Making tea on the allotment

I begin to get a sense the soil on Plot 14 is improving. Before Christmas I invested in manure and topsoil. Since then Taj has been helping dig and weed out...

...the white rhizomes of couch grass that spread just below the surface of the soil, extracting nourishment, we remove by spade and hand; pile at the back of the plot. I'd not pride myself on tilth of the kind you'd find on Vanley's plot, but that's my goal. It's an endless process, made more arduous by the now well known proliferation of stones ...

...on all VJA plots where once a mighty prehistoric river ran under tropical sun. These primordial water-smoothed stones are being extracted and piled up, in some cases used to edge paths. I feel nearly as optimistic with experience as, when, in ignorance, I took on the plot four years ago.

Four years ago

In between, there have been times when I've procrastinated about even going out to the site, though it's hardly five minutes on my bicycle. The other day I brought out a kettle and camping gas stove - the means of making tea on site.

My new kettle

Taj met me. He usually comes on foot, often jogging, but occasionally on his new small bicycle. We continued working. I'd used the Handsworth Helping Hands van to deliver a water butt someone had thrown in one of our street clearance skips. It needed was a tap which I bought on eBay. Hoses are forbidden for watering plots but you're allowed to use them to fill a water butt. Almost surprising  to be thinking about water, given previous weeks of rain, but of a sudden it had become warm and sunny. With the van on the plot we set about clearing and loading up rubbish left by another departing plot holder whose dreams of building a summer house out of old timber had foundered along with the rest of his plans to grow vegetables. With the semi-rotting wood, went sacks of plastic detritus, a rusting water filled tool box, a grimy dented electric kettle (did he think there was power on site?), bottles and cans.
"A cup of tea, Taj?"
"No. I have orange"
The kettle whistled. I applied myself to mug, tea-bag, milk -  in a wine bottle - and sat back in the sun, a bowl of water for Oscar.

We gazed on the ground in front of us. Taj had been digging at the top of the plot and I at the bottom. More rows of potatoes were in, each nested in a handful of topsoil, beside two rows of onions.
"It's looking good, Taj"

"Now for cabbage, sprouts, cauliflower. But I must find a way to protect the young plants from the pigeons. Bastards!"
We worked until 2.00. I peeled off layers of clothes under the warmth of the sun; had two more breaks for tea and some chocolate fingers, melty. A rhythm of sorts. Taj tidied the paths adding edging bricks and lazying slabs I'd recovered from a skip last year. My broad beans are showing. I'm not sure about the state of the onions that have sprouted. They look the same as they did three months ago. I dug up the last of the Jerusalem artichokes, taking some home for eating, replanting the rest in two rows.
Gill came out to check the beehive she's kept on the plot the last two years.

The bees which had lost their queen and died off last winter had made it through this winter, but after Gill had done her inspection she said "They're all dead. I think it's because the weather got better a month or so ago. They started going out. Then we had this rain. Bees hate wet'"
She held up a comb she's taking for analysis. It showed a grey patch like a tumour on an X-ray. "That's the damp patch. They brought in the rain when they returned to the hive"
She'll seek another swarm for April. I said I was going to rebuild the hive's surround; make it less vulnerable to wind.
"It's nothing you're doing wrong, Simon."
*** *** ***
I took Oliver to see the allotment. He wanted to hold Oscar's lead. We processed down our road; I holding Oliver's reins, he led by Oscar, until we got to the VJA site when I let Oliver take over...

...watching he didn't snatch at Oscar's lead and that Oscar wasn't going to pull him over, They seemed to have a working relationship.
The departing plot holder next to me, during his 6 month occupation, cropped the hedge that bisects the site - a useful wind break running most of the length of the site. He left the cuttings uncollected.
Allotments demonstrate gaps between between intention and action. Other plots near ours reveal similar chasms. Being more familiar than I was three years ago with the difference between an idea and an action I can sympathise. It would be good to have a successful gardener next to me instead of two more or less fallow plots on either side. Oliver was as intrigued by the shed as I, wanting to shut himself inside, burrowing under the wheel barrow.

My grandson in the shed

I imagine living long enough to ask him if he recalls being in that shed or will he construct his early memories out of grown-ups' anecdotes and images? How much have I've made up the story of my childhood  - 'a sleep and a forgetting'.

Sat on Gypsy at Mill End  - the story of my childhood

Then we walked on to Handsworth Park, having this favourite place almost to ourselves. A sturdy west wind blew down the pond, a calling wind streaming the spring bud willows. Now and then a cloud gap allowed dazzling light onto the ruffled water.

