Category Archives: The Journal
Prioritising The Health Priorities
The messages of health promotion are universal; but are they coming over sufficiently effectively to the person in the street?
There are a number of things which anyone can do to enhance their chances of good health – don’t smoke, don’t drink too much, get some exercise and eat sensibly are the main bits of advice; and we could add to that, try to live in a physically healthy environment, make sure you have your immunisations, check ups and the like, and give your kids a good start in life (breastfeed, cuddle and talk to them, etc).
Not really rocket science, is it?
Why local priorities?
Given these universal priorities, the way healthy living is often promoted sometimes puzzles me. The messages are simple, and can I suspect be targeted quite straightforwardly where they have most effect. So why the huge plethora of leaflets, people and campaigns?
Of course some individuals will always want more than the generic message, and that’s good – if they know, they’ll probably tell others – but I suspect that the huge amount of ‘individually packed’ info which comes into play at the level of single primary care trusts is sometimes more confusing than helpful.
There are of course some priorities which apply more to certain places and people than others – smoking and unhealthy eating are two examples – but the wider the campaign, the more effect it will have.
Health promotion is often marketing
Perhaps I’ve got it wrong, but marketing is a specialist activity, and lots of health promotion boils down to marketing. And marketing often seems to work best when the message is simple.
By all means have more info ready in the wings, but perhaps more visible messages from the ‘centre’ would be helpful too. It’s beginning to happen, but it’s not yet connected for everyone.
Anger Management is a Key Skill
Emotional literacy, which includes anger management, is a fundamental of civil society. Let’s build very positively on the new acknowledgement that relational education can bring benefit to children who may be under stress and in need to support to make the most of their lives.
Good to see in today’s media that “>Anger Management is to be included in the school curriculum, at least on a pilot basis in 50 schools.
To be honest, I’m surprised it’s taken this long – but obviously pleased to see some recognition that this is necessary. As I know from work I’ve undertaken in the Youth Service, there is a real need to help young people see that sometimes ‘just walk away, stay cool’ is the very best response.
A skill for life, not just for school
But anger management, and its underlying corollary, emotional literacy, isn’t just something people require when learning in schools.
This is a fundamental for civil society – our democratic tradition, our work styles, and especially our family and personal lives, all function at a much better level when we can ‘read’ and respond to others, and indeed understand ourselves, at suitable levels of insight.
I hope this formal acknowledgement of emotional literacy – an aspect of development which has been promoted by some for many years – will over time become fully embedded in our understanding of children’s early years, in our parenting and educational skills and in our civic life. Some people already have it in spades; but everyone benefits when it’s there for us all.
The Politics Of Aspiration For All
Tony Blair has been unwavering in his determination to tackle low horizons head on. This challenge lies at the bottom of all his thinking on schools and how to improve them. But maybe the voluntary, faith and business groups the Prime Minister so wants to see become involved in schools should ask themselves first what they could do to raise ambition and opportunities for the wider families of the children who most need support.
Education, education, education…. and never conceding the politics of aspiration for all. The two things are, as Prime Minister Tony Blair rightly says in his Guardian article (18 November ’05), intimately connected. For almost all of us, and never more so than for those around the centre-left, this truth is both self-evident and compelling.
Perhaps however the Prime Minister’s idea that ‘there is a huge untapped energy in the private, voluntary and charity sectors for partnerships to help state schools’ is only part of the truth.
From where I look – in Merseyside, as someone who has seen quite a bit as a teacher, social worker, researcher, evaluator, entrepreneur and so on – I’m not sure this hits all the nails on the head. It may hit some; but not all.
The options for partnership action are wider
I’m still unconvinced that Tony Bair’s wished-for partnerships are most urgently needed in schools as such. For me, working on the ground, the politics of ambition has to be much broader than ‘just’ schools – though this is a part of the equation.
Ambition simply inside the school gates is not going to take many children very far. I accept that the Prime Minister’s idea of education-other sector partnerships is (at least for now) a matter of choice; but many of the least blessed parents who, like everyone else, want the best for their children, are less concerned with well-meaning voluntary and faith groups or businesses getting involved with their kids, than they are with getting themselves into work.
For lots of people on Merseyside the main objective is just to get a job – and preferably a decent one. If voluntary and business interests, for instance, want to support disenfranchised people, perhaps they could begin by finding ways to employ them.
There are plenty of currently almost-trained adults on Merseyside whose future trade registration depends on work experience which is very hard to find. (Small businesses say they can’t afford to provide this for apprentices; and most of Merseyside’s economy is small businesses….) So how about starting with opportunities for less privileged parents and carers to show their children what ‘real work’ is, by being able to actually do it, for pay?
