Labour is warned not to treat Mayor Boris Johnson as ‘ a joke’
THE FLOODING that had ravaged York during this week of 2012 and left the area surrounding Clifford’s Tower resembling a moat looked set to be repeated as autumn drew in, with concerns that the region’s sodden ground would struggle to absorb more rainfall.
It would also spell more misery for the region’s farmers, whose harvests were hit hard by the summer floods and whose waterlogged fields were now posing major difficulties for drilling and planting for next year’s crops.
As the Conservative Annual Conference approached, senior Labour figures warned members to stop treating Boris Johnson as “a joke” because this might be aiding his attempt to become Prime Minister.
They said Labour could pay a hefty price for its dismissive attitude towards the Mayor of London. One party veteran said: “Boris has got where is by people not taking him seriously and saying he is not a threat.”
This followed speculation in Tory ranks that Mr Johnson could return to Parliament in a by- election and stage an early leadership challenge to David Cameron.
Fears were growing for the longterm future of towns and villages across the region where populations were dwindling.
Ryedale and Richmondshire in the Yorkshire Dales were among four of the districts where experts projected little or no population growth over the next 25 years, raising fresh fears about the sustainability of many tiny villages and the services they relied on.
Scarborough and north- east Lincolnshire had also been picked out as vulnerable by experts at the Office for National statistics.
The ONS’s latest projections put these four areas in the bottom 21 districts nationwide for population growth in a table of more than 350 local authority districts.
“The implications for our Dales communities are stark,” said John Blackie, leader of Richmondshire District Council, where the population was now forecast to grow by just 3.6 per cent in 25 years.
“The services that we depend on will gradually fold; they will collapse before our eyes. Shops and pubs and schools will go.”
More than 25,000 primary school pupils across Yorkshire had not reached the expected standard in a controversial new phonics reading test which had come under fire from teachers for branding children as ‘‘ failures’’ at the age of six.
Almost half the pupils who sat the 40- question assessment in Yorkshire earlier in the year had failed to hit the Government target, with the region’s schools failing to match the national average performance, according to new figures. The data from the Department for Education also showed that by the time pupils are assessed at seven years old Yorkshire had fallen further behind the rest of the country and had England’s lowest level of pupils reaching the expected standard in both reading and writing.
The new phonics test asked pupils at the end of the end of their first year of formal schooling to sound out or decode words, including some that were made up, such as such as “voo”, “terg” and “bim”, to check their reading skill.
In showbusiness news, homegrown stars Damian Lewis and Dame Maggie Smith picked up some of TV’s biggest honours as they were recognised with US Emmy Awards for their roles in Homeland and Downton Abbey. Dame Maggie won outstanding supporting actress in a drama series for her role as the Dowager Countess of Grantham in the period drama, while Lewis was also honoured.
One party veteran said: ‘ Boris has got where is by people not taking him seriously and saying he is not a threat.’