Corrective action like water off duck’s back

ON SEPTEMBER 25, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) held a trial of accessible voting solutions that allow blind and partially sighted people to vote independently and in secret.

RNIB has been campaigning on this issue for many years, with the charity time and time again hearing from people with sight loss of how they faced challenges in their democratic right to cast a secret and independent vote, as the practical act of voting – making a cross in a specific location on a piece of paper – is fundamentally a visual exercise.

We are working alongside the Electoral Commission and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) to find solutions to ensure future elections are accessible for the 350,000 blind and partially sighted people living in the UK.

The accessible solutions which were tested at RNIB’s London offices were a range of tactile and audio devices which allow people with sight loss to determine the order of the candidate list and mark their desired box.

It was fantastic to be in a room where everyone shared their commitment to improve the voting experience for blind and partially-sighted people.

We heard directly from those with lived experience in encountering barriers when polling stations don’t have accessible solutions available, and the impact this has on their independence – a powerful demonstration of why change is needed in this space.

We look forward to continuing our engagement with the Electoral Commission and DLUHC, and to see how the results from this trial can inform future elections.

WATER companies are being ordered to reduce customers’ bills to the tune of £114 million for breaking sewage dispersal laws and deliberately allowing untreated effluent to pollute our waterways and coastal areas. Not to mention interrupted water supply.

In the same breath, some water companies are being given a share of £88 million in performance related practices.

United Utilities for instance will receive £25 million for their ‘Average’ rating.

Have you ever heard of anything so bizarre and downright ludicrous?

What exactly do the regulators Ofwat think they are going to achieve?

This type of corrective action is like (contaminated) water off a duck’s back!

Everybody knows the water companies’ business models have a built-in contingency to cope with these piffling fiscal matters.

They are letting the CEOs of water companies get away with any unsavoury and law-breaking methods by not punishing them accordingly.

These water companies have failed to re-invest in an aging sewer system, they have no interest in the quality of our drinking and wastewater and they are ignoring their duty of care in relation to water and wastewater standards.

Ofwat CEO, David Black, said: “We will continue to use all our powers to ensure the sector delivers better value.” Really? Never mind better value, what about forcing them lawfully to uphold their promises to upgrade and develop the crumbling Victorian sewer systems and provide better quality of service that the citizens of the 5th richest nation (for now at least)- on the planet should expect and demand.

But that is not the case. It is all about money and shareholders’ profits.

As is everything this government holds as sacrosanct.

The Tory ideology is all about greed and money, money, and more money for the richest of the rich.

A RECENT report from the International Monetary Fund revealed that globally fossil fuel companies received government subsidies of over £10 million per minute in 2022. Yes, every minute!

Sadly, much of those subsidies benefited the wealthy and the oil and gas conglomerates which also did very well out of the government support scheme. As a result, governments are more in debt and at much higher interest rates and of course all this has to be paid for by our taxes.

Oil and gas prices are constantly manipulated by markets and foreign powers. OPEC can easily reduce production and earn more for their oil, and events in producing nations can send the price rocketing yet further.

Last year, like any other year, oil and gas from the North Sea was sold at market prices and even exported, so the beneficiaries were the producers and their shareholders, not British consumers.

The Tory government dances to the tune of the oil and gas companies who hold us to ransom; but it doesn’t have to be like this.

The way out is to reduce our reliance on a commodity that can be replaced by cheaper options or, better still, saved by avoidance of waste.

We aren’t even trying. Why haven’t we regulated for new homes to be energy efficient with effective insulation and fitted with solar panels and heat pumps?

Why aren’t we properly insulating all our existing homes? Why is new onshore wind power effectively blocked? Instead we’re just adding more CO₂ emissions and health-damaging pollution to the atmosphere in an act of costly self-harm.

I AM writing to you in response to Make Space for Girls new Parkwatch report which for the first time reveals the full extent of how teenage girls are designed out of parks.

Parkwatch was a citizen science project where we asked people to go to their local park and count who was using the teenage facilities, and how many of these were girls.

We got more than 250 counts from across the country, giving us the first ever data on who uses the teenage facilities in our parks.

The results are quite shocking. Over 90% of those using the most commonly provided teenage facilities in parks are boys and young men. Girls and young women are left with nowhere to go.

This is a problem which has been hiding in plain sight for a long time. The vast majority of what we provide in parks for teenagers are skate parks,

BMX tracks and fenced pitches for football and basketball.

Our research demonstrates for the first time that these are used 90% by men and boys, which means that girls don’t feel safe or that they belong.

This inequality has a whole range of impacts. Girls don’t feel that they are meant to be outdoors, or that they are part of the community, and this has an impact on both their physical and mental wellbeing.

We know that girls are less active than boys – but is that surprising when they don’t have places to be active in?

And it’s proven that access to parks and nature is really good for the mental health of young people, so in a world where girls are three times more likely to have a problem than boys, getting them into parks should be a priority for everyone.

So we’re recommending that councils look at their provision and see if it really does meet the needs of teenage girls. A broader range of facilities need to be built, which are more inclusive for everyone. And most of all, they need to talk to teenage girls themselves, to find out what they really want.

We know that councils are short of money right now, but a lot of the facilities that teenage girls would like to see – swings, social seating and trampolines for example - are actually cheaper than the facilities that they currently provide.

And we also know that no one has created this situation deliberately. But now we understand just how much teenage girls are designed out of public spaces, we can’t go back.

If there is one message that we take from the Parkwatch report, this has to be that it’s time for a change.