From Regeneration To Sustainability: A Northern Take On Knowledge
Summary: This is a version of the Keynote Lecture I gave at the NUREC 2008 conference, in Liverpool on 28 July 08.
In it we explore the connections between Knowledge Economies and Ecologies, and Big Science and Regeneration, especially in regional and sub-regional settings, and in respect of issues around Sustainability.
My basic thesis is that Knowledge is not yet recognised for the fundamental resource it surely is.
A complete version of this paper can be found on Hilary’s professional website, here.
The Haldane Principle, 21st Century Science Research And Regional Policy
There are compelling reasons for a regional science policy for the UK; but they are often dismissed as incompatible with the Haldane Principle of 1904 and 1917/18, that government must not ‘interfere’ with scientific research. Science then was vastly less expensive and impacted far less on the economy and ordinary people’s lives. In the 21st century, the potential for regional development through science is huge – and it can only be done through intentional government direction.
The ‘arm’s length’ principle, that government should not intervene in how to determine what scientific research is done, was developed about a century ago, by Richard Burdon Haldane (1856-1928), who chaired UK Government commissions and committees on this subject in 1904 and 1917/18.
The 1918 Haldane Report recommended that only specifically required research should be commissioned and supervised by particular governmental departments. All other research, said Haldane, should be under autonomous Research Councils (of which the Medical Research Council was to become the first), free from political and administrative pressures and able to develop as was deemed fit by the Research Councils themselves.
Noble and fictional?
Noble as the pursuit of knowledge simply for its own sake may be, it’s impossible in our age of huge expenditure on Big Science that this recommendation, now almost a century old, can remain unexamined as the way forward.
The possibly apocryphal story is told (sadly, I can’t remember by whom) of one of the extraordinarily talented Huxley family having, many years ago, a laboratory at home in which he explored scientific questions; and of his son asking innocently of their young neighbour, what his father did in his (home) laboratory…. It’s not like that any more.
And in most cases it probably wasn’t like that then either. Not many people in any age have been able to pursue science just as a self-financed hobby.
Vast investments
As recent House of Commons debates have illustrated, there is growing concern that the UK Government’s huge investment in science should have the best possible return, on what is in the end tax payers’ money.
But no investment returns in our complex world can be measured in only one way. There are impacts of many kinds – on jobs and the economy, on infrastructure, on the environment, on people’s future life expectations, as well as on the state of knowledge itself.
Who does what evaluation?
Few of these impacts are easily measured, and even fewer carefully monitored from when a line of research is first proposed. This is at least in part because of the Haldane Principle and its continuing influence on government.
Politicians continue be nervous of any accusation that Haldane has been breached, an accusation easily made by scientists keen to pursue their work unhindered. So, little is made of the positive or negative impacts that scientific research of itself (as opposed to later ‘applied’ through technology and industrial developments) may have on, for instance, the locations in which they may be placed.
Single criterion decisions
‘The science’, it is proclaimed, must speak for itself, unhindered by base considerations of how it might benefit (or otherwise) non-scientific developments such as urban regeneration.
One result of this position is that decisions about large-scale and fundamental scientific research are made only by scientists, with scant if any regard to the measurable impacts which the process – as opposed simply to the possible eventual outcomes – of undertaking the research might have on the people (tax payers) who provided the wherewithal.
Surely even a hundred years ago this was not Haldane’s intention? He was in fact advising the government of the day on how best to benefit from science at a time of war.
Imaginations and applications
There is a strong case for supporting fundamental or ‘pure’ science, in the sense that it allows the very best scientists to take their disciplines forward in exciting and truly astonishing ways. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is a core activity in science, and, properly handled, can be an enormous catalyst for progress.
Haldane can be very properly invoked to ensure that there is no interference in the way fundamental science is actually done. We can understand that fundamental research requires scrupulous peer review, but never political meddling.
This is however very different from the idea that politicians have a positive duty to ensure all the ‘added-value’ they can squeeze for the wider community which they represent, when the government funds big research investments.
Regionalism and regeneration
In Haldane’s time the very concept of regeneration as we now know it didn’t exist.
