Neighbourhoods

Eric Pickles, monstrous epitome of the disposable generation

I remember my mother expressing disgust at the amount of unnecessary packaging that came with the shopping she brought home to feed the family. This would have been in the late sixties or early 1970s (I know, not much has improved).

And I recall my dad explaining the concept of built-in obsolescence in manufacture; that would have been some years before. I grew up in a comparatively affluent social system in which people were expected to just throw things away if they were surplus or didn’t work properly. The consequences of disposing of stuff were not something anyone needed to concern themselves with.

The principles here are, first, that the tax-paying citizen has the right to consume whatever they want to if they have legally acquired it, and dispose of it whenever they want (this principle is sometimes called 'america'); and secondly, they have the right to fiercely condemn their council for not going along with this culture in every respect, and cleaning up after them (this principle is sometimes called 'the daily mail').

Now this monstrous culture has grown large, bloated and out of control. How ironic that, as Janet Street-Porter points out, we have a Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who seems to be obsessed with wheelie bins, at a time when some of us would like him to be pre-occupied with helping to maintain services like elder care, youth work, child care, bus services and libraries:

'Pickles has ordered councils to make huge cuts to balance their budgets. You would hope services that are of particular benefit to the elderly and vulnerable such as mobile libraries, meals on wheels, and home help for the infirm and disabled might be protected. You'd hope that Sure Start nursery centres for the young, which enable lower-income mothers to go out to work, might be ring-fenced. But you'd be wrong – charities say 250 are set to close. In the mad world of Eric Pickles, the wheelie bin is king, more important than library books, local transport and childcare.'

Mr Pickles epitomises a culture which believes that because some parts of the public sector are malfunctioning, they should be thrown away. Apparently the consequences of that wanton and irresponsible disposal are not something he need concern himself with. It’s deeply unfortunate that such a person has any power at all, considering the social damage already being caused. The question is, how soon will the built-in obsolescence in this political approach begin to take effect?

 

'In there, or out here'

On one of my favourite themes, gated communities, check out another little gem from babycakesromero...

'You're looking to come into a non-gated community, so unless you can show me proof of residency for out here, I can't let you proceed...'

Y dnt u cal?

I suppose in some ways this is a relief, it's not just authorities in the UK who work overtime to oppress and bully young people arbitrarily:

'Use of mobile phones has been banned by a local council in northern India. The reason given is to ban unmarried women from carrying mobile phones and also to halt romances between youngsters from different castes.'

Given the importance of cricket to Indians and the importance of mobiles to cricket betting, there's gonna be a lot of confiscated phones floating around the place.

(Belatedly) via the CeMoRe blog. Originally in TechWeek.

Audrey's shovel

Audrey said I hope we don't get any more snow, I got fed up shovelling it. She told me how she'd made a shovel. Her saw was broken she said, so she had to use a bread-knife, to cut a flat piece from the side of a plastic box. She put a hole in it with a hammer and nail, and screwed it to a broom stick. Matter-of-fact-proudly she described how she shaved a little off the bottom of the broom stick to make it smooth underneath and scrape flush with the ground.

Audrey's in her seventies. She gets about indoors with one of those stable three-footed walking sticks and uses an electric scooter when she goes out. 'And I was the only one in my street who cleared the snow.'

Other vignettes and fictions

Big society debate video

Back in October I took part in a debate about big society at the Battle of Ideas (short account here) and a video has now been published. My five min chunk starts here. Plenty of interesting stuff in the discussion.

Other BoI debates here.

Inactive democracy was always a bad idea: street reps and new forms of governance

I spent the whole of yesterday afternoon in a traditional oak panelled, leather-benched council chamber in Shipley, Yorkshire, with a group of practitioners discussing their work with street reps across the district.

Symbolically, the room was dilapidated and its pomp had been subjected to un-ceremonial uses. Conceptually, the meeting served to accentuate the anachronistic surroundings, exposing many of the issues of our accelerating transition from the age of authority. If not perhaps a defining moment, certainly a moment for defining. (The pic is Blackburn Town Hall, not Shipley, which is similar but the seating is red).

The immediate cause was to review some community development work carried out by Groundwork in various neighbourhoods. But for the area neighbourhood management coordinators and street wardens sat round, it was mainly just another meeting working out how to tweak detail, and exploring the raw niceties of probable futures – fewer staff, less resources, recession-hit residents with accumulating problems. Several of those present probably do not know if they will have a job in three months’ time, and yes, emergency exit strategies were mentioned.

But still it felt like a privilege to be there, because I’ve been witnessing the ungainly, messy emergence of the new order.

