In late November 2008 I posted a view on the Building Design website related to the expansion plans for Heathrow airport and a counter idea from an architect Mr Beanstall to build a new airport in the Thames Estuary instead. Neither airport idea is intelligent, in my opinion, and seems inequitous to the rest of the UK. As always I've slightly edited the original listing, as the original was written in some haste as part of an evolving theme, not presented here. This is my view, what's yours? The link to the entire topic on BD is presented below.
http://www.bdonline.co.uk/comments.asp?storycode=3128131
Mr Beastall describes the advantages of multiple runways in a number of European
locations and rightly identifies the need for improved UK airport infrastructure. But the countries whose airports he admires and refers to also have excellent rail networks. These allow for high speed national and international connectivity, often combined as integrated transport hubs. Here in England, only Birmingham airport comes close to this, by sitting next to a major intercity rail link, several motorways, and some local light rail.
Other UK airports connect to our rail network, but much of this is non-dedicated, and has Victorian infrastructure. Of the "modern" examples, the Heathrow-Paddington link he refers to, is hardly strategic. As for “a truly integrated transport policy,” he and the UK should broaden their priorities. UK cities (including London) should be connected to each other first, and then lets worry about connecting to Europe. The UK already has one great Euro link, namely the Channel Tunnel, whose high speed, dedicated infrastructure is much better than anything else currently operating across Britain.
Can I also add that the obvious disutility of locating any new infrastucture, let alone an airport, in the Thames Estuary (which already has a flood barrier) will be the future fight against rising sea levels. It’s true that planes can take off over the sea, but can they take off under it?
As for Mr Soley’s case, his endless, unjustified, and irrational case for Heathrow's expansion has to stop. It is pure commercial self-interest and irrational on safety and economic grounds. Heathrow has had its day, and if BA038 had crashed into Mr Soley’s (and my) former constituency of Hammersmith, or elsewhere in central London, and not pancaked onto Heathrow’s perimeter, we’d not be having this conversation.
Let’s knock both ideas on the head and see smart money spent on high speed "maglev "type rail that can link existing Northern airport to London, and indeed anywhere. Birmingham and Manchester being the most obvious airports to utilise, but others could benefi. So too would the economic balance and well being of millions of UK citizens in the North, who can access London, and its airports in minutes rather than hours, and those in the South-East who are fed up of airport blight and air/car congestion.
That’s vision , that’s long term, that’s sustainable, that’s sensible, that’s setting an example to other nations, and that’s fair
Sunday, 10 May 2009
G20 Revisited
I wrote this to a friend pre the recent G20 event in London. As always, I should have posted it sooner. My friend was cynical about the G20’s attitudes to climate change, and supportive of of civic protest to affront the G20 . Perhaps rightly so, but this is how I read it at the time.
You probably won’t agree, but don’t you think that thinking like that of the "New Green Deal" will be on the table for next weeks summit? I’d be amazed if ideas like it were not central to the agenda. Climate reform, unlike social reforms, has to include economic and financial interventions as a key part of the process, and this is what the New Green Deal is all about.
Capitalism will and has to be reformed, and the G20 realise this. Corporations and global finance have left governments and governance floundering, and despite the obvious poor regulation of international finance, nothing much can prevent crass stupidity, or indeed honest simple ignorance, which between them account for most of the “own goals” in this rapidly escalating financial crisis. Common sense, and honesty, would have helped if applied at the appropriate times, but financiers were blind and greedy, and you cannot govern these.
In fact, some of the governance processed suggested in the New Green Deal, have already started with the targeting of tax havens and firming of regulations related to offshore and off balance sheet activities. You will have read about this in the press this last week. Furthermore; and whether we like it or not, it is governments and central banks who are leading these processes. Some of the dialogue related to this has been at the level of nations having to “defend the realm,” as there is no doubt that the financial crisis presents unprecedented challenges to national well-being. Gordon Brown virtually confessed as much as the outcomes of the credit crunch became more apparent.
