September 3 2010
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Youth champion keen to give Peckham a good name

 

Youth champion keen to give Peckham a good name
Alan Wright
Althea Smith works full-time as a Southwark councillor in a large number of projects involving teenagers and young adults in her community. She doesn’t like anyone to call her  “councillor” because it creates distance from those people she works with. To most youth she is “Auntie Althea” rather than “Councillor Smith”. For Althea it is so important that the young people know that she is on their side. “The babies must be given their milk until they acquire a taste for the whisky”,  she says as a quaint allusion to the transition from youth to adulthood. 
She nurtures young people through a programme of cultural, sporting, health, educational and leisure activities funded mostly by the council itself to which she was first elected five years ago (she is currently serving her second term as one of the three representatives of Nunhead ward). It would be difficult to give Althea a job title of fewer than 10 words, since hers is no ordinary nine to five occupation.
Her work encompasses a handful of quite specific issues, such as tackling London’s highest teen pregnancy rates, unemployment and lack of education among 16-24 year olds in the borough that includes Peckham, Elephant and Castle, Camberwell, Bermondsey and leafy Dulwich. For example, she explains quite candidly how, “since Southwark is such a deprived area, sex is a popular  ‘activity’ and this raises several issues for local government. Firstly, it is very evident that there is a considerable lack of education among people of all ages about sexual health”. 
One way Althea and others like her are tackling this is through free community “health talks”.
It is hoped that new approaches towards the issue will see teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates fall in the coming years. Also, the council is keen to offer better support to young rape victims, many of whom choose to keep their babies.
The issue of high youth joblessness has been addressed by the local education authority by the opening of new academies which have seen sixth form attendance increase and academic standards improve over the past few years. 
The Southwark Council website reveals a plethora of schemes aimed at improving the lives and opportunities of the people of the south east London borough such as adult learning, community safety work, youth media projects and the new John Harvard Library.
Althea was promoted to the power post of chair of the council’s Planning Committee when Labour took control of the town hall from the Lib-Dem Conservative coalition in May 2010. This has put her in political control of some big residential and commercial developments worth more than a billion pounds. 
Althea gleefully notes that: “As part of these urban regeneration schemes new accommodation is becoming available, much of which is aimed at students.” Southwark has a large student population as a result of further and higher educational institutions like South Bank University and the London College of Communication falling with its boundaries. It must be said that there are some locals who object to the increasing numbers of students in the area but Althea and the new rulers at the town hall are not among them. 
“Young people under 18 can’t vote but they still have dreams and aspirations that politicians should sit up and listen to“, she adds. Althea says a vital aspect of her job is educating young people about politics “since they are the voters of tomorrow “.  Students have shadowed her at the town hall to get a flavour of what her work entails.  Politics, she explains, must be made accessible to young people before society can expect them to take an interest in it.
Althea says she tries to educate young people about issues like the MPs’ expenses scandal and why, despite it being a hammer blow to public confidence in the political system, it should not be a reason for them to abandon the democratic process.  Instead, she says elected representatives should see the controversy as further proof that politics needs the active involvement of the public to free it of corruption and abuse.
I was mightily impressed by the wonderful role played by Althea in her community and beyond (she is also chair of the London branch of Jamaica’s People’s National Party, for which she does political and welfare outreach work). She is clearly very hard-working and driven by a burning desire to do good and make a difference to the lives of ordinary people in general and young people in particular. 

Alan Wright

Althea Smith works full-time as a Southwark councillor in a large number of projects involving teenagers and young adults in a community plagued with a bad name nationally because of gun crime and murders.

submitted by Editor on July 20th 2010

Budget VAT hike 'will hit poorest people hardest'

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was accused of an attack against the poor as he announced in his emergency budget that VAT would rise to 20% in January writes Jon Land.

submitted by Newsdesk on June 22nd 2010

Future of Digital Economy Bill will test new government

 

Tomas Mowlam
Future of the Digital Economy Bill will test this new coalition 
Rejoice we have a government. It seems it’s not a government any of us voted for but that’s the dangers of democracy for you. 
The big question however is that in this shaky new coalition how is Lib Dem ideology going to hold up? 
In the election Labour felt the judgement of a public fed up with their mistakes. Of which there were many. As a tech journalist who also writes about civil liberties, for me one of the worst mistakes was the Digital Economy Bill (DEB); it’s where Labour’s failure to understand technology and their assault on civil liberties fused in legislation. Its future however is going to be a test of the new coalition.
To swiftly re-cap; the DEB promises draconian penalties for file sharing, was terribly vague about what would be considered legal and few MPs really understood the technology they were discussing. These included Stephen Timms, Labour MP for East Ham, and as the ex-Minister for Digital Britain responsible for pushing through the DEB; 
In a letter to MP Emily Thornberry he referred to IP address as standing for Intellectual Property (it stands for Internet Protocol), though it was conceivably written by a staffer. During the brief debate of the bill Timms referred to password (WEP) protected Wi-Fi as being secure (it’s not). Though he should have known better, he wasn’t alone amongst MPs in the House in not understanding the technology.
Despite arguments from MPs like Tom Watson that the Bill was unsound, it was run through during the wash-up and passed 189 votes to 47. 
Nick Clegg’s pre-election attitude to the bill was unequivocal; "it was rammed through after the election was called in the last dying days of the Parliament in something called a 'wash-up'. 
“It wasn't a wash-up, it was a stitch-up. A stitch-up between Labour and Conservative MPs who decided that you didn't deserve to have your representatives in Parliament properly looking at a bill which might have a very, very serious impact on the way that you use the internet."
Cameron said the Tories let it slide through because “we thought it was important to let the good bits of that bill through” in order to protect British music and film industry. 
All 29 Lib-Dems MPs who voted, did vote against it, but how well will a clear pre-election commitment to repeal it fare in an alliance with the Tories who paid it no more than a passing glance? 
The fate of the DEB, something that Clegg called a “classic example of what's wrong with Westminster”, will be a great test of how the Lib Dems can keep their own identity in this coalition. 
Tomas Mowlam is a journalist for PC Site which reviews and compares laptops and software. Follow him on Twitter: @tmowlam 

Tomas Mowlam

Rejoice we have a government. It seems it’s not a government any of us voted for but that’s the danger of democracy for you.

submitted by Editor on May 22nd 2010
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