29/11/2011 East Midlands Today

This is East Midlands Today with Dominic Heale and me, Anne Davies.

Our top story tonight: The green light at last for the A453.

The government has announced the second busiest stretch of motorway

in UK is to be improved. And mother's Christmas message to

drink-drivers. If it makes one person stop and

think and say I will get a taxi, then it is worth it, David will not

have died in vain. The innovative procedure developed

in America designed to help and eight year-old from Derbyshire walk

unaided. The Duke and Duchess of Cornwall pull a pint to help

Good evening. Welcome to Tuesday's programme.

First tonight, the Government has at last given the go-ahead for

improving one of the busiest and most congested roads in the country.

Widening the A453, which links Nottingham and the M1, has been the

top transport priority for the East Midlands for more than a decade.

Business and council leaders say dualling the road will generate

�540 million for the region and end congestion misery for motorists.

Let's join our reporter Simon Ward on a bridge over the A453. You can

see the light of commuters going home. If you have been stuck on

this road you will know the frustration of drivers and

companies held up in traffic. 32,000 cars a day use it. People

have been talking about making improvements since the early 1980s,

but finally today the government confirmed it will be widened.

Just a single carriageway in each direction, but this is the vital

linking road between the M1 and Nottingham. It took the Chancellor

just seven seconds to commit the government to Midlands road

improvements costing hundreds of millions of pounds. In the Midlands

the A453, the Kettering bypass, they will all be improved.

Donington services motorists welcomed the news.

If they are putting some money into the infrastructure to improve the

rate it will be a good thing. good dirtier. You always get stuck

on the brow of the hill getting stuck down coming back to the

roundabout. It will make things much easier, no more traffic jams,

touch wood. It has always got problems. Good move. At last.

Nottinghamshire councillors are in a buoyant mood and will still offer

�20 million to a project that could cost more than �160 million in

total. This is a major piece of road for transport in this area.

Both all goods and services, people go -- going to the airport, goods

coming from the airport, wonderful news for everybody.

The city of Nottingham also expect to benefit.

A obviously it dovetails into the tram extension up to Clifton. We

have seen both schemes as integral to the transport no work for the

staff of the city. It is the end of the road for campaigning. The next

step is to actually construct the dual carriageway. The road is a

major route in and out of Nottingham. It is essential for

transporting goods. Time is waiting snarled up in traffic and that its

deliveries. Many truck drivers say they take long did tours to avoid

the road. It is the bane of our lives. We are

very frustrated at the fact it hadn't been widened. Our vehicles

get held up on a daily basis, and it is really getting to the stage

where we are at having to tell drivers to get in other directions

to get to their destiny since such as the M one because it is so

frustrating -- their destination such as the M1. There is another

transport company with 13 vehicles, and their drivers will do anything

to avoid going on it. If it is getting late in the morning I would

use an alternative route. In order to miss it out completely. You get

held up and lose so much driving time. How do you feel about the

fact it should now be jailed? Elated. Long awaited. It is

something that will go ahead. So -- how long it takes, I do not know,

but it has got to beat a good thing for everybody. The Road haulage

Association here told me it is welcoming the expenditure on the

road, the prospect of more free- flowing traffic on the A453, and as

for the truckers, any improvement Joining us now is a member of the

Area Chamber of Commerce. Presumably money as they lost by

not having a better road? This has cost us a lot of money over a long

time. We have lost opportunities for investment, particularly in

Nottingham city because the approach has been simple. Why has

it taken so long for the government to listen? If we had the answer to

that we could answer that very well. It has taken a long time to get

here. It is a very important decision taken today. Is the devil

in the detail? Do you have further worries? Until we actually see a

precise timescale and how it will be funded, there is always still an

element of doubt. We think it is a very important decision taken today.

We have to see it builds in. used to buy as the government

approved it? Very police. What will it mean for the region? Excellent

news. The most important piece of infrastructure that needs to be

built in the area, and will improve transport links here enormously.

We still don't know when it will be built. The county council had work

could start next year. Still to come, a busy evening of

football. Jeremy's at the City ground to tell us more.

Forest, Derby and Leicester all at home. There will be a minutes

applause here before the game against Gary Speed's old club,

Leeds United, just days after his Next, a disabled boy has just

undergone an operation which could mean he'll be able to walk unaided

for the very first time. Joel Rogers had the life-changing

surgery in Bristol just a few hours ago. In the past, children have had

to travel to America for the procedure and families have had to

fund it themselves. But Joel's surgery is being paid for by NHS

Derbyshire. From Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, our health

correspondent Rob Sissons reports. Getting the television to work next

to his hospital bed seemed his biggest worry. If he was anxious

about the major Neurosurgery, he wasn't going to show it.

