Why we need to support Medway's bus drivers in their fight for a safer and better timetable.

Medway's bus drivers are currently on strike today and they will be on strike on Monday, and the following Monday afterwards. The strike is not about money at all; they are content with their pay. Most of the bus drivers did not want to go on strike; but the timetable brought in by Arriva in June has made the safety of their drivers and passengers far, far worse. Some bus routes have a one minute recovery time each way, so if a bus is late due to traffic; the driver's recovery time (which is quite often the time they use to do mundane, but necessary things such as going to the toilet and standing up after sitting down and driving for hours upon end) is cut into; most drivers will tell you this if fine if a recovery time of five minutes or more is in place because a few minutes here and there off their toilet time is fine, but when drivers are being forced to break the working hours law due to traffic conditions and the location of the depot in Gillingham; then this is not acceptable.

I spoke with their union rep Tony Teed earlier today about why they were going on strike and the reasons for it. Firstly I asked him why the drivers were going on strike, his reply was " This strike is 100% about the safety of our passengers and our drivers; the new timetable cut recovery times and has impacted the ability for our drivers to provide a high quality service due to the lack of recovery time." Something I think we can all agree on; if a bus driver crashes because of tiredness they risk the lives of many passengers on the bus this is not acceptable.

I then asked Tony if the strike was over money, a feeling that has been brought about by some local residents, "This strike is NOT about money, we aren't asking Arriva for a penny; all we want is a timetable that works for drivers and passengers a like." he told me; we then had a long protacted conversation on the merits of the old timetable compared to the new one. I was then told that no new buses were brought about with the new timetable and the only thing that happened was driver recovery time was slashed.

So to conclude to the residents of Medway and afar; show some solidarity with drivers they work hard so we can all get to work/shopping/friends and many other things that happen when we use the buses, a different timetable will make the buses go on time like they used to and drivers will be happy; which is something we all want from one of the most undervalued jobs and services in the country. Thanks to Tony for speaking with me for 15 minutes in the freezing cold I was lucky enough that I got to go home; the drivers were all in high spirits and I was offered many a biscuit/cake and teas and coffees whilst I was there; I respectfully declined as I pointed out that I wasn't the one who was standing out in the freezing cold all day!

A Regional Manifesto for a regionalist Labour Party

It's been over two weeks since we lost the election. UKIP are eating into our votes all over England, Plaid are doing a good job in some South Wales valleys seats and the SNP all but destroyed the Labour Party in Scotland. Let's face it, the Labour Party is in chaos; Andy Burnham was right to say that this is not ground zero for the Labour Party electorally, things can be much, much worse. We need to look at what fundamentally went wrong.

Labour's opposition to an English Parliament is in my view justified, we need regional assemblies so areas that are look over from Westminster can be changed. In the years under Blair and Brown, New Labour did wonderful things in the North West, Manchester has been transformed from what it used to be, Liverpool has had lots of money thrown at it, and it's worked, these places now have the infrastructure recquired for a so called "Northern Powerhouse" or as I like to call it, Mega-City 1 (kudos to the nerds that get that reference). The areas that we forgot about have rejected Labour for arguably the last ten years. We did nothing in Scotland, running the country with a sense of arrogance, that said that even a donkey could win an election for the Labour Party in Scotland. We have let the north east rot, where were the investments outside of Newcastle and Sunderland? We let the north Kent marginals just grow with no infrastructure for things like roads, schools and hospitals and then wonder why these areas have some of the worst healthcare in the country.

If Labour is to win these ares back from the hands of UKIP and the Tories, we NEED to bring about some actual change. A northeastern assembly could do wonders for places like Durham and Northumbria, it would bring investment into towns like Darlington and Bishop Auckland. A West Midlands assembly could stop the absorption of the surrounding areas into "Greater Birmingham" and actually create jobs for people that need them. Enhanced power for Wales and Scotland can show the people of these proud nations that a United Kingdom is the best for everyone. If we don't stop the tide of nationalism with a wall of regionalism, the Labour Party will be gone as we know it.

Generation Youtube needs a way to be incentivised to vote

In May 2020 Those who are now 13 and older will be able to vote in a general election for the first time, this generation of voters will have grown up in age where they can't even remember dial up. The younger section of this generation will have grown up in a time where they will scarcely remember what life was like before the advent of things like iPlayer were around. This will be the first generation where political parties really need to take a look at what they are going to do to make this tech savvy generation more politically aware. 

