Cops conned - Hackney in the news

The News of the World reports that a Stoke Newington con man conned the cops to become a Community Support Officer for four months. But this more detailed piece in the The Romford Recorder says the man was actually a resident of Romford. More importantly though, he worked in Stoke Newington. How did he do it? The Romford Recorder reports: "Oluwagbemiga Oshin, 42, managed to circumvent security vetting for the Metropolitan Police, simply by changing his first name, a court heard." He changed it to Christopher.

According to this piece in UTV News the most likely candidate to become the next Prime Minister of Canada was one-time Hackney resident, Michael Ignatieff... The piece says: "But he had found new love with a Hungarian-born publicist Zsuzsanna Zsohar. Life was good. After his second wedding, which took place at Hackney Town Hall in 1999, there was a party at the couple's minimalist Hoxton loft. It was attended by, among others, Jonathan Miller, Michael Palin and Simon Rattle." Was he paying attention to volatile Hackney politics at the time?

BBC reports postal strike could hit small businesses using Hackney-based company Carvery Cuts - "London’s leading vinyl dubplate and online mastering service" - as an example.

Hackney's controversial army recruitment centre gets a mention in a Guardian piece about a surge in recruitment.

Also in the Guardian - sorry, probably Observer as it's Sunday - about bees in Hackney. says: "While beekeeping sounds like a lovely idea for those with a garden, what about the rest of us? "You really don't need much space to keep bees," says John, who points to the example of 14-year-old Philip Schilds, who has made his name producing Hackney Honey from hives on the roof of his inner-city home.

Coincidence? History repeating itself? Or the best speech?

Conservative MP David Davies is a consistent fan of Diane Abbott.

"11 Jun 2008 : Column 383
David T.C. Davies: I have the near impossible task of following one of the finest speeches I have heard since being elected to the House of Commons. The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) need not fret: we will not be on the same side on many issues, although we are on this one. (Link to debate)

But a year later, on 9 July 2009: David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con): It has been a pleasure to listen to the debate. I am sorry that the House is so empty at the moment, because the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made, without doubt, the best speech of the afternoon; indeed, it was one of the best speeches that I have heard in this place. I am not just saying that. I disagree with some of what she said, and she will disagree with some of what I am going to say—but she knows what she is talking about, this lady. (Link to debate)

Diane Abbott interviews Nick Robinson

In a series of Guardian interviews in which politicians get to interview well known journalists, Diane Abbot appears to escalate the animosity between press and reporters. She took the opportunity to deliver some harsh, loaded, personal questions, criticising Robinson's looks; suggesting his politics were a betrayal of her ethnic roots, and that he was sneering.

DA You have a very knowing manner on screen. A sort of knowing…

NR [Laughs.] You're thinking of something slightly ruder than that. Do you mean sort of sneering?

DA A little bit like that…

NR I don't want to come over as sneery. I shouldn't.

DA Are you grateful that you're pursuing your career in a broadcasting environment very different from that in the US, where you have to be quite good-looking?

NR [Laughs.] Oh dear, oh dear, she says I'm sneering?

DA I'm just asking!

According to Wikipedia she was a researcher and reporter at Thames Television from 1980 to 1983 and then a researcher and reporter at TV-am from 1983 to 1985 before becoming a press officer at the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone from 1985 to 1986 and Head of Press and Public Relations at Lambeth Council from 1986 to 1987.

See new head of Hackney Communications

Hackney has appointed Carl Welham as interim assistant chief executive, communications and consultation ( PR Week, 17 September) previously of Buckinghamshire County Council where he was head of comms and customer service.

See him here on YouTube saying that councils face major cuts and work has to be done to "make sure communications is not a casualty of that by proving we are an essential part of the business and not a nice to have add on." Hopefully that doesn't mean bogus self-justifying communications strategies.

If this question that he dealt with in a Buckinghamshire meeting applies to Hackney, then may be communications could prove itself by cutting back on spending:
"A member commented that there was a lack of consistency in communications from different service areas. Carl Welham explained that individual service areas spent four times as much money on communications as CS&Comms. Some members questioned why the central CS&Comms team were not co-ordinating all communications to ensure a consistent standard.

Another brief outline of what he thinks about the job and where it might have gone wrong.

Empire to close - aircraft noise pollution

The guardian reports that the Hackney Empire will be out of action for 9 months due to financial difficulties.

