Author Archives: Hilary
Martin Anthony (Tony) Burrage
Martin Anthony Burrage (‘Tony’) is a classically trained violinist, pianist, teacher and music animateur. After graduation from the Royal Academy of Music and the BBC Training Orchestra, in 1971 he joined the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he remains a proud member. Founder Director of Ensemble Liverpool, Live-A-Music & Elegant Music, Tony is a keen chamber musician, committed to engaging audiences and to the work of black British composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor.
Impressions Of Prague
Prague is much more than a ‘great city’; it is testament to a people who have within easy living memory overcome enormous odds. When this is combined with the depth of history and the spectacular cultural vistas of the city, Prague becomes irresistible. Yet, to thrive in the twenty-first century Prague must also take in its stride challenges of a very contemporary kind – the influx of a myriad visitors and of modern investment capital. Perhaps lessons might be learnt from experience elsewhere.
I’ve been to Prague quite a few times in the past decade or so.
My first few visits were in the company of musicians in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, who have a very real relationship with that city – the Orchestra’s Conductor Laureate is Libor Pesek KBE, the feted international maestro who over the years has done such great things with his Liverpool colleagues. The RLPO, with Pesek, was the first-ever non-Czech orchestra to open the famous Prague Spring Festival.
And then, more recently, I have visited Prague on my own as part of my work with European Renaissance, which of course brought a whole new perspective to my experience. So I’ve now seen a little of Prague through the eyes both of artists and of business people. What good fortune.
So much to see and learn
This is a city I could never tire of. As I’ve learned to navigate Prague’s historic heart I’ve realised you could explore forever – always the mark of a great capital city. First, one finds the physical place, where things lie; and then the depth of history and culture starts slowly to unfold. Why is that statue there? Why did that building survive, but not the one next to it? What’s the story behind this type of trade or that kind of cultural offering?
There are things which will always stay in one’s mind: The enormity of Staromestske Nam, the beautiful cobbled old town square, which has seen such extrordinary events over the centruries. The dramatic beauty of adjoining Tynsky Chram, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, backed by its intimate piazza cafes and boutiques. The fact that Vaclavske Namesti, Wencelas Square, scene of the Velvet Revolution, is in reality a central shopping boulevard with Narodni Muzeum, the striking National Museum, towering above that boulevard at its furthest point from the river.
Then there’s the majesty of Katedrala Sv. Vita, St. Vitus’ Cathedral, and the attached area of Prazsky Hrad, the Castle, approached from the old town via the Vltava River (Moldau) over Karlov Most, Charles Bridge. How could one not be
eternally taken with all this?
Living heritage
All these splendours unfold before you even get to the ancient Josafov (Jewish Quarter), huddled, heart-achingly small, down near the river and the Rudulfinum with its Dvorakova Sin, the Dvorak Concert Hall, home of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Nor, on this ‘virtual tour’, have you yet seen the great triangular Obecni Dum (Municipal House, with its concert halls, including the Smetana Hall, home of the Prague Symphony Orchestra), at the other end of the historic quarter.
Nor indeed, until you have crossed back across Charles Bridge with its painters and jewellers, then travelling on high up to the Castle once more, have you viewed the contrast from the mighty symphonic halls which is found in the tiny, ancient, craft workshops of Zlata Ulicka (Golden Lane).
All these venues are alive with artists and artisans exercising their skills much as they might have done some centuries ago.
Big changes
Prague is nonetheless a modern city, changing all the time. It has lost its grey, concrete sadness, imposed for so long by the Soviet authorities, in favour of a cosmopolitan , almost festive, demeanour. Now the city centre is bedecked by art works of all sorts, some of them huge and eye-catching if not always demure.
Nothing illustrates these changes better than Duta Hlava, the Architects’ Club situated by Betlemska Kaple in Betlemska Nam (Bethlehem Chapel and Square) in the Stare Mesto, the Old Town. The first time I encountered this underground cafe-restaurant was a decade or more ago; the best way to descibe it then would have been ‘bohemian’.
When we last dined there, fairly recently, it could have been described, instead, as suffering from its own success: it was much smarter, heaving with well-heeled people (the students seemed to have migrated elsewehere) and the serving staff were stretched to the limit.
Commercial vs. nostalgia?
