Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Rural social justice

Rural_social_justiceAccording to a forthcoming State of the Countryside report, in rural areas, the ratio between the lowest 25 per cent of annual incomes and equivalent house prices is almost one to ten.

Welcome, the Rural Social Justice Coalition, to help do something about it.

17 Jun 2008 21:52:34 | Social exclusion

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If you walk you meet people I've been idly thinking about expanding a chapter about dog-walking that I wrote last year, and the other day was given more material in a chance conversation: The other dogwalkers, I wouldn't know their names or anything about them but we look out for each other. But I know the names of, I call them the little drunk people, there's a little place I walk past with the dog, where they get their drink cheaply, they sit outside and drink. I've made an effort to get to know them, and I know that if something happened to me, if I didn't come back they know that, they'd look out for me. If you walk you meet people and you find out about them.
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Help with mobiles I’ve just been going through some responses to a ‘community survey’ about learning opportunities, with an open question asking what courses people would like locally, and I came across this response – ‘Help with mobiles/telephones.’ I think it’s quite enlightening in several ways. Culturally, we share a peculiar pretence that mobile phone technology is user-friendly. But many of us (certainly including me) can only get started by virtue of our connection with a knowledgeable young person or techie. No-one seems to offer short courses with follow-up support, even though the basics are common to most devices. And who do you turn to for advice on selecting a tariff or contract? We know enough about this technology to see how it can help many people to sustain connections that otherwise are hard to maintain. But we don't necessarily think about appropriate support. In my experience, very little of the policy debate on 'digital exclusion' (as it is sometimes called) refers to the use of mobile devices. Having the cultural capital, we deny or elide these cultural exclusions, and ageism is one of the more depressing reasons for that I suspect. I think someone saw this little questionnaire as an opportunity to stick their hand up quietly and say 'help' - 'this technology could help me, but where do I start?' If there are colleges and community centres out there running such courses, I'd like to know about them. The pic is from the Grameen Foundation's remarkable Village Phones project.

Kevin Harris

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