It was only later that observers such as J.D. Bernal (in 1939) argued that the overarching consideration be social good rather than freedom of research; this being followed in 1971 by Sir Solly Zuckerman‘s critique of the artificial separation of applied and basic science – a critique in part accommodated by the Rothschild Report of the same year, which saw some funding and decision-making being handed back to government. (This thinking was also followed elsewhere, e.g. in 1972, when an article in the respected journal Nature called for an ‘End to the Haldane Principle in Canada‘.)
That was respectively 80 or 35 years ago; and despite continuing debate (in Canada, the United Kingdom and elsewhere) it seems we still fail to see where Haldane helps in the modern world, and where he doesn’t. I doubt this was a legacy the man himself intended.
Good science can also offer added value
There is little doubt that only good science is worth doing – the other sort isn’t really science at all – and good science requires genuine independence for its practitioners. Haldane continues to offer assurance that scientists can and must conduct the work they do unhindered.
We should not however confuse this guarantee of research independence ‘on the ground’ with the duty upon government to ensure its (and our) money is invested well.
Sometimes the best investment is indeed in fundamental research, expensive though this is. But the ‘non-science’ dividends of placing that research, whether fundamental or applied, in one location rather than another, may be compelling.
Regional science policy
Now that science involves such enormous funding, the case for investing that money also as part of regeneration strategies in the UK ‘regions’ is persuasive.
Some scientists on Research Councils, divorced from the realities of wider public policy, may want to cite Haldane as they resist the idea of looking at regional investment impacts ensuing from the development of research proposals. They are wrong to do so.
The time has come for regional science policies to become part of the equation, acknowledging the impact that Big Science research based away from the Golden Triangle would have on areas of the UK which require regeneration. This is hardly an ask too far.
And it is certainly not a threat to the integrity or operational independence of science, Haldane Principle or not.
Read also:
Science & Politics
Natural Vs. Physical Science Research Points Up Regeneration Added-Value
and
Big Science, Technology And The New Localism
World Population Day: Important In Britain Too
Today is World Population Day. On this day in 1968, world leaders proclaimed that individuals have a basic human right to determine the number and timing of their children. Forty years later, population issues remain a real challenge even in Britain, where greater cohesion is still needed for policy in action.
Inevitably much of the focus since then has been on women, and especially maternal health and education.
There can be no doubt at all that a failure of health care during pregnancy and birth takes a terrible toll on lives, both maternal and infant. Multiple unplanned pregnancies are a leading cause of premature death and tragic disability for many women and their children, especially in very poor countries.
Access to family planning
UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, says active use of family planning in developing countries has increased from 10-12% in the 1960s to over 60% today. But despite these improvements, a World Bank report just released says that 35 countries – 31 of them in sub-Saharan Africa – still have very high fertility rates and grim mortality rates from unsafe deliveries or abortions.
According to this World Bank report, women in developing countries experience 51 million unintended pregnancies each year because of lack of access to effective contraception That is a great deal of heartache, even apart from the enormous issues it raises for global ecosystems.
Not just a a ‘Third World’ issue
But this is not a problem only for people in the poorest developing countries.
Most of us are aware that people in the ‘developed’ countries use hugely more energy and other resources than do those in poor countries. Even with our much lower fertility rates we are currently much more of a threat to global sustainability than are people in Africa.
Blighted lives in the Western world too
“Promoting girls’ and women’s education is just as important in reducing birth rates in the long run as promoting contraception and family planning,” says Sadia Chowdhury, a co-author of the World Bank report.
That is also true even in places such as today’s Britain. Teenage pregnancy – and unintended pregnancy overall – remains a serious issue for many families in the U.K. even now.
There is an essential synergy between prospects for women in education and employment, and elective motherhood. Each benefits from the other. And each also brings benefit for the children who are born, including better prospects even for their very survival.
IMR inequalities relate to social class
Currently differences in infant UK infant death rates can be huge, and can often be attributed to occupational and class differentials. In 2002-4 a baby born in Birmingham was eight times more likely to die before its first birthday than one in Surrey, with rates of 12.4 and 2.2 infant deaths per thousand live births respectively. (Bradford is another very high-risk area, and set up its own enquiry to see how to improve.)
This is not an easy matter to discuss politically, but it could not be more important, even in Britain, one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
Improving family health
One main health objectives of the British Government is to improve infant mortality rates (IMR: the number of babies who die before their first birthday, against each one thousand born), so that the infants of poorer parents have better outcomes, like those of more advantaged parents.
