19/01/2017 South Today - Oxford


19/01/2017

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The plans that could save ?100 million, but see 400 jobs go.

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Claims that abolishing all six councils in Oxfordshire -

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and replacing them with just one - will improve public services.

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The boss trying to help homeless people after finding one

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of his employees sleeping in a wartime bunker.

:00:16.:00:19.

The campaign to put a fossil of this dinosaur on display in Oxford.

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It would be the biggest political shake-up of how council services

:00:36.:00:41.

Plans have been unveiled to abolish all six and replace them

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with a nitary authority, responsible for all services.

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Supporters claim millions of pounds would be saved every year,

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Our political editor Peter Henley reports.

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Coming soon to a letterbox near you - One Oxfordshire...

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A plan to abolish six councils and replace them with one.

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At the launch, councillors from three political parties called

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themselves the turkeys voting for Christmas, but they said

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they could save ?20 million a year to provide better services

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The savings come because we are joining services together,

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so Planning would join with Highways.

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It would be more integrated and we would make sure

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the back-office costs like HR, Finance, Collection Services,

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Customer Services - all under one roof.

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Labour county councillors back the plan because they say

:01:32.:01:34.

There is a blame culture - "That is not our problem,

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Or, "That's not our problem, that's the city's."

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It is difficult for someone vulnerable who is looking for help.

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They are offering all sorts of guarantees, particularly

:01:47.:01:51.

to Labour-run Oxford City Council, that they won't be taken over

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But there is a rival plan from the districts,

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which involves a combined authority with an elected mayor,

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something the government is looking for to devolve powers

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The other five councils say they are more in touch

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Talking to local people and businesses, they all say we need

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And if we are able to get a devolution deal, we will be able

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to get money out of government to put towards infrastructure

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improvements, such as improving roads and rail and other services

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Both plans are just draft ideas at the moment.

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The government will hope agreement can be reached between them

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Peter Henley, BBC South Today, Oxford.

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Extra police patrols are being carried out in Caversham

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after reports that two men may have tried to abduct an 11-year-old girl.

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She was approached by two men near Caversham Primary School

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A company boss who discovered one of his employees was sleeping rough

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is encouraging firms to do more to help homeless people.

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Adrian Smith runs a logistics firm in Newbury.

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He's meeting his local MP to try to get support for a scheme

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where companies take on homeless workers and offer guarantees

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For Joe, this is a trip back to what for three

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I was just having a wander one day, as you do, and I found this place.

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It was empty, just a few bricks and that.

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I think someone lived in here before.

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They obviously got found out and they tried to bury it.

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You do what you have to to survive, I suppose.

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What makes this home of last resort all the more shocking is that

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for much of the time that Joe was here, he was holding down a job.

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It certainly came as a shock to his boss, but it was also

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a discovery that the man who runs this multi-million pound business

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He would turn up for work on time, I always thought he was a little bit

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scruffy, but nothing, you know, he was working

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And then upset, really, I guess was the underlying emotion.

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Joe's tent is still pitched inside the bunker but he is now

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in a hotel paid for by his boss, while he sorts out the deposit

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He jokes that the pillbox here is just a short distance

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"I've never liked a long commute," he says, but make no mistake,

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that gallows humour was putting the bravest of faces

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on what undoubtedly was a squalid existence.

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Many of the 30 or so people getting breakfast from this

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charity in the town could tell similar stories.

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The man who helped Joe out says nobody should think themselves

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immune and he is urging other bosses to do their part.

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My stomach isn't strong enough to step over these

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I am no Boy Scout, but in my early years, when I was 16, 17,

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I spent a good few months sleeping on people's floors and sofas

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because I fell out with my parents because I knew everything

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He is neither a pariah nor someone to be pitied.

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His boss would say he's just a person making

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Joe Campbell, BBC South East Today, Newbury.

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Scientists in Oxfordshire hope a new ?50 million

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project will change the way energy is produced.

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The team, based at Culham Science Centre, are putting the final

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When finished, it will explore ways in which we can make

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Whether you are sending an e-mail, charging your phone or just watching

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the news, electricity powers almost every aspect of our lives.

