When faced with a difficult hypothesis in maths or physics there's a long tradition of simply turning it on its head, assuming the opposite, and then seeing what happens. For example, Galileo used the idea of dropping different sized cannonballs off the Leaning Tower of Pisa to illustrate his hypothesis that all objects, no matter what their mass, fall at the same rate. With the equipment available at the time this would actually have been a very difficult experiment to do - analogous to the tightest off side decision a referee's assistant has ever had to make - and subject to far too much human error. In reality, he did do practical timing experiments but these were made on balls rolling down slopes (to slow everything down) and he measured the different distances traveled in equal times by using bells that could be positioned at different points along the track. By adjusting their positions he could make them sound at equal musical intervals and then work out how they were speeding up.
But, the real experiment was carried out in his head. Suppose, he thought, large bodies really did accelerate faster than small ones. If you made a combined body made of a small one attached to a large one with a piece of string and then dropped it, the large body would be held back by the smaller body and hence the combined body - which is even larger than the large body - would fall slower than the large body by itself. This contradicts the original assumption and thereby proves it wrong.
A similar trick is often played in maths. For example the proof that the square root of 2 is an irrational number - cannot be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers (e.g. p/q) - involves the assumption that it can followed by a little bit of algebra which ends up contradicting the assumption. This sort of argument is given the glorious name of "reductio ad absurdam".
So, you'll have to forgive me for shifting this idea to a completely different context.
Recent survey work carried out by Sport England and published by Public Health England suggests that in North Yorkshire only 25% of those aged 40 to 79 year take the minimum recommended amount of physical activity. Since this amounts to just 150 minutes a week (half an hour a day on five days out of seven) of the sort of exercise that tickles up your heart rate or makes you aware of having to breathe, instead of trying to think why the vast majority are so inactive I wondered what I'd have to do to join them in their inactivity.
I live in a small town (60,000 people in winter about 100,000 in the summer) about 15 minutes walk from the town centre. 3 or 4 times a week, I'll walk into town, or across to the other side and almost everyday I'll cycle for half an hour or so on my way to pick up heavy shopping or attend meetings. In addition, I frequently head off for an hour or so into the local countryside. So, as you can see, even without the recreational trips into the countryside, let alone my habits of running up stairs, sawing timber, mowing the grass or clipping the hedges - all by hand - I'd have trouble making the cut.
I could, of course, stay in and simply fail to get the things that need doing done - which wouldn't please the rest of my household - or do them by walking so slowly so that I don't raise my heart rate. You've seen this sort of walking. For men it usually involves thrusting your hands in your trouser pockets and then swinging from the hips. Unfortunately slow walking, which in days long past I'd be forced to practice on demonstrations, makes my lower back hurt. Or I could walk slowly to the bus stop and then take the short bus ride into town; though that would demand enormous patience to stop myself from simply walking off. So, there's probably no practical alternative but to pick up those car keys, take the car and drive.
Oh, and is that the dog asking for a walk....
Friday 26 September 2014
Monday 22 September 2014
Lardbuckets and Tossmobiles
I behaved badly the other day. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last, but I've discovered that I can make the most of it if afterwards I wallow in a little puddle of regret.
I was taking the long route to the shops, and doing a few circuits of Oliver's Mount, when I rounded a bend on the top circuit to find the road effectively blocked by a parked car with it's door wide open while the driver chatted to a man standing in the road nearby. It was clearly a very important car - low, shiny and with personalised number plates - and the man standing nearby looked as though he was being duly impressed. Meanwhile, I'd just got to one of the good bits in Beethoven's 6th Symphony and really couldn't be bothered to stop, pull out my earphones and politely ask if they'd mind moving out of the way. Instead, in the second or so it took to assess the situation I thought "f**k it, the standing man is so in rapture to the shiny motor car that he's not going to move any closer too it" and, without any warning, just went straight through the gap.
Luckily I got away with it, but one of the things about cycling, or walking, is that it gives you time to think and as I rode on I began to regret what I'd done and tried to figure out why I'd done it. To cut a long story short - see Situational or Dispositional to get the gist - I was responding to the car rather than to the people who were associated with it. It could have been, for example, that the car was simply being tested as a favour to the real owner and that the driver and his conversant wouldn't normally be seen dead in such a vehicle*. But at the time my imagination didn't stretch quite that far and, in all probability, the person driving the car was the owner and part of the reason for owning it, along with the personalised number plates, was as a status symbol. So, I hope he'll forgive me if I was wrong but there is every reason to suppose that I wasn't.