Even I was tired when we finally got home. Oliver sat at our kitchen table, gradually nodding into sleep, a rusk in one hand.
"You and Oscar have worn him out" said Lin

*** *** ***
From New York where they've been in a museum my half-sister Oriana sends me an anticipatory e-card, a wedge of Oldenberg Cake

*** *** ***
On Thursday evening I'm taking the minutes for a committee meeting of Handsworth Helping Hands. We're hassled by errands and news of difficulties in other people's lives; a distant friend made blind by a series of strokes; another diagnosed with only months to live; another braving the ordeal of chemo, and a sudden wave of sadness for the absence of my mum. What I meant by a 'calling wind', the way the rushing sound, like a big waterfall, like distant surf, reminds me of other occasions with the same note, seeming to stimulate memory as varnish brings out an oil painting, a fragment of infant sensation when I was preoccupied with the green of the grass around me, happily alone insulated, left to myself, and somewhere a small aeroplane wandering in the sky, a sound undulating with the gusting of wind in the trees, independent of place and time, abrupt, a sound from heaven.

The earth turns towards the sun

When we in our species' infancy supposed a personal agent, as I'm inclined to even now until thought overrides instinct, so this gusting wind in the trees ...

Our washing line in Ano Korakiana

...that blows the washing dry, that I feel calling was - is - a being, as is the sun rising and setting, and the earth, giving increase.

Jimoa, John, Linda, Mike and Charles - Handsworth Helping Hands

*** *** ***
My university is kindly and gently saying goodbye:

Dear Simon. As you may be aware, it is INLOGOV’s 50th Anniversary soon and as part of this celebration we are seeking to put together a ’50 Faces of INLOGOV’. This will feature 50 people who have been involved in the life and work  of INLOGOV (both in the past and present) over the last 50 years.  We would very much like to have you as one of our 50 Faces and I am writing to enquire whether you would be willing to be featured?
We are aiming to put together some information together about each person and I if you would like to be featured, please could provide me with the following information to use in this context:-
1)      Two/three sentences to describe your current role/career
2)      Two/three sentences on how being involved in INLOGOV as a student, staff member, client etc has helped you
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me in the first instance.
Kind regards, Rachael

Rachael Pearson, PA to Catherine Staite, Director, INLOGOV
Institute of Local Government Studies

Dear Rachael, I hope this will do. Let me know this has arrived and if Catherine would like it modified - with subtractions or additions.

1. Two/three sentences to describe your current role/career

Inlogov is a gateway to a world that’s engaged me for forty years. Despite intense pressures – political and financial – I’ve been allowed to remain an ‘amateur’, encouraged, by successive directors and invaluable colleagues, to balance writing, research and face-to-face training and development with practitioners, never having to put an academic career ahead of a shared fascination with studying, supporting and working with local government practitioners. In retreat from campus I remain a community activist with enough experience of government to make trouble in sensible ways.

2) Two/three sentences on how being involved in INLOGOV as a student, staff member, client etc has helped you

I’ve been a tourist in my own land; finding routes by train, ferry and bicycle to seminars and consultancies between Kirkwall and Newquay, Barnsley and Greenwich, roaming deep countryside and mean city streets, working with all flavours of councillors and the diverse professions that strive to serve them. My research focus - a thirty year preoccupation - has involved capturing on video, with their permission, the conversations of members and managers at the source of tension between politics and administration where government is made. The institute's international reach has brought invitations to assist in the same exploration in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Scandinavia.

I attach a pictures that is reasonably flattering:

Best wishes

Simon

Simon Baddeley, Visiting Lecturer, INLOGOV, University of Birmingham 

Leaving Darlington "The seminar on scrutiny skills for councillors went well, I think"

...the present model of a highly centralised state “will not see us through for very much longer”...'

'...the shadows they make real...'

Crumbs from a year's conversation with Jan D:

...There is a tendency to respond to problems by adopting legal or bureaucratic means (sometimes these are necessary) rather than solving the underlying real causes which in most cases are cultural and behavioural.  These are more difficult to deal with and do not  easily fit into a climate of Quick Fix and Sound Bites peppered with blame games and finger pointing (very different to true accountability). I can't remember last time I heard the phrase ‘Big Society’. It has disappeared from the political narrative I fail to see how (or understand ) the reduction of the public sector or the rolling back of the state will promote the Big Society. I think the government don't understand it either or can find any credible narrative for it, hence it has been allowed to fade away. It is more likely that the vacuum will be filled by economic interests and/or ‘intelligent’ criminals....

