20/12/2013 Look North (Yorkshire)

Welcome to Friday's Look North. Tonight, a random, cruel and

motiveless killing. Simon Holdsworth's family appeal for help

in finding the person responsible for his murder in Sheffield.

Has happened to Simon has devastated our lives. We are all such a close

family. This has left a huge hole in all of us. We'll be hearing more

from them in a minute. Also tonight.

Addicted to painkillers. Why thousands of people in Yorkshire

could be hooked on drugs prescribed by their GP.

They're not just for laughs, but a serious business. How pantos help

swell the coffers of the region's theatres.

And, it was a cold and frosty start this morning, this was the scene

near Sheffield. We have got some wet and windy weather on the cards this

evening. I am back later in the details.

Good evening. The mother and partner of

36`year`old Simon Holdsworth, murdered as he returned home in

Sheffield late on Monday night, have made emotional appeals today for

help to solve what's been called a random, cruel and motiveless

killing. Christine Holdsworth said Simon had been the loveliest son in

the world. His fiancee Carline said all the plans they'd carefully laid

for a wonderful wedding and honeymoon next year had been torn

from her and her son. Our Crime Correspondent John Cundy's report

contains some flash photography. He was over the moon to be getting

married next year. He loved his fiancee and little son so very much.

As much as we all loved him, too. A mother's anguish at the loss of a

son. You cannot tell anybody how much this hurts. I never thought I

would say this. But Lees, `` please, please try and help. His

fiancee says her plans for a happy future can be no more. We were so

happy as a family, with our son. It will be his fourth birthday on

Christmas Eve. We had already done the Christmas shopping, and his

presence are wrapped. But he is dead, he will not be there. A

full`scale murder enquiry began on Tuesday, hours after the discovery

of Simon's body. Flowers and tributes are still being laid. This

has been described as one of the safest areas in Sheffield, yet late

on Monday night, on these playing fields, Simon Holdsworth was

battered to death for no apparent reason. No weapon has been found,

and police are desperate for any help they can get from the

community. They have released CCTV footage from Simon as he alighted

from his bus home, minutes before his killing. Who were his fellow

passengers? Police want to trace them. We are a cute days before

Christmas. For the family, their Christmas has been destroyed in an

act of horrific violent. I do not hate the person who has done this,

because Simon was warmth and love. I just want to know why. I never

thought I would know what a broken heart felt like, but I do now. I

just want somebody to try and help us, just help in any way they can.

His family called him a loving, caring, bubbly man with a smile for

everyone. Taken from them at the age of 36.

There are warnings that thousands of people in Yorkshire could be

addicted to prescription drugs and painkillers. It comes as a committee

of MPs has suggested that up to a million and a half people across

Britain could be dependent on medication they were originally

given by doctors. Latest figures show that Yorkshire and the Humber

has the third`highest prescribing rates for opioid painkillers such as

codeine or morphine. At my worst, I was on 26 of these a

day, and now I am down to the one tablet. Amanda Steel was prescribed

morphine for chronic pain in 2009 following breast cancer surgery.

Over time, she became addicted. If she missed a dose, the withdrawal

would be terrible. I will never forget how horrific it was my

profuse sweating, feeling like I was going to pass out, a cloud over my

ears, so I could not hear everything, it sounded like I was

speaking from a bucket. She has been coming to a specialist clinic at the

lead addiction unit, set up last year to deal with patients addicted

to prescription medication. Of the patients seen by the clinic in its

first year, 72% were addicted to opiate painkiller is a most commonly

codeine or tramadol. The other 28% were addicted to sleeping tablets.

Of those, nearly a quarter were getting their drugs from the GP. 15%

were getting them from an illicit source as well as their doctor.

Crucially, there are no detailed figures collected nationally or

locally that show the wider scale of the problem. We have seen a key

patients at these units, I think it is the tip of the iceberg. There

could be thousands of patients who might not even know that they are

dependent. You think because you have been prescribed it and you

followed all of the instructions that you were supposed to, that

addiction should not necessarily happen. But I was on such high doses

because my pain call for it, I supposed it was inevitable. She will

take her last morphine tablet on Christmas Eve, bringing an end to an

addiction spanning five years. But it is feared there are thousands of

others who are not getting help. Later on Look North.

We take a look in the sewers. The damage done when you pour turkey fat

down the plughole. Yorkshire Water fights back.

Denis MacShane will have to wait until Monday to hear his sentence.

He has already admitted criminal charges of false accounting at an

earlier hearing last month. Today, a judge heard arguments from

prosecution and defence about the level of sentencing he should

receive. The judge said he needed to consider his decision over the

weekend, but that the delay gave no indication of the sentence he would

eventually hang down. We have been at the Old Bailey. What happened

today? It is a year since he resigned from the House of Commons,

a month since he admitted to the court charges of false accounting.