A recent report suggests that, despite the fact that for the last decade that the BMI (body mass index) of the average American has been stable, their waistlines are still expanding. Now you might think that the owners of large bellies would try to avoid drawing attention to them. Wearing Lycra, for example, you'd think would be a no no. But I wonder how many of them have noticed that, from the perspective of a pedestrian or a passing cyclist, modern cars with their aerodynamic sloping windscreens actually provide a perfect display area for, what a friend from Ghana in his West African way refers to as, their responsible bellies.
A few years ago the then prominent Labour politician Roy Hattersley withdrew at the last minute from a popular satirical TV program "Have I got News for You" . Because they couldn't get a substitute at such short notice, and because he's a bit overweight, they chose to replace him with a tub of lard. So now, when I'm getting grumpy with the traffic, I tend to refer to certain types of cars - usually inflated 4 x 4 s that have never had a bale of straw or a sick sheep thrown, I mean delicately placed, in the back - as Lardbuckets and the sort of car I encountered on The Mount as a Tossmobile. (those unfamiliar with UK slang see Tosser )
I prefer to think of the use of these terms simply as ways of relieving stress rather than as wholehearted value judgements. You, of course, are entitled to think as you please.
*Among the many tasteless jokes that circulated after the Princess of Wales' death in 1997 was "What's the difference between a Mercedes and a Lada? " "Princess Diana wouldn't be seen dead in the back of a Lada"
I was taking the long route to the shops, and doing a few circuits of Oliver's Mount, when I rounded a bend on the top circuit to find the road effectively blocked by a parked car with it's door wide open while the driver chatted to a man standing in the road nearby. It was clearly a very important car - low, shiny and with personalised number plates - and the man standing nearby looked as though he was being duly impressed. Meanwhile, I'd just got to one of the good bits in Beethoven's 6th Symphony and really couldn't be bothered to stop, pull out my earphones and politely ask if they'd mind moving out of the way. Instead, in the second or so it took to assess the situation I thought "f**k it, the standing man is so in rapture to the shiny motor car that he's not going to move any closer too it" and, without any warning, just went straight through the gap.
Luckily I got away with it, but one of the things about cycling, or walking, is that it gives you time to think and as I rode on I began to regret what I'd done and tried to figure out why I'd done it. To cut a long story short - see Situational or Dispositional to get the gist - I was responding to the car rather than to the people who were associated with it. It could have been, for example, that the car was simply being tested as a favour to the real owner and that the driver and his conversant wouldn't normally be seen dead in such a vehicle*. But at the time my imagination didn't stretch quite that far and, in all probability, the person driving the car was the owner and part of the reason for owning it, along with the personalised number plates, was as a status symbol. So, I hope he'll forgive me if I was wrong but there is every reason to suppose that I wasn't.
A recent report suggests that, despite the fact that for the last decade that the BMI (body mass index) of the average American has been stable, their waistlines are still expanding. Now you might think that the owners of large bellies would try to avoid drawing attention to them. Wearing Lycra, for example, you'd think would be a no no. But I wonder how many of them have noticed that, from the perspective of a pedestrian or a passing cyclist, modern cars with their aerodynamic sloping windscreens actually provide a perfect display area for, what a friend from Ghana in his West African way refers to as, their responsible bellies.
A few years ago the then prominent Labour politician Roy Hattersley withdrew at the last minute from a popular satirical TV program "Have I got News for You" . Because they couldn't get a substitute at such short notice, and because he's a bit overweight, they chose to replace him with a tub of lard. So now, when I'm getting grumpy with the traffic, I tend to refer to certain types of cars - usually inflated 4 x 4 s that have never had a bale of straw or a sick sheep thrown, I mean delicately placed, in the back - as Lardbuckets and the sort of car I encountered on The Mount as a Tossmobile. (those unfamiliar with UK slang see Tosser )
I prefer to think of the use of these terms simply as ways of relieving stress rather than as wholehearted value judgements. You, of course, are entitled to think as you please.
Photo courtesy of the Richardsons Cycles web site
(they have not endorsed the terms used in this blog)
*Among the many tasteless jokes that circulated after the Princess of Wales' death in 1997 was "What's the difference between a Mercedes and a Lada? " "Princess Diana wouldn't be seen dead in the back of a Lada"
Tuesday 16 September 2014
In one ear and out the other.
