Business Breakfast is sponsored by Harrogate law firm Truth Legal. 

A Harrogate man has launched a new app in Leeds which aims to reduce health inequalities.

The Caterpillar app aims to encourage people to take small steps to improve their’ lifestyles, such as increasing daily steps or making healthy changes to dietary habits.

The app was founded by Paul Baverstock, who lives in Harrogate, and has been hailed by Leeds City Council chief executive Tom Riordan as a “gamechanger”.

It is also backed by two-time Olympic gold medallist and public health advocate, Alistair Brownlee.

Mr Baverstock said:

“We’re using Nobel Prize-winning behavioural science techniques to help people create healthy habits that stick. 

“This isn’t for those who set extreme fitness challenges or track every calorie, it’s for those who might struggle to engage with and make small and important changes in their lives.”

Caterpillar connects to health apps, such as Google Fit and Apple Health, and sets personalised physical activity goals. 

It uses the latest expert information to help people make choices about their dietary habits.

Caterpillar is based at Leeds University and was incubated by the Leeds City Council’s BUILD programme in 2021.

Business groups hold first social

Business members at Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce and Harrogate BID social.

Harrogate businesses leaders met up for the first Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce and Harrogate BID summer drinks event on Monday night.

Representatives from firms from across the district attended 63rd+1st cocktail bar on Albert Street for the get-together.

It gave business leaders the chance to network with other members.

Strayside Sunday is a monthly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

In the wake of last week’s local elections, Councillor Richard Cooper, the Leader of Harrogate Borough Council, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the Conservatives poor showing could be put down to dissatisfaction with Boris Johnson’s national government. 

And what a poor showing it was for the blues, with 10 of 21 Harrogate district seats turning yellow.  The Lib Dems ended the evening as the largest group in the Harrogate district and with the most seats (8/13) on the Harrogate and Knaresborough Area Constituency Committee.  

 I do, however, have some sympathy with Mr. Cooper’s view that national issues predominated.  My household and our area relatives voted Liberal Democrat en masse, in some cases voting that way for the first time in their lives. 

We simply could not bring ourselves to vote Conservative because of the shambles in Westminster.  Shambles both singular (…Boris Johnson,) and shambles plural (…his cabinet).   

I felt compelled to vote against the interests of a man with no integrity, no honour and no shame.  I didn’t try, nor did I need to, persuade others in my circle to do the same. As with millions of people around the country they came to the view that Boris is not to be trusted.  Nor, increasingly, is he to be liked. 

We know he lied and lied again about Partygate and his role in it.  We know too that whatever his role he presided over a 10 Downing Street with a work culture that would make any self-respecting American frat house blush.  A culture lacking appropriate sobriety. Worse yet a culture lacking appropriate accountability. 

The question that gurgles out of the Downing Street cess pit is precisely what, these days, represents a resigning issue?   

I don’t contest that Boris had a half-decent coronavirus and lockdown.  I think too that he has been almost exemplary in his handling of British interests and leadership in respect of Ukraine. 

But these issues, and the consequential negative economic and cost of living crisis effects are going to severely test the nation in the months ahead and to navigate that needs the government to reach into a now non-existent goodwill bank account. 

Read more:

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Boris is responsible for that penury, along with Rishi’s wealth and wife’s non-dom status, Priti’s ghastly and shaming “send them back to Rwanda” policy, and pretty much anything to do with Jacob Rees-Mogg. 

This government’s juice is not worth the squeeze:  As a result councils like Westminster, Wandsworth, Barnet and Southampton slipped from Tory grasp last week and the North Yorkshire almost did.

 Andrew Jones MP must now be in fear of his seat, bless him.  Harrogate has a solid Liberal Democrat base again and a recent tradition of its parliamentary representation. 

When approached for comment by the Ferret on local elections night he waved our intrepid journo away.  Not for him it seems to speak to local residents through, by some margin, the most read news outlet in the district. 

Prideful nose bitten to save fearful face? Silly man.  He may well come to regret his stance come the night of the next General Election, if indeed he stands – some think that he may give way to a Richard Cooper candidacy. 

If so, Stray Ferret readers can no doubt look forward to continuing ghosting from the local Conservative Party during the next couple of years.  This kind of behaviour goes beyond the obviously misguided view in some local Tory circles that the Ferret is a Liberal Democrat organ and becomes a democratic insult to local constituents.   

Which brings me back to the local election results.  Whatever the national picture Harrogate Borough Council has not covered itself in glory these past few years.  Expensive (vanity?) projects like the Knapping Mount council HQ, Appy Parking, and now the Station Gateway development substituting for a concerted and sustained effort to get the planning and economic development knitting right. 