And much the same applies to the commecial and retail centre of Prague, based around Wenceslas Square. More cyncially savvy commentators may deplore the arrival in the Czech Republic of Marks and Spencer, Debenhams and Tesco, but these surely are seen by others as indicators of the business coming-of-age of this extraordinary country.
To compete and develop in the international market Prague needs these stores, as indeed they need Prague. There is no doubt that the citizens of Prague will need to keep their wits about them as they emerge even more into the gaze of international capital and all that comes with it. But the costs of not doing so, especially in a state where until so recently the autonomy of the market did not (officially) exist, would be unthinkable to most.
Here is a city on the move but with its heritage very largely still intact. Long may it stay so.
Challenges and opportunities
Much of what Prague offers is priceless. With care, even more of it could be. As in other cities – Liverpool in the U.K. amongst them – there are opportunities which as yet have not been fully grasped. These include a reliably consistent level of delivery, especially in some public services.
But Prague has the huge advantage of having seen how other European cities have dealt (or not) with such challenges. No two situations are identical, but there is enough commonality in the scenarios to learn the lessons, one city from another.
The uniqueness of Prague lies elsewhere, in the very heart of this capital city. That is what Prague must defend and develop for itself.
This article is also published (as ‘Prague: The Must-See Western European City’) on the European Renaissance website.
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Free Enterprise Moves East: Doing Business from Prague to Vladivostok
Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral Of Christ The King
Sometimes the sun seems to beam right along Liverpool’s Hope Street as though it had a special route to the heart of the city. When dark clouds lie behind the Cathedral, the effect of this noonday shaft of light is dazzling.
See more photos of Liverpool’s Cathedrals and celebrating communities on Hope Street href=”http://www.hilaryburrage.com/hope_street_liverpools_cultural_knowledge_quarter/liverpools_two_cathedrals/”>here [Liverpool’s Two Cathedrals] and below….
Read more about Hope Street Quarter.
Information on Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral is available here.
See also photgraphs at Calendar & Camera and Liverpool (Anglican) Cathedral.
Liverpool 2007 And 2008 – Different Emphases, Similar Opportunities?
Liverpool is excitedly preparing for its big years in 2007 (the city’s 800th anniversary) and 2008 (the European Capital of Culture year). With such a long and dramatic history of diaspora, who knows what the city will be like by the end of the celebrations? The scope for enterprise – both in Liverpool and by other cities and regions – to build relationships across Europe and beyond is enormous.
BBC Radio 3 hosted a fascinating Free Thinking event in Liverpool’s FACT building last weekend, with presentations, discussions and performances by an impressively eclectic array of debaters and artists. And, perhaps appositely, the very next day the City launched its initial plans for the 2008 European Capital of Culture year.
One of the sessions at the BBC event focussed on the question, ‘Is Liverpool an English city?’. ‘Everyone in the country knows Liverpool is special – and unique,’ says the blurb, ‘but do they secretly mean it’s “unenglish”?’
Sadly, I couldn’t be at the debate, but it’s an interesting question – and one that, although I’ve lived in Liverpool for over three decades, I’d find difficult to answer. All of us have only one shot at life, so comparisons are difficult, but is it usual for people who have been resident in a place for over a third of a century still to be asked where they ‘come from’?
Ports are meeting places for the world
Working up the hill, away from the ports in the education and cultural sectors, it actually took me a while to realise that for some of my fellow citizens, Liverpool’s maritime history is the city’s autograph feature. Indeed, until the Heseltine interventions in the 1980s it was not even possible really to see much of that history. At least the reclamation of the southern docks for retail and leisure use (the Tate Gallery and Maritime Museum are situated there) helped us to see what an important port Liverpool was – and in fact still is, for freight rather than passengers.
So Liverpool is cosmopolitan in a particular way. In the mid-eighteenth century that one port was involved with 40% of the world’s trade. Liverpool is therefore home to many whose predecessors reached the city by sea, or who in some cases had intended to travel onwards, but halted when they got this far.
We have communities of several generations from the Caribbean and parts of Africa, from China (Liverpool’s China town is a large and important feature of the city) and the Indian sub-continent, who travelled from the West; and, from Eastern and Central Europe, reached us from the East. With these historic influxes has come of plethora of religious and cultural understandings – Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Orthodox and many others.