Discussions about the role of street reps, as I’ve suggested before, are about adjusting the relationship between citizen and state, with an emphasis on co-production; understanding a less formal, more everyday kind of democratic action-in-place; about resisting attempts to formalise and prescribe what people do but supporting them in doing it; acknowledging that targets and performance measurement are at best unhelpful and inappropriate; that networks not organisations are the key but that you can’t make them accountable, and so on. It’s a whole sticky messy tangle of contemporary theoretical policy spaghetti…

These are the kinds of issues that exercise the minds of political theorists and people in think tanks right now - and people who, can you imagine, are not embarrassed to be called ‘thought leaders’ - who are looking at screens or reading reports but not listening to folk like these in rooms like this in towns like this. Thought leaders my arse.

So I listened and was able to appreciate that behaviour change needs local exemplars, plenty of nurturing by local practitioners, and lots of time: just like community development. What these practitioners are trying to do, in some pretty downtrodden localities, is to help networks develop which have credence and weight but do not become cliques, which are open and reflect an informal participative democracy based on local people’s interests. What these practitioners are trying to do is exactly what this government would like and what it needs to understand.

Some of the issues for practitioners are old familiar tensions of course, like whether the politics of intervention are broadly universalising (as typically under Tory councils) or targeted (as under Labour authorities). The question is as sharp as ever when it comes to resources for supporting street reps. Should street wardens be equally involved in more affluent areas? In such places, someone claimed yesterday, if people want something done they just pick up the phone. The Place Survey and Citizenship Survey data can show us, in general terms, where people feel least empowered. So if resources are targeted at the least affluent areas, how does that change perceptions of the role of street reps? In my view, we do it because it’s not healthy for society to have significant imbalances of power.

Against that, it’s worth remembering that when I asked experienced street reps, who had been attending area forum and housing committee meetings and so on, whether they felt they could influence decisions, the answer was a clear ‘no’. People felt they could influence actions, but they could see that the process of decision-making was hidden from them, because of course it doesn’t really happen in the meetings. Especially not when they’re in attendance.

Arguments like these have always run through community development practice, but I want to suggest that discussions about street reps offer a remarkable lens on the new order. And I was full of admiration for the way this mix of staff kept probing for ways to help local people support each other and improve their local quality of life, because schemes have to be made to work in the space between budget and politics, between residents’ energy and capacity, and allocated support.

Inactive democracy was always a bad idea. I wonder if we will look back in 10 years’ time over a transformed conceptual landscape of local social relations and governance, and recognise this awkward work for its nervous, principled clearing of the ground. And what will the council chamber be being used for?

Searching for a culturally unifying notion

Along comes a recession, and maybe the political advantage goes to the first to come up with a compelling and uniting conceptual framework. Except, 'big society' hasn't quite engrossed or convinced enough of us. OK keep thinking.

Here's a new collection of papers (via Will Davies) about associational democracy, asking questions about approaches to governance and economics that can 'increase the flow of information, accountability, trust, inclusion, choice, as well as enable individual empowerment and freedom.' And noting in passing that part of the problem is that

'we have become too constrained by an individualised, abstract and largely economistic set of beliefs and practices. So how can we become more collaborative and human, to improve our wellbeing, increase the effectiveness of what we do and manage the processes and tensions of both desired as well as unavoidable change?'

(More useful stuff about la vie associative and associationalism on the Infed site here).

I wonder whether searching for some all-encompassing culturally unifying ensign is ever again likely to be fruitful. Where it seems to work in its own terms ('God Bless America') its consequences seem, er, questionable at best. Big society won't be the last ever attempt of its kind, because we humans don't give up so easily, but it could be that western civilisation has outgrown that sort of large-scale cohesion. Ah of course, what we need is a culturally integrating notion that accommodates the sense of cultural disintegeration (or diversity, if you prefer). 'Small society' could be a good starting point. Let's see what happens.

 

These are the people you need to know

Here's a tidy post from my friend Liz Ixer over on Harringay Online, rehashing this o.p. and suggesting seven ways to make your neighbourhood a better place. Liz makes the principles locally pertinent and weaves-in the role of the neighbourhood online network.

I see lists like this quite often, this one has the virtue of simple practicality and relative brevity. The headings are:

1.    Plant something
2.    Pick up litter
3.    Get to know your neighbours
4.    Find out who your government/local representatives are
5.    If you see something, say something
6.    Shop locally
7.    Go for a walk.

And credit to the original poster, Sarah Goodyear, who makes this point under the heading 'Get to know your neighbours':

'If anything bad happens - a blackout, a flood, or worse - these are the people you need to know. It starts with hello.'

 

Stop press: government offers 'rant' funding

There's a rather vague Cabinet Office news release today about funding opportunities in European Year of Volunteering.