The town centre of Harrogate is a sorry mess; with empty shop fronts and discount outlets wherever you look.  Oxford Street’s concrete desert lacks any sort of charm. 

This was meant to sorted out through the town plan, a plan which was never used as the means to bring people together in share municipal endeavour. Instead, multiple outsourced and bought consultations led to division, stasis and, as we can see, inaction.   

National issues were important last Thursday, but don’t kid yourselves that local issues didn’t matter at all, Messrs Jones and Cooper. 

Your tenure has been marked by arrogance and a lack of focus on issues that matter a great deal to local people.  And, notwithstanding that responsibility for highways rests with North Yorkshire County Council, the landmine like potholes and crazy pavements of the district matter too. 

If indeed Double Devolution happens as Leader of NYCC Councillor Les Carl says it still will, the newly formed Harrogate Town Council will need to get a grip and quickly.  If not, the local Liberal Democrat ascendency might very well continue. 

That’s my Strayside Sunday.      

PS Love the Stray Ferret’s royal bunting!

Strayside Sunday is our monthly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Oh dear.  Since last we communed in these pages the Prime Minister has had to accept the resignation of his Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock and, as a result it seems, failed to win an important by-election this week down the road in Batley and Spen, when set fair to do so.  Has the electoral worm turned?

When Mr. Hancock was caught on CCTV in the corridor outside his office at the Department for Health and Social Care the grainy images showed him engaged in enthusiastic tongue wrestling with his advisor Gina Colangelo, his hand clearly grabbing her bottom.  Not a dignified look.  Both parties concerned are married (but sadly not to each other) with six children between them.  When confronted with the story, Mr. Hancock’s hand was forced and he told his wife and family he was in love with another and would be setting up shop with Gina.

While marriage break up is often a cause for sadness, especially when children are involved, Mr. Hancock has let it be known through friends that he has found a “love match.”  Good for him.  Initially the PM let it be known that everyone was entitled to a private life and that he considered the matter closed.  Boris being Boris he could hardly have done anything else.  If he had sacked the man, he would have brought the chequered history of his own private life into sharp relief, which the media would have gleefully welcomed.

The issue of course is that Ms. Colangelo had been advising Mr. Hancock in government.  Further, following a period during which she acted in an unpaid capacity, she was then appointed to the board of the DHSC as a Non-Executive Director paid £15,000 annually from the public purse.  In other words, she became a public servant tasked with marking her lover’s homework.  In the United States this would be called “inside the beltway” and just won’t do.

Mr. Hancock tried to hang on to see which way the political wind was blowing; his fate sealed when his own party, in the form of cabinet ministers and MP’s, named and unnamed, turned against him and briefed the media that his behaviour was not on.  He resigned and posted a doleful video mea culpa to his Twitter account.  And with that he was gone.  No more lectures on rules of six and social distancing from our bouncy school prefect.

No one emerges from this sorry matter with much credit; the Health Secretary, his advisor, nor the PM.  But what grinds my gears most is that the British national media was shown again at its sanctimonious and hypocritical worst.  I want to know where, when and how did The Sun receive security footage from inside a government department?  And, while I agree that Ms. Colangelo’s paid position at the DHSC of course represented a conflict of interest for both parties, one must think that the hacks at the current bun were most excited by the prurient way it all came to light.  There is nothing the tabloids like more than a bit of how’s your father in public life.  And don’t we all?

A good friend of mine, an erstwhile bigwig in local government, is a member of the 2019 parliamentary intake.  A formidable campaigner, the aforesaid honourable member had been spending a significant amount of time recently telephone canvassing, knocking doors and delivering leaflets in the Conservative interest in the Batley and Spen constituency. We saw each other three weeks ago for a catch up and drink was taken.  Heavy in our botanicals he convinced me that the seat would be won, such was the blue-tinged sentiment on the doorstep.  Just a short cameo this week for our own Andrew Jones MP; Harrogate’s finest was spotted helping the cause in Batley and Spen, sharing fish and chips with the candidate.  No word on whether mushy peas or curry sauce provided the accompaniment.

Just three weeks ago the party was convinced it was on for another astonishing Red Wall win.   As it transpired the Labour Party held the seat by just 323 votes, Kim Leadbeater holding off the Conservative Ryan Stephenson.  Amanda Milling MP, the Conservative Party Co-Chair admitted that the Hancock affair had been a contributory factor in the final days leading up to the vote.  Of course it was; we don’t like being told what to do at the best of times but this government is clearly of the “do as I say” not “do as I do” school.