Meanwhile, I am going to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Mid Wales on Tuesday to discuss eco-economics, and more, as part of their Zero Carbon Britain seminars. Part of the environmental challenge is, as you correctly identify, about reforming the economic system and I am totally in agreement with this. It is iniquitous to consider economics and climate change separately. In the UK these issues are compounded by domestic matters related to fair pay, poor pension provisions, fee paying education, the privatisation of the public realm, and the seen and unseen stealth taxes ranging from public fines to sub-standard goods & services. These are economic matters with social consequences that inevitable affect people and place, and thus environmental behaviour related to well being, consumption and opportunity. People who expect more are bound to get less, with inevitable outcomes.
Bit on the world stage, the great hope for G20 is that France & Germany, who recognise these broad issues at the highest levels of government, will take a lead and interweave economic and climatic arguments around non-sovereign broadly holistic ideals. It will be interesting to see how the new US president will react too. I would suggest, and hope, his agenda will be a huge advance over the politics of George Bush.
But in championing the French and Germans, let’s also recall that it was Blair, Brown, and the UK Treasury that commissioned the Stern Review, and at the time, this was way ahead of anything that other G20 governments were doing. So in this respect, the UK deserves some credit for this.
So despite the complexity of feelings and issues around G20 how can mankind return from this environmental and financial brink if the politicians can’t talk because London is caught up in mass civic anarchy? Protest is a right but I take the view that at this moment in human history, talk is more important.
---------------------
In reviewing the above, at the date of posting, I think that G20 missed the boat. France and Germany were sidelined, and perhaps in essence because G20 is new and the 12 additions to what was the G8 take time to embed and have influence. I think too that a lot of the outcomes were about securing equal opportunities for emerging nations related to trade retention and growth. Thus the big lesson has not been learnt, that in climate survival terms we have to move on from global consumption economics to localised economics. This includes smaller banks, different expectations on growth, and trading patterns that are far more responsible than they are at present.
You probably won’t agree, but don’t you think that thinking like that of the "New Green Deal" will be on the table for next weeks summit? I’d be amazed if ideas like it were not central to the agenda. Climate reform, unlike social reforms, has to include economic and financial interventions as a key part of the process, and this is what the New Green Deal is all about.
Capitalism will and has to be reformed, and the G20 realise this. Corporations and global finance have left governments and governance floundering, and despite the obvious poor regulation of international finance, nothing much can prevent crass stupidity, or indeed honest simple ignorance, which between them account for most of the “own goals” in this rapidly escalating financial crisis. Common sense, and honesty, would have helped if applied at the appropriate times, but financiers were blind and greedy, and you cannot govern these.
In fact, some of the governance processed suggested in the New Green Deal, have already started with the targeting of tax havens and firming of regulations related to offshore and off balance sheet activities. You will have read about this in the press this last week. Furthermore; and whether we like it or not, it is governments and central banks who are leading these processes. Some of the dialogue related to this has been at the level of nations having to “defend the realm,” as there is no doubt that the financial crisis presents unprecedented challenges to national well-being. Gordon Brown virtually confessed as much as the outcomes of the credit crunch became more apparent.
Meanwhile, I am going to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Mid Wales on Tuesday to discuss eco-economics, and more, as part of their Zero Carbon Britain seminars. Part of the environmental challenge is, as you correctly identify, about reforming the economic system and I am totally in agreement with this. It is iniquitous to consider economics and climate change separately. In the UK these issues are compounded by domestic matters related to fair pay, poor pension provisions, fee paying education, the privatisation of the public realm, and the seen and unseen stealth taxes ranging from public fines to sub-standard goods & services. These are economic matters with social consequences that inevitable affect people and place, and thus environmental behaviour related to well being, consumption and opportunity. People who expect more are bound to get less, with inevitable outcomes.
Bit on the world stage, the great hope for G20 is that France & Germany, who recognise these broad issues at the highest levels of government, will take a lead and interweave economic and climatic arguments around non-sovereign broadly holistic ideals. It will be interesting to see how the new US president will react too. I would suggest, and hope, his agenda will be a huge advance over the politics of George Bush.
