Britain may get some new National Parks, according to ‘energetic' environment secretary Michael Give. There are currently ten, along with thirty- four sites designated as areas of outstanding natural beauty.
The first national parks, the Peak District, Snowdonia and Dartmoor, were created in 1951, as the seventieth anniversary rolls around Give has ordered a review to be led by former Conservative Party aide Julian Glover.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph last week Mr Gove said it was ‘time to look afresh' at these iconic landscapes with a view to making ‘sure they are not only conserved but enhanced for the next generation’.
You would need to be a true cynic not to have your heart lifted by landscapes that have been inspiring artists and everyone else since the Enlightenment. The trouble is when it comes to Tory environment policy in general and pretty much everything involving Michael Gove; a little bit of me will always be profoundly cynical.
The Tories talk a good game on the environmental, not least because it plays into the ‘blood and soil' patriotism of members in the shire counties once described by David Cameron as the ‘turnip Taliban’. When it comes to delivering anything tangible they tend to be found wanting.
Their enthusiasm for fracking and the expensive white elephant that is HS2 knows no bounds, New Labour may have had form when it comes to selling off school playing fields to developers, but the Tories have hardly donned armour to protect them since 2010.
As for the perennially busy Mr Gove, he is the archetype of a politician in a hurry. Why waste time with half measures when you can charge at an issue head on? Particularly when doing so might help with the great (to him anyway) of seeing our hero standing on the doorstep of Downing Street.
What really worries me though is that the wrong problem is being addressed. It would be cause for air punching joy if any government were to create more national parks, they aren’t perfect, but they do protect landscapes that are a public good from being exploited.
The real issue is protecting those green spaces that aren’t as photogenic as Dartmoor or the Cairngorm’s, but matter hugely to the communities that use them. These are the places most threatened by drive the regeneration of areas facing economic challenges by building executive housing.
The thinking behind this is that all it takes is a ready supply of detached houses and investment will follow, except for when it doesn’t of course. Needless to say, the shortage of affordable housing is ignored by this ‘if you build it they will come' approach.
We need, desperately, to build the right sort of houses in the right places, with decent transport links and amenities. Gobbling up the wood at the end of the road or the scrubby bit of field where people have walked their dogs since forever to build a pocket estate of executive boxes will be of benefit to nobody.
In fact, it is hugely damaging to communities that have used these spaces for decades and risk along with being made more cramped and polluted as a result. It shouldn’t surprise anyone outside Whitehall that such spaces tend to get developed in areas that are already facing serious challenges.
The idea behind creating the national parks back in the fifties was that access to the countryside with all the benefits associated should be for everyone. In the spirit of which we should fight for every green space as a common good that should be held in trust for those to as much as those landscapes deemed iconic.
We may not always win; but it would send a powerful message about what we value and how we want to live.
Thursday 31 May 2018
Wednesday 23 May 2018
Stress is proving seriously bad for the health of our society and the economy.
Stress is an issue of growing concern for policy makers, a report published by the Mental Health Foundation shows the extent of the damage it is causing to our national health.
The report based on a YouGov poll of 4169 UK adults shows that 74% of the respondents said they had been so stressed in the past year they found it difficult to function.
The causes of stress are multiple and complex, ranging from major life events to multiple minor annoyances.
Amongst those cited by respondents coping with their own long- term illness or that of a relative was a major cause of stress in the over 55’s (44%).
Young people report high levels of stress associated with feeling pressure to be or appear successful (60%) and constantly comparing themselves to others (49%).
Debt was cited as a cause of stress by 22% of respondents along with worries connected to housing. Younger people were significantly more stressed about this issue (32% of 18-24 year olds), the older people get the less of a concern it appears to be, 22% of 44-54 year olds were stressed about housing and by age 55 this falls to 7%.
In general stress seems to be a problem that inversely affects younger people with only 7% of respondents in the 18-24 age group saying they never felt stressed compared to 30% of older ones.
Conditions in the workplace also feed the UK’s problem with stress, figures produced by the Health and Safety Executive(H&SE) for 2016/17 show 526,000 instances of stress related absence. Public sector workers are more likely to take time off sick due to stress with tight deadlines and lack of support from management being given as the main causes.