The target for England is a 10% reduction in the relative gap (i.e. percentage difference) in infant mortality rates between “routine and manual” socio-economic groups and England as a whole from the baseline year of 1998 (the average of 1997-99) to the target year 2010 (the average of 2009-2011).
Life outcomes and expectation
To focus this up: for each baby in the UK who dies before his or her first birthday, there will be about ten who survive with enduring disability, and often with diminished life expectancy.
At present, often through lack of knowledge, or sometimes difficulties in accessing appropriate care, this distressing outcome is much more likely to affect families where women are poorly educated, than those where women have a good education and good jobs or careers.
Preventable tragedy
It does not have to be like this.
The Government is absolutely right to tackle this difficult matter, but effective action requires co-ordinated delivery by all who provide care and support for parents and children. There must be no room for professional maternity care in-fighting, such as is reported by Sir Ian Kennedy, chair of the Healthcare Commission to exist between obstetricians and midwives.
Children’s Centres as a way forward?
The national transition from Sure Start to the encompassing provision of Children’s Centres, underpinned by the fundamental philosophy of the Every Child Matters initiative, is now underway.
To date there has been little discussion about how family planning support needs to be built into this really important development.
Professional obligation
This may be a tricky issue, but it’s one where the professionals could, if they chose, much help the Government to help all of us.
When are we going to hear those who provide early years and family support saying, loud and clear, that ‘every child a wanted child‘ is a basic requirement for everyone in Britain as well as elsewhere?
A not-to-be repeated opportunity?
The need for effective family planning in parts of the developing world remains desperate, and must be met.
But that doesn’t excuse skirting the issue here at home, just at a point when new and joined up services focusing directly on families and children are being created, with the aim of eradicating child poverty and increasing wellbeing for everyone.
And given the political sensitivities, surely it’s the practitioners – in health, education, welfare and the rest – who have to lead the way?
Read more articles about Public Service Provision.
Older. Female. Blogger. But No Geek.
Who inhabits the cybervillage? Mostly it seems younger people, and, in the more technological parts of that so-called village, men. But there are a few self-proclaimed women ‘geeks’ of a certain age out there too; and some of them are claiming a cyber-space for their own ideas. I don’t profess to be a geek; but maybe I match the profile in other ways.
It’s interesting that, as we mark the eightieth anniversary in Britain of full female emancipation via the Equal Franchise Act (2 July 1928), the issue of ‘older female geeks’ seems to be coming to the fore.
In July 1928 women in the U.K. were awarded the vote on the same basis as men. And in the Summer of 2008 it looks like they are to be recognised as enfranchised also as legitimate inhabitants of the blogosphere.
Older female geeks who blog
As Natalie d’Arbeloff of Blaugustine says in her Guardian article of 13 June ’08, there aren’t many ‘older female geeks’ as yet, but this species does exist as a measurably sized group. She lists amongst their number Penelope Farmer of Rockpool in the Kitchen, Fran of Sacred Ordinary, Marja-Leena Rathje, Elizabeth Adams of The Cassandra Pages, Tamarika of Mining Nuggets and Rain of Rainy Day Thoughts.
Self-evidently sterling women, all of them; but am I correct in thinking that not one of these writer is actually British-born and still living in the UK? North America features highly in this list; though not Britain. I, being so domiciled, am pondering this….
Geeks or bloggers?
And are all bloggers geeks, I wonder? For me, the interest lies in the writing, in getting one’s head around particular or puzzling ‘facts’, experiences and perceptions, or perhaps placing an engaging (I hope) photograph in a pleasing or interesting way. The technicals are of significance only insofar as I have to do them to achieve what I want – just like driving my car.
The skill in designing my blog has been entirely Nick Prior‘s, not mine. My role as we develop the website has been merely to explain or think up what features I have a feeling would help, and Nick then interprets them, to deliver something real.
Claiming a blogosphere space
But being a geek (though I’m not even sure Nick’s one of those, he’s skilled and knowledgeable, not just an excellent technician) isn’t what matters. It’s surely the ideas which count?
Today I read another Guardian piece, by Cath Elliott, in which she discusses the use older women make of their blogs to look at experiences and perceptions which might otherwise remain unremarked.