One of life's mysteries is why things that, with just a little bit of consideration, can make obvious sense and yet still don't happen. For example, we know that far too many people are physically inactive, we know that the excessive use of motor cars causes congestion, pollution and is a significant contributor to climate change and yet a simple measure, improving a valuable bit of public space so that more people can be encouraged out of their cars and into a habit of regular everyday physical activity, simply falls off the political radar.
It's now just about ten years since we established the Friends of the Old Railway. Our simple purpose was to improve the old railway line between Scarborough and Whitby so that it could be used by pedestrians, cyclists and wheel chair users of all ages and abilities and provide a valuable wildlife corridor linking the towns at each end to their rural hinterland.
In order to support potential grant applications we needed to come up reasonable estimates of the numbers of people using the Cinder Track. To do this we conducted surveys along different stretches of the Track on an as and when basis. There was no particular schedule for the surveys we simply did it when felt like it and noted the date, the start time, the end time and the number of users that fell into particular categories (pedestrians, wheel chair users, push chairs and cyclists). We assumed that over a period of time we'd get a reasonable sample and from this an estimate of the annual usage.
Of course, some stretches were surveyed more than others, and there was undoubtedly a bias in favour of good weather, but all in all the results we came up with were at least consistent. The highest rates of usage were in the urban areas at the ends - in Scarborough and Whitby - and tailed off towards the more isolated middle. So, in urban Scarborough we got a conservative estimate of at least 500,000 trips a year, in Whitby at least 150,000 and in the middle about 50,000. But, while the surveys tell us how many people use the track they don't tell us what type so what follows has the status of a personal observation and isn't a proper sociological survey.
The first thing that's clear is that for most of the day the adult presence is provided by dog walkers, older people, women (seemingly of all ages and classes) and poorer men. There are also times of day when there are very large numbers of children, young people and family groups (often young women with children). One of the things I find particularly pleasing is the way that the users interact with each other. It's not at all uncommon for adults to stop and chat or for groups of young people and families to be engaged in quiet conversation as they walk. Free from the threat of traffic children are allowed to progress at their own pace and often make little deviations to explore the local environment.
Now you might have noticed that there's one group of people who are significant by their absence and this absence sums up one of the problems we have in getting the quality of this, and other, pieces of public space taken seriously. Middle class, middle aged men. Almost everyone is there except the people who usually make the decisions. And the reason they're not there, and why some of the other groups are, is because they have access to cars and drive. In fact, if there's one thing that most of the other users have in common is that they don't have everyday access to a car.
Now I know that there are exceptions. There are some middle class men who like to walk or cycle to work and there are some who occasionally find time to walk the dog but, by and large, there aren't that many. This means that whilst they may have day to day experience of finding it hard to get a parking space or annoyed at potholes in the road they don't have the same connection with users of the track.
Once upon a time I used to believe, foolishly it turns out, that if you presented a decent argument then the powers that be would be obliged to respond. No, this isn't the way things work at all. The first thing that most people do is substitute the question you've asked - why don't we improve public space so that we get people out of their cars and back onto their feet? - with the alternative question - Is this argument being put forward by my sort of person? Since most of our decision makers socially identify with motorists, and not scruffy ex scientists with a bee in their bonnet, they simply don't acknowledge the argument that's been put.
In one ear and out the other, with a few polite yes buts along the way.
n.b. The section of track shown in the picture has been renovated to a good standard all we're asking for elsewhere is that it's smooth enough for buggies and wheelchairs and wide enough to pass.
It's now just about ten years since we established the Friends of the Old Railway. Our simple purpose was to improve the old railway line between Scarborough and Whitby so that it could be used by pedestrians, cyclists and wheel chair users of all ages and abilities and provide a valuable wildlife corridor linking the towns at each end to their rural hinterland.
In order to support potential grant applications we needed to come up reasonable estimates of the numbers of people using the Cinder Track. To do this we conducted surveys along different stretches of the Track on an as and when basis. There was no particular schedule for the surveys we simply did it when felt like it and noted the date, the start time, the end time and the number of users that fell into particular categories (pedestrians, wheel chair users, push chairs and cyclists). We assumed that over a period of time we'd get a reasonable sample and from this an estimate of the annual usage.
