The Great Collective University Inertia

My Open Letter to All the Leeds Universities Aigust 21 2020 Dear Universities, This is it. It is 10 weeks of relentless antisocial distasteful partying on an industrial level, by “entitled” young so-called adults who treat us, all year round residents like dirt, and by not pulling them up on their appalling, selfish, life-threatening behaviour, you are treating us like dirt. It’s one excuse after another. “They’re not all from our university. “ “Are you sure it was No 6?” “We can’t do anything until October.” “We don’t have all their addresses” “They’re not back at university until autumn.” “It’s the landlord/lady’s responsibility”. Out of the long-term residents in just one small street there are now three that we know of down at the local surgery on a regular basis, ill, signed off, or unfit for work, who have serious illnesses, all originating in stress-related conditions. The cost to the health service, to social services, just in monetary terms is already stacking up. Then we read there is an article in the local newspaper about why we should learn to love our universities. Apparently it’s because they benefit the Leeds economy, as so many people work for them. In Hyde Park and all over Headingley people’s careers, lives, health, happiness, families everything is in ruins and tatters just so that Leeds can be the best (really!) city in the north. In Moorland Road and Avenue alone we are teachers, university lecturers, doctors, builders, charity workers, retired people, social workers, garage mechanics, musicians, visual artists, university admin assistants, and real students (as in came here to study), a total mix of people who maintain this area the whole year around have been abandoned and left and hung out to dry by an uncaring council, incompetent police force and self-serving, self-seeking, entitled universities. Colleges who are spending their money rebranding themselves as universities and conservatories in order to enhance their status, universities spending millions on fancy new buildings, and heaven help anybody who went to university in Leeds, liked the area, and stayed on loyally to preserve and look after it. Heaven help anyone who mistook a beautiful Moor and beautiful Victorian architecture for a place of beauty and safety in which to pass a decade or two of their post-graduate life. There is a great collective inertia, and one part of Leeds in which society's have just been abandoned. Bad enough in a "normal" year, but inexcusable in a global pandemic.

When all the students come back

Well , who is looking forward to the students returning to their uni towns? I will tell you who: university finance departments, landlords and ladies, Sainsbury’s. Once this list would have included bars and pubs, and local shops. Once it would be local residents looking forward to new trends in music and art, and even philosophical debates down the Royal Park Pub. Most, if not all university lectures can be online. Practicals obviously need equipment, but possibly students could to access that at a local home university. Quite this a drastic step I realise. This would involve cooperation between institutions, but hey, this is a global pandemic, but I say where there’s a will... It seems that the exasperated parents have already dropped off and got rid of the most determinedly antisocial partygoers, probably a thousand or so, given the reports we have from Moorland Avenue, Saint John’s Avenue, Hyde Park Road, Cardigan Road, the Norwoods, Victoria Road, the Broomfields, the Langdales. But many more thousands are set to descend on the city. We hear of one uni has actually asking students to come back early. Is to this ensure they will get their fees, or to get them inside the city boundary before lockdowns return? Hopefully these are students who have come here to study. Nonetheless they will have been looking forward to freedom, freshers week and meeting up with old friends. To have them all descend on Leeds at once is the recipe for an almighty spike and heaven help the students and the unis when they get the blame for Leeds’s first football game in the Premier League to be behind closed doors and when all the pubs get closed again. We suggest that the council and the universities get together, be creative and come up with an intelligent plan.

Open Letter to All Leeds Universities

Open letter to All Leeds Universities

As one university spokesperson wrote to us, indeed your students are not solely responsible for the situation. In many ways the students are just victims, collateral damage in a system, an infrastructure which which has evolved, consisting of entitled students and their entitled parents, lazy and unscrupulous landlords and ladies, and the criminal drug pushers who work for themselves at the expense of us all. (And of course it isn’t all landlords/ladies, it isn’t all students, but it is all druggies.) Let us also add in a council and a police force who either genuinely don’t realise just how bad the situation has become, or don’t have the will or the capacity to change it.

However, as far the students are concerned, they may not be solely your students, and it is not all students, but the party-goers are all students. And the students are only here because the universities are here. And this gives the unis both the responsibility and ability to do something about the situation.

Presently there are two distinct types of party-type antisocial behaviour. The raves such as the one that happened on Woodhouse Moor were not organised by students and were mostly locals and nearly all from other areas of Leeds. But in the late afternoon the organisers were conspicuously walking round the back streets round our way so presumably they were looking for students to invite. And students’ parents and the universities should be really worried about this.

