Category Archives: Knowledge Ecology And Economy
Where Are All The Physicists?
A new report says Physics is at risk of dying out in schools. However can this be, when Physics is one of the most intrguing and exciting stories on the block?
I have a real Thing about how invisible Science and Technology are. It’s everywhere around us; yet most people seem simply not to see it.
Hw do we transact our communications? How do we take ourselves from A to B? How do we keep our food fresh and our homes warm… You get the picture.
But there’s no Big Take on science. We imagine those who actually do it are ‘Boffins’ (whatever that may mean). And anyway it’s all too hard with too many sums, so who cares?
The Missing Physicists
In the light of this general view (correct me if it’s wrong), I’m hardly surprised to read today that there is a severe deficit of Physicists. Again, So what?, you may ask.
Well, it’s like this: Physicists and those in closely related disciplines are the people who lead much of the high-spend and high-impact knowledge economy. They take our understanding of the world and how it is made to places people in previous generations never even dreamt of; and with their engineering colleagues they also lead much of our industrial innovation.
Plus, they are the people who teach the next generation about the nature of what at the most fundamental levels makes the world go round. Taught properly, this is one of the most exciting things anyone can ever learn…. I studied A-level Physics many years ago, and although I shall never make a Physicist, it hooked me. You see things in a very different, and quite amazing, light when you begin to learn what sub-atomic particles are all (or even a bit) about!
Why aren’t there enough Physics teachers?
I’d guess there are a number of answers to the question of where all the Physics teachers have gone.
Firstly, good Physicists get snapped up in industry and finance, for large amounts of money. Not many others can manipulate and analyse figures like they can. Teachers’ salaries are no match for what the city and the biggest industrial companies can offer.
Then there’s the prospect of teaching itself. Teaching is difficult, it can be draining, a lot of children are – and always have been – resistant to the sort of complex studies required by well defined disciplines (in any academic field).
And finally, in my books, there’s the question of ‘relevance’. Because we hardly ‘see’ Science and Technology, we don’t understand why it’s relevant.. and you try teaching youngsters things which they believe have no relevance…
The excitement of Physics
But it’s not even just that there are now fewer Physics teachers than before. A news story this week also tells us that the number of Physics teachers who are actually well qualified has dropped dramatically.
Would it be reasonable to suggest that some of this is because Science, and especially the hard physical sciences, are so invisible that we don’t value it? If we did, of course, people would want to teach Physics, and even more importantly students would want to study it.
There’s a big challenge here for the scientists themselves: Tell people, loudly and clearly, why Physics excites you! Show them why it’s ‘relevant’… and even maybe tell them that the best Physicists earn lots of money….
In other words, please try to understand that even the most challenging and abstract ideas in disciplines such as Physics can become interesting, when people know these ideas exist and perceive them as integral to our society and how it is moving forward, in so many ways.
There’s a massive PR job to be done here. Investigating the very nature of matter is about as exciting as it gets. We all need to share in the excitement; but that can only happen when someone takes action to ensure we know about it.
A New Life In Australia: Dream Or Reality?
Young professionals have always wanted spread their wings. But why are some workers outside London more willing to up roots to Australia, than they are even to try life in their own U.K. metropolis – or, come to that, in Cornwall if they want surfing and sun or in the Higlands if they want space? The distant unknown, it seems, is a more attractive dream for the future than the anything closer to home.
Strange how people often feel ‘safer’ opting for the completely unknown, rather than for the semi-familiar. Two or three times this week I’ve been chatting to young public sector professionals and skilled trades people around my patch (northern England) who’ve announced they fancy a new life in Australia.
When quizzed a bit more, the reasons for this option usually run as
1. it’s warmer and sunnier (indisputable, of course…. but it can be pretty humid too);
2. there are more ‘opportunities’ there (Yes, but that could be because loads of young Australian professionals are over here); and
3. it’s ‘boring’ here in the U.K. (What, all of it?)