Of course, some stretches were surveyed more than others, and there was undoubtedly a bias in favour of good weather, but all in all the results we came up with were at least consistent. The highest rates of usage were in the urban areas at the ends - in Scarborough and Whitby - and tailed off towards the more isolated middle. So, in urban Scarborough we got a conservative estimate of at least 500,000 trips a year, in Whitby at least 150,000 and in the middle about 50,000. But, while the surveys tell us how many people use the track they don't tell us what type so what follows has the status of a personal observation and isn't a proper sociological survey.
The first thing that's clear is that for most of the day the adult presence is provided by dog walkers, older people, women (seemingly of all ages and classes) and poorer men. There are also times of day when there are very large numbers of children, young people and family groups (often young women with children). One of the things I find particularly pleasing is the way that the users interact with each other. It's not at all uncommon for adults to stop and chat or for groups of young people and families to be engaged in quiet conversation as they walk. Free from the threat of traffic children are allowed to progress at their own pace and often make little deviations to explore the local environment.
Now you might have noticed that there's one group of people who are significant by their absence and this absence sums up one of the problems we have in getting the quality of this, and other, pieces of public space taken seriously. Middle class, middle aged men. Almost everyone is there except the people who usually make the decisions. And the reason they're not there, and why some of the other groups are, is because they have access to cars and drive. In fact, if there's one thing that most of the other users have in common is that they don't have everyday access to a car.
Now I know that there are exceptions. There are some middle class men who like to walk or cycle to work and there are some who occasionally find time to walk the dog but, by and large, there aren't that many. This means that whilst they may have day to day experience of finding it hard to get a parking space or annoyed at potholes in the road they don't have the same connection with users of the track.
Once upon a time I used to believe, foolishly it turns out, that if you presented a decent argument then the powers that be would be obliged to respond. No, this isn't the way things work at all. The first thing that most people do is substitute the question you've asked - why don't we improve public space so that we get people out of their cars and back onto their feet? - with the alternative question - Is this argument being put forward by my sort of person? Since most of our decision makers socially identify with motorists, and not scruffy ex scientists with a bee in their bonnet, they simply don't acknowledge the argument that's been put.
In one ear and out the other, with a few polite yes buts along the way.
A patient dog waits
n.b. The section of track shown in the picture has been renovated to a good standard all we're asking for elsewhere is that it's smooth enough for buggies and wheelchairs and wide enough to pass.
Tuesday 9 September 2014
The last straw
It's now 18 years since I gave up working full time as a teacher in the local Sixth Form College (an establishment of further education for 16 - 19 year olds). I'd been finding the work more and more annoying for the simple reason that I could see it going on forever and felt that I was in a mental straight jacket. Partly this was because my one major initiative, a course that looked at the relationships between science, technology and society, had failed to recruit quite enough students that year and had therefore been cut, and partly because I was fed up with thinking about things on other people's behalf rather than my own.
The last straw, the one that broke this camel's back as it were, came when I was helping a student with his project work. In his case it was to determine the efficiency of a light bulb and the first thing that we'd decided to do was to see if we could get some idea how much heat, as opposed to light, the bulb was giving out. Because we were only dealing with low voltages there wasn't much problem with simply dunking the bulb in a beaker full of water, taking care to keep the terminals dry, and seeing how much the water heated up. If you know how much water you've got and how much its temperature has risen you can work out how much heat, at a minimum, the bulb must have produced. If you also measure the electrical energy put into the bulb ( Energy = Voltage x Current x Time ) you can get a first estimate of what proportion of the energy put into the bulb had been turned into heat.
So far so good, but then came the insightful bit. Whilst we had some idea of how much heat the bulb was producing we still didn't know how much energy was being carried away by the light. Now evidence suggests that I do my best thinking not when trapped behind a desk but when either walking or cycling, so its most likely that my brief moment of revelation came when cycling to or from the college. Suppose, I thought, you put a small drop of ink in the water. All of a sudden you can't see the bulb even though, presumably, its still producing light. This means that the light energy must have been absorbed and would reveal itself as an additional rise in the temperature of the water. Brilliant...or so I thought.
When I next saw the student I gently talked him through this idea, in such a way that he could almost have thought that he'd thought of it for himself, and then left him to get on with it.
But, when the time came to present the work it turned out that he simply hadn't been bothered to conduct the extra brief experiment and had completely ignored my brilliant suggestion.
That was it, enough of thinking about things for other people just so that they could be ignored. The final straw may not have been very big but it was big enough.
