Category Archives: The Journal
Elected Mayors, Democracy And The Regional Agenda
The campaign for a debate about elected Mayors promotes ideas of democratic involvement and public accountability. It is for these reasons, not as a short-hand way to achieve city-regions, that this campaign should be encouraged. Even if elected Mayors become the norm, towns and cities will still need major regional input if they are to be effective players within Britain.
It’s not reallly news that some major cities have problems pulling things together to achieve progress; and nor, to be frank, is it news that Liverpool often seems to be amongst that number.
This is why I believe people should support the campaign for a referendum on a Mayor for Liverpool. For the referendum to happen would require 5% of those elegible to vote in the city to support it… not many one may think, but actually quite a proportion to raise in Liverpool, the city with the lowest election turn-out in the country. In my view, almost anything which encourages people in places like Liverpool to think positively about voting is a good thing.
Elected Mayors as housekeepers
It doesn’t however follow that, because moves to consider elected mayors are supported, that wide-ranging powers for such persons should necessarily be the order of the day. Cities like Liverpool need a named ‘responsible person’, who can bang heads together to get things done, and who must be prepared to take the flack if things don’t work. This person could be seen as taking the role of housekeeper, ensuring that things happen as they should, and that, for instance, streets and parks are clean and safe, events occur to schedule and budget, bids and proposals are submitted on time and well prepared etc.
It would be important for an elected Mayor to have defined, and achieved a consensus on, for instance, what is his / her role, and what is that of the City Chief Executive / Directorates, and of elected Councillors.
Not city-regions
Nor should it be assumed that an elected Mayor would take the lead role in the mooted city-regions. There may well be a role for city-regions as sub-regions, but that debate is still emerging and it is not for me convincing. In the end an excessive emphasis on city-regions not only loses the ‘hinterland’ of any metropoils, but also ignores the reality of regional infrastructure.
No toen or city in the UK outside London is on its own large enough to plan major transport, business development, or scientific investment. The things can only properly be addressed at regional level; as indeed they are in most parts of Europe.
Accountability
City regions and their merits or otherwise are a different debate from the current discussion about elected Mayors. If there’s now a decent debate about elected Mayors, that will be a good start. Maybe it will strengthen interest in the democratic process. And if it also encourages the idea that those who claim to give the lead require support, but must also be prepared to account very openly for their performance, that will be an excellent bonus.
Seasonal Food – Who Knows About It?
Over the past century our connection with basic food production has largely been lost. But now there are urgent environmental as well as direct health reasons to ensure everyone understands how food is produced. People as consumers (in both senses) need to know about food miles, short produce supply chains, nutritional value and the annual cycle of food production through the changing seasons.
One obvious starting point for this crucial ‘sustainability’ message is schools; and another is allotments.
The way that people find out about food seems to vary from generation to generation. This wasn’t always the case. For millennia you ate what you could grow and, if you were lucky, also what you could swap of your surfeit for someone else’s surfeit.
Then came the developing trade routes, some ancient and exotic (the Silk Road, also a route for spices and much else) and others, far more mundane to our modern minds, such as Salters Lane, the mediaeval travellers’ way which appears in British towns and villages as widely spread as Hastings, Redditch, Tamworth, Chester and Stockton-on-Tees, along with other similar reminders of trade in by-gone eras.
Also within Europe, for instance, were the horrors of such deprivation as the Irish potato famine of 1845-9 and more recently, for some within living memory, informal and formal food rationing (the World Wars of 1914-19 and 1939-45) – a deprivation it is now often considered was more of the palate than of essential nutritional substance.
Different expectations, the same basic understanding
In all these cases, however, fabulous or tragic, ancient or contemporary, people understood something about the genesis of their food. It was either from plants or from animals, nurtured intentionally or garnered whence it appeared. If you wanted to eat, you had to engage in some way in the production or location of your meal.
This, it could be argued, is what is different in times past from how things are today. It can certainly be said that although people must still find their food somewhere, it tends to come pre-prepared, in labelled packets, frozen or perhaps in tins, but not self-evidently from plants and animals.
In much of the western or ‘first’ world the conscious link with what is rather romantically referred to as ‘the soil’ has quite largely been lost. Most people now expect to be able to eat anything they can afford and that they take a liking to, any time they choose.
