Sunday, 16 September 2012

Miss Manners thinks not

As a cultural exhibit, this is a little gem. Having declined invitations for several years, a reader writes to ‘Miss Manners’, c/o the local newspaper, regretting not having been invited to a neighbour’s party. Do spare a moment and read it. Here’s part of Miss Manners’ response:

GENTLE READER: Just a minute, please. You have been declining these people's invitations since 2006, and now you are sulking because they finally stopped issuing them? And you think it would help if you sat down with them, and explained all the more important things you've had to do for the last six years?

 

 

16 Sep 2012 12:33:43 | Neighbourhood relations

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Older people and informal neighbourhood care: an issue that won’t go away JRF are starting to crank up their thinking about informal neighbourhood care and older people, and I’m starting to sit forward in the expectation that something really useful will emerge from their work over the next couple of years. I was reminded just yesterday that we’re well behind the Dutch in our thinking and action on this theme (although they have a general election coming up with plenty of potential to go backwards fast). Nearly three years ago I remember offering a somewhat disillusioned post after running out of steam and failing to get anyone interested in the issue of neighbourly support. Even Age Concern, who had supported my research and publication, could muster no interest. At the time the problem seemed to be that the ageing agencies were all preoccupied with what they saw as the ‘countable’ issues of pensions and benefits. Crisis, what crisis? The crunch may be not so much whether high quality research and policy advice emerges – it surely will – but whether JRF manage to get any purchase on policy itself. High stakes, in an ageing society with its formal support systems being rapidly dismantled.
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The last word on 'community leaders' On The World at One today (at about 16.40), here's Simon Holdaway of Sheffield University commenting on the way police have to work at neighbourhood level: 'The idea that there are leaders of communities is misleading.' Not just well-put and timely but also a masterly choice of adjective.

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