Ireland and Continental Western Europe
What is less evident in our overt cultural mix is the direct influence of Southern Europe – though it is certainly there, especially in the sometimes overarching ethos of Roman Catholicism and Southern Ireland (Eire). And then there is the strongly Protestant Orange Order influence of Northern Ireland (Ulster), whose descendants in Liverpool, like their southern counterparts, have traditionally lived siloed in tight-knit communities with little knowledge or tolerance of other ways of seeing the world.
As is well known, the clash of Southern and Northern Irish influences (Catholics ‘versus’ Protestants) was only be resolved when, in the 1980s and ‘90s, the leaders of Liverpool’s two great cathedrals (Bishop David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock) by their personal example called time on this damaging friction.
Liverpool 2007 – 800 years and proud of it
Given the particular diasporas from which Liverpool has benefited historically, it will be fascinating to see what the city can make of its opportunity to shine on the world and European stage in 2007 and 2008. There are a number of factors here, even apart from the celebrations as such, which should enhance the opportunities for Liverpool at this time – amongst them, the massive privately funded Grosvenor ‘Liverpool 1’ commercial development (at £950 million reputedly the largest project of this kind in Europe) which is currently taking root in the heart of the city centre.
The 2007 event will celebrate Liverpool’s 800th Anniversary. (The city’s charter was signed in 1207.) This surely is the opportunity of a lifetime to acknowledge and embrace the rich and diverse cultures and traditions of the city, to look back at our past but also forward – not only to what follows in 2008, but also much further into the future.
This is in a very real sense ‘Liverpool’s year’, a ‘birthday’ (as the locals insist on calling it) worthy of pulling out the stops. 800 years as a city, even if others can also claim it (Leeds’ charter is also dated 1207), is an important milestone.
The birthday party will be for the people of Liverpool. Others will be very welcome to join us – what’s a party without honoured guests? – but the style, the scene itself, needs to be determined by those, the citizens of Liverpool, whose ‘birthday’ it is.
Liverpool 2008 – European Capital of Culture
But what does Liverpool’s history mean for its year as European Capital of Culture? It has consistently been said that it was ‘the people’, Liverpudlians themselves, who won this award. Is there a danger that 2008 could be ‘more of the same’, an extension of the scenario for 2007?
If we return to our first question, is Liverpool “unenglish”?, we need to note that, so it is said, some 60% of Liverpudlians have never even been to London (and I’d guess that maybe 90% of people living in England outside the North West have as yet never been to Liverpool).
Given this situation, we must ask how many of the citizens of Liverpool so far have a real knowledge of Europe outside the influences we have already noted? How many are fluent in other European languages? How many have business or other formal connections across Europe? The answer is surely that here is a city at the start in every way of its journey into the twenty-first century.
Unique opportunity
Liverpool 2007 / 8 offers a unique opportunity to establish two-way connections with the city. The very next day after the BBC debate on Liverpool’s ‘englishness’ or otherwise, the city launched its initial programme for the 2008 year with a grand civic event in St. George’s Hall, and another one in London for the wider world. 2007 is for Liverpool; 2008 is intended for the world,
2008 offers business and cultural entrepreneurs from around Europe and beyond a real chance to establish themselves in the city, whilst Liverpool’s eyes are firmly fixed on the global stage – and, we hope, theirs on us.
The full extent of the outward-facing Liverpool ‘offer’ for 2007 and especially 2008 remains to be seen – there is increasing confidence that something interesting and worthwhile will be made of these unique opportunities.
The scope for inward investment, connection and synergy with elsewhere is however already established as truly enormous.
Here is a city ripe for growth of every kind, and increasingly ready to jump at the chance. This is a virtuous circle for anyone enterprising enough to recognise it.
Global players
Whether Liverpool is “unenglish” we must leave the BBC debaters to determine. Whether that same city is now positioned once again to take its place as a major player at the European and global levels we can answer for ourselves.
The answer is Yes.
And, in contrast to the last time Liverpool was a great trading city, when the odds were stacked against ‘outsiders’, this time Liverpool will be trading on an even playing field with its external partners.
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This article is also published (as Liverpool: Ripe For Growth in 2007 And 2008) on the European Renaissance website.
