When the IT goes down for whatever reason

Back in the day i.e. some 7+ years ago or more, when I was a civil servant and therefore before I retired, one of my jobs was to try to keep a local business continuity plan (BCP) in place and up to date. It helped guide us through what to do when disaster struck – fire, flood, utilities down (water, gas electric), terrorism, local/national IT problems etc. etc.

My thoughts went back to those days when I walked into my local Co-Op and saw significantly empty shelves caused by their IT systems being hijacked, as indeed has also happened to M&S.

I started to wonder what the BCP’s look like for the data/IT/distribution centres of big national retailers? Do they have/is it possible for them to have back up traditional manual stock systems? Surely, being able to reasonably quickly revert to the old way of doing things has to be firmly in the mind of business planners as hijackings by criminals/rogue or enemy states must be expected on all but a daily basis.

Yes, keep updating the IT security to try to make your systems are as inaccessible as possible, but also plan for the fact that breaches, with far reaching consequences, will happen. Take all your staff, particularly frontline staff in shops, through what the back-up systems are, how to do a daily manual stock-take and phone through requirements each day to try to keep the shelves as full as possible. This is particularly an issue, I assume, with food retail.

I wonder how seriously both having a BCP and most importantly keeping it up to date are taken? It’s no use turning to it in times of crisis only to find that it was last updated some years ago and no one can remember when the last run through of it took place. Oh that was when Mary was in charge but she left 3 years ago. I think you get my drift here.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to suggest that the Co-Op’s BCP’s (or for that matter M&S) weren’t up to scratch, they could well have been and hopefully were, but the longer a business can’t fully function following a crisis the less robust the continuity planning. Well that was my way of looking at the process.

 

44 years on the last Merseyside County Council 

election still causes the odd rumble/grumble

Social media outlets can often be strange places where people just say what they’re thinking, sometimes without any filter or indeed knowledge of what on earth they are talking/upset about. This is particularly a thing with social media community groups I find.

In the lead up to this May’s local elections I saw postings raising concerns and offering some odd all but conspiracy-type theories regarding why there were no local elections in Sefton Borough/on Merseyside this year.

In fact we’ve not had local elections one in every 4 years on Merseyside since our County Council was abolished back in the Thatcher era. The last County election* was as long ago as May 1981. That’s some 44 years!

Here’s a link to a Wikipedia page which tells the story of the rise, fall and short 12 year life of Merseyside County Council - created 1974, abolished 1986:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merseyside_County_Council

OK, I was involved in local politics on Merseyside for 40 years so like any other politician, of all political colours, I know why the Boroughs of Merseyside** have 3 consecutive years of local elections and then one with none and that this electoral cycle has been embedded for a very, very long time now. On that basis why have a few voters cried foul in May 2025, asked why they’ve not had polling cards, even pondered on who may have put the brake on their local elections? Do they have such thoughts every 4 Merseyside years I wonder?

My first ever local election campaign was actually the very last set of Merseyside County Council elections of May 1981 where my good Liberal friend Jack Parkin was the candidate in the oddly named West Lancs No.3 Ward. Odd in that the ward was not in West Lancs at all and had actually been removed from West Lancs Rural District back in 1974 when local government had been reorganised. I recall that the ward was actually referred to as Maghull South, West & Melling. That Jack came pretty close to winning from a standing start has long been a fond political memory of mine.

Electoral graphic - Wikipedia

 

But turning back from my personal nerdy election memories to the reason for 2025 being ‘fallow’, in local election terms, on Merseyside. When it was explained on social media, by me and indeed others as to why we have no elections this year I got the distinct impression that some folks still seemed to cling to something being wrong even to the point of thinking that their right to vote may have been removed from them.

When you consider that only around one third of voters, or even less, actually usually vote in local elections (and only two thirds in General Elections) that means the Apathy Party actually tops the poll at pretty much every local election, so why the cries of foul when a quite legitimate ‘fallow’ year, in terms of local elections, comes around?

As a parting aside, I recall how difficult it was in my campaigning days to get people to vote in local elections, so the irony of some folks protesting about how their ‘opportunity’ (there wasn’t one) to vote in May 2025 was ‘taken away from them’ by forces unknown is not lost on me.

* Merseyside County Council was abolished in 1986

** Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley & Wirral & St. Helens

 

Our railways need to be a 7 day a week operation

Like the NHS, social care and retail our railways need to be a 7 day operation and the staff working for them probably need to be on something like 5 out 7 day contracts. I include managers/bigwigs in that too, I might add. 

 

I say that as a life-long trade unionist. That our railways have long relied on staff doing overtime to deliver a 7 day a week operation is frankly ridiculous. That some of our railway lines don’t operate on a Sunday, at all, is also ridiculous – Ormskirk/Preston comes to mind.

I listened to the new big chief at Northern in the YouTube video (It's a long watch) linked below. He certainly talks the talk, but will he deliver?- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxBDa9mP_Yg

Maybe Northern could shed a couple of lines to help them cope and reform? Ormskirk – Preston and Kirkby Headbolt Lane – Wigan should be turned over to Merseyrail with a more intensive, 7 day service. Probably Bidston – Wrexham needs to be become a Merseyrail service too i.e. no longer Transport for Wales.

But turning back to my trade union angle. Where presently employed staff don’t want to work 5 out of 7 contracts then they should be offered a generous opportunity to leave the railway. Things have to change if we're to try to meet climate change targets and get more people using our railways. My view is that if the UK builds a reliable frequent railway then passengers will come and use it. Reopened lines have proved this and one, The Northumberland Line, is referenced in the video.

Oh and an old hobby horse of mine, the circular buses that connect communities to their local railway station (Maghull on the Merseyrail Network being an example) should be free and frequent.

 

 

Some thoughts on Northern in Tyke Country

A week away in Beverley in a holiday let right next to the town’s rather grand station, so what do we do but travel with Northern three times to Scarborough, Hull and York on separate weekdays.

 

A Northern Class 170 at Beverley

 

All the trains (6) were on time, clean, well patronised and had very robust on-train ticket checking. I did notice though the Northern and indeed wider operating rail company’s problems of Sunday cancellations due to lack of train crew.

A downside with Northern was our pre-booked, via their own website, tickets to Scarborough. I inadvertently selected the wrong Monday, should have been 24^th March but I booked for 31^st March. I realised my error straight away and tried to change the tickets to the correct day – wait for it!

The original tickets were £22 ish ,I recall, and the new ones were £27 ish. No problem thought I, I’d pay the extra and a small admin fee. Oh how wrong that thought was. The admin fee was quoted as £40!!! I was stunned and had to just buy new tickets and let the wrongly dated ones go. Yes, I know it was my error but £40 to change them to the right day that I wanted to travel on when the tickets were in the £20’s strikes me as appalling. Northern, a public company these days, should be ashamed of such a stunt.

 

A Northern Class 155 at Beverley

 

Other thoughts - Scarborough Station was a right old mess as it’s clearly undergoing major works. The trouble is there’s nowhere for the diesel fumes to go as the temporary roof is only a short distance above the trains. You had to walk down the platform to the uncovered part to escape the fumes.

 

A TransPennine express Class 185 at under refubishment Scarborough Station

 

OK, I’ve had a grumble but the Class 170’s were a great ride (I’d previously sampled the East Midlands Trains version of them on the Robin Hood Line down in Nottinghamshire) and even the refurbished and elderly Leyland-built Class 155’s to York were passable. So that was our experience over in Yorkshire of Northern. A bit of a curate’s egg.

 

The death of UK coal mining

Being born and raised (until the age of 6) in a mining community makes me someone with a clear link back to an industry that has now completely gone.

 

By the time I was born (1958) it seems coal mining was already in decline. Both of my grandads were originally miners but both finished their working years doing other work – one had a fruit and veg horse & cart round in Kirkby-In-Ashfield the other worked in Boots the Chemist factory in Nottingham. Of my dad’s generation, amongst my family, 2 of the men were miners but 3 were not. Of my generation (all born 1950’s) none of the 3 males became miners.