A report produced by the Centre for Economic and Business Research in 2017 gives the annual cost to the UK of time off taken due to stress as £18billion, saying the problem has increased dramatically since 2011 and could cost the economy £26 billion by 2030 if nothing is done to address the issue (Source: Personnel Today).
Stress can be helpful in controlled amounts because it helps us to be alert and maximizes performance in the short term. Experienced for long periods it can exacerbate or cause serious physical and mental health problems.
This can include damaging the body’s immune and digestive systems, it can also encourage unhealthy behaviours. Respondents to the YouGov poll spoke about eating unhealthily (46%) and drinking too much (29%) to try and cope with stress.
They also described the impact stress, which is not seen as a condition in its own right, has had on their mental health, 51% reported feeling depressed, 61% said it had made them feel anxious and 37% said they had experienced loneliness as a result of being stressed.
The report makes several recommendations for tackling the problems associated with stress. These include better support for public sector workers, mental health literacy training in schools and for employers to treat mental health in the workplace as a health and safety issue.
It also calls on health professionals to treat stress more seriously, there is still a residual scepticism as the ‘stiff upper lip’ school of medical thought continues to, if only implicitly, shape policy.
The most important recommendation the report makes though is that the government funds detailed research into the causes and prevalence of stress, focussing on the impact of welfare reforms.
The report based on a YouGov poll of 4169 UK adults shows that 74% of the respondents said they had been so stressed in the past year they found it difficult to function.
The causes of stress are multiple and complex, ranging from major life events to multiple minor annoyances.
Amongst those cited by respondents coping with their own long- term illness or that of a relative was a major cause of stress in the over 55’s (44%).
Young people report high levels of stress associated with feeling pressure to be or appear successful (60%) and constantly comparing themselves to others (49%).
Debt was cited as a cause of stress by 22% of respondents along with worries connected to housing. Younger people were significantly more stressed about this issue (32% of 18-24 year olds), the older people get the less of a concern it appears to be, 22% of 44-54 year olds were stressed about housing and by age 55 this falls to 7%.
In general stress seems to be a problem that inversely affects younger people with only 7% of respondents in the 18-24 age group saying they never felt stressed compared to 30% of older ones.
Conditions in the workplace also feed the UK’s problem with stress, figures produced by the Health and Safety Executive(H&SE) for 2016/17 show 526,000 instances of stress related absence. Public sector workers are more likely to take time off sick due to stress with tight deadlines and lack of support from management being given as the main causes.
A report produced by the Centre for Economic and Business Research in 2017 gives the annual cost to the UK of time off taken due to stress as £18billion, saying the problem has increased dramatically since 2011 and could cost the economy £26 billion by 2030 if nothing is done to address the issue (Source: Personnel Today).
Stress can be helpful in controlled amounts because it helps us to be alert and maximizes performance in the short term. Experienced for long periods it can exacerbate or cause serious physical and mental health problems.
This can include damaging the body’s immune and digestive systems, it can also encourage unhealthy behaviours. Respondents to the YouGov poll spoke about eating unhealthily (46%) and drinking too much (29%) to try and cope with stress.
They also described the impact stress, which is not seen as a condition in its own right, has had on their mental health, 51% reported feeling depressed, 61% said it had made them feel anxious and 37% said they had experienced loneliness as a result of being stressed.
The report makes several recommendations for tackling the problems associated with stress. These include better support for public sector workers, mental health literacy training in schools and for employers to treat mental health in the workplace as a health and safety issue.
It also calls on health professionals to treat stress more seriously, there is still a residual scepticism as the ‘stiff upper lip’ school of medical thought continues to, if only implicitly, shape policy.
The most important recommendation the report makes though is that the government funds detailed research into the causes and prevalence of stress, focussing on the impact of welfare reforms.
Thursday 17 May 2018
Poverty in the classroom teaches us a painful lesson about inequality.
Classrooms across the UK are fast becoming the front line in the struggle to get by after almost a decade of austerity.
A report compiled by the Child Poverty Action Group and the National Education Union, based on a survey of 908 union members working across the education sector from nurseries to secondary schools reveals the extent of the problem.
It also highlights the increasing role played by teachers and support workers in picking up the slack as benefits are frozen and services cut to the bone.
Amongst the members surveyed 53% said they had dipped into their own pocket to subsidize books and stationary, one teacher quoted in the report said staff ‘regularly purchase clothing, food and supplies for students and their families’.
