Category Archives: Education, Health And Welfare
British Summer Time Draws To A Close
The nights are drawing in, and the debate is beginning once more… Must we really turn our meagrely lit afternoons into even more gloom? Maintaining the extra hour of afternoon daylight year-long, over and above British Standard Time (BST), well compensates most people for even darker mornings, as reports by RoSPA amongst others have demonstrated. The net benefits to the economy, energy savings, health, safety and, for instance, for the leisure industry, would be many.
Already talk is turning to the dreaded day that The Clocks Go Back – this year, Sunday 29 October at 2 a.m, in the U.K.. What daylight we may have enjoyed at 4 p.m. on 28th October will now be our allocation for just 3 p.m. on Sunday 29th; and it will get a lot worse before it gets any better, in March next year, when British Summer Time returns.
Why can’t we just keep to British Summer Time (BST; confusingly the same initials as the 1968-71 trial British Standard Time)? British Summer Time is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) plus one hour. The evidence shows benefits on balance would be an improvement in our overall quality of life. It’s been tried, from 1968-71, and it worked. And that was before issues around energy saving etc were deemed critical as well.
Background information
The background to the current situation, and the cost-benefits for health, safety, environmental sustainability, the economy, leisure activities and much else have had a good airing on this weblog:
The Clocks Go Forward (But Why, Back Again)?
Time is Energy (and Daylight uses Less)
The debate will continue
This is not an issue which is going to go away, so perhaps The Time Has Come for the Big Debate on this? In our eco- and economy-driven age, we can no longer simply do things as fundamental as this in a given way just because it’s the status quo.
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)…..
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
Seasonal Food – Who Knows About It?
Over the past century our connection with basic food production has largely been lost. But now there are urgent environmental as well as direct health reasons to ensure everyone understands how food is produced. People as consumers (in both senses) need to know about food miles, short produce supply chains, nutritional value and the annual cycle of food production through the changing seasons.
One obvious starting point for this crucial ‘sustainability’ message is schools; and another is allotments.
The way that people find out about food seems to vary from generation to generation. This wasn’t always the case. For millennia you ate what you could grow and, if you were lucky, also what you could swap of your surfeit for someone else’s surfeit.
Then came the developing trade routes, some ancient and exotic (the Silk Road, also a route for spices and much else) and others, far more mundane to our modern minds, such as Salters Lane, the mediaeval travellers’ way which appears in British towns and villages as widely spread as Hastings, Redditch, Tamworth, Chester and Stockton-on-Tees, along with other similar reminders of trade in by-gone eras.
Also within Europe, for instance, were the horrors of such deprivation as the Irish potato famine of 1845-9 and more recently, for some within living memory, informal and formal food rationing (the World Wars of 1914-19 and 1939-45) – a deprivation it is now often considered was more of the palate than of essential nutritional substance.
Different expectations, the same basic understanding
In all these cases, however, fabulous or tragic, ancient or contemporary, people understood something about the genesis of their food. It was either from plants or from animals, nurtured intentionally or garnered whence it appeared. If you wanted to eat, you had to engage in some way in the production or location of your meal.
This, it could be argued, is what is different in times past from how things are today. It can certainly be said that although people must still find their food somewhere, it tends to come pre-prepared, in labelled packets, frozen or perhaps in tins, but not self-evidently from plants and animals.
In much of the western or ‘first’ world the conscious link with what is rather romantically referred to as ‘the soil’ has quite largely been lost. Most people now expect to be able to eat anything they can afford and that they take a liking to, any time they choose.
The downside of choice
Nobody would disagree with the general idea that variety in our diets is a good thing. But in practice it doesn’t seem to be like 
that. Our food arrives on the shop shelves (the only place now where most of us hunt and gather) processed and packaged, and often laden with things we don’t need as well as those we think we want….
For every interesting flavour and texture there are frequently too many empty calories, too much refined sugar and the ‘wrong sort‘ of fats, if not always too few vitamins and minerals. (Contrary to popular belief, frozen and tinned food can, we are told, be as nutritious in these respects as the ‘real thing’. Indeed, given that frozen and tinned foods are usually very fresh when they are processed, they may well have more nutritional value than the produce lying ‘fresh’ in the market.)