 Only five years ago my daughter came back from work at the pub to find that someone had climbed the tree in our front garden and then dropped onto the pavement where she then died. Only later did we discover that she been persuaded to take drugs for the first time and, the very next day, was going away to university to do a post-grad course. How tragic this was was brought home when her parents came up from her hometown to see where she died and meet the person who found her. As they stood in the garden looking at the tree and described the life she had been about to lead we just felt that their daughter was our daughter or sister.

But this letter is not just about noise, parties drugs and alcohol abuse. Anti-social behaviour also includes incompetent  waste management. Students either don’t care or don’t know how to recycle and, for example, don’t realise or care that you can’t, in Leeds, put glass into a green bin, and that you should not leave bins out on the pavement. Also, on Leaving Day just wheeling mattresses and sofas out onto the street for someone else to deal with is the disgusting height [or depth] of anti-social behaviour.

Hyde Park Road Leeds

And then  there are few things more insensitive than parking in front of a neighbour’s drive. Obviously the council hasn’t helped by painting white parking lines down some streets (eg Moorland Avenue), but you would think that the presence of a parking area, especially if there is a vehicle in it would be a giveaway. The implications for anyone who has to drive to work [and arrive on time] are frightening.

In general the graffiti and the fly-tipping (apart from the aforementioned mattresses) aren’t directly the students’ fault, but by treating the neighbourhood badly you invite others to regarding it as a dumping ground.

Local residents who live here all round keep the area afloat - just. We keep the shops, the takeaways and the pubs (what’s left of them] ticking over. Without us the area would die altogether. So when the two entitled parents told one particular resident on two separate occasions within one week in July 2020 that she living in the wrong area, said parents should realise that without us, their children would not last the distance.

 

Homeless in Leeds

From a comment on a local chat line"

There is a guy sitting in the rain because he can't shelter under the
Arndale because he gets moved. Where can we tell these guys to go sit to keep dry. He's only a teenager, he's well turned out not intimidating. How heartless are the owners if the
Arndale and what can we do? I have given him some money for a coffee so he
can sit inside somewhere but it's not a solution

 

This is Joe Kent's detailed, informative and, I think, encouraging response:

"It is certainly a complex and difficult situation, I have worked for many years (too long unfortunately) supporting homeless people and trying to find solutions - here is some information and what I have found out over the years that I hope will help with this dilemma:

If you see people who are sleeping rough then there is a great reporting tool you can use called Street Link. http://www.streetlink.org.uk/

You can download it as an app on your phone and report straight away - this will get your sighting and report sent to the Leeds Rough Sleeper outreach team within less than one working day
Despite cuts to the council (really massive cuts - I think it is up to around 50% of their budget since 2010 now) there is still a Leeds rough sleeper team - and it is a good one too. It is run by CGL / Change Grow Live ( they used to be called CRI) and they have some really good people working for them.

That team will go out in the evening and very early morning to find people and connect them to services such as the Crypt. They respond to reports on Street Link.

The other key place to go to is Housing Options in the city centre - they can pay deposits and get people into private rented accommodation very quickly.

http://www.homeless.org.uk/ is a national directory of hostels you can search
There is also an outreach team run by BARCA-Leeds who work with the top cohort of people in the city who have insecure housing, addictions, are re-offending and mental health illness. This is very challenging work and the team re-establish connections with services and stabilise people to improve their situation (Don't refer to this one, they work in partnership with other agencies and target people with most complex issues)

There is still a network of supported accommodation / hostels in Leeds, but this has been cut severely and next year will see further reductions. This is secondary type provision that acts as move on for people from various situations including from the Crypt.

There is no doubt that rough sleeping is rising - there is an annual rough sleeper count by most councils (and most councils do interim surveys) to check numbers seen sleeping rough. These are independently invigilated and they do provide a very good annual benchmark of the numbers of people found on the streets. The methodology was set up by Shelter in around 2002 I think and Homeless Link provide independent invigilators.

Many agencies and politicians complain that these figures are not accurate as you can never find everyone because people hide away (there was one on the radio today) which is true. But by doing the same method every year you have a good indication of the trends. And also reporting is very good from a range of agencies to find people hidden away - the rough sleeper team know most spots around the city.