...I have mentioned before the need to recalibrate the relationship between LAs and government and for LAs to have their own 'narrative' for this. Whilst this remain important, I am coming more and more to the conclusion that it is the relationship between LAs, their population and local community, which requires more attention and recalibration. The traditional models are becoming increasingly irrelevant; no longer fit for purpose. The old saying that “all politics are local” remains true, but a narrative (and practice) based on delegated democracy, selective engagement and top-down consultations is not going to promote Localism...more likely it will be used to drive the current policy objectives. Perhaps the time has come to  phase out this narrative or reconstruct it within an overall narrative of 'mobilisation and support'; for LAs to make this focus a priority because if (when) successful this would impact significantly on the LA-government relationship, simply because the political foundations of LAs would strengthen. No government could ignore that for long. This will take courage and persistence. The starting point is to ditch the parent-child relationship of local to centre; 'cleanse' local government of its Stockholm syndrome with Whitehall...a tall order; to get  hundreds of LAs to 'sign up' is near impossible, but what is the alternative? What I find frustrating is that no such narrative, backed up by analysis, leading to  a Localism Agenda has even started to emerge. This may be unfair but it seems that the mind-set is stuck in the past and past methods are being rolled out to deal with the new agenda when in reality something very different is called for...

...So you and I are in tune on the matter of narrative – the need for one that can get some grip on the reality of our current circumstances. To borrow from Lord Grey “plots are being lost all over Europe” - probably beyond – and we may not see them recovered in our lifetime. The many headed public is gathering snake-oil narratives with enthusiasm inventing the facts to make them work, as we can all do so well. ‘Intelligent criminals’, mountebanks, hucksters, profiteers (especially) and populists are enjoying the confusion, fashioning common-sense interpretations of what’s going on from rumour, speculations, distortion and amplification – the common vice of gossip. The shadows they make real include a profusion of lurking invasive ‘others’; proliferating foreigners, a continent of bureaucrats, a mass of work shy benefit thieves, neighbourhood fanatics plotting destruction, malign and invisible forces conspiring to contaminate and destroy what matters to decent folk. Best wishes, Simon...

...I am trying to weave this into the dialogue we have had so far. I am trying to create a framework which can accommodate these trends and hook the other points we have made on to it but I am struggling a bit. When are you back. I am happy to make the trip down to Birmingham. Could do with chewing these things over with you. Best Jan... 

Meeting Jan D

From Jan D on 2 July:

Simon. At long last the Local Government Association (LGA) has come up with something worthwhile - see attachment, news of the speech at the LGA Conference by its Leader Sir Merrick Cockell.

What they now need to do is to work this into a strategy for making it happen. Governments do not give up power easily nor do their civil servants! I don’t think that any of the main parties are really serious about devolution beyond paying lip service to it. More delegated responsibilities do not necessarily mean more devolved powers. Rather the reverse. The key to this is to come up with a radically different taxation system and much legislative powers at local level; but the real challenge is how to wrestle power away from Whitehall. Cunning and stealth are key factors. I think this report plus the recent LGIU report - Connected Localism - offer a way forward. Should not INLOGOV start to do some work on this?* Perhaps you and I should join the affray! It would really invigorate me. Best Jan

LGA calls for devolution to 'local treasuries'2 July, 2013 by Mark Smulian

The LGA has proposed a radical devolution of public services and financial power to localities in a bid to lead debate for the scheduled 2015 general election. It said that handing responsibility for all public services and resources to ‘local treasuries’ in elected authorities would foster faster economic growth while offering a solution to over-centralisation in England. Public services could be transformed through local leadership “rebuilding democratic participation, fixing public services and revitalising the economy,” LGA chairman Sir Merrick Cockell (Con) said.
With ideas to appeal to national politicians in all main parties, the LGA’s Rewiring Public Services report said the present model of a highly centralised state “will not see us through for very much longer”. Devolution and local financial autonomy would reinvigorate democracy with local politicians taking responsibility for tax and service standards, so voters would no longer hold national ministers responsible. Local services decisions would be “together in one place, for each place,” with resources fixed by national government but shared out by English local government collectively, not ministers. This would help answer the ‘English Question’, where voters have been angered that devolution has lagged behind Scotland and Wales, the LGA argued. Voter engagement with local politics would increase because the public would see direct consequences from voting, taxation and service standards if an elected ‘local treasury’ were visibly responsible for these.
Sir Merrick (Conservative) said politicians in all three parties were sympathetic to these ideas.
“It certainly seems to chime with some of the things being said by people in different parties,” he said "Things cannot stay as they are now. We are looking for the three main parties to adopt these ideas in their manifestos and then one would expect any party to deliver on that.”
Sir Merrick said the coalition had supported pooling and devolution of local public service resources to a limited extent, “but logically if you believe in community budgets and city deals the consequence is that you need structural change and things cannot stay the same”.
The paper stressed the need for single places to control public services and resources but did not explicitly say what should happen in two-tier areas.
“A local treasury could be based on a city or large town but also on a county – not necessarily a county council – with all partners including districts coming together and looking to the long term rather than current structures,” he said.
“Seeing a further cut of 10% we will have to think hard about the viability of councils to operate in the way they have been”
The LGA has also sought to appeal to the political parties by offering a route to faster economic growth. Localities could alter business rates and local tourist or sales taxes – to support their economies and target investment “in projects that will unlock growth potential and improve productivity,” the report said
This would end the “top-down bidding culture and refocus decision-making decisively on local employer-led priorities; enabling the public sector to provide a better tailored service to local businesses”.
Sir Merrick said that despite the paper’s concerns about local political apathy, the LGA did not look at changes to the voting system.
“I don’t think first- past-the-post is the problem in causing the stagnation, it is that people want to feel that their vote matters because it will have consequences in local taxation and services,” he said.
Were this to happen, the role of councillors would change substantially as they would be responsible for all public services not just those of one council, Sir Merrick said.
The paper also suggests that a large though unspecific number of council leaders should sit in the House of Lords and raises the possibility of MPs being involved in local treasuries, possibly as formal consultees.
The LGA’s plan for devolution of public services and the accompanying money to localities is based around six propositions it claims would revive local democracy, transform service standards and boost economic growth.

