28/06/2011 North West Tonight

Good evening and welcome to North West Tonight. Our top story: 99

years after it was founded in Liverpool, TJ Hughes prepares to

enter administration, pudding 4,000 jobs at risk. It is a shame. I used

to come here with my mother. So will it make it to 100 years?

Tonight we look at the state of the region's High Street so.

Also, we are in Ireland to meet the man who reported the Moors

murderers to the police and after four decades has decided to tell

his story in depth. How do you tackle child obesity?

Here in St Helen's they are targeting the takeaway. New ones

can no longer be built within 400m of any school.

And from urban grime two beats and rhymes. The council worker who quit

pen pushing for poetry at Another blow for the region's high

streets tonight. TJ Hughes, the iconic store with jobs across the

North West, is about to go into administration just two years after

another Liverpool-born company, Woolworths went to the wall. TJ

Hughes is likely to sell all or some of its 57 stores. Thousands of

jobs could be at risk. In a moment we will report on why the North

West is suffering more than most. But first, our reporter joins us

from TJ Hughes' headquarters. In this part of Liverpool you

cannot escape the named TJ Hughes and so it has been for many years.

It was back in 1912 that Thomas J used from West Kirby set up his

first store. The company has had its ups and downs and sadly over

the past year or so there have been more downs. The 4,000 workers are

wondering whether going into administration will bring down the

shutters for good. It has been a dominant name on

Liverpool's retail landscape for just short of a century. The first

TJ Hughes opened here in 1912. News that the chain planned to call in

administrators dismayed many of its customers today. I think it is

terrible. A lot of elderly people come here. I am going in to look at

bedlinen and curtains because I am used to always buying them from

here. That is a shame. I used to come here with my mother, years ago.

It has been part of your life. sentiment alone does not make a

business profitable. The company lost millions last year. A

management team bought it out earlier this year but so far has

failed to learn things around. The past few months have seen

particularly difficult trading conditions for TJ Hughes, hence the

decision to now seek administration. It is a very sad day. A huge men,

well established. It has become a victim of the retail world in the

21st century. REPORTER: Is every place for these

companies in the 21st century? Absolutely. It is about the ability

to involve. The brand has a 57 stores across the country. Most are

here in the North West. It employs 40,000 people. The company says it

will do its best to protect jobs but these are obviously worrying

times for everyone here at TJ TJ Hughes is not alone. Let's hear

from our reporter about how this fits into a wider picture of gloom,

unfortunately. This was the moment the Woolworths

shutters came down on 100 years of high street is true. This

Liverpool-born High Street hero was the first casualty of the recession.

Today Liverpool-based TJ Hughes became the latest in a brush of

that store closes and administration. More words was not

a surprise because it was the walking wounded. -- Woolworths was

not a surprise. The difference between success and failure in

Beadell can be quite small. They have not been loss of profit or

sales for the last three years. Even the most successful of

retailers have had difficulties. Let's take a look at the numbers.

The number of shops closing in the first half of this year is almost

the same as the Hall of plastic, 820 stores, 10,500 staff so far

this year. 944 stores, almost 11,000 staff last year. The North

West is the worst hit region. In Bolton and Wigan there are one in

five shops vacant. That is just under 20%. The national average is

around 11%. One in five shopping centres have been in financial

trouble here in North West, more than in any other region. Today

President won its fight to build a new city centre. But Preston admit

they do not have the cash to pay for it and in this climate there is

The public will be consulted about plans to close inquiry desks at 29

police stations in Greater Manchester. At a meeting today, the

force said it wanted to close many of its front desks to help save

�134 million over the next four years. It believes giving victims

of crime specific appointments will be more efficient. Rather than

going in, hanging around one of the public inquiry Counters, which is

not always the best of places to be, and I think if we make appointments,

we keep those appointments, which is vitally important, people will

see that as a better service than just wandering in on the off-chance.

Figures out today show the number of people dying in accidents at

work in the North West has gone up more than a third. Two of the 23

people who lost their lives in the past year died in an industry or

accident at the Sonae plant. Trade unions say cuts in funding for the

Health and Safety Executive will now mean fewer inspections.