This includes sanitary towels and other hygiene products.
In addition, 13% said their school ran a low- cost food club and 16% said their school either ran a food bank or provided subsidized meals for students.
Access to a warm meal during the school day was an area of concern for many respondents, with children with disabilities or special educational needs and those from refugee families most at risk of missing out.
As one teacher put it ‘the bar has been raised, so some families who would have had free school meals no longer do'.
Over half the respondents (56%) said children entitled to free school meals are missing out because their parents are either intimidated by the bureaucratic process involved or fear they will be stigmatized as a result.
One respondent parents fearing their child would be ‘seen as a statistic:’ and so were missing out on nutrition vital to their development.
In general, 87% of the teachers surveyed said they believed that poverty was having a negative impact on their student’s education, with 60% saying the problem has got worse in the past three years.
The struggle to get by faced by families in poverty of living on low incomes has created a situation where many young people miss out on basic things like bring able to travel to visit friends or family, as one respondent said this is ‘heart breaking’.
Poverty experienced in childhood can have an impact on physical health and mental wellbeing that lasts a lifetime. This had been attested to by academic research going back for decades, to which this report only adds.
The only place where this truth does not seem to be self- evident is in the corridors of power. New Labour made limited attempts to address the problem but were hamstrung by a fear of appearing socialist; the coalition and the Tories have ignored it entirely.
Faced up to or ignored the problem of poverty and its social consequences still exits, there is a real risk that future generations will be seriously harmed along with the future stability of our economy and society.
A report compiled by the Child Poverty Action Group and the National Education Union, based on a survey of 908 union members working across the education sector from nurseries to secondary schools reveals the extent of the problem.
It also highlights the increasing role played by teachers and support workers in picking up the slack as benefits are frozen and services cut to the bone.
Amongst the members surveyed 53% said they had dipped into their own pocket to subsidize books and stationary, one teacher quoted in the report said staff ‘regularly purchase clothing, food and supplies for students and their families’.
This includes sanitary towels and other hygiene products.
In addition, 13% said their school ran a low- cost food club and 16% said their school either ran a food bank or provided subsidized meals for students.
Access to a warm meal during the school day was an area of concern for many respondents, with children with disabilities or special educational needs and those from refugee families most at risk of missing out.
As one teacher put it ‘the bar has been raised, so some families who would have had free school meals no longer do'.
Over half the respondents (56%) said children entitled to free school meals are missing out because their parents are either intimidated by the bureaucratic process involved or fear they will be stigmatized as a result.
One respondent parents fearing their child would be ‘seen as a statistic:’ and so were missing out on nutrition vital to their development.
In general, 87% of the teachers surveyed said they believed that poverty was having a negative impact on their student’s education, with 60% saying the problem has got worse in the past three years.
The struggle to get by faced by families in poverty of living on low incomes has created a situation where many young people miss out on basic things like bring able to travel to visit friends or family, as one respondent said this is ‘heart breaking’.
Poverty experienced in childhood can have an impact on physical health and mental wellbeing that lasts a lifetime. This had been attested to by academic research going back for decades, to which this report only adds.
The only place where this truth does not seem to be self- evident is in the corridors of power. New Labour made limited attempts to address the problem but were hamstrung by a fear of appearing socialist; the coalition and the Tories have ignored it entirely.
Faced up to or ignored the problem of poverty and its social consequences still exits, there is a real risk that future generations will be seriously harmed along with the future stability of our economy and society.
Tuesday 15 May 2018
We need to look beyond the shiny tech sector to solve the productivity puzzle.
We have record levels of employment and yet the UK lags behind Europe and much of the rest of the world in productivity.
When it comes to addressing the conundrum of why British workers produce less than their French and German counterparts the default setting of most politicians is to talk about technology as the solution. Partly, you suspect, because they like being photographed with the latest piece of space age kit almost as much as they do bring snapped walking around a hospital.
A year long research project carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) suggests we should be looking elsewhere. The real productivity problem lies with low waged sectors like hospitality and retail.
This isn’t a reflection on a lack of investment or any deficiency in the skills of workers. It is a result of how staff are used and the problem that has dogged British industry for decades; poor management.
Low productivity, described in an editorial written for Prospect magazine by Rain Newton Smith and Ashwin Kumar as the ‘most intractable problem’ faced by the UK doesn’t just hit the profits of corporations, it drives down wages and living standards too.