Now that I find really fascinating. And I’d like to think in part it’s what I do right here.
Read more articles about Hilary’s Weblog.
Monday Women Returns To Heart & Soul
After some great times at El Rincon (thanks for the warm welcome and hospitality, Francisco and co!) the Monday Women group is delighted to be returning to Chumki Banerjee’s Heart & Soul Bistro in Liverpool’s city centre. Meetings will continue to be on the first Monday of every month, from 5.30-ish for about two hours (come and go as you wish or need to; and the e-group continues anyway, of course). There’s no requirement to join anything, and no ‘membership’ fees to pay; just turn up and enjoy a good chat
Finding Heart & Soul is easy: it’s at 62 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, next door to the ‘old’ YMCA, and opposite the multi-storey car park – which hardly gives a clue to how delightful a place this bistro is… beautifully fitted out with a sense of calm and space, original artwork on the walls, and (weather as ever permitting) a gorgeous sun-trap of a paved rear garden.
Meeting dates for 2008
Meetings ‘in person’ – you can of course meet any time on the e-group – are scheduled for the first Mondays of the month (5.30 / 5.45-ish till sometime after 7pm) on these dates:
4 August
1 September
6 October
3 November
1 December – our Christmas party, which is always great fun, but will start a bit later.
So, please put these dates in your diaries now, tell your women friends, and just turn up! Women in Liverpool and even those just in town for the day from elsewhere are all really welcome; and there truly is no catch, or cost beyond buying yourself a drink if you’d like to.
Genuinely no fees or cost
This group was set up by friends, simply for friends (whether they’re old friends or new, in employment or busy at home, younger or more ‘seasoned’; everyone’s welcome). Monday Women‘s all about being companionable and mutually supportive, not about being commercial. But, equally, you’re welcome to share your ideas about your business or community activities if you’d like to. There’s always someone you could be talking to for mutual benefit, or just to enjoy a chat.
Read more about Monday Women and about Gender & Women.
PS We now have e-groups for Monday Women on both Yahoo and Facebook – both entirely informal and free to join, with no obligation of any sort. Just search ‘Monday Women Liverpool’ on either site, and click to say you’d like to join. We only ask that people ‘apply’ to be on these e-groups in order to avoid spam, so as a real woman you’ll be warmly welcomed.
Sefton Park Boating Lake Shortchanged: A Half-Done Restoration?
The upheavals as Sefton Park is ‘restored’ have been grim. Trees and habitats destroyed, birdlife disrupted and months of mud and noise – though at least, we all believed, for future benefit. But will the Boating Lake, largest and most public of the waterways, now remain a dumping ground for waste as before? Apparently the money may be running out. If it does, I’d say, so is our civic pride.
Is this (above) the view of Sefton Park Boating Lake which will stay with us after all the heritage and landscape restoration is finished? Will the people of Liverpool, already said by Bill Bryson to have celebrated a ‘Festival of Litter’, permit what is arguably the City’s most significant park to retain within it a dumping ground for anything their careless fellow citizens have over the decades jettisoned into the Boating Lake?
… and this proposed ‘cost-cutting’, so it is said, all for a saving which is probably less than the amount already spent on destroying perfectly healthy trees in Sefton Park because they ‘block the view’?
The photographs below show some of the garbage which lies below the normal waterline of the lake, together with a view of the area which the dredger has cleaned up (by the top island), and the boating fence which, as things stand, may delineate the divide between the restored area and the much larger part of the lake which it’s feared will be left in neglect.
Will the powers-that-be ensure, despite the rumours, that the whole lake will be cleared? Or has this City really still so little civic pride? We await the evidence that all will be well, hopefully very soon.
Read more articles on Sefton Park
and see more photographs at Camera & Calendar.
Recycling: Remove Sticky Tape Before Saving Planet
‘Saving the planet’ is a project which must surely involve everyone; but apparently not all designers of domestic recycling technology agree. For recycling to be effective, design should logically follow, not lead, function. This requires an understanding of how ordinary people will use recycling opportunities – before systems are designed, not as an afterthought.
Stories abound of people who have been fined for recycling things in the ‘wrong’ way – collections with mixed content, paper with an individual’s name on it as ‘proof’ that they put items in the wrong repository, using a compost heap inappropriately – all make good stories to create media martyrdom to the recycling regulations.
