Category Archives: Regeneration, Renewal And Resilience
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.
Liverpool Botanic Garden, Edge Lane
The long-delayed Edge Lane developments, constructing an Eastern Gateway to Liverpool by 2007 / 8, are about to start. What a pity, then, that the historic Wavertree Botanic Gardens located just by the intended new route (and initiated in 1803 by no less a person than William Roscoe) are in such a state of neglect.
May Day
May Day has been with us for centuries. Its overt meanings, and even the actual date, may change, but the sense of taking a day to do something different and more personal remains. People in every age and every part of the world have welcomed the onset of Summer and the chance to throw a party.
It’s May Day today. The first of May, that unequivocal date which, unlike the contested first day of Spring (is it the vernal equinox on 20/21 March, or the newer BBC version on 1 March?), is firmly set in the European calendar.
When I was small I genuinely thought that May Day was about Morris Dancers and Maypoles. We lived in villages in Hampshire, Wiltshire and then Gloucestershire, and my father was a rural science teacher who took his local community involvement seriously – so we all enjoyed a flavour of the festive rituals of many centuries, and are none the worse for that.
Holding on to traditions and ideas
I suppose that in some ways that was the end of a very long period in history, already mostly shattered by global stife and the increasing grip of technology. Looking back, it might be seen as idyllic, though that it certainly wasn’t; give me double glazing, wider horizons and lots of running hot water any day.
But there are vestiges of the ‘old’ May Day way of life which still resonate. The festivals (May Day, Harvest and what have you) were unselfconscious and for everyone. Our understanding of the seasons and cycles of the earth – I learned about crop rotation at a very early age, and about its history back to mediaeval times not much later – is something which still informs my perceptions, albeit now in terms of eco-systems. And the things we did were family inclusive; sometimes overly so, but at least everyone was there.
New meaning for old ideas
Only after I came to the city did I learn that there was also another ‘meaning’ to May Day – its use, on the first Monday of May, as a celebration of workers’ rights. Thus, 1 May 1886 in the United States saw the very first International Workers’ Day…. not to be confused with 1 September, which after historical debate is now set in America as Labor Day.
Such reinvention of celebratory events is not however confined to the U.S.A. In Liverpool since 1978, when the date first became a Bank Holiday, we have seen the first Monday in May used to underpin general festivities, to recognise Trade Unions and, occasionally, to celebrate shire horses. The scope is huge in a place with such long historical links to labour, but also with wide-open spaces such as Sefton Park right by the city centre.
Modern May Day
Activities this year for May Day are a million miles away from my hazy childhood recollections. There range from a demonstration in London to promote a Trade Union Freedom Bill, to a grass-roots Labor Arts Festival in Edmonton, Canada and a Maypole event at Liverpool’s Tudor half-timbered Speke Hall and Morris dancers (yes!) outside our wonderful St. George’s Hall, via big marches and strikes across the U.S.A. in favour of regularising the status of illegal workers.
Thus morphs the traditional May Day in a more politically conscious era, whether the objective be workers’ rights or a determiniation to see celebration through the arts of community in a more fragmented world. We can only be glad, whatever the detailed argument about the causes espoused, that people still see fit to make the effort.
We have lost much of the original understanding of May Day, and I’d guess that many people active today are not even aware of its historical roots. But things change only in some ways. For every person involved in worthy trade union activity today, there are probably still hundreds carrying on the original idea behind May Day, taking a day off work and getting out their lawnmower or barbecue set, as they prepare for some family’n’friends time in the garden.
Let’s hope the sun shines for everyone, demonstrators, gardeners and revellers alike.
Good News On Hope Street
It has been over a decade since the campaign to renew Liverpool’s Hope Street was first mooted; but now at last we’re almost there. To mark the event, all the partners involved have agreed to host a day in June [later deferred to Sunday 17 Septmeber ’06] of arts-based celebration on the street. The arts, as ever, will give us common cause and help us to enjoy together the space which we have all been hoping to see refurbished for so long.