The downside of choice
Nobody would disagree with the general idea that variety in our diets is a good thing. But in practice it doesn’t seem to be like 
that. Our food arrives on the shop shelves (the only place now where most of us hunt and gather) processed and packaged, and often laden with things we don’t need as well as those we think we want….
For every interesting flavour and texture there are frequently too many empty calories, too much refined sugar and the ‘wrong sort‘ of fats, if not always too few vitamins and minerals. (Contrary to popular belief, frozen and tinned food can, we are told, be as nutritious in these respects as the ‘real thing’. Indeed, given that frozen and tinned foods are usually very fresh when they are processed, they may well have more nutritional value than the produce lying ‘fresh’ in the market.)
And herein lies the rub. There is a confusion in perceptions between ‘fresh’ and ‘well-preserved’ foods, between ‘produce’ and ‘ready meals’. And most people have only the vaguest of ideas about the essential differences between, say, strawberries or carrots flown in ‘fresh’ from California or South Africa, and those grown in glasshouses close to the point where they are sold…. which in turn means we cannot fully appreciate concerns around ‘food miles‘, local / short supply chains or, to return to our original theme, nutritional value-for-money.
Close to the land, close to the retailer
At last some retailers (including some of the biggest) are beginning to acknowledge some of these issues. They boast that they have short supply chains, that their produce are prepared immediately after cropping, that they are willing to promote sustainable ‘seasonal’ products; and they even sometimes offer nutritious recipes to cook from basic (and less basic) ingredients which are fresh and wholesome.
Now it is up to everyone to make sure they understand what is meant by all this.
For not the first time in this debate, much of the answer has to lie in education, in encouraging children to nurture living things; in making sure children know that food does not grow on supermarket shelves, and that they understand how the seasons can be harnessed to ensure a supply a healthy and varied diet.
The other obvious approach is helping people, wherever they live, sustain their own communities, to visit farmers’ markets, and grow at least some of their own food, in allotments or by sharing back garden space, or even just in pots.
From little acorns do great oak trees grow, just as from modest ideas about strawberry pots or rows of peas and potatoes can the notion of seasonal food once again take its place in our understanding of a sustainable world.
Energy Saving: Ergonomics And Logistics For Real People
The very high temperatures in the U.K. this week should give us all pause for thought about global warming. One idea which might come from that is a realisation that there are many small ways in which energy conservation could be ‘designed in’ to our every day lives. Perhaps we should even have citizens’ competitions to see who can come up with the best ideas?
We’re in the middle of a really big heat wave, and all of a sudden everyone is thinking about climate change and sustainable energy resourcing. Now, to mix our metaphors, is the time to strike on this one, whilst the iron is hot.
Not a few of us find it strange that we have to use energy to stay cool at the moment – rather the reverse of the usual problem; and the more curious of us have also begun to consider the mechanisms and costs of that commodity, still quite rare in domsetic buildings in the U.K., the air conditioning system. There is apparently a risk that more widespread adoption of this much vaunted facility could wipe out any gains in energy conservation which we in the U.K. are beginning to make. It can give a boost to the economies of very warm places, as it did in the USA, but at serious cost to the planet itself.
Ways to save energy
There are many ways that everyone can do their bit to save the planet, and these days most of us are aware of at least some of them. I wonder however whether we could do a little extra, by thinking more collectively about ‘designing in’ some of these strategies… could we have wall panels in easily reachable places displaying the switches for our televisons and the like (thus perhaps ensuring that the machines are fully actually turned off when not in use)? Why aren’t down-pipes automatically equipped with waterbutt linkage? What about individually operated small fans fitted as standard in most rooms of our homes, rather than hankering after complete air conditioning? Why aren’t gardens normally furnished with composting facilities? Where is the normal facility for low lighting (solar-boosted of course) via photo-sensors in our porches and other similar areas?
Gripping the public imagination
These are just a very few ideas, and doubtless they have all already been taken up somewhere. What would be good now, however, is if we made these suggestions central to our way of thinking; and what better time to start than when for just a few days we begin to realise what ‘global warming’ really means? Somehow, we need to get everyone’s imaginations gomg on this one. How about some sort of national competition or suggestion box?