I am feeling fine. I am not feeling nervous. Because of his terrible

palsy, he has relied on splints as his Walker to get around. He will

be far from his classmates for the next few weeks, undergoing

physiotherapy. But he is close to their hearts. The community near

Matlock has raised money for extra physio to top up what the NHS will

pay for. In the last few years he has really become very aware of the

different and what he cannot do, and begins he cannot play. And

hopefully this will mean he is a lot more involved like he wants to

be. His operation takes hours. After removing a section of bone in

the spine, the neurosurgeon exposes spinal cord nerves. These are

divided and tested electronically. The responses from muscles reveal

which are causing spasticity, stiffness and pain in his legs.

Part of the nerve are then cut. They call it selective dorsal rise

lottery. It was developed in a mess Africa. He is the 10th patient in

the UK to undergo this -- it was developed in America. They become

more independent, improve their balance, and some of them, and

children like Joel will be able to walk independently in the future.

After the operation he will be able to finally wear something here has

always dreamed of, trainers. What sort you want?

Cool ones. Infra-red cameras in the special lab will be following his

footsteps over the next two years for Dub year-old has travelled many

miles from Derbyshire for this treatment but in many ways his

journey is only just beginning. Let's go live to rub now in Bristol.

Rob, what the latest on how Joel's operation has gone?

It has gone really well. Took about four hours. Less than expected. He

is in recovery, doing really well. He will spend a couple of days in

the high dependency unit, then a lot of work learning to walk

unaided, which will of talk -- of course take months. Fantastic news

it has gone well. So when will Joel be back in Derbyshire?

About three weeks. I would imagine with those new trainers as well.

I do hope so. I would imagine we Police have made an arrest after a

police officer was badly hurt in a hit and run incident. Mansfield

officer Diederick Coetzee remains critically ill after being knocked

off his bicycle while off duty. Today a 32-year-old man was

arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving, failure to stop at the

scene of a collision, and failure to report a crime. Families in

Leicestershire are clearing up after a burst water main flooded

five homes. The leak began around midnight on Dorset Avenue in South

Wigston. Severn Trent engineers have now stemmed the leak and say

they'll do what they can to help those whose homes have been damaged.

A mother whose son was killed by a drink driver is calling for

motorists in Leicestershire to say no to alcohol this Christmas. David

Johnson was on his motorbike when he was hit by a man driving over

the limit. It's a timely campaign as figures from Nottinghamshire

police suggest drink drivers are consuming more alcohol than ever.

Victoria Hicks reports. He was my whole world. Such a level

of life, and cheeky with it sometimes. He was a gentleman. You

have these plans and dreams for your children, and then suddenly,

they are gone. David was 33 when he was killed by a drink-driver in

Leicestershire. The impact of the crash broke every bone in his body.

He died in the arms of a stranger. As he overtook there was nowhere

for him to go so he went off straight into David and his fiancee

landed on a brick wall and had a fractured pelvis and her leg pinned.

David was flung into a drive, and he died of a ruptured aorta. It is

like somebody has just punched me in the chest and ripped my heart

out and just thrown it away. It is so painful. 125 drivers were

arrested for drink-driving in Leicestershire last Christmas. This

year's message, don't drink at all. The reason being, if you drink and

drive you are likely to get caught, you will be breathalysed, if you

get breathalysed and it proves positive you will get a ban. That

could possibly lead to the loss of a good job or even prison. The man

who killed David Johnson was sentenced to three and a half years

in prison. He served 18 months. Dawn Bycraft went to visit him.

After I had seen him and we got the whole picture came together, I came

out with the conclusion that as biased -- as bad as it is for me

and the husband, I still feel sorry for him, because he has got to live

with the fact that for a couple of extra pints he has taken a life. If

by what I have said today just makes one person stop and think and

say I will get a taxi, and save one person from going through the pain

I am going through, then it is worth it, David will not have died

in vain. More than 900 schools in the East

Midlands are expected to close tomorrow as public sector workers

go on strike. They're taking action over proposed pension changes. But

as Kylie Pentelow explains, it's not just schools that will be

affected. For parents, school closures will

mean the biggest disruption tomorrow. Here are the latest

figures: In Nottinghamshire, more than 380 schools are closing. The

number in Leicestershire and Rutland is 330 and in Derbyshire

there are expected to be at least 210 closures. But one education

union in Derby is against the strikes.

We don't believe we should involve children in industrial disputes. It

is as simple as that. The children come first. They are not our

employers, yet they and their parents are the ones who suffer,

when teachers take strike action and we don't believe that is right.

