Local Politics

  • What’s wrong with Reading?

    The town of Reading is large. It has a lot of communities. It has lots of neighbourhoods.

    The local issue now is it’s suffered badly with rampant and serious organised crime.

    The level of activity isn’t to be overstated. There are worse places. Yet the location is not one you’d expect.

    It doesn’t lend itself to incubating crime. This is done by people that have nefarious intent. It’s not about local history or culture.

    The types of crime is of serious concern because most people don’t do it in Reading. The gangs are from everywhere but there.

    The issue is also not racial. The crime bosses are mostly white. The problematic store guards are black and white. The secret crime cells are multiracial.

    While it’s not the core, it’s part of the peel. The confusion created by contentious debates about race muddles our approach to everything in life.

    It should be straightforward to arrest someone. It’s not if the problem is it looks like social profiling. The evidence is irrelevant if passions are heated to boiling point.

    However, any work done to a create a safer Reading shows how ingrained the problems were. It isn’t helped by a lack of awareness in locals.

    The pride some say they feel is not in their contribution to society. The pride some feel is in those whose work is making a difference in every local community.

  • Reform UK get new Chairman

    Dr David Bull is the new Chairman of Reform UK. The TV host and broadcaster is a veteran of UK politics.

    As he takes over he’ll handle internal party affairs, membership, its public profile, and other matters.

  • Local life is how we feel

    The way we walk around our local areas says something about who we really are. It may be we take a lot of interest in where we live. It may be others have no care for it at all. There’s variance in attitude in just this respect.

    A graffiti spot on a wall

    Any passive mark left over can also instruct us. It may demonstrate a real hatred of English culture. It may show a love for it. There may be signs of pride. They can also be indications of felt shame. These are different between people too.

  • A Salisbury nomenclature

    The city of Salisbury, Wiltshire is not a stage for drama. It’s been a focus of national attention for a poising. It was alleged Putin did it and it brought some fame. It’s not a good sort, though.

    There’s always another side to a story, as well as a city. The truth in Salisbury is it has its own “local” stories that trend in streets and on a few corners. The time I spent there was no exception.

    In a small part of it – set about a church, as it happens – there was a hoo-ha over a publication. The Catholic Herald isn’t a point of huge controversy but unbeknownst it had been one for a long time.

    In a small way a few locals had begun to converse over it but long ago – a few decades, it was said. Fast forward, and a small cohort has picked up on this single conversation.

    Maybe it was brought up as a memory, but it soon turned into no small controversy. These locals decided to “serve” the outlet in whatever way they could, which meant becoming Catholic first.

    It was a period of hysteria, a type that pops up and disappears often in England. A moment of enthusiasm, however, can be misunderstood and in a short while the group had grown larger.

    It turned into a quasi journalist’s ‘cult’, holding meetings and organising rotational prayer rotas. It was also a butt of local jokes. It was discussed in pubs and written off over tea and coffee.

    The partners in this humorous crime didn’t get their work in the end, and they didn’t end up observant either. It’s just a quirk of nature in the English countryside, but a morality tale also, somehow.

  • Potholes and plaintiff’s

    Where I live potholes have been a problem for a long time, but it’s getting better.

    The repeated projects to lay new roads has worked in many areas – step by step, I mean – and this makes a difference beyond the overall ascetic.

    It’s not nice turning into a glorified trench as you visit a friend or return home (and the car doesn’t like it, either).

    There are so many things wrong with decay that we try to bring it up as many times as possible in as many conversations that centre around local politics which come up.

    Or at least, that is before it gets too boring to mention it again.

    But what else is there that is actually interesting that just local politics covers?

    Not a lot, in my view, unless it’s a problem you spotted.

    It makes it real if it’s personal so it’s worth trying again to bring it up since potholes don’t go away overnight.