Hilary’s Website Goes Visual
This weblog has just become a photo blog. In the past week or so several of the postings have gained an extra full-colour visual dimension. It may take a while yet, but hopefully in due course your aspirant photoblogger will get around to visuals for most of these postings.
There has been something of a lull in up-front activity on this site for the past few days. Never fear, however, there is no lack of action behind the scenes.
Truth is, I’ve been learning how to put photos on my website; and my excellent and long-suffering web designer, Nick Prior, has been doing his best to teach me by ‘distance learning’ (i.e. down a phone line….. ).
You, The Reader, and Nick can be the judges, but I think I’ve got the hang of it now – it’s like weblinks only fancier, because you usually have to change the size of the photo too (otherwise anyone without good broadband would have to wait ages for the download).
My first photoblog efforts
So now we have quite a few articles / postings with their very own pictures. Please take a look at my photographic efforts to date (all my own shots). Themes covered in this first week include: Sefton Park birds, Sefton Park development plans, Wavertree Botanic Gardens, Big Science and the new localism, Minako and Ian’s lovely ‘international’ wedding, and life with a violin and its owner.
There will, I hope, be more before too long. Your comments are welcome – and please watch this space….
Robyn Archer Departs Liverpool’s Culture Company
Robyn Archer’s resignation, announced today, as artistic director of Liverpool’s Culture Company leaves many questions about what the 2007 and 2008 celebrations are actually intended to achieve. Acknowledging this simple reality would help a great deal in making progress.
So the first question everyone’s asking is, Why? Why has Robyn Archer, after in reality such a brief sojourn in Liverpool, decided that Liverpool’s 2007 & 2008 events are not for her?
Only Ms Archer can answer that, of course, and she is unlikely to add much to her media statement that it’s for ‘personal reasons’. (Well, yes, but that could mean many things to many people.)
In the meantime, the question I would still really like to see a proper response to – and which I asked Robyn Archer directly on one of the very few occasions when I actually encountered her – is this:
By what criteria will we know that Liverpool’s 2007 and 2008 celebrations have been a success?
The fundamental question for Capital of Culture
There may well be more than one sensible response, but perhaps – who knows? – it was partly a lack of clarity in various quarters about this fundamental question which provoked the latest departure. (Some of us recall that the very first 2008 lead director also departed Liverpool, almost before he’d unpacked his bags.) Perhaps there are multiple possible answers – to renew and regenerate our city, to promote and celebrate communities, even, just maybe, to bolster ‘cultural’ activities as such – but no-one seems able to offer a definitive and widely agreed response.
Whether or not it bothered Robyn Archer, this question continues very much to worry me. There still seems to be a confusion in the minds of some local people about the difference between Excellence and Elitism, between the absolutely correct requirement that Liverpool’s cultural celebrations include as many local citizens from as many different communities as possible, and the frankly silly idea that anything which is, as they say, ‘artistically challenging’ is also somehow inappropriate in this city.
The real cultural challenge
How are we as citizens together to grow in our understanding of art, music, dance, drama, or anything else, if we are afraid to take it to people who haven’t encountered it much as yet?
Of course people should be offered and involved in artistic activities which engage them directly – ‘community education’ projects and so forth – but somehow we also have to encourage them to see that there is much more than that too.
The courage to offer leadership
At present, it feels as though those – and there certainly are several, on the Culture Company Board amongst other places – who are willing and able to promote the idea that we gain more from cultural experience when we permit it to challenge us – are being outnumbered by those who, to use the old metaphor, play to the gallery of small town politics.
The real issue is cultural and civic leadership. Liverpool will be a city fit for the 21st century when the local powers-that-be are ready to acknowledge not only how far we have already travelled, but also how much further there is to go before we can really call ourselves a Capital of Culture in the sense that most other European cities understand that term.
Then, perhaps, we won’t have to rely on the wonderful goodwill of just those seasoned artistic directors who show a commitment to Liverpool well beyond the call of professional duty. Only then will the lure of Liverpool to the international cultural community be irresistible.
A Wedding And A Coming of Age, Japanese-style
All societies celebrate marriage and acknowledge it officially in one way or another. But how many acknowledge equally officially the coming of age of their young people? Conversation with young Japanese guests at a wedding today has set me thinking….