Diversity Watch Widens
It’s not just public conferences which often fail on diversity. The Bank of Scotland Corporate’s advertisement today in Merseyside’s Businessweek shows the distance still to go before the chaps grasp what diversity might be about – and why everyone, from banks to sub-regions like Merseyside, needs to implement it.
We have already established the Conference Diversity Index on this website. Now it seems we need to widen the scope of Diversity Watch, to encompass other aspects of public presentation.
On the day when The Guardian carries an article by Jill Treanor entitled ‘No room at the top – fewer women reaching boards of Britain’s top firms’, the weekly supplement of my other morning newspaper, Liverpool’s Daily Post Businessweek supplement provides plenty of evidence of how this comes about.
The Daily Post has today a Special Supplement on ‘Business Success:’ with a ‘ Focus on corporate growth on Merseyside’, in which the lead feature considers ‘Nurturing seeds of growth’.
My precision with titles here is because what follows further into the Supplement demonstrates very clearly why everyone needs to be very worried, both about gender (and other) equality in business and, more specifically, about the Merseyside economy.
More of the same
The Post Supplement carries a full page advertisement for the sponsors, Bank of Scotland Corporate, featuring twenty eight photographs of staff, no doubt all fine folk, who offer Merseyside a service which the Bank of Scotland says is ‘Commercial. Efficient. Entrepreneurial’.
Of these personnel just ONE is a woman. And you have to look very hard to find her. Her photograph is in the very bottom corner of the page, the last of the twenty eight people displayed.
Could it be that Merseyside, to refer back to the lead article above, is ‘nurturing’ the opportunities or ‘seeds of (corporate) growth’ for chaps rather more than for non-chaps?
Unembarrassed?
It beggars belief that anyone could find this acceptable; but presumably they do. Discrimination legislation aside (and that must surely be where they have put it), how can there be any confidence in an organisation which so unashamedly flaunts its lack of awareness of, or perhaps respect for, the issues?
You would have thought that at the very least the Bank of Scotland Commercial might have decided against photoraphs to advertise their diversity deficit.
Missing the point
Diversity is critical both to basic notions of fairness and, from the hard business perspective, to economic success. Obviously to some people the status quo must still be more acceptable (very acceptable?) than looking to see how to better the Commercial. Positive. Entrepreneurial aspects of the enterprise, whether it’s a bank or the whole of Merseyside we’re thinknig about.
And here’s the final irony: the strapline for the Bank of Scotland Commercial advertisement is ‘Look at things differently’.
The BURA ‘Futures’ Debate
The 2006 British Urban Regeneration Conference (BURA) conference ‘Futures’ Debate raised many important issues. Critical to all these, if regeneration is ultimately to be effective, will be increasing focus on (1) the implications of global warming and sustainability, and (2) the challenging task of mutual ‘translation’ between the many stakeholders in any developing programme, to ensure that understandings and ideas are shared and can evolve.
I went to the ‘Futures’ Debate at the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) Annual Conference in Milton Keynes, on October 11th. The debate was a vigorous affair, chaired and led by BURA Director Jackie Sadek, a woman who knows how to keep the exchange of ideas flowing.
The format comprised an introductory address by Government Minister Richard Caborn, two minute slots each for six leading regeneration practitioners, and responses from a ‘jury’ of expert witnesses. Then the discussion was opened to the floor – more than a hundred practitioners and attendant media representatives from around the country and beyond.
The central issue under debate was how we all perceived the future agenda of regeneration in the U.K.
The event was, as Jackie Sadek herself said, a ‘rollercoaster’ of deeply informed give-and-take, covering matters from the micro and to the massively macro. No single brief report could do it justice, but I will try here to give a feel for the ideas which in retrospect caught my attention, at least.
Keeping the Government’s attention
Leadership and ‘guidance’ from on high were felt by several speakers to be missing from the regeneration agenda. There’s plenty of regulation – to judge from comments, some of it outdated – but too little real enablement. Some said that governmental attention spans are too short; regeneration is a long-term proposition. Others criticised the ‘constant’ changes which they saw in regulation and funding, and wished for more attention to large-scale infrastructure.