But in championing the French and Germans, let’s also recall that it was Blair, Brown, and the UK Treasury that commissioned the Stern Review, and at the time, this was way ahead of anything that other G20 governments were doing. So in this respect, the UK deserves some credit for this.
So despite the complexity of feelings and issues around G20 how can mankind return from this environmental and financial brink if the politicians can’t talk because London is caught up in mass civic anarchy? Protest is a right but I take the view that at this moment in human history, talk is more important.
---------------------
In reviewing the above, at the date of posting, I think that G20 missed the boat. France and Germany were sidelined, and perhaps in essence because G20 is new and the 12 additions to what was the G8 take time to embed and have influence. I think too that a lot of the outcomes were about securing equal opportunities for emerging nations related to trade retention and growth. Thus the big lesson has not been learnt, that in climate survival terms we have to move on from global consumption economics to localised economics. This includes smaller banks, different expectations on growth, and trading patterns that are far more responsible than they are at present.
To boldly go............
Further to the historical fact that it is 30 years this week since Margaret Thatcher took up office in Downing Street. I started my first proper job on the same day. Honest.....Here are some reflections.
The election that preceded this, was my first as a voter (don't ask.) I started work for a long lost government department called the Property Services Agency, in Shrewsbury as a clerical office (remember those.) It was a casual 6 month contract and I had to cross a picket line to get in! One was the start of an era, (casual contracts) the other the end of an era (the right to withdraw your labour.)
I recall a fellow employee in the corner, who had the now long lost job title of “typist.” She typed 300 words a week, or so it seemed given the pace of work in 1979 and drank a lot of tea; a habit I confess that I copy by type, if not copy-type. I also recall postmen who collected and delivered said letters, when there were no picket lines to stop them, and the months of activity that occurred between writing one letter and receiving a reply, apart from drinking tea. These days’ emails are instantaneous, with gaggles of recipients, and plagues of replies, and stern rebukes if there is no response within the nano-second. I also recall a boss who was literally physically sick at the smell or oranges and who was, in her word, "incest" if anyone tried to eat one. I assume she had very fruity parents!
But strangely I can't recall the typists’ unsackable face or indeed her desk. Both were hidden behind scores of framed photos of the stars of Blake’s 7 and Star Trek, or was it photos of the stars and galaxies these brave actors ventured into. In either case they were the frontier to her desk and a convention of sorts. These arrangements went with a convention of type, via her trekking along to science fiction fan conventions. She went with trekie friends, aliens or otherwise. Such events are very common today, but less so in 1979, and were totally alien to me as a 17 year old biker with an leaning toward punk rock and a closet leaning to reggae and soul. As a 49 year old biker with a leaning toward punk rock and open leaning to reggae and soul I still feel the same. Despite forgetting her face and indeed her name, I do recall a scandal with her, and if I rightly recall, it centred on racist comments she made. Not to me, but someone important. It seemed odd that someone could empathise with aliens, but not immigrants, but as I said, she was unsackable. These were lazy, hazy, crazy people days, and a final frontier where flying pickets and space cadets ruled all. Then Maggieathon came with her VoteOn torpedos and Britain changed for ever.
Strangely, and circuitously, on my first day in my new job, I also recall a modest collection of beer mats on the office wall. These were local brews, and galaxies, that were equally exploreable in both space and time. In pre-digital days, the average clerical worker had the fairly modest and innocent habits of heavy drinking and beer worship, especially on long Friday afternoon sessions. Later when the PC was invented they discovered new habits of internet porn, hence the subsequent fall in beer consumption. So how weird it is in this week of personal and public recollection about Maggie, to also hear that the last manufacturer of beer mats has slipped silently off the bar, into the beer cellar of oblivion. To me, this is a strange parallel decent, a bit like Maggie’s, but of little relevance to others. So I mark this with a Private Eye type requiem.
So, farewell then beer mats.
Now you are no more.
Walls and tables will miss your decor.
And all the wetter will be the floor.