We had a very happy time today. A lovely friend from Japan, Minako (who is our HOPES volunteer) married her art-enthusiast Ian right here in Liverpool. Rarely have I seen a more cosmpolitan and relaxed gathering, as we all celebrated with the beaming couple. There were friends and family from Japan, Hong Kong, Spain, Italy, Canada, Romania, Turkey, Malaysia, Germany and many other places, alongside an impressive diversity of home-grown Scousers and other Brits.
It was a great day for us all to share – the sort of occasion where one makes new friends with amazing ease – and, as always at such celebrations, there were plenty of nice surprises as well as the treats we had hoped for and looked forward to.
Chatting with young visitors
For me one of these treats was the opportunity to talk with young guests from several corners of the globe, amongst them a Japanese student who told me about the ceremony she next hoped to be part of – the Seijin Shiki or Japanese Coming of Age ceremony.
This was a surprise, the first I’d ever heard of such an event. I gather it is eagerly anticipated by the participants, all young people in each town who will reach the age of twenty in the current school year (April – March). The date used always to be 15 January, but since 1999 it has been on the second Monday of January. Twenty was set as the age of adulthood in 1948; before that age young people may not now smoke, drink or vote.
A civic event
Seijin Shiki is an event organised by the officials of each town. All eligible young people are invited to a morning ceremony where they are welcomed to adulthood and reminded of their new rights and responsibilities.
Many young men I gather now wear ‘normal’ day suits, but the women still often choose traditional dress for the occasion, the furisode, which is a style of kimono, sometimes passed from mother to daughter and often worn only for this event and on their wedding day (as Minako did today, looking wonderful).
Siejin Shiki is a special day and is marked by most young people as just that, before finishing in celebrations of a less civic sort, in the style of young people at a party the world over.
Different meanings for different people
Like every other formally marked celebration anywhere, I gather this event has different meanings for different people. For some it is simply a way to have a good chat, all dressed up, with old school friends; for others it apparently sometimes offers an opportunity to make a point about how they think the new voters should position themselves politically; and no doubt for another group it’s just an excuse for a party, regardless.
Whatever, and of course with safeguards, it’s in principle a very positive idea.
Perhaps few of us in Britain do enough to make young people feel they are partners in our social fabric, people with an entitlement and an obligation to take a stakehold in society. We criticise and carp, but do we welcome young people as they enter adulthood? I think we could, and very probably should, do better.
Celebrating people
The way I found out about this was that I went to a lovely wedding and thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was really nice to share the celebration with so many and varied friends old and new, and we all wish Minako and Ian the very best for their future together in Liverpool.
In Britain we do seem to know how to acknowledge and celebrate marriage, and I hope that our visitors from Japan and elsewhere would agree about that, though our style may be very different from how it’s done in their own countries.
But what I’m far less sure about is that we know as a society how to celebrate young people and the meanings attached to their coming of age. As families and friends of course we do it well; as a civic and democratic society we perhaps have a lot we could learn from our friends in Japan.
Politicians Must Do The Dialogue, Not Just The Drama
Motives for dialogue between people of hugely different perspectives may be complex, but the need maintain communication is reiterated across at least modern history. Politicians as disparate as Winston Churchill, Condoleeza Rice and Hillary Clinton have all maintained this view at various times.
‘To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war’, in U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill‘s famous line at an American White House luncheon in 1954, is consistently good advice.
Churchill, as is well acknowledged, was not averse to drama alongside dialogue – he actually won the 1953 Nobel Prize for literature for his ‘mastery of historical and biographical description as well as for brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values’. But he knew the talking was always at least as important as the posturing.
Consensus across the divides
It’s interesting to see this position reflected half a century or more later in the position of two modern American politicians who stand both apart from Churchill and from each other.
First, we had right-wing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice visitng the U.K.’s then-Foreign Secretary, the centre left-wing Jack Straw in North West England, and proclaiming herself comfortable with the protests which greeted her at some events. “Oh, it’s OK, people have a right to protest and a right to make their views known,” she is reported to have said.
And then we learn that Senator Hillary Clinton has kind things to say about the ‘charm and charisma’ of President George Bush, the Republican who followed her Democrat husband into the White House. Senator Clinton said of the President that she had been “very grateful to him for his support for New York” after the attacks on September 11 2001. Though the two had had “many disagreements” he had been “very willing to talk”.