Government responses, they write, has tended to focus on the ‘shiny and new frontier firms' at the economy’s cutting edge. Important stuff no doubt, but it misses the point.
There are and always will be more people doing, allegedly, mundane jobs than brilliant innovators. A balanced economy with a sense of purpose values both because both are necessary.
A few companies, Newton Smith and Kumar cite cosmetics retailer Lush and the nation’s favourite pie seller Gregg’s, as examples of employers who are working to ‘improve staff skills and wages, keeping them motivated and adding value to each store.
The majority though take the fork in the road marked ‘Taylorism’ with its relentless micromanagement and deadening imperatives to make humans act like robots. This, as our flat lining national productivity shows, hasn’t been a success; more to the point any limited benefits gained haven’t been shared with workers.
This is a reprise of an old, old story in British industry, frantic and frankly pointless bean counting on a voyage to the narrowest of horizons. Having been cut out of the loop when it comes from profiting from working harder you wonder not so much at employees being demotivated so much as that they continue to make anything more than a token effort.
The JRF recommend that any future interventions aimed at improving productivity must benefit workers as well as their capital owning bosses. They also call for better management practices and less use of casual labour.
It has taken a Conservative Party constitutionally disposed to think having an industrial strategy is the first step towards Communism an age to come around to the idea that the UK needs one.
Now they have with the shadow of Brexit hanging over the economy it needs to be written with the findings published by the JRF in mind. If that doesn’t happen we risk slipping into an economic backwater and a dangerous political crisis.
When it comes to addressing the conundrum of why British workers produce less than their French and German counterparts the default setting of most politicians is to talk about technology as the solution. Partly, you suspect, because they like being photographed with the latest piece of space age kit almost as much as they do bring snapped walking around a hospital.
A year long research project carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) suggests we should be looking elsewhere. The real productivity problem lies with low waged sectors like hospitality and retail.
This isn’t a reflection on a lack of investment or any deficiency in the skills of workers. It is a result of how staff are used and the problem that has dogged British industry for decades; poor management.
Low productivity, described in an editorial written for Prospect magazine by Rain Newton Smith and Ashwin Kumar as the ‘most intractable problem’ faced by the UK doesn’t just hit the profits of corporations, it drives down wages and living standards too.
Government responses, they write, has tended to focus on the ‘shiny and new frontier firms' at the economy’s cutting edge. Important stuff no doubt, but it misses the point.
There are and always will be more people doing, allegedly, mundane jobs than brilliant innovators. A balanced economy with a sense of purpose values both because both are necessary.
A few companies, Newton Smith and Kumar cite cosmetics retailer Lush and the nation’s favourite pie seller Gregg’s, as examples of employers who are working to ‘improve staff skills and wages, keeping them motivated and adding value to each store.
The majority though take the fork in the road marked ‘Taylorism’ with its relentless micromanagement and deadening imperatives to make humans act like robots. This, as our flat lining national productivity shows, hasn’t been a success; more to the point any limited benefits gained haven’t been shared with workers.
This is a reprise of an old, old story in British industry, frantic and frankly pointless bean counting on a voyage to the narrowest of horizons. Having been cut out of the loop when it comes from profiting from working harder you wonder not so much at employees being demotivated so much as that they continue to make anything more than a token effort.
The JRF recommend that any future interventions aimed at improving productivity must benefit workers as well as their capital owning bosses. They also call for better management practices and less use of casual labour.
It has taken a Conservative Party constitutionally disposed to think having an industrial strategy is the first step towards Communism an age to come around to the idea that the UK needs one.
Now they have with the shadow of Brexit hanging over the economy it needs to be written with the findings published by the JRF in mind. If that doesn’t happen we risk slipping into an economic backwater and a dangerous political crisis.
Thursday 3 May 2018
Record numbers of people using food banks a new report for the Trussell Trust shows.
The Trussell trust says that it distributed 1,332,952 three- day food parcels between April 2017 and the end of March, a 13% increase on last year. Out of these 484,026 were given to children.
The trust operates 428 food banks around the UK, serving an average of 666,476 unique users every year, most of whom visit at least twice.
A report published by the Trussell Trust in April, ‘Left Behind: Is Universal Credit Truly Universal?, based on a survey of 248 people using their food banks shows the impact of the initial wait to claim Universal Credit and the failure of payments to cover the cost of living on individuals and households.