And herein lies the rub. There is a confusion in perceptions between ‘fresh’ and ‘well-preserved’ foods, between ‘produce’ and ‘ready meals’. And most people have only the vaguest of ideas about the essential differences between, say, strawberries or carrots flown in ‘fresh’ from California or South Africa, and those grown in glasshouses close to the point where they are sold…. which in turn means we cannot fully appreciate concerns around ‘food miles‘, local / short supply chains or, to return to our original theme, nutritional value-for-money.
Close to the land, close to the retailer
At last some retailers (including some of the biggest) are beginning to acknowledge some of these issues. They boast that they have short supply chains, that their produce are prepared immediately after cropping, that they are willing to promote sustainable ‘seasonal’ products; and they even sometimes offer nutritious recipes to cook from basic (and less basic) ingredients which are fresh and wholesome.
Now it is up to everyone to make sure they understand what is meant by all this.
For not the first time in this debate, much of the answer has to lie in education, in encouraging children to nurture living things; in making sure children know that food does not grow on supermarket shelves, and that they understand how the seasons can be harnessed to ensure a supply a healthy and varied diet.
The other obvious approach is helping people, wherever they live, sustain their own communities, to visit farmers’ markets, and grow at least some of their own food, in allotments or by sharing back garden space, or even just in pots.
From little acorns do great oak trees grow, just as from modest ideas about strawberry pots or rows of peas and potatoes can the notion of seasonal food once again take its place in our understanding of a sustainable world.
Early Intervention In The Early Years
Critics of Sure Start, the U.K. government’s early years programme, have been vocal of late. Yes, there is evidence that benefit has not always as yet reached those small children and families who need it most. But this is work in progress, and it must be continued.
Sure Start, the huge government-led programme for 0 – 4 year olds, has been subject to quite a lot of criticism of late. It’s understandable that senior polticians, the Prime Minister himself amongst them, should want to see progress before the next general election. The problem however is that small children don’t become achieving teenagers in the same time-span.
This was never going to be easy. Sure Start is at present specifically focused on the least advantaged families, where take-up, especially for those parents who find themselves most challenged, is variable. But it’s essential that those with the governmental cheque book hold their nerve.
Evidence that it works
One thing which stands out in the Sure Start programme is its emphasis on activities such as reading aloud for parents (and that includes fathers) and children to share. There is a dedicated theme in all this about bedtime stories, and indeed about just simple conversation between little ones and their carers. This is a difficult activity to measure with any degree of accuracy, but we know from longitudinal studies that, over years rather than just months, it works.
Sure Start is not the first programme of this sort. There’s plenty of evidence from previous programmes here and in the U.S.A. that early intervention is really beneficial for those who become involved. But we’re still learning how to reach the least advantaged and those who feel most marginalised.
Adapt, perhaps; abandon? No
Workers in Sure Start have had to find the way forward for themselves. Inevitably in such a situation some have had more success than others – not least because some local contexts provide greater challenges or fewer already established resources than do areas elsewhere.
The move towards Children’s Centres, whilst unsettling for many of the professionals concerned, is if handled sensitively probably the right way to go. It would be a tragedy if critics determinedly take a short-term view which makes it difficult for the Government to continue with this work.
Dismissing the idea behind the initiative would result in damage to the futures of many thousands of children who deserve the better start in life.
Graduates Into Employment….
Many young people want to remain in cities like Liverpool after their higher education, but opportunities to develop professionally if they do so are still often quite limited. So what exactly is a ‘graduate job’? And how do graduate jobs fit in with local economies?
There’s a brand new ‘Met Quarter’ shopping arcade in Liverpool city centre which looks quite interesting, so that was where we headed in search of some coffee, after a meeting in town this morning.