Cumbria has been holding a tourism summit to discuss a recent fall in

visitors to be counted. There are fears the decline could deepen

because Cumbria Tourism lost more than �1 million from its budget

when the North West Development It is almost a year since Jane

Clough was stabbed to death by her former partner outside Blackpool's

Victoria Hospital. He was on bail at the time. Jane's parents, John

and Penny, have been campaigning for changes to the law and today

they travelled to London to hear their MP lead a debate in the House

of Commons. It was about changing the bail laws.

The latest figures from 2009 show at least 27 murders were committed

by people on bail and another one was added to that grim total when

Jayne Clough was stopped last year. Today her family and friends left

blandish in the early hours to travel here and hear what they have

is the first steps in a change in Campaigning for a change in the law

they are convinced would have saved their daughter's life. Jane Clough

was murdered by her former partner, Jonathan Vass, while he was on bail

accused of nine counts of raping her. Our daughter it should still

be alive. A woman who is brave enough to report abuse and rape

should not be dead. The legal says the judge was not told of any

concerns expressed by Jane about her safety or any evidence

presented that Vass was likely to John and Penny want the law changed

to allow prosecutors to appeal bail decisions. They were in the public

gallery to hear the issue debated in Parliament. I feel that the

murder of Jayne Clough has highlighted issues in our legal

system. It raises questions over the accountability of judges. The

granting of bail. The treatment of victims of rape. Sentencing policy.

If he had been refused bail, he had the opportunity to appeal against

it. We find it ludicrous that the victim does not have a similar

right of appeal when bail is granted. After a devastating year,

John and Penny hope today can be the first step towards a change

they believe will spare other families the heartache they have

David Smith calls it his car crash - a year of his life that began

when he met Ian Brady. It ended when he witnessed the full horror

of one of the Moors murders. David reported Brady and Myra Hindley to

the police but for more than four decades he has refused to tell his

story in depth. Now, in an exclusive interview, he has called

for detectives to do more to find the one remaining victim, Keith

Bennett. At 16, I was married, I was a

father and I had a job. The boy was doing could. At 17, I was a witness.

In 1965, David Smith was married Myra Hindley's sister, Maureen. The

two couples would spend evenings together, drinking and listening to

music. Brady would drunkenly talk of plotting robberies and murders,

but the teenager thought he was joking. Was there ever a point when

you thought, something is not right here? Mare, never. -- no, never. He

was a slightly eccentric friend. One night, David walked Myra home

to the terraced house she shared with Brady in Hattersley. There he

witnessed the murder of 17 year-old Edward Evans, walking in as Brady

bludgeoned the teenager to death with an axe. The feeling of relief

was when I first got in the police car, instantly. Because you thought

he would kill you? Yes. A wooden fence now marks where 16 Wardle

Brook Avenue once stood on the end of the terrace. Such was the

public's revulsion at what happened here that the council demolished

the house. And no one has ever rebuilt on the site. David Smith

became the prosecution's chief witness at the trial of Brady and

Hindley in 1966. Both defendants tried to convince the jury that he,

too, had been involved in the murders - a lie that many believed.

In his book, he describes being beaten by strangers and watching

women spit at his baby son. David Smith has lived here in the west of

Ireland for the last 17 years and has always closely guarded his

privacy. Now, more than four decades after the Moors murders, he

has finally decided to tell his story in depth for the first time.

He says he wants his grandchildren to understand his past, and to help

find the one remaining victim whose body was never located. Police say

they have exhausted all avenues of inquiry. When I close my eyes, I

see the picture of Keith Bennett, and he has to come home. There are

areas that need looking at again. Do you have any regrets? None

whatsoever. I just think I had a little bit of a car crash, but I

survived it. Walked away from it. And others didn't? We are still

Still to come, paying tribute to a city legend. Former captain Mike

Doyle passes away at the age of 64. It was quite obvious that he was a

good player and he went on to prove that.

And eight miles of shelving, 900 years of history, and all at the

mercy of an antiquated air- conditioning unit. What is being

New takeaways have been banned from opening up within 400m of any

school in St Helen's. It is the latest idea from a council

battening childhood obesity. 38 % of 10 and 11 year-olds there are

overweight or obese. St Helens and Halton Primary Care Trust say

obesity cost it �28 million in two days and and 10 and it estimates it

will rise to �36 million by 2015. The council is pointing its finger

to fast food. Home time in a Thatto Heath.

