality of life.

Needless to say, this idea was not popular, as would have vastly reduced the role of the regeneration industry professionals......

Brian Davey

Keith McHenry's vision of a network of British activists following the example of the many established Food Not Bombs groups in other countries appealed to some of us very much. After considerable discussion, research and planning, we decided to concentrate on providing free hot meals for local asylum seekers, as the Sponsored Fast which was co-ordinated by the Refugee Forum in the new year had opened our eyes to the effects of the disgusting legislation which has effectively made many vulnerable people destitute.

Working with the Refugee Forum, we'll be serving the first meal on 12th March, and aim to continue fortnightly from then on. Hopefully the group will grow as it takes shape, and we'd soon like to get stuck into some campaigning alongside the provision of food, as we feel the time has come for the issue of refugee rights to be debated more openly by the people of Nottingham.

Dear Vernon

I am mailing you to raise concerns about the Asylum and Immigration(Treatment of Claimants etc) Bill that is currently under consideration, and to ask you to oppose a number of its measures in the forthcoming report commencing on March 1st which will be the last substantial opportunity for MPs to debate the bill before it goes to the House of Lords.

These measures, if adopted, will undermine asylum seekers' rights and drastically reduce their access to justice. By doing so, they will undermine justice and democracy for all of us.

Clause 11 of the Bill removes higher court supervision of all immigration appeals and linked Home Office action, creating instead a single tier tribunal; the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT). This is antithetical to both justice and democracy. Instead of bringing rights home. The Government?s proposals create a class whose access to justice is illusory.

Specifically there will be:

*no right of appeal against the decisions of the AIT to the Court of Appeal or the House of Lords

*no judicial review by the High Court of the AIT decisions

*no legal challenges to Home Office acts connected with subsequent

*no right to challenge a decision or act that is outside the law.

Such removal of the current judicial oversight over immigration appeals and Home Office decisions will lead to an increase in miscarriages of justice and some asylum seekers will be returned to certain persecution and possible death. Currently, many initial decisions are later found to be wrong. I urge you to ensure that these most vulnerable people are not deprived of access to the justice system.

Clause 7 of the bill proposes to deny families, who have come to the end of the application process, support. This could result in destitution and subsequent removal of children from their parents as a means of coercion to make the parents accept deportation. It is unethical for a family to be separated as a result of imposed destitution, and it contravenes the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child and enactments concerning the rights and responsibilities of children and families in Britain.

Clause 2 of the bill criminalises those arriving without valid immigration documents with possible penalties of up to two years imprisonment. This clause fails to recognise that those fleeing persecution will often not have means of obtaining travel documents.

These and other proposals in the bill will undermine our commitment to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees. These measures in the Bill have been criticised by the cross party Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Home Affairs Select Committee and more recently by the Constitutional Affairs Committee.

I hope you will oppose these measures, as it is important that Britain is both fair and humane in considering the claims of those seeking asylum in this country.

Yours sincerely,

Chris Cann  (Mrs)

Dear Vernon,

As your constituent, I would urge you to support: Early Day Motion: Section 55 of the Nationality Immigraion and Asylum Act 2002 Gerrard/Neil MP :-

"That this House notes the publication of a report by the Mayor of London into the operation of section 55 of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 which found that up to 10,000 asylum seekers could be left destitute in London alone because of the denial of support under section 55, and that this is putting severe strain on refugee communities, themselves already deprived, but who feel obliged to help those left without any support; further notes the concerns expressed by the Home Affairs Committee about the operation of section 55; and calls on the Government to accept the recommendation of that Committee and commission an independent review of the working of section 55."

I have read the report from the Mayor of London's office at http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor/refugees/docs/destitution_by_design.pdf and found it highly illuminating.  Continuing Section 55 endangers not only asylum seekers, but also the whole community.  Although the report deals with the situation in London, we can extrapolate from it to consider the situation in Nottingham.  We must also understand that forcing people into destitution is immoral.  

A recent (January 04) sponsored fast in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire against the destitution of asylum seekers, particularly with regard to Section 55, was very well supported and we learned about the desperate lengths some people are driven to, to find somewhere to sleep at night - allotment sheds, recycling bins etc.  