The last straw, the one that broke this camel's back as it were, came when I was helping a student with his project work. In his case it was to determine the efficiency of a light bulb and the first thing that we'd decided to do was to see if we could get some idea how much heat, as opposed to light, the bulb was giving out. Because we were only dealing with low voltages there wasn't much problem with simply dunking the bulb in a beaker full of water, taking care to keep the terminals dry, and seeing how much the water heated up. If you know how much water you've got and how much its temperature has risen you can work out how much heat, at a minimum, the bulb must have produced. If you also measure the electrical energy put into the bulb ( Energy = Voltage x Current x Time ) you can get a first estimate of what proportion of the energy put into the bulb had been turned into heat.
So far so good, but then came the insightful bit. Whilst we had some idea of how much heat the bulb was producing we still didn't know how much energy was being carried away by the light. Now evidence suggests that I do my best thinking not when trapped behind a desk but when either walking or cycling, so its most likely that my brief moment of revelation came when cycling to or from the college. Suppose, I thought, you put a small drop of ink in the water. All of a sudden you can't see the bulb even though, presumably, its still producing light. This means that the light energy must have been absorbed and would reveal itself as an additional rise in the temperature of the water. Brilliant...or so I thought.
When I next saw the student I gently talked him through this idea, in such a way that he could almost have thought that he'd thought of it for himself, and then left him to get on with it.
But, when the time came to present the work it turned out that he simply hadn't been bothered to conduct the extra brief experiment and had completely ignored my brilliant suggestion.
That was it, enough of thinking about things for other people just so that they could be ignored. The final straw may not have been very big but it was big enough.
Friday 5 September 2014
Addicts at the wheel
Last weekend was the fourth Scarborough Festival of Cycling. Most of the events take place up on Oliver's Mount which has a great big field in the middle for grass track racing and a smooth road circuit that can easily be closed to traffic. The racers who come like the road circuit because, unlike most closed circuits in the UK, it has a great big hill. This means that at long last the hill climbers get a chance to laugh at the sprinters.
Unfortunately, whilst it might be titled the Scarborough Festival of Cycling it could more properly be called The Festival of Cycling at Scarborough because we've never really managed to connect the events to the town itself and most of the participants and spectators, the participants families and friends, come from elsewhere. This year an attempt was made to bring the event off the Mount and into the town itself with a Family Bike Ride on the Saturday morning. But, because the powers that be tend to see cycling as a dangerous activity, especially when it involves children and traffic, we were obliged to start at 7.30am. All praise to the 40 or so that turned up but making special efforts to drag children out of bed at 6.30 was never likely to have enormous public appeal. To put it simply we were intimidated off the roads not just by the fear of traffic but also by the fear of motorists response if something seemed to be getting in their way.
If you look at transport planning guidelines it's usual for there to be a well defined hierarchy of road users. Typically this means that the needs of pedestrians should be put before those of cyclists, public transport users and motorists, in that order. In Scarborough, the main road from the west meets the sea at the end of the West Pier and there's a road junction with the road that runs along the sea front. At this junction not only are pedestrians keep to the narrow footpath (sidewalk for Americans) by fences but the pedestrian crossings are split so that you have to go through a cage in the middle of the road. These cages are quite narrow and clearly fail what some urban designers call the double buggy test; could two double buggies, those with children side by side, get past each other. A few years back when the road that runs past the rest of the harbour was given a face lift (wider pavements, more seating, improved lighting) the cages at the junction were left unaltered. Some of us bemoaned this wasted opportunity only to be told that they had considered doing something but that it was felt it would "interfere with the traffic". So, despite there being a well defined hierarchy of road users the old hierarchy had subtly reasserted itself.
At another meeting I attend I mentioned this reassertion of the traditional hierarchy to a senior official in the County Council. To my surprise he agreed with my analysis. The gloss was somewhat taken off this when, later in the meeting, he announced his retirement. Clearly what was an acceptable position when about to leave office hadn't been when he was fully in post.
On other occasions, at other public meetings to discuss how we might improve public space in the town, the one thing that really tended to raise the hackles of the participants was any suggestion that there might be additional controls on parking. Whilst they wouldn't want to think of themselves as such, the vehemence of the response bore all the hallmarks of a group of addicts being threatened with the withdrawal of their fix.
The problem, as far as sensible planning policy is concerned, one that genuinely puts the needs of pedestrians first, is that the majority of people involved in the decision making are themselves, to a lesser or greater degree, auto addicts.