Ambition is a cultural thing
I don’t doubt for a minute that Tony Blair genuinely wants to see progress and improvements for our children and their futures. He’s absolutely right to throw down the gauntlet to us all. If we, voluntary, faith, business and other communities, want the best for children, we do indeed need to think hard about where we can best support and encourage.
And we need, too, consistently to challenge complacency, incompetence and / or narrow comfort zones, whether in local communities, schools, hospitals, industry, churches or indeed politics itself. If there are employment, educational, medical or other practitioners who don’t cut the mustard, they need to understand just why this is not acceptable – though not at the (perceived) expense of people ‘at the coalface’ who are in fact doing a good job.
I still wonder however whether we have the right ‘mix’ in all this, as yet. Tony Blair has identified and articulated an important, probably fundamental, problem, in that he sees (and always has seen) education and ambition as key elements of a successful future for everyone. But I’d like to think that all those sectors apparently so keen to go into partnership to support children can grasp the aspirational challenge outside the school gates, as well as inside.
Enterprising or Entrepreurial?
The English language is surprisingly unhelpful when we consider the different ways in which enterprising people take on social and private businesses. Why is there no noun, other than ‘entrepreneur’, which reflects the variations between different ways of going about one’s ‘business’? And does this indefinite mode of ‘naming’ influence the way that some folk approach the business world?
I had a very interesting conversation today with a friend who works in suporting Liverpool businesses.
We were mulling over the issue of more public than private sector economic activity in Merseyside, and we got onto social enterprise. The reason there’s so much social enterprise here, it seems, may be that most people who decide to set up their own business come from working in the public sector… so their previous professional experience was of being employed by the state or local government.
From this public sector background, the full-blown private sector can look pretty scary, a step too far. Social enterprise is perhaps seen as closer to the ethos of public service, and perhaps less daunting, than would be full private sector competition in all its glory.
Enterprising and self directed
In some sense the ‘social’ option permits one to develop one’s skills in an enterprising way, without having to ‘go for it’ as would be necessary in a private business.
In my dictionary (Concise Oxford) enterprise is defined as ‘[an] undertaking, esp. bold or difficult one; business firm; courage, readiness, to engage in enterprises’. When defining the adjective, ‘enterprising’, the word ‘imaginative’ is added to this list.
In other words, people who are enterprising are willing to take on challenging and stretching tasks; but they may or may not aim to make financial profit as such. Mostly, it could be said of those who are enterprising that they like to choose their own way forward, and perhaps survive on their skills and wits, rather than that they are out for what they can get in the purely financial sense.
Entrepreneurial and in control
My dictiionary has a slightly different take on the meaning of ‘entrepreneur’. It says of entrepreneurs that these are people ‘in effective control of [a] commercial undertaking; [they] undertake a business or enterprise, with a chance of profit or loss…’.
So is the difference between someone who is ‘enterprising’ and someone who is ‘entrepreneurial’, that the latter are willing to drive forward – not simply direct – their activity in a way that exposes them to risk as well as profit?
Would social entrepreneurs agree?
It’s probably unjust to suggest that some social entrepreneurs are unwilling to take risks; the best and most socially amibitious of them certainly do… though sometimes – not always – the ‘risk’ may be more to their standing and others’ view of their skills and judgement, than directly to their pockets. (Social entrepreneurs, please do disagree, if you wish!)
Nonetheless, there may be something in this. We are many and varied in the way we see the world. Some of us value hard cash and all that goes with it; some of us put more store by value judgements of other kinds; and of course some of us try to bring these different, perhaps in part conflicting, elements of our lives together in what we set out to do. The world is a complex place.
Inadequate vocabulary
There’s one thing that strikes me about all this, however: There simply isn’t a separate noun in the English language which refers to people who are enterprising, rather than those, the ‘entrepreneurs’, who are entrepreneurial in the ‘strong’ sense.
When we talk about people setting up small businesses (even if they have absolutely no intention to become big ones), or social enterprises, we use the same word – entrepreneur – as when we discuss those who seek to take on huge financially make-or-break activities of the fundamentally ‘red in tooth and claw’ sort, in the private sector.
What’s the best balance of enterprise to entrepreneurship?
Perhaps this lack of distinction in our naming of activities and roles goes a little way towards explaining the lack of ‘ambition’ in significant numbers of people, for instance, in Merseyside. Because they haven’t actually rubbed shoulders with too many folk who really are ‘full-blooded’ entrepreneurs, they don’t recognise there are two senses in which one can become enterprising and / or entrepreneurial.
Undoubtedly, many industrious business people, in both the social and the private sectors, would not want to be entrepreneurial in the strongest sense, even if they saw the opportunity. I’d be interested, nonetheless, to find out what general percentage of businesses in any locality is the best predictor of a healthy and reasonably stable economy. Does anybody know?