You can read more about this at http://www.nottsrefugeeforum.org.uk/

I would also urge you to support Early Day Motion: "Rogue Gangmasters" - "stop to the exploitation of vulnerable workers" (note: people seeking asylum not allowed to work and can be denied support under Sec 55 - see http://edm.ais.co.uk/weblink/html/motion.html/ref=681)

and

Early Day Motion: "Failed asylum seekers and families" - Dawson/Hilton  MP

"That this House calls upon the Government to withdraw clause 7 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, Etc.) Bill on the grounds that no civilised country should ever attempt to force people to leave by harming their children and breaking up their families." see http://edm.ais.co.uk/weblink/html/motion.html/ref=157

and

Early Day Motion: "Asylum Seekers and their Children" - Davis/David  MP

"That this House notes with concern the significant rise in the number of asylum seekers in Britain in the last six years; condemns the Government's policy of taking the children of asylum seekers into care to persuade them to return home; believes this policy to be inhumane and degrading; and urges the Government to abandon this policy at the earliest opportunity".

Thank you,

Chris Cann

It's important to stress that not all asylum seekers suffer mental health difficulties – as there are also many cases of amazing resilience in the face of tremendous difficulties. When people face the gravest challenges and come through this can be a most powerful boost to their self esteem and self confidence.

Nevertheless, when you remember that the definition of a refugee, under the Geneva Convention, is someone who has grounds to flee because of a justifiable fear of persecution – you can hardly be surprised that so many asylum seekers show symptons of psychological distress from time to time. For persecution is likely to mean chronic fear which lends itself to a justified paranoia – and to flee means the likely long term, possibly permanent, loss of home, loved ones and friends. It means to go to countries where language and communication is likely to be a problem and disorientation at a different culture and institutions virtually inevitable. It means entering a period of chronic uncertainty about your life and status.

As Joanna Teuton's research shows a common assumption among medical personnel has often been that psychological difficultues are the result of traumatic stress suffered in the countries from which refugees and asylum seekers have fled. However a major factor in these psychological difficulties is the difficulties asylum seekers and refugees have in this country – including the hostility that they commonly face.

This hostility, of government and large elements of the public is 'psycho-toxic'.

Here is an example of the kind of official small mindedness that seems tailor made to put the boot into a vulnerable person's already fragile mental health. (It's not from Joanna Teuton's report). It was published first by Amnesty International and starts with a Home Office Letter:

Case study: Cameroon Refusal letter, April 2003

You claim during the time you were in detention you were ill-treated and forced to watch your father being beaten after he stopped the officers having sex with you.

You claim you have suffered from nightmares since your arrival in the United Kingdom and that your experiences have left you 'very traumatised and nervous'. But you have sought no help to improve your mental health following your experiences in the Cameroon. Given this claim and that you were sent to the United Kingdom to find a place of safety, the Secretary of State would have expected you to seek medical help, or have been offered such help for this serious problem on your arrival.

Amnesty International comments:

This letter is addressed to a fifteen-year-old girl. It appears that the allegation of 'ill-treatment' (which constitutes torture) in detention is not believed because the applicant did not obtain medical treatment in the UK. In addition, the applicant's credibility appears to be doubted because she was not offered treatment on her arrival in the UK. This applicant claims that she is traumatised by her experiences, giving rise to psychological problems including nightmares. How this would be immediately obvious to medically unqualified immigration officers at the airport is not clear.

Aside from overlooking the applicant's age in consideration of her account, the Home Office has failed to consider whether seeking medical help for a psychological complaint would be culturally appropriate.

Her asylum statement reads:

They asked my father many questions and they beat him in front of us as well. They used a long black stick to beat him. I do not know how many times they did this in front of us, but it was more than once. Sometimes they would just pull him out of the room and beat him. When he came back he would have a swollen eye, a swollen mouth and injuries on his shoulders. They did not ask the questions in front of us. They did not ask me or my siblings any questions.

Whilst at the police station, some of the male police officers undressed me. They wanted to have sex with me and my father said no and they beat my father up. They did not have sex with me or beat me - I see this scene at night now all the time.

Amnesty International:

A sensitive analysis of this account would include consideration of the account in full and the commissioning of corroborative medical evidence if questions of credibility arose. The age and capabilities of the applicant would be borne in mind throughout consideration of the case. The account of 'attempted' rape should not be assumed to mean that rape did not actually take place - it may be that the applicant is too afraid to admit that full rape was carried out.