Now, far be it from me to talk anyone out of an adventure – I went to Arizona on an American Field Service International Scholarship, for a full year and all on my own, at the ripe old age of seventeen – but I’m still a bit puzzled.
Why not London?
If I further enquire (because I’m curious, not because I want to dissuade) why these young people don’t want to try (say) London, I’m usually told it’s because Londoners are unfriendly and it’s a horrible, expensive, confusing place which you can’t get out of.
Well, some of my best friends live in London, I quite often work there, and I graduated from a London university. On the whole, I enjoy being there. It is a collection of some of the most historic ‘villages’ in the world, it has culture, it has cutting edge knowledge, it has huge parks…
But others’ hostile view of London does raise some interesting issues, such as: how do folk ‘know’ that a land they have never even visited isn’t also confusing, unfriendly or expensive? How can they be so confident that it’s a better place to be?
Or Cornwall or the Highlands?
Are these adventurers actually seeking a ‘new’ life when they leave the U.K., or, in fact, just a revamped version of the ‘previous’ one, with more excitement, freedom, challenges or whatever? And is this a realistic expectation in either event? Most people probably plan to take their current skills with them in their news lives, so they are in reality just trading locations (no harm in that).
If people want work and sunshine / space, why not Cornwall or the Highlands? Both are currently Objective One areas of the U.K., with plenty of incentives for skilled and entrepreneurial people, and both have space enough for everyone. They offer beaches, inexpensive housing, a more relaxed life-style; and they leave the option of experimentation without a huge commitment. In fact, on reflection, I’d probably suggest they be explored as ‘practice runs’ before taking the drastic step of crossing the equator for a permanent change of home.
It’s all in the marketing
These ideas of London and Oz are probably both wide of the mark. People are people everywhere, and, even allowing for deep cultural differences, how you find them usually depends far more on your own personal approach than on any other factor.
Which brings us to marketing and image…. Australia is openly eager to draw some of our brightest and best to its shores; and no problem there – we do the same to them, and, perhaps sometimes less fairly, to other countries too. But whilst London seems to emphasise the requirements of the knowledge economy, Australia also overtly seeks to draw those with technical and applied skills.
London as a city rarely does anything about actively attracting young public sector professionals from other parts of the U.K. Yes, individual organisations do this, but not London as a city in
its own right. It doesn’t really need to; but perhaps young people need it?
Conversely, the UK ‘regions’ all set themselves up in opposition to the metropolis. The very brightest of all already go to London in their droves (London has a far higher concentration of very highly qualified people than any other part of the U.K.); but little is done directly to encourage exchange and flow between different U.K. regions. And to us in the ‘regions’ London often looks like the Opposition.
Shared experience has value
It would be a very positive move if we encouraged young professionals to know their counterparts elsewhere in the U.K. Perhaps the problem here is that often only as they become more senior are they expected to attend conferences outside their own regional ‘comfort zone’, meeting other workers in more distant locations and learning how different people see the world. Indeed, for many that never happens, or else it’s too late by then for them to develop a fresh perspective.
Until a couple of decades ago many undergraduates chose to study as far away from home as possible; but that was at a time when a far smaller percentage of our young people went on the higher education. The sheer numbers of students these days makes this option impossible to finance by state grants; there’s been a relocation of post-school study to home ground as a trade-off for more people (of all ages) doing it.
So when are young people today getting their experience away from home territory? How can they come to see the opportunities across the U.K.? Maybe here’s a theme to return to another day.
Add your comments below…
Why The Merseyside Economy Needs More SciTech Research & Development
A recent meeting of the North West Business Leadership Forum and The Mersey Partnership has focused minds on how to engage the Knowledge Economy at its highest levels. Reseach and Development are universally understood to enhance economies. The challenge now for Merseyside entrepreneurs and businesses is therefore to grasp the exciting opportunities emerging via our growing high-tech knowledge base.
