Nearly 5 years after some money was first set aside by the IW Council for youth facilities in Pan - as part of the plans to get the community on board for the proposed lucrative Pan development - the new Multi Use Games Area (MUGA) behind Downside Middle School is now open (pic), and will formally be opened this Thursday.
£100k was set aside by the then IW Council leadership and it has since been topped up with £300k of Sport England monies; thus delivering a quality facility.
For the last 3 years both PNP and I have been pushing for delivery of this scheme which has taken an inexplicably long time. At last its here, but I hope the community won't have to wait as long for the other promised benefits from the development..... once it actually starts.
28 comments:
They're very lucky to get this much public money eh Geoff, let's hope they appreciate it and are helped to make full and proper use of it. Time will tell.
It's clear most modern kids need to do a bit more sport. This can only happen if adults are prepared to give up time and put in effort. Spending someone elses cash is the easy bit.
Can't see the develoment being built anytime soon.
New Labour - and your mate an 'end to boom and bust' Gordon has closed down the house building industry!
My,my - there are an awful lot of dogs in this manger aren't there? Let's hope the good folk of Pan make good use of this gift, eh? I'm sure they'll be very 'umble. As usual, there is the normal jumping onto national issue. Now GB has closed down the building industry. How so? How is he responsible for irresponsible lending by international banks? eh? Get real please.
Yoda of course they should be grateful for enjoying the benefit of someone elses money. They didn't earn it eh, it's ours. In case you hadn't noticed, kids don't earn much. Why see the above posts as a forelock tugging class issue? The same would apply in Freshwater or Bembridge.
Governments are responsible for regulation. The collapse of the UK banking system was a regulatory failure. The buck stops with G Brown. If you socialists think the electorate wont hold you responsible for the dire state of the UK economy you're dreaming.
LET'S HOPE THEY DONT WRECK IT.
Anon 7.59 - you're a one aren't you.
Firstly, the kids may not pay taxes, but their parents do. But I forgot that we're still in the 1950's where we look up to our elders and betters and accept the crumbs from the rich mans table, doffing our caps and saying 'Gawd bless you sir for your kindness'..,
Secondly, what exactly should GB have been regulating? Hedge Funds? short selling? Interest rates? Supply and Demand? Greed? Credit Cards? Pay awards?
As Keynes pointed out some time ago (and Marx before him), capitalism contains within it the seeds of its own destruction as the market is ultimately self defeating - placing short term gain before long term investment. With the development of global financial markets, no government could ever hope to regulate every aspect of it. Not even die hard socialists think that and now we have the pathetic sight of free market tories saying that it should have been regulated all along...Thatcher D will be turning in his grave.
As for the people holding GB accountable - well, the good people of Scotland seem inclined not to do so. We'll see in due course.
Tally Ho!
Regulatory failure? If it was, it was a failure that was most obvious in the US; but then, regulation has always been weak there (if you look beyond the stiff sentences US courts hand out to erring executives, the things that banks are quite legally able to do, such as lending to people who would never be able to repay them, are sufficient to cause, as they have, world capitalism to crack). Do you think - honestly - that the British economy is insulated from that in some way? No economist does! In any event, regulation would not have prevented stupid lending decisions, irrational acquisitions of questionable companies, excessive self-reward, or corporate greed, all of which combined to wreck such good name as British banking possessed and made a disastrous international situation,if possible, worse. We didn't have nationalized banks in this country, until their own behaviour made it necessary; they were private companies whose boards made the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons.
So far as Pan is concerned, the only real investment in that area until very recently, other than that put in by the housing association, has gone to support a housing development which will surround the area and turn it into an almost instant ghetto. The only reasons the development was planned for Pan was that the council owned the land, had done a deal with the developers and could fulfil their quota of "social housing", or part of it. I don't know about "once it actually starts...."; IF would seem the word to me.
In return for this ghastly development, Pan gets youth facilities which it has needed for a long time; and someone hopes "they" don't wreck the MUGA... All right: I know there is a fair number of destructive little horrors on Pan, but given the problems that area suffers, from petty crime to drugs, unemployment, relatively poor health, where else are you going to put your regeneration funds? Why do you think Sport England has made such a large investment in the area? And what is this "someone else's money" talk all about? Pan is one area of the IW, and there are others in East Cowes, Ryde, parts of Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor, where we have high social deprivation and low ambition, expectation and achievement. Those are the areas where we SHOULD be prepared to spend if those trends aren't to continue for generation on generation. What I fear about this whole thing is that the LibDem council and its Tory successor saw Pan as a place where it could get a good price for its land and solve its, the council's, housing allocation problems: the needs of those who actually lived there came a long, long way behind.
Peter - you are a jedi master. I am a mere Padawan.
The force is strong with you.
You only had to watch Jamie Oliver's attempt to improve the lot of 'these people' to know they'd rather live on take-aways and kebabs than feed their many children properly. For thsose at the bottom no amount of benefit is ever enough despite our generosity making drugs, fags, booze, lottery tickets, nike gear and take aways possible. These people can't behave and repeat the mistakes of past generations ad nauseum. Yes the expectation they have for their children is low but you're fools if you think spending a few hundred grand on a sports facility will make any difference at all up there. It's any army of life skill teachers you need, that and the power to reduce benefits when the don't do as taught.
