CJNBlog

Various schemes have been proposed like GMI - Universal Basic Income, for one. I'm not that au fait with the key differences, but a conversation on line with an artist has brought the idea to the fore (for me). This artist was pleading for council support during the COVID-19 lock down, when most premises were told to close down. Her argument was that art is beneficial to society/culture and the economy, but what's hidden beneath this argument is that of course she needs money, money typically comes in exchange for work and her work is art. I am not trying to say that art for art's sake is unimportant, but with many competing claims on money, it is quite a difficult argument to sustain, whereas the argument that everyone should be given the means to subsist as a birth right (or citizenship right) can be made on behalf of everyone, and isn't, and doesn't sound like special pleading. Once someone is secure in knowing that they will be adequately nourished, clothed an...

It was pointed out to me that the change to BST (that took place on Sunday 29 March) is beneficial to sufferers from Seasonal Affective Disorder. I don't really see why, but my first thought was that if it helps them then it's OK by me. But I have changed my miond. I read the Daylight Saving Time article on Wikipedia and saw the long list of disadvantages of changing the clocks during the year  - but not everywhere and not on the same day, and not necessarily following a rule consistently even within one territory. In the world today there are lots of devices that need to be able to cope with the plethora of rules and mistakes could be costly or even dangerous. Daylight Saving Time is a misnomer - the amount of daylight is of course unaffected by clocks. What proponents say is that it gives more light in the evenings. That rather depends on what you mean by 'evening'. If you mean a nominal 6pm, then why not say 6pm? Evening is rather ambiguous, but the term must origi...

With the London Assembly consulting on this, and coincidentally with my own work, his has been a hot topic for me lately. Most people, it seems, when they hear "high street" think of shops. They lament that there are not enough of some types of shop and too many of other types of shop. They rehearse all the well-known and sometimes contradictory problems. Rent / business rates are too high. "They" should limit the number of [x] type of shop. Car parking should be free and plentiful There's too much motor traffic and consequent noise and pollution and so on. One person debating with me thinks gentrification is a good thing, but this is a working-class area and the council is seeking to regenerate without gentrifying, whilst may people think that regeneration is just gentrification in a thin disguise. They are against regeneration because they will be squeezed out by the increasing cost of housing and the decline in social housing stock that is the direct r...

'One borough, one community' is a tagline used by the council in The London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, where I live. Ever since the former boroughs of Barking and Dagenham were merged in 1965 to form The LB of Barking, there has been at worst rivalry and resentment, and at best the persistent belief that the two former boroughs continue to exist, or that there are two parts of the Borough. I heard the latter claim repeated just a few weeks ago. [Aside - many people think the boundary between the two former boroughs is where the boundary between the IG and RM postcodes runs (whilst in the Borough). They are wrong.] In 1980 Dagenham got its own way and "and Dagenham" was added to the name of the Borough. It makes for a very cumbersome place name and re-inforces the idea that it is two places abutted. People say 'I don't live in Barking and Dagenham, I live in Barking' (or Dagenham, I suppose). It is very difficult if not impossible and undesi...

It occurred to me today that people think that council tenants or people that the council has a duty to house are being shipped out of the borough so that it can be gentrified. When the council claim they are trying to regenerate the borough without gentrifying it it is basically dismissed as a lie. There's a video circulating under the caption "My town's regeneration doesn't include me" and/or "Losing My Home In The Name Of Regeneration". It's basically a lament that the subject and other people in similar to him are being squeezed out. He accepts the regeneration but doesn't accept the effect it is having / will have on him and others like him. But if we look at the factors affecting this situation, we see something slightly - perhaps subtly - different. (1) The high cost of housing in London (and the south-east). (2) The massive decrease in government grants to councils (3) The general government policy in favour of home ownership and ...

This is the indignant comment I sometimes used to hear from people who had stayed at home waiting for an operative who didn't show. Apart from the fact that it seems very unlikely that the person simply sat at home waiting and had nothing else to do - no unread books, housework up-to-date, admin all done  - there is a glaring mathematical fault behind this statement: Like is not being compared with like. Here are some simplified figures to make my point Let's say you earn £26K a year - £500 a week. That's £500 a week, and if you are salaried you probably get £26K/12 per month irrespective of how much leave you take in each of those months.  But let's also say you get 6 weeks leave. So per week worked you get £26K/46  = £565.22. And let's say your working week is 35 hours - you're getting £16.15 / hour. Now if you worked for that hourly rate for 35 hrs a week 52 weeks a year you'd earn £29,391.30 pa. You won't, but provided you don't take more tha...

Edited version of a Facebook post. The builders of many never envisaged that there would be so many cars or that cars would be so large. Once someone has a car they build a life round it such that it becomes indispensable. I have not applie d for jobs where the ad states "you must have your own car", but there are people on here (a FB grop) who say they couldn't hold down their job without a car or their job directly requires them to have one. There are people saying (on this FB group) that we shouldn't have more houses and flats because there isn't space for all the cars. The volume of cars is already a problem and it is quite obvious that not everyone can have one even if they can afford it. The people that don't have cars don't get the jobs that need cars, and don't get to go more or less wherever they like whenever they. The people that do have cars like this freedom of course, and they don't like the idea that it will be curtailed, or that t...