Wednesday, 09 May 2007

Oi you!

A recent Women's Design Service survey report includes this comment:

Public spaces are improved by design, by encouraging more people to enter them and use them, and providing the facilities for them to do so in a responsible way. This includes reducing traffic, providing easy sustainable access, lighting, shops that people want to use, safe crossings, facilities and leisure, and giving them back to people.

It's not exactly an outburst is it? More like a tired list of odd jobs for the weekend. So why does it take new labour's talking surveillance cameras to elicit such simple sensible advice to government?

_42764725_cctv_montage_203 Be patient and wait for the next development - school competitions are to be organised so that selected children's voices can be used for these disembodied street reprimands. (There's an official somewhere in Whitehall thinking, 'Yup, that should do it.') No wonder they want everyone in the country to be able to understand english.

I'm hoping I'll get the chance to test these devices out - (can they detect negative thoughts yet, do you think?) -  and if I find their syntax or grammar at fault I hope I have the presence of mind to launch into the most caustic philippic I can muster. No wait, better still, we should have a smart-mob organised mass confrontation, with loud speakers and children's pre-recorded protestations of innocence...

But do they understand mockery?

9 May 2007 22:40:17 | Citizenship and democracy, Space and place

1 Comment

Just for Fun: Does anyone else agree that the guy in the pic looks a little like Education Secretary Alan Johnson?

Posted by: Rosie Niven | Friday, 11 May 2007 at 11:59

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Sustainable travel towns conference In all likelihood, sustainable travel means sustainable neighbourhoods. The third annual sustainable travel towns conference takes place in Worcester, 23 and 24 May 2007. The Sustainable Travel Towns are Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester, part of a five-year programme part-funded by the Department for Transport. Details. The programme warns, be prepared to cycle, walk or paddle.
PREVIOUS POST
A clue about respect We had a buzzy discussion last night at the Swindon festival of literature where Lynsey Hanley and I busked a session about estates, neighbourhoods and neighbourliness. The pic suggests one of those 'aaaah' moments when someone asks the killer question... Or this may have been the question about front gardens and gossip. The questioner came up to me afterwards and said she was now persuaded to grow potatoes in her front garden, implying cheerily that I was to take credit for this. There were also several points made about the role of third places, especially community-based venues - like Community Crossroads (formerly the railway museum) where we found ourselves - which play such a crucial and often under-appreciated part in the community sector. And it's curious the coincidences that bump into you, however quietly you might try to move about, on this planet... It happens that someone came up to me afterwards and asked what I meant by 'respect' - as in personal respect, or as in 'Respect agenda'. Then later, on the train home, a quick crossword in an available newspaper offered this clue to my weary eye: Respect (4) H _ E _ That's one I wouldn't have thought of, even under the outgoing political regime.

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments