YP Comment: Recognising the role of women. Glass ceilings need shattering

Like so many areas, a memorial to Queen Victoria is so typical of the mindset, even bias, of male-dominated councils who never thought twice about honouring their own; hence the preponderance of tributes which honour the feats of great men.

It’s an oversight that can be rectified if Leeds MP Rachel Reeves, author of an acclaimed biography of the city’s first female MP Alice Bacon, and council leader Judith Blake can secure the necessary money from a crowdfunding campaign and private sector philanthropy – there are no shortage of contenders worthy of celebration. It’s the same elsewhere. Though William Wilberforce towers over Hull, there is, at least, now belated recognition of aviator Amy Johnson – arguably the city’s most famous daughter – while Sheffield’s permanent memorial to the Women of Steel offers an object lesson in the art of the possible.

However, despite the fact that Queen Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning monarch in history, Theresa May is Prime Minister and Cressida Dick has recently become Scotland Yard’s first female commander, they are the exceptions. There has never been a female Chancellor – or shadow Chancellor – for that matter, while the Church of England has been forced to defend Philip North’s appointment as the Bishop of Sheffield due to his opposition to female clergy.

Evidence that there are still glass ceilings to be shattered before there’s real equality in public life, and the workplace where parity of pay remains an unequal struggle for some, Philip Hammond’s Budget needs to work “for all” – male and female alike. There’s much still to do before awareness-raising events like IWD are rendered redundant.

Heartless crimes

IT is one of the most heartless forms of crime – the targeting of ill and vulnerable pensioners fleeced of their hard-earned money by the unscrupulous.Sadly, such offending is now so widespread that a new taskforce has been set up in West Yorkshire to help tackle financial exploitation of the elderly through scams, fraud and doorstep crime.

Appalling recent cases include an 83-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer who lost their £786,000 life savings to mass marketing fraud and an 84-year-old who lost £164,000 to doorstep criminals. The West Yorkshire Financial Exploitation and Abuse Team has already had success in helping to secure convictions against ruthless company directors Robert Morrison and Paul Towers, who used their elderly victims as “meal tickets” in a rogue trading scam that netted them £2m as they preyed on dementia sufferers and the blind.

One of the saddest aspects of the taskforce’s work is concentrating on the financial abuse of the vulnerable by family members or carers. Just last year, Yorkshire carer Donna White was jailed for stealing from an 84-year-old woman she cared for after being caught taking money multiple times – even on Christmas Day.

White was only caught after the victim’s family became suspicious about money going missing and set up a secret camera.

While the initiative is to be welcomed, three points should be made in conclusion – regret that it should be needed, ruefulness that the trust of loved ones can’t always be taken for granted and recognition that continued vigilance is the best safeguard of all.

Fantasy trains

MAGNETIC LEVITATION may work in Shanghai which boasts the world’s fastest railway, but futuristic-sounding carriages in the sky are not needed on the trans-Pennnine route between Hull and Liverpool. The brainchild of fantasists who seem to have forgotten that their contraption would have to travel over the wind-swept Pennine hills, it actually diverts attention away from plans to upgrade links from Leeds to Manchester and vice-versa.

Though there’s political recognition that train speeds – and rail capacity – should be increased, the issue is that the sense of urgency is not shared by the powers-that-be Whitehall where transport policy invariably begins, and ends, in London. As such, it speaks volumes about the disparity in investment that passengers here will just be satisfied with some new track being laid, and with a minimum of fuss please, rather than pie-in-the-sky plans that will never get off the ground because they’re so unrealistic.