On Thursday (10 November) this week I went to a joint North West Business Leadership Forum / Mersey Partnership forum in Liverpool. Attendance was high, this being the first opportunity for some of us to hear the views of Robert Crawford, the new Chief Executive of The Mersey Partnership.
Robert’s analysis of where Merseyside ‘is at’ was of course worth hearing. In just six weeks he has obviously seen and digested a great deal, and he shared some of his initial thoughts with us during his talk. What particularly encouraged me, however, was his emphasis on the Knowledge Economy at the highest levels: his questions around retention of post-grads as well as first degree graduates, and his challenge to our three local universities to increase ‘Reach In’ – the term used by States-side colleges for close alignment with local businesses, especially at a time when private corporates have to some extent reduced their own in-house research and development.
Nations don’t compete; businesses compete
Innovation, productivity and skills development, as MIT and other studies have told us, are globally the key to enterprise success. It follows therefore research and development are at least as important in Merseyside as anywhere else. Our sub-regional productivity is lower than elsewhere, but our higher education base is robust. The task is to bring the potential for R&D into play to increase productivity, as has happened dramatically in parts of China and elsewhere. Knowledge inevitably traverses continents freely, but it is up to businesses to engage it for their own use.
Places as far apart as Bangalore, North Carolina and Ireland have found ways to bolster their economies using very high skills. We in the North West of England now have the opportunity to do the same. Fortunately we have just secured a huge advantage via the new-found confidence in North West science at Daresbury and in Liverpool’s own university science base. It needs to be said, however, that this work is in every sense regional and (inter)national, as well as sub-regional. Merseyside will get nowhere in this vast emerging network of science and technology without collaboration with our erstwhile city-region competitors. None of us is big enough to do it on our own.
Moving forward
For the Merseyside economy and its people to flourish in this new context, as Robert Crawford said in his address, we need mechanisms in place to define our own sub-regional partnerships, and to identify and remove local impediments to progress. For this to happen we also need to map our baseline/s and to have confidence that public sector intervention will be carefully considered, timely and appropriate.
One part of this positive partnership development will be the increasing involvement of high-achieving people who have links with our city and sub-region; they may not all live here, but there are many other ways in which win-win synergies can be developed.
For me, such synergies clearly include the huge numbers of high-skills liaisons which occur virtually and person-to-person in the North West’s world-class science programmes. But whilst there can be huge benefits for Merseyside which arise from these endeavours, we must never escape forget that the science itself is funded internationally, and its potential impact is global. Only if Merseyside’s local entrepreneurs take the time to grasp the opportunities to hand will we benefit particularly. The next challenge is to persuade enough of them that such apparently esoteric activity actually has relevance for their bottom line.
Technology & Enterprise: The Good News For UK plc
A very high global ranking in use of ICT, plus a report that Britain now has the best financial environment for entrepreneurs in the world, will be welcomed by many, but might seem more of a mixed blessing to a few. Combine this however with a UK Government paper showing how ICT can support even the most excluded, and perhaps everyone could agree that maybe we’re on to something really promising?
The Economist doesn’t always carry the cheeriest of good news for us Brits, but this week’s edition does provide some interesting information.
The Milken Institute, a think-tank in California, has reported that Britain now has the best financial environment for entrepreneurs of the 121 countries (92% of the global market) it has ranked every year since 1998. The Institute looks at the breadth, depth and vitality of each country’s capital markets – and has concluded that we are ahead even of Hong Kong, Singapore and the USA for the first time.
Then, also in the 5th November edition, the Economist tells us that the World Bank has rated Britain below only our competitors above, plus Denmark, in capacity to exploit information and communication technology (ICT). This index is based on the availability, quality, affordability, efficiency and adoption of ICT.
Perhaps for some these reports raise alarm rather than cheer, but there’s another interesting piece of news too – the UK Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has just released a report, Digital Solutions to Social Exclusion, which suggests ICT may be of benefit even to the most excluded of our citizens. It is now being used to help homeless people to get jobs, maintain medical support, and much else.