Yes it is our money that's spent on 16 year old mothers whose daughters behave in exactly the same way when they're 16. As long as I'm paying I want someone working on a solution. The bottom 105 are the people in most trouble in life. They cost the rest of us a fortune in benefits / jail etc.
While that last post is, depressingly, true in many cases (and I've lived just round the corner from Pan, and had my window put in) we can't just leave a bad situation to get worse. There have been positive things about Pan in recent years, thanks to sustained attention and some spending. So people can and do respond. What Pan needs is jobs; all very well saying people will stick to benefits rather than work, but when there isn't any work they haven't a lot of choice. Why, when we have collectively spent so much on education, we still have so many who are unskilled, semi-literate and innumerate is indeed a question that needs to be answered. But we've got to find work for people to do somehow; and that's likely to take significant public spending as well as private investment. The alternative is a benefit culture which helps neither society nor those who depend on it. And we know what bored kids with no sense of a useful future are likely to get up to, so it's self-interest as much as anything else to try to intervene & improve their prospects. I don't pretend it's easy.
Yoda,who is Peter?
You do seem to have a rather large chip on your shoulder. The policy of rewarding the lazy, feckless and badly behaved minority at the expense of the law abiding is one of the reasons that this country is going down the pan (toilet not Newport). There are vandals everywhere, not just on Pan. There are also a lot of responsible and community minded people on Pan and a sense of community and responsibility towards others is what is lacking generally in our society. Bring that back and the battle is half won.
With regard to regulating, the government as well as the financial institutions need regulating. Unchecked reckless socialist government spending has done a lot of harm, just as has the behaviour of the financial institutions, as well as people who spend what they can't repay without thinking about the consequences. It's up to government to make the rules and we are entitled to expect more responsible behaviour from the government. If Brown is so financially competent, why did he spend 10 years watching and encouraging the 'boom', he must have known how it would end.
as always, there is a middle ground. The excesses of both the financial institutions and the government need regulating.
Whoops!
We can't leave it to hard working decent families on Pan to improve the behaviour and aspirations of the minority who cause the problems. Yes we need more jobs but many of these people need more than a job. It's convincing them that they can do better that's important. That and trying to get them to take a pride in themselves and their children. Carrot and stick is my solution. Less pity, less benefit and more doing something positive for the money, community work or training not just hand outs.
That's been tried by the conservatives, it led to an outcry from the bleeding hearts, it's against their human rights you see.
Never mind that we spend our best years working to pay tax to keep these people in idleness.
I have to say that some of these comments sadden me deeply. There seems to be a general theme here that there are groups of people beyond reach and undeserving of attention and support. Surely this is not a universal view? Who exactly are we keeping in idleness or is this an urban myth that keeps the cold hearts warm at night?
Strange how the people of Pan manage to get references to human rights and socialist spending. Do they know that they have such influence?
The references to socialist spending were not aimed at Pan in particular but in general at a system which allows people to make a living on benefits a life choice without giving anything back to the society which keeps them and their children. It is wrong for people to be able to make a better 'living' off the taxpayer than by working and contributing, It is government's fault for perpetuating the situation. It is not only morally wrong and unfair but it is undermining the structure of society in Britain.
Working people resent it, do you understand? It isn't some airy fairy political ideal we are talking about, it is real life.
There is genuine sympathy for those unemployed through no fault of their own, especially those who lose their home as well. Just don't pretend that everyone who is unemployed is in that situation through circumstance rather than choice.
The recent John Prescott documentary on class revealed several of these people. Two Jags asked one man with several kids why he couldn't get any work as a labourer. The man was lcearly affronted! Despite having no education or qualifications he thought manual work beneath him. He was of course much better off on benefits and doing a bit of window cleaning. This IS how the other half live and must be addressed.
Hmmm. So far as scrounging is concerned, there are ways of addressing this. The basic level of benefit is in fact extremely low; anyone who would choose to live on unemployment benefit rather than work has either strong masochistic tendencies, or a job on the side. Incapacity benefit, or whatever it's now called, is similarly hardly generous, and no compensation for being genuinely unable to work. The plot thickens when children are introduced to the equation; benefits increase, social housing becomes available, and the snag then is that the rent for the social housing means that, given what people could earn through work versus the level of benefit (and immediate liability for full Council Tax) they would lose heavily by coming off benefit.
Several things could be done about this - the passage into work could be made easier; council tax could be abolished, replaced with an earnings tax (for instance), but above and beyond all of this, there have got to be jobs for people to go to. If there aren't, no system of enforcement, carrot OR stick, will work. Government seems not to grasp this. Of course, working people resent keeping those who don't; and there again, workless people resent flabby rhetoric about "hard-working families" from G B, when they have no opportunity to join them. "Get on your bike", said Norman Tebbit, in so many words. But where to?
