Category Archives: Politics, Policies And Process
More Cars Are Not The Answer
There’s a current proposal for legislation to reduce car speeds to protect the environment and our resources. Environmental impact assessments are also important. Perhaps publicly funded activities should be assessed in terms of their proximity to public transport hubs.
I admit it, I don’t enjoy driving. If the trains behaved themselves, I’d always travel that way (though of course I can’t and don’t). But now I have a rationale for my preference: cars at speed are not only downright dangerous to those immediately around them, but they also cause even more damage to the environment than cars travelling less quickly. Official.
Next to the rail station?
So here’s an idea: why not insist that ALL publicly funded bodies be required to transact their non-local meetings and other business within, say, a kilometer of a major railway station?
And require also that they have to give details of a wide range of public transport routes every time they call people together? (This needn’t be as difficult and costly as it sounds… just post details permanently on the relevant website and refer people to it in their meeting papers, every time – with penalties if the info isn’t up to date.)
Before anyone points it out, I’m perfectly aware that the chances of the first part of my idea happening are approximately nil.
‘Environmental impact’ aware
I can’t see, however, why the second part should not be done. Let’s at least insist that those who convene activities involving public expense of any kind become aware of the damage they may be doing, using that funding, to the environment and resources which we all have to share.
Stakeholders In Liverpool’s Hope Street
There are exciting things happening in Liverpool’s Hope Street. After more than a decade of consistent lobbying by HOPES: The Hope Street Association, it looks as though real, beneficial change is about to occur….
The past few weeks have seen a lot of activity in the Hope Street community; and it’s all good stuff.
We in HOPES: The Hope Street Association, a charity bringing together community and stakeholder interests, have been collaborating with Liverpool Vision and other partners for quite a while now to bring about improvements in the public realm – we recently obtained almost £3m. for this after a ten-year campaign!
Physical developments can lead economic ones
As I’d always believed would happen, evidence actually on the street of visible improvements has provided the impetus required to take forward the economic and business developments which the Hope Street Quarter so badly needs.
So today some of us sat down as representatives of the Hope Street Stakeholders and made plans which will have real impact on the Quarter and, with luck, well beyond. This has been HOPES’ intention for some long while, and it’s genuinely exciting to see it happening, with people from various organisations (arts, community, education and faith) and private enterprise sharing discussions to make substantive progress.
What happens next?
There are a few months to go before the public realm work will be completed and then we shall start to think about public art to ‘represent’ the communities of the Quarter, and so forth.
In the meantime, we’ve got the Hope Street Festivals group going with a view to next year, and now we’re planning some public and private enterprise moves – more about which I hope to report later.
So, watch this space. In quite a short time we will I hope have proof positive that bottom-up campaigns to benefit quite varied communities really can produce results!
The Tesco Effect
It may not be fashionable to say so, but maybe Tesco has a point when it says it can work to help develop local trading and communities. The evidence is not conclusive, but neither have all the arguments as yet been fully explored.
The debate about Tesco is all around us in Liverpool just now. There are strongly vocal groups, some of them just local people and traders, and some of them I suspect part of larger national campaigns, who are implacably opposed to any further development of Tesco anywhere near our patch.
Others, far more quietly, would actually rather like a bigger, brighter Tesco (or any other large supermarket) not far from home, where they can pop in, parking assured, 24 / 7.
It seems however that whilst one of Tesco’s applications, to the north of the city, has now been approved, there will be a big fight over the south city bid. Officers have recommended agreement, politicians mostly oppose it; so who knows what will happen when it all goes to appeal?
Reasons for unease
As far as I can gather, opposition to Tesco and other supermarkest falls into some four categories:
1. we live nearby, and shoppers will block our street parking, and maybe make a noise;
2. green space is at risk;
3. local traders will suffer;
4. we are opposed to any big business which may be getting the upper hand.
Reasons for quietly hoping plans will go ahead, however, tend simply to be that it’s convenient, open long hours and the range of merchandise is good.
Mixed messages
Maybe I’ve missed something, but it feels to me as if a number of mesages are coming over here, not very coherently.