Takeaways nearby. From now on, any new ones will be banned. It is a

good idea but it is a bit late. We have so many. So the council is

setting out exclusion zones. 400m wide, they will surround all

schools and sixth-form colleges. No new takeaways allowed. We have 161

takeaways in the borough and that is enough to serve our community.

We are saying enough is enough and we are using a robust planning

policy for to attempt to prevent further takeaways opening,

especially near our schools. There have been trying to tackle obesity

for some time here. They are making progress but that does because they

would like and the consequences, they say, are grave. Children who

are obese when they are younger get fatter as they get older and by the

time they get into adulthood, they are becoming very overweight.

this take away in Cowley, Darie is serving up fish and chips. At the

secondary school down the road, older children often come in.

Having to walk further, he says, will not put them off. People will

eat whatever they want to eat. Simple as that. And most people in

St Helens Town Centre agreed. they are going to eat chips, they

are going to eat chips. The council can and will do nothing about

takeaways that already exist close to schools and with so many already

doing business, it remains to be seen how much difference this new

policy can make. Earlier ice-pick to Tam Fry from

the National Obesity Forum, which campaigns for better awareness. --

earlier I spoke to Tam Fry. He said similar exclusion zones in other

places were a success. It is really incumbent on the schools to make it

a success, because they have got to offer something to the children

which is better than going outside. If they are really going to make it

work, they have to look at their own canteen system and make quite

sure the food on offer is going to be attracted to the children.

organisation advocates getting to children before they even enter

primary school, so weighing and measuring them every year from

about one years old. Why isn't that happening? If you want me to give

the political reply, it is perhaps because we have no money to do it

but actually, what should be the happen is that we should bite the

bullet, find the money and do this kind of measuring from the age of

one, because at that point, you can pick up as early as possible and

healthy weight gain. Once you have established that, you can intervene

to make the quality changes which are necessary. One about those

parents who say, we do not want a nanny state? I would say to the

parents, do you want your children to be fat or not? If you follow

that regime, the parents will be happy in knowing that their

children, who are putting on a healthy weight, can actually be

held to a healthy lifestyle, healthy weight. The prospect of

having fat children because they have gone unnoticed throughout

their early years, would not be what most parents wanted. What

resistance are you finding here, governmental or parental? It is

many governmental? The Government is holding back. -- it is mainly

governmental. Last week a report came out for the Obama

administration which said that clearly we have to do this whether

the parents like it or not, because the quality of the children is

deteriorating so much that the expense to the state, and that is

to say here in the NHS, is at such a high level that we have to take

this kind of action. Tam Fry is speaking to me a little earlier.

You have been telling us what do you think. One viewer was horrified

at the proposed ban on takeaways. He contacted us on Facebook to say

he hopes it is not his council doing it because he loves his fish

and chip suppers. We should point out, it is new takeaways near

schools. A viewer originally from Macclesfield's says it is parents

who needs -- need to take responsibility. A taxi driver from

sale treated us to say surely the answer is to teach -- keep the

score -- keep children in school at lunch time. Chris Mason greeted us

to say banning takeaways from near schools does not go far enough.

Canteens should not be allowed to serve food with batting and under

16 year-olds should not be allowed in sweet shops on their own. --

Next tonight, the death of a former Manchester City captain. Mike Doyle,

a member of the great side of the 1960s and 1970s, has passed away

aged 64. He ended his career at Bolton and Rochdale but will be

best remembered as part of the glittering City team that included

Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee and Francis Lee. Stuart Flinders

