One of the occupational hazards of political activism is turning up to a meeting when nobody else does. It is sometimes annoying, but seldom ever a wasted experience.
That was what happened on a drizzly Wednesday night last week when I headed into Newcastle-under-Lyme town centre. It was almost seven o'clock and the town was caught in the hiatus between the shoppers going home and the drinkers coming out to play.
Both are less plentiful than they used to be, Newcastle has fared better than some local town centres, even so it has its problems. The market, which has survived for hundreds of years is in the process of bring killed off by council incompetence and consumer indifference. There are more shops open here than in Stoke or Burslem, but the prevalence of signs screaming ‘sale’ suggests business is far from good
Cultural Squatters occupies a former TV rental shop in a grim sixties shopping precinct newly renamed ‘Astley Walk’ after Phillip Astley a local son credited with inventing the modern circus. There is little of the big top about it as I walk past an employment agency, another coffee shop and somewhere selling electric bicycles. Things are clean and despite the weather people are out and about, but there is an undercurrent of desperation it is hard to ignore.
Cultural Squatters bills itself as a hybrid of pop up coffee shop, arts space and community venue. A melding of town centre as a place for experiences and good intentions that can tempt cynicism when taken at face value.
The reality is, I'm relieved to say, somewhat different and, more importantly, a lot more positive.
The interior is the sort of jumble of mismatched furniture, posters and comfy looking sofas that looks entirely random and probably took weeks to design. At the door I am met by a lively woman who introduced herself as Narina and exudes good humour and friendliness to an infectious degree.
She confirms the meeting I am down to attend is booked in for tonight, but not due to start yet and offers me coffee. At a pound for a mug it is reasonably priced and served without the self-important posturing I have paid over the odds to endure in more self-consciously hip establishments.
One of the virtues of waiting for something to happen is that it gives you an opportunity to watch what is already going on all around you. Settled on one of those comfy sofas I sit back and take in the show.
Through the window I can see the evening passada of a provincial town getting under way. Stylishly dressed young women getting out of taxis and running across the road to the cash machine, one with a scarf over her head, looking for all the world like a chic babushka. Early evening drinkers going from one pub to another and at the bus stop opposite a family, together in terms of proximity, but separately engaged with the glowing screens of their phones.
Inside Cultural Squatters a sort of writer’s circle is taking place in the room behind me, a dozen people reading stories each one received with polite interest and positive comments. On the wall opposite where I am sitting visitors have chalked positive messages, most are greeting card stuff about being nice and seizing the day; one reads ‘play or be played'.
So what game, if any, is Cultural Squatters playing? The atmosphere is friendly without trying to recruit visitors into being happy by decree. Its ethos is rooted firmly in the welcome all as equals values of the counterculture, but without the often-tedious introspection dressed up as profound insights.
The meeting didn’t happen and after a second coffee I left and walked home the long way along Merrial Street, past the former council offices. These were down to be redeveloped for retail and high- end apartments, the project has been put on a back burner due to uncertainty about the future of the high street.
The talk now is of high streets and the towns to which they are attached becoming places where people go to have experienced rather than to buy things. That makes me nervous, largely because it makes me think of hipsters paying over the odds for bowls of cereal while the services everyday people depend on atrophy.
Cultural Squatters suggests another and more rewarding sort of experience, one based around the desire for friendship, community and being valued for who we are that is fundamentally human. In a country where we are too often encouraged to focus on those things that force us apart rather than bring us together that can only be a good thing.
I don’t know whether that or anything else will save the high street from going the way of the dinosaurs; but it might just make us a whole lot happier.
Monday 27 August 2018
Thursday 9 August 2018
Greenery keeps our air clean, so why are we so keen to bulldoze the green belt?
Figures produced by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and published by the Office for National Statistics show that vegetation removed 1.4billion kilograms of air pollutants from the environment in 2015.
Currently five times more pollutants are emitted, by traffic fumes, burning fossil fuels, domestic heating systems and other sources. Even so the amount removed has had a positive health impact and generated savings for the NHS.
The figures are taken from the UK Natural Capital account, a survey of natural assets including soil, air, water and wildlife. It is intended as an audit of the ‘health’ of the UK's environment.
The survey also looks at the cultural value we put on nature, the extent of which is something that often gets ignored.
As a result of the pollutants removed from the air by trees, grasslands and other vegetation there were 7100 fewer heart and lung admissions to UK hospitals and 1900 fewer early deaths. This generated £1billion in avoided health costs.
Although vegetation, particularly trees, plays a significant role in removing pollutants from the air and generating health benefits as a result, it cannot be relied on to solve the problem entirely.