A good estimate is to consider a ratio of around 4 to 1 - for every one rough sleeper counted in a snapshot count there were around 4 people in insecure situations who might have been on the street that night.

So in Leeds, the figure has recently been around 15 - 20 people. This probably means that they are in a larger group of around 60 - 80 people in Leeds who are in and out of the streets. They just happen on the night of the count to be on a friends settee, in temporary accommodation such as the Crypt, in prison, back temporarily with their family, etc.

Leeds manages this situation really well - Manchester rough sleeper counts are usually around 10 higher than leeds over the years. In recent years they have shot up to over 80 whilst Leeds has remained largely steady - this is for a number of different reasons including the disbanding of a team centrally and other factors.

There are now huge numbers of people in tents in Manchester, people may have noticed that there was briefly a tent city in Leeds. The story behind this is rather surprising - it was part of an organised protest by a very angry man who has a house in Harrogate. He started off through a Facebook page criticising everyone and building a network of supporters.

In September they set up tents outside the Town Hall, they brought in people from Sheffield, Nottingham and other places. Some locals were from Leeds. They drove off the rough sleeper team, attacked the Crypt and other services and ended up moving to the old site of the swimming pool. The object seemed to be self-publicity and there were live Facebook feeds.

It all ended in horrific circumstances, a group of men attacked the camp with baseball bats and the camp dispersed. We suspect it was a drug debt from someone in the camp. The same people have now moved on to Hull and started the same pattern again.

From talking to people who lived on the streets for many years, a common theme is that the distribution of tents and food can trap people in a lifestyle on the streets rather than other services that are linked into solutions that lead people off the streets and back into housing. I can see that the tent city in Leeds did briefly offer people a community and this is an important issue.

A key factor now happening are the high levels of extreme poverty in our society - the foodbanks in Leeds are now serving people who are in work as well as people on benefits and the many people who are now sub-benefits due to either dropping out of the complicated system altogether, or being suspended from benefits - the film I Daniel Blake very accurately shows how this can happen. The new system of Universal Credit is gradually replacing the current benefit arrangements, this is very concerning for many reasons which is clearly recognised by he Government because it is being introduced very gradually. Almost by stealth.

A foodbank in South Leeds is in danger of running out of food which just offers staples and basics
The whole situation (i.e poverty on a mass scale) has seen a rise in begging associated with desperation and hunger (in my opinion).

From my previous and current work all surveys in different parts of the country showed that around 70% of beggars are not homeless despite what props or stories they may use. Unfortunately from the story here I have to conclude that the young man in the Arndale was not homeless and was begging.

A large proportion of beggars also have addiction issues - either alcohol or drugs. The majority of others, particularly in good spots for begging will be part of a network (often a small one) and will be paying a fee to others who will drive them off unless they do so.

The story of being made to sit in the rain does not ring true - is there now security monitoring the pavements at the Arndale? And the Crypt has only ever housed single people since the 1930's - they only have very small single rooms and are not kitted out for families or children, including managing the safeguarding issues. There is no exclusion of people without dependants.

Also, there are not any hostels in Leeds that will charge an entry fee or deposit.
There is no doubt that people are driven to begging by desperation, but there will be a dual narrative running here - the life history of that individual that has put them in this situation (there will be something around neglect and abuse for the young man you encountered, I have no doubt) most likely to be combined with a current situation of addiction and/or exploitation. There is a need, but what is the solution? It is not simple unfortunately.

I hope that this helps with some understanding. I have worked in this field for too many years, I wish there was a straightforward solution because I am sick of what happens. I, too, have been caught out many times with giving money to people who were scamming me, but in the final analysis I don't really mind, it is a human and kind thing to do, and it is fantastic that people on this network and in our community do care. What we need are better solutions."

Why would any children of no faith in Moortown be directed to a faith primary school in Chapeltown?

I wrote this letter to the YEP before the tragic Tory success in the latest UK general election. Sadly this "success" will mean that the Conservatives think they have a mandate for dismantling our public education system:

 

This debacle over the allocation of places to the Khalsa Science Academy throws up a number of uncomfortable issues.

1. It is a free school/academy. As such it doesn't need to conform to national or even local educational standards, such as employing qualified teachers or providing healthy meals. Despite Gove and Cameron defending this "freedom", no one else in the country is buying this is as a good thing.