With tears and beers
Finally, in addition to typists, clerical officers, the "Real" Civil Service (as opposed to the official or provisional branches,) flying pickets, and beer mats, the building I was employed in on that first day has also gone. It and the Midland Electricity Board regional offices, which also comprised workshops, a large retail outlet, a depot, a company social centre, and adjacent open fields, have all gone. The buildings, fields, and all those hundreds of jobs were replaced by a housing estate. No parking lot, no big yellow taxi, and not society "as we know it Jim" just an exurbia of boring little red brick boxes.
The only remnant of the place that I knew on that first day thirty years ago, is a sub-station endlessly pushing carbon based electricity around a carbon hungry grid, that we all know is not seriously sustainable. Yet there is sits, reminding us, of how it was and how it can't be.
To boldly go............
The election that preceded this, was my first as a voter (don't ask.) I started work for a long lost government department called the Property Services Agency, in Shrewsbury as a clerical office (remember those.) It was a casual 6 month contract and I had to cross a picket line to get in! One was the start of an era, (casual contracts) the other the end of an era (the right to withdraw your labour.)
I recall a fellow employee in the corner, who had the now long lost job title of “typist.” She typed 300 words a week, or so it seemed given the pace of work in 1979 and drank a lot of tea; a habit I confess that I copy by type, if not copy-type. I also recall postmen who collected and delivered said letters, when there were no picket lines to stop them, and the months of activity that occurred between writing one letter and receiving a reply, apart from drinking tea. These days’ emails are instantaneous, with gaggles of recipients, and plagues of replies, and stern rebukes if there is no response within the nano-second. I also recall a boss who was literally physically sick at the smell or oranges and who was, in her word, "incest" if anyone tried to eat one. I assume she had very fruity parents!
But strangely I can't recall the typists’ unsackable face or indeed her desk. Both were hidden behind scores of framed photos of the stars of Blake’s 7 and Star Trek, or was it photos of the stars and galaxies these brave actors ventured into. In either case they were the frontier to her desk and a convention of sorts. These arrangements went with a convention of type, via her trekking along to science fiction fan conventions. She went with trekie friends, aliens or otherwise. Such events are very common today, but less so in 1979, and were totally alien to me as a 17 year old biker with an leaning toward punk rock and a closet leaning to reggae and soul. As a 49 year old biker with a leaning toward punk rock and open leaning to reggae and soul I still feel the same. Despite forgetting her face and indeed her name, I do recall a scandal with her, and if I rightly recall, it centred on racist comments she made. Not to me, but someone important. It seemed odd that someone could empathise with aliens, but not immigrants, but as I said, she was unsackable. These were lazy, hazy, crazy people days, and a final frontier where flying pickets and space cadets ruled all. Then Maggieathon came with her VoteOn torpedos and Britain changed for ever.
Strangely, and circuitously, on my first day in my new job, I also recall a modest collection of beer mats on the office wall. These were local brews, and galaxies, that were equally exploreable in both space and time. In pre-digital days, the average clerical worker had the fairly modest and innocent habits of heavy drinking and beer worship, especially on long Friday afternoon sessions. Later when the PC was invented they discovered new habits of internet porn, hence the subsequent fall in beer consumption. So how weird it is in this week of personal and public recollection about Maggie, to also hear that the last manufacturer of beer mats has slipped silently off the bar, into the beer cellar of oblivion. To me, this is a strange parallel decent, a bit like Maggie’s, but of little relevance to others. So I mark this with a Private Eye type requiem.
So, farewell then beer mats.
Now you are no more.
Walls and tables will miss your decor.
And all the wetter will be the floor.
With tears and beers
Finally, in addition to typists, clerical officers, the "Real" Civil Service (as opposed to the official or provisional branches,) flying pickets, and beer mats, the building I was employed in on that first day has also gone. It and the Midland Electricity Board regional offices, which also comprised workshops, a large retail outlet, a depot, a company social centre, and adjacent open fields, have all gone. The buildings, fields, and all those hundreds of jobs were replaced by a housing estate. No parking lot, no big yellow taxi, and not society "as we know it Jim" just an exurbia of boring little red brick boxes.