One thing which needs to be done, is the enaction of legislation concerning the use of political attack ads on the internet. The Tory party has been very big on ploughing a lot of money into political attack ads on things like Youtube. With specialised advertising it is no more easy than ever to develop an ad designed for people whom the Tories think are most likely to join them. Labour's online presence in comparison to the Tories was absolutely pathetic. Whilst the party did not have the money to invest in these sort of things, they could have at least TRIED to make a difference. Ads from various celebrities were shared across Facebook, and if the situation was anything like it was for my timeline, they were generally met we laughter and trolling (by people you are very close to as well, Politics is a funny thing isn't it!) 

Having just stumbled across the Progress Youtube channel, purely by accident might I add. I have seen that it has 25 subscriber, this is absolutely pathetic. Whilst I know Richard Angell, the director of Progress is a very social media savvy person, it appears that Progress has put little to no attention into its Youtube presence. If 1,000,000+ can watch Zoe Sugg make videos about make up and a hand bag, then why can't at least ten thousand of us watch Progress videos! We have 250,000 members in the Labour Party for heavens sake. This is also one the areas where newer parties like UKIP and the Greens have gained a footing, UKIP have been very clever and surprisingly tech savvy for a political party which is characterised as being full of old people.

Young people want to be engaged, but they needed to be engaged in way that suits them, just remember that as the electorate grows older, more and more people that use social media come into the electorate. I think Dan Jarvis said it perfectly at the Progress annual conference at the weekend that we tend to focus on twitter when the majority of the he population does not use it, we need to be focusing on Facebook and Youtube, the majority of britain has a Facebook account and the majority of Britons watch some form of youtube content at least once a week. One of the good things Ican say about the campaign was that at least Ed bothered to go and see Russell Brand who has youtube account with over a million subscribers, but why didn't Ed Balls go and see FunforLouis, why wasn't Yvette Cooper on Zoella, why wasn't Douglas Alexander on LittleRadge's channel appealing to the Scottish electorate. These are all BIG youtube channels with at least 250,000 subs  and audience younger than anything a direct mail could reach to.

Why Britain needs to look at digitising our education.

Subbable and Patreon merged this Monday, click here for more info. In this merger it has aligned two providers of funding for Youtube and other forms of new media stars. One of the functions of Subbable was to fund Crash Course and SciShow two educational YouTube channels. Crash Course has various courses from Biology to Government and Politics, it functions as a supplement to US schools programmes, it is also used by teacher across the world as a way to informalise what can be exceptionally difficult topics (the latest topic on Government and Politics was on how a bill passes in Congress) and is a great education tool for teachers and students alike.

Other YouTube channels closer to home in the education field are the channels Numberphile, Sixty Symbols and Periodic Videos; run by the video journalist Brady Haran. These projects are funded by a mixture of Patreon subscriptions, grants from various institutions and advertising on the videos. These videos also provide and insight into the topics which have alienated many for years but have brought a new fun take on topics.

What any government (yes ANY!) needs to look at on May 7th is to see how education can be used in video form as way to promote education for children who are otherwise not incentivised to take up these subjects. Funding for YouTube channels like Numberphile and Crash Course can begiven by the government or even the BBC as it has been proven that shows like this, which are very educational and very well done, DOES provide a greater incentive for children, teens and adults to learn more and can be done at a fraction of the cost that major TV channels have for a budget. Crash Course runs 4 different courses with grants, ads and $25,000 a month in funding from Subbable/Patreon that employs more than 15 people to animate, write the scripts, present the shows and all the other things associated with media content.

If the DfE gave out say £1,000,000 in repayable grants to educational YouTube channels the benefits would more than outweigh the costs. OU courses online already have thousands of views online, but these channels have hundreds of thousands of viewers and over a million subscribers. I'm not saying this money should directly go to Hank Green et al, the government can set up a new sub-committee on the matter or push the BBC towards this sort of funding with more grants for educational programmes.

All that needs to be done, is SOMETHING; in general government has failed to incentivise young people in voting and education naturally only works at a certain pace for maybe 25% of the room. Digital video content could be one way to unlock the potential of those children who do not want to learn at a pace which suits a teacher. All of this can be done at a very small cost in the grand scheme of things, £1 million is roughly the salary costs of one school considering there are 1000s of schools in the UK this should not be a problem for the government.