End of AI Case Study

That's the official thuggery and of course it reflects and is pandering to a general public attitude. Elsewhere in this edition of NAN, in his article about the Sherwood By-Election, Lord Biro expresses eloquently the attitude of many in the white working class to black people – an attitude that also pours out in vitriolic hatred of asylum seekers and refugees. If you listen to many people when they are pouring out their loathing of asylum seekers and refugees you get a strong sense of how indignant and aggrieved they are by the very presence of asylum seekers here. You get the sense that they, and the rest of us white English ( or Brits if you like) are the real victims. We, so it seems, are the suckers, dupes, who are being taken for a ride by these cunning greedy people who are over here and out for all they can get out of us. They are to jump the queue. And it's not fair. It's not right. It's not just.

In this mind set, their problems are far less than ours. We are the one's who are really suffering. We are the more deserving. We are the people who are having too put up with far too much.

What you've got here is a situation in which all the smouldering resentment under the surface of everyday life about how life is not living up to people's expectations, and their sense of how things “ought to be”, is coming out as anger and hatred directed at people who've got the sheer cheek of presenting themselves as victims too – and who are seen as potential competitors for sympathy, attention, social security support and housing. So all the individual cases that appear to disprove that claim that refugees are actually people fleeing war, trauma and persecution and which appear to show them as scroungers and queue jumpers are picked upon eagerly as confirmation of stereotypes of people whom it is legitimate to hate. Of course, given thousands cases of asylum seekers across the country, you will always be able to find people to fit a stereotype – some cases of abuse that Daily Mail will rant on about in an implied generalisation that this is what virtually all asylum seekers are like.

I dwell on the social psychology of our own society – for what we see in the mental health problems of asylum seekers is, to a degree, a mirrored reflection of British hate that arises in our own culture's victim mentality. It is the consequence of scapegoating.

A refugee friend of mine says, as it were in his own personal mantra - “I can, and I will, and I must”. He's referring here to his need to maintain a steely determination to keep on going and not give up. Not give up to overdosing on vodka, to staying in bed, to utter hopelessness and then passivity. To the need to keep on going – surviving the periods of uncertainty and waiting and then the intense activity with lots and lots to do. The need to get over the endless obstacles that are in his way if he is to stabilise a life in this country in safety. Legal obstacles, finding a job, fighting through the benefit system, getting a place to live, getting furniture, getting Nottingham City Council to fix his heating, getting a job, getting his tax codes sorted out, making ends meet – all in a language he is only partially competent in, with institutions he is unfamiliar with. I'm talking here of a man who used to be a professional in his own country, the owner of a Mercedes and his own driver – who now drives a fork lift truck on night shifts at a local factory. (Although the Daily Mail would like to present asylum seekers as bogus economic migrants move down the social scale precipitously moving to this country – and this status change can be a trauma in its own right).

Despite all this what is surprising is how resilient many asylum seekers and refugees are. Presented with life or death circumstances which turn life into a perpetual nightmare, most manage nevertheless, to keep on going. They don't have a choice not to – they must. It reminds me of the one occasion when I went mountain climbing. I hadn't intended to climb a mountain. I thought it was a hill walk up Crib Gock on the Snowdon horseshoe. The person who was with us irresponsibly misled us as to what was involved. After a while the grass turned to grass and rocks, now and then we had to use our hands to steady ourselves. Then there was no more grass, just rock and after that the gradient increased until, eventually, it was straight up and it was necessary to hold on with both hands. To fall would have meant serious injury or death. The transition was gradual and we were now so high up there did not seem to be a turning back and I found myself, for the first and only time in my life, rock climbing up a mountain. In that circumstance I told myself not to look down, to stay calm and keep on climbing, to keep on going.

I see many asylum seekers as living every day rather like that. They are, so to speak, on a rock face and must keep on going – 'falling' means a return to great danger and the likelihood of imprisonment, torture and death. For them it's not a few hours on a mountain, it's months and months living with the chronic uncertainty of whether they will lose their case and be returned to their deaths.

In these circumstances a descent into immobilising despair is always a temptation- particularly in long periods of waiting to hear the outcome of the various steps in the legal process of applying for asylum. It's not surprising that anything from a quarter to over a half show signs of psychological distress. While they are still seeking asylum they are not allowed to work and often have to cope with chronic inactivity and the isolation that comes with having few people with whom they can communicate in their first language. Some give way to this despair when they have no longer anything else they can do – but sit in accommodation that has been provided for them, and wait, for months or years, for the hearing of a case that can mean the difference between life or death. One of the findings of Joanna Teuton's research is a need for enjoyable and meaningful things to do to fill the time, which would bring asylum seekers out of isolation and into contact with other people.

