Category Archives: Sustainability As If People Mattered
Time Is Energy (And ‘Clocks Forward’ Daylight Uses Less)
‘Daylight saving’ is a strange notion. But ‘daylight energy saving’ is a very different consideration. How we arrange the hours of light and darkness across our working day has many impacts – which makes it all the more curious that so little high profile or current research has been focused on British Summer Time and rationales for why the clocks ‘go back’ in the Winter.
My recent piece on British Summer Time has drawn a lot of comment, both on and off this website.
There are people who seem simply not to mind whether / when it’s light or dark as they go about their daily business, but there are many others who have responded quite strongly in terms of their need for as much daylight as possible. It must be very helpful in some ways not to mind how dark it is, but it’s quite incomprehensible to others that there are folk who genuinely ‘don’t mind’. Perhaps it’s rather like being ‘colour blind’ – if you don’t perceive the difference between red and green you just accept (and may not even know about) it; or maybe some of us have physiologies which are more photo-sensitive than others.
Daylight saving is energy saving
The most important thing to come out of the discussions so far, however, is not that people may have different personal preferences, but that the terms of engagement in this debate are becoming clearer.
One striking aspect of so-called ‘daylight saving’ which is emerging, alongside the prime safety considerations, is its significance not only potentially for business efficiency, but also, even more crucially, for energy. It does begin to look very much as though more ‘summertime’ would keep energy consumption down.
Where’s the evidence?
A big surprise in all this is the paucity of serious publicly available evidence other than on safety (avoidance of accidents). It seems in some respects that the last substantial governmental research in this area was conducted in 1989.
That was now seventeen years ago. Since then, it need hardy be said, much has changed.
Business and technological practices are much different from those dismal years of two decades ago. Our consciousness of the energy crisis and of ecological issues is far better developed now than it was then. The public (electorate) is now far more aware of the issues of sustainability than they could possibly have been in the 1980s.
What’s the cost-benefit of ‘daylight saving’?
So where is the cost-benefit analysis of the different ways in wihich we might distribute the eternally pre-ordained number of daylight hours we have at our disposal, summer and winter? Common sense suggests that arranging things so there’s as much daylight as possible in the hours when most people can use it is a good start.
If anybody really knows the answer, please just let us know!
The full debate about BST is in the section of this website entitled
BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)…..
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
Solar Lighting Could Solve The Parks Problem
The debate about lighting in Liverpool’s parks continues, with strong views on both sides. One idea which resolves most of the issues raised would be solar lighting. It can be put anywhere, it’s easily maintained, it’s relatively cheap – and it has all the right ecological credentials.
The nights are at last beginning to shorten, and we can finally think again of strolling around Sefton Park before supper.
There are big plans afoot for Sefton Park, as for several other of Liverpool’s parks, but one of the sticking points has been lighting – much of Sefton Park is unlit, and there seems little likelihood that this will change even if the ambitious renovations promised do actually come to pass.
Why no park lighting?
Several reasons have ben given for withholding lighting from large swathes of the park and its pathways (even some of the widest and most used). These include a fear that it will frighten away the bats, badgers, whatever, or that it makes unlit areas look ‘even darker and less safe’; and apparently these concerns are more compelling than the very understandable sense that a lot of people just don’t like walking in an unlit park, albeit they would like to get some exercise.
But at base I suspect that the most pressing reason for no more lighting is cost. The powers-that-be know it would be quite expensive to install and maintain, and they don’t want to ‘overburden’ the funding bids which are being developed to make our parks better and nicer places to visit.
An ecological solution
So why can’t we bring together concerns for cost and other issues, and reach a half-way position which, to me at least, looks rather sensible?
Let’s have solar lighting.
Solar lights don’t have to be joined together with bits of cable, they don’t require electricity from a generator, they can be put anywhere (and more can be added as desired) and they don’t need time switches. Solar lights come on as it gets dark and they turn themselves off after a few hours (short stretches of light when it’s cold and only the sturdiest souls are striding out, and longer during those balmy summer evenings when everyone wants to promenade). Plus, once installed they are inexpensive, and their maintenance is easy.
And, perhaps best of all, solar lights are eco-friendly. If there’s one place in the city which needs to set an example with green credentials, surely it’s our parks?
See also: Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park?
Cherry Picking Liverpool’s Sefton Park Agenda
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?
Friends Of Sefton Park
What To Do At Any Age ~ Be Happy
Life is not a rehearsal. We all want to get it right, though that’s much harder to do than say. Future postings on this website will look at some life-stage-specific ideas for ‘what to do’. But this is a list of ideas about how to be as happy as you can, whatever your age and situation. I hope they’re useful.