No one has been happier in all of this than the dreadful Dominic (Barnard Castle) Cummings.  Having attempted to bring Matt Hancock down during his appearance before a joint parliamentary committee hearing into the coronavirus – “he should have been sacked 17 times etc.” – Mr. Cummings has been playing out his own personal psychodrama through endless blogs and Twitter chains.  The man’s ego, as well as his prose, knows few bounds.  I guess that’s what happens when you are played by Benedict Cumberbatch on the telly.

In the end one is left with a vague and uneasy feeling that the ship of state isn’t being run by men and women of principle or decency.  People fall in love all the time.  They have affairs and leave marriages.  But Matt Hancock was the first to tell us he had been working tirelessly to beat coronavirus, yet, in addition to his work battling a national crisis and being a husband and father to three children he found the time to have a passionate affair.  Boris was willing to let this go unpunished because his own copy book is far from clean in this regard.  All of this contributes to a feeling of one rule for them, one for the rest of us.  Unless the government gets a grip, that way electoral defeat looms.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Do you have a view on this column or is there a political issue you’d like Paul to write about? Get in touch on paul@thestrayferret.co.uk

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

Goodbye and good riddance 2020.

As the new year begins we can reflect on the tumultuous events that none of us could have predicted 365 long days ago. Covid-19 has become an ever-present spectre in our national life, threatening our health, grievously damaging our economy and sharpening the grindstone of everyday living.

From the collectivist blitz spirit of spring when we all agreed to “Stay at home. Save lives. Protect the NHS,” through a summer of cancelled exams and educational turmoil for our young people, to a late autumn second national lockdown and into a winter of new, more transmissible variants, remembering the “before times” brings to mind the universal human luxuries of social and physical contact, the democratic luxuries of liberty and freedom of movement and the relative financial luxuries (for some but by no means all) of economic stability.

There have been bright spots of course. The way the nation rallied publicly in support of healthcare and other front-line workers; clapping from our doorsteps as one, draped in the colours of the rainbow. Captain, (now, deservedly, Sir) Tom Moore’s valiant one hundred lap trek around his back garden on his walker to raise over £30m for the NHS. Myriad examples of local and voluntary support groups organising to ferry food and kindness to the isolated and alone. This was and is truly the best of British.

Our behaviour hasn’t been flawless. Injunctions against gathering and socialising were increasingly ignored as compliance fatigue set in.  This was perhaps understandable for reasons valid, for example choosing to prioritise our mental health and, for reasons less so, as a reaction to the ever-changing government-imposed restrictions, broken promises (the five-day Christmas being just the latest example), confused guidance and mixed messaging.

Fundamental trust in the Conservative government’s actions and motives has been damaged too. From the scandal of eye-wateringly large contracts awarded, without due process, or even prior qualification, to the Chumocracy to supply flawed PPE; to its tone deaf refusal to provide free school meals for children who needed them; to the latest example, a national NHS Test & Trace programme (actually run by Public Health England) based initially on the idea that a single technology, developed at the centre, could meet the hugely diverse character and needs of the British population; one worries that our government, just over a year into its term, is in office but not in power.

And they are spending staggering sums of our money in the process; over £10bn was spent on PPE; Test & Trace, the latest failed attempt to build a national technology system, has so far cost the taxpayer £22bn, yes, that’s £22 BILLION!. Only when council leaders reacted with fury at the Test & Trace system’s unfolding and predictable inefficacies did the project pivot to work with and exploit the knowledge and existing networks of local authorities.

Scratching the surface reveals that Serco, one of the private companies leading the effort, have themselves subcontracted twenty other private businesses to help deliver the work. It has been a fiasco and a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money. Come the revolution heads should roll but it is nonetheless rumoured that Dido Harding, the head of Test & Trace, will be rewarded with the position of NHS England Chief Executive on Sir Simon Stevens’s impending retirement. I kid you not.

My hope is that, if anything, the events of the past year will cause us to look again at the type of country we want to build. One in which the public good becomes paramount, one in which health and wellbeing (particularly for the less well to do) become the North Stars guiding politicians and policymakers in their actions, one in which we define anew what constitutes, in both conception and implementation, the affairs of state. If not a bigger state then a more activist state. A state that understands and acts on its obligations to care for its people first and one that recognises that capital does not, as we have seen yet again, a soul possess.

