Film Review: Crust

Film: Crust (2003) Mark Locke

Shown by Stirchley Happenings at Stirchley Working Men's Club, Birmingham (May 16th 2013)

A film about a West Midlands publican seeking his dreams with a 7 foot mutant crustacean and learning some lessons about life along the way. Crust is a charming, low budget film which has at its heart a story about what makes life meaningful.

The put-upon downtrodden Bill Simmonds (played by Kevin McNally) sees a chance of redemption from a fighting shrimp that the wheeling dealing Hamid Choudhury (Madhav Sharma) happens to possess. Exactly why a 7 foot Mantis Shrimp from tropical climes has turned up in the West Midlands is never answered since any questions about the shrimp is responded to with the phrase "its the 21st century, who gives a shit!". Yet despite yourself, you do start to care about the three protagonists of Bill and his partners in crime Steve Crump (Perry Fitzpatrick) and Shaz Smyth (Louise Mardenborough) as they head to the bright lights of London to attempt to pitch the fighting crustacean to TV companies. You even begin to care about the shrimp which looks like this:

The reason why you care is that writer/director Mark Locke has a deft touch in terms of both the humour and pathos (yes pathos) elicited from McNally, Fitzpatrick and Mardenborough as their characters have their illusions stripped from them. Locke even manages to draw out Ulrika Jonsson finest acting performance during her cameo appearance. The film's warmth carried me throughout and had me laughing throughout from the sharp humour in the dialogue to the absurdism of the film's climax.

I recommend that this film is watched in good company after a couple of beers and allow yourself to be carried away by its charm.

Many thanks to Stirchley Happenings and the IWW union for showing this tonight. For those wanting to know the shady background as to how the film came into existence then I recommend Adam Curtis' blog The Bitch, the Stud and the Prawn.

Birmingham's Autism Strategy for Adults consultation launch

It was the 6th World Autism Awareness Day on April 2nd as officially designated by the United Nations General Assembly to raise awareness of autism across all communities and societies. You may not have heard of WAAD but those involved in local government and the NHS across the UK are having to raise autism awareness among their staff. Not for a day but permanently.

The 2009 Autism Act and the subsequent national strategy published in March 2010 Fulfilling and rewarding lives: the strategy for adults with autism in England places statutory duties on local authorities and NHS bodies to develop strategies for increased awareness of autism and adaptation of service provision to enable autistic users to access services easier. The act also calls for reasonable adjustments to remove barriers to access and participation in public life.

And on World Autism Awareness Day at Think Tank, Millennium Point, the Birmingham Autism Partnership Board (BAPB) officially launched its Autism Strategy for Adults in Birmingham 2013-2016 as a consultation document.

Presenting the strategy were councillor Steve Bedser, Birmingham City Council Cabinet Member for Health & Wellbeing, Dr Ashok Roy, Chair of the BAPB who specialises in the psychiatry of learning disabilities, and Jonathan Shephard, Chief Executive of Autism West Midlands. Sitting amongst the audience were senior BCC officers who are grappling with the implications for service delivery from the budget cuts announced up to 2016-17. Dr Roy stated that this was an optimistic strategy. In this age of austerity for Birmingham, optimism is at least a free commodity.

The draft strategy sets out six areas where the BAPB wants to deliver progress: implement training and raise awareness; implement pathways for diagnosis; improve on opportunities for employment & education; improve access to services; improve transitions from childhood; and improve interactions with the criminal justice system.

These are all worthy challenges to pursue in aid of a more inclusive city. While there has been considerable attention to autism in childhood there remains large gaps in the understanding of how autistic adults in society function despite autism being a life-long condition. There were considerable difficulties in obtaining information about adult autistic service users because they often weren't being recorded. For example NHS trusts were particularly weak at information recording although this is changing with the NICE clinical guidelines issued in June last year.

Yet the barriers to inclusiveness for those on the autistic spectrum are not as obvious as say providing an access ramp for wheelchair users. Rather, it requires a cultural shift across service provisions within the NHS and local government to meet the needs of users with an autistic spectrum disorder. This represents some interesting challenges in terms of both recognition of someone on the spectrum and making reasonable adjustments for them by front-line public sector service staff.

It is worth reflecting on this truism: "if you met someone with autism, you met one person with autism". Autism is a developmental disorder where the brain has developed differently which can come from a myriad of physical causes. How someone's autism presents itself is diverse. Having an awareness of autism doesn't necessitate an understanding of autism or identifying what reasonable adjustments should be made when presented with an individual on the spectrum. Recognising a difference is merely the start of a communication process and requires freedom of agency from service staff which may not always be possible if the service provision is proscriptive in nature.

A major challenge to the ambitions of this strategy is the austerity that Birmingham is currently experiencing. Whilst the establishment of the Health and Wellbeing Board required by the 2012 Health & Social Care Act will support the strategy through a specific Joint Strategic Needs Assessment for autism, this remains the most challenging of times to attempt to reconfigure service provision and provide additional services given the cost pressures being experienced.

Yet the process currently being undertaken in preparation for BCC's consultation this summer on Adult Social Care provision from 2014 onwards should be identifying current costs being incurred to the city by those on the autistic spectrum across department budgets where possible. If genuine societal costs can be identified then some modelling can be undertaken to assess the cost-effectiveness of preventative work. This could then be widen out to involve the Police & Crime Commissioner/panel and NHS bodies which would also improve data gathering and assessment. From such work can negotiations for joint funding of preventative services or submissions for central funding take place as proposals could then be evidenced.