No-one, however, suggested that the government is not committed to regeneration as a seriously long-term venture; and most speakers thought it can be demonstrated by ‘real’ examples that regeneration does work. There’s scope here for dialogue at the highest levels, if common positions between protagonist practitioners can be elucidated.
Silos and scale
Regeneration still is not joined up, if we are to believe the comments of many speakers. We continue to operate in silos (including fiscally; no
Where’s The Soul In Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance?
Are ‘regeneration’, ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ different? Perhaps they are. Regeneration is predominantly a physical thing, whilst ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ are increasingly about the real meaning, the ‘soul’ of the regenerational process. The journey from one to the other is a transition from the literal to the artistic and cultural. But how best to get there?
How can regeneration work so that it is in the end more than just developing markets for investors, important though that financial interface is?
Experience of regeneration and renewal in the UK tells us that it is a mixture of positive and negative. As numerous reports (including Lord Rogers’) have shown, there are things which have been done well, and things which have had seriously unfortunate outcomes. Both sorts of experience need to be recognised for the valuable lessons they offer.
The different ‘voices’ of regeneration, renewal and renaissance
There are several perspectives here: those of the community activist, the politician, the business operator, the planner, the economic strategist. Only rarely however is the voice of the artist heard; and this is where it may be possible to make a difference. Arts and culture, ‘high’ or less so, can give people common cause, something in which, if presented positively, they can all share and become involved.
From that can arise also a common sense of purpose and direction. People who feel involved feel a stakehold and ownership. This is what makes regeneration into renewal, and then into renaissance. This is the essence of the journey from bricks and mortar to genuine community.
Hope Street Liverpool
An example of this approach is the renaissance of Liverpool’s Hope Street. This process, over more than a decade, evolved from a deeply held ‘grass-roots’ conviction that Hope Street deserved the very best of public realms, to give everyone a sense of pride in what was slowly estabished as the Hope Street Quarter. Hope Street is home of the city’s two great cathedrals, two universities and of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Everyman Theatre, not to mention the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), Blackburne House and much, much more.
Yet on first acquaintance Hope Street looked tired, dirty and possibly unsafe. Hardly an appropriate ambience for world-class cultural institutions which are found from one end to the other of this historic thoroughfare. HOPES: The Hope Street Association, a voluntary ‘arts and regeneration’ charity, was therefore formed to change this sad state of affairs.
Nonetheless, it took enormous focus and years of hard work by volunteers to move the authorities (and even some of the major institutions) to perceive what was evident to those with eyes to see: Hope Street is a place with soul, a place for creative and exciting people with ideas. In other words, it was and is the ideal place from which to nurture renaissance and renewal, to the benefit of both local people (more visitors and customers, more jobs, more fun, more sense of community…) and the city’s wider economy.
The soul of renewal
There has to be a way to get to the ‘soul’ of renewal, to its ownership by people in a way that enables economic benefit but does not preclude the human reality which lies behind the more formal contexts of the action.
Again, Hope Street offers a (cautionary) example. The Summer of 2006 at last saw the completion of the long-sought £3 m. public realm works programme. Everyone was delighted and, after delays on the part of some authorities, eventually there was the opportunity to celebrate in the biggest street festival since the Silver Jubilee visit of H.M. the Queen in 1977. But at the very same time those who had worked so hard as volunteers to bring the transformation about found they had in many ways been displaced by new commercial and corporate interests who now at last saw the potential of the Hope Street Quarter.
The immediate parallel which springs to mind here is with Hoxton and Shoreditch in London, where many creative people say they have been driven out, ‘displaced‘ by high prices. The parallel, though valid, is not however exact. In this instance it is those who who give their activities voluntarily who are at risk of displacement, perhaps at least as much as individual artists and non-corporate creative professionals.
Regeneration for whom?
The jury remains out on the extent to which those grass-roots visionaries who dreamed of a great future for Hope Street Quarter will continue to be central to the area’s destiny. What sort of ‘community’ involvement there will be in years to come remains to be seen.
How often do regeneration proposals move beyond the physically visible in any real way, to what it actually means to everyone concerned – whether those who live in the area, those who work or visit there, those who invest there, or those who are concerned for its conservation, historically or environmentally?
And, if the claim is made that getting to the real soul of renewal does happen, why are the people entrusted to do it so often the same team who draw up the physical plans? This is a hugely different task.