When he arrived at the Old Bailey, it was effectively for a hearing to

decide what sentence she should get, with arguments from prosecution

and defence. The prosecution claimed there was a deliberate intent to

deceive, because he had written 19 invoices to himself, and he had

misspelt his own name and his own address on them so that when he sent

them to officials to check at the House of Commons, it would look as

though he had not actually written them himself. That is the

prosecution, what did the defence have to say? They say he made no

personal profit, what happened was that, when this offence took place,

he had been travelling through Europe as an unpaid, an adviser to

the then Labour government, and he spent the money but he did not have

any invoices to be able to claim it back, so what he was doing, he

admits it was wrong, but `` but he said it was getting back money that

he had spent. We come back here on Monday at 10am, courtroom number

nine, the judge said the arguments were so complex that he needed the

Kintyre weekend to be able to decide what he was going to do, but he

warned Denis MacShane, although he was releasing him on bail, it was

absolutely no indication as to exactly what to expect, Monday.

In other news, police say they're getting increasingly worried for the

safety of a 15`year`old girl who's been missing from Dewsbury for ten

days. Levi Margison was last seen in Huddersfield on Wednesday last week.

She was wearing an orange hooded top, blue skinny jeans, a grey

zip`up hooded top and lilac and white Nike trainers. She's been

known to go missing before, but never for so long.

I spoke to her mother today, she was concerned to try to get her home for

Christmas, there are gifts waiting for her, she has an older sister,

they are quite close, and she is missing her desperately.

Emergency services were called to Goldthorpe in South Yorkshire today

after an explosion in a back garden. Four people have been taken to

hospital with minor injuries after a cylinder exploded at a property in

Elizabeth Street this afternoon. Fire`fighters gave first aid to the

casualties, who were then taken to hospital. North Yorkshire Police

have released video footage of a woman who overturned her car near

Skipton. They say it's to highlight the

dangers of drink driving. Deborah Anderson was more than three times

the legal limit when she crashed on the B6265 at Hedden in October.

Today, she was sentenced to 250 hours unpaid work and banned from

driving for three years. She also received a 12`month supervised

community order. A West Yorkshire Police officer who

was shot in Leeds earlier this month is said to be making good progress

in hospital. PC Suzanne Hudson suffered several shotgun wounds in

the incident in the Headingley area of the city. James Leslie, the

37`year`old man accused of the attempted murders of PC Hudson and

her colleague PC Richard Whiteley, has been told he faces trial in

April. A man who handed his friend in to a

police station while dressed as Batman has been sentenced today for

burglary. Stan Worby made headlines around the world earlier this year

when he took his friend to a police station in Bradford. Mr Worby was

charged with burglary when police stopped a vehicle containing stolen

property. Now, he's been given a 12`month suspended sentence of six

months in prison, ordered to complete 200 hours of community

service and pay ?80 to the victim. North Yorkshire Police's

Commissioner has said she won't be taking legal action against former

Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell and his once deputy Adam Briggs to claim

back ?100,000 in allowances she says they shouldn't have received. Julia

Mulligan said the Police Authority, which she replaced last year, made

the payments in good faith. But a report has confirmed the payments

were not within the authority's legal powers. The Commissioner said

trying to recover the money through the courts would be too costly.

Meanwhile, North Yorkshire Police has agreed to buy an 8.4 acre site

in South Kilvington, near Thirsk, to build its new headquarters. The

existing HQ is a listed building in Newby Wiske, near Northallerton.

Police Commissioner Julia Mulligan says it's costly to run, difficult

to access and not suited to modern policing. Work is under way on the

design of the new building. Former Halifax and Leeds rugby

league player Graham Holroyd is to stand trial in March on four rape

charges dating back more than 20 years. The 38`year`old from Halifax

pleaded not guilty to the charges, which are alleged to have involved a

boy and a girl, when he appeared at Bradford Crown Court today. The

allegations date back to the late 1980s and early 1990s. He's been

granted bail until the trial hearing in March.

The Yorkshire Ambulance Service is preparing for one of its busiest

nights of the year. The last Friday before Christmas, also known as Mad

Friday, usually sees a sharp rise in the number of calls made to the

emergency services. On the same night last year, the Yorkshire

Ambulance Service received over 260 extra calls. That's 30% more than a

typical night. They're urging people to drink

responsibly and only call 999 in a serious or life`threatening

emergency. Next tonight, Yorkshire Water is

using a revolutionary new system to clear blocked sewers. The problem is

particularly bad at this time of year, because so much cooking fat is

discarded down sewers, where it solidifies. The new device can clear

blockages in a fraction of the time taken by conventional methods.