The new arcade is indeed worth a good look – all shiny steel and glass and smart labels – but there was one aspect of it that certainly wasn’t new to us. Our friendly and welcoming waitress was someone we already know because she’s a recent graduate. Like several others of her graduating year, she is employed in a capacity which gives her an income, but doesn’t really use her formal skills.
A conundrum for cities on the edge
This is a familiar problem for cities like Liverpool, perceived by bright young people to have excitement and ‘edge’, but with relatively weak economies.
The question which always arises in this context is, how long will a recent graduate stay in employment which doesn’t fit their recently acquired formal skills? Is it right to encourage young people to stay? Or should we be encouraging them to fly the civic nest, with a promise that we’ll keep in touch?
Liverpool has plenty of graduate incubators and ‘Graduates into Work’ programmes. Both have very important functions in the local economy. The former helps proto-type entrepreneurs to take their ideas forward; the latter, of course amongst other things, is often especially helpful for local graduates who already have their homes and families in Merseyside and need to stay.
The initial post-graduate years are critical
Is there an issue when young graduates remain in Liverpool in low-skill jobs, just at the time when they should be busily extending their experience and applying thier newly acquired knowledge?
Figures on graduate retention beyond a year or two are notoriously difficult to find for given locations. These are however crucial to our understanding of how the high skills agenda should be developed in an emerging economy such as Merseyside’s.
What some graduates and those with second degrees actually do after graduation remains a mystery, but the suspicion is that if they stay in a city like Liverpool they do not always fully use their new skills. Maybe we need to be honest enough on occasion to help them get experience elsewhere which, we all hope, they will later come back to Liverpool to use.
A fair exchange?
That young graduates want to stay and enjoy the vitality of a city such as Liverpool is excellent. Their enthusiasm and determination to make something of their lives here is something everyone warmly welcomes. But if we want these young people to develop their potential properly, we need to think of ways to establish a freeflow of skills and experience between our own backyard and other places.
Then, when the local economy really does come up to speed, we’ll have plenty of skilled and experienced people waiting, who already know us and want to be part of it.
Do Gender Pay Audits Bring Wages Down?
There’s a debate to be had about gender pay audits or reviews. To be effective, should they be compulsory and public? Do they have the desired effect on pay equality? And could they result in pay equity within given occupations, but even lower overall wages where the majority of the workforce is female?
The Fawcett Society reported recently that 30 years of equal pay legislation has taken us almost nowhere in terms of income equite between men and women. Apparently, it will be roughly another 85 years before we can hope to see this in reality.
In other words, sometime never… So obviously we’re not getting it quite right, despite the legislation.
Equal pay audits
One ‘solution’ which has been proposed is compulsory equal pay audits in employing organsiations The logic of this way forward is already being followed by some organisations such as the NHS (National Health Service, Agenda for Change) and socially responsible companies, where careful parity of pay against task is already established. But many businesses do not do it.
At least in theory such audits or reviews would ensure equal pay for equal work. This is something few would argue against.
Making it fair
But is there a snag, unless the audit is compulsory for everyone? If only some types of employment – for instance, in the third and public sectors – oblige by doing the decent thing, will that result in higher wages, probably for the usual parties, in other unmeasured and unreported sectors?
And would this also mean that wages in those sectors which are monitored take a general downward turn? – There is plenty of historical evidence of average wages falling in given occupations as numbers of women in them increase.
Maybe this is a bit like the situation reportedly found in Scandinavia, where people’s tax returns are posted for all to see? Cynics have been known to suspect that high earners sometimes find a haven for their money outside that declarable fiscal area… with the loss to the national economy which that is thought to entail.
Plugging the gaps?
How are we to deliver fair and equal return on endeavour without having ‘havens’ for those who consider themselves above that sort of thing? If there’s a sensible answer, many of us would be pleased to hear about it.
Flowers In Pots For All
The inner city is not an easy place to indulge green fingers, but there are many reasons why we all need to think about this. It’s not even just about fresh, healthy produce; there’s a really important issue of sustainability in all this. Let’s start with the hesitant late-night gardener in Tesco.