‘Lifestyle’ Versus Value Creation In Merseyside’s Economy
Merseyside’s economy is often criticised for being too public-sector driven. And now the critque has extended to some sharp observations about the type of businesses which are here, as well as just how few of them there are. Maybe a bit of ‘experience swap’ would help us to get a wider picture?
There has been a lot of comment in recent years about the over-reliance of the Merseyside economy on the public sector, over the private one. It’s not so much, we are told, that there’s too much of the former, but rather that there’s not enough of the latter.
But now it seems even that defence is blown. At his quarterly report to the Liverpool Society of Chartered Accountants, corporate financier Steve Stuart has criticised Merseyside’s private sector for being ‘life-style’ at the expense of ‘value creation’.
This seems fair comment. Apparently, of 27,000 VAT-registered businesses in the area, 26,000 employed fewer than five people – and less than 700 had a turnover of more than £2m.
Too cosy or too costly?
The problem seems to be that most local businesses are averse to interference from outsiders, and like to do things their own way. This is a situation for which Mr Stuart holds local business advisers in part responsible.
Given the choice of external ‘interference’, or keeping things within the family, nearly all business people in these parts chooses to stay cosy. Not many want to take on the extra cost of private equity funding.
Well, I’m not surprised. Who around here has even heard of private equity funding? Of course, those in the world of banking are familiar on a day-to-day basis with this sort of arrangement; but you don’t bump into equity financiers on every corner in these parts.
This is, sadly, a part of the country where having A-levels is quite a considerable achievement for some folk… and where the difference between a pass degree and a doctorate is often seen – if it’s understood at all – as an irrelevant distinction. So not many of our home-grown entrepreneurs are bothered about the fancy stuff.
Who’s responsible for the Merseyside economy?
But before we ‘blame’ anyone too much for this unambitious state of affairs, for inhabiting such cosy comfort zones, it might be interesting to ask exactly who we think is ‘responsible’ for the health of our local economy. And my answer is, I’m not sure anyone really knows.
For my part, I regret that local people seem to need to be so cosy; but I don’t think it reasonable, given the claustrophobic and stultifying circumstances in which they survived until quite recently, to expect everyone in Merseyside who owns a business to want to go Big Time.
Before we see too much progress here I suspect we shall have to shake things up a bit – and one way might, dare I say it, be to bring in business ‘advisers’ from other parts of the country… and invite our home grown ones to work in differently-challenged business environments elsewhere, for the experience this would bring of other ways of doing things.
Then we’d all get a view of how green the grass is (or, depending, isn’t) on the other side of the fence. And that might really make some of us take ownership of pushing our local economy forward.
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
A New Life In Australia: Dream Or Reality?
Young professionals have always wanted spread their wings. But why are some workers outside London more willing to up roots to Australia, than they are even to try life in their own U.K. metropolis – or, come to that, in Cornwall if they want surfing and sun or in the Higlands if they want space? The distant unknown, it seems, is a more attractive dream for the future than the anything closer to home.
Strange how people often feel ‘safer’ opting for the completely unknown, rather than for the semi-familiar. Two or three times this week I’ve been chatting to young public sector professionals and skilled trades people around my patch (northern England) who’ve announced they fancy a new life in Australia.
When quizzed a bit more, the reasons for this option usually run as
1. it’s warmer and sunnier (indisputable, of course…. but it can be pretty humid too);
2. there are more ‘opportunities’ there (Yes, but that could be because loads of young Australian professionals are over here); and
3. it’s ‘boring’ here in the U.K. (What, all of it?)
Now, far be it from me to talk anyone out of an adventure – I went to Arizona on an American Field Service International Scholarship, for a full year and all on my own, at the ripe old age of seventeen – but I’m still a bit puzzled.
Why not London?
If I further enquire (because I’m curious, not because I want to dissuade) why these young people don’t want to try (say) London, I’m usually told it’s because Londoners are unfriendly and it’s a horrible, expensive, confusing place which you can’t get out of.
Well, some of my best friends live in London, I quite often work there, and I graduated from a London university. On the whole, I enjoy being there. It is a collection of some of the most historic ‘villages’ in the world, it has culture, it has cutting edge knowledge, it has huge parks…
But others’ hostile view of London does raise some interesting issues, such as: how do folk ‘know’ that a land they have never even visited isn’t also confusing, unfriendly or expensive? How can they be so confident that it’s a better place to be?
Or Cornwall or the Highlands?
Are these adventurers actually seeking a ‘new’ life when they leave the U.K., or, in fact, just a revamped version of the ‘previous’ one, with more excitement, freedom, challenges or whatever? And is this a realistic expectation in either event? Most people probably plan to take their current skills with them in their news lives, so they are in reality just trading locations (no harm in that).