2. It is a Sikh school. Are the parents religious? Sikh even? Well, for me this begs the other question of why are Christian schools bursting with Muslim children? And one answer is that church schools only survive because they include children from other faiths. Is this a good thing? Debate. But when my Muslim friend was in 6th form at a Catholic college she had to attend masses in order to qualify for EMA - the allowance that sixth-formers used to get to help them finance staying on in education.

 
3. Fir Tree School in Moortown was one of those schools which the late unlamented Education Leeds took an axe to. Unlike the much missed Royal Park, this building is still standing and long since should have refurbished as an authority school, as this crisis clearly shows we in Leeds need.

Instead, this government, whose days I pray, in what ever religion is available, are numbered, has ordered Leeds Council to give a publicly owned asset to a private company. Unbelievably Cameron's take on this (YEP 2 May) was "free schools don't take money away from other schools. They're separately funded." and he suggests that "where a free school is built elsewhere it demonstrates that parents aren't happy with the education provision". I think we were generally happy until he told us that satisfactory wasn't satisfactory anymore.

And, Dave, your government decreed in 2011 that any and all new schools had to be free schools or academies, and that local authorities were not allowed to open new schools, even in a town where a private company has willfully and wrongly destroyed so many. This has nothing to do with parental choice as your paper's front page clearly shows.

4. By its name this new school seems to be a Science specialist institution. At primary age! Research clearly show the value of the Arts in education. This title does not bode well for them.

 

5. This local school isn't actually yet in Moortown, but presently housed in Chapeltown, not, I think "local" at all!

 

So, it's up to Leeds to sort this out, because this will be being replicated around the country and making us the world's laughing stock

Leeds to be Cultural Capital?

Thanks to Yorkshire Evening Post for printing my letter [20 December 2013]:

I see that Leeds is planning to to bid to be cultural capital (YEP 5 Dec). I am looking at the things that Leeds has been losing, and I am wondering exactly what it still has to offer.

The article mentions the West Indian Carnival, Henry Moore Institute and Opera North HQ. but this town, my adopted home town, seems to be a sorry state. For a start, the skyline from the motorway is a guastly mash-up of toy town designs, including the infamous Bridgewater. Beautiful Victorian buildings, like Royal Park are demolished; hideous PFI schools proliferate; Leeds has become a centre of shopping centres.



East Steel at YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic Town Hall Concert

But I would most certainly support this bid, with a few provisos: that the culture should include us all. For a start I would give the orchestras, choruses and special needs music charities their homes back, either at the West Park Centre, or on its present site, or somewhere equally suitable. The YAMSEN:SpeciallyMusic Christmas Concert, playing its 30th concert last week at the Town Hall, is certainly a cultural asset to be celebrated.

For a second I would examine Leeds West Indian Carnival a bit more closely. The only live band in the procession is its own steel band. No other live acts - samba bands, djembes, or marching  bands from any other cultures get a look in, and my own steelbands (Foxwood, Sparrows etc) were banned three years ago, on the grounds that a live band might provoke a riot! Leeds Silver Sparrows played London Southbank two years ago to celebrate the Festival of Britain. Foxwood wowed Wonderland this weekend on Briggate. Alas they were not considered worthy to pay their own home town carnival!

Foxwood Steel at Leeds Waterfront Festival 2013

In other cities, Liverpool and Cardiff for example, they have reconsidered what Carnival means to their cities, and reinvented them, bringing in acts from more recent immigrants to reflect their cultural diversity. Huddersfield, for example has renamed its carnival "Huddersfield Carnival" and is setting about becoming more inclusive, without losing its West Indian roots. 

So, by all means apply to be the centre of culture, but first let's have a good inwards look at ourselves.


Sparrows play Festival of Britain at London Southbank July 2011

Victoria Jaquiss FRSA

The Benefits of a Vibrant, Culturally Rich City

Checking through the minutes of the actual council meeting which presented the West Park Centre Options Appraisal I find that the court, I mean the council, did indeed agree with (or rather say yes to] the Report's recommendation to consider two options: partial demolition or total annihilation. So Corporate Property Management (the very name conjures up the antithesis of West Park has been about!) writes up five notional options then dismisses three of them, without debate. Eh! How does that work?