Aeroplane noise... I've only noticed how bad it is since being made redundant... as if pilots change down a gear and make a screeching turn in the skies over Chatsworth Road. This research shows it is a problem with East London topping aircraft noise list. Hackney is the eighth worst affected borough.

MP Meg Hillier is on maternity leave but she makes the odd appearance every now again. A Google News search also threw up this mysterious item: "Mục tiêu của hội An Việt là giúp người Việt Nam sống tại Anh Quốc có thể hội nhập vào xã hội mới, tạo cơ hội thăng tiến cho các thế hệ sau này. Phỏng vấn ông Vũ Khánh Thành, nguyên nghị viên hội đồng thành phố Hackney, người sáng lập hội An Việt"

Does any one know what, where or when this event was?

Hackney unemployment accelerates

The number of Hackney 'job seekers' - people claiming Job Seeker's Allowance (JSA) - has risen to 9,826 according to the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics. The figure is for August and is up from 9550 JSA claimants in July.

In terms of Hackney's overall working population (about 140,000) the increase month on month was 0.2 percentage points, up from 6.7% of the working population on JSA in July to 6.9% in August.

This appears to be in-line with the average monthly increase. Over the last 10 months, the percentage of the borough's working population now claiming JSA has increased by 2% from 4.9% in both October and November 2008 to 6.9% in August.

On average, about 1% of Hackney's working population has been added to the JSA claimant count each five months. Hackney's increase in JSA claimants is amongst the fastest of all inner London boroughs.

As figures below show, since May, Hackney North's claimant count seems to be increasing faster than Hackney South. The north has seen 250 new job seekers on the register since May compared to Hackney South where 199 jobs have been lost over the same period.

Hackney South still has the higher percentage of JSA claimants - 7.7% of its working population, compared to Hackney North where 6.3% of the working population are JSA claimants. Over the last 10 months, Hackney South's JSA claimant count has still increased at a faster rate than the North (from 5.4% to 7.7% in the South, compared to 4.5% to 6.3% in the North) The latest figures show the North narrowing the gap.

However the unemployment issue did not appear to be a concern for the borough's politicians. There were no councillors' questions on employment or the extent of possible public sector job cuts on the council meeting agenda last night (Wednesday)

Figures from August in Regional Monthly Data - September 2009

Last month's figures - which covered July - showed that 9550 people in Hackney were claiming. This was an increase of 242 claimants from the figure in June. In June the number of claimants in Hackney actually fell to 9308 - from 9350 in May, a fall of 42 claimants.

Hackney North
May - 4,081
June - 4,118
July - 4206
August - 4,331
A total of 125 jobs lost over the period (up to July)
Now a total of 250 jobs lost since May.

Hackney South
May - 5,296
June - 5,190
July - 5,344
August - 5,495
A total of 48 jobs lost over the period (up to July).
Now a 199 jobs lost over the period from May.

Links to Blood and Property stories on unemployment:
Job Centre reorganised: can it cope?
Hackney crime figures - the only way is up
Hackney women losing jobs faster than men
Hackney: a worklessness miracle
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth
Unemployed in Hackney: The lull before the storm
Will Hackney return to 17% on the dole?

Tabloids target Hackney

News of the World says Hackney social services returned kids to a squalid home hours after their mother was arrested by the The Met's Child Abuse Investigation Command who stumbled on the Hackney flat by accident:

This week the youngsters were taken into police protection and the mother arrested. On Tuesday she was cautioned for neglect and the case handed to social services. Within hours they RETURNED the children to the flat, which they said had been cleaned up.

Figures given in the story from East London's Child Abuse Investigation Command show that its case load is up by 2/3 on last year.

Last week the east London cop squad, covering Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets, were dealing with 300 live cases. This time last year it was around 180.

But how likely is it that the quality of East London parenting has become 70% worse in the space of a year? Is this Baby P panic? Next week Hackney's Cabinet Agenda reports pack includes a financial update showing that childrens' services are still feeling the pressure.

Page 137: In summary, the service is experiencing caseload pressures in both Access and
Assessment (A&A) and Children in Need (CIN) resulting in increased levels of agency staff.
The former relates to increased anxiety in the partnership following the recent high-profile case in a neighbouring borough.

