Tony Porter Ponders: Long overdue U-turn, big news for Wigan as things progress.

Last week I joked that you should join me this week for the latest U-turn from our Labour government.

Keir, on Saturday, announced a full national enquiry into rape gangs, despite in January saying those asking for one were "jumping on the far-right band wagon".

Our Labour council went against Keir early this year, after pressure from others to request one and now Sir Keir is as far right as the rest of us.

I have repeatedly pointed out that Keir loves a U-turn, but this one has been forced.

He had read the full Baroness Cassey report into grooming gangs and realised that he had to call a statuary national inquiry right away.

We did not get to see the report until Monday, and, in my opinion, there were no shocks.

Baroness Casey found multiple examples of organisations, police, social services etc, “avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions”.

Her report concluded: “Unless government and all the organisations involved are able to stand up and acknowledge the failures of the past, to apologise for them unreservedly, and to act now to put things right, we will not move on as a society.”

This left some of the most vulnerable children with no-one to turn to they could trust.

I have a grown-up daughter, but I feared for her when she was a teenager. That was fifteen years ago.

I worry for the future but hope this will change. I wrote here a few months ago about being uncomfortable when I was closely followed by two, whispering and sniggering non-UK nationals at half seven at night.

This Saturday a teenager was in my shop excited that he was out to buy Father's Days gifts.

This always bubbly character reappeared an hour or so later looking very sullen.

I asked what had happened and he said he was sitting outside Pound Bakery and some people with foreign-sounding accents were harassing a woman, who walked off. They then turned to him. With his presents in a gift bag on the floor he felt very uncomfortable and a little threatened and came straight to my shop.

He rang his dad and left via the back entrance to the Grand Arcade where dad was waiting in the car.

This in broad daylight on a busy Saturday afternoon. We should be able to feel safe in our towns regardless of age or sex, but it would seem we are not being protected and in recent times more protection and help is given to the wrong people.

We need change, not Starmer’s change: real change and soon.

There is great news in Wigan though. A swanky new coffee shop is about to open in the former WHSmith shop, Bap is to re-open in a new guise and Grand News has opened in the Grand Arcade.

The big big news and there are two, are, A: that Stack are about to fit out the enormous space they have in the former Debenhams store, see my Wigan Watch on YouTube to get a sneak peak. It is a massive, almost church-like space.

But wait, there is more very exciting news from the New Market Hall site this is B: the big crane will be installed sometime next month.

Wigan is on the up.