recalls a City legend. Across to Mike Doyle... He won his

place in the hearts of City fans by once declaring before a match, I

hate United. He won a league title, the FA Cup, two League Cups and the

European Cup Winners' Cup. He played 448 times for Manchester

City. To play that many matches for a team so successful, you have to

be good. Fred was an apprentice at City when Doyle joined the club

from Stockport boys. I remember him walking through the door for the

very first time. He was a very confident young man because that

was in his nature. He always knew he was a good player. He went on to

prove it. Mike Doyle despair as he watched City struggle in later

years. I am gutted. I am embarrassed. City may have entered

a period of promise now but for many years, Mike Doyle was a

reminder of how long it had been since the club enjoyed success. A

time when commentators... Still used phrases like by Germany. --

bijinniny. He moved on to state before spending his final seasons

at Stockport and Rochdale. He died after being treated for liver

failure. He was 64. A former team- mate said tonight he was the heart

and soul of Manchester City. I saw him play many times. It holds

millions of documents and centuries of history on its eight miles of

shelving. But priceless treasures in the Lancashire Record Office are

at the mercy of an air-conditioning system that is well past its sell-

by date. The good news is that the system is being replaced. The bad

news is the archives will be closed to the public while the work is

carried out. Dig deep in the Lancashire archive and you will be

amazed how far back you go. A letter signed by Elizabeth I to

the Emperor of China in 1602. really a great privilege to be the

custodian of this material and to be able to handle it and know that

our work is preserving it for future generations. The oldest

document, this scrap of parchment - a charter from Henry I from the

12th century. The longest individual document is this one,

18ft long, listing all of the world the possessions of a woman who died

in the 16th thirties. Everything here depends on a defective air

conditioning. If they absorb too much moisture it will encourage

mould growth. If they are to drive they can crack it. Not good for

things like this, the original charter from 1301 granting a weekly

market. What has happened in the last ten years is we have seen an

increase in warm, as you Midsummer's and the air-

conditioning has not been able to cope. -- warm, humid summers.

record office shirts at the end of this week until October for a �1

million upgrade, too perfectly preserved prices but -- examples

from the past. It is incredibly special and you feel it a real

privilege to be careful to touch them, have spread of them, use them

for research. The raw-material of It has not been too humid here

It has been fresher. He is a comparison for you. Week reached 29

Celsius in Manchester yesterday. Much more bearable for us today. We

have gone from being well above the average to a little below the

average in the space of 24 hours and we have lost the humidity as

well. And we had the sunshine at least. We have been sandwiched

between two lines of showers. A glorious afternoon across the Isle

of Man. So we will keep these dry, clear conditions as we go through

the night. We have that clear, north-westerly airflow now. It will

Tomorrow morning, we will have plenty of sunshine once again from

the beginning. You will have to be quick to enjoy it that because the

cloud will be moving in with showers in the morning. Some of the

showers will be quite lively but they will fade away as we go

towards the evening. Temperatures similar to today. The pressure is

building so we will say goodbye to the rain clouds for a while. Drive

towards the end of the week and He went from the streets of Salford

to a field somewhere in Somerset. Sounds quite poetic, doesn't it?

But that is just what has happened to Tony Walsh. He took redundancy

from the city council to become poet in residence at the

Glastonbury festival. Eno has been to meet him. Why Glastonbury?

two months after quitting his job in Salford, Tony Walsh is playing

the biggest gig of his life ever - Glastonbury. It is for the

atmosphere, always fun. The sun rise and the sunset. But changing

careers has not been an easy decision for Tony. He spent many

years helping to regenerate Salford, like the transformation of these

back alleys, now turned into beautiful gardens. So how do you go

from regeneration to poetry? I have been writing all my life. Since I

was five or six. I kept Perrins in a draw. I am 45 now. A few years

ago I went to an open mike poetry night. They seemed to like my poems.

Approximately 200,000 people turned up at the festival this year to see

some of the finest in the business performing. So how did it actually

feel to play Glastonbury? It is every performer a's dream to walk

on to stage and say, good afternoon, Glastonbury! It was fantastic. It

is hard to convey it to people that have not been. If you think about

Beyonce on the main stage, that is fantastic. I am on a real roller

coaster at the moment. Now and again I look down and it is quite

scary, the financial side, let's be honest. I have two children and a

mortgage. I said, why don't we take strength here, as a mighty flock of

doves with a single word to change the world... So how well did his

set go down at the festival? Brilliant, really good. The bit

about how you feel in the morning... I enjoyed the yoga. It was nice to

hear it spoken out loud because Onwards and upwards for Tony, I