Nobody’s suggesting that everything in the garden is rosy; it never is. But here is evidence indeed that science and technology can, with the right push, work hand in hand with the market to enhance life chances for a whole lot of people.
The CCLRC – And Why We Really Should Want To Know About It
The CCLRC is the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils of the UK. Its 2005 Annual Meeting was an amazing showcase of research at every level from the very tiniest scale imaginable (if indeed you can), to the most enormous. Here were world-class scientists and technologists, telling us what they do and why they are so incredibly enthusiastic about it.
The CCLRC is not an organisation which often hits the front page of the papers; but, as we all know, some of the best things in life are the least paraded. So I want to spend a few minutes right now saying why I think it’s a really exciting prospect.
First, though, the basics: the CCLRC is the UK’s Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils. In other words, it’s the top body in charge of (very) Big Science in the UK; and yesterday, 4 November, I was lucky enough to attend their national Annual Conference, at the Lowry Centre in Salford. I’m still buzzing!
The science budget is massive
Consider this: the CCLRC budget last year was nudging half a billion pounds, and it has oversight of some of the most prestigious and influential laboratories in the world, including the Daresbury and the Rutherford Appleton facilities in Warrington and Oxfordshire respectively.
Scientists and technologists in these laboratories, working alongside colleagues in numbers of our great universities, are exploring almost everything you can imagine about our world and our universe.
At the tiniest, nano, level these scientists are looking at how ‘engines’ at the atomic scale are ‘driving’ muscles; and they have developed a ‘molecular flashgun’ – the brightest beam of light ever created anywhere.
At the other extreme of size, CCLRC supported research is attempting to model global climate changes, and look at planets and space.
Science at the cutting edge
Much of this we were told about at the meeting yesterday, with fascinating presentations bringing together simple models and amazingly enthusiastic speakers, world authorities in their subjects.
And in between all this there are the pieces of work which will bring about cures for illnesses, new ways to produce manufactured goods, and greater understanding of genetics…
Then we were invited to look also into the future. Where will science and technology be taking us?
Futurology
This question is importantly about ‘futurology’, that informed guessing which tells us that exciting things, challenging things and sometimes really difficult to grasp things are about to emerge, all as a consequence of the extraordinary work which is being carried out in scientific communities around the world. To read about some of these anticipated developments, clearly explained and illustarted, just turn to the CCLRC’s own website.
As is quite apparent when one looks at these fascinating developments, no laboratory or university can now undertake Big Science in a vacuum from others. Collaboration is always the name of the game, across regions, nations and continents. And this brings us to another reason why the CCLRC and its huge expertise is so vital, to the UK as a nation and to the geographical areas in which it has a major presence.
Big money and big ideas
Investment at the level of the CCLRC is hard to secure. It doesn’t think small. It brings the most able and influential scientists and technologists with it wherever it decides to blossom; and this, in turn, brings forth industrial and commercial investment, and employment opportunities at the highest level – in other words, it enables the sort of synergies between economic development and knowledge for which any area of the UK yearns.
Do not suppose for one moment that, because most of us would be very hard put even to explain what Einstein discovered about particle motion a century ago, this Big Science has nothing to do with us.
Big Science brings opportunities (and, indeed, challenges) of the highest order, it brings amazing collaborations between people of many regions and nations, and it brings as yet barely touched scope for economic synergies and development.
A pretty phenomenal return on investment of less than half a billion pounds, when you see it like that.
Fifty Not Out… (Or Learning To Love E-Technology)
This is Hilary’s fiftieth contribution to her website. She discusses here how it came about, and how she would like to develop it, with you the reader, for the future.
No, it’s not my birthday; that doesn’t get mentioned much these days. But I am pleased to claim this contribution as my fiftieth piece for this weblog.
So what has been achieved? Nick Prior, my website designer, has already written something of where he thinks we’re at (see his website, bottom of this page), and now it’s my turn.