Here are the ideas so far, to be tried every day. I’d like to think they apply just as much whether you’re just beginning life’s journey, or are well into that adventure…….
Start the day positively: smile!
No-one can feel good all the time, but most of us, most of the time, could try harder than we do to achieve this. Would it do any harm to think, as we awake, ‘Today I will smile and be pleasant whenever I can’?
Who knows? Those sentiments might even be reciprocated – a win-win if ever there was one.
Perform random acts of kindness
There’s a whole movement, started by Danny Wallace, dedicated to the performance of Random Acts of Kindness – and it’s a great idea. Whoever and wherever you are, there’s almost sure to be an opportunity at some point in the day to perform a random quiet act of kindness, however small, just to help someone along – even if they’ll never know who did it.
Being kind to others is also being kind to yourself. And kindness might become contagious.
Be eco-friendly
The planet isn’t ours to waste, however old, young, wealthy or not we may be. We all need to do what we can to achieve a sustainable environment. Our daily routines, what we eat, how we travel, and many other things; all are part of the equation.
An eco-‘can-do’ approach is a necessary part of everyone’s life. No ifs or buts, we need to be eco-conscious, every day. It goes with actively noticing what’s around us. How carbon-neutral, in friendly co-operation with others, can you become?
Try ‘No-TV’ days
This is a little time-luxury just for you as a person.
Do you really need to ‘watch the box’ every day? Are there occasions when talking and sharing with others are more important? Or how about some quality time on your own – a good book, music, indulging in an interest or hobby, even just sitting in the garden or park?
Maybe you could rotate ‘No TV Day’ across the week, or perhaps just make it a daily hour or two? You might be surprised by all the other positive and pleasant things you could do or experience instead.
Stay off the cynicism
Cynicism is very easy. We sometimes assume that people are only in things for their own good; perhaps we ascribe motives which may or may not be fair. And maybe we criticise when silence or support might be a better way forward.
In taking the cynic’s view, we seemingly protect ourselves from the responsibility to have a personal opinion. Is this helpful?
By all means be cautious; but please don’t be cynical. It’s corrosive and it gets us nowhere.
Use that pedometer
Nine or ninety, we need exercise to keep mind and body functioning well.
So, if you possibly can, get a pedometer and use it. The idea is to see, from whatever starting point, how much more you can clock up each day on your ‘pedometer count’.
Enjoy the fresh air as you walk wherever you can. Appreciate the changing views and the people around you. Let your walking be an adventure for body and soul.
Make a daily ‘went-right’ list
And finally… you aimed to start the day positively, now try to finish it in similar style.
Of course everyone needs to learn intelligently from mistakes (who doesn’t make some?), but as you get to the end of each day, ask what actually went right that day.
This used to be called ‘counting your blessings’. Maybe that sounds quaint to modern ears, but there is always good reason to remind ourselves how much is positive in our lives. Not everyone can be wealthy or fantastically fit; nonetheless very few of us, in the modern western world at least, have nothing to appreciate or be thankful for.
But your daily ‘what went-right’ list is more actively positive than simply counting blessings, important though this is. It’s about the things you and yours accomplished and achieved in that twenty four hours, and how you contributed to your own and others’ well-being – which is a good note on which to finish any day.
And devise your own ‘happy list’
These ideas are just a start. You know what would add most to your personal day, and you’d really like to do. So make your own list of daily positives.
There’s only one ‘rule’ – your list should be constructive, happy, do-able and, at no point, include the word ‘not’. Discover for yourself the power of being gently positive. Do make it a habit.
Read the discussion of this article which follows the book E-store…
‘School Trips Change Lives’ Says The National Trust
School trips to look at local ecology seem to be very successful in encouraging children to appreciate their environment. If this works for local eco-issues, surely it can work also for wider social ones? The ‘How Do They Do It?’ scheme has been very slow to get off the ground, but perhaps its time has some. Who will help to make it happen?
Tha National Trust has been running a Guardianship Scheme for some fifteen years, with almost one hundred schools in its programme. The idea, now evaluated by Dr Alan Peacock of Exeter University, is that ‘trips’ out of school make a difference to the way children understand their world… and the evidence, reported in Dr Peacock’s evaluation (Changing Minds: The Lasting Impact of School Trips), is that such trips do exactly that.
Environments are social as well as ecological
The benefits of ‘nature walks’ and the rest, confirmed by Dr Peacock and his colleagues, will come as no surprise to those of us who have been lucky enough to experience these as part of growing up. Nature walks amount almost to an entitlement for all chidlren, wherever they live – the city has an environment and ecology just as much as did the village of my early years.