Mixed motives, but still sensible?
We can all of course guess that things are not really as proclaimed, when politicians of different hues profess a keeness for dialogue between themselves. Condoleeza Rice very probably wanted to make things a little easier for her host, Jack Straw. Hillary Clinton was, it is thought, attending to the need to ‘woo the right’ in her bid to secure the next Presidential election.
But mixed motives don’t necessarily make for bad action. Given a bottom line, almost every one of us would prefer that people keep talking, to the alternative. Better to keep the lines open, than to close them, wherever and whenever we can.
Early Intervention In The Early Years
Critics of Sure Start, the U.K. government’s early years programme, have been vocal of late. Yes, there is evidence that benefit has not always as yet reached those small children and families who need it most. But this is work in progress, and it must be continued.
Sure Start, the huge government-led programme for 0 – 4 year olds, has been subject to quite a lot of criticism of late. It’s understandable that senior polticians, the Prime Minister himself amongst them, should want to see progress before the next general election. The problem however is that small children don’t become achieving teenagers in the same time-span.
This was never going to be easy. Sure Start is at present specifically focused on the least advantaged families, where take-up, especially for those parents who find themselves most challenged, is variable. But it’s essential that those with the governmental cheque book hold their nerve.
Evidence that it works
One thing which stands out in the Sure Start programme is its emphasis on activities such as reading aloud for parents (and that includes fathers) and children to share. There is a dedicated theme in all this about bedtime stories, and indeed about just simple conversation between little ones and their carers. This is a difficult activity to measure with any degree of accuracy, but we know from longitudinal studies that, over years rather than just months, it works.
Sure Start is not the first programme of this sort. There’s plenty of evidence from previous programmes here and in the U.S.A. that early intervention is really beneficial for those who become involved. But we’re still learning how to reach the least advantaged and those who feel most marginalised.
Adapt, perhaps; abandon? No
Workers in Sure Start have had to find the way forward for themselves. Inevitably in such a situation some have had more success than others – not least because some local contexts provide greater challenges or fewer already established resources than do areas elsewhere.
The move towards Children’s Centres, whilst unsettling for many of the professionals concerned, is if handled sensitively probably the right way to go. It would be a tragedy if critics determinedly take a short-term view which makes it difficult for the Government to continue with this work.
Dismissing the idea behind the initiative would result in damage to the futures of many thousands of children who deserve the better start in life.
The ‘Thank You’ Officer
Local communities need people who are engaged and involved – and if possible, even happy. Thanking people regularly for what they do would be a good start here….. and it might even fit the government’s intended move to ‘Double Devolution’.
There’s been a lot in the media of late about how happy or otherwise people are. The gist often seems to be that although our wealth and standards of living are hugely better than they were, people are no happier than before.
I once read that one of the Scandinavian countries decided to do away with ‘targets’ for public services; they just set the objective of increasing ‘customer’ satisfaction by a certain percentage each year – and it worked.
This set me wondering whether the same sort of principle might be employed to increase community engagement.
‘Thank yous’ denote recognition
Perhaps every town should have a Thank You Officer – someone whose job or allocated task it is to find out about the good and helpful things which individuals and groups in the community have done, and who would then arrange for them to be thanked publicly. (There are of course already various formal awards systems etc; but this would be an on-going and integral part of the civic life of the community, not something you have to wait months in silence to be ‘awarded’.)
This strategy might have three positive upshots. Firstly, the people who did the ‘good deed’ would feel appreciated, and perhaps even want to do more of the same.
Secondlly, public recognition offers positive role models and might encourage others also to make additional community input.
And thirdly, it would assist the powers-that-be and the strategists in perceiving the difference which local people (at all levels) can make in their own and their neighbours’ communities. This, as has been commented before, is not always apparent to those whose job is to deliver policy.
Double Devolution
Perhaps encouragement to acknowledge what is contributed to a community would help the policy makers understand what matters to people in that community, and to see where simple support, not official ‘direction’ or formal strategy, can be the order of the day.
