Crime rise fears... and is classic literature at risk of dying out?
YORKSHIRE COULD expect crime to rise as police forces shrank, unemployment soared, councils slashed services and courts allowed repeat offenders to remain on the streets, a chief constable warned during this week of 2011, in a daunting assessment of how budget cuts would affect the region.
Challenging assurances from government ministers that neighbourhood and 999 response policing would remain immune, South Yorkshire Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes admitted spending reductions would “undoubtedly affect each and every area”.
In a report to South Yorkshire Police Authority, he warned of fewer units to tackle serious and organised crime and that support staff cuts would saddle officers with an “increased burden”, detracting from frontline duties.
Yorkshire’s four police forces were preparing to shed more than 2,000 posts in a year, as they began the task of overcoming a £200m budget black hole by 2015.
Funding would be cut by 20 per cent in real terms over four years, during which the workforce at South Yorkshire Police alone would shrink by 1,100.
Mr Hughes believed problems would deteriorate further as spending cuts by councils and other agencies put additional demands on his force.
The financial muscle which helped Tory candidates to win key Yorkshire seats at the general election in May 2010 was revealed this week, including how they splashed out £300,000 on campaigns in 11 crucial marginal seats which helped propel David Cameron into Number 10.
Tory candidates spent £65,000 more than their nearest rivals in those key seats in the months leading up to polling day, as target voters were bombarded with leaflets, posters and phone calls.
Analysis of official election spending data by The Yorkshire Post revealed that Alec Shelbrooke – who ousted Labour in Elmet and Rothwell – was the region’s biggest spender, forking out £39,829.08 on his campaign, which helped him win the seat with a majority of 4,521.
Claims that the Government’s proposed £32bn high-speed rail network was unaffordable were dismissed by Ministers, as MPs in the region stepped up their support for the scheme.
Rail Minister Theresa Villiers said because construction work on the 225mph network was not scheduled to start for another five years “it is not competing directly with other priorities in the current period of austerity”.
Classic literature was at risk of dying out in schools, the Education Secretary warned. Michael Gove said fewer than one in 100 teenagers who sat an English literature GCSE the previous year had studied novels published before the 20th century.
He claimed only 1,236 out of 300,000 students had read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, 285 had read Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd and only 187 had studied Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë as part of the test.
More than 90 per cent of exams were based on three books – Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird – all of which were published after 1930.
Mr Gove said: “Even when children do engage with books, our constricted exam system doesn’t encourage them.
“They are simply not picking up enough new books, not getting through the classics, not widening their horizons.
“In short, they’re just not reading enough.”
Yorkshire’s four police forces were preparing to shed more than 2,000 posts in a year.