If even a passing aquaintance with the world immediately around us is of long term benefit, how much more can it benefit us to know something of our neightbours – the other side of our town, the other end of our country, or indeed the other side of Europe and beyond?
Preparation and support are the keys
But it’s not enough simply to ‘do a school trip’ – where teachers are still brave enough to undertake this daunting exercise. To maximise the positive impact chidlren must firstly have a real idea before they depart of what they are likely to encounter; and they must have opportunities to meet and get to know local people when they get there.
Such demands are a tall order. They require a genuinely integrated approach to the curriculum, and a degree of planning which goes well beyond that of the time table.
So why not start more simply? By all means carry on with the ‘holiday’ style visits which some schools try hard to provide for their students. But what about also looking at ways of integrating the ‘widening horizons’ agenda for both children and adults?
It’s part of the regeneration and renewal agenda, too
Provision of opportunities for learning about how other people do things is a recurrent theme on this website.
Those who would perhaps find the sharing of experience most useful are often those who can least afford and / or organise it. There’s a real need to do this… and if it starts by simply going to the other side of one’s own city with the intention of meeting new people and seeing new things, that’s great.
The professional challenge
This is a challenge for teachers, regeneration specialists, community development workers and many others. Can people be encouraged to move beyond their own experience in ways which are comfortable and positive, so that they are better equipped to make genuine choices for their own communities?
And, critically, are we as practitioners up to this ‘challenge’ ourselves? Do we agree, as the Peacock evaluation indicates, that direct experience is good, provided it is properly structured and supported?
How do they do it?
Are we ready to give time to a programme such as How Do They Do It? where, as I have suggested on many occasions, small groups of young and older people together go to new places and ask just that of something which seems to be working well? How can this idea be improved? Who will join forces to help it along?
Liverpool’s Princes Park Has Friends
The Friends of Princes Park is amongst an encouraging number of similar groups who are demanding that our green space be nurtured. Liverpool has a historical legacy of wonderful parks; and now its citizens are insisting more voluably that these are fit for the twenty first century city.
Today’s Liverpool Daily Post supplement has a long article by Peter Elson on the work of the Friends of Princes Park. The Friends have resurrected themselves after a fallow decade or three, and are making the same case for attention to their treasured space as are other groups in and around Liverpool. All power to Jean Grant, the Chair and leader of the developments! This is a park in Liverpol 8, adjacent to some of the least advantaged communities in the city. It needs nurturing.
Promising developments
There’s talk of involving local schools and of linking Hope Street to Sefton Park… a long discussed but so far not actioned development (but a route some of us take by way of a constitutional when time permits). There is an encouraging acknowledgement of the part the Park can play in sustaining social inclusion, health and an understanding of the history of our city.
Where’s the support?
One possible snag in all this however seems to be the continuing reluctance by the City Council to support, quietly and constructively, the citizens who care about this fabulous amenity. There are encouraging noises from that direction now – but the track record often isn’t good. Here’s an opportunity for the Council to play what (in my view) is its proper role…
Councils clearly have a formal duty to balance competing demands for support by citizens around the city; but they could also become facilitators, socially, financially and strategically of the people who want to see things improve. Now, that would be a new way to do things.
The Friends Of St James’ Cemetery And Gardens, Liverpool
The Friends of St James’, who are restoring the historic cemetery and park next to Liverpool Cathedral, have achieved much in the few years of their formal existence. The inner city becomes, by the hard work of volunteer environmentalists and gardeners, joining with equally committed volunteer lobbyists, a place where green space can thrive to encourage the naturalist in us all.
The Friends of St James Cemetery And Gardens held its third AGM this evening. Reports from the Chair, local resident and sculptor Robin Riley, and the Vice-Chair, Prof. Tony Bradshaw, a noted emeritus researcher from the University of Liverpool, were incredibly encouraging – programmes of volunteer engagement, plans for children’s educational activities, accounts of excellent public engagement events during the past year … all warmed the heart and gave us hope for the future of this unique inner-city environmental resource.
St James’ is a space dug out by the masons of yesteryear (I suspect that blocks of its red stone comprise the wall at the back of my house), and situated right next to Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral. It holds about eighty thousand graves, relating in their stony way the history of the city for many decades up to the 1930s.
The cemetery, now also a park or ‘gardens’, hosts the Huskisson Memorial and much other testimony to Liverpool’s history. Amongst the other very interesting things to be found in this hollow scooped from the innrer city are a natural well and many exciting nooks and crannies. But until recently it was a no-go area, somewhere that most of us were rather afraid to explore at any time of day.