So, if you never leave the house without the car keys, find yourself using a car for journeys of less than a mile when you haven't got much to carry, worry about whether there'll be a parking space close enough to the shops, don't know how long it would take to walk to the station or are surprised to find that other people have walked for half an hour to get to the place you've driven to, then, if you haven't got a serious health problem, it's likely you're an addict too.
Unfortunately, whilst it might be titled the Scarborough Festival of Cycling it could more properly be called The Festival of Cycling at Scarborough because we've never really managed to connect the events to the town itself and most of the participants and spectators, the participants families and friends, come from elsewhere. This year an attempt was made to bring the event off the Mount and into the town itself with a Family Bike Ride on the Saturday morning. But, because the powers that be tend to see cycling as a dangerous activity, especially when it involves children and traffic, we were obliged to start at 7.30am. All praise to the 40 or so that turned up but making special efforts to drag children out of bed at 6.30 was never likely to have enormous public appeal. To put it simply we were intimidated off the roads not just by the fear of traffic but also by the fear of motorists response if something seemed to be getting in their way.
If you look at transport planning guidelines it's usual for there to be a well defined hierarchy of road users. Typically this means that the needs of pedestrians should be put before those of cyclists, public transport users and motorists, in that order. In Scarborough, the main road from the west meets the sea at the end of the West Pier and there's a road junction with the road that runs along the sea front. At this junction not only are pedestrians keep to the narrow footpath (sidewalk for Americans) by fences but the pedestrian crossings are split so that you have to go through a cage in the middle of the road. These cages are quite narrow and clearly fail what some urban designers call the double buggy test; could two double buggies, those with children side by side, get past each other. A few years back when the road that runs past the rest of the harbour was given a face lift (wider pavements, more seating, improved lighting) the cages at the junction were left unaltered. Some of us bemoaned this wasted opportunity only to be told that they had considered doing something but that it was felt it would "interfere with the traffic". So, despite there being a well defined hierarchy of road users the old hierarchy had subtly reasserted itself.
At another meeting I attend I mentioned this reassertion of the traditional hierarchy to a senior official in the County Council. To my surprise he agreed with my analysis. The gloss was somewhat taken off this when, later in the meeting, he announced his retirement. Clearly what was an acceptable position when about to leave office hadn't been when he was fully in post.
On other occasions, at other public meetings to discuss how we might improve public space in the town, the one thing that really tended to raise the hackles of the participants was any suggestion that there might be additional controls on parking. Whilst they wouldn't want to think of themselves as such, the vehemence of the response bore all the hallmarks of a group of addicts being threatened with the withdrawal of their fix.
The problem, as far as sensible planning policy is concerned, one that genuinely puts the needs of pedestrians first, is that the majority of people involved in the decision making are themselves, to a lesser or greater degree, auto addicts.
So, if you never leave the house without the car keys, find yourself using a car for journeys of less than a mile when you haven't got much to carry, worry about whether there'll be a parking space close enough to the shops, don't know how long it would take to walk to the station or are surprised to find that other people have walked for half an hour to get to the place you've driven to, then, if you haven't got a serious health problem, it's likely you're an addict too.
Tuesday 2 September 2014
Money
When you get to a certain age you can't help but think, briefly, about the different paths that your life might have taken and maybe start to try to explain why it has taken the course it actually has. Being inclined to look for overall principles rather than precise details I've realised that, for me, one of the most important defining characteristics has been my attitude to money.
The idea that the most important influences in you life occur early on has often been summarised in one of the many variants of the phrase "Give me the child up to the age of seven and I'll show you the man", and thinking back to my own early childhood I can readily summon up instances that reflect my ongoing relationship with money.
The first was when, at the age of 5 or 6, I'd spent 6 shillings of my pocket money on a catapult (30p in today's money but a lot more then) and my main memory is not of the catapult itself but of lying in bed worrying about having wasted the money. The next, when 8 or 9, was when I got the ridiculous toy that I'd lusted after - a toy gun* that could fire a number of different kinds of projectile and would best be seen in the hands of Rambo - and realised after about half an hour of playing with it what a completely ridiculous thing it was and, more importantly, what a fool I'd been to lust after it. In addition, as a curious and numerate child, I'd usually catch sight of my parent's bank statements and couldn't help but notice that at the end of every month they were about £100 overdrawn. Though I've no idea if I ever discussed this with them at the time, it struck me as obvious that if they just spent a little less one month then the overdraft would get cleared.