As revolutionary inventions go, it looks fairly unremarkable, but this

kit can clean three kilometres of blocked sewer with no roadworks and

no chemicals. It simply uses the power of air. What is happening is

that the air is being spun inside the pipe, and it creates lots of air

currents and a vortex, and that scours the inside of the sewer,

cleaning it in a very short space of time. There is a sewage pipe running

under the treatment works here, that has been blocked for 18 months.

Conventional high pressure water jets would take three weeks to clear

it. After just two hours, effectively sending a whirlwind down

the pipe, this is the result. Mortgage cleared. We have

international patents on the technology that we are using, it has

never been used outside Yorkshire so far, so this is a first. It seems to

be working very well at the moment, we are optimistic. This shows the

gunk that can accumulate in Silvers, it is always worse in

winter. Yorkshire Water hope blockages like these will be cleared

much more easily in future. The water slowly eats away at the

crease. It completely cleans the Silver, down to the base metal. The

benefit of it, they are more effective, and it will drastically

reduce the amount of flooding we have. There are 20,000 miles of

Silvers Underground in Yorkshire, plenty to keep the clean a busy. But

with no roadworks and it unobtrusive design, you may never know it has

been. Underground, it will be as clean as a whistle.

From Buckingham Palace to underground! The glamour!

Before 7pm. Preparing for their first Yorkshire

Christmas, the former Gurkha soldiers who've made their homes in

Catterick learn about a traditional Yuletide in Britain.

And, oh, no, they don't, oh, yes, they do. Christmas pantos come to

the rescue of the region's theatres. Next tonight, the York Army Museum

has been given ?1 million of Lottery money so it can undergo a complete

redesign. Since it opened 30 years ago, the museum has told the stories

of our region's soldiers and the wars they fought in. The lottery

cash will help it mark the centenary of the First World War next year.

From Victorian heroes to Victoria crosses. The battle of balaclava to

the ball more. These York Army Museum documents over 300 years of

our region's military history. Many of the artefacts are of

international significance. But the museum admits experience feels a bit

dated. It is old`fashioned, we have got poor lighting and storage, and

none of the articles are particularly accessible. We have got

an eclectic collection, but it does not really convey the stories behind

them. That is the wonderful thing that the new design will be able to

deliver. Funded by ?1 million from the National Lottery Hero, it will

bring this historic collection to a modern audience. More open spaces, a

focus on education, and a move from forced to the men who fought and

died. Trying to uncover the ethos that makes soldiers do things that

they do not want to do, the story of the infantry and the story of the

cavalry, those events have been mutually supporting, and today, we

can make them mutually supporting within the collection and tell that

story. The timing of this is no accident, next year is the centenary

of the Great War. Something not just to remember, but to learn from. It

is important that our folk understand how we got to where we

are, and the telling of the story allows us to educate another

generation and future generations of people in that history. The museum

says their focus will now be on bringing that history to a new

audience. All in time for the centenary of the war they once said

would end all wars. We will keep you posted as to how

that develops. Let's have a look at some football

now, and Danny Wilson takes charge of Barnsley for the first time since

his return to the club, and it's a nice, juicy derby with Leeds United.

Wilson rejoined as manager on Tuesday, nearly 20 years after

taking on the job last time around. His job is to keep them in the

Championship, and he can't wait for tomorrow.

It could not be better, a derby game, anything can happen, as we

know. To go there in front of 30,000 plus, taking a lot of our fans down,

they will be well heard, it promises to be a cracking game. I know him

really well, he is a friend, he went there before, he did a really good

job, I am sure he will do well. Yorkshire's Joe Root says the

England team still has plenty to play for despite losing the Ashes

down under. Root and a couple of team`mates were enjoying a day off

from cricket as they took to the racetrack. But they'll be ready for

action when the fourth Test starts in Melbourne on Boxing Day.

You have got to front up, we have been beaten like a side that has

played better, and we have got to put that right in these last two

test matches. We can do that on Boxing Day, we have got to come out

fighting and make a statement. I would have thought that Jonny

Bairstow deserves a go, Matt Prior has not been playing well.

And, one other piece of cricket news. Yorkshire's second`team coach,

Paul Farbrace, has left to become the head coach of Sri Lanka. The

club paid tribute to the huge impact he's made in his two years with

them. He is a great coach, Sri Lanka have

a gem. They've gained a reputation as brave

and fearless soldiers, but now the former Gurkhas who've made their

homes in Catterick have been showing their softer side. The men and their

families are part of a growing Nepalese community in North

Yorkshire, and this year many are looking forward to their first

traditional Christmas. A big one for the top, little ones

to go around. New beginnings, and for many, a new experience of

Christmas. The army town of Catterick is now home to one of

Britain's biggest Nepalese communities, many of them former

Gurkha soldiers who, through community projects this year, have

had their first real taste of a traditional British Christmas.