Short-term technology before people
Almost anything can be recycled, but at present it seems Local Authorities decide for themselves what they will and will not process. Often immediate costs are not measured against the long-term implications of not taking action now. Despite challenging targets set by central government, few of us are yet holding local decision-makers to account for by-passing future sustainabilty…. if we were, there would be more conversations around involving ‘ordinary people’.
The factors which feature most in local decision are likely to be the economics of recycling, available recycling technologies and where to locate recycling facilities (including the NIMBY – ‘not in my backyard’ – factor). Public understanding of the very serious situation we are all in is rarely discussed.
What repeated stories of fines and public naming show is how very far officialdom may be from the real need to get the public on-board, and quickly.
Silly civic expectations
Our own City Council is party to non-automated recycling processes which still do not accommodate some recyclable plastics. Yet the need is to raise the currently very poor performance of the city, at just 7.6% – when one council already achieves 50%, the Government target for all councils by 2020.
Doubtless, those who have designed the process see it as innovative and positive; and certainly it is better than what preceded it.
But is the City Council serious? I however will continue to have my doubts whilst the Council briefing, issued to every household in the City, includes the instruction to ‘Please remove sellotape‘ before recycling gift wrapping paper – an instruction which was even issued as part of the recycling initiative last Christmas. (How else would one spent Christmas afternoon?)
Citizens as wrong-doers or as partners?
Whether individuals intentionally break the rules, or do so unknowingly, the outcome if detected is the same: a news story which makes others wary of doing anything at all.
The physical technology exists to recycle pretty well everything; processes are available for all domestic waste, if the budget and machinery are up to it.
Making people into media stories because of their recycling behaviour will simply encourage their fellow citizens to cynicism and an unwillingness to recycle at all, for fear of wrong-doing.
Sustainable behaviours are not optional
The imperative to get recycling is urgent.
We need, very soon, to get much cleverer about how to help everyone be part of the solution, not the problem.
Read more articles on Environment and Sustainability:
Conserve, Recycle & Sustain and
Sustainability As If People Mattered.
Double British Summertime (Central European Time) For Jersey?
We’ve reached the Summer Solstice or Longest Day, but still the demand for more evening light, energy savings and greater road safety yearlong won’t go away. Now it’s the turn of Senators in Jersey to try to align their community with Central European Time, which we Brits call Double Summer Time. And U.K. politicians too are thinking again. Given the many benefits of CET, let’s hope this time endorsement of the idea is compelling. Perhaps where Jersey leads the U.K. may follow? …
The Channel Islands, Guernsey and Jersey, enjoy a close connection with France, lying just off the French coast of Normandy. But whilst these very pleasant isles are not in the United Kingdom, they are geographically part of the British Isles and largely English-speaking, with a strong financial link to the U.K. economy.
It is very interesting, therefore, that Jersey is to hold a referendum on proposals to move the island to Central European Time.
This is so-called Daylight Saving with serious intent. Central European Time is two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in the Summer, and one hour ahead in Winter.
A long-contested idea
This proposal has been around for many years, in Jersey and Guernsey, and in mainland Britain.
The ideas behind the proposal have been well rehearsed, whether in the U.K. Parliament, repeatedly by RoSPA, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, or indeed on this very website.
We know, as RoSPA constantly reminds us, that moving permanently to lighter evenings would overall reduce accidents, enhance health (more opportunities for exercise), help the economy -especially the evening economy, and tourism – and save energy.
Public support
In the U.K., more people support the change to Central European Time than do not; and even in Scotland, location of the darkest mornings and as it happens also the most SAD: seasonal affective disorder, at least 40% are still in favour of change. (Tim Yeo‘s proposed but failed Bill of 2007 accommodated demands that the U.K. devolved administrations, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, could opt out of CET anyway, should they so wish.)
But still the foot-dragging continues, with a feeling in some quarters that it’s ‘not British’ to adopt CET, or maybe that it’s an affront to our agrarian heritage.
Changing mood?
But the new element in all this is that the Conservatives – often hostile to anything ‘European’ – are now reported to be thinking of adopting proposals for CET (i.e., ‘Abandon Greenwich Meantime’, in the words of The Telegraph) in their next manifesto.