The Mail on Sunday savages funding won by Arcola Theatre's dance troupe - claiming that £240k has been spent on the project which should have gone to the third world.

Other news:

This may be old news but Hackney Council is looking for construction managers to take on Haggerston Baths with a 21 Sept deadline for bids.

An old book on Hackney (sordid and dull)

This is the Hackney and Stoke Newington section of The Fascination of London which was contributed by the University of California.

It includes items such as this: THE way from London to Hackney was, during the last century, a way of terror. The newspaper- cuttings of the period show innumerable highway
robberies committed, particularly about Cambridge Heath. Dick Turpin, whose favourite resort was the White Horse in Hackney Marshes, must have found this a happy hunting-ground, as numerous coaches passed from London northward and back
again.

The part of the ward to the west of Mare Street is sordid and dull. The Cat and Mutton
Bridge over the canal forms the extreme boundary of the parish, and what is now the Broadway used to be called Mutton Lane. On the east side of this stood a bun house, which once rivalled that of Chelsea.

Al-Qaeda history on Chatsworth Road

Today this piece on the Telegraph website says: "The al-Qaeda recruiting offices were two Islamic shops on Chatsworth Road in Hackney, east London. The first, the al-Koran Islamic bookshop, was run by Mohammed Hamid, who used the nickname Osama bin London and recruited and trained the failed suicide bombers for the attacks of July 21 2005.

"Hamid, who was later jailed for life for soliciting to murder and providing training for terrorism, met Yassin Omar, one of the leaders of the July 21 plot, at his bookshop in 2003. Opposite the bookshop was an unregistered charity called the Islamic Medical Association (Kosovar) run by Mohammed Patel which was used by the airline bombers as cover for their travel to Afghanistan from January 2003."

Back in June The Sun reported: Ali said he helped the Islamic Medical Association for up to two years after he was given a leaflet at his mosque.
He said he was joined at its office in Chatsworth Road, Hackney, east London, by co-defendants Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Waheed Khan and Tanvir Hussain.
He added: "They needed volunteers to go to Pakistan and deliver some of this aid and administer it and I volunteered to do that."
The jury was told that Ali travelled to Chaman, close to Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, for several months in January 2003.
Ali said two more co-defendants, Assad Sarwar and Umar Islam, also travelled to Pakistan at this time to help the charity.
He said the camps were "mucky and smelly", with desperate people living in "appalling conditions."

Chatsworth terror hub?

This is the Islamic Medical Association Kosova on Chatsworth Road. Is it the same Hackney-based Islamic Medical Association mentioned in news reports about the recently convicted airline bomb plotters? It was reported that one of the would-be bombers put most of his energies "into a charity called the Islamic Medical Association, based in Hackney, which he used as cover to travel to Afghanistan, where he drove an ambulance in refugee camps."

Back in June Bucks Free Press reported: "Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 27, from Walthamstow was introduced to Assad Sarwar, from Walton Drive, High Wycombe, and Umar Islam, formerly of High Wycombe, through the Islamic Medical Association."

Ali told the court he had previously met Sarwar at one of IMA's charity shops in Hackney, London, where "he used to help out bagging up clothes before he went to Pakistan."

Neighbours of a charity shop with a similar name at 19 Chatsworth Road said that it opened at odd times. No one was there to say whether it was or had ever been a meeting place for would-be terrorists.

The Charity Commission said there is only one Islamic Medical Association on the register which has some outstanding accounts. However it is listed is in Great Yarmouth - link here for more details.

For a debate Harry's Place.

4000 newts move to Hackney?

This piece in the Builder and Engineer said the Olympic project included an: "An ecologic action plan to protect habitats and wildlife including translocating 4,000 smooth newts, 100 toads, 300 common lizards and create over 1 hectare of new wildlife habitat on Hackney Marshes."

So, apparently, all of these newts are being moved to Hackney to the new wildlife habitat - or have they been sent somewhere else? And why so many of them compared to toads and lizards?

Jobcentre reorganised - can it cope?

When I last signed on at Hackney's Jobcentre Plus it had just been through a major upheaval (the change happened on August 17) and it now segregates job seekers who have been on the dole for more than three months from those who have come in more recently. The longer-term unemployed are now sent upstairs to face deeper scrutiny.