Late night shopping (feeling very virtuous because we’d just been to a dance and inter-active media event at Unity Theatre and had even stayed for the discussion afterwards)… so it had to be Tesco Old Swan if we wanted bread and coffee for the morning.
Inevitably, I gravitate to the plants and flowers stall – where else but the supermarket would you be tempted to buy seeds for weekend gardening at 11 p.m. on Friday night? A woman already there is eyeing a packet of French marigold seeds uneasily. Do I know anything about gardening?, she asks. She is thinking she might grow some flowers in a pot in the back yard
My ‘advice’ is limited by my own inexpertise. Perhaps it’s a good idea to use water-holding gel to guard against neglect of the seedlings (my own major misdeed) and, if a dry patch is likely, nasturtiums are both delightful and very forgiving. We chat on such things for a while and the woman moves on, clutching the marigold seeds doubtfully.
Shops, jobs and flowers for everyone?
Old Swan is a part of town which faces many challenges. Much of the housing stock is derelict Victorian, doubtless magnificent in its prime but now ‘student’ flats, or else back-to-back terrace. The unemployment rate remains high and the educational attainment is well below average. Tesco is the only major store on the area, and a very significant local employer; and it stocks gardening products which, if my late-night encounter is anything to go by, tempt first time green fingers.
None of this justifies the particular business strategies which some say the superstores adopt. But perhaps it does point to a few important considerations about economic development of a run-down area, and it also tells us that people still hope for better – why else buy flower seeds?
And why is there so little that grows in the lives of people in Old Swan? There’s nearby Newsham Park, curently a topic of hot debate amongst those who value green space, and the Edge Lane (Wavertree) Botanic Garden – would that it had the same recognition and status as its contemporaries in e.g. Birmingham! But not much else.
Green fingers from the start
When then can we expect that inner-city chidlren will learn routinely how to grow things at school? When will we start to think carefully about more allotments and other community growing space for grown-ups? In what ways can we help with the active use of gardens and allotments in the city? When will we start to teach children (and their mums and dads) about seasonal, lcaol prodcue? And how can we link the urge to see things grow with wider matters of health, diet and environment?
These are matters of sustainability in the long-term; and if they start from marigolds in a pot from Tesco, that’s an interesting conjunction too.
Anti-mother Discrimination And Reluctant Parenting: A Solution?
A recent survey suggests young people prefer material benefits to babies. But maybe hesitation about starting a family is more about uncertainty whether one’s parenting will be good enough, than in wanting ‘more’ materially. And there is hope for the future of young families, not least in the support which Sure Start programmes are now beginning to deliver across the country.
The Guardian / ICM poll on attitudes to having children, reported today (2.5.06), demands careful reading.
The Guardian editorial on this important survey identifies some critical issues about contemporary attitudes to families and parenting. Now that young women and men feel equally free to pursue serious careers it is unsurprising that both should be cautious about producing babies; though this does not self-evidently suggest that babies are not valued of themselves. Perhaps rather it’s concern about whether potential parents can provide ‘good enough’ care for their intended offspring which holds them back….. That, and the certainty that mothers still can’t win when it comes to combining work and parenthood.
It is true that, as the Guardian leader says, there is a role here for government in supporting families and parenting, but it’s less than accurate in suggest that this nettle has not been grasped. Amongst a range of initiatives is the national Sure Start programme, now developing across the country.
Sure Start programmes support parenting
Local Sure Start programmes in many places are working on the issues which underlie current concerns of parents and potential parents. By 2008-10 there will be Children’s Centres all around the country, catering not ‘just’ (as Sure Start programmes currently do) for less advantaged young families, but for everyone. They will aim to accommodate the crucial fact that, as one parent commented, it ‘costs a lot’ financially and personally to go out to work when one has children.
Sure Start and the anticipated Children’s Centres still face many challenges, but they are genuinely good news….. look out for National Sure Start Month, in June.
Ironically, because Sure Start and Children’s Centres have so far focused on less advantaged families, they have not yet reached the chattering classes; so no-one’s noticing them. Soon however these programmes will be at a place near you, and to everyone’s benefit.