In the situation we find ourselves in i.e. with a thriving council arts centre specialising in

1. music for children and adults with special/additional needs and including [rather a nice role reversal]main stream learners, and with the toilets, hygiene suites, disabled minibus parking and access

2. housing a music service [office, rehearsal and performance areas and storage], and

3. housing four of Leeds main classical ensembles [orchestras, opera and choruses and storage and parking]

in a building needing a makeover (and especially its shoddy electrics putting right), having endured  a "temporary closure", but where finances may be an issue, there should be three simple options:


1. Destroy everything (in the name of health and safety)
2. Keep some of it (in the name of compromise and money saving)
3. Refurbish the lot (after listening to reason)

Now I have not here even touched upon the 30-odd other regular [part-time and full] users of the centre]. They are well documented earlier on in this blog.

But the beauty of the West Park users is that we don't have to go looking for them, for tenants. They all want permanent  offices and storage space, and regular rehearsal and performance space and free parking.

So either you want the Culture and the Arts or you don't. You want to care for your most vulnerable children  and adults. or you don't. You want to care for your minorities [Travellers, Irish Arts, unions, gamblers, weight-watchers] or you don't. And actually I think that Leeds does.

"All people of Leeds will enjoy the benefits of a vibrant, culturally rich city".

So, what we are saying is, if you care for these things, then you won't close down the very building that have given them life all these years, or make it so small that it cannot function.

YAMSEN:SpeciallyNeeds' Children's Choirs

Once we just used to get on with it; now we have to shout!

Sue wrote thus to the YEP about the Special needs choirs, and they printed it on Saturday:

Published on Saturday 23 February 2013 08:00

I am a member of YAMSEN, a charity run by volunteers working with children and adults with learning disabilities and additional physical problems, through music.

YAMSEN has been running for 30+ years and is very well respected nationwide. A small part of what we do is to run three choirs for children and adults – in total they represent 200 people with a learning disability. We meet up twice a month to sing together and rehearse for concerts – the last one was in Leeds Town Hall in December. The West Park Centre was our base – great room space, grand piano, wheelchair access and lift, disabled toilet facilities, ramps to enable everyone to access the ground floor and plenty of parking for all the minibuses that transport everyone.

As a result of the centre’s closure we’re having to find venues week by week if we can, and it means we can’t plan concerts which the choirs love to work towards. Why would anyone with any sense close a building overnight without a strategy to house everyone in another or even better building?

For goodness sake, fix the electrics so we can get back in there and gradually refurbish it, and get someone in with some vision to market the building and see its potential – a fantastic community arts centre. West Park could be filled day and evening. Most people don’t want whizzy new buildings – they want spaces they can use, easy parking, access and most of all a feeling of community which we’ve lost.

Sue Tomassi

Hyde Park Leeds LS6 UK

September 2012. Am going for the third blog here.  The Leeds Schools Campaigner is really just for education with a leaning towards Leeds, LS6, UK. The Letter to Carriacou is my letter about gigs and personal adventures to Debs, who should be in Carriacou but at present is in an Emirate. Don’t ask.  [Read the blog.]

And so, may I introduce: Hyde Park Leeds and the Wider World. As it says on the tin, about local events, politics, community in Hyde Park, sometimes just local, and sometimes as it affects Leeds and then further afield.

Hyde Park, Leeds is the area surrounding and a bit northwards from Woodhouse Moor [see below on a sunny day], an old battleground from the English Civil War, and Hyde Park doesn’t usually get a good press.  And this blog does not particularly propose to change that.

I live in Hyde Park, hence my interest.  Like many who do, I stayed here after Uni, lovely architecture, nice mix of cultures and social groupings, population on the transient side, from the students to the immigrants, all leads to a life led privately.

So much Victoria architecture was, of course,  often lovely up fronts which were often facades for rather plainer backs.  

 The streets above are Brudenell Road at sunset, and then Moorland Avenue. Moorland Avenue is really the back street for Moorland Road and St John's Grove. This aspect of the houses on this street is inevitably plain, and the rebuilt garage [above/left] with its attendant rubbish is a true eyesore. Most houses on Moorland Avenue have given over most or all of their gardens for parking spaces. And, as you see can see from the above  picture, some trees were harmed in this exercise.  In short they [the trees] are not there anymore, and actually, despite some complaints,  no landlords were harmed in this exercise, and no replacement trees ever grew in their place.

Ironically  the sign in the front garden of the rubbish back declares there to be "luxury apartments". This is a conservation area so trees should not be felled, and signs should not be erected.