Pulling together to reclaim the space
The opportunity to reclaim this large space arose at least in part from the Bishops’ Conference on Social Responsibility which was held at Liverpool Cathedral in 2001. The environmentally aware theme of this conference resonated with the ambitions of many of us at the Cathedral and in HOPES: The Hope Street Association to develop the St. James’ site (which runs along the southern part of Hope Street) as part of our long-awaited Hope Street Millennium Public Realm proposals. In this ambition we found sterling support from David Shreeve of the national organisation the Conservation Foundation, a keen environmentalist who was much involved with Liverpool Cathedral and in this conference.
David worked with HOPES and others to encourage the City Council to see the value of developing the historic site right on our doorstep, and so the Friends of St James was formed. Here is an example of how having someone beyond the local scene to act as a champion can work wonders. What is declared by influential people beyond the locality to be precious may well be similarly perceived also by local decision-makers before too long.
Building for the future
So now we have a very active organisation for St James’ which will soon be a registered charity, and we also have buy-in from the City Council and Liverpool Vision, as well as from many ‘ordinary’ citizens of the city.
We also have big plans, including the imaginative Bridge of Hope, a project for a glass bridge which is intended to take people on a walkway at street level, high above the cemetery, straight into the Cathedral – thereby at last realising a dream which has been part of the Hope Street ambition for many decades.
What prospects for green space in the city?
Liverpool has been very slow to treasure its parks and green space. Sefton Park, for instance, has been left quietly to ‘naturalise’ for many years until very recently; but the Friends of Sefton Park, like those of St James’, have campaigned long and hard to develop these parks a sensibly managed public space once more… And it’s happened, because citizens of the city living around and enjoying these green spaces, cared enough to make a fuss and involve other, generously helpful people.
Let’s hope the same success can now be achieved by people who are campaigning for improvements to Newsham Park and other superb parks and green spaces in Liverpool. Newsham Park, for instance, has hard-working Friends as well. They need support!
The critical thing is, unless people can enjoy green space for themselves, they probably won’t be able to value it as they could, indeed should. It’s become a generational thing. If you haven’t seen it, you probably won’t want it, whether its allotments, parks or simply somewhere nice to walk.
Inevitably we must accept that Liverpool’s parks and open spaces cannot all, and unreservedly, be ‘set in aspic’ (to use a naturalistic metaphor); but I applaud wholeheartedly those who fight to ensure that the children of today have the opportunity, by example of fellow local citizens, to become be the enthusiastic users, and indeed guardians, of inner-city green space in the future.
See also
Liverpool’s Two Cathedrals
Hope Street Quarter, Liverpool and
Camera & Calendar.
The Tesco Effect And ‘Clone Town’ Britain
The ‘Tesco effect’ is a matter of serious concern for everyone, from the All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group to people on abandoned and insular housing estates. What is needed now is more thought for how the future could look, and what can best be done to serve the interests of consumers – and businesses and employees – across the board.
The MPs looking at supermarket dominance have, we gather, been quite clear that the future does not bode well. Leaks from the High Street Britain 2015 report suggest that food wholesalers and independent newsagents may soon be freezed out by supermarkets.
This debate is on-going, on this site and in many other places and is significant for us all – hence my returning to the theme yet again.
Contexts change over time
I do understand why people are concerned about supermarkets. There is a fear that supply chains will be / are being distorted, and that suppliers, especially small suppliers, will be squeezed out in favour of the big boys. Such concerns are both real and legitimate; though we must wait until the Office of Fair Trading reports back on its current enquiries before we come to clear conclusions about the current state of things.
And I’m sure, too, that the all-party parliamentary small shops group, which will issue its formal report on High Street Britain 2015 soon, is thinking hard about the future as well as the present and the past. Nonetheless, I am surprised at the apparent lack of debate (at least as reported in the press) in terms of some of the fundamentals of the issue.
Some basic questions for the future
Amongst the questions which come to my mind every time the ‘Tesco effect’ comes up as a topic are these:
1. Is it the role of local planning officers to offer ‘protection’ to small shop-keepers? And, if so, under what rationale, and do they have a framework in which to do it? (They may well have, but I’d be astonished if I’m the only person who doesn’t know what it is.)
2. Is it reasonable to suppose that supply chains are strengthened when suppliers, especially small ones, collaborate – in of course legal ways? What work has been undertaken to establish vulnerabilities and strengths here?