The website has been in planning for some months. Nick and I were introduced by a mutual friend, who knew I aspired to setting up a website, and that Nick, an expert in this field, aspired to developing a new mode for these. I felt I needed a virtual space to try out and share ideas, and Nick wanted to work with someone who was interested in his approach, but would engage as a relative newcomer to the medium; which certainly made me eligible for the collaboration, on the basis of knowing little about how to do websites!
After our initial discussions and work at the end of August, I took time out to think about everything, so nothing was put into the website until three weeks ago – which averages at over one piece per day. That has, on the whole, been easier than I’d anticipated; though of course it’s for others to say whether what they read is of interest. Whatever, there are plenty of things which capture my imagination and on which, I have discovered, I have something to say.
The challenge seems to be articulating ideas in a concise and coherent way – and then to write a summary which introduces and enhances that ‘message’. No doubt there’s scope to work on this, but it’s quite an interesting and different discipline for me as a writer.
What is also clear is that there’s a lot of ideas out there to sort into something more coherent, presentationally. My instruction from Nick was just to write what came to me; we’d think about more consolidated Categories later. So that’s what I’ve done, and to an extent the outcome has surprised me. (Try it for yourself sometime, it’s quite an eye-opener in terms of what you think you’re observing and considering! )…. And do please tell us if you have any particular views on how the Categories should be constructed.
I’ve also been attempting to bring some balance to these contributions. Some of them are about big, difficult or woolly issues, others are about my personal experiences and where I live. We all have a ‘home’ for our observations and ideas, and I’ve tried to reflect this in what I’m sharing.
How am I doing? People are quite frequently telling me that they enjoy ‘popping in’ to have a little read on the website, but not many of them so far have responded directly to my ideas.
Is your quietness because you agree, because you don’t agree, because the technology seems more trouble than it’s worth, or because you’re shy? I’d be really interested to know, because Nick and I are hoping to make this a space where everyone who feels so inclined, can join in. This is perhaps the ‘new e-age’ mode for discussion, when people and communities are so far apart geographically and in other ways.
Thank you for your patience and interest thus far. Please keep visiting, and please do contribute if you’d like to. I look forward very much to hearing from you.
Hilary
Sustaining The Conservation Debate
The pressing environmental issues of the day can be addressed in many ways. Everyone has their own take on eco-matters. None of these different understandings offers complete answers to very complex questions, but all who ask them do us a service insofar as they keep the issues at the forefront of debate.
Does Prince Charles have a point? You probably don’t have to be a royalist to think perhaps he does, environmentally at least. Few can be unaware that conservation and sustainability are important to him.
In that concern of course our future monarch is not alone. Turn the pages of publications as diverse as The Guardian and The Economist, The New Economics Foundation (nef) and The Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), and you will find the same themes: energy and sustainability are the debates of the day.
Similarly with our politicians and policy makers, national and local. Whole departments are dedicated at every level to finding ways forward. Nuclear, oil, solar, wind, tide or biomass? Green bins for garden waste, purple for paper…. Our leaders are certainly onto a winner when they share their thoughts on recycling and energy. Everyone is worried, though not everyone will follow through to action.
The ‘action’ is however where it has to be. Nothing will be achieved by being worried – though there is undoubtedly consensus that we all should be. And it’s here things sometimes start to go fluffy.
There are logics which arise from environmental concerns.
If you believe that things need to stay as they are (or, better still, were), you’ll probably take the view that progress is not to be encouraged. What we ‘should’ do is stick with what we know, but maybe regulate it rather more, so that things don’t change.
But if you generally welcome initiative and challnge, you’ll want to find new ways to meet the problems which everyone agrees are there, and you may even believe that Science in all its glory has the answers.