The benefits generated are not shared equally between the regions of the UK, the leafy South East fares best, whilst the four areas with the lowest levels of pollutants removed by vegetation are in London. Many other cities have widely varying levels of removal, with inner-city, often disadvantaged areas faring worst.
Despite their obviously key role in protecting the environment green spaces are something we frequently undervalue. This is down, perhaps, to a complacent belief that because they have always been there they always will be there.
In a world where business and government alike find it ever harder to value anything that can’t be quantified into pounds and pence to think that way is to subscribe to a massive false sense of security.
The threat is embodied in the comments made this week by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss that protection against development of greenbelt land or risk voters frustrated at not being able to buy a home of their own turning to Jeremy Corbyn.
What her comments lack in common sense they make up for in political calculation. Truss has cleverly yoked the aspiration of every shire Tory to have his or her own castle called home together with the fear that a Corbyn government will turn Britain into Venezuela by the first Whitsun after getting elected.
Two bites at the paranoid cherry, surely a winning combination? Not this time though since she has faced a vociferous backlash in her own backyard, turns out the one thing shire Tories value more than having a home of their own is the semi-mythical concept of the greenbelt girding our cities.
Out of a silly season controversy a dangerous seed has been sown, sweetly reasonable sounding developers have been able to go on television and say that the greenbelt is an illusion, backed up by some bizarre instances where that status has been applied to things like disused car-washes.
Thiers is the dangerous logic of ‘a little bit can’t do any harm’, building on the odd field here and there, maybe losing a little bit of woodland won’t do any real harm; will it? Until it does because what we had has been chipped away one little bit at a time until there is nothing left.
The ONS figures show that vegetation, even if it is just the weeds growing through the roof of a disused car-wash, does have a positive impact on our national health. Far from building on the greenbelt we need to be expanding it and finding ways of designing more green spaces into our towns and cities.
Currently five times more pollutants are emitted, by traffic fumes, burning fossil fuels, domestic heating systems and other sources. Even so the amount removed has had a positive health impact and generated savings for the NHS.
The figures are taken from the UK Natural Capital account, a survey of natural assets including soil, air, water and wildlife. It is intended as an audit of the ‘health’ of the UK's environment.
The survey also looks at the cultural value we put on nature, the extent of which is something that often gets ignored.
As a result of the pollutants removed from the air by trees, grasslands and other vegetation there were 7100 fewer heart and lung admissions to UK hospitals and 1900 fewer early deaths. This generated £1billion in avoided health costs.
Although vegetation, particularly trees, plays a significant role in removing pollutants from the air and generating health benefits as a result, it cannot be relied on to solve the problem entirely.
The benefits generated are not shared equally between the regions of the UK, the leafy South East fares best, whilst the four areas with the lowest levels of pollutants removed by vegetation are in London. Many other cities have widely varying levels of removal, with inner-city, often disadvantaged areas faring worst.
Despite their obviously key role in protecting the environment green spaces are something we frequently undervalue. This is down, perhaps, to a complacent belief that because they have always been there they always will be there.
In a world where business and government alike find it ever harder to value anything that can’t be quantified into pounds and pence to think that way is to subscribe to a massive false sense of security.
The threat is embodied in the comments made this week by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss that protection against development of greenbelt land or risk voters frustrated at not being able to buy a home of their own turning to Jeremy Corbyn.
What her comments lack in common sense they make up for in political calculation. Truss has cleverly yoked the aspiration of every shire Tory to have his or her own castle called home together with the fear that a Corbyn government will turn Britain into Venezuela by the first Whitsun after getting elected.
Two bites at the paranoid cherry, surely a winning combination? Not this time though since she has faced a vociferous backlash in her own backyard, turns out the one thing shire Tories value more than having a home of their own is the semi-mythical concept of the greenbelt girding our cities.
Out of a silly season controversy a dangerous seed has been sown, sweetly reasonable sounding developers have been able to go on television and say that the greenbelt is an illusion, backed up by some bizarre instances where that status has been applied to things like disused car-washes.
Thiers is the dangerous logic of ‘a little bit can’t do any harm’, building on the odd field here and there, maybe losing a little bit of woodland won’t do any real harm; will it? Until it does because what we had has been chipped away one little bit at a time until there is nothing left.
The ONS figures show that vegetation, even if it is just the weeds growing through the roof of a disused car-wash, does have a positive impact on our national health. Far from building on the greenbelt we need to be expanding it and finding ways of designing more green spaces into our towns and cities.
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