Today marks a new phase in the development of Liverpool’s Hope Street Quarter.
It may not have looked much to the casual observer – just a handful of people talking about an event in June. But to me it seems really significant: we, that is HOPES: The Hope Street Association and Liverpool Vision and the City Council have agreed to co-host a celebration of the completion of the Hope Street refurbishment, open to all who want to be there, and acknowledging the very complex partnerships which we have had to nurture over the past few years to get to where we are today.
The arts as common ground
Here, if ever there was one, is an example of how people coming from very different places can find common ground – a particularly apt metaphor in this instance – through the arts and community activity. If everything goes according to plan, mid June this year will see people from many communities sharing a friendly, family, fun event in Hope Street, enjoying the many ways in which we can all become involved in arts and community activities. [Later note: the event eventually came about on 17 September ’06, as part of a wider Hope Street Festival Day.]
The connectivity is why this event is so important for me. On the one hand we have very large organisations – the North West Development Agency in this instance – and on the other, we hope, the smallest arts groups and people from local communities, all sharing the successful completion of a long and testing project, over a decade in the making.
We’re not quite there yet – there are still many other things to attend to as we make progress on this exciting regeneration programme – but we’re well on the way. And the door is open to everyone who wants to be involved!
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.
Investing In The U.K.’s Big Science And Medical Research
The U.K. Science and Innovation Framework 2004-2014 has taken on new significance with the recent Budget. Scientists, economists and the regeneration arm of government need to make common cause if the proposals to reshape particle physics (PPARC), medical research (MRC) and links between business and innovation are to achieve the promise which they appear in many ways to offer.
The Government, we gather, would like to elaborate its ten year plan for science, the Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-2014: Next Steps, by bringing together the Particle Physics and Astronomy Council (PPARC) and the Council for the Central Laboratories of the Research Councils (CCLRC).
The proposal emerging from the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Education and Skills is that these two august bodies be merged as a new body, the Large Facilities Council (LFC). The LRC would have a budget of half a billion GBP a year for current CCLRC work and that part of PPARC’s work which concerns large investments. Other, grant awarding, parts of PPARC would merge with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
The physicists are not happy
It would be fair to say that this proposal has not been greeted enthusiastically by everyone in the science community. To quote one astronomy blog:
This move would place astronomy and particle physics research in direct competition with the rest of the physical sciences for money. I would expect this to mean that it will be harder to get a particular research project funded, as the competition for the limited funds is greatly increased. It will also mean that the new EPSRC will have to develop a plan / road-map for the whole of engineering, physics and astronomy; a pretty huge field. Can one funding council do this alone while maintaining the breadth and depth of research in the UK?
Nor perhaps are the medics
Another of the Next Steps proposals is that the Department of Health‘s research and development budget should be merged with that of the Medical Research Council to bring together all public research in health and medicine in the U.K, with a budget of some billion GBP. Inevitably, there will be questions asked about whether this size of investment can be feasibly managed. (There are possible parallels, not least in the particle physics world, where Cern‘s much admired Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is funded by 20 European states, using the talents of 6,400 scientists from all corners of the globe.)
The wider contexts
These ideas are not, however, developing in a vacuum. Side by side with the recasting of the budgetary alignments are proposals to set targets for increasing numbers of school students, and to increase business investment and involvement in research and development. These are difficult objectives to challenge, except perhaps in the sense that ‘more not less’ might be the cry.
It’s important to acknowledge all the levels at which these various concerns and considerations apply. There are fears for vulnerable / invisible research, there are fears about the status of academic institutions and research bodies, and there are the natural fears of scientists that their jobs maybe at risk. As we know from other change initiatives, these concerns cannot simply be dismissed.
Benefits of a new kind?
We should however try to factor in a number of newer perspectives as we consider these proposals. I have argued elsewhere that support for large-scale or ‘Big Science’ in the North West of England would have been easier to secure, had there not been a stand-off between those medical scientists funded by the NHS and those funded by other bodies.