So, precocious little bugger that I was, my early attitude to money was that if you didn't want to worry about it then it was best to avoid spending it and that even though you thought that buying something would make you feel better it usually didn't. Since then I've only ever really been happy spending money on things that were necessary, like getting the roof fixed before any more damage got caused, or books (but even then the first thing I did when I got a Kindle was to raid the old classics that were out of copyright and have ended up a late George Eliot fan as a result) The very concept of "retail therapy" has always struck me as oxymoronic even if just in the sense that if the answer to your problem is "shopping" then it couldn't have been much of a problem in the first place. Much better to go out for a walk, chop some wood, make a cup of tea,,,,
I once read an interview with the enormously rich Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone. As far as he was concerned
"I doubt if any successful business person works for money. For most people who are reasonably successful it's a way of keeping score, that you're doing all right."
So, once you've got enough even the hyper wealthy simply want more as a way of demonstrating their status. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to care about money that much, to devote my life to getting a bigger heap than someone else, but not only does it all feel so vacuous it's also now been shown that beyond a certain point - where you've got enough to provide a decent roof over your head, food on the table, clothes on your back and a modicum of entertainment - having more money doesn't make you any happier. Indeed, it's also been shown that for major status purchases, like a new sports car, the greatest pleasure is in the anticipation and, after a week or so, the initial thrill of being seen to be able to drive around in the thing is replaced by envy of those that can drive around in something even newer and flashier.
A recent opinion piece in the New Scientist on OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) suggests that the rationalisation for the OCD (an obsession with hygiene for example) might actually follow the behaviour rather than precede it. You find yourself repeatedly doing something that you know is a bit wierd so, to avoid cognitive dissonance, you come up with a rationalisation. In my case it could be that my early, and slightly fearful, attitude to money led almost directly to my obsession with how we might distribute the Earth's finite resources in a more equitable way, and the answer to that problem has never seemed less likely to be "shopping".
* A quick search under "1960s toy rocket launcher gun" confirms that it was a heavily marketed "Johnny Seven OMA" (Where OMA presumably stands for One Man Army)
The idea that the most important influences in you life occur early on has often been summarised in one of the many variants of the phrase "Give me the child up to the age of seven and I'll show you the man", and thinking back to my own early childhood I can readily summon up instances that reflect my ongoing relationship with money.
The first was when, at the age of 5 or 6, I'd spent 6 shillings of my pocket money on a catapult (30p in today's money but a lot more then) and my main memory is not of the catapult itself but of lying in bed worrying about having wasted the money. The next, when 8 or 9, was when I got the ridiculous toy that I'd lusted after - a toy gun* that could fire a number of different kinds of projectile and would best be seen in the hands of Rambo - and realised after about half an hour of playing with it what a completely ridiculous thing it was and, more importantly, what a fool I'd been to lust after it. In addition, as a curious and numerate child, I'd usually catch sight of my parent's bank statements and couldn't help but notice that at the end of every month they were about £100 overdrawn. Though I've no idea if I ever discussed this with them at the time, it struck me as obvious that if they just spent a little less one month then the overdraft would get cleared.
So, precocious little bugger that I was, my early attitude to money was that if you didn't want to worry about it then it was best to avoid spending it and that even though you thought that buying something would make you feel better it usually didn't. Since then I've only ever really been happy spending money on things that were necessary, like getting the roof fixed before any more damage got caused, or books (but even then the first thing I did when I got a Kindle was to raid the old classics that were out of copyright and have ended up a late George Eliot fan as a result) The very concept of "retail therapy" has always struck me as oxymoronic even if just in the sense that if the answer to your problem is "shopping" then it couldn't have been much of a problem in the first place. Much better to go out for a walk, chop some wood, make a cup of tea,,,,
I once read an interview with the enormously rich Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone. As far as he was concerned
"I doubt if any successful business person works for money. For most people who are reasonably successful it's a way of keeping score, that you're doing all right."
So, once you've got enough even the hyper wealthy simply want more as a way of demonstrating their status. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to care about money that much, to devote my life to getting a bigger heap than someone else, but not only does it all feel so vacuous it's also now been shown that beyond a certain point - where you've got enough to provide a decent roof over your head, food on the table, clothes on your back and a modicum of entertainment - having more money doesn't make you any happier. Indeed, it's also been shown that for major status purchases, like a new sports car, the greatest pleasure is in the anticipation and, after a week or so, the initial thrill of being seen to be able to drive around in the thing is replaced by envy of those that can drive around in something even newer and flashier.