Anyone whose had anything to do with politics, health or housing knows that there are people who don't want to work, have become afraid of it, or just see no prospect of ever getting it and so give up. But you do need to look at the fundamental reasons for "idleness", before lumping the jobless together in one group. It's too damn' easy just to point the finger and shout "workshy".
who's, even. Got to keep up this blog's high grammatical standards..
Ok - cards on the table. Those of you who think that people are better off being unemployed, please tell us all how much benefit the unemployed get and how this disincentivises them from working.
That means that (a) you know the avergae level of job seekers allowance (and how long it is paid for and under what conditions) and (b) the average (mean, median, mode) pay for, say, male workers on the island. If the job seekers allowance is higher, then you are right. If it is not, then it is an urban myth and you are a bunch of bigots who prefer your myths to hard facts.
Go on - tell us the figures. Bet you don't know...
Won't be hard to find out, though, will it? I don't know myself, to be honest. But I do know the current rate of Incapacity Benefit (now Employment Support Allowance) and even if you take the Council Tax concession and Housing Benefit into account, you're still on far less than you'd get in paid work. Government is "rolling out" Pathways to Work, they tell us: well with unemployment now creeping up to 2 million, that's going to take a bit of rolling...
THis whole agenda was set by ministers themselves, from Blunkett, to Hain, to Hutton and now to Purnell, and eagerly taken up by the Mail and Express, amongst others, as a by product of which attacks on disabled people are increasing. Makes you proud of Labour-lite Britain...
I am banging on a bit about this, and apologize; but I may have contradicted myself. I referred to (without naming it as such) the poverty trap in an earlier post, where the calculation as to whether going to work or staying on benefit in social housing is at least marginal. It does of course refer to low paid work, which is the only work for which many are qualified or are likely to get. Part of our trouble as a country and economy is that our wages are, by comparison with much of the rest of Europe, appallingly low. You can't stimulate an economy if you've nothing to stimulate it with, anymore than you can get work if there is no work to be got. These subtleties elude the popular press.
I shall shut up now.
11.49 anon. You miss the point. God knows how they do it but millions of people do live on benefits and hundreds of thousands could in theory work. I have no idea how so many people live on the state pension but they do.
We all know the benefits trap works against finding a new job. That's not a party political point but a fact. Sure if you live in South Wales jobs may not be as easy to find as they are in other places but the fact that 1 million plus people have come to the UK from Eastern Europe must prove work is available for those who really want it? Most of us who work do things we would rather not do. That is the key difference between people like me and and those happy to survive on benefits and in some cases cash in hand work rather than put themselves out. It's a lifestyle choice. Our government of any colur should make it harder to pass years on benefits.
No 2.16 anon - it is you who misses the point. The fact that something is an accepted fact does not make it true. It makes it an urban myth. You side step this bit of reality by saying words to the effect of 'I don't know how they do it, but they clearly are better off on the dole'. The fact that you don't have a bloody clue as to how much money someone gets for job seekers allowance is an indication that you won't allow facts to get in the way of a prejudice.
Job seekers allowance is £64 per month. That's dole money in old terms. It's paid for 6 months only. Not only do you have to attend for an in depth interview every 3 weeks, you also have to show evidence that you are activly seeking work - or the benefit is stopped.
Even allowing for elements such as housing benefit, I seriously doubt that (a) many people prefer the dole to work and (b) that they are 'better off' on the dole.
They may know no better, but shame on you people who generalise about something that you clearly know nothing about except the dark voice in the back of your minds uttering 'scrounger', 'my taxes', 'shiftless poor'. Shame on you all.
Anon at 11.57 PM, you are either taking the Mickey or you are so entrenched that you won't even consider that there are two sides to the argument. There is no point in having dialogue with someone like you.
suits me sweet pea
The fact is millions of people in Britain DO manage on benefits.
So it must be possible? How the hell could I know how much each payment is. Benefits are complex. Job seekers allowance, incapacity benefit, housing benefit blah blah. Most of us wouldn't have clue. All we know is there IS an underclass that live this way without making much effort to improve their lot, sadly nor the lot of their children. Baby P lived with just such a 'family'. My bet would be the social workers failed to remove him because they see these people all the time. In Labour's Britain is a lifestyle choice. I'm hoping the politicians, social workers and/or buck passers responsible are sacked and humiliated. Baby P and the 000's like him deserve at least that much.
Yawn - another daily mail rant. Now the sad and tragic death of a small child is symptomatic of a wider malise in society. Do you people have no shame?
You are again missing the point. You argue that untold tens of thousands of shiftless, workshy people enjoy a life of idleness because of government handouts.
You can't quantify or evidence this claim because it is in your head. You prefer not to know the details as that would get in the way of your fantasy.
I argue that such a proposition is, at best, wildly exagerated because no one could or would exist on such a pittence unless they had no other choice.
Your fantasy then divides the world into the deserving and undeserving - the former (proably tax paying, polite middle class families)can have playgrounds becasue they are deserving. The poor, unwashed layabouts at Pan get scarcasm because they are undeserving wasters - that's the implication of the comments on this blog. It's a quite disgraceful attitude that I deplore and I hope that others reject it too.
We know there's an underlass do we? No sweetheart, you know it because the Daily Mail tells you and you think that Shameless is a documentry. Idiot.
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