Meanwhile the new arrivals are given specific five minute time slots which they cannot miss. At my last signing-on, my adviser didn't have time to take down the evidence on my attempts to get back into work. Is this just streamlining or have numbers of claimants gone up significantly?

On Thursday the Hackney Gazette reported that an employment charity had lost its funding and would have to close down - the story was posted on the Gazette's website yesterday. The charity's head said that job centres in Hackney "can't cope".

20-year backlash for recession unemployed... and other happy news

Don't stick with your next new job!

Hackney resident and Undercover Economist Tim Harford (a recent biog) says a study of "those hurled into unemployment by mass layoffs in the 1982 US recession... discovered horrendously long-lasting effects."

He said that a recession-proof career path is only for the lucky ones: The (1982) recession itself – one often compared with today’s downturn – was savage, but it was over in less than two years. Yet von Wachter and his colleagues discovered that those who lost their jobs had incomes about 20 per cent lower than would otherwise be expected, even two decades later.

Hackney has 761 police officers.

This is nearly 200 more than neighbouring Waltham Forest (562) and seems to make the difference between rising and falling crime (although crime looks more likely to rise in Hackney).

According to the Guardian: Because Waltham Forest is classed as outer London, the borough currently has just 562 police officers, compared to 768 in neighbouring Newham, 761 in Hackney and 778 in Tower Hamlets – this is despite similar populations and crime profiles.

Reported crime rose in Waltham Forest by 3.9 per cent last year, an extra 1,012 crimes, compared to a drop in reported crime in Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets.

Mental Health in Schools

A piece in Nursing Times describes mental health project in Hackney that encourages pupils at special schools and pupil referral units to use mental health services. Over half of those dealt with have been referred but never used these services.

A case study describes how one pupil's disruptive behaviour in class was related to not being able to see his coat.

One key observation is that over half the SMHT (school mental health team) caseload is made up of young people and families who had previously been referred to the child and family consultation service but not engaged with it.

Who lives in Queensbridge Quarter?

A piece in Building.co.uk interviews an 87-year-old resident Betty Spinks... “Not like any other council house I’ve been to. The place looks so tidy"
Not like the old days: “It was the worst estate in England. You’d see rats in the gutters, cockroaches everywhere, and you couldn’t step out your front door at night. Here I feel safe.”

Hackney - a worklessness miracle?

Earlier this month the Office of National Statistics published Hackney's worklessness figures.

They weren't too bad - the unexplained miracle continues. The workless of Hackney still seem to be finding their way back to work at a surprising speed.

All this during a period when the rest of the country was on the brink of financial collapse with jobs being lost. In contrast, figures show that, in Hackney the population of economically inactive residents shrank. It fell by about 2,900 people (from 28.7% of the working population to 26.6%).

The recession, it seems, has had the opposite effect in Hackney as it has in most other parts of the UK. This seemed to be further confirmed by the publication, yesterday, of the workless households figures ( Work and worklessness among households Statistical Bulletin - August 2009 and 26/08/09 News Release - Half a million more working-age people in workless households).

These show that the North East has over-taken Inner London as the place with the highest rate of worklessness - it now has 23% of homes with all employment age residents out of work. Meanwhile Inner London's level of workless households is 22.9%, the second most concentrated are of household worklessness in the UK. This is down on the same time last year (Work and worklessness among households - August 2007 ) when 23.9% of Inner London homes were workless.

Nationally, the ONS figures for workless homes are the worst they have been - possibly since records began - showing that one in six UK households is unemployed - at least that's according to this interpretation provided by the BBC yesterday.

But not in Inner London, and it can only be supposed that Hackney has bucked the trend here too. Back in 2007 Hackney had the second worst level of workless households of all inner London Boroughs (26%). Worse than Newham (27%) and equal to Tower Hamlets (26%) and, unexpectedly, the next worst was Kensington and Chelsea (23%) - (That's according to (Table 2(iii) Working-age people by region and combined economic activity status of household)

So is Hackney like China? Powering ahead and "decoupling" from the rest of the developed world? Not according to Cllr Guy Nicholson, cabinet member for regeneration and the Olympic Games:

"In terms of Hackney’s economic development strategy, the borough has not ‘decoupled’ from the UK’s, and specifically London’s economic direction of travel. Hackney Council will continue to ensure the growth and dynamism of a range of economic sectors within the borough. Key sector are: Servicing for the City, High Value Manufacturing, Retail, Hospitality and Entertainment,Creative Sectors."