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Depleting levels of coal, oil and gas mean we need to find

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And the answer to this global problem is being addressed right

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We all know about climate change, about the need to find ways

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of powering our world which do not produce CO2, carbon.

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Fusion offers the potential to be that perfect,

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It is low land use, has effectively limitless resources and is very

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When you fuse hydrogen atoms together, they give out heat.

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This heat is then used to turn water to steam,

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It is a topic that has been researched here for decades.

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Inside this complex machinery, scientists are trying to make energy

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They now hope their latest project can help give an answer

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Regular viewers of BBC South Today may remember in 2013

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when our reporter went round the fusion experiment.

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Well, fast forward four years and I am here on top

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It is a third of the size, and more importantly, it is cheaper,

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It is hoped this experiment might make fusion technology more

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As we saw with the recent Hinkley Point fission power station,

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at ?20 billion, that takes a lot to get off the ground.

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If we can reduce the cost of fusion power plants,

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it gives more chance to get these up and running and sited in cities

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Testing will begin in autumn, when the inside of this machine

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will become hotter than the sun, and the team hope the findings

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will help to shine new light on their search for

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A museum in Oxford's secured ?90,000 to help display the fossil

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The long-necked plesiosaur roamed the oceans 165 million years ago.

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The Museum of Natural History still needs another ?20,000 before

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visitors will have a chance to see it.

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This monster of the deep could soon be on show in Oxford.

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They belong to a group called plesiosaurs...

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Seen here in this reconstruction, it weighed more than 600lbs and fed

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on marine animals such as fish and shellfish.

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Behind closed doors, Juliet has the painstaking task

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of scraping away clay, millimetre by millimetre, in order

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For me, to just scrape off that clay matrix and reveal the bones

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after 165 million years is quite extraordinary, like opening

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Christmas presents, revealing a little bit more and a bit more.

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Archaeologists discovered the 165 million-year-old

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reptile bones at a quarry in Cambridgeshire in 2014.

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Now, museum bosses want to display the bones next to another plesiosaur

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It was a really unusual-looking animal.

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It had a neck of 2.5 metres long and a body of five metres long,

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with four large wing-shaped flippers and a short, stubby tail.

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We don't have anything like that today.

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For now, this Jurassic giant lies in waiting before the time

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Alexis is coming up with the weather forecast for tonight

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Very like last night we will have a widespread frost.

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It will be very chilly overnight tonight with the chance also of some

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freezing fog patches, and the fog will develop

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during the early hours of the morning and may linger

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Temperatures will fall away to around minus two Celsius

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in our towns and cities but perhaps minus four Celsius or minus five

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A lot of sunshine to start the day tomorrow, a little more cloud

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will arrive from Northern areas in the afternoon.

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Otherwise, another glorious day, a lot more sunshine than originally

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thought, with temperatures tomorrow reaching a high of

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It will feel cold despite the sunny spells.

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Through the course of tomorrow night we will have another widespread

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frost, slightly more cloud expected on Saturday, particularly

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for Western parts of the region, but a weather front moving

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in from the West and we may have the odd spot of rain

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by the evening but most places will stay dry.

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Saturday is a frosty and cold start, a cold feeling day with sunny

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As we look ahead to the rest of the weekend, Sunday will have

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very similar conditions to Saturday, although there will be slightly more

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cloud about and temperatures will really struggle with a high

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looks as though we can, a bit more cloud on Sunday. Now the national

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picture. Good evening, it will gradually get

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colder in the UK in the next few days, something we don't have to

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worry about in Australia at this time of year. Of course it's the

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Australian tennis open at the moment and there's a big storm moving

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through Melbourne at the moment. Hopefully it will have cleared

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through by the time of Andy Murray's match. We have high withers and

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light winds and some interesting contrasts despite things being very

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slow moving, with the sunshine to the south of the weather zone but

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stuck underneath the weather zone, it's been another miserably grey

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day. No doubt quite dreary with some patches of drizzle. This is how it

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looked in Staffordshire, under the weather front. In the sunshine,

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despite the Frosty start, a sparkling day and a fantastic sunset

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here in the Isle of Wight. Some areas, in parts of Northern Ireland

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that haven't seen much sunshine

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