Every one of those wards has a very high BAME % population- in some cases over 90%.
No surprise when you breakdown 80+ vaccination rates across Brum by ethnicity (Bham and Solihull CCG)
White B 93%
British Indians 86%
Chinese 67%
Bangladeshi 67%
Pakistanis 66%
Caribbean 64%
But in even some much whiter areas take up is lower than average
So a ward like Kingstanding which is 83% white still only has a take up rate for the over 80s of 77.5%
Indeed the Council says in the doc that deprivation is one of the key factors in determining take up
In fact the docs say there's now a 15 point gap between take up for the first dose for the over 80s in the most deprived wards in the city compared to the most affluent wards.
Of course, everyone is being offered a vaccine, it's about take up.
The vaccine centre I was in was the Al-Abbas Islamic Centre in Balsall Heath.
Balsall Heath is one of the poorest wards in the country with long established health inequalities.
The clinical lead at the centre tells me how ingrained scepticism in his community has become: "Initially we were asked is it safe to have. Is it halal? Are the ingredients safe? Will it change my genes? Will it affect my fertility? Will I get tracked?"
"The correlation is due to deprivation, language and mistrust for higher authorities. It plays a huge part."
Setting up the centre in the mosque has really helped. But the local Imam told me that it still wasn't enough- that more needed to be done in terms of community outreach, otherwise with unlocking based on national figures, there was a long term risk of communities like his…
...continue to struggle. "If we don’t go for our jabs- it’s big danger. It's about trust and we [community leaders] have it. We've seen so many die in my community, I've buried 19 people this past year year, this year so far we’ve buried five or six this year- this is reality."
Scientists too are concerned about the differentials between white and BAME communities and rich and poor and that we should think about them more when considering unlocking.
Earlier I spoke to Professor Janet Lord of Bham University, she also sits on SAGE. She said the differentials between communities and the fact the data still isn't complete means it isn't the time to being making decisions on unlocking.
I also spoke to @liambyrnemp, one of the local MPs. He says that unless we work out a plan to deal with differing vaccination rates across communities and one to deal with already appalling health inequalities, deprived communities will be scarred by this for decades to come.
I just can't emphasise enough how big these vaccine disparities are.
Look at these two slides, one for Ladywood constituency (inner city, BAME, poor) and one for Sutton Coldfield (richer, whiter). It's a completely different picture.
Become commonplace to say about Covid globally that none of us are safe til we all are.
So it is in Britain- and getting lost in how we talk about vaccines is how many communities are at risk of being left behind.
Nadhim Zahawi asked about my Bham data story Today this morning. Says government is seeking to step up role of community pharmacists in rollout in more deprived areas. Still not much of a sense of a wider structural analysis of why some deprived areas might have take up issues.
Some of those more systemic problems probably have their roots in some of the issues Nasar described below- similar to other issues we’ve seen apropos deprivation and the pandemic.
NEW: Latest @TheNewsAgents Investigates - Britain’s hidden homeless children
Nearly 140,000 kids in Britain are now homeless, in so-called “temporary accommodation”. We went to a school where half of the kids don’t have a home to call their own. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…
It’s having a devastating effect on the educational outcomes of a big and growing group of working class kids. They’re almost forgotten, because they’re not on the streets. But their living conditions are Victorian, often sharing one room with their parents, siblings, shared bath.
Some of the kids come to school not having been able to wash in the mornings because there wasn’t an agailable bathroom in the temporary accomm. They’re embarrassed and have to wash at school. There are sometimes safeguarding issues because the kids are sharing bathrooms with strangers in the TA.
NEW: Lib Dems call on the govt to suspend arms sales to Israel.
@EdwardJDavey: “Clearly, the thought that British-made arms could have been used in strikes such as these is completely unacceptable.
“The government must take swift action to suspend arms exports to Israel."
There's been (more or less) a fragile consensus between Conservative and Labour on policy towards Israel and the war. Pressure is going to increase on Starmer to move. Possibly (and more importantly) Sunak too...
Flick Drummond, Tory MP for Meon Valley has also said arms to Israel should cease.
“This has been concerning me for some time. What worries me is the prospect of UK arms being used in Israel’s actions in Gaza which I believe have broken international law.”
For the general election, very little. This was a unique by election and little is transferable. But it does change politics before the election and possibly tells us something about the shape of politics after it as well.
In the short term the result is highly embarrassing for Keir Starmer and for Labour. The Labour vote collapsed by over 40 % points. Labour will point to the fact that they withdrew support. But that reminds us that they had to withdraw support in a safe seat, itself a shambles.
Questions for the leadership as to why the by-election was held so quickly and why the selection process happened so quickly. As it is a safe Labour seat has been handed to one of the party's most implacable opponents.
It’s not like the British Parliament makes everything about itself, no not remotely
Net result of all of this? Starmer has a lucky escape. Speaker is weaker. Commons is farcical. Nothing changes in Gaza. MPs don’t really get their vote. We continue not to scrutinise what matters (and even then not that much) , which is the government’s position and plan.
Btw attack the Speaker’s decisions or not, but the threat of violence against MPs is real. Speaker should be thinking about that. The fact we’ve just come to accept that as a kind of background to our politics is the grimmest thing of all.
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets
-cuts of to public services by £300m over two years
-21% rise in Council Tax
-dimming street lights
-fortnightly bin collections
Breakdown of cuts for 2024-25
-£23.7m from adult social care
-£51.5m from children’s services
-£6.2m from housing
-£39.2m from city operations
More elsewhere. This follows long term reduction in spending power from the council, as per rest of local govt.
Libraries, cultural organisations in the city all set to endure substantial cuts. 600 job losses at the council likely.
If you’re a Birmingham resident (biggest local authority in Europe) you’re going to feel this in years ahead in all sorts of ways.