The third way, of course, is to try to think out of the box. Should we use so much energy? Are there modes of operation which meet needs in far-distant places as well as our own? What mix of provision and production of enery, food, whatever, will best reduce risk of under- or over-reliance for ourselves and others? Does nuclear increase or decrease the risks in energy? Does GM help to feed people or do we risk damaging them? Should we increase our consumption of vegetables and reduce that of meat? Is intercontinental travel ‘bad’ because it harms the physical environment or ‘good’ because it increases human understanding? The questions could go on…
Essentially, the issues relate to human activity – after all, it’s largely what we as individual human beings choose to do which has brought about these conumdrums, so presumably it’s up to us as socio-political beings to sort it out.
Here then is the rub: Conservation on its own is probably impossible. Science and technology alone probably can’t solve the problems. Everything which looks like it might have positive effect is but one part of the total scenario; but the incremental, balanced approach lacks appeal because of its very caution and good sense.
It’s much harder to have impact with the slogan, say, ‘10% this sort of energy, 25% that sort, 5% of something else’ (etc), than it is to go for the grand gesture.
The politics and the practicalities often don’t stack up when people realise it’s they, personally, who will have to make adjustments, not them, unknown folk somewhere else.
Full marks then to those across the entire conservation-progress spectrum, Economist, nef and Prince Charles alike, who keep the debate going. Sustaining public interest (and thereby enabling complex issues to be addressed even when it costs) is a crucial element in the environmental equation. Perhaps different people are asking different questions, but it’s a lot better than asking none at all.
Liverpool School Of Tropical Medicine Teams Up With Bill Gates
The Bill and Melinda Gates award to the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine is testimony to the excellence of that institution; and it is also a huge endorsement of investment in the future of science in the North of England and beyond.
Congratulations to Professor Janet Hemingway and her team on their award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation!
As a Member (and previously a Trustee) of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine I have watched over the past three or four years as the School’s ambitious plans have progressed from the drawing board to the Gates Foundation Boardroom. Everyone has been very focused on success, and building the ‘package’ which has brought this about was painstaking work. It has involved careful co-ordination between governmental funders, national and local politicians, academics at the highest level, and many others.
People like Bill Gates don’t give their money unless they are convinced it will be well matched by other funds, and will be extremely well spent.
This is extremely good news not only for the LSTM and the University of Liverpool, but also for the city and the Northwest of England – not to mention for the prestige of British science itself. The research is of the highest standard and the outcome, in terms of impact on people at risk of malaria, will be massive.
Regional synergies
Slowly but surely the connections between science institutions in the North of England are being made. The synergies of collaboration are beginning to be visible beyond the largely ignored ivory towers.
If these new developments are genuinely welcomed and nurtured by our city and regional leaders for what they can bring, the impact on parts of the UK could be almost as significant, in their own way, as the impact of the research in the locations where the medical risks being studied are to be found.
Why Change Management can’t be perfect (as if you didn’t know)
Different communities and groups frequently have different understandings of why ‘change’ occurs and how ‘progress’ is achieved. Leadership and initiatives in such circumstances can be very challenging. Nobody’s interested in Policy Pilots. They want Results.
It’s always puzzled me, and the more I think about it, the more so…..
We all know that
(a) we live in times of rapid change,
(b) the variables in the changes are uncountable, and
(c) to whatever extent, change has to be eternally managed.
In other words, we are solidly aware that the whole process is unpredictable and subject to serendipity at every stage of the game. Plus, there’s never an end. Change is a dialectic as compelling as Time itself.
Why is ‘change’ a worry?
So why do so many people spend so much time criticising ‘Change’, and apparently so little time in general public discourse considering ‘Since Something Is Going To Happen Anyway, What Shall We All Do To Make It A Bit Better?’
Clearly, the myriad of forces which impel change as such also apply to the motivators and causal factors behind any individual’s reaction to that change. There are psychological ones, socio-political ones, geo-economic ones… The list could go on.
There is also however a general cultural factor which probably applies diffierently at different times and in different places, whether we are thinking about huge historical eras or micro-contexts like single workplaces.
Here are some possible scenarios to which one might be able to apply specific examples.. just fill in with your own!