The regeneration agenda does not, as of course Gordon Brown and his colleagues would argue, stand apart from the agenda for Big Science. The real challenge, however, is to manage the necessary transitions in a way which values and promotes the knowledge economy and those who work within it, rather than leaving them behind, bewildered and resentful about the proposals which are now emerging.
Never has there been a greater need, if we are all to benefit, for the scientists, the economists, the regeneration specialists and the politicians to talk amongst themselves. This, fundamentally, is what the current consultation period on Next Steps must be about.
The Clocks Go Forward … But Why, Back Again?
British Summer Time is welcomed by almost all of us – more daylight when we can use it is much appreciated, as Lord Tanlaw’s proposed ‘Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill’ acknowledges, for reasons of health, safety, energy savings and business benefit. So why do we need to revert to the darkness next Autumn? The answer appears to be historical drag, a reluctance to be ‘European’, and an obdurate insistence by some of national identity over common well-being.
Like 99% of the rest of the UK population, I’m really looking forward to the extra hour of evening light which will be ours as of this weekend. We may lose an hour of sleep just one Sunday morning, but then we get months of beautiful daylight at hours when we can actually enjoy them. It can’t come too soon.
It was always a huge puzzle to me why the ‘experiment’ to keep British Summer Time all year seemed to go so badly wrong when it was tried in 1968 to 1971. Then I learned that it was nothing to do with sensible allocation of daylight hours for nearly all of us – it was essentially a sop to the Scottish Highlands, where apparently people demanded the right to dark evenings for us all, so that they had a bit more daylight in the morning.
Why Highlanders couldn’t just adjust their working day a bit if they so like first light, is beyond me.
Safety – and Health – take a back seat
Since the missed opportunity of thirty five years ago, things have moved on. We now know about SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and about the net increase in accidents – acknowledged in many countries – which wintry Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) brings in its wake – even for Scotland.
So there really is no excuse for any failure to support Lord Tanlaw’s current private Parliamentary Bill to adopt Single Double Summer Time (SDST) for an experimental three years from 29 October this year. The idea has the support of ROSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) and of PACTS (the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety) – who jointly last tried to effect such a change via Nigel Beard MP’s 10-minute bill in 2004. The previous time the change to all-year so-called ‘daylight saving’ was attempted before that was in 1994, with a Bill promoted by Nigel Waterson MP.
This debate has therefore now emerged as a matter of both safety and, equally importantly, health. The epidemiology of the proposed time shift suggests that it would not only reduce accidents, but also promote health; people would be more active in the winter, with beneficial effect to both physical and mental well-being.
My national identity before my health (and yours)?
The debate seems to boil down to two lines of argument:
Firstly, that it is the inalienable right of Scots people to conduct their morning farming activities in daylight – a ‘right’ which would be preserved in Lord Tanlaw’s bill, because it expressly accedes that the Scottish (and Ulster and Wales) Parliament/s could adopt current ‘winter time’ if they so determined; and
Secondly, that this is some sort of ‘European plot’, against farmers milkman and postal workers (…), foisting ‘non-British time’ on us – despite the additional difficulties which British ‘local’ winter time causes for companies seeking business across both Europe and wider afield. (It’s rather a surprise to learn in Hansard 8 Dec. 2004, Column 584W, that the Department of Trade and Industry has not conducted much research since 1989 (Cm 722) on potential economic and social effects of the ‘biannual time change’.)
Don’t play politics against common sense
Let us put aside the obvious issue that very few indeed of us live on farms (and that for many the sight of a postal worker before 10 a.m. – or a milkman at all – causes astonishment these days) and just focus on the facts.
Health and safety are what make our lives better. Not nationalities. And who wants his or her national identity to be seen as an obstacle to healthier and safer lives anyway?