Is it business-like?
But the question of soul alone is not enough. It is also necessary to demonstrate actually to those who invest large amounts in regeneration (a) that ‘soul’ is critical to meaningful renewal, (b) that it makes business sense in the best meaning of the term, and (c) that it is of itself business-like, that it can create value for the people who talk about ‘soul’, as well as for others.
Without evidence of these things, it is difficult to ensure this deeper aspect of renewal will ever happen at all.
For this is a far cry from the way that most regeneration and renewal is conducted, and it requires a constructively critical approach of a kind only rarely encountered, the courage to articulate vision and show leadership in facing up to difficulties and opportunities openly.
Case studies, honesty and imagination
One challenge for those who believe in this wider vision, collaboratively, is to find a way to nurture such a new emphasis, probably through a combination of case studies, disarming honesty and imaginative leaps. Perhaps this is most importantly where that artistic voice is needed.
What certainly won’t work on its own in sharing this ‘message’ is the conventional conference, addressing the usual suspects…. But neither perhaps would suddenly challenging everyone’s expectations in too dramatic a way.
The next question is therefore, what balance in the greater scheme of things can be made between strictly ‘regenerational’ activities and more meaningful, longer term, ‘renewal and renaissance’ ones?
And should we expect that balance to change over time?
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This article is also published (as Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance: Where’s The Soul Of The Enterprise?), with Jim Greenhalf’s response, on the European Renaissance website.
SaveOurDaylight: Victor Keegan’s Pledge-Petition
An online pledge-petition has just been created in support of lobbying MPs for the experimental introduction of ‘daylight saving’. Twenty-first century climate change, with its requirement that we save energy wherever possible, makes the need for this proposed three-year experiment even more pressing.
I’ve timed this blog to come on-stream at a very particular point in the year – the exact date and time (in 2006, Sunday 29 October at 2 a.m.) when the clocks go back one hour for the duration of the Winter. It’s an hour when I hope I shall not be paying much attention, but also one that many of us anticipate at best with unease. The extra hour in bed tomorrow morning is great; the prospects daylight-wise from now until the end of March are not.
Rethinking daylight for the 21st Century
There are various moves afoot to keep this issue in the public eye. There’s a bill (probably about to expire) in the Lords, and just this morning (Saturday 28th October ’06) there was news that the Local Government Association has joined the Policy Studies Institute in predicting a reduction in accidents
and other unpleasant things if we moved the entire day forward by one hour throughout the year – which would mean one hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in the Winter, and two hours ahead (‘Double Summer Time’) for the rest of the year.
And now we have the blog-petition: SaveOurDaylight is an extension of the debate which surprises me not at all. It’s organised by Victor Keegan, who has also written a piece for The Guardian’s Comment is Free on the issue.
Mr Keegan has pledged to write to his MP about this if 50 other people sign up to do the same. My guess on the basis of the enormous interest in the ‘clocks go forward / back’ entries on this website is that he will need to be looking for his pen and paper before too long at all.
The benefits are real
Of course there are a few people in any situation for whom change brings problems, but the evidence favouring change so far is overwhelming. And that’s before we even seriously get to the environmental advantages -now critical, but not much factored in during previous examinations of the benefits of so-called ‘daylight saving’. In my books the challenges of climate change really have to be the clincher.
The petition is there to be signed. Go for it!
As I keep saying, it really is a win-win.
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)…..
Pollution, Politics And Practicality: Where Do The Scientists Fit In?
It’s a big distance from the mythical Northlands of Noggin the Nog, to the brutal facts of global warming, but Noggin’s creator, Oliver Postgate, is doing his bit to help. The next step is to try to understand the realities of the complex connections between science, politics and people. Then we really shall begin to see how to establish sustainable living, and how to deliver on the ground what we know in theory is required.
Oliver Postgate is a name which takes me back many years….. it turns out because he’s the author of the wonderful Sagas of Noggin the Nog which were so enjoyed by us all at a point where little bedtime stories featured large in our lives.
But now Mr Postgate is appearing in another guise, in The Guardian advertisements (the latest on 16 October), bringing news of potential environmental doom for our planet.