A recent opinion piece in the New Scientist on OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) suggests that the rationalisation for the OCD (an obsession with hygiene for example) might actually follow the behaviour rather than precede it. You find yourself repeatedly doing something that you know is a bit wierd so, to avoid cognitive dissonance, you come up with a rationalisation. In my case it could be that my early, and slightly fearful, attitude to money led almost directly to my obsession with how we might distribute the Earth's finite resources in a more equitable way, and the answer to that problem has never seemed less likely to be "shopping".
* A quick search under "1960s toy rocket launcher gun" confirms that it was a heavily marketed "Johnny Seven OMA" (Where OMA presumably stands for One Man Army)
Monday 1 September 2014
Back to work ?
It's the start of September which, in England, means it's the end of the long summer vacation and time to get back to work. It also means that it's getting close to the time when it might be worthwhile to start popping e-mails into people's in boxes; once they've cleared the backlog that's accumulated in August and before they lose the mild enthusiasm of a fresh start. It's also the time when I feel like writing up the posts that so far only exist as titles on a piece of paper.
Regular readers, of which there are a few (more than one but not a lot), will know that, apart from the odd bit of whimsical philosophy, my main interests centre on sustainable development (living within our ecological means), public health (with a particular emphasis on everyday physical activity) and a mild obsession about the role that improving public space can play in both.
So, the titles that I've got scribbled down beside me include
"Who's that in the park?" - a look at which sort of people that currently make use of parks and public spaces and, perhaps more crucially, who don't and why.
"Feeding an addiction" - musings on the global dominance of car culture and the psychological, social, political and economic barriers that get in the way of those of us who, perhaps Canute* like, are attempting to reverse the tide.
"And what do you do ?" - how on Earth can a vaguely employed visionary answer that question without it turning into a sanctimonious list. Oh what joy I imagine it might be to say "I'm a neuro-surgeon" or whatever and just have done with it.
"A lost opportunity" - why didn't our previous Labour Government take walking and cycling seriously and leave behind a legacy of improved health and sociability.
But, even though part of the reason for writing a post is to flush thoughts out of my head and onto the page - so that others might take their place - I've nearly always got a wider political purpose in mind. This means not only writing for people who might be inclined to agree but also for those who probably aren't. To put it simply, I must keep things brief, but to the point (and know what that point is) and attempt to achieve what I now know is nearly impossible: Get people to see their own behaviour as just part of a wider social phenomenon rather than as something for which they, personally, are getting the blame.
There, that's the intention announced. Now I can make a cup of tea, take the dog for a walk and get on with the rest of whatever it is I've got to do today.
* Canute, King of what was once a North Sea Empire, who famously demonstrated the limits of his powers to his over zealous supporters, who thought he could do anything, by failing to turn back the tide while pretending that was what he was trying to do.
Regular readers, of which there are a few (more than one but not a lot), will know that, apart from the odd bit of whimsical philosophy, my main interests centre on sustainable development (living within our ecological means), public health (with a particular emphasis on everyday physical activity) and a mild obsession about the role that improving public space can play in both.
So, the titles that I've got scribbled down beside me include
"Who's that in the park?" - a look at which sort of people that currently make use of parks and public spaces and, perhaps more crucially, who don't and why.
"Feeding an addiction" - musings on the global dominance of car culture and the psychological, social, political and economic barriers that get in the way of those of us who, perhaps Canute* like, are attempting to reverse the tide.
"And what do you do ?" - how on Earth can a vaguely employed visionary answer that question without it turning into a sanctimonious list. Oh what joy I imagine it might be to say "I'm a neuro-surgeon" or whatever and just have done with it.
"A lost opportunity" - why didn't our previous Labour Government take walking and cycling seriously and leave behind a legacy of improved health and sociability.
But, even though part of the reason for writing a post is to flush thoughts out of my head and onto the page - so that others might take their place - I've nearly always got a wider political purpose in mind. This means not only writing for people who might be inclined to agree but also for those who probably aren't. To put it simply, I must keep things brief, but to the point (and know what that point is) and attempt to achieve what I now know is nearly impossible: Get people to see their own behaviour as just part of a wider social phenomenon rather than as something for which they, personally, are getting the blame.
There, that's the intention announced. Now I can make a cup of tea, take the dog for a walk and get on with the rest of whatever it is I've got to do today.
* Canute, King of what was once a North Sea Empire, who famously demonstrated the limits of his powers to his over zealous supporters, who thought he could do anything, by failing to turn back the tide while pretending that was what he was trying to do.
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