Christmas is not celebrated in Nepal in a big way, so it is different,

but it is important because they are becoming part of the community and

most of the people here have children and grandchildren, so they

are learning all of this. Myself and my family, Christmas and New Year,

we like it. Very happy. It was 2009 when Gurkhas got the right to live

in Britain, following a high`profile campaign by the actress Joanna

Lumley. Since then, thousands, like Sandip Wright, have chosen to stay.

Attracted to Catterick and its connections to the Army. People feel

like, this is our home, this is where we belong. It might be

difficult for some of us to adapt to the culture, though. This is their

home, they visit Nepal on holiday, and if England is their home, they

ought to know about Christmas. They have served the British army for 200

years, with a loyal and fearless reputation. Today, though, a gentler

side was seen, learning their first Christmas song and opening their

first Christmas stocking. Good old Yorkshire Christmas!

If you're off to the theatre over the festive season, you might be

surprised to hear just how much Yorkshire relies on the traditional

Christmas pantomime. The region's panto industry actually generates

between a quarter and half of all the money made by Yorkshire's

theatres and touring companies. The giant! For many people, it would

not be Christmas without a trip to the pantomime. Here in Wakefield,

over a quarter of their annual audience will pack into the stalls

over a five`week period. These productions are big business, and

the right choice is imperative. Firstly, for many people, it is

their first visit to the theatre, and secondly, it is a time of year

when we can make as much money as we can to support the costs of the

theatre. In years gone by, the cost was offset by funding from the

public sector, but austerity has cast a cloud and Christmas has

become more important than ever. A lot of theatres which are supported

by ourselves and the local authorities are having that

investment, it becomes even more critical, and places become even

more sensitive to having a poor Christmas. Thankfully, actually,

sales are doing really well this Christmas. It is not just the big

show stoppers fighting for audiences. In Chesterfield, this

company has an all teary emotive, focusing on preschoolers. It is

important that coming to the theatre is part of the Christmas tradition,

families bring their children. That is our next generation of audiences.

It is lovely to see Father Christmas. Coming down the chute. I

like the present. A new generation one over, box office revenue for the

future. I love a good panto, I have seen one

of them in York. I'd urge everybody to support their local pantomime,

the best time of the year. Oh, no, you don't!

Oh, yes, I do! Some photographs. It is quite a

stormy forecast, right the way through Christmas week. This is a

nice photo from yesterday. The blue skies over Knaresborough. The second

one, the sun set over Bolton Abbey. The third one, a wintry scene near

Sheffield. Is that a light snow covering? All is it a heavy

hoarfrost? You can keep your pictures coming in. Or you can tweet

me. We have got some unsettled weather like the way through next

week, but starting with this evening, wet and windy weather on

the cards. It will not be raining all day, but the showers tomorrow

could be really happy. Hale and Thunder mixed in. This will push

through tonight. Behind it, very breezy conditions. Across the

weekend and into next week, very blustery indeed. A warning for

Western Hills as we go through the next few hours, a lot of rain. You

can see how the mass of cloud has pushed in from the north`west. After

pretty decent day, the cloud has the conduct, and we have outbreaks of

rain pushing south`east. If anything, it might wake up as it

pushes further east, but it could be accompanied by a gusty wind. By the

end of the night, the rain will have cleared away south eastwards, and it

will not be as cold and frosty as it was last night. The sun will rise at

8:22am. Tomorrow, it will be a breezy,

blustery day again. It will not be raining all day long, but as well as

having dry and bright weather, we have little bands of showers pushing

through on and off. They will be very heavy in nature, squalling wind

around, Hale, thunder, and in nature, squalling wind around, Hale,

Thunder, and indeed very heavy downpours, it might mean a little

bit of the white stuff. A bit unsettled. In the heavy showers, it

will track the temperature down, it will feel quite chilly and breezy.

Through Sunday and into the beginning of next week, on Sunday,

fewer showers, we still have the theme of breezy conditions, and

there will be a queue showers in the West, but overall, a dry picture.

Christmas Eve looks like a filthy day. Wet and windy weather sweeping

in from the West, hopefully it will brighten up for Christmas Day.

That is as far as we go. We are back with our late news after the 10pm

News, at 10:25pm. We are back on Monday. Have a lovely weekend,

goodbye.