Category: News

HOMELESSNESS AND ROUGH SLEEPING – THE SAD END OF SOCIETY

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It is all too common a sight to see people sleeping rough on the streets of Cardiff. Our first thoughts are usually of compassion and charity. I remember travelling back from London by train one winter evening and as I left Cardiff Central station on foot it was dark and raining. I passed a young, girl on the pavement who was wet and crying, and my social conscience nagged at me. That prompted me to visit the Huggard centre for rough sleepers. It is run by Cardiff Council and situated at the back of the station, and I soon realised the immense scale of the problem.

Before the pandemic, the number in England alone was over 219,000. During the Coronavirus pandemic there has been a reported rise of 150% in people seeking emergency accommodation. In Wales each year, 2,900 people sleep rough. However, rough sleepers account for just 7% of the total number of those experiencing homelessness. Many are sofa surfing, sleeping in their cars or in places such as storage units.

It is important to know that in Wales, we are fortunate that our government, unlike England, has made the bold commitment to housing everyone experiencing homelessness. This means all Local Authorities in Wales, have a duty to house people experiencing homelessness. However, while the ambition is good, the reality is more problematic. Firstly, there is a housing crisis in Wales, specifically there are not enough affordable homes. Furthermore, the complex reasons which cause people to become homeless mean it can be very difficult for individuals to access services.

People become homeless for lots of different reasons, such as when they leave prison, hospital, the care system, or the army with no home to go to. Many women experiencing homelessness have escaped a violent or abusive relationship. However, there is often a common link between the underlying causes of these situations.

The link is difficult events in our childhood, now referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences, which can have a lifelong effect on our lives. Research undertaken by Public Health Wales has

shown that being raised in a home where there are problems such as domestic abuse, neglect, violence or use of drugs, results in excessive and prolonged stress on children during their early, formative years. Crucially, when four of more of these problems occur within a household the prolonged exposure to stress changes the development of a child’s brain and immune system changing their prospects, including detrimental impacts on mental health, increased likelihood of chronic disease and early death, and higher probability of engaging in health harming behaviour, such as alcohol addiction.

And, for those who experience four or more of these problems in their childhood, they are 16 times more likely to experience homelessness.

There are several charities in Wales who work to alleviate homelessness and rough sleeping and I am raising money for Housing Justice Cymru. They mobilise faith and community groups to take action on homelessness and housing need. Sponsored by the Church in Wales, they are a small, highly influential charity. Their work makes a huge difference to thousands of people across the country, through their volunteer led projects which help people experiencing homelessness, either through night shelters, hosting projects or their Citadel project, which helps people to find and sustain a tenancy. Housing Justice Cymru also helps Churches with derelict land and buildings to sell their assets to enable the building of affordable housing, helping to address the housing crisis in Wales.

If you see someone sleeping rough – Be Kind, establish a human connection by making eye contact and smiling. Crouch down to somebody’s level if they are sat down. Ask them how they are doing and if there’s anything you can help them with.

Getting Involved – If you want to volunteer, contact the Wales Council for Voluntary Action or Housing Justice Cymru.

 

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WENVOE FORUM – CONSIDERING TODAY AND TOMORROW

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A big thank you to those of you who completed our survey or sent us comments. We need to get many more replies to make sure we are really hearing the views of the whole village but those who have been kind enough to give us a few minutes of their time seem to confirm that we are thinking along the right lines, with a high percentage interest in environmental issues.

As a next step we have set up a community meeting

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Act today so that we can bequeath our children and grandchildren clean water, fresh air and a healthy environment in which they too can thrive. Tomorrow will be too late. Join our meeting to plan what we, the Wenvoe Community can do.

Zoom Meeting

Achieving Zero Together

Thursday 1st July

7.00 – 8.30pm

• Vale of Glamorgan – Project Zero, what the LA can do, how we can help
• Wenvoe residents – Your ideas for projects, activities and actions
• Next steps – We’ll need help to move forward with the priorities

E-mail Gwenfo.Forum@gmail.com with ZERO as a title to book your place (limit 100 connections)

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The need to tackle climate change is pressing. According to its website “Project Zero is the Vale of Glamorgan Council’s response to the climate change emergency. Project Zero brings together the wide range of work and opportunities available to tackle the climate emergency, reduce the Council’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2030 and encourage others to make positive changes.”

It is an ambitious wide ranging plan that covers buildings and energy use, sustainable travel and transport, a green infrastructure plan, waste management and promotion of a circular economy and more. You can read more on the Vale of Glamorgan website and at the above meeting on Zoom, Tom Bowring, Head of Policy and Business Transformation will give an overview of Project Zero and what it will mean for Wenvoe, how we can help the local authority meet its carbon emission aims and how it can help us with our projects to tackle climate change.

Another idea that scored highly with survey respondents was helping to reduce food miles by making sustainably produced, low waste, food available to buy easily in the village, particularly fresh products.

We will be setting up a social media presence for the forum so that people can link with us more easily, so look out for Gwen Fo on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo)

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The need to tackle climate change is pressing. According to its website “Project Zero is the Vale of Glamorgan Council’s response to the climate change emergency. Project Zero brings together the wide range of work and opportunities available to tackle the climate emergency, reduce the Council’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2030 and encourage others to make positive changes.”

It is an ambitious wide ranging plan that covers buildings and energy use, sustainable travel and transport, a green infrastructure plan, waste management and promotion of a circular economy and more. You can read more on the Vale of Glamorgan website and at the above meeting on Zoom, Tom Bowring, Head of Policy and Business Transformation will give an overview of Project Zero and what it will mean for Wenvoe, how we can help the local authority meet its carbon emission aims and how it can help us with our projects to tackle climate change.