The cultural backdrop
In some cultural understandings – and again these may be micro as well as macro – there is a sense simply that Things Happen. This probably includes amongst other ‘Things’ people who are outside the group, who are perceived with whatever degree of acceptance or resistance to be the agents of the change…. No good communicating with them, because ‘We’ won’t make any impact, so just wait and see, and then judge the outcome.
Then there are other cultural understandings which may suggest that, whilst ‘We’ are aware of what’s going on, the option of complaint later is preferable to taking early responsibility for what arises. The Comfort Zone is visible, but is safer than expending the time and energy which a pro-active response would require.
And finally there are cultural understandings which just fail to appreciate the fluid nature of the process of developing ideas. In this case, people do know how to interrogate proposals and they may well have strong views, but they see every decision and outcome as cast in stone.
This last is a particularly difficult position to address, but one familiar to many of us who attempt to initiate Managed Change.
Vague ideas which leave things hanging…
You perhaps go into a situation with a remit to support constructive developments, and you ask those concerned what they think. Their response is, ‘Well, what do you want?’……
But you know that, come the time when plans crystallise into actions, there will be plenty of advice on What You Should Have Done.
The dialectic of such development is challenging. Not everyone sees any difference between Change and ‘Consensual Progress’; nor does everyone want to. If you as an initiator emphasise the plasticity of outcomes, you are accused of not knowing your stuff; but if you offer directional leadership (is there any other sort?) you are of course autocratic.
It’s all a matter of perspective, as any politician or organisational head attempting to pilot his or her favourite policy will tell you.
Empowerment
Empowering people and communities to believe that things can usually change consensually for the better – that only very rarely is there no space for adjustment – is one of the most difficult aspects of community leadership, whatever the ‘community’.
Perhaps one of the first steps in this direction is the acknowledgement that we all, You, Me, Them, make mistakes; and that it IS possible to learn from and act on these, positively.
2012 London Olympics: An Opportunity For Liverpool?
Already, some people in Liverpool believe the 2012 Olympics will be ‘bad’ for Merseyside. Having already won the accolade of 2008 European Capital of Culture, – and bearing in mind also the City’s 800th Anniversary in 2007 – surely we in Liverpool are actually very well placed to benefit greatly from the 2012 Olympics, if we start to plan now? The glass is decidedly half full, not half empty. The next challenge for Liverpool is to recognise this and act on it.
The news on Merseyside today is that a survey shows more local business people think the 2012 Olympics will be bad for the Liverpool area than good for it.
They argue that benefit will probably be directly in relation to proximity to London; and indeed that finance for the Olympics will take any available monies, leaving not much for the rest of us.
This is a particularly puzzling view in Merseyside, where we are about to benefit from our 800th Anniversary in 2007, and then the 2008 European Capital of Culture – events brim-full of business opportunities and visitors, alongside the city’s current enthusiasm for regeneration.
Call me naive, but I see here a chance to build on whatever success we in Liverpool can make of our 2007 / 2008 events. The city’s leaders have consistently said they want the celebrations and developments kicked-started by the 2008 Culture Year (and the city’s 2007 800th Anniversary celebrations) to continue longer term, with a programme which has horizons well beyond those dates.
These forthcoming events are surely the way to make sure we’re on the ball for the Olympics, a position which is unique to Liverpool in the UK . By 2012 we will have put in place all the infrastructure and tourism facilities you could possibly wish for, and we will have learned a lot during our 2007/8 years in the limelight.
It’s up to all of us outside the capital to make sure that our Olympics ‘offer’ for 2012 is up to scratch. I don’t want to ask people now if they are worried about 2012. I’d prefer to ask how, already, they are engaging their imaginations to make 2012 a year when the whole country makes the most of chances to work together to show what we can do.
This is definitely one scenario where the glass is not half empty, but already half full – especially for Liverpool, 2008 European Capital of Culture. Let’s make sure the 2012 opportunity is relished, not rejected.
Dreaming Realist 