He said: "The recession has impacted upon Hackney in terms of an increase in JSA claimants. However, the borough has not been affected any more than the UK as a whole. Since September 2008, the proportion of the population of Hackney claiming JSA increased by 1.7%, compared to an increase of 1.6% in Britain as a whole. However, Hackney started from a considerably higher baseline in terms of the proportion of the population already claiming JSA.

"As discussed above, Hackney’s employment rate has increased significantly over the past few years. The gap between London’s and Hackney’s employment rate has decreased from 15.1% in Q4 05/06 to 3.4% in Q3 08/09. This is a significant achievement in the context of the high levels of multiple deprivation which continue to exist in Hackney. Due to the time-lag in the employment rate data, it is as yet unclear how the increase in JSA claimants will impact upon the employment rate in the borough."

Yellow spider alert in Hackney

Normal-looking brown spiders are all over my garden. If this year is anything like last year, they will soon look like rotten strawberries hanging in mid-air. I generally don't notice them until it's too late.

They are bad enough.

Then this small yellow poisonous-looking creature turned up yesterday.

It was the colour of a banana so I thought it must be some exotic killer of some kind. But it probably isn't exotic or dangerous. I didn't squash it. Hopefully it'll deal with those green shiny beetles that, I suspect, ate my rosemary plant.

£600k council cash disappears... so what?

Hackney Council payed £610,000 to Hackney charity boss Dr Adu Aezick Seray-Wurie in 2000.

According to a report by the Charity Commission: "The statements for Dr Seray-Wurie’s account and those for the Charities, as well as the Charity’s annual accounts, all showed that none of the funds were passed to either Charity."

However the same report says the Charity Commission will not pursue the case. In 2006 the police said they would not be investigating the case either.

Dr Adu Aezick Seray-Wurie, chair of Hackney-based African Development Agencies and Hackney African Organisation , won a legal claim for £610,000 in unpaid grants from Hackney Council in 2000. The money was paid into Seray-Wurie's personal account.

Last year Seray-Wurie tried to prevent the publication of a Charity Commission report into the East End Citizens Advice Bureau on the grounds that it was defamatory last year.

The 2008 report of the Charity Commission's chief executive said:

The use of our regulatory powers has come under external scrutiny recently with two separate court hearings.

These were two separate legal cases brought against the Commission by Dr. Adu Seray-Wurie (the applicant) in which the Commission was successful. In the first, on 23 April the High Court struck out claims brought by the applicant for defamation, and on other grounds, relating to our published inquiry report into East End Citizens Advice Bureau.

The claim for defamation was struck out on the basis that the report was covered by qualified privilege, and that there was no evidence of malice.....

In the second case, on 25 April the High Court dismissed an appeal brought by the applicant against our decision to remove him as a trustee of African Development Agencies Ltd. The Court decided that we were right to make the removal order on the basis that there had been misconduct or mismanagement in the administration of the charity, and it was necessary or desirable to remove the applicant for the purpose of protecting property of the charity or its proper application, the removal being a proportionate step to take in all the circumstances.

Are there enough detectives in Hackney?

The Evening Standard wrote a story to highlight the anniversary of the unsolved death of a Hackney boy who died after falling 60 feet. The police believe he was being chased by a gang.

Detective Chief Inspector Phil Rickells told the Standard: "I am trying to establish whether he was pushed or whether he fell. We know some people entered the block."

Hopefully DCI Rickells is not affected by the shortage of detectives reported by the BBC - apparently there are 5,000 fewer than there should be. Meanwhile is most of the serious crime in Hackney being dealt with by cops from outside the borough like Operation Trident?

According to its website, Operation Trident has 350 police officers and 86 support staff. It was set up in 1998 because 75% of London's gun crime involved the victim and suspect both coming from the capital's black communities. All good, but what happens if Operation Trident gets over-stretched?

Libel and Leabank

Leabank Square blog hit the headlines yesterday with a story that has now been followed-up elsewhere.

Evening Standard: Olympic chiefs threaten to sue 'noise and dirt' blog

The offending material has been removed but blogger Sona Abantu-Choudhury insists: "...down here in the East End of London – it’s called a lie. The person telling the lie – is called a liar. Simple as!"