Firstly, concerns about street parking are persuasive for local councillors dependent on electoral support – let the people park – but they are not otherwise very convincing. Mechanisms exist and are easily put in plaxce to prevent parking altogether, or allocate resients’ priority, etc; and in any case most Tesco stores have quite adequate parking facilities of their own, if they are permitted to establish these.
The concern about green space of course follows from this – more Tesco space, less green space; but Section 106 arrangements (which basically require developers to ‘give’ something to the local community in return for ‘taking’ a local footprint) can be brought to bear by Council Officers, so that alternative facilities will be part of the package. Perhaps not everyone from the Council for the Protection of Rural England will be happy with the end result; but, to be frank, cities are not rural.
The argument that local traders will suffer is more difficult; the jury is still out on this, because the evidence is generally unconclusive. Organisations such as the New Economics Foundation suggest that the effect on local traders may be damaging; this is therefore an issue to be taken seriously. It is probably however less clear that at least some of these local traders would have done well even if the lcaol supermarket had not been built.
And finally, the question of market share needs to be considered. Tesco, for instance, has about 30% of this in Britain, almost twice as much as its nearest competitor. But whether Tesco should be constrained is a matter in the hands of the Office of Fair Trading, not something which can be resolved at local level in a narrow context.
The counter-argument
The issues so far discussed are perhaps only part of the story.
Let us put aside matters of investment, when building large supermarkets, in local infrastructure and construction and so forth. These are usually acknowledged at least in part at some level.
But only rarely is it also noted that Tesco, like its main competitors, offers well-defined and nationally led staff training and development; the pay to start with is not especially good, but the opportunity to move up the ladder (or across to another one) is certainly there. In some communities, there are few other opportunities of this sort; but where these opportunities are on offer, specially in otherwise less advantaged areas, they are surely of value.
And, finally, we have to ask ourselves why local traders, if they really do want to keep going, are not forming liaisons at the professional as well as the protectionist level. Are they sharing responsibilities such as staff training, local environmental improvements and the like? What, if anything, is the collective deal, with or without the supermarket in their midst?
Maybe Tesco is right to carry on growing, or just maybe it should be restrained; but the basis of the debate so far does not explore all the issues at stake. If the simple demand to ‘stop!’ were replaced by a dialogue on how to develop, with or without large supermarkets, local people and politicians might discover that there are more ways forward than they think.
Art In Whose Context? (Private ‘Versus’ Public)
Art and culture are often dismissed as peripheral to public life; but private investment in the arts is serious business. There is a strong case for the position that what’s good enough for private investment, is also good enough for investment in the public sphere.
Looks like we’re all a bit muddled about what the arts are ‘for’…. Revent news stories have revealed that a Cheshire Member of Parliament is up in arms because the North West Development Agency has over the past few years spent a seven figure sum on (mostly very large-scale) public art; and there’s another rumpus about money being ‘wasted’ on engaging professional artists to do work in hospitals (see Is Art good for your Health?); and the list could go on….
Conflicting perceptions
If ever there was confusion, you can find it when people debate the arts. That is, if they debate at all. For some, there’s no need to debate, they just know – usually, that it’s all a waste of time and money.
And, perhaps even more worryingly, often the arts are not even considered when people look at plans for the future. Arts and culture are add-ons which can happen later, if someone remembers to get around to it. Certainly no need to seek professional advice or make sure there’s an outline arts strategy in place from the beginning.
Yet the same folk who berate public art often have no objection to the private sort. To parody, maybe a little unkindly, old masters in oak drawing (or international corporate board) rooms are one thing; vibrant work on accessible public display is another.
The cost factor
An underlying theme in this seems to be that arts and culture are O.K. as long as nobody publicly accountable has to shell out for them now. Perhaps this is why Museums seem to be able to make their case more easily than the Performing Arts – the less unrelentlessly labour intensive, and the more thematically linked to ‘tourism’, i.e. ‘business’, the better.
