Channel 4 News asks “Is Luton broken?”

It has taken me a little while to write about this week’s Channel 4 News report where Jon Snow visited the town to ask if Luton is emblematic of broken Britain. This is partly because I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it.

I think the report was an honest and accurate picture of the issues faced by the town and the attitudes of many residents to those challenges. Maybe it gave a slightly too negative picture. There are lots of positives about Luton that I could point to that weren’t covered. Yet in saying that, I am wary of appearing to want to wish away the very real difficulties that we face. I think the real problem is that the report raised more questions than it answered.

As a local politician and councillor it is good to have such a salutary reminder of just how big the challenges are. It is also good to be brought up short by just how much the political discourse I see in the town seems so divorced from the reality that Luton’s people face. In particular, the antics of Margaret Moran and the clashing egos of those parliamentary candidates that I have been writing about on this blog over the last few weeks seems a world away from the realities depicted in the Channel 4 news report.

Anyway, watch the report and see what you make of it;

This content was originally posted on my old Strange Thoughts blog.