The only remnant of the place that I knew on that first day thirty years ago, is a sub-station endlessly pushing carbon based electricity around a carbon hungry grid, that we all know is not seriously sustainable. Yet there is sits, reminding us, of how it was and how it can't be.
To boldly go............
Transitions in Liverpool
The following web link leads to an interesting piece in the New York Times, on the growth of the transition movement in the USA. In this case it’s a story written around a journalists experience in a small Iowa Town called Sandpoint. He made an initial trip of discovery and later re-visited to see what had changed
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19town-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
The story appealed to me, in a number of ways, and my posting below represents my own reflections on it. My thoughts were originally scribed in an email sent to the academic who was kind enough to forward me the original article. I have tidied these up a bit, but the text is mainly the same.
I am interested in the dynamics that take place between the more generalised snapshots that are normally used to represent different moments or states within the same process or system. The dynamics of change are far more interesting than the frozen capture of change. I am also interested in narrative as opposed to analytical analysis.
Thus the account of the journalists return visit addresses change as a narrative process and indicates that transition was taking place. The story of the citizen invited to work with the town authorities on the new zonal development plan was especially interesting to me, given what I do in the area of urban regeneration. But I also found the idea of a "parallel community," particularly engaging.
This community was both economic and political (with a small p) and had clearly self-organised in co-operation with the authorities, and not despite of it. In my view, if such a body had “self-organised” in the UK, it would have been seen as a threat to the "Civic" governance structures that exist at the local level. It might also have unleashed the political anxieties and deluded self-importance that increasingly represent the attitudes of local politics. This is a world of emperors, advisors, generals, media wars, and camp followers. I often find the contributions of elected local representative as revealing as they are revolting, as they inevitably reveal more about their ignorance than their intelligence.
The UK “civic” seems to thinks it is better than the “non –civic” (meaning Us), which is why PAX Liverpool, and other such groups, want to create a "shadow" Council that mirrors the elected one
But in comparing transition between the UK and Mid West USA, what is perhaps less recognisable to us Brits, and it is not referred to in the article, are the following considerations:
1. The USA is a pioneering, entrepreneurial, free spirited society. It thinks differently.
2. Its constitution underpins this and legally respects diversity and free thinking ideas.
3. The Mid West is long associated with self-sufficiency by the hardships of its geography and climate.
4. It also has a strong (German/Scandinavian) Lutheran work ethic.
5. It also is the potato centre of the US so farming and food production is in the blood, so to speak.
6. There is no welfare system, & very little of what we would call "socialism" in the USA, so most Americans understand thrift, yet also respect and revel in capitalism.
7. Towns have mayors. They are directly accountable. Change is a natural part of the process.
8. Rural America has strong religious, kin, family and community values. Much more than in the UK
9. Mid West places are small (by American standards) and distant
10. The culmination of all this is a strong work ethic
Most of the above is lost, atypical, or not as pronounced in post-Thatcherite Britain. When Mrs Thatcher infamously said that there was “no such thing as society” she was wrong. If she has said, there is such a thing as a “fractured society” I would say she was, sadly, right.
There is a local view that the US transition movement is behind the UK movement. I am not sure if this view reflects the entire UK transition movement, or just Liverpool Transition, but in my view, and certainly by Liverpool standards, Sandpoint looks way ahead of Liverpool. Mainly as they have achieved a political acceptability that we never will. In this respect they might even be ahead of other UK places too.
Groups like Liverpool Transition, and other self-organised community groups, are in the eyes of "the Civic" less equal than sanctioned and organised groups. And I am especially thinking here of Liverpool’s eventual and slow alignment with the UK’s “Sustainable Communities Act 2007. In making this slow alignment to the Act, it has sought to tick the SCA box, by aligning its own "Liverpool First" community initiative, as the cities official representation of the Act and its policy ideas. “Liverpool First” does have independent and respected community representation, but its board is heavy with Civic politicians. So having, in a sense, reacted to the Thatcherite view on “Non-Society” and identified and branded “Liverpool First” as a legitimate society, they have effectively said, that all other self organised and “non-legitimised” groups will, and can only ever be, part of something called “Liverpool Second.”