However, I suspect that with a Brexit deal now signed, whatever you think of it on the merits, the government will charge ahead with policies designed to stimulate business and trade. From free ports to enterprise zones, from tax incentives to fiscal stimulus, the government has to rebuild a battered economy. If it is to do so and return itself to our electoral (or at least opinion poll) affections, then it must demonstrate that it has “levelled up” the economy while delivering humane social improvements.

I wish you all a happier, more contented and above all healthy 2021.  With mass vaccinations now underway, I very much hope that will be the case, so that when spring comes around again, we will experience the rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection and regrowth that the season usually promises.

Let’s hope too that the bright, sunny, international trading uplands long promised by the Brexiteers comes to fruition and that the Conservative “levellers” spend the spoils on the areas and initiatives that need it most.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Strayside Sunday is our weekly political column written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party:

In 2019, Britain ranked sixth in the world in its incidence of obesity, with the proportion of us “struggling with our weight” growing faster than anywhere in the world.  And even before the emotional trauma imposed by lockdown, 1 in 4 of us experienced some form of mental ill health.  It’s for that reason that I believe the first principle for any governing body, be they national, regional (North Yorkshire County Council) or local (Harrogate Borough Council), is now to provide for the physical, mental and economic wellbeing of all the people it serves.  Without such holistic and inclusive thinking we will continue to see the wider determinants of ill health – low income, inadequate housing, poor diet and loneliness, to name a few – impact those of us that can least afford it, at a time when household budgets are going to be stretched to their limits.

In this context, the hiving-off of the borough’s leisure facilities by Harrogate Council (into what is known as a Local Authority Controlled Company) is not in the public interest.

On Friday, these pages quoted the wonderfully named Councillor Stan Lumley, Harrogate Borough Council Cabinet Member for Culture, Tourism and Sport, who justified his creation thus:

“This is like a partial privatisation. It allows us to benefit from some things that a private company would, but by keeping control of the business. It’s the best of both worlds.”

I am a conservative, so, as you might expect, I believe in the market economy, but only in terms.  The provision of leisure services is, I believe, an essential public good, especially at a time when we must surely nurture the health and wellbeing of our bruised and tender population.

Harrogate Borough Council, in the name of cost savings and efficiencies, is attempting to ‘marketise’ our leisure at precisely the moment it is needed most, by most.  Unsurprisingly, no long term assurances can be given about the future of Starbeck Baths, a monument to place and community, serving one of the less affluent areas of the borough, yet great plans await for the Hydro, a gentle walk down the hill from tree-lined avenues of The Duchy.  Setting aside the fact that, in the Harrogate Convention Centre, the council has not previously covered itself in glory with its similar arms-length operations (the centre has not been profitable for years), nobody has asked what seems to me to be the only important question: “Whatever the original decision, is it still the right thing to do?”

In my view, given the circumstances we now face, it is wrong to take a course of action that will likely make leisure more expensive and less geographically accessible, and, in so doing, negatively impact the wellbeing of the people of the borough.  The council seems set, as ever, to pursue blindly the ideology of privatisation.  To do this in the face of compelling new arguments is negligent.

As a former Parliamentary Private Secretary to Jeremy Hunt when he was Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Jones MP knows the negative impact that wider determinants can have on wellbeing, he knows too how important wellbeing is to economic success, both individual and collective, let alone to social stability and cohesion. That’s why I’d like to see Mr. Jones take this on as a cause celebre: I’d like him to call for a rethink from the council on leisure privatisation.  Sadly, I predict he won’t, because the campaigns he tends to favour, think “save” Stray FM and Nidd Gorge, allow him to avoid coming into conflict with his friends and constituency office employees at Harrogate Borough Council.

The very first class I walked into at university was taught by Professor, now Sir Simon Schama.  The class, “Britain Since 1945,” was co-taught with another ex-pat Brit, Professor John Brewer.  Thirty-four years later, what stands out in my memory is that these two undoubtedly brilliant academic friends and colleagues attempted to out-Popinjay one another with Flock of Seagull fashions and multi-coloured spectacle frames.  The class was brilliant.  It made me feel that, on the whole, we, the Brits, were the good guys, and could be proud of our heritage, history, culture and tolerance.

Sir Simon was in the news this week to comment on the protests against memorials across the land, these built or named to celebrate “Great” British historical figures from Baden-Powell (a Nazi sympathiser), to Colston (a slave owner), to Gladstone (supporter of the pro-slavery Confederacy) and to Robert Peel Jr (son of an anti-abolitionist) et al.  I’m with Schama when he says that if it was good enough for the Romans to melt down the statues of their fallen emperors for coinage, it’s certainly fine to dispose of the statue of a man, namely Edward Colston, whose riches came, at least in large part, from the blood, sweat and toil of slave labour.

