Shortly after Dr Beckton successfully completed his Viva, it was necessary to follow the time-honoured traditions of doctoral creation.
Many congratulations Julian, well done 🙂
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Is there a Doctor in the house?
////digital divisions and mixed messages
//Yesterday the Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt blamed ‘a lack of funds’ for the government’s decision to delay the roll out of 2MB broadband. Labour had set 2012 as a deadline, now Mr Hunt says he does not think there is “sufficient funding in place” to meet that goal.’
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in its recent report A minimum income standard for the UK raises the benchmark for an “acceptable standard of living” from a computer and home internet connection being essential for people with school-age children to essential for all working age households.
Steve Robertson, chief executive of BT Openreach, says “As a society we need to make our minds up about what is an essential element of our social fabric. Today not having broadband makes people feel deprived”
A letter from David Cameron appointing Martha Lane Fox as the UK Digital Champion (18/06/10) says (my emphasis) “…the Government is committed to increasing transparency and accountability through making information systematically available online. We also want to improve the convenience and efficiency of public services by driving online delivery….To make this happen, we need to encourage more people to go online and hence be able to access public information and services.”
Clear evidence here of digital divides and mixed messages while, maybe not surprisingly, no mention of the digital exclusions that exist even with a broadband connection in place.
Plastic is for life…
//The Plastiki, a plastic bottle catamaran, revisits the issue of plastic waste in the oceans; in particular the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Gyre where the currents have created a concentration of plastic pollution. The plastic breaks down but doesn’t decompose. Plastiki also raises awareness of the shortage of fish, comparing their journey to that of Thor Heyerdahl on the Kon-Tiki in 1947 where the fish were so abundant crew were throwing them back into the sea. Despite having their lines in the water every day, Plastiki crew have caught only a couple of tuna in three month, reinforcing reports that 80% of the world’s fish stocks have done. The remaining fish are damaged by plastic pollution.
“These particles [of plastic] are ingested by marine life and pass into our food chain. We all do it: we throw this stuff, this packaging….into the bin, and we think it has gone. But it comes back to us one way or another. Some of it ends up on our dinner plates.”
Videos on You Tube. World biggest garbage dump – plastic in the Ocean http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNqzAHGXvs&feature=related
Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch- a TED Talk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrAShtolieg&feature=related
Conference catch-up
//The value of conferences is the opportunities to meet other people and share ideas and experience; especially with a subject like digital exclusion, which isn’t high on anyone’s list, although it should be. Participants at JSWEC, the Joint Social Work Education Conference, were a rare mix of service users, carers, volunteers, social work students, educators, practitioners, academics, government officials and the mix worked well. The atmosphere was friendly, supportive and eclectic; widening participation in practice with not an ivory tower in sight.
The HEA Conference took place the week before; like JSWEC it was also held at the University of Hertfordshire. The atmosphere was different although the bar was equally well attended. Jan Sellers from the University of Kent created a temporary labyrinth in the campus grounds. It was a shame it couldn’t have been there for JSWEC too because it would have been popular. The idea of walking the labyrinth is to take time out. Pause to reflect and focus on the winding twisty path into the centre and out again. Understanding isn’t important, you don’t need to analyse, it’s the doing of it that counts. Interest in the use of labyrinths in higher education is growing. See http://labyrinths.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk for more information.
My conference hat-trick began with the International Social Work and Social Development Conference. I blogged a bit about the Hong Kong experience here. The experience was inspiring. International conferences offer a rare insight into other countries and lifestyles. They support a retrospective assessment of what you have at home. No matter how much we complain, the UK is an excellent place to live. We have an education system the world admires, a welfare state second to none and precious amenities we take for granted like clean drinking water. John Bowerman, photographer for National Geographic, says the only justification for travelling is the stories you bring back. The most memorable story I heard was from Ms. Valerie Maasdorp, Clinical Director for the Island Hospice and Bereavement Service in Zimbabwe. The speech contained multiple realities; poverty, lack of food, shortage of medicines, the legacy of Aids resulting in thousands of orphans and the harsh consequences of living under a dictatorship government. Here we can ignore the media and pretend everyone wears shoes and can provide for their children. Sharing space with people who are living lives so much harder than ours is a difficult, uncomfortable experience. The story I bring back is we should all value what we have so much more than we do.
Art or Ego?
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Another Place on Crosby Beach was original. If public art is to stimulate thought and reaction then for me it worked. The parallels that came to mind as the tide revealed and concealed the statues ran unexpectedly deep. Even now, knowing the process is continuing reminds me of the permanence of nature in contrast to the impermanence of human life. But how many times do you need to repeat something before it starts to lose its originality and impact? Statues of Anthony Gormley are now available on an international scale; they’ve been installed in London, Edinburgh and New York and their latest appearance is high in the Austrian Alps. Gormley says calls the figures “silent witnesses” and says:
“The works are neither representations nor symbols, but [define] the place where a human being once was, and where any human being could be… [It] asks basic questions – who are we, what are we, where do we come from and to where are we headed?”
Once on Crosby Beach I might have agreed. But the effect is lessened by repetition. They are starting to raise the question of is it art or is it ego that drives someone to continually recreate themselves in this way.
