Does Old Age Have To Mean Life On The Sidelines?
Summary: What happens to people as they get older? What should be the starting points for more consideration of this vexed question? With post-war babies currently reaching retirement and many of their parents still alive, the number of elderly people in the UK is increasing dramatically. But socio-economic infrastructure still often lags behind.
Whilst never unimportant, advanced old age was until quite recently not a widespread issue. There is now a pressing need to understand better how to accommodate and respond to this shift in the UK’s demographic.
Communities Are Much More Than Localities
Summary: The new agenda in regeneration is beginning to emerge, and with it will emerge also a new lexicon. Each of us will have their own priorities for terminological redefinition. Mine is to re-examine the meaning/s of ‘community’. Communities are not just localities; they are as many and various as the individuals who describe them, but this is rarely reflected in thinking on regeneration or social policy.
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Move On If You’re Monied (Or Now Alone)
Summary: The status is still unclear of recent proposals that social housing (‘council housing’ and the like in old parlance) be only for those in greatest financial need. But whether simply political musing, or seriously on the agenda, these propositions are, even just for starters, a very bad idea. And so, without very careful preparation, is the idea that if family changes mean your house becomes ‘underoccupied’, or you are job-seeking, you must move on.
Such proposals miss the point that people live in communities, not isolation; and communities require a degree of stability. These ideas can result only in one thing – more so-called ‘no hope’ estates, and fast.
Visit Hilary’s professional website here to read more and post your comments on this article.
Brokering For Adequacy In Austerity
Summary: There’s little most of us as individuals can add to general commentary about the current fierce financial cuts; but there is perhaps a real role for brokerage, undertaken by non-partisan cross-industry bodies, to find a way forward.
The first priority, beyond politics, must surely be to minimise harm as far as possible in the face of a grim determination to reduce public spending at any cost.
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Can Swans, Dogs, Families And Fishing Co-exist In Sefton Park?
This male swan is father to his six cygnets, now surviving without their mother. The female of the adult pair was lost when a dog attacked her, and the fear is now for the safety of the swan family in her absence. So once again we ask the perennial questions about who our city parks are ‘for’. Can dogs and people mix? And how reasonable is it to permit fishing in this urban environment, given that it too destroys waterbirds and scares away young families?
Homes, Job Prospects And Horizons: How Far Is ‘Away’?
Summary: Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, proposes to help people move house to get work. This is not of itself a new idea; from Norman Tebbit’s ‘on your bike’ onwards it has been proposed in various ways by the main political parties that those without employment need encouragement to become domestically mobile. Inevitably the counter-argument has been that jobs are not necessarily to be found just around the corner, a mere bikeride – or, in Duncan Smith’s proposals, within fifteen miles – of where jobless people currently live. So can this idea work?
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Longest Day, Lightest Night, Least Energy Lost
This is the longest day of the year, a day and night when darkness barely touches the River Mersey or the historic ports of Liverpool and the Wirral to each side of that river’s great estuary. But even on this solstice day it’s not all about heritage. The estuary’s traditional maritime installations are here matched by the forward-looking technology of wind turbines, a constant reminder that energy is not ours to squander. Longer evening light, with the clocks forward year-through as 10:10 proposes, would help reduce this waste consistently without effort.
Inaction On Regional Trains Speaks Louder than Words
Summary: The electrification of railway lines in the NW of England (and elsewhere) has been planned for some while. Money was allocated for this programme by the last government, recognising the need to modernise regional intercity connections for economic and environmental reasons.
But in the new coalition government’s austerity-focused scheme of things it seems this plan is under threat. Upgrading these lines is essential. It’s the regional economy, people’s livelihoods and issues of energy efficiency which are at stake. Vague words of hope for the future will not do.
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Liverpool Enjoys Sun And Fun
The sun shone warmly on Liverpool’s Lord Mayor’s Parade today (Saturday 5 June 2010), and afterwards people thronged happily in the city centre.
Bandspeople made their way along Church Street past a musician with more ancient instrumental traditions, and in the retail area of Liverpool One shoppers took time out to relax on a fake lawn, in the company of an enormous frog and fairy-tale toadstools. The city centre in the sun was fun, and Liverpool was today indeed a World In One City.
A Trial Of Two Localisms
Summary: Has nationally-prescribed double devolution somehow morphed into nationally-prescribed strategic localism? Is either of them meaningful without generous national resources and serious leadership? Can the previous double devolution consultation model really transmute into genuine local self-determination? And is this proposed shift in the end about strategy for the future, or about nostalgia for the past?
Visit Hilary’s professional website here to read more and post your comments on this article.
Dreaming Realist 