Ideally, we gather, the arts should be delivered by volunteers (amateurs) who ‘give something back’ – whatever that means – whilst people who are paid should concentrate on careers in the basics, treatments, training, tarmac, tills and the like; and of course everyone understands these are all essentials of modern living. But would that life were so simple…. though I wouldn’t like it to be so boring.
Missing links
There are two immediate snags with the ‘do arts for pleasure not pay’ argument.
The first is that, if no-one takes a proefssional role in the arts, there will soon be no-one left to show the next generation how to do it. The arts demand high levels of skill which take a long time to acquire – if anyone is to invest this amount of energy and time, they need a reasonable assurance that there will be a professional pay-back later, whether this be as a painter, a performer or even, say, a public parks and open spaces artist and animateur.
Secondly, art in all its forms can be the ‘glue’ which attaches a community to its various and infomal formal structures. The arts offer opportunities for local pride (think of Newcastle’s Angel in the North, or Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall), they can involve people directly (street theatre, music, film projects etc) and they provide ‘real’ reasons for communities at every level to come together and to share a common interest and identity.
Private or public?
Maybe the context/s of art and culture are what define how we perceive it all. Perhaps if we recognised the various posturings and positions from an underlying ‘private vs. public’ perspective we can begin to make sense of them. The confusion then drops away, for me at least. If art and culture are good enough for private settings, they are good enough for public contexts too.
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.
Where Were The People When They Did The Planning?
There are housing estates designed in such a way that it’s almost to find a route in and out of them without a car. Many people on the edge of urban areas live in such places, cut off from others, in their own constrained ‘comfort’ zones. Whatever were the planners thinking of? And what can be done now to raise horizons and expectations?
I’ve recently been visiting a number of ‘disadvantaged’ communities, walking and driving around housing estates and out-of-town areas which many of us who don’t live in them rarely see.
It’s often quite a pleasant job. Most folk anywhere will make you feel welcome and at home. People in these areas as much as anywhere else will of course do their best to help, advise and engage with those who visit them, and there’s always lots to learn.
But… but… whatever were the planners thinking of when they permitted these estates to be devised? Where are the centres, where are the decent shops, where’s the clinic / surgery, where’s the (secondary) school, where are the meeting places? And, oh so importantly, where on earth are the quick, safe links between the various localities?
For many of these areas, there are in effect only one or at best two roads in and out; plus, the linking footpaths, if they, are grim in every sense – not at all routes that most of us would care to take.
All this means that many more people than we might imagine live in ‘closed’ communities. Public transport is poor, cars few and far between; there is precious little chance of going outside one’s immediate vicinity.
Here, then, is planned ‘comfort zoning’ of the worst sort. The big wide world may be out there, but it’s almost inaccessible; and the small zone of personal experience which is easily navigable becomes far more enclosing than it decently should.
It must also be said, on the basis of my recent experience, that even when planners have included facilities within given areas, these facilities have sometimes been allowed to transmute from ‘community’ facilities to yet more housing – the shop or centre wasn’t doing well; it closed; then it was acquired for private developers…. and now it’s flats. So now there are even fewer ‘facilities’. How do ‘they’ allow this to happen?
If the next generation is to see the world through more open eyes, the current one has to be able to take youngsters out and about. If adults in a community are to raise their expectations and amibitions, they have to be able to meet others and see things beyond their immdeiate experience.
Nowhere (except pubs?) to meet, and no way out of the estate, are not the best encouragements to the necessary wider agenda for progress. There’s a job of work for infrastructure designers – get in there and open up the passages between areas; and there’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs, public and private – start to add value to communities with meeting / leisure and proper retail facilities.
The enterprise is to some small extent beginning to happen, but how can it take off when communities remain isolated and the chances of increasing market size in an area are contrained quite simply by almost no ways in and out?
Where Are Liverpool’s Parks And Open Spaces?
Liverpool has a number of fascinating green spaces, including Calderstones, Croxteth, Dovecot, Everton, Greenbank, Norris Green, Otterspool, Princes, Reynolds, St James’, Sefton, Stanley and Wavertree Parks, as well as other Gardens and Churchyards…. The contribution which follows is a direct invitation to readers to comment on these vital ‘lungs’ in this historic city.