The further information section includes this exquisite sentence:

'rant funding is available for 5 civil society organisations or consortia of organisations'.

Well, times are hard, and proof-readers an unthinkable luxury: or is it just that our government has taken pity on the hard-working voluntary sector whose people deserve a chance to let off steam and have a good moan? Or perhaps there's an impish official at work (in the Office for Civil Society? Stroll on).

Enjoy it before they use some of the available funds to engage an Editorial Consultant to make the correction.

Public libraries in crisis: it could be worse than you thought

My take on the shameless withdrawal of government from supporting public libraries is to keep in mind that our libraries are one of the few things left that consolidate the public realm. Once they're gone, it's not just hard to get the library service back: it will be that much harder to reinstate the notion of publicness.

There's a wee map of threatened closures here. The Public library news blog posted this note the other day:

There is a devil of a dilemma for those who wish to save libraries after withdrawal has been cut - whether to "help out" or not.  Many authorities (such as Gloucestershire) are saying that the local library will only survive if a community group takes it over, with minimal council support. Those who love libraries may quite rightly be tempted to do so.  However, if they do before all other options are taken, then it will only encourage yet more branches to be effectively privatised in this ways.  Libraries will become just another charity shop. However, the council may well close the library anyway if groups don't step up to the mark. The unwillingness of charities to take over wildlife preserves without full remuneration may be an argument in favour of not helping.  Call their bluff and, perhaps, the council will back down.  Or perhaps they won't.

I recall from attending the Conservative party launch of the Big Society that the abandonment of public libraries was mentioned often but local government not at all.

ʻDoes William Rose make faggots?ʼ Neighbourhoods seen through online timeslices

A few months ago, as part of our research for the Online neighbourhood networks study, Hugh Flouch and I began trying to find a way to assess the diversity of content of our case study sites (Brockley Central, East Dulwich Forum and Harringay Online).

We established three 'timeslices' - different six hours periods on separate weekdays during the research period - and examined most of the content that was posted within those times. Even though we are both familiar with thriving local websites - and Hugh is the founder of Harringay Online - we were struck by the diversity of material that came out.

The results are summarised in our latest paper, ʻDoes William Rose make faggots?ʼ We organised the material into thirteen categories, as follows:

• Built and green environment: streets, fencing, vermin, litter and recycling
• Transport and travel
• Local services, facilities and shops; monitoring and campaigning
• Homes and houses
• Exchange, lost and found
• Looking after children
• Governance and politics
• Disturbances and irregularities: antisocial behaviour and violence
• Entertainment and recreation
• Local news, local people and local history
• Wider world politics and current affairs
• Homespun philosophy: distractions that are not time-sensitive
• Meta-interactions and moderation.

No-one familiar with neighbourhood networks will be surprised at this range, and some may be able to suggest other categories not captured by our process. Nonetheless it is revealing - matters as serious as shootings, stabbings and rapes are as much the matter of the digital conversations we monitored as are local history, jokes, stories or indeed the question of what the local butcher can conjure from offal.

In our view it is this diversity of material, more than any single area of interest, that makes these sites rewarding to participants. This is what ensures that the sites flourish as local communication ecologies - environments sensitively managed which encourage growth and diversity, which are always changing while also, so far, remaining independent and sustainable.

Juxtaprose 5

'They shout conversations through rooms rather than talking face-to-face, they argue constantly at very anti-social hours (e.g. 3am), they stamp about and slam doors, cupboards etc. Last night my sister came to mine in tears at 12:30am because the chavs had arrived home drunk and proceeded to sing at the top of their voices then have a huge argument. 'Whilst there is clearly a problem with the lifestyles of these people, there seems to be an acoustics problem too. When sitting in my sister's bedroom, you can every single word, perfectly clearly, that the upstair's people are saying, even if they are talking at normal levels. If they have friends round, the noise from their conversation is so high it's unbearable. I have witnessed this myself, it's no exaggeration.' (1).

'It was determined that the noise was coming from a broken fan blade in a basement air conditioning unit that cooled computers that controlled cell phone antennae on the roof of a nearby building. The super of the building said to call the landlord. The landlord said call AT&T. AT&T said lady, we don't have a location within three miles of your address, so it must be Verizon. Verizon said they're our towers but AT&T rents them. AT&T said call AT&T Wireless, separate company. AT&T Wireless said press 1 for a new cell phone press 2 for a new rate plan press 3 to learn more press 4 to repeat the menu and offered no menu options regarding the slow march toward the brink of insanity. My landlord said why don't we just gain access to the basement and turn it off? Their landlord said only the super had the key to the basement. The super's grandson said the super wasn't home.' (2).