3. What do we know about the ways that local independent traders can work together to protect their patch, and to offer a quality, forward-looking employment experience to local people?
4. Are there ways in which the energy and other resources put into transporting and other handling of goods – especially foodstuffs? – can be shared more overtly with the customer, so that the purchaser can choose ‘environmentally friendly’ products, as they might well prefer to in local markets?
5. Why is there so little debate about the socio-economic contexts of supermarkets? One size may well not fit all, despite the strength of e.g. the ‘Clone Town’ arguments coming from the new economics foundation and others. In run-down places supermarkets may well be the only employer in the whole area which is big enough to provide stable employment and proper training. In wealthier localtions there may be many other employers who can provide training and career routes for everyone who seeks these. Surely this context makes a difference to ‘value-added’ in terms of supermarkets? So what do we know about the ‘career progressions’ of supermarket workers in various contexts?
6. And finally, who is thinking about the appalling service provision gaps in housing estates throughout the country? In terms of supermarkets they may well be ‘food deserts’, but aren’t there niches here for (social?) enterprises such as farmers’ shops, local bread shops and all sorts? These are not necessarily day-dreams, they could with the right support (and security measures) actually happen; and they could also offer training in trades and retail to local people. So, again, what research has been done to test feasibility, and what work has been done to encourage such efforts?
The questions continue…
We could ask a lot more questions like this. There are indeed many issues about which we need to know more as the ‘Tesco effect’ is debated; but it would be good if such questions could be asked in the context of changes for the future, and of small trader / supplier empowerment, rather than sometimes simply because of nostalgia or of fear of the big supermarkets, whatever.
Tesco And The Objectors Both Win Their Points
Tesco has won its appeal to expand a store in South Liverpool (Allerton) by 50%. Some – though not all – local people are very worried by this. But the retail giant has also offered to set up consultation with residents to see how developments can be made to have the most positive impact. This offer must be taken up.
I see (front page of today’s Daily Post) that Tesco’s appeal for their South Liverpool development has been successful.
It’s been interesting that so many people have read and / or responded to my postings on Tesco and the environment. This is clearly a matter about which a lot of people have strong feelings, one way or the other. My own view however is that the debate, whilst it’s probably now come to an end legally – unless there’s a challenge? – has been beneficial whichever view one takes.
The community has gained influence
Perhaps those members of the local community who were and are against the development of the South Liverpool (Allerton) site – and by no means all local people took this view – are currently despondent about the outcome of Tesco’s appeal. I’m not so sure that they should be.
Yes, Tesco has the go-ahead to enlarge their store very considerably, but there have been serious efforts made to reduce the ‘green impact’ of the development as far as possible, and the University is pleased they can confirm they will go ahead with their own sports proposals. Also, of course, the promised money from Tesco will now be forthcoming for the public realm work along the Allerton shopping corridor.
But that’s not the only positive outcome. The most recently evident one is that Tesco is striving to show itself in very publicly ‘listening’ mode. They want to set up a residents’ committee to work on the local impact of their development, and they have acknowledged the significance of the concerns expressed. The opportunity is therefore now available to take Tesco up on these offers and see if the promises of consultation etc are kept.
The ball is now firmly in the objectors’ court. I hope, to continue the sporting reference, that those who protested will choose to pick that ball up and run with it. Tesco has offered to work and liaise with local people. Let’s respond in kind and see if and in what ways the offer is meaningful.
Christmas Activities For Children And Families
No-one has the perfect answer to the question, ‘What shall we do with (or as) the kids over Christmas?’ But here are some day-by-day suggestions for the family during the Christmas / Winter Solstice week, with an indoor, an outdoor and a foodie activity for each date. Mix and match, with something for everyone, is the general approach. And, whatever you do, have fun.
Friends Of Sefton Park
The Friends of Sefton Park (in Liverpool) have been making excellent progress in taking forward their work for the city….
The initative to promote Sefton Park seems to be going on apace.
The Friends of Sefton Park now have a new e-group which people associated with the Friends can join; and the plans for the future of the Park are developing and being debated quite rapidly. (Anyone who wants to join the Friends of Sefton Park Group could contact me directly via ‘Email Hilary’ on my home page, and I will send the expression of interest on to the Group.)
One thing which I find fascinating is how many of us with serious involvement in the environment are also e-contactable and so forth. Obviously, e-technology is a low-energy activity, once it’s all set up – and we don’t have to use petrol and paper to be in touch!
See also: Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park?
Cherry Picking Liverpool’s Sefton Park Agenda
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?
Solar Lighting Could Solve The Parks Problem
Dreaming Realist 