Saturday, May 17, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
The Future of Preston
With several redevelopment projects in the pipeline, the future for
The Tithebarn project, set to be finished in 2014, is the most high profile current regeneration project. It will cost £700m and will see the regeneration of a large, rundown area of the Town Centre.
Other projects include a plan to rebuild Preston Bus Station in a new location, a proposal for regeneration in a rundown area to be known as the Horrockses Quarter , a new development by the River Ribble and the Avenham Car Park development.
I talked to some of the shoppers, business owners and shop employees in the Town Centre and asked their thoughts and opinions relating to the future of
Francesca Jackson, 20, from Ribbleton said, “I don’t think things like the Tithebarn project will make a difference. The People of Preston are past caring anyway.
“They’ve been promised it for so long. It was meant to go ahead in 2003, then 2005; were still waiting and nothing’s happened.”
Margaret Booth, 42, also from Ribbleton said, “I think they get their priorities wrong, we need more hospitals and more facilities for old people.
“We already have a couple of shopping centres and that’s enough.”
Other people were more positive on the subject of the developments. David Rhodes, 67, a City Centre Jeweller from Fulwood said “Any development is good for
The new bus station development will be built on a site at the junction of
Rebecca Prike, 30, from
I also asked people whether they thought that car parking in
I asked Mr Rhodes about this and he said “If they could improve the parking facilities it would be much better. They also need to reduce the cost so it’s not so expensive that it frightens people off.
Douglas Dackhouse, 41, works as a Lawyer in Preston but lives in
Having seen how full of people Fishergate can be I wondered whether people think Fishergate should be pedestrianised. Almost everyone thought it should.
Lyn Hartley, 45, from
I asked Rebecca Prike this and she said “Yes, why not. There’s other ways to get to Penwortham so there’s no real need to have Fishergate open to traffic.”
The Problems of Car Parking in Preston
Residents in Avenham are against the building of a new shopping and apartment complex on Avenham car park, according to a local news agent.
Taru Bhakta, co-owner of Dips News on
The project planned by Local developer Salya Homes will create over 300 new apartments and 13 shops.
But 600 car parking spaces would be lost – stretching
Mrs Bhakta a long-time resident of the Avenham area said that both business men and shoppers park in the area leaving no spaces left for actual residents.
She said, “People I know, who come in the shop, are really fed up. Often people are having to park far away from their homes.
“Most people around here cannot believe that the council are reducing the number of car-parking spaces when they should be making more; they’re getting their priorities wrong.
“Councillors should be making sure there is ample parking space for us rather than focusing all their attention on new regeneration projects.”
Mrs Bhakta thinks that the problems with parking in the Town Centre could be eased if more effort was put into park and ride schemes.
“If more people used the park and ride then it would reduce congestion and maybe reduce the number of Town Centre visitors who park in residential areas.”
“The problem with it now is the cost of busses. To take the bus from near the park and ride to the Town Centre costs £2.30.”
“It’s no wonder people don’t use public transport. Prices like this make it cheaper to run a car.”
Mrs Bhakta however does not think a congestion charge for
“Unless they had a special pass for people like me, if I went to pick up my son, as I often do, I would charged. This would be terrible for us and for most people who live around the Town Centre.
“It may also cause me to lose passing trade. If that happened I would lose my usual morning and evening trade.”
In Mrs Bhakta’s experience
“It’s hard to navigate around
Despite being against the Avenham development Mrs Bhakta is in favour of new
“Customers often comment on new projects they’ve read about in the LEP. Most things I hear are positive; they are glad that effort is being made to improve their city.
“They have done a lot of improvement already, for instance in the park and on some of the buildings in this area. Regenerations and developments can be good and bad.”
Monday, March 10, 2008
GP's agree to extended hours
The Independent in its report wrote that the GP's have caved in. This wording suggests that it thinks they gave in too easily or went against their principles. This doesn't seem to be saying that they think the government were wrong to put pressure on GPs although the story does report the opinions of GPs which say that the Government's strong-arm tactics had been "unacceptable".
The BBC's wording looks at the story from the GPs point of view, the opening paragraph focusing on the fact that GPs have given ministers a huge vote of no confidence.
The Times in the opening paragraph uses the word bulldozed to describe how the government went about 'persuading' GP's to agree. I think this suggests that the Times disapproves of the way that the government went about working out a deal with GPs.
The Times also quotes Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s GP committee, she said "We want patients to be happy with the service they get from GPs, but it will only work if GPs feel they can trust the Government not to bully and micro-manage them all the time."
The Telegraph emphasises the degree to which GPs are angered at the way the government treated them, using the headline 'Furious GPs agree to extend surgery hours.' I think this suggests that they want to try to make trouble for the government and take advantage of anything negative which concerns the government.
Essentially all the reports comment on the fact that the government effectively forced GPs to accept this deal but they each look at it from a different angle, which usually mirrors their political positions.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Antidepressant drugs don't work
As seems usually to be the case, most media news websites were fairly impartial in their coverage of this story, not really giving their own opinion. They do however publish the opinions of others as part of their articles.
Most stories covering this included the opinion of Professor Kirsch of the University of Hull who led the study. He said: "Given these results, there seems to be little reason to prescribe antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients, unless alternative treatments have failed to provide a benefit."