Independent local government - This would see each ‘place’ act as a local treasury. The departments of communities and local government, transport, environment, energy, culture and parts of the Home office would be combined in an England Office to discourage the silo culture in Whitehall when it engages with localities. England’s share of UK resources would be based on need, not the Barnett formula and be shared out by local authorities collectively. This settlement would have formal constitutional protection to put it “beyond future Whitehall revision”.
Growth - Local treasuries would budget for growth and be able to impose local taxes and vary business rates. There would be local leadership of skills and jobs initiatives.
Adult social care and health - Local commissioners would direct resources through place-based public service budgets where they have the greatest impact on the health and wellbeing, with savings in acute services from more effective prevention and re-ablement reinvested in the local community.
Children - Councils would have the flexibility to redesign services around individual and family needs, bringing services and decisions together in education and children’ social care, so allowing greater investment in early intervention.
Financial sustainability - Local government would become self-funded through council tax, business rates and other taxes, all under local control with the right to set new local taxes and fees which fully recover costs.
Borrowing would be freed from Treasury restrictions scene it must already meet prudential rules. There would be a local government bond agency and the right to develop earnback deals to reinvest the proceeds of growth.
Transforming local government - The time is right to transform local government, the LGA argued, because it is more trusted than national government. It cited Ipsos MORI polling shows that 79% of people trust councils to make decisions about local services, while only 11% similarly trust central government. LGA research showed 70% of residents think councils do a good job and it said the sector was “in a strong and credible position to develop a workable model for the delivery of local public services”.

**** ****
*INLOGOV's new book: 'Making sense of the future: do we need a new model of public services?'

Chapter 1 - Catherine Staite: Why do we need a new model of public services? 

Public services, including those commissioned and delivered by local government, have changed substantially in the past ten years. There have been changes in service delivery mechanisms, in relationships between users and services, in organisational structures and in partnership arrangements. It appears likely that the next ten years will bring at least as much change, if not more. INLOGOV is developing a new model of public services, in partnership with public service leaders, as a way of drawing together many of the themes in current debates about the ways in which the public sector will have to change. In particular, we are looking at how public services can manage demand, build capacity and strengthen mutual understanding, through the development of stronger relationships with communities as well as through co-production and behaviour change. The purpose of this model is to provide a framework to support public service leaders – both political and managerial – to make better sense of a complex world and find workable solutions to previously intractable problems.

Chapter 2 Lawrence Pietroni: The relational revolution. 

Why do we need a relational revolution? The challenge of enabling genuinely relational services is not new, but it is growing and becoming more urgent. It is a simple fact of demography that personal social care is going to become an even greater part of public service and (for the foreseeable future at least) a political reality that the financial resources available to support it are going to be even fewer. Working out how to meet the needs of vulnerable older people with humanity is one of the most pressing issues facing local public services. The relational challenge, however, goes much further.

Chapter 3 Beyond Nudge: Beyond 'nudge'. 

A three-fold change to the design and delivery of public services has been taking place over the past decade. Expectations of user choice or personalisation, emergent localism and most particularly the implications of cuts in public spending, increase tensions within the public service framework. One key factor underpins all of them: they require fundamental change in the expectations of individuals, communities and service providers if best use is to be made of ever diminishing resources and whilst securing public well-being. Many experts have said that the critical public service challenge of the decade is to encourage behaviour that benefits both the individual and the state, whilst preventing long term expense. They want to discourage behaviour which creates user dependency and attracts further costs. Behaviour change is vitally important, they say, because we can no longer provide the services we have always done, in the way we have always provided them. Various approaches to altering the behaviour of citizens have been outlined in a growing body of evidence including Nudge (Thaler and Sustein) ‘Think’ (John et al) and MINDSPACE (Dolan et al). However, in this chapter we set out our belief that behaviour change is a necessary but not a sufficient response to the challenges facing public services, because it focuses too heavily on individuals and not on the system as a whole. There is too much reliance on service users choosing to do something different when actually the need is for the individual and the community to think differently. We believe that this requires an attitudinal or cultural change and not simply behavioural change. INLOGOV’s new model for public services provides a useful distinction between individual co-production, community co-production and self-help activities (see Chapter 4) which this chapter will draw upon.