Hospitals too are preparing for their staff to take action. Bosses

in Nottingham say they've already let patients know if they'll be

inconvenienced and only ten operations have been postponed. And

they say tomorrow, the most urgent medical cases will be protected

from the impact of the strikes. We haven't had industrial action in

the health service since the ambulance strike in 1989, so it is

something we are not used to as employers. In fairness, our staff

are not used to doing it. I think for most of them it is a big step

they are planning to take. We are concerned to make sure that the

days are not repeated into next year, and we do believe people are

doing their very best to maintain emergency services.

So what do you think about the strike action? Well we've been out

in the East Midlands today and there certainly isn't united

opinion. I don't normally agree with strikes

because you get nothing out of it, you have lost money. But I agree

with this because they have paid into it, they are entitled to get

it out. The country is in a mess and the public sector are no

different from the private sector who are suffering badly. So, we are

all in this together. I have a lot of sympathy for them. They have

been left in a position where they don't have any choice.

Inconvenience for me with my three- year-old, day of school and

everything. But I can understand where they're coming from.

Everybody has got a right to do what they are doing. If it was in

the private sector, there would be exactly the same situation that a

up you will not get any more money and you will the people in the

lurch. The private sector, didn't get the gold-plated things they get,

it is ridiculous. Well whatever your opinion, the strikes are

taking place tomorrow. And if you want to know the latest on school

closures and how it could affect you, go to your Local BBC radio

station and online. Nearly half a billion people have

been infected with it and a child dies from it every 45 seconds. We

are talking about malaria. But now a major breakthrough in how the

parasite survives in the bloodstream has been discovered.

One of the teams which made the discovery is based at Leicester

University, so that's where our reporter Jonathan Cecil went today.

If they bite you it can hurt, but the female mosquito can also

transferred their sleep -- deadly malaria parasite. -- can also

transfer. A child dies every 45 seconds from the disease. Now,

after 10 years of research, there has been a breakthrough. It

happened in part right here in the East Midlands. The team has

discovered how the parasite survives in the bloodstream of its

victims. We have identified a group of more than 30 proteins which are

essential in the parasite. That means if we inhibit or stop the

action of any one of those 30, you will stop the parasite from growing,

and you will kill the parasite. next stage is to design and build a

drug that can stop one of these proteins, but that will not be easy.

Yearly half a billion people in the world have malaria at the moment.

Many are children. Many of those are pregnant women. You drug has to

be incredibly safe. That is why it takes so long to develop these

drugs, because it is all about developing a safe drug that is also

going to work. But it could take up to another 10 years before a

complete cure against this deadly Good work going on there in at

Leicester. Still to come on the programme: The

weather switches into early winter mode.

As we near the beginning of December, it is a rather topsy-

turvy weather story. One moment, wet and windy, the next, still

windy but the cloud clears. Time to Was that a star or the police

helicopter? Anna was the star. We have got the sport with another

star here. More than 60,000 football fans across Derby,

Leicester and Nottingham will pay their tribute to Gary Speed tonight.

The 42-year-old manager of Wales died at the weekend. We've a full

programme of matches tonight. The picture behind me from Leeds

explains why we will start with the City Ground. It is where the

occasion will be the most poignant. The Official tribute will be a

minute's applause before kick-off, but the Leeds United fans also plan

to sing Gary Speed's name for 11 minutes starting in the 11th minute,

in memory of their great number 11. It will be a strange feeling where

fans will unite. Give a lot of support to an individual who has

had such a successful career. was a member of the Leeds team that

won the title in 1992. He joined the club as a teenager on the same

day as the man managing Leeds tonight. Two innocent 14 euros who

came on the morning of the game, signed the forms with Mr Saunders,

the chief scout, and Eddie was the manager. That was the first time we

came across each other for top 20 years down the line, it seems like

yesterday we were starting off together. Obviously, very difficult

to understand and work out why this has happened. At times like this

the football world comes together and the Nottingham Forest fans were

joined in the applause. It is a huge loss. He was one of the first

people to text me when I got the Nottingham Forest a job. I had

spoken to him a few times. He is an absolute gentleman, that has been

mentioned quite a few times. Aside from that, in football terms,

Leeds are 5th, Forest are 20th. Four wins and a Steve Cotterill but

that doesn't seem so important on what is bound to be an emotional

night -- under Steve Cotterill. At Leicester's King Power Stadium

there'll be a minutes applause before the game for Gary Speed.