Another idea that scored highly with survey respondents was helping to reduce food miles by making sustainably produced, low waste, food available to buy easily in the village, particularly fresh products.

We will be setting up a social media presence for the forum so that people can link with us more easily, so look out for Gwen Fo on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo

More opinions needed please

If you haven’t completed the survey please, please do, it only takes 2 minutes. You will find it at this address:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7Y2G95H

or on our Facebook page.

We particularly want to hear from younger residents, under 25s, students at school, college or university after all it’s your future we are thinking about.

Anyone who would like to join the Forum for its on-line meetings will be very welcome, please contact us at  Gwenfo.Forum@gmail.com  and we can tell you more.

 

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TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP…………EVERYTHING !

The Wenvoe Mast is transmitting another Royal Event this June

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On 17th April, more than 13 million people in the UK watched live television coverage of the funeral of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The BBC’s coverage of the scaled-back military procession and St George’s chapel service at Windsor Castle alone attracted 11 million viewers. The Queen Mother’s 2002 funeral was watched by 10.4 million, while that of Diana, Princess of Wales, had a record 32 million in 1997. On happier days 26 million tuned in to watch the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tie the knot at Westminster Abbey, while Harry and Meghan’s Windsor wedding, pulled in around 18 million across all TV channels.

We have become accustomed to seeing royal events on our TV screens. It was Prince Philip himself of course, who paved the way for national TV coverage of royal events. As chair of the committee organising his wife’s 1953 coronation, the Duke of Edinburgh overruled the fierce view of the then prime minister, Winston Churchill, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, that admitting cameras to film the ceremony would destroy the majesty of the occasion. But Prince Philip, already an early adopter of home videos, gambled that letting family pictures into homes would humanise and popularise the Royal Family.

Planning began immediately after King George VI died (on 6 February 1952), and over the following months the sale of television sets rose in anticipation of the big day. The BBC had acquired 100 redundant military transmitters at the end of the War, and BBC engineers went to work converting them for sound and picture transmissions for the north east of England and Northern Ireland – which would otherwise be without coverage.

We did not have that problem of course, because our local Wenvoe transmitter had already been built at a cost of £250,000 and opened in August 1952. Fully operational, the original Wenvoe mast, some 750 feet high, allowed households across South Wales and the West Country to see the Coronation as it happened. By late 1952 it was estimated that about one family in every 25 owned a TV and the mast ensured 8 million people would get the opportunity to tune in to the historic events.

Nearly 70 years later, the Wenvoe transmitter is still enabling us to watch live coverage of royal events. If Covid 19 rules allow, on 12th June many of us will tune in to TV coverage of the Queen’s Official Birthday Parade or Trooping the Colour. The ceremony is believed to have been first performed during the reign of King Charles II (1660–1685) and has been used to mark the official birthday of The Sovereign since 1748. The Queen has taken the salute at every parade since her accession to the throne in 1952 other than in 1955 when there was a national rail strike.

These spectacular royal events make for great television and the British seem to be able to pull them off with a panache and style the envy of other countries. Subject to restrictions, which could mean a scaled down and less public event, F Company Scots Guards will this year Troop their Colour in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen. It is hoped that up to 1,450 soldiers of the Household Division and The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, along with up to 400 musicians from the Massed Bands, will take part. Over 240 soldiers from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards will line The Mall. A fly past by the Royal Air Force will also take place.

 

 

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THAT’S ANOTHER FINE MESS STANLEY

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While on a visit to the Tourist Office in Ulverston which is in Cumbria, we came across a statue of Laurel and Hardy.

This comedy pair were well known in the silent film era and went on to make many ‘talkies’. I have seen many of their films.

Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in 1890 at the home of his grandparents, Sarah and George Metcalf. He lived there for the first six years of his life before moving to Bishop Auckland. Stan however continued to spend much of his school holidays with Grandma and Grandpa Metcalf in Ulverston and apparently Grandma Metcalf had to keep a close eye on Stan as they walked through the streets as often he would stop and make faces in the glass windows of the shops. Mrs Metcalf would often find that she had left Stan behind as she walked.

The Council have now made a Stan Laurel Trail around Ulverston and the statue (see picture) of ‘The Boys’ was given to the town by the Sons of the Desert which is the International Appreciation Society for Laurel and Hardy. When Stan returned to Ulverston with Ollie in 1947, he received a hero’s welcome and was presented with a copy of his birth certificate on the balcony of the Coronation Hall.

Sons of the Desert is devoted to keeping the lives and works of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy before the public, and to have a good time while doing it.

The group takes its name from a lodge that the co-medians belong to in the 1933 film Sons of the Desert. In keeping with the tongue-in-cheek “desert” theme, each local chapter of the society is called a “tent,” and is named after a Laurel & Hardy film. Worldwide, there are well over 100 active tents, whose members meet regularly to enjoy Laurel & Hardy movies in an informal atmosphere

So what is the film Sons of the Desert all about?

Well Stan and Ollie trick their wives into thinking that they are taking a medicinal cruise while they’re actually going to a convention, the wives find out the truth the hard way.

So that he and Stan can sneak away to Chicago and attend the annual “Sons of the Desert” lodge convention, Ollie pretends to be sick, and gets a doctor (who turns out to be a veterinarian) to prescribe a long ocean voyage to Hawaii. They return home only to learn that the ship supposedly carrying them has sunk in a typhoon. Their hastily- contrived tale of “ship-hiking” their way back cuts no ice with their wives, who’ve been at the movies watching a newsreel of the lodge’s convention parade, starring… guess who?

 

The nearest tent to Wenvoe is in Bristol and called the Fraternally Yours Tent.

 

Colin Jenkins

 

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