Transition has a long way to go, yet……
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/magazine/19town-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
The story appealed to me, in a number of ways, and my posting below represents my own reflections on it. My thoughts were originally scribed in an email sent to the academic who was kind enough to forward me the original article. I have tidied these up a bit, but the text is mainly the same.
I am interested in the dynamics that take place between the more generalised snapshots that are normally used to represent different moments or states within the same process or system. The dynamics of change are far more interesting than the frozen capture of change. I am also interested in narrative as opposed to analytical analysis.
Thus the account of the journalists return visit addresses change as a narrative process and indicates that transition was taking place. The story of the citizen invited to work with the town authorities on the new zonal development plan was especially interesting to me, given what I do in the area of urban regeneration. But I also found the idea of a "parallel community," particularly engaging.
This community was both economic and political (with a small p) and had clearly self-organised in co-operation with the authorities, and not despite of it. In my view, if such a body had “self-organised” in the UK, it would have been seen as a threat to the "Civic" governance structures that exist at the local level. It might also have unleashed the political anxieties and deluded self-importance that increasingly represent the attitudes of local politics. This is a world of emperors, advisors, generals, media wars, and camp followers. I often find the contributions of elected local representative as revealing as they are revolting, as they inevitably reveal more about their ignorance than their intelligence.
The UK “civic” seems to thinks it is better than the “non –civic” (meaning Us), which is why PAX Liverpool, and other such groups, want to create a "shadow" Council that mirrors the elected one
But in comparing transition between the UK and Mid West USA, what is perhaps less recognisable to us Brits, and it is not referred to in the article, are the following considerations:
1. The USA is a pioneering, entrepreneurial, free spirited society. It thinks differently.
2. Its constitution underpins this and legally respects diversity and free thinking ideas.
3. The Mid West is long associated with self-sufficiency by the hardships of its geography and climate.
4. It also has a strong (German/Scandinavian) Lutheran work ethic.
5. It also is the potato centre of the US so farming and food production is in the blood, so to speak.
6. There is no welfare system, & very little of what we would call "socialism" in the USA, so most Americans understand thrift, yet also respect and revel in capitalism.
7. Towns have mayors. They are directly accountable. Change is a natural part of the process.
8. Rural America has strong religious, kin, family and community values. Much more than in the UK
9. Mid West places are small (by American standards) and distant
10. The culmination of all this is a strong work ethic
Most of the above is lost, atypical, or not as pronounced in post-Thatcherite Britain. When Mrs Thatcher infamously said that there was “no such thing as society” she was wrong. If she has said, there is such a thing as a “fractured society” I would say she was, sadly, right.
There is a local view that the US transition movement is behind the UK movement. I am not sure if this view reflects the entire UK transition movement, or just Liverpool Transition, but in my view, and certainly by Liverpool standards, Sandpoint looks way ahead of Liverpool. Mainly as they have achieved a political acceptability that we never will. In this respect they might even be ahead of other UK places too.
Groups like Liverpool Transition, and other self-organised community groups, are in the eyes of "the Civic" less equal than sanctioned and organised groups. And I am especially thinking here of Liverpool’s eventual and slow alignment with the UK’s “Sustainable Communities Act 2007. In making this slow alignment to the Act, it has sought to tick the SCA box, by aligning its own "Liverpool First" community initiative, as the cities official representation of the Act and its policy ideas. “Liverpool First” does have independent and respected community representation, but its board is heavy with Civic politicians. So having, in a sense, reacted to the Thatcherite view on “Non-Society” and identified and branded “Liverpool First” as a legitimate society, they have effectively said, that all other self organised and “non-legitimised” groups will, and can only ever be, part of something called “Liverpool Second.”
Transition has a long way to go, yet……
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