Chapter 4 Bovaird and Loeffler: We’re all in this together: harnessing user and community co-production of public outcomes.

 Co-production is big – it is rapidly becoming one of the most talked-about themes in public services internationally (Bovaird, 2007; Alford, 2009) and in the UK (nef, 2008; Loeffler, 2009; Department of Health, 2010).In this chapter, we set out what co-production is, why it matters and its implications for public services, as part of the INLOGOV model. We argue that the movement towards co-production can be conceptualized as a shift from ‘public services for the public’ towards ‘public services by the public’, within the framework of a public sector which continues to represent the public interest, not simply the interests of ‘consumers’ of public services.

Chapter 5 Bovaird and Quirke: Risk and Resilience. 

In this paper we suggest that the conceptualisation of risk depends on the character of uncertainty in which public service organisations operate and the content of the knowledge domain in which they make decisions. Very different approaches to risk management are appropriate to different parts of public organisations, depending on their specific cultures and the issues being handled.Risk management needs to focus more on those risks to the actual outcomes experienced by service users, communities and citizens generally; and less on the institutional risks to the organisations themselves and the people within them. A key element of future strategies must be to embed resilience within service users, communities, service providers and service systems. We propose an approach to managing risk and resilience which is based on an integrated risk enablement strategy.

*** *** ***

*** *** I pottered in our garden on Sunday, still reluctant to face our allotment.

A mown space amid profuse greenery, close cut grass now and then drizzled with petals, and a damp brick path to the shaded compost barrel, the pond water clean and clear protected by weed from too much sun; water lilies crowding the rushes. Early this morning, barefoot on our balcony, it occurred to me how long it's taken to get this semi-balance of neatness and mess, chaos and order, weeds and flowers, that we enjoy, debate and bicker over. The garden's husbandry is just within our skills and inclinations. In the case of oir allotment, can this wabi-sabi process be speeded up? Could some accumulation of gardening wisdom help bring me sooner to a similar relationship with 200 square metres of vegetable growing space barely a quarter mile away?

*** *** ***
Karen Leach of Localise West Midlands, who I knew from shared membership of Birmingham Friends of the Earth wrote a few days back of a localised approach to supply chains, money flow, ownership and decision-making...

When we saw the “new ideas in economics” strand of the Barrow Cadbury Trust’s Poverty and Inclusion programme [now the Resources and Resilience programme], we were surprised, and pleased. It’s long been an ironic state of affairs that charitable trusts have shown limited interest in exploring the systems by which we organise our livelihoods that cause the social problems the trusts exist to solve.
To us, it was an opportunity to research the assumption at the heart of Localise West Midlands’ mission: that in a more localised economy, more people have a stake, which redistributes economic power and resilience, reducing disconnection and inequality. Not, perhaps, a ‘new’ idea, when you consider 1960s Schumacher – but newly in need of exploration in the face of growing inequality and economic failure.
The chasm between charity and economic development thinking is mutual. There are plentiful ideas around what we have been calling community economic development: social inclusion as CSR, community-led job creation, co-ops and social enterprises, local procurement initiatives. To many economic development practitioners these are very nice projects that go into a little box labelled “voluntary sector” and have little to do with the real economy, which is about big sites, tax breaks for multinational corporations – “prostituting ourselves for inward investment” as the Centre for Local Economic Strategies‘ Neil McInroy colourfully puts it.
Our project, Mainstreaming Community Economic Development, is an attempt to take localised economies out of this little box. Firstly, to see the social potential not only of voluntary sector initiatives with social objectives, but also of private sector activity that is locally controlled and based, where the community’s participation is as owners, investors, purchasers and networkers.
And secondly to challenge what is given economic priority. Given the benefits of localised approaches, shouldn’t we try to integrate them better into our economic interventions? Shouldn’t they get a fair crack at subsidies and support structures? Shouldn’t we use cost benefit analysis to see which types of activity most maximise the returns to the local area and to those in disadvantage? It doesn’t fit into a little box, it’s just a consideration in all good decisions.
In its first stage, a review of the literature evidence for the benefits of localised economies, we found good evidence that local economies with higher levels of SMEs and local ownership perform better in terms of employment growth (especially disadvantaged and peripheral areas), social inclusion, income redistribution, health, civic engagement and wellbeing.
Such economies also support local distinctiveness and diversity, which we see as positives because of their contribution to economic resilience, economic options to suit a diversity of people, sense of place and belonging, area quality, added interest and richness of experience.
We found that a local economy largely controlled by ‘absentee landlords’ – distant private and public sector controllers with little understanding of the local area – is a recipe for economic failure. Locally-inappropriate decisions and ‘footloose’ businesses leaving the area for better economic conditions seem to combine to weaken local businesses and create a self-reinforcing cycle of decline and exclusion.
Many of our private sector case studies showed local commitment. From Birmingham Wholesale Markets to renewable energy consultancies, they demonstrated ‘enlightened self-interest’ in understanding their interdependency with local communities. Their role in an inclusive economy can’t be underestimated. If only their voices were louder than those of absentee landlords in today’s ‘pro business’, London-centric political environment.
Informed by this and our case studies we set out proposals for a strategic approach centred on local supply and demand chains, participation and control. Taken strategically, every regeneration project, every economic development decision, every spatial plan, would be based on maximising benefit to and ownership by local people, and particularly its excluded communities.
While much can be done locally, to enable CED to scale up requires national change to decentralise economic and governmental power and make changes around policy, support services, subsidies, tax, banking, infrastructure and measures of success, creating a level playing field for indigenous economic activity.
Politically, it’s helpful that localisation approaches are inherently pro-business, but also respond to public concerns over the concentrations of wealth and power that created the 2008 Crash. As we take it forward, civil society interest, international examples like Mondragon and careful use of language may help this agenda to stay out of that little box long enough to contribute towards a better economy.