Frankly, mining was a dangerous job which many fathers clearly did not want their sons to follow on to, if there were other employment opportunities available. However, for generations alternative employments for men were few as mining communities had been developed to provide miners for local pits. The railways were the obvious alternative as wherever there was a pit there was a railway working to it. My uncle Ken Calladine took the railway route to employment.

I recently came across a YouTube video from June 1968, which I link below:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00PpizDxVG4 *

The video is of a Nottinghamshire NUM Miners’ Gala/Demonstration through Mansfield. What particularly took my eye was the white ‘coffin’ regarding the demise of Kirkby (Summit) Colliery (closed 1968) as that was where my grandad Walter Calladine had worked many years ago. He died of pneumoconiosis, I might add.

So only 10 years after I was born the decline in coal mining was clearly deepening. Add another 40 years on and UK coal mining was all but gone with mining communities suffering great hardship due to the lack of alterative employments; some still struggle to this day! Friday 10^th July 2015 saw the last Nottinghamshire coalfield mine close – Thoresby.

Many of us, if we think about coal mining at all these days, will look back to the miners' strike of 1984/85 and probably see it as the defining moment in the run down of the UK coal industry. In many ways it was, however, more mines were actually closed during Harold Wilson’s governments than at the hands of ‘Thatcher the milk snatcher’.

The video is a wonderful piece of social history as much as it’s a record of proud but declining mining communities. Just imagine if we were expecting our present generation of young men to go down a pit; there’d probably be demonstrations against such dangerous work and the wording on that ‘coffin’ may change to:-

‘***** Colliery - Don’t send our sons to be murdered down a pit’

 * Acknowledging the MuBu Miner YouTube channel/original recording by Ken Smith

Archive footage of the 1968 Nottinghamshire NUM Gala and Demonstration passing through Westgate, Mansfield in June 1968. The theme of pit-closures is evident from the various floats, 1968 was the worst ever year for pit closures in Britain. Branch Banners, Coal Queens, Colliery Brass Bands and Carnival Bands all feature in the footage. Original footage by Ken Smith of Underwood

 

Archive footage of the 1968 Nottinghamshire NUM Gala and Demonstration passing through Westgate, Mansfield in June 1968. The theme of pit-closures is evident from the various floats, 1968 was the worst ever year for pit closures in Britain. Branch Banners, Coal Queens, Colliery Brass Bands and Carnival Bands all feature in the footage. Original footage by Ken Smith of Underwood

 

What’s happening within the right of UK politics?

Things have been slowly shifting on the right of UK politics ever since the Referendum Party appeared many moons ago. The pace of change has increased a lot since the 2016 EU/Brexit Referendum through various iterations of further right/far right parties ending up recently in Reform.

The political movement of the right is often and in my view wrongly spoken of as being a changing of the guard between the failing Tories and Reform. In simplistic terms this may be a significant part of the case but it also masks the movement of right-wing Labour supporters first to back Brexit, then to back Johnson and now with them standing with Reform. And don’t forget it was this section of Labour’s ‘support’ which delivered Brexit for Johnson.

Labour has been able to rely on a pretty solid working class vote for generations across the UK and that includes many supporters who have been, to varying degrees, right-wing. Having said that the East Midlands, where I hail from, is an obvious area where Labour has never really been able to secure/rely on working-class right-wingers.

Ever since I became involved in politics and the trade union movement in 1980 it has been clear to me that Labour has had a significant number of right-wing working-class members/supporters. Indeed, a reinforcement of my view came from a Labour Party member in the early 1980s who told me that Labour had more racists than the then Tory Party. I appreciate that racism is only one factor that can denote people with right-wing opinions and that some right-wingers may well not be racists, but let’s face it racism amongst genuine progressives should be a rare thing.

