Police say 16 drink and drug driving arrests made over the weekend.

North Yorkshire Police made 16 arrests over the weekend (12/13 December) as part of Operation Attention, their ongoing campaign to get drink and drug drivers off the roads.

Shockingly 12 arrests were made on Sunday alone, with one 67 -year-old man returning a alcohol reading of 92 – the third highest reading seen so far in this campaign, over two and a half times the legal limit.

Another worrying statistic was the number of drug driving arrests made this weekend. Of the 16 arrests made – a quarter were for drug driving.

This brings the total number of arrests made to 48 in just over two weeks of the campaign. A breakdown of the results so far:

13 drug driving related
35 drink driving related
8 arrests made where alcohol levels were more than double the legal limit.
Highest reading so far – 141 – four times the legal limit. (Provided by a 44-year-old woman arrested in S’boro)
40 men arrested.
8 women arrested.
10% arrests – charged with failed to provide.

Commenting on the progress of Operation Attention so far, Sgt Andy Morton of the Roads Policing Group said “The weekend’s activity shows that if people choose to break the law and drive under the influence of drink or drugs – we are out in force and waiting to catch them. We are determined to remove drink and drug drivers from the roads, so that they don’t pose a danger to law-abiding motorists.”

“If you are going out to have a drink, please ensure you have thought about how you will get home at the end of the night – leave your car at home.”

“We continue to appeal to members of the public that if they know of someone driving under the influence of drink or drugs – please contact North Yorkshire Police on 101 or report anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.”

Rats in elderly persons accommodation

Some people’s nightmare.

A report in The Press claimed that a rat had bitten an elderly resident living in the Councils Glen Lodge sheltered accommodation. The incident happened in June. The victim was hospitalised and – several months later – died.

A Council official is quoted as saying

“It is with regret that, despite extensive efforts by professional experts, environmental health and independent inspectors, we have been unable to determine the exact circumstances of how Mrs Hudson’s injuries occurred”.

Public confidence is a fragile commodity so we find it surprising that the incident hasn’t apparently been considered though the Councils committee system.

An open and honest approach is all the relatives concerned could reasonably ask.

The Council could remedy the defect by asking for a report to be considered at the meeting of its Adult Social Care scrutiny committee next week, The committee has a light agenda.

Dr Dave Cowan, leader of the wildlife programme at the Food and Environment Research Agency, has analysed previous studies to try to estimate a total rat population.

“Rats are almost completely commensal in Britain, [meaning] they’re associated with human activities. That gives us a start because we only really need to think about how many rats there might be living in close proximity to ourselves.”

“It’s pretty rare that rats are inside our dwellings. Less than half a per cent of dwellings have rats,” he says.

In those cases, “it would be just a couple of rats”.

A better figure to take is the number of dwellings that have rats outside, in the garden or driveway or compost heap and so on, Cowan suggests.

“Around 3% of our dwellings have rats present outside. We can come up with a figure of 1.5 million rats in total in Britain in or around our homes.”

The reputation of some of the City’s care facilities have wobbled recently so some reassurance and – if warranted – an apology, would seem to be the least that the Council should offer.

York St John students join forces with North Yorkshire Police to promote a safer Christmas

York St John University Business Management students have been working with North Yorkshire Police on the force’s Twitter campaign around Christmas safety.

York St John lecturer Mark Dransfield with his Business Management students who have been working with North Yorkshire Police

As part of their Digital Business Communication module students were looking at strategies to develop effective internal and external operational communications. They explored a range of tools, models and strategies and Tom Stirling, Digital Communications Manager at North Yorkshire Police, came into a student session to look at North Yorkshire Police’s use of social media.

Mark Dransfield, Senior Lecturer in Business Management, said: “One of the unique things about this module is that I engage with several partners in industry in order to give more meaning and a direct relevance to the theories we look at. This year I have worked with Portakabin and North Yorkshire Police (NYP).

“I chose NYP because they have a great social media profile, are very active and have won awards for their social media activities.”

Students were asked to develop a campaign for a tweet chat, a live chat – typically an hour long – held on Twitter. Participants use a hash tag to engage with and follow the conversation and tweet chats are often moderated with moderators asking up to six questions to prompt engagement. (more…)

York residents are region’s most active

York is in the top spot for the proportion of active people in Yorkshire and Humber and is among the UK’s top ten per cent of local authorities, according to Sport England’s latest figures.

Over 41% of York adults do one or more 30+ minute sessions of sport a week: the highest in the Yorkshire and Humber region and up nearly five per cent since the survey began in 2007.

Over 28% of York residents also perform extremely well when it comes to achieving three 30-minute sessions of sport or active leisure per week. This was the second highest result in the area and up from 26.9% in the last survey.

York now ranks in the top ten per cent, or 31st out of 325 Local Authorities where residents achieve 3 half hours of physical activity a week. The results have been released by Sport England following their Active People Survey 9, which monitors levels of physical activity undertaken across the country over the last two years.
(more…)