Not everything needs to be led from on high; and sometimes (though not always) local people have a better grasp of what needs doing next than anyone else. It’s all a matter of combining local understanding with that essential wider vision – so why not start by appreciating much more those on the ground who seem keen to think-on about their communities? They’re the folk who, with support, can make it happen.
This could be the start of a really genuine Double Devolution of power, at the points where it matters.
The ideal job?
Is Thank You Officer the ideal task or job? And would it repay the costs pretty quickly?
Only time would tell. There would be snags in this idea, as there are in all other ideas, but saying Thank You is something which might increase both engagement, and also satisfaction, across the board.
A Taxonomy Of Enterprise For Growth Theory?
The knowledge economy is a huge area, with impact at every level from the micro to the massively macro. Yet there is still much debate, influenced by celebrated economists such as Robert Solow and Paul Romer, about whether technological progress produces economic growth, or vice versa. One commentator, David Warsh, has recently suggested that this debate currently throws only limited light on economists’ understanding of how economies make progress. Perhaps nonetheless there are interesting questions which arise here in terms, particularly, of the impact of ‘invention’ and ideas in, say, social enterprise environments?
If technological progress dictates economic growth, asks The Economist, (‘Economic focus: the growth of growth theory‘, 20 May 2006, p.96), what kind of economics governs technological advance?
The Economist article and blog praises David Warsh‘s new book, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, and his analysis of the shifting understanding of the genesis and impact of technological advance.
‘Ideas as goods’
In his book Warsh examines Nobel prize winner Robert Solow‘s supposed notion that ideas are bound to end up in diminishing returns (they are ‘exogenous’ to economic growth theory), and contrasts it with the proposition of Stanford University’s Professor Paul Romer, that ideas are endogenous to growth theory – that they can be part of it.
In this analysis there are as I understand it three main principles:
1. ideas are ‘non-rival’ – i.e. they can be used by as many people as care to, at the same time;
2. ideas are expensive to produce, but almost without cost to reproduce;
3. nonetheless, the business of reproducing ideas does not usually give much in respect of financial returns, because ideas, being ‘free’ to reproduce, end up having very little economic value.
But goods in what market?
From these three premises it is easy to see that ideas have to be ‘protected’ if they are to have ‘value’ in normal business markets. In other words, they have to be copyrighted; and at the same time obviously other people have to be educated to a level where they can usefully employ these ideas, once they have ‘bought’ them.
But does this apply to all types of ‘market’? I’ve been musing for a while on the idea that enterprise can be taxonomised in ways which make differentiation of impact (on ideas, people, systems) quite interesting. The normal ‘for profit’ economy behaves in one way, the ‘ideas generator’ ‘academic’ economy sometimes behaves rather differently, and the ‘social’ or ‘not-for-profit’ economy probably behaves in a different way again.
All these responses make sense to the ‘actors’ involved. Commercial business people aim very clearly at protecting their ideas in the knowledge economy; but academics and social entrepreneurs currently often promote their ideas without much reference to the ‘business’ value of the ‘invention’ because they are more concerned, respectively, with their status or with general social outcomes, than they are with how fast the actual money flows in their particular direction.
Shifting bases of ideas production?
Over time, things may change of course. The same edition of The Economist which carries the Growth Theory article also has a piece on shifts in the understanding of American academics concerning intellectual and real estate property values. Likewise, the economics of social enterprise is still in its infancy.
Maybe economics at the ‘small’ level – the level of academic and social-enterprise activity – is like the physics of particles… ‘nano’ behaviour is different from larger-scale activity in its impact.
Whatever (and here I’m trying to articulate something which others will understand much better than I), it’s likely that over time the behaviour of those who produce academic and / or ‘social-technical’ ideas in the new knowledge economies will change. The question is, how and when?
The impact of benefit from ideas
Who will ‘profit’ from these changes? And, in the end, could the impact of freely shared ideas be felt even on the global scale, if the sharing extended to developing economies as well as those where the knowledge economy already has huge impact?
Will the growing realisation that all ideas have economic value in some sense lead to attempts to ‘protect’ social-technical invention as well as as the ‘normal business’ sort? Or will there be a continued wish to leave the way open for sharing and mutual development – just as, for instance, Tim Berners-Lee chose to do, when he created the world-wide web?
Dreaming Realist 