If people want work and sunshine / space, why not Cornwall or the Highlands? Both are currently Objective One areas of the U.K., with plenty of incentives for skilled and entrepreneurial people, and both have space enough for everyone. They offer beaches, inexpensive housing, a more relaxed life-style; and they leave the option of experimentation without a huge commitment. In fact, on reflection, I’d probably suggest they be explored as ‘practice runs’ before taking the drastic step of crossing the equator for a permanent change of home.
It’s all in the marketing
These ideas of London and Oz are probably both wide of the mark. People are people everywhere, and, even allowing for deep cultural differences, how you find them usually depends far more on your own personal approach than on any other factor.
Which brings us to marketing and image…. Australia is openly eager to draw some of our brightest and best to its shores; and no problem there – we do the same to them, and, perhaps sometimes less fairly, to other countries too. But whilst London seems to emphasise the requirements of the knowledge economy, Australia also overtly seeks to draw those with technical and applied skills.
London as a city rarely does anything about actively attracting young public sector professionals from other parts of the U.K. Yes, individual organisations do this, but not London as a city in
its own right. It doesn’t really need to; but perhaps young people need it?
Conversely, the UK ‘regions’ all set themselves up in opposition to the metropolis. The very brightest of all already go to London in their droves (London has a far higher concentration of very highly qualified people than any other part of the U.K.); but little is done directly to encourage exchange and flow between different U.K. regions. And to us in the ‘regions’ London often looks like the Opposition.
Shared experience has value
It would be a very positive move if we encouraged young professionals to know their counterparts elsewhere in the U.K. Perhaps the problem here is that often only as they become more senior are they expected to attend conferences outside their own regional ‘comfort zone’, meeting other workers in more distant locations and learning how different people see the world. Indeed, for many that never happens, or else it’s too late by then for them to develop a fresh perspective.
Until a couple of decades ago many undergraduates chose to study as far away from home as possible; but that was at a time when a far smaller percentage of our young people went on the higher education. The sheer numbers of students these days makes this option impossible to finance by state grants; there’s been a relocation of post-school study to home ground as a trade-off for more people (of all ages) doing it.
So when are young people today getting their experience away from home territory? How can they come to see the opportunities across the U.K.? Maybe here’s a theme to return to another day.
Add your comments below…
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.
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.
The Philosophy Of Hedges
Hedges are protective, productive and permeable. They offer haven but also permit the flow of light and air. They respond to change by organic adjustment and they can sustain themselves. They are a metaphor for healthy boundaries, rural or urban, able to adjust and yet still retain integrity.
Hedges have always fascinated me. As a small child I walked with my sister and father along country pathways between fields, my father, a rural science teacher, all the time pointing out the features of the hedges,and explaining how, as living things, these hedges had been both nurtured and shaped – sometimes for many centuries -whilst they in turn sustained life for other plants, and birds and animals.
The craft of the local hedger, the names of his tools and the names of all the bushes, grasses and wildflowers… details now elude me, but abidingly the ideas underpinning of the significance of hedges remain.
It is not therefore surprising that the gardens of my homes as an adult have always been enclosed by hedges. Some were there long before I arrived, but quite a few have been planted and grown by ourselves. I especially enojy it when I find a tiny shoot growing from a random seed or berry, and can plant it amongst the larger inhabitants of our urban hedgerow. Thus in the fullness of time have emerged quite a number of hollies, some buddleia and even a few rustic roses and hawthornes.
The urban meaning of hedges
My professional life now is a thousand miles away from the innocent rural ambles of my childhood. Perhaps the contrast is almost Cider With Rosie vs. The City; but the significance of boundaries for me continues to be beyond doubt.
People still require boundaries, real and metaphorical, for their comfort and protection. Not many of us feel at ease in unmarked and uncharted territory. But, whether we consider and acknowledge it or not, a metaphorical ‘brick wall’ can be constraining in a way that a ‘hedge’ never is.
Hedges let us see the light next door, they permit the passage of air (but diminish the onslaught of the gale), they support life in a host of ways. Brick walls, on the other hand, block light and air, and do not offer sustenance and safe haven to small creatures. Hedges may take years to grow, but they adapt and respond organically to change. Brick walls are quickly constructed but come down only when they are dismantled – and then they are no more.
Protective, productive and permeable
The hedge as a boundary is a model for both rural and urban life. Hedges protect, but they don’t constrain, they are productive but they are organic in their response to their environment, and they are permeable, enabling flow of light and air without any loss of their role in defining boundaries.
Rural fields and urban communities alike need to be marked out. But let’s not forget that the marking of boundaries is best done in ways that respond to changing needs and opportunities over time, encouraging cross-over and the flow of the small ideas which may one day become big players on our territory. Hedges with their rich ever-changing diversity, the haven for a host of hidden small lives, serve us better than brick walls.
Dreaming Realist 