Acknowledge it or lose it?
It would be a sad irony if, in having started where it matters most of all, the government were not now to be given the credit for what will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity really to make a difference to the prospects of families of every sort – including those of hardworking professionals of both genders – right across the nation.
London’s Theatre Museum Gets A Boost From Its Musical Neighbour
Covent Garden’s Theatre Museum is the National Museum of the Performing Arts, a unique and special place. But it is currently under threat of closure. An urgent rescue bid is being considered by the Museum’s nearby neighbour, the Royal Opera House. Success in this venture is not only essential for the greater good of both parties, but also offers encouragement to those who see that to survive the arts must work together.
The national Theatre Museum in Covent Garden has been under serious threat for a while now. If anything, my conviction – shared, of course, by many others – that this would be a disaster, grows by the day.
But it seems that a way may now be found to put things right. The Museum Theatre’s nearest neighbour, the Royal Opera House, is looking to see if it can take over the running of the Museum, before it is closed and its contents get mothballed in the V & A in South Kensington.
Performing arts working together
We must hope this ‘rescue bid’ between close neighbours, and in a fantastic setting, is successful. Not only does it make huge sense in terms of synergy in a given locality – with perhaps the greater push towards full use of this unique set of resources which could follow – but it is also a story which needs to be shared, with a big message… Together the arts, and especially the performing arts, can flourish. Set apart, this isn’t so easy.
It’s a lesson we almost learnt the hard way in Liverpool’s Hope Street a decade ago, when we had to lauch the CAMPAM slogan – Once lost, we will not get it back! CAMPAM was the Campaign to Promote the Arts on Merseyside. In the early 1990s we fought and won a long and weary battle to make sure that Liverpool didn’t lose its Everyman and Playhouse Theatres, or indeed the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.
History doesn’t need to repeat itself. The Theatre Museum and the Royal Opera House, side by side in Covent Garden, were surely made for each other. I really hope the matchmaking drama we now see before us has a happy ending, soon.
The Theatre Museum, London
Covent Garden: The Untold Story – Dispatches from the English Culture War, 1945-2000
Read more articles on the National Theatre Museum.
Wirral’s Ness Gardens: A Place To Learn Whilst You Enjoy
Ness Botanic Gardens, owned by the University of Liverpool, are a delightful example of how learning and enjoyment can come together. They are the creation of a cotton merchant who wanted to share his absorbing interest in plants from across the world (and especially from the Himalayas) with the people of his hometown, Liverpool. This work, begun in 1898, continues to prosper to the present time.
Ness Botanic Gardens are on the Wirral near Chester, away from the River Mersey facing the splendid windswept views of the Dee Estuary which overlook the North Wales coast. They offer delightful views which take one back to more pastoral times, and include the habitats of many species of birds and wildlife.
This apparent tranquility and timelessness has not however prevented some very forward-looking management on the part of those responsible for the site. Just this week (14 April 2006) saw the opening of the new Horsfall Rushby Visitor Centre, designed alongside a wider programme of development to encourage year-round enjoyment of this special location.
Where academic excellence meets family fun
The story of the Gardens is both unusual and enlightening. They were created by a Liverpool cotton merchant, the Fabian Arthur Kilpin Bulley, who wanted to establish in Britain the ‘new’ Himalayan and Chinese mountain plants he had funded the plant explorers George Forrest and Frank Kingdom Ward to discover . And so in 1898 began the adventure which was to become Ness Gardens, a place of elegance and education, as it welcomed vistors from near and far.
In 1942 Arthur Bulley died and left his ever-expanding Gardens to his daughter Lois (1901-1995), who presented them to the University of Liverpool in 1948, with an endowment of £75,000 per annum on the understanding that they be kept open for the public. Her intention that this beautiful place continue to fascinate and inform both young and older people is reflected in the current Visitor Centre, scientific programme and educational developments.