It'll be poignant for one City player in particular. Mark Shardlow

is at tonight's game. We heard from him briefly yesterday but when the

teams come out of the tunnel and stand for the minute applause it

will mean more to one young man and many others, that is Andy King. He

played against Gary Speed as a teenager down here for Leicester,

but more significantly when Gary Speed was appointed manager of

Wales he gave Andy King his international debut. Myself

personally, I will be looking for a performance to show him how

thankful I am for what he has done for my career. The one thing I have

said, he wouldn't want anybody to miss any football because of what

has happened. He loved football, he was a great football man. The best

way to do it is go out and play and show him, and really pay your

respect for him by playing football. As for tonight's game Nigel

Pearson's first two matches in charge have resulted in a win and a

draw. Another winner will make sure Leicester are firmly knocking on

Our third side in action is Derby County where memories of Speed are

also strong. At Pride Park before the visit of Brighton was Ross

Fletcher. Everything ready for Derby County

against Brighton but like at Leicester and Nottingham Forest a

minute applause to remember Gary Speed. Striker played under him at

Sheffield United and things were not going so well but here is the

measure of Gary Speed, he offered to pay bonuses out of his own

pocket when Jamie helped Sheffield United, such a mark of the man.

always had the time to talk to you. If you needed -- if you needed

advice he would help you. He would do anything for you. It is

obviously a sad day for football, I would love to score for him. It is

just one of them things. An emotional night for everybody

involved. Derby County need a result. Four straight defeats has

seen him go from second in the table to 15th in just a couple of

months. Let's hope that changes tonight against Brighton.

There'll be commentary on all the games on your BBC Local Radio

station and you'll get first chance to see the highlights in our late

bulletin tonight. And we'll have more here tomorrow night.

A lot happening on the Late News tonight.

It's generally agreed that every rural village needs a thriving shop

and a good pub. So bring the two together and you've got the perfect

combination. That's what a scheme called Pub is The Hub is all about

and it comes with royal approval. It was the idea of The Prince of

Wales, and with his wife The Duchess of Cornwall, he's been to

visit a Lincolnshire success story, a pub that's really doing well

despite the tough climate. Quentin Rayner's report contains flash

photography. The Cholmeley Arms welcomed Their

Royal visitors with open arms. Their support for rural pubs is

well known. This one and its adjoining farm shop near Grantham

are proof the pub is -- the scheme does work. It is close to the

Prince's heart. He came up with the not-for-profit idea 10 years ago as

part of his Rural Action programme. The pub had closed before they to

go over three years ago. But by tapping into the schemes advice on

a project funding the pub was refurbished, and a farm shop opened

in a derelict barn. Three couples in the last two months have sent --

said to us they are looking to diversify to get the trade-in. The

scheme has then people to see how things work here, and they were so

impressed getting that guidance. Any help for pubs is welcomed by

the trade at a time when the beer sales are at their lowest since the

Great Depression did up 14 pubs each week are closing in the UK.

Best is partly due to the rising tax. 27,000 jobs could be saved if

further proposed tax rises were scrapped. We have probably done 30

or 40 schemes. Some have been immensely successful, everything

from post offices to school meals, two obituaries and things like this.

Anything that adds to the village - They tasted a drop of Newton strop,

although the prince bought the press would missing out on the

local brew. -- new to's Drop. I think a pub selling chocolate

cake could be a marriage made in heaven. We saw a twinkling little

star earlier, he has another one. Kylie thinks that is Jupiter.

We have had a rather wet and windy afternoon. The rain has now cleared

away. It will be staying windy This photo was taken a couple of

weeks ago in the rain. Please send them into us. Let's have a look at

the pressure track. You can see a friend that has cleared up across

the East. -- pressure chart. -- you can see that front. We have got

colder air coming in. The isobars are staying a fairly tight,

continuing to be windy. The rain has pushed away a cross towards

Lincolnshire. Behind it, mostly dry, you may just note the odd passing

shower. Mostly clear skies. Temperatures will fall to four

degrees. Because his days when the overnight it should be frost-free.

You might just get attached in rural parts. -- a touch. Showers

may develop across Derbyshire and North Nottinghamshire, but

beautiful sunshine as we go into the afternoon. Temperatures

reaching a maximum of 10 degrees, but staying fairly breezy so it

will feel quite cold. More rain to come, Wednesday evening, tried to

start, this area of rain will move in. Then another band of rain will

push its way in from the West. But once that clears, Thursday will be

dry. We will see broken cloud, sunny spells. The wind will

gradually ease on Thursday. Much more settled day to come. Friday,

one of those perfect winter's days. Widespread frost in the morning.

Lot of sunshine in the afternoon. To make the most of it. There will

be still some unsettled weather at the weekend.