~ ~ ~
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled
BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)….. Specific articles include:
Making The Most Of Daylight Saving: Research On British Summer Time
The Clocks Go Forward… And Back… And Forward…
SaveOurDaylight: Victor Keegan’s Pledge-Petition
British Summer Time Draws To A Close
Time Is Energy (And ‘Clocks Forward’ Daylight Uses Less)
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
Regeneration Means Looking After What You’ve Got, As Well As What You Aim For
Plans for a future Mersey Tram are in tatters at the same time as the very real Mersey Ferry landing stage lies under water. More care for current assets and less dispute about proposals still on the drawing board might have served the Liverpool sub-region better. Regeneration is about looking after what we already have, even as we dream about the future.
Transport arrangements in Liverpool have been somewhat topsy turvey of late.
Am I the only person who wonders how we could be letting our main Passenger Ferry landing stage slip into the Mersey at the same time that we are making such a fuss about the ‘loss’ of the proposed Tram?
After five years of plans and plotting it seems the Trams are not to return to Liverpool, at least in the foreseeable future. This is obviously a blow to those who fought to see this mode of transport resurrected in the city, not least the Merseytravel team who had already invested heavily in track and the like for construction.
All was not as it seemed
But then we learnt that not everyone within the city council was enthusiastic about this idea. There are stories of counter-briefings and blame in high places.
And whilst this extraordinary tale was unfolding…. the Liverpool Pier Head landing stage fell into the Mersey River. And the Ferries had to be cancelled for the foreseeable future, all because of an ‘unexpected’ tide.
So not only will people from the starkly less advantaged east of Liverpool not get the rapid transport system which many insisted they had needed in order to develop work opportunities for the future, but also people who currently travel into Liverpool from Wirral to work (or vice versa) suddenly found their transport had, quite literally, been sunk.
Lessons worth learning?
There may be lessons here for everyone; and doubtless different people will conclude differently what these lessons are. But for me it’s this: Don’t let grand plans for the future ruin what’s OK about the present.
Too much of the regeneration agenda, in Liverpool and quite possibly elsewhere, is taken up with filling the front pages of the local papers with imaginative and very likely undeliverable ideas; but far too little of this agenda is concerned with nurturing what we have already, whether this be people or physical resources. The second, ‘nurturing’ option may be less dramatic than the ‘visionary’ first, but it’s equally important.
Visions for the future have produced a blinkered view of the present. Whilst Liverpool City Council, Merseytravel and others made plans and perhaps counterplans about the hugely expensive Tram, not much thought was, it seems, being giving to our already famous Ferries. And now we have neither. Perhaps, with a bit less posturing and a bit more thought, we could have had both.
Modern Civic Leadership Needs Gender Equity
Cities like Liverpool still seem to have a problem about ‘strong women’. On-going changes of civic leadership in the city offer an opportunity for the chaps to disprove suspicions that they continue to hold this antiquated attitude across all spheres of influence. Institutional sexism has no place in an adult and forward-looking city.
Recent turbulence in Liverpool’s civic leadership has set me thinking about what comes next. Do we want more of the same, or do we want something fresher and more responsive than the present arrangements?
This is a city with a tradition of behind-the-scenes chaps’ groups who met for luncheon and called themselves ‘The Big Four’ (or is it Super Six, or First Eleven, or Secret Seventeen?), and which has no, repeat no, really serious power-brokers outside Westminster who sometimes wear skirts. (There are some fine women out there doing excellent jobs, but they ain’t at the top of local government in Liverpool.)
Does Liverpool have a problem about women?
I’m certainly not of the view that women are necessarily ‘better’ than men in any respect, or that change necessarily means feminisation. But I do think, on the basis of many years’ experience, that this is a city which still has problems with welcoming the input of strong women. Maybe that’s not just a characteristic of Liverpool, but we are quite evidently trailing in the so-called Equal Opportunities stakes, as the Mersey Partnership Gender Agenda illustrates all too painfully.
Equality of opportunity is also best use of human resource
This isn’t just (though it is anyway) a matter of equity. This is a matter of the optimum use of resource, including talent, knowledge and understanding. In cities like Liverpool (I assume there are others too) problems seem to be ‘solved’ by top-down directives. Maybe that was necessary at one stage; but it won’t take us up to the next level – at least, not in my opinion a next level which in the long-run will do us any good.