Amongst the other reasons for using a food bank given by respondents were low income (28%), debt (9%) and benefits delays (24%). All these show significant rises over the past year.
As a whole the number of people using food banks has risen by 52% in the year following the year since the roll out of Universal Credit began.
Launching the report Emma Revie, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust spoke about the challenges people using their food banks face, including illness, unemployment and family breakdown, saying ‘as a nation we expect no one should be left hungry’, adding that ‘we owe it to each other to make sure sufficient financial support is in place for those who need it most'.
The charity is calling on the government to ‘uprate’ Universal Credit so that payments meet the cost of living and for councils to offer more support to people who are struggling.
Emma Revie said Universal Credit was the ‘future of our benefits system' and as such it was ‘vital’ the government got it right to prevent further suffering for vulnerable people.
There is no doubting the good work done by the Trussell Trust and its many volunteers in communities across the country. It is though worrying that they take such a, perhaps unconsciously, defeatist attitude to Universal Credit.
Far from being, as Emma Revie suggests, the ‘future’ of the benefits system it seems like an attempt to drag welfare policy back into its dark and troubling past. The sour faced suspicion and institutional cruelty are painfully redolent of Victorian workhouse committees.
This isn’t a bold new approach to dealing with the long -standing problems of economic inequality, let alone the fresh challenges automation will bring. It is, at best, an exercise in playing to the lowest political denominator on the unthinking right; at worst, it could be the driver of the sort of right wing fundamentalism.
What is needed is some real fresh thinking. The sort that looks beyond the five- year political cycle and asks questions that can only have troubling answers.
Questions like is it time to move away from the orthodoxy that says the market has a solution to every problem and is the Protestant work ethic now doing us more harm than good?
This will not be an easy process and every group that takes part will see some of its cherished standpoints if not overthrown then certainly cast in an unflattering light. If we ignore it though, then as the rise in food bank use shows, inequality will continue to grow and with it the threat to our democracy.
The trust operates 428 food banks around the UK, serving an average of 666,476 unique users every year, most of whom visit at least twice.
A report published by the Trussell Trust in April, ‘Left Behind: Is Universal Credit Truly Universal?, based on a survey of 248 people using their food banks shows the impact of the initial wait to claim Universal Credit and the failure of payments to cover the cost of living on individuals and households.
Amongst the other reasons for using a food bank given by respondents were low income (28%), debt (9%) and benefits delays (24%). All these show significant rises over the past year.
As a whole the number of people using food banks has risen by 52% in the year following the year since the roll out of Universal Credit began.
Launching the report Emma Revie, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust spoke about the challenges people using their food banks face, including illness, unemployment and family breakdown, saying ‘as a nation we expect no one should be left hungry’, adding that ‘we owe it to each other to make sure sufficient financial support is in place for those who need it most'.
The charity is calling on the government to ‘uprate’ Universal Credit so that payments meet the cost of living and for councils to offer more support to people who are struggling.
Emma Revie said Universal Credit was the ‘future of our benefits system' and as such it was ‘vital’ the government got it right to prevent further suffering for vulnerable people.
There is no doubting the good work done by the Trussell Trust and its many volunteers in communities across the country. It is though worrying that they take such a, perhaps unconsciously, defeatist attitude to Universal Credit.
Far from being, as Emma Revie suggests, the ‘future’ of the benefits system it seems like an attempt to drag welfare policy back into its dark and troubling past. The sour faced suspicion and institutional cruelty are painfully redolent of Victorian workhouse committees.
This isn’t a bold new approach to dealing with the long -standing problems of economic inequality, let alone the fresh challenges automation will bring. It is, at best, an exercise in playing to the lowest political denominator on the unthinking right; at worst, it could be the driver of the sort of right wing fundamentalism.
What is needed is some real fresh thinking. The sort that looks beyond the five- year political cycle and asks questions that can only have troubling answers.
Questions like is it time to move away from the orthodoxy that says the market has a solution to every problem and is the Protestant work ethic now doing us more harm than good?
This will not be an easy process and every group that takes part will see some of its cherished standpoints if not overthrown then certainly cast in an unflattering light. If we ignore it though, then as the rise in food bank use shows, inequality will continue to grow and with it the threat to our democracy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)