Good luck!

Hackney crime figures: The only way is up

In this week’s Hackney Gazette there is an interview with the new borough commander, Steve Bending. He said that the crime levels in Hackney were low and it would be difficult to push them down further.

“There are some boroughs in London which have almost the same number of burglaries in a day which boroughs like Hackney have in a week" and he added that “There comes a point where – unless you have a borough with a field and two sheep in it – there’s a point where crime will stop decreasing.”

Recession and the rise of crime

The Gazette asked if crime reduction will become harder as the recession kicks in, Bending's answer was: “Logic says at some point if you have lots of people who have not got jobs, then there’s a risk that those people will go into crime to fund their life style… but whether we are at that point now is a moot point.”

What is the “informal economy” - how much of it is criminal in Hackney?

Most analysis of the informal economy – all the stuff that goes on behind the tax man’s back – is done with a view to clawing tax back. Most of the initiatives related to the informal economy are related to how much money the Treasury will save or retrieve.

This 2007 Hackney Council economic paper suggested that there was nothing much to worry about from the informal economy – at least not in terms of crime:

Informal / illegal economy: Anecdotal evidence suggests that a small number of Hackney residents are involved within the informal sector and in some cases with illegal activities. For many people, the financial returns of informal activities exceed those that they could potentially achieve in the formal employment market. As such, it is thought that a number of people are choosing this route as an alternative to employment. The informal economy is thought to include a wide range of activities, from childcare provision to criminal drugs and burglary activity sometimes associated with gangs in Hackney.

Much more recently (April 2009), the council admitted that it didn’t know a great deal about the informal economy because it was not an easy area to investigate. In its Report of the Community Safety and Social Inclusion Scrutiny Commission Tackling Worklessness Review 08/09 (367KB), the council said:

One aspect proved particularly elusive and that was the issue of how individuals and businesses in the informal economy can be supported to move into the formal economy. Any analysis of the broad subject of worklessness in Hackney will need to address the prevalence of the informal economy and indeed the likelihood of its expansion during the economic downturn. Engaging with those in the informal economy is no mean feat and we would recommend that perhaps innovative approaches to evidence gathering might be employed… it would certainly aid policy development if local data and research on the topic could be captured.”

The report cited Lord Garbinder’s report from 2000 which excluded the overtly criminal element of the informal economy. It was more interested in the ‘minor’ crimes such as benefit fraud – a problem often described as a victimless crime. The report’s chief aim was to work out how to easily claw back tax from the informal economy.

“Sometimes there are other illegal aspects to the business, such as work by illegal immigrants. And most large-scale crime, such as drugs trafficking and money laundering, is also part of the hidden economy. Apart from illegal immigration, which is touched on in Chapter 4, these issues are not covered in this report.”

The fact that the council, in 2009, is talking about “how individuals and businesses in the informal economy can be supported to move into the formal economy” is a clear sign that it is not looking at issues like prostitution and drug dealing – which are potentially devastating to local communities - but not interesting to the tax man.

It seems that these are not explored because the treasury would probably not be able to claw-back tax from these businesses – even if the criminals were caught. Benefit fraudsters are more profitable to pursue.

The question is whether there is a coherent picture, anywhere, of how many people in Hackney make their livings from crime, how many supplement their incomes with crime, and whether this number is increasing.

Unfortunately looking at the existing data will not tell you this. Even if reported crime is down, to what extent does this mean that drug dealing or prostitution are decreasing?

Hackney has highest rate of youth unemployment

It may be old news to some but 2008 figures show Hackney had the highest level of youth unemployment in the country - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8199269.stm

Also, Hackney is the only London borough to win a government grant to help it do something useful with empty shops. According to this article in Regen.net, communities minister John Denham said councils in receipt of the grants would be able to use the money as they saw fit on ideas to boost town centres and transform boarded up shops into something useful, such as a meeting place, a learning centre or a showroom for local artists.

He said: "There is no need to see unused shops on our high streets going to waste, especially when we know that it doesn't take a lot to turn a vacant shop into something beneficial for the community."

Recent unemployment stories on Blood and Property here:
http://bloodandproperty.blogspot.com/search/label/unemployment

In the Guardian:

Council's are not prepared for the next wave of the recession - according to the Audit Commission.

Unemployed in Hackney: The lull before the storm