Using human resources well means accommodating different styles and different perspectives. Even putting aside the compelling moral case, the fundamental reason that equal opportunities is critical is that any other way wastes potential to serve the best interests of everyone. (Has someone forgotten that over half the population is female?)
Sometimes men of influence are afraid of women who are strong
Men and women across the globe are in the end much the same; the variations within each gender are usually greater than the differences between the genders when it comes to work, decisions, personal choices and so forth. We (nearly) all want what’s best, we (nearly) all want decent, effective decision-making. So theoretically it doesn’t matter whether our leaders are men or women, as long as they’re able and of good faith.
But in one respect Liverpool at least hasn’t got there yet. The chaps who decide things – not all of them, but some – are not yet prepared to change their perceptions, to see individuals for what they can bring to the party, rather than what they wear (to be facetious, a skirt or a tie?). Whilst the city continues to be run by an unspoken convention about what sort of person is ‘appropriate’ for serious influence, leadership and decision-making – and challenge as you may, demonstrating this convention isn’t the case is very difficult – we are desperately missing a trick.
Influence and leadership across the board
Covert sexism in Liverpool applies whether we’re looking at the Town Hall, the local economy or community development and involvement. There is an inflexibility somewhere in ‘the system’ which results I suspect from insecurity and / or protectionism masquerading as traditional, definitive leadership. And this overall leadership, as we have seen, is hugely male-dominated.
Current civic changes offer a chance for those decision-makers who really do care about the best interests of us all now to deliver something more inclusive and thereby also more effective for the whole community.
We shall be a Grown Up City when, and only when, the Chaps are no longer afraid of Strong Women.
Whatever Is The ‘Health Economy’?
The ‘health economy’ is much discussed but little defined idea. Within local health-care provision it carries an assumed status which it is perhaps now time to challenge. We don’t in everyday parlance between managers talk of an ‘education economy’; so why a ‘health economy’? Many of us would defend very strongly the concept of essential health care free at the point of delivery, but the idea of a closed specialist health economy may not be the best strategic vehicle to ensure delivery of such modern, responsive and effective health care.
There’s a fair amount of excitement around the changes in the National Health Service these days. Big shifts are about to occur in the shape, goegraphical and structural, of Primary Care Trusts, Stratgeic Health Authorities and much else. And in amongst all the other deliberations there is much reference to the ‘health economy’.
What is the ‘health economy’?
Now is probably not the best time to go into the pluses and minuses of the strategic plans for the various strands of the NHS; feelings are running high and there’s a lot to sort out yet. But it may well be a good time to ask, just what is the ‘health economy’?
This is a very particular notion, and possibly not a very helpful one. In the U.K. at least it seems mostly to refer the range of business and economic activities which fall within the scope of government-led medical attention. Nonetheless, it is by no means as easy as one might imagine to find a definition of what the health economy actually is, as opposed to simply references to it in the contexts of other health-related activity. ‘Health professions’, ‘health care’ or ‘health economics’, yes, there are many formal references and links; but ‘health economy’…. if you know of a good weblink or text book, please tell us!
A constraining concept
Perhaps it’s time to stop using this term at all. With the newer ways of delivering health care (even though this is still more likely to be ‘illness and medical care’, rather than ‘well-being and health promotion care’) the interface between different types of providers is becoming more blurred. The intention of the NHS to provide essential care free at the point of delivery remains, whoever is giving it, but the economic links are of necessity becoming far more complex.
New opportunities
There are many ways in which a more fluid concept of health-related activity might widen the scope for responsive delivery. We don’t hear about the ‘education economy’, ‘arts economy’ or ‘science economy’ as every day notions; they’re all part of, for instance, a much bigger knowledge economy. Perhaps less talk of the ‘health economy’ will open up more visible opportunities for local social enterprise and business engagement in flexible and client-responsive health care provision; and that in turn may perhaps also help local investment and regeneration in a much broader way.
Dreaming Realist 