Good for Oliver Postgate. He has seen how urgent is the task of acting to control (or hopefully reverse) environmental damage, and he is doing something about it. This position may be a very long way from the gentle Northlands of Noggin the Nog, but, in the real world we actually live in, where Oliver Postgate now finds himself is an extremely apposite and important place to be. If Al Gore can go there, why not, I ask quite sincerely, also Oliver Postgate?
Science and politics
I’m one hundred percent with Mr Postgate in his assertion that:
As nobody can pretend to know for certain what is going to happen to the climate, the only safe and sensible thing to do is to deal with it now.
But I’m not sure Oliver Postgate is also correct when he tells us that:
The present government has been making a show of tackling [environmental issues], but the task it has given to its scientists is not simply to find a way to end global warming – they could do that at once – but to do so “without cuttimg either our economic growth or our living standards”.
As these are the two main causes of global warming, this task does, as they say: ‘present some difficulties’ in that, from among the many different specultaive predictions on offer, the scientists are being expected to seek and select, as definitive, the most ‘politically practical’.
A confusion somewhere?
To unpick all the understandings in these two brief statements would take some while. Questions of scientific direction, funding, feasibility, cost, the connections between science and government and, ultimately, political deliverability would all need to be examined in a way which is beyond even a detailed weblog posting. Each of these is an enormous topic in its own right.
Perhaps we shall return to these themes in the future.
Political reality
But there a few matters which we can address immediately. These are:
1. Scientists advise government, on the basis of the best available evidence. Their reputations depend on giving guidance which will withstand the scrutiny of both their colleagues and wider stakeholders. It is important to accept and endorse scientists’ professional independence.
2. What is done by government with scientific advice is a political, not a scientific, matter. The grim reality is that politicians can only take forward policies which, even after they have factored in leadership, example, costs and so forth, still seem to have a chance of success, of being accepted by the voting public.
3. We can all, therefore, help the Government by letting them know we really and truly want to see global warming reversed (or at least arrested) and, critically, that we are also genuinely willing both to take the consequences, and to argue the toss with others who resist this challenge to their routine and expectations.
4. To do this we would have to stop just cynically criticising politicians who want to do more but believe it would be political suicide, and start having the courage to praise them for what they are already doing right. Not a cool thing to do, but nonetheless essential if we sincerely want to see real progress.
What to do now?
So who’s up for it? The spirit of Oliver Postgate’s Noggin the Nog, a good and cheerful childhood example for anyonel, will surely be with us if we choose positively to help bring about the difficult political changes required.
In the meantime we need to remember that scientists have shown change is incremental. We may not be doing absolutely everything right in our own eco-lives, but doing what we can to reverse damage keeps the issues very much alive, and is a lot better than doing nothing.
As one significant, successful but not always best loved trader keeps reminding us, Every Little does indeed Help.
Will Merseyside Miss Out? The Gormley Statues And The Theatre Museum Are Must-Haves.
Sefton Council says Antony Gormley’s Iron Men may soon leave Crosby Beach. The national Theatre Museum, which it has been mooted should come to Liverpool, has yet even to be considered by the City Council. Where’s the cultural leadership and vision which could mark Merseyside as a fascinating place to visit?
Here we go again. The cultural drag, if I may call it that, which afflicts so many places is once more theatening to relegate our sub-region to the ‘might have beens’, a place which could have been braver and better.
In just one evening last week (on Wednesday 18th October ’06) Liverpool City Council took the extraordinary decision not even to discuss a motion about how the city might acquire the national Theatre Museum, whilst on the same evening Sefton Council voted not to keep Antony Gormley‘s one hundred Iron Men on Crosby Beach.
There is a real danger that we on Merseyside will end up looking as though the last thing we want is to support culture, just at the time when the mantle of European Capital of Culture is about to be ours.
Time is short
The Daily Post and others have already started a campaign to reverse the Gormley statues decision, with some success already. It is now necessary for others to ensure that Liverpool Council does the same, and makes a real effort to bring the national Theatre Museum to Merseyside …. of, if they can’t, for someone esle to do so The benefits of doing this are clear and have already been discussed on this website.
The reputation of Liverpool and Merseyside in 2007/8 rests on imaginative and forward-looking leadership and real vision in culture and the arts. It’s time everyone in Merseyside pulled together on this.
Read more articles on the National Theatre Museum.
Dreaming Realist 