If a protest captures the imagination, wins hearts and gains mass support, as Black Lives Matter has undoubtedly done, then progressive changes happen and we should celebrate them.  This especially if we are challenged to think critically about our existing assumptions.  But the right to protest is a gift, a gift actually achieved through our complicated and murky history, built by men and women who can never be judged unimpeachable by contemporary norms and contexts, given to us by an imperfect democracy which we abuse at our peril.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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• Harrogate needs to know what the long term future of the NHS Nightingale 
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Strayside Sunday is our weekly political column written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party:

In the days after Boris Johnson introduced lockdown on March 24th, I wrote in the Yorkshire Post and Stray Ferret in praise of the Prime Minister’s leadership and in praise of the substance and effectiveness of government communication at the time. 11 weeks later the PM’S moral leadership is under threat and the Government’s initial clarity of communication has been lost.

This week, hot on the heels of the credibility-sapping Cummings affair, the government has asked for, and succeeded in bringing, all members from every constituency in the land back to parliament.  Observing social distancing requirements, it took MPs 90 minutes to make their way through the queue to vote for a measure that disenfranchises any MP with an underlying health condition, or who is isolated for family reasons. This cannot be sustainable.

As parliament will soon be rehoused to make way for the pending multi-billion renovation of the Palace of Westminster, the Government should have grasped the opportunity for a continued virtual parliament, embracing technology in circumstances that make it both possible and advisable: Saving money for the taxpayer; repatriating MP’s to spend more time in their constituencies; closer and more accountable to the people they represent.  Little wonder that Harrogate and Ripon’s own ‘virtual’ MPs, Andrew Jones and Julian Smith, both voted to return to Westminster.

Now that both MPs are back in the capital, perhaps they could ask ministers for urgent clarification about the future of Harrogate’s Nightingale Hospital, thankfully under-utilised for covid cases, which, from Friday past, was being used to provide CT scans for non-covid patients. In the “Before Times” Harrogate relied greatly on the income from conferences and attendees.

The NHS’s contract to use the Convention Centre ends on June 30th.  Given the centrality of the centre to Harrogate’s economic future we need urgent information from the council about the plans for it. It may well be that the Department of Health and Social Care is hedging specialist beds capacity against a covid ‘second wave’ spike. It might just be that a decision is pending. Either way, any plan to get the town’s economy back on its feet needs the Convention Centre convening again, not least to generate some proportion of the £57m economic benefit it claimed to bring to the town in 2017/18.  Even the public acknowledgement of uncertainty by Harrogate Borough Councillors Cooper and Swift is better communication than saying nothing at all and signals to the local business community that they need to make contingent plans for a much straitened economic future.

No political column this week can fail to mention the killing of George Floyd.  As of writing, the charge against Minneapolis policemen, Derek Chauvin, has been elevated to second-degree murder and the other three officers face counts of aiding and abetting murder. Mr Floyd’s death was caught on video and, thanks to social media ‘shares,’ has now been seen by millions around the globe.

On Tuesday, activists asked us all to post a “Blackout Tuesday” black disc in place of our social media profile pictures and asked that we spend our time understanding how to combat the innate and institutionalised racism that the organisers say we are all guilty of, because we were born into white privilege.  While it is undeniable that the good and, let’s face it, mostly white burghers of genteel Harrogate cannot in any way appreciate the lived experience of an urban black Minnesotan, to extrapolate from that to a blanket charge of racism is wrong headed and dangerous.

Which is a clue for those of you who’ve asked why I won’t participate in discussion on social media.  A battle of ideas fought on social media can’t possibly have the space, tolerance and reasoned discourse needed if we are to bottom out loaded subjects like race and make progress toward real equality together.

I don’t believe it is possible or even wise to attempt to substantiate reason and complexity in 280 characters or, as Twitter says ‘less’ (when of course it should say ‘fewer’).  Titbits of virtue signalling, local bores, selfie whores, moaners and the ‘let’s all pile on kicking of those who made mistakes years ago, in contexts long forgotten’, are not of interest and gladden neither heart nor soul.

I celebrate the power of social media to reveal acts of criminal violence such as the killing of George Floyd but I also denigrate its dumbing down and silencing of real public discourse.

Some things are as simple as black and white; it’s just that most things are not.  Things in the public realm are and should be difficult. Reaching agreement and achieving compromise asks the best of us, while, IMHO (sigh), social media amplifies the worst.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.