After the chronic worry and inactivity, if they receive confirmation that they can stay, another set of problems start. Many of us know how stressful moving house is. Now they have to find a place to live, furnish it, sign on and start looking for work in a hostile society. Perhaps one of the reasons for the hatred of asylum seekers is that, secretly, a lot of British people feel that they could never survive such dramatic life transitions themselves, keep on going and in many cases do so well. I wonder if I would.

Brian Davey

The Post Offices intends to close down many Post Offices serving communities in the Nottingham neighbourhood. Dispite (or because of) the denial of consultation with the users of the services, the Post Office's plans can be overturned - only you are needed to make it happen.

• Do you use Sherwood Rise, Laurie Avenue, New Basford (Rawson Street) or Mansfield Rd Post Office?

• Do you think they play a valuable part in our Community?

• Are you concerned about their proposed closure?

• Do you want to know why Royal Mail is closing local Post Offices despite making £200 million profit this year?

• Are you being forced to use a bank in the city centre to deal with your money or benefits?

The Sumac Centre is hosting a public meeting to plan and support a campaign to defend Local Services on Wednesday 10th March.

Stop Press
The campaign is now up and running, with petitions circulating spontaneously throughout the neighbourhood, consultation response forms (available from Sumac) being completed by door to door canvasing and a protest planned for Monday 29th March.

Call the Sumac Centre on 0845 458 9595 to help with any of these initiatives, and come to the next campaign meeting at Sumac, 245 Gladstone St, Forest Fields, on Wednesday 24th March at 7.30pm.

Beginning with "Terrorister - a film about the sentenced ones".
(Sweden 2003, dir. Lukas Moodysson and Stefan Jarl. 85 min in swedish with english subtitles).

A documentary, on the recent anti-globalisation protests in Gothenburg, Sweden and the alleged police misconduct during the protests.

But is this the whole truth? Critical voices are raised today who state that the lawlessness on the streets of Göteborg shade in comparison to the lawlessness during the continuing processes and that the following of the riots is a big court scandal. The film directors travelled to the prisons to speak with the least heard, the activists, the until now 60 convicted who were sentenced to a total of 45 years in prison.

Sunday 21st March continues the season with A Program of Short Films:

Eat-My-Shorts

Ange Taggart from My Dads Strip Club hosts Eat-My-Shorts an evening featuring video shorts for your pleasure celebrating the bare-faced-cheek of activists.

Including favourites like London's coolest gang, special agents the Space Hijackers on their hilarious Circle Line Party; ... Puppet, the winner of Adbuster¹s subvertising contest pasting over Bush signs in Chicago and Manchester¹s spoof March For Capitalism.

Friday 27th March at 7pm

The Medicine Show' arrives at the Sumac to heal all with a night of films, music and performance brought to you as part of their UK Tour by Beyond TV

With films by:

• The Indymedia Network
• Undercurrents
• Big Noise Tactical
• Home Made Media
• Psychic Bread
• Real 2 Real
• UHC
• And Beyondtv.org

Music by Manchester' new beat combo Band of Death, radical DJ's B [Desert Storm] and Julie and performance by NATO [Northern Arts Tactical Offensive] : http://www.nato.uk.net/

The Season continues on Sunday 28th March with:

"Life in the Fast Lane - the No M11 Story"
(UK 1995, dir. Mayyasa Al-Malazi & Neil Goodwin. 85 min. Music by Zion Train, the Clash, and the Levellers.)

As the 10th anniversary of the eviction of "Wanstonia" passes, and local Eco-Protest sites at Nine Ladies and Mansfield Woodhouse gear up to resist their own evictions, it's timely to look back at the campaign against the M11 Link road in East London.

This feature-length documentary tells it like it was, giving the inside story of an extraordinary, kick-ass direct action campaign.

• Doors open 7pm.
• Films start at 7.30 pm.
• Ice Cream and Popcorn available!

Full details are at http://www.veggies.org.uk/diary.htm

"Wrong Time, Wrong Place? is a video about Maarten Blok, who was arrested during the EU summit in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2001. All he ever did was climb onto a container. Now he is charged with assaulting a police officer. The Netherlands will, without looking into his case, extradite him to Sweden. There a long and probably unfair trial is waiting.
Stop Press.
This show, planned for Saturday 20th March, has been postponed, and may feature in a future Sunday evening's program.