Neoliberalism As Water Balloon from Tim McCaskell on Vimeo.
** ** ** **

Jan. I’ve done this blog page on the latest LGA narrative, which meshes with others (including I hope Inlogov’s)...Let’s get together soon in York after I’ve refined the critical incidents we worked on and see how it can help evolve the political-management-professional spaces model. I like the film at the end that I’ve embedded on how neo-liberalism works. Best S 

Simon. I like this. Good that we have joined the fray. I ‘m  reading all the reports and documents at the moment incl those by INLOGOV. It’s good to see that some new ideas are now emerging. Without sounding too critical and acknowledging they are much better than anything I have read for a long time, there are still crucial elements missing in these publications, e.g. 'new feudalism', managing the 'vacuum', the 'intelligent criminal', inequality, strategy for managing a change in the central-local relationship i.e. how to manage a change in the power relationship and conduct the 'power struggle' this entails. All of these and related elements are necessary. These have profound implications for the political-managerial arena and what is required of the people who inhabit it. The first step is to work out how to get LAs and their partners to run with these. The LGA report may be a good start. Two perspectives need to come together. The Inside of the Box needs to meet The Outside of the Box...we could organise something for late summer/early autumn? Best Jan

Excuses

'Back in 2007 the Stern Report warned of the future costs of climate change. But it looks like its happening now. News reports of freak storms and forest fires in the USA, repeated floods in the UK, unseasonable fatal avalanches in the Alps, and yet the impact on subsistence farmers in other parts of the world has barely been reported, let alone counted..' .from a blog by Martin Stott, Sustainability Consultant for local government and beyond

"Martin, I promised myself that the vegetables on our table at Christmas would be from our allotment. They won't be."
"It's been a terrible year, Simon. My allotment was under water for weeks""
"You're kind. Onion fly, slugs, pigeons, rain rain rain - in June and July especially"

Martin's floating garden

"Lots of people have been abandoning their allotments"
"Because it's a lot harder than they realised"
"Also there's such demand. People are getting evicted"
"Yeah. It's all these gardening programmes making it look simple."

In the papers: ...They're to blame for thousands of allotment holders being evicted from unkempt plots....novice gardeners are becoming down-heartened...abandoning their plots to weeds and neglect...an estimated countrywide waiting list of 200,000 for plots, a record number of allotment holders...have been asked to vacate their land, for leaving their soil unworked...surge has been blamed on the popularity of gardening show...Steve Johnson, an allotment rep at Beverley town council, in East Yorkshire ~ “People see these gardening programmes that make it look easy. It’s not like that. They get very depressed when they see the weeds and they abandon it.”Reg Knowles, Allotments & Gardens Council “Unfortunately people watch the gardening presenters on TV and don’t really see how they have a paid team working seven days a week on their plot. When they realise they have to do all the work themselves, it’s a lot and you have to be able to put the time in. People think allotments are easy to maintain but it’s been a bad year weather-wise and people have got disheartened and not bothered doing their plots. You’ve got to be honest with people. The worst thing you can do is not tell them how much work it is.” In Brighton, 1070 notices to quit have been issued...more than a third of the council’s plots but a bite into a long waiting list. Merton Council...has issued 378 notices to quit...almost a third of its 1364 plots. Allotment holders with untended plots in Beverley have been warned to “use them or lose them"...