The Tories have pretty much destroyed themselves in recent years, not least because they had no plan whatsoever to deliver the Brexit they campaigned for. Again, I accept that not all Tories backed Brexit but very many did. Reform has been on the Tory’s heels for a while now and it has effectively forced them to tack further and further to the right so to compete with Reform – it hasn’t worked!

It was often said up to a couple of generations ago that the Church of England was the Conservative Party at prayer and I think that sweeping generalisation was actually not so far away from the truth. Yes, of course not all CofE worshippers were or are Tories by a long chalk but many used to be and as a choirboy in the late 1960s/early 1970s I’d say I think I saw that. Nowadays I suggest that saying is probably way off mark with only a minority of Conservatives being CofE. In part that’ll be a consequence of declining religious participation generally but the present day Tory Party is very different from the one of the 1970s. It’s now much further right, the One Nation Tories have either left or been invited to leave and the rhetoric from Tories these days is hardly consistent with religious teachings especially when it comes to immigration! My view is that the CofE influence held back many Conservatives of the past from pursuing less inclusive ideas which are very much to the fore now sadly.

But now let’s look at Labour’s shifting support. I’ve lived on Merseyside since I was 10 and a county more devoted to Labour you’d do well to find. Yes, there’ve been some significant Lib Dem successes across Merseyside but they were pretty much snuffed out by Clegg’s leadership of the party and are only now being rebuilt. I reference Merseyside because it’s the area of the UK where I’ve been politically active for 45 years.

There was a Town Council by-election in Maghull last week, in its West Ward. Unbelievably, there was no Labour candidate and the serious contest was between the mainly socialist Community Independents and Reform. The two other candidates were also rans, in horse racing terms. The Community Independents won with 339 votes but Reform came from nowhere to gather 309 votes. Whilst there was a Tory candidate, right-wing voters pretty much ignored them to back Reform and I’m sure Reform also got significant support from former Labour voters with right-wing views. Reform actually won a by-election in the Merseyside Borough of St. Helens in recent weeks. Let’s be face it, if Labour’s vote is collapsing to the point where it can’t field a candidate and it loses a seat too then things are looking grim indeed for Starmer’s Party on Merseyside and probably beyond.

Labour, like the Tories, has found itself leaking votes and support to Reform. It’s why Starmer has, like the Conservatives, been tacking towards the right in what looks to be fruitless attempt to keep or even pull back discontented right-wing leaning Labour supporters, or should I say former supporters. Of course, by tacking right, Starmer has been alienating his progressive, left of centre and socialist supporters. Indeed, the emergence of the Community Independents is very much caused by Labour tacking right. Also, the Lib Dems have been picking up centre-left former Labour voters/supporters whilst those with a socialist inclination, who have not gone towards the Community Independents have shifted to the socialist leaning Green Party.

Our two major political parties of long memory are in deep, deep trouble and we could be close to the effective death of one or both of them akin to the demise of the old Liberal Party in the 1920s/30s.

Many who look upon themselves as working-class are now drawn towards the further and far right in significant numbers. This despite the politics they’re now backing being manipulated by wealthy right-wing extremists who look upon public services as something to be cut back to enable further tax cuts for the wealthy. This scenario could well lead to such voters effectively shooting themselves in both feet via making the rich richer and helping with the deconstruction of the public services they rely upon. And all this because they’re just fed up with mainstream politicians, be they Conservative or Labour, for not delivering what they want to see.

 

Whatever happened to integrated public transport?

I recall this lofty aim from the 1970s as being something I thought of as a brilliant idea. Little did I know that UK politics would soon head in exactly the opposite direction via Bus Deregulation in 1986 and Rail Privatisation in 1993.

 

A Merseyrail train on the Ormskirk Line

I’m not sure what those behind these two Acts of Parliament actually wanted to achieve (other than to save money, of course) but driven by political dogma what they actually achieved was pretty much anti-everything integrated public transport, as buses and trains were put in competition. But we were told that market forces would lead to better transportation. Well, that didn’t happen because the real objective was little more than cutting government transport costs, whilst favouring the private car. Yes, there have been some limited successes with rail but it has led to a fragmented railway with huge costs still requiring big government subsidies. In my humble opinion had British Rail been modernised and enabled to be successful like most other developed public transport systems across the world (USA & Canada being notable exceptions) we would now have a much better railway and decent bus services.