Despite this being not a total admittance that these drugs don't work most news providers led with a headline like this. From this you could assume either they wanted to spice up the story or want to express their own opinion that depression drugs don't work.
A comment in the Independent this time by Tim Kendall, deputy director of the Royal College of Psychiatrists' research unit, said that in his opinion the findings, if proved true, would not be surprising.
The fact they publish opinions like this could lend support to the theory that the Independent at least on the whole does not believe Antidepressants are of any use.
Rather than reveal a personal aversion to the idea of Antidepressant drugs the BBC suggests simply that the results are worrying, which is more impartial. They quote, for instance Marjorie Wallace, head of the mental health charity Sane, who said that if these results were confirmed they could be "very disturbing".
They also covered a response from a manufacturer of an Antidepressant in more detail, which again shows evidence of more impartiality.
Other news providers such as the the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Belfast Telegraph also showed more impartiality on this subject, which is perhaps surpising although know the Independent is a 'views' paper it is likely to give much of it's own opinion on things.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Map showing news reports in Lancashire Evening post
View Larger Map
This map features short news summaries linked to the place where the event reported on actually happened.
Measles cases reach record high in 2007
This comes mostly as a a result of a drop in the uptake of the MMR vaccine. The number of MMR vaccinations first fell in the late 1990s and though theories linking MMR to autism have since been disproved, the number of children receiving the jab is still below the recommended level.
Dr Mary Ramsay, a consultant epidemiologist at the HPA, which released the figures, said "This increase in measles cases is of concern." She said that large numbers of children are still not fully protected so we expect to see more large outbreaks of measles in the future.
Measles can be fatal as proved by the death of a 13-year-old boy from measles in 2005.
Most of the major serious news providers covered the story. None of the reports that I found were negative about the MMR jab though most simply printed the negative facts and figures about measles cases allowing the facts to speak for themselves.
Many like the Guardian and Channel four news reported doctors advice prominantly, suggesting that these opinions are to be trusted. They seemed to use the doctors opinions in order to support there own positive slant on the MMR vaccine.
The BBC reported A spokeswoman for the Department of Health. This person said "MMR uptake has increased in recent years", but "We want to see more children protected against these potentially serious diseases."
Alan Johnson and the Well Notes
An estimated 175m working days are lost to sickness each year, at a cost of £13bn. This shows that somthing needs to be done, but is this the answer?
I would say no, but this blog isn't about my opinions its about what every one else is saying. So, i'll start with what the BBC said when it covered the story.
Though the BBC is mostly impartial they do publish other peoples opinions. In a story dealing with this they published the view of Dr Peter Holden, of the BMA's GPs committee.
He said that GP's are often put in difficult positions when they have to decide whether to issue sick notes. He goes on to say that doing this is very different from deciding whether patients are ready to go back to work. He said "GPs should not be there to police the system."
Dr John Canning was quoted in the Independant's coverage of the story. He said that in his experience employers only want there employees back at work if they are fully fit. And so the current situation is in there interest.
Prof Khan said on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme however that he thinks no one likes the current situation and that it is worthwhile to try something new.
The Telegraph gave the story particularly negative coverage. One headline was "GP well notes 'doomed to fail', says doctor". This story focuses on the opinion of a doctor who was involved in drawing up the plans called Dr George Moncrieff, a GP, who practices in Oxfordshire.
He said Independent occupation health specialists should be introduced to adjudicate on sick notes instead of GPs. He also said that GPs central role in 'policing' the sick note system which they have had for sixty years has been counterproductive. So, he can't see how suddenly telling them to right well notes instead, could help.
Most of the opinion on this story seems to agree with me that this new well note system will probably not make much difference.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Which drug is worst?
We were told to choose one of various subjects to base our blogs on and I chose health, I perhaps would have prefered entertainment, but what do you do.
The topic that brings me to this point, on the cusp of writing my first blog is... which is the worst drug. Now, I think this comes under health, i'm pretty sure it does, after all it is your health that would suffer as a negative result of taking drugs.
The inspiration for this "blog" is last weeks horizon, which I happened to watch. They did a countdown over the course of the program revealing which drugs scientists now consider to be the worst drugs in order. Heroin and Cocaine were at the top, no surprise there then. But, Ectsacy -also a class A drug- was 18th and alcohol was fifth and the program suggested if it was a new drug it would be banned.
Now, perhaps you can understand why I chose this program as the basis for my first blog. Of course for a student, alcohol is, you could say... quite important. In the program they stressed how bad binge drinking is for you but they seemed to not quite apreciate how in-grained the culture of binge drinking is amongst young people.
From what I've seen I can determine that virtualy every student and probably most young people binge drink on a regular basis. That is, certainly they do in Preston anyway. Most people I know go out drinking at least twice a week and i've heard tales from people about how they spent whole student loan payments in the space of just a few weeks on alcohol.
I guess my basic point is that many people (who let's see are a little bit older) don't realise that binge drinking is (it pains me to say) quite a major problem. In my opinion, it will take something more than just telling people how bad binge drinking is before people like me will give even a second thought to the idea of cutting down their drinking.