A way to CET?
Well, I really hope this happens. It has been said that Jersey, whilst keen to move to CET, is worried about how things will work out if the U.K. doesn’t do the same.
If we can somehow forget odd ideas about Britishness and ‘Europe’, and instead concentrate on issues of environmental sustainability, health and safety, we will do much better.
One way to start would be to move swiftly to Double British Summertime in Summer, as part of the change to adopt Central European Time throughout the year.
Read more articles on BST: British Summer Time & ‘Daylight Saving’ (The Clocks Go Back & Forward)
Liverpool: In England, But Not Of It?
Much of the outside of Liverpool Lime Street train station is clad with art work celebrating the UK’s choice of the city as European Capital of Culture 2008. So what should we make of the cladding’s message, that Liverpool is ‘In England, but not of it?’
The idea of covering ugly and unused buildings with celebratory artwork is excellent.
Lime Street, as Liverpool’s railway terminus, epitomises our ‘Gateway to the World city‘ (as Liverpool’s ports did and, commercially, still do). It is therefore fitting that visitors in 2008, our year as European Capital of Culture, be greeted on arrival with vibrant images reflecting Liverpool’s arts and cultural offer – an offer which draws on the traditions and experience of centuries of migration to Liverpool, with people arriving from across the globe:
But what are we to make of the claim, as part of this greeting, that Liverpool, whilst still ‘Gateway to the World’, is also ‘In England, but not of it’?
How can we, the people of this historic port, expect to progress and prosper, if we choose consistently not just to be ‘on the edge’ of Britain, but so it seems actually over that edge, in another place altogether?
What sort of civic identity and message does that give to our own fellow citizens?
And, critically, what does it say to those in the rest of the country with whom we must do business and confer on many issues, if Liverpool is to move forward successfully in the twenty-first century?
Read more articles on Strategic Liverpool
and on Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008.
More photographs: Camera & Calendar
Secondary Modern Schools
What are schools for? If they’re intended to give every child a good start in life, how can anyone defend the old-style Secondary Modern Schools? And how can the other side of this equation, Grammar Schools, be justified? These are institutions defined only by the fact that their students ‘passed’ or ‘failed’ an examination at age 11; and the children know it.
The Guardian has reported that there are still 170 Secondary Modern Schools in England, as also 164 Selective Grammar Schools remain, the last few institutions from the Tripartite System commonly employed by Education Authorities the UK between 1944 Butler Education Act and the Education Act of 1974. (This Act heralded the arrival of Comprehensive Schools – though effectively only in name if selective state education also continued in any given County.)
Ed Balls MP, the Government’s Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, does not like selection by testing at 11+, but has allocated substantial sums of money to help those ‘SecMods’ in need of extra support.
Selection and struggling students
Balls is right to do this, but it is right as well that the Guardian reminds us that the 14 County Councils which provide wholly selective state secondary education are also those with highest proportions of struggling schools.
Grammar Schools had their place in the post-WWII scenario of bringing forward the talents of children from less privileged backgrounds, at a time when there were few academically well-qualified and professionally trained teachers. The ‘Grammars’ were a well-intentioned strategy to nurture children deemed bright, and we knew far less then about how to teach and support children across the board to succeed.
Now, a school which does not support all its pupils or students is rightly judged inadequate; it is not the children who have ‘failed’, but the school. (What can I say about the school only a few miles from where I live, where just 1% of children gain five good GCSEs – the worst ‘results’ in the country? Despite its beautifully fitted-out new buildings, its results are simply an unbelievable disgrace.)
Failed students, or failed schools?
One of the reasons given for not closing dreadful schools – though that may happen – is that the children might think it’s they who have failed, not their school.
But with the 11+, where only a small percentage of children gain Grammar School places, that’s exactly what the message is: ‘You, personally, have already failed’.
How counter-productive and downright cruel is that?
Success despite rejection
I know people who ‘failed’ at age 11, but have gone on to achieve considerable success in their careers.
None of them attributes that success to their Secondary Modern School; and most of them still rue the day when, aged just 11, they were pronounced ‘failures’.
It hurts and damages for life.
Read more articles about Education & Life-Long Learning.
Dreaming Realist 