(en) Britain, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire Notts Black Arrow - Mainstream Media?s March Massing

What is it about the national press and Nottingham at the moment? Seems like we are fast 
becoming a barometer of England?s economic woes and hopes. ---- Firstly, on March 20th, 
Dragons? Den presenter Evan Davis stitches together a ?Budget Special? for his day job, 
the Radio 4 Today Programme. He makes a few 10 mins trips in and out from the BBC 
roundabout presumably after a night at Jurys Inn on London Road, visiting the delayed 
waterfront development and the site of the defunct Eastside project. Interviews about 
innovation at BioCity and the creative industries are added and an interview with Jon 
Collins is edited in about private business prospects in City. ?Judging from your face 
it?s quite a struggle?, Davis comments. (No Evan, he always looks like that). On the same 
day Channel 4 anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy spends an afternoon in a pub in Arnold ?to see 
if George Osborne can smash the brains in of the zombie economy.?

Then two days ago we had ITV in St Ann?s in an attempt to find out the effect of the 
Bedroom Tax on residents where Housing Benefit will be cut for non-private rented houses 
with ?unoccupied? rooms. This is certainly a hot issue here and many council estates will 
be hit hard. Locally the Labour Party and its trotskyist supporters are riding on a 
nationally visible wave of anger about this Coalition government?s move to reduce benefits 
on social housing. Nottingham City Council have a petition against it with support of the 
voluntary sector, and the Trades Council have picked Lillian Greenwood MP for their Mayday 
podium after the disaster of expenses scandal Notts MP Alan Meale invited last year. 
Greenwood will no doubt spend much of her speech time on the Bedroom Tax. Using a typical 
legalistic route, the Council is aiming to reclassify all high rise flats as one bedroom, 
even ones with two, to stave off some of the pain, as the second room is usually tiny. 
Rooms that are smaller than 50 square feet (4.6 meters squared) will be considered as 
studies and not bedrooms.

Interest in the Nottingham economy may well have been piqued by the staggering figure of 
1700 applicants for 8 jobs at the new Mapperley Costa Coffee which made the network press 
in February. Less visible in the national media has been the loss of 200 more jobs at 
Boots over the next two years, announced last week. Even less visible is the commercial 
and third sector use of workfare, with even a homeless charity like Framework getting 
unemployed people in for free from the Job Centre under a mandatory work scheme.

Nottingham and Notts are well placed for attention. The eight largest urban area in the UK 
with vast inequalities (10 year life expectancy difference between neighbourhoods) and a 
Labour Council, and a Tory run County with deprivation in many areas presided over by the 
aptly named Kay Cutts together with a high profile minister and media-monster in Broxtowe, 
Anna Soubry MP, who is intimately tied to the NHS reforms which have just begun to take 
effect in full. The stage seems set for a lot more national media focus.

There will be surely be similar stories in other cities but for now the eye of the media 
is gazing on ours like Tolkein?s Sauron.

For our part, anarchists in Nottingham AF group will continue to be involved in social 
struggles over the austerity measures being meted out, whilst not being fooled by moves 
from the local Labour Party and TUC apologists or City Council to try and make themselves 
look kinder than the Tories. Faced with angrier protests about Bedroom Tax, other councils 
are saying they won?t evict anyone for rent arrears (Brighton) or say this will be a ?last 
resort? (Hull). On the spectrum of outright implementation through to statements of 
opposition to cuts, NCC still look about as radical as they did when they went down to 
parliament a couple of years ago along with Greenwood to lobby Eric Pickles, while Graham 
Chapman came to a Notts Save Our Services meeting to rid us of any notion that the council 
might defy the government by setting a ?needs-based? budget.

As of December 2012 Collins was ?seeking an urgent meeting with government minister Eric 
Pickles? in response to a ?looming crisis? in core cities like Nottingham. This makes you 
wonder about his definition of urgent and looming when you consider the capitalist bubble 
burst in 2008 when Gordon Brown was holding the reigns. It was not long after that the 
City got stung to the tune of ?41.6 million from its Icelandic ?investments? of which a 
quarter still remains unrecouped in spite of Labour?s volley back at Iceland branding it a 
?terrorist state? (a country that the British state could be prepared to wage war upon if 
it didn?t get real with ?our? money?). On the other side of the balance sheet, the City is 
poised to implement the Coalition government?s Council Tax changes that will cut benefit 
for many people of working age who depend on it