Journey of discovery
Our own involvement in Ness Gardens began back in the 1970s, when a reseach student friend at Liverpool University experienced what, at that time, seemed like a cruel blow. He had been assiduously observing a derelict site in the city centre to find out what sort of road-side plants and grasses best grew on such unpromising terrain when, because of a misunderstanding by a Council employee about location, a ton of topsoil was dumped on his experimental venue. The anguish was terrible – should there be an official complaint because the experiment was ruined; or should there be celebration of the act of reclaiming the derelict site for better use, albeit by mistake?
Resolution of this dilemma arrived in the form of an offer to recreate the dereliction by transporting a huge load of rubble to a fenced-off location at the edge of the University’s Ness Gardens. Our humble role in this adventure was occasionally to give our friend a lift over to the site to continue his work. The experiment was repeated, the results brought forth much in the way of understanding how to use grasses to reclaim land, the young scientist’s career was launched to great acclaim – and we became regulars at Ness Gardens.
The research and development continues
The striking thing about Ness Gardens is that, not only does it change dramatically with the seasons, but it has consistently expanded and grown over the years. The Gardens have spread across much more of the site, with a growing number of areas of specialist interest (the latest is the ‘Prehistoric Garden’ just created from an existing clay marl pit); and the world-class science has similarly developed over time.
Here is a place always worth the journey, where there is a conscious intention to deliver first-class research in the context of a welcome for everyone. Support the Friends of Ness Gardens if you can – and be sure to visit their new Centre and see the Gardens for yourself.
From Euston To Ecology, Engineering And Enterprise With The Virgin Trains Windowgazer
Travel takes many forms. The idea behind the ‘Windowgazer Guide’, a booklet explaining what can be seen as one’s train travels from London Euston northwards, is excellent. Here is a concept which can take us not only on physical journeys, but also on journeys of discovery of many sorts, scientific, environmental, cultural and much more.
How many people know that, as their train passes Stafford on the way northwards from London Euston, they are right by the 360 acres of the Doxey Marshes, an especially important breeding ground for lapwing, redshank, snipe, yellow wagtail, sedge, warbler and pochard? Or that a short while thereafter as they get to Crewe they are at the centre of a town celebrated in 1936 by W H Auden and Benjamin Britten in a documentary (Night Mail) extolling the work of the Royal Mail trains?
These are two of the interesting facts which I learnt from the Train Manager as he read from a travel guide over the public address system, on my journey home from Euston just this week.
It’s one of those odd co-incidences that the same day I ‘discovered’ the Windowgazer Guide I also learnt that today (9 April 2006) is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of Britain’s greatest bridge builders, Isambard Kingdon Brunel – the man, so my Windowgazer Guide tells me, who came with his colleague engineer Thomas Locke especially to observe the installation of Robert Stephenson’s pioneering Britannia tubular bridge, now spanning the Menai Strait which divides Angelsey from the rest of Wales. My interest already alerted by the commentary on my train journey, I found the story of Brunel immediately relevant and memorable.
Always something new
This has set me pondering the many ways in which we can learn something new every day.
The Windowgazer Guide I saw is a free publication available on the Virgin Train North West line from Euston to Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. You obtain it from the refreshment carriage bookshelf, and it offers all sorts of interesting information about your journey.
The scope for this sort of publication, drawing together information across the whole range of arts and science is enormous. And it’s not ‘just’ trains which offer opportunities of this sort. Almost every journey does the same.
Bringing local knowledge to bear
The trend towards local access to the internet, be it via schools and community centres, libraries, housing associations or whatever, affords huge scope here. It would be great to see projects across the country which encourage local people to share their knowledge via the internet so that we can enjoy journeys illuminated by fascinating facts and ideas, wherever we go. What we learn might sometimes spark new and beneficial ideas of all sorts, who knows?
Perhaps there’s a way that someone could use the ‘Grid‘ to make available a route map of the U.K., with trainlines, roads, canals and whatever else marked out, onto which individuals and local communities could add their particular knowledge of where they live and work?
Getting from A to B is one form of travel. Sharing information and enjoying new ideas is another, perhaps even bigger, adventure.
Dreaming Realist 