Martin and I were chatting on campus; a Christmas get-together of Inlogov staff on the 4th floor of the Muirhead Tower, planning ways to put the world of local government - in most distinctive crisis - to rights.

 Christmas lunch and seminar on the challenges facing local government

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As of October 2013, the Cambridge Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages will suspend the teaching of Modern Greek as a full Tripos language on financial grounds. If the proposed changes go ahead, no student will emerge from Cambridge with any more than a cursory knowledge of Modern Greek language and culture..... 
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I gave a talk at Sheldon Library about The Founding of Handsworth Park. Arose in the wet and set out  for New Street Station where I caught a train to Marston Green. I embrace these drizzling grey wet days, donning full wetwear, including my cosy waxed gloves, putting a waterproof cover over my pannier. From the station I pedalled along a wet path strewn with sodden leaves and paused at the end of the runway as a holiday plane full of passengers from a warmer drier place arrived in Birmingham.

I enjoy talking about Handsworth Park. My audience - about 15 people around my age, umbrellas and raincoats stacked in corners beneath bookshelves, my folded bicycle and dripping rainwear drying by a radiator. I strive to evoke a feel for those ancestors of ours who 120 years ago decided Handsworth should have a park

As the civic gospel of municipal improvement spread from Birmingham into the estates of Handsworth, its local government leaders saw a public park as a benefit for the district. Following the setting up of an education board and a free library, the adoption and proper kerbing of roads, street lighting, tramways and the construction of sewers,1 influential voices in the district began to speak of the need for a “lung” in the city. They did not pursue the idea simply out of expediency or to raise the value of their properties. Such self-interest was present - used unashamedly to strengthen their case among the practically minded citizens of Handsworth - but opposition to the Park from that quarter was at times so intense that calculative motives alone would not have carried the project through....

Sheldon Library

Back into town afterwards. Bought a tray of fish and chips with curry sauce and ate it on the train - relishing its sogginess. Still drizzling on the way home with £25 extra pocket money in my pocket. I treated myself to the ride under the Hockley flyover, through its messy underpasses, smelling of wet cannabis, surfacing by the bill boards at the foot of Soho Hill, a mile from home

Our front door's decorated. I'll put up the tree on Friday evening.Start to lay presents under it.

Mistletoe from the garden and our artificial wreath

Artificial Christmas ~ a bargain buy by Lin 20 years ago

Advent calendar - a present given us 25 years ago by my Greek half-sister

As soon as I was home Lin asked me to take Oscar for a walk, so I headed in the dark to the allotments unlocking the pedestrian gate and wandering through the deserted site to my shed, confirming to my relief that tho' my crop has been so disappointing the ground looks tended, my shed shipshape and dry inside despite the surrounding damp.

My shed on plot 14 on the Victoria Jubilee

Oscar and I strolled home in the continuing drizzle. Amy and Guy arrived with Oliver, followed by Richard and Emma. Tea, coffee, all round and a chance to dandle the babe, my wet clothes laid out in the boiler room.

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19.12.12

ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΗ Σας γνωστοποιούμε ότι το ερχόμενο ΣΑΒΒΑΤΟ 22.12.2012 και ΩΡΑ 19:00 θα πραγματοποιηθεί στον Ιερό Ναό του Αγίου Αθανασίου  η καθιερωμένη κοινή Χριστουγεννιάτικη συναυλία της μπάντας και της χορωδίας της Φιλαρμονικής μας. Θα ακολουθήσει κέρασμα στο κελί. Επίσης οι μαθητές της Φιλαρμονικής μας θα παιανίσουν τα κάλαντα  στις γειτονιές του χωριού μας το πρωί της ημέρας των Χριστουγέννων μετά τη θεία λειτουργία. Τους μαθητές θα συνοδεύουν και τα μέλη του Δ.Σ. για την καθιερωμένη οικονομική ενίσχυση. Ο Πρόεδρος και τα μέλη του Δ.Σ. εύχονται ολόψυχα σε όλους τους κατοίκους του χωριού μας Χρόνια Πολλά, Καλές Γιορτές και Ευτυχισμένος ο Καινούργιος Χρόνος.                                                             NOTICE

We announce that the customary communal Christmas concert of the band and the choir of our Philharmonic will be held this Saturday 22/12/12 at 1900 at the Church of Saint Athanasius, followed by treats for all. Also the choir of the Philharmonic will go around the neighbourhoods of our village singing carols the morning after the Christmas liturgy. They will be accompanied students and members of the Board for the traditional collection in aid of the Philharmonic. The Chairman and Board wish a wholehearted Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.to all residents of our village.