Therefore the biggest challenge facing an autism strategy for adults is the quality of information available and the lack of information from certain sectors. Whilst the BAPB has identified areas that will improve the lives of autistic adults if implemented, it does so from an incomplete picture of the city. If by 2016 we have considerably more quantitative and qualitative data from across the public sector then there could be a more informed debate in terms of service design rather than just spreading awareness. Such information would also inform a more detailed level of scrutiny regarding outcomes as they impact the city rather than just internal project milestones and outcomes. 

This strategy document is a welcome step forward for the city's autistic inhabitants and their families. The challenges will be how far the targets and/or aspirations laid out are able to be delivered and whether in 2016 the city has a more detailed picture of the needs of autistic adults within its boundaries. For this strategy to be truly excellent, a specific commitment to information gathering is required for me. 

The consultation runs until the 26th of June and information can be found here.

The tactical errors that cost Portpin control of Portsmouth Football Club

There's been a lot to take in over the last month from when Portpin asking for peace terms the night before the court hearing and the agonising wait for terms to be agreed and accepted by Mr Justice Peter Smith in courtroom 30 of the Rolls Building. The scramble to get the paperwork completed in order was achieved ahead of a celebratory and exuberant Fratton Park crowd with Sheffield Utd playing the perfect party guests. Since then, Guy Whittingham has been appointed permanent manager, players have started to sign on for the League Two adventure, and new senior off-field staff have arrived in the form of CEO Mark Catlin and Engagement Manager Micah Hall. After five years of a spiralling drift downwards, the club is taking the steps to rebuild its foundations for a better future.

And yet this feel-good moment might not have occurred had Portpin restructured a couple of financial arrangements more carefully to legitimise their usage and therefore secured a third period of ownership. Thankfully despite the restrictions placed on Portsmouth Football Club 2010 Ltd by the Football League, old habits were difficult to contain during their tenure between October 2010 and June 2011. That period left a number of questions that Portpin were unwilling to answer in order to satisfy that they were "fit and proper" enough to pass the Owners & Directors Test of the Football League.

You might think that the behaviour that saw Pompey become the only Premier League side to enter administration would have been enough to disqualify the members of Portpin from taking ownership of a football club previously. Yet it didn't and Portpin took control in October 2010 setting an important precedent.

The rules of the Football League regarding ownership allows for a second chance for owners even if you had put a club in administration before. Whatever their misgivings, the Football League were rule-bound to give the members of Portpin a second opportunity of ownership of Portsmouth Football Club in 2010. The consequence of this was that had that period between October 2010 and June 2011 been unremarkable in terms of its governance then an application for a third period of ownership would have likely been approved.

As leopards cannot change their spots so Portpin couldn't change their behaviour from their first to their second period of ownership. Not only did they leave behind the equivalent of a burglar’s calling card for CSI to clean up in terms of unpaid debts owed but they enacted two specific financial manoeuvres which questioned their consideration as being "fit and proper". These were the transfer of the debentures on Portsmouth City Football Club Ltd to the newco Portsmouth Football Club 2010 Ltd and the Hiroshima Ltd season ticket arrangement which saw £800,000 of PFC income diverted to a Hong Kong black box.

The illegitimacies of the debentures transfer and the season ticket monies have been discussed here and here. These actions were fundamental to demonstrating Portpin's inability to pass the Owners and Directors Test. Yet had Portpin been a little bit cleverer and less short-term in their thinking then they could still be in control of Portsmouth Football Club today.

The first area where they could have been cleverer was with the debentures. No doubt there was strategic reasoning for them to accept the transferring of them by Andrew Andronikou to their newco company in January 2011. Yet with their negotiations with CSI, they could have quietly retired the transferred debentures and created a new and legitimate debenture for £17m over PFC and its assets as part of the sale agreement. Such an arrangement would have given Portpin a stronger negotiating position in dealing with the Football League and the administrators BDO as it would have allow them to show clean hands.

The second area is to do with the Hiroshima season ticket deal. Essentially the reason why the Hiroshima deal was shown to be problematic was that there weren't any goods or services that Hiroshima Ltd had provided Portsmouth Football Club 2010 Ltd. In their haste to put one over on CSI, Portpin had failed to provide a reasonable-looking debt to cross-knit with the financial arrangement agreed between themselves, Hiroshima Ltd (owned by Balram Chainrai) and Zebra Finance. This I suggest illustrates that Portpin were not thinking of a third ownership when they sold to CSI. Had they thought about covering their actions with a cloak of legitimacy then it would have been possible to muddy the waters sufficiently to justify the transaction though a paper exercise.

In both case with the debentures and the Hiroshima deal, Portpin had the opportunity to restructure these financial arrangements to 'legitimise' their existence. By not sufficiently covering their tracks gave the opportunity for the Pompey Bloggers Collective to identify the illegitimate practises which resulted in the articles written by Micah Hall and Dodgy Curry linked above. Those articles, amongst other submissions, formed the basis for some of the unanswered questions that the Football League put to Portpin surrounding their ownership of Portsmouth Football Club 2010 Ltd.

In the cold light of day, short-term and insufficient thinking during their period of ownership between October 2010 and June 2011 undermined Portpin's position in their attempt to regain control of Portsmouth Football Club for a third time. In their quieter reflective moments, I hope they understand that was their actions and inactions that cost them control. Not the administrators BDO or the PST or the bloggers or that Keith Harris couldn't substantiate a meaningful bid. They brought it upon themselves. Both the debentures and the Hiroshima issues could have been nullified making it exceedingly difficult for the Football League to refuse their application on the Owners and Directors Test.

I suspect it grates considerably.