Liverpool has a number of fascinating green spaces, including Calderstones, Croxteth, Dovecot, Everton, Greenbank, Newsham, Norris Green, Otterspool, Princes, Reynolds, St James’, Sefton, Stanley and Wavertree Parks, as well as other Gardens and Churchyards…. and no doubt others can add comment about, and more information immediately to, this list.
The City Council now has a draft strategy for developing some of these spaces, but there’s still a place for people to befriend their favourite parks.
So please do let us know about your Parks and their Friends.* Let’s make a list of the contacts for all these wonderful green spaces in our city.. Our parks and green spaces are important and people’s views and ideas need to be shared. You can add your information and comments below, or, as others have done, in for instance the Sefton Park ‘slot..
Friends’ Groups so far of which I am aware are:
Croxteth Hall & Park
St James’ Cemetery & Park
Newsham Park
Princes Park
Sefton Park
[*Note to contributors: You don’t need to display any more of your details than you wish when you give your name. This website only asks for your email address, privately, so that we can ban spammers, not you!!]
Does The Train Take The Strain? (Or Shall We Take The Car?)
Ideally everyone would use public transport; but of course they don’t. Perhaps however this is not simply because of the usual overt issues – cost, frequency, reliability etc – but also because of less easily measured human responses to uncomfortable contexts such as isolated platforms, cold and wet waiting areas and a general feeling on insecurity about the ‘transport offer’ overall.
Trains play quite a significant part in my life. Given the choice, I would always go for public transport; though often of course I can’t.
But I do whenever possible choose to travel by train, both long distance and for commuting. This strategy is not however without snags. Whatever enthusiasts claim, train travel can sometimes feel uncomfortable or even unsafe.
When you’re on the Intercity it’s hard to realise how fast you’re travelling through small stations; when you’re commuting from one of these points, it’s even harder to believe that trains – enormous vehicles by anyone’s standards – are permitted to rush past where you standing on the platform at such breakneck speeds. It’s like standing on the slipway of the motorway; and just as scary.
Then there’s the lack of shelter and the isolation. Train stations on commuter routes, outside London at least, tend to be vast unpeopled wind-tunnels, away from the road and houses, which expose one to rain and cold, and, potentially, to being alone in very lonely places. No matter how many CCTVs, it can be unpleasant to realise you’re the only one on the platform – at the moment. Add to this the rudimentary and sometimes solid brick, unwindowed, covered stands which may afford the only seating, and you begin to feel very vulnerable indeed.
My guess is that many people feel this environment hostile. Panic buttons, good lighting and visible CCTV can go a long way to sustaining the excellent safety record of most train stations; but it doesn’t always come over that way. And when people don’t feel safe, they find an alternative – for preference not noisy and jumbled up buses, but their warm, locked cars. (I checked in the office yesterday; every women there said her car was first choice for just these reasons.)
Thus perhaps do barriers to easy use of public transport in our non-capital cities arise; and this is before we even start to ask whether it’s straightforward to buy tickets (not all systems have the equivalent of Transport for London’s Oyster Cards), whether the signage is good (why do noticeboards ask ‘Have you bought your tickets?’, when they mean, ‘Here is the machine, by the wall, which will sell you a ticket?’), and whether the train will actually turn up as promised, and is actually going where you planned to go.
In my more radical moments I am tempted to suggest that no public transport employee, in the public or private sector, should ever be permitted to claim a car allowance, though of course claims for use of public transport would always be allowed. This would apply even more to managers and planners than to everyday workers.
but this is obviously not going to happen, so maybe the next best thing would be to encourage transport companies to have ‘exchange away days’, where a member of staff from Company X is invited to travel difficult journeys around the area of Company Y, with nothing except a tenner, a notepad and pencil and a train timetable in his or her pocket.