‘Pride’ and predjudice
//As the LGBT community celebrate 40 years of Pride, Peter Tatchell looks forward to a society that is beyond Gay and Straight; to the end of homophobia. I’m not sure that’s possible. Social phobia have deep roots. We absorb socially constructed identities and ideas. They are tenacious, almost impossible to remove. Like attitudes towards disability. The language has moved on. The words cripple and handicapped are no longer socially acceptable. The medical model, where impairment was blamed for non-participation, has been replaced with a social model. This acknowledges society’s failure to recognise and cater for difference of need. But underneath I wonder how much has really changed. We may have statutory equality of opportunity but negative attitudes are still there. They maybe invisible, even subconscious, but access is for the majority and this is not changing. Take the recent move towards street furniture and shared surfaces, where the distinction between road and pavement is removed. This suggests the built environment is becoming less rather than more accessible. What about technology where the flexibility of digital data means it can be made accessible to everyone. The furore over the Tesco online shopping website this week clearly demonstrates how little the needs of visually impaired shoppers are taken into account. What’s that? You haven’t heard anything about the Tesco online shopping website? Then I rest my case.
Hong Kong
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In Hong Kong the divide between east and west is tangible. The concrete steel and glass skyscrapers are indicative of scores of Western cities. Expensive hotels surround the Hong Kong Convention Centre in Wan Chai, all joined by a series of walkways that cross over roads and mean you can effectively spend a week in the harsh air conditioning, your feet never touching the ground. Which would be a shame because it’s down at ground level that you find the real Hong Kong. Where the Western façade gives way to colour and culture that has existed unchanged for centuries. Where food is cooked on the street; the jobless sit in dirty corners and the hopelessness of poverty is etched into tired faces. Young teenage girls stand in club doorways inviting tourists inside; they look like they should be doing their homework not pandering to sex tourism. In Hong Kong there is no middle way. If you are rich, you live above street level, if you are poor your life is lived in among the doorways and rubbish piles, where the smell of frying onions mingles with sewerage.
Nothing in Hong Kong is free. I visited a state nursery for children with disabilities where even the poorest parents pay a contribution. At the Hong Kong Institute for the Blind, cheaper treatments are offered but still at a cost. Education for children is a valued priority; a way out of poverty, an opportunity for greater participation in western lifestyle and values; the evidence of which is everywhere in the ubiquitous, globalised brands of McDonalds, Subway and Starbucks, all key players in the internationalisation of cities where consumerism is rife and difference reduced to the type of currency unit in your pocket.
Some of the best things about Hong Kong are their virulent anti-smoking policies; they’re anti-plastic bags and litter. Functions and events run smoothly. The metro is a dream, spotlessly clean and easy to navigate. The buses, trams and Star ferries between Hong Kong and Kowloon and the surrounding islands operate on regular, cheap timetables. I never saw anyone drunk or aggressive in public. The day begins with Tai Chi, an example that would benefit us all with its slow, smooth grace. Peaceful Buddhism is a major religion and the government openly influenced by Confucian philosophy. This again is symptomatic of the dichotomy. Hong Kong is key to capitalism, its skyline dominated by the International Financial Centre, while down in the streets below the traditional Chinese medicine shops stock dried animal parts for the holistic treatment of individual ills and ailments. Like the difference between the humidity and the chilled air conditioning, Hong Kong is a city of contrasts, but one where you need to get out into the heat to experience it.
My next blog will be about The Agenda, the 2010 International Social Work and Social Development Conference and HUSITA (HUman Services Information Technology Applications).
Deadly oil
//
Images from the Daily Mail There are no words.
what goes around comes around
//What goes around comes around and here we are, 100 years on from the report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law (1910) looking once again at welfare reform. The rhetoric of benefit dependency, or benefit scrounging depending on your philosophy, informs current government policy aimed at getting the nation back to work. Being employed is going to be made the most attractive option.
Do some simple deconstruction and look at the background, lifestyle and income of those making these statements. Then put them into white wellies and leave them in a wet fish factory or get them into the industry of the 21st century – a call centre – either cold calling where your wage depends on meeting your targets or customer services where the ‘care’ ethos has gone to extremes – give Iain Duncan Smith the experience of verbal abuse on a shift rota that includes bank holidays and weekends. Will he still see work as the ‘more attractive option’?
Its all about getting people back into work and nothing about support for those who have always been in work, who spend their lives doing the low paid routine jobs that the government is trying to make more attractive than benefits. Ensure those citizens have contracts that protect them, not cut their wages if they’re genuinely ill, and most of all create affordable education opportunities so work chances can be improved. The cost of part time education is exorbitant and contributes to the trapping of young single people into dead end jobs where opportunities are locked down and there are too few rewards for taking the ‘more attractive’ option.
Then there is the issue of incapacity benefit – and ensuring protection for those genuinely excluded from social, economic and cultural participation. Not because they are unable to take part – but because society is not designed for them to be able to. A separate blog post I think. If you have any concerns about these issues then watch this space…
…the consistency of latex paint…
//
“Local reports described heavy sheets of oil the consistency of latex paint clogging the marshes in the Mississippi delta that provide a haven for migratory birds, and buffer the shore from Gulf hurricanes. ”
This is what everyone wanted to avoid, because the wetlands are the nursery for everything that swims or crawls in the Gulf of Mexico,” said John Hocevar, oceans campaigner for Greenpeace. “Once the oil gets stuck in there we are pretty much stuck with it.”