November 1997 November 1997
![[ Gingerbread outing at Alston ]](Gingerbread.jpg)
Keighley Kiddicare is run by and for lone parents offering affordable childcare for those wishing to go out to work. A shining example of New Labour's philosophy in action? Not according to Bradford Council who cut Kiddicare's grant at a stroke on Friday, leaving over 70 working lone parents facing the prospect of a return to benefits.
Bradford Gingerbread's Advice Service was simultaneously closed, leaving struggling single mums to face New Labour benefit cuts without support.
Never mind, there's always the Law Centre. Whoops - that's gone as well - a feat the legendary former Tory leader Eric Pickles failed to achieve.
In a shock announcement on Friday over 160 Bradford Voluntary Sector projects heard that they would receive no council funds; over £1.5 million chopped from long standing groups, ranging from the West Indian Parents Association to Womens Aid. That amounted to a quarter of the council's Voluntary sector budget.
The effect on services and job losses across the district has yet to be calculated. Watch this space.
KDIS Online will be available via your TV set shortly. Web-TV will soon allow people to access the Internet directly through their TV sets, without a PC in sight.
The first of these devices, the NetStation, goes on sale in a week or so. This set top box attaches to a TV set and a telephone line to allow World Wide Web surfin' for technophobes. In an attempt to keep up Yorkshire cable is to offer a similar service early next year, with the added advantage of no phone charges.
The NetStation goes on sale in Curry's and Dixons at the end of the month. Costing £300, the box plugs into the TV through a scart connection, and connects via a long extension to a phone socket. A further monthly charge of £15 is required to the "service provider", in this case NetChannel, a related company. Then connection is a simple matter of inserting a smart card, keying in a password and off you go. Phone charges are the cost of a local call whilst on-line.
Bradford Council's Neighbourhood Forums are costing over £160 for every member of the public who turns up.
The Forums, designed to give local people a direct say in Council matters, are costing £1 million a year. They run in 3 "cycles" a year - the last cycle having 77 meetings around the district.
The Forums have been criticised as "toothless talking shops" by opposition councillors. Poor attendance has been blamed on growing public cynicism.
The Forums were set up 6 years ago by the new Labour council. They are overseen by 5 "Area Panels" covering Shipley, Bradford North, West and South, and Keighley. Each panel has a small budget to spend on community needs
Figures released by the Council show a total of 2304 people attended the 77 Forums over the Summer period. Almost half of these were in the Shipley area, where controversial proposals for house building on Baildon's Jenny Lane playing fields brought 284 to one meeting, and proposals for a BSE incinerator brought 147 to a Denholme meeting..
But meetings in poorer areas were ignored by residents; Ravenscliffe had 6 people; Low Moor brought in 8; Parkwood in Keighley and Heaton, Oak Lane attracted 4 each; Lower Grange struggled with just 2 members of the public.
On the surface Thursday night's performance of "A Party That Will" was the story of the Manningham Mill Strike of 1891, a strike which led to the creation of the Independent Labour Party.
Simply told and convincingly acted, it could easily be dismissed as just another evening of entertaining amateur dramatics. In fact it was much, much more.
The play was written by Keith Narey, an active local socialist until his death earlier this year. "A Party That Will" is just one example of Keith's ability to move on from the paper selling and political speechifying of his earlier Militant Tendency years into other forms of communicating.
The play was produced and performed by local people in the very space in which the strike erupted over 100 years ago, as part of the Manningham Mills Community Festival. The Festival is a celebration of the re-opening of Listers Mill as a community arts space for Manningham.
Seeing Keith's work, put on with such commitment, sharing that space across a century of struggle resonated with irony and with satisfaction - the strikers were back in the mill this week - but this time they won.
Part of Listers Mill was reclaimed earlier this month by the Manningham Mills Community Association, after 18 months planning. Over 400 volunteers worked solidly for 3 days to convert the derelict building, with around £50,000 worth of donations of materials and labour from local businesses. The Festival ends on Sunday and a conference is planned for November 5th to decide on the projects future. All welcome.
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