In England

Mail waiting in Birmingham

Home in Handsworth and a list of things to do starting with a morning on campus tutoring on our Community Governance and Leadership Programme and checking over our web presence. Coming along! I like the links - for instance Dave McKenna's Localopolis and enjoyed Ian Brigg's talk on YouTube, noting the link to some of my research on political-management leadership and member-officer working. The banality of good - η κοινοτόπια του καλόυ.

Marble Arch on the coach back to Birmingham

The village band is going to Thessaloniki

Mr Leftheris and his married daughter, Natasha, mother of Dimitra

'Our' band - The Spyros Samaras Philharmonic Society of Ano Korakiana - leaves from Corfu town via Igoumenitsa on Friday morning to play in Thessaloniki. The village will be missing its young for a weekend. There was bustle in the bandroom above the clinic last night and yesterday morning Natasha, the Leftheri’s daughter, was polishing her daughter Dimitra’s helmet in preparation for the journey.

The shutters we bought are installed but for one problem. Alan had suggested they’d fit better if the hinge straps were bent back straight. When he did it on one of the jambs with a sturdy wrench it worked fine. When I did it the hinge socket broke its weld.

“No no no no! Why me?” I plead. I get out my mobile…“Alan?” (plaintive phone call and explanation) “Bring it over and I’ll weld it back for you. Simple.” “Thank you Alan – so much”. This heartfelt gratitude for another's abilities I lack, so reminds me of my exchanges with my stepfather and with those friends I have who can do joinery, plumbing, welding, electrics, plastering, roofing and - just name it – craftsmanship, manual skill – sometimes demeaningly recommended for those not 'suitable' for the professions or for academic work. Twaddle on stilts. Yet installed in popular assumption like the ‘tradesman’s entrance’ on houses, a bizarre turn in our mental archaeology, though by no means original - consider the long fingernails of the mandarins to show they didn't work with their hands. Pathetic. How I envy the talents of carpenters and farmers and admire myself when I achieve something that at least approximates their craft – like the cypress floor we’ve restored here, the banisters and - until I broke the hinge - hanging these shutters – and I haven’t even mentioned knitting, sewing, embroidery, weaving, more skills that should be part and parcel of being educated along with reading, writing, keyboarding , drawing, painting and making music. I found Alan at the bottom of his rambling garden working amid organised chaos - one of his favourite ideas.

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"Mr Simon!" A gentleman called out from outside our house this morning and delivered a handwritten note from Nico, one of our neighbours a few metres up Democracy Street. It was a suggestion visit www.corfuland.gr - where among other interesting things there was an old colour film from British Pathé - a short sketch of Corfu in 1962. It was made when I was twenty, the same summer I sailed from England to Greece and back in Danica with two friends.

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Flashbacks to C.P.Snow on campus politics, in this case reading a flurry of shared email exchanges circulating proposals and debate on the future of where I work:

The Review Group recommends that INLOGOV reviews its use of Associates as soon as possible with a view to:

1. formalising relationships with those Associates whose contribution furthers the core academic mission;

2. initiating a process of disengagement from those Associates whose contribution does not further the core academic mission; and

3. mitigating against over-dependence on these individuals.

A colleague’s comment:

The Review Group proposed the mission statement: ‘to create, disseminate and evaluate academic insight that enhances the politics, policy and strategic management of local government’ … If we are to tinker with it - and I think there may be argument to run with it for a while, given that it's now been approved (subject to consultation?) by the university executive board - then I'd simply insert 'democratic' before 'politics' in this statement…

Email from another colleague:

Hi Simon. Have just got back from 'the meeting’ … if you stick to the idea that you quite like the thrust of the mission statement, and that it represents an endeavour to which you and your work already make a key contribution and would continue to in the future … Hope all that's somewhat reassuring…we can chat… when you return. All best wishes, C

The morningscape shifts towards autumn. On 1 October we return to England to work in Birmingham. Seldom has a sojourn here seemed to pass so quickly, filled with many things including concerns about change at home and anticipation - pleasurable - of work through November in Australia, with John Martin, where the weather moves towards summer, and where I read news of red sand coating Sidney and the land around.

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Alan's refixed the broken hinge which had been held by a tiny strip of faulty weld. Perhaps it's a good thing it went when it did. The shutters are looking good - after a little more careful bending of the hinge straps and sanding of the wood frame above - though we'll need to sand and apply deep Corfu green instead of that blue, more typical of the Aegean. I'll add an iron peg top and bottom on which to close the doors.