What seems perfectly logical and simple to people who do use a trainline all the time, often seems far more problematic to someone new to the scene; does the tram have a special name? where’s the ticket office (and are there different ones for different services)?; why is such and such a line cancelled with such regularity?; does this service feel equally safe for all types of passenger?; can you work out how the various routes interconnect?
Uncertainties arising from these sorts of questions probably go a long way to explaining why public transport is far from always the method of choice. Getting people out of their cars and onto the train or bus is a big priority environmentally, but for success it has to be done in ways which the punter finds comfortable.
And if comfortable and safe-feeling public transport doesn’t happen, problems will also arise for wider regeneration and renewal, especially in areas without high car use to start with. The action of choice may be no action – just stay put and don’t bother.
It would be interesting to know how much research has been undertaken into which aspects of comfort and safety most reassure travellers, and which of these are the most cost-effective, in all senses of that term. For many of us, how the train and other public transport systems are run is of only marginal interest; but how we feel about using the systems determines at a very fundamental level whether we actually choose to make use them.
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.
British Orchestras On The Brink…. Again
British Orchestras are under severe financial threat because of new tax rules. The likelihood is that this threat will somehow be resolved. But will most orchestra performers still find, skilled as they are, that their own professional position remains precarious?
Here we go again. Another story about British Orchestras and their financially parlous states; and as usual, the story is true.
Good funding, bad rules
It was reassuring to hear the Association of British Orchestras (ABO) view earlier today, that the government has indeed invested a lot of money in our orchestras over the past few years, to very good effect. British Orchestras are widely regarded as amongst the best in the world, and this government-led funding has, says the ABO, genuinely helped to keep them so.
But then someone somewhere makes a ruling which throws the whole lot into confusion, and potentially into financial chaos and maybe worse. As any professional classical musician will tell you, there’s a huge difference between the work patterns of a freelance musician and that of an (often ‘resting’?) actor… but they’ve been booted into the same category for national insurance payments. Both ‘entertainers’, whatever these might be.
Real jobs?
Of course, no real surprise here. The professional life of classical musicians remains a total mystery to nearly everyone. We all have vague some notion of what actors might do, but orchestral musicians…?
‘What do you do for your REAL job?’ is a question asked all too frequently, followed closely by ‘But it’s only part-time, isn’t it?’ and, a little down the line (I’m not making this up, it actually does sometimes happen when tickets for a professional concert in, say, a hired venue like a church, are being offered for sale), ‘Who are you going to donate the money to?’.
Given this state of affairs, it’s not surprising that financial rules about insurance aren’t fit for purpose when it comes to musicians, even if, following representations from Equity (the actors’ union), they were introduced with the best will in the world, to help resting thesps.
The underlying issues
Let’s hope this gets sorted out pronto. Then perhaps someone can turn to the underlying problem facing people in this very unusual profession.
Truth is, it’s extraordinarily difficult to get work as a player in major orchestras, and even if you manage that, the likelihood of making this your lifetime profession is remote. Most orchestral performers (though of course not all) will depart long before they can claim a retirement pension, a sizeable proportion of them because of ill-health, stress or playing problems. Plus, as the Musicians’ Union never tires of pointing out, the pay is awful – often less than the national average wage, in a profession which requires many years of university-level study.
Myth of musicians’ professional progression
For most classical musicians there is also little professional progression.
Players often claim the work’s become a ‘trade’, rather than a ‘profession’, in at least the sense that the job may well expand to include teaching, school ‘residencies’ etc – but it doesn’t usually offer much personal artistic development and advancement.
On the brink or on the blink?
With a bit of luck, British Orchestras will be able to pull away from the latest risk of going over the Brink; any other resolution of this latest fiasco is unthinkable.
Resolution of this problem [Post-script: Which was eventually achieved] will not however mean that many of those who play in our orchestras feel more secure that they personally won’t end up on the Blink.
See also: Orchestral Salaries In The U.K.
Life In A Professional Orchestra: A Sustainable Career?
The Healthy Orchestra Challenge
Musicians in Many Guises
Where’s The Classical Music In The Summer? An Idea…
Dreaming Realist 