Moving on, the fact that each railway operator in the UK procures their own trains means that the costs must be higher than having a coherent large scale purchasing process with all the associated economies. Why, one set of trains purchased not so long ago by TransPennine Express has been parked in sidings and is now unused!

Passengers not being able to use tickets bought from one operator on a competitors train also mitigates against use of the railway system and don’t get me started on the myriad of tickets available via differing operators.

Bus deregulation, which was interestingly not imposed on London, has likewise been pretty much an unmitigated disaster with the number of bus routes dropping pretty much every year, not least because of austerity. And of course we’ve continued to developed car-centric communities where to get anywhere you need to have a car.

The logic of running poor quality public transport services and thereby forcing many to own and maintain highly expensive cars, who otherwise would not need to have them, has long beaten me. Our roads are so congested and every new road built leads to more traffic rather than solutions to traffic jams that by-passes etc. are meant to achieve. Plus, people who really can’t afford to run cars pretty much have to have one making their household budgets stretch too far.

In 1980, as a someone new to politics, I listened to the former Liberal MP David Alton talk about integrated public transport and indeed the need for local public transport to be free. I was sure he was right then and I’m damn sure he was right as we move into 2025, but as I’ve already said just after hearing his views integrated public transport was pretty much abandoned in favour of the private car.

Of course, having created the myth that if we all have cars transportation will be far more convenient etc. how do we change direction, as we surely must do, to recreate what we once used – buses, trams and trains? Folks like their cars, they believe that with more road building congestion will be sorted out, when the opposite is true. They’ve moved further away from where they work allowing for long driving times to get to their place of employment in their own car. Doing that journey by public transport could well be all but impossible. Now, significant numbers work from home much of the time thereby changing travelling habits, yet our roads are still choked with traffic.

Trams have returned to some UK cities but probably with the exception of Greater Manchester the lines are far too limited, Nottingham being an example of a city requiring significantly more lines for Nottingham Express Transit (NET) to really be effective in reducing car usage.

Merseyside and Tyne and Wear have redeveloped old railway lines and have significant Metro-type systems but they are not as extensive as they need to be. Merseyside for example desperately needs to extend its Merseyrail system to places such as Preston, Wigan, Wrexham, and Liverpool Airport and its main Station, Liverpool Central is very much at capacity and can’t really cope with greater passenger numbers.

And what about buses? Each year routes across the UK shrink, they’re too infrequent (even non-existent in rural areas) and buses, of course, get stuck in traffic jams too. I was struck, and not in a good way, by an ‘idea’ from the Liverpool City Region Mayor during 2024 to introduce ‘Gliders’. They’d actually be buses made to look like trams! Such a timid ‘solution’ for Merseyside brought with it rather too many public laughs and little backing you’ll not be surprised to hear. In my world, buses should be very much integrated with trains and often feeders to rail services.

In my own Merseyside community we have circular community buses that link with one of our local railway stations but the buses don’t meet every train and often they seem to leave the station just as a train is pulling in! And surely such buses should be electric as they follow shortish regular routes. Oh, and yes of course Mr Alton, they should be free to get on as passengers using them, other than pensioners, have to pay twice to use the bus and then the train meaning the joint cost mitigates against jumping on them in the first place. In turn, locals who would use them just get their car out and even run a car they may not otherwise even need in joined up transportation world!

Our new government is taking some tentative steps in the right direction but sadly with no money in their/our piggy bank to make a significant impacts. Our stalled economy is at odds with the likes of the Irish Republic, for example, where public transport ambitions (and the money to pay for them) are significant indeed. We have to be optimistic and keep pushing a sustainable transport agenda because more road vehicles really are putting us on the road to ruin.