Q. What to do in a crisis when it's one crisis heaped upon another crisis, heaped upon ten years of pointless austerity?
A. Walk On . . .
Janene Pieters reports for NL Times on March 20, 2020
At the initiative of Dutch 3FM DJ Sander Hoogendoorn, 183 radio stations in 31 countries played the song 'You'll Never Walk Alone'by Gerry and the Pacemakers at 8:45 a.m. on Friday. The idea was to emphasize solidarity in this time of social distancing brought on by the coronavirus crisis.
The initiative started on Tuesday, when Hoogendoorn called Jeroen Kijk of NPO Radio 2 and asked him to join him. Later other Dutch and foreign radio stations followed.
First stop survival strategy . . .
As an example of a survival strategy response this initiative is an inspiration. In the face of shared risks in the health care environment, and in widespread anxiety when "social distancing" is essential, this Liverpool football community "anthem" translates across the airwaves and borders of Europe, now the epicentre of the Covid 19 pandemic.
"You'll Never Walk Alone" originates in a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. In the second act of the musical, Nettie Fowler, the cousin of the protagonist Julie Jordan, sings "You'll Never Walk Alone" to comfort and encourage Julie when her husband, Billy Bigelow, the male lead, falls on his knife and dies after a failed robbery attempt.
The backstory to the song begins in a show tune but is then becomes transformed in the context of the collectivity and community of football cultures worldwide. This tradition begins at Liverpool F.C. after the chart success of the 1963 single of the song by the local Liverpool group Gerry and the Pacemakers.
According to former Liverpool F.C. player Tommy Smith, lead vocalist Gerry Marsden presented Liverpool manager Bill Shankly with a recording of his forthcoming cover single during a pre-season coach trip in the summer of 1963. "Shanks was in awe of what he heard. ... Football writers from the local newspapers were travelling with our party and, thirsty for a story of any kind between games, filed copy back to their editors to the effect that we had adopted Gerry Marsden's forthcoming single as the club song." The squad was subsequently invited to perform the track with the band on The Ed Sullivan Show with Marsden stating, "Bill came up to me. He said, 'Gerry my son, I have given you a football team and you have given us a song'."
Gerry Marsden remembers how, in the 1960s, the disc jockey at Anfield would play the top ten commercial records in descending order, with the number one single played last, shortly before kickoff. Liverpool fans on the Kop would sing along, but unlike with other hit singles, once "You'll Never Walk Alone" dropped out of the top ten, instead of disregarding the song, supporters continued to sing it.
The song was adopted by Scottish team Celtic after a 1966 Cup Winners Cup semi-final against Liverpool at Anfield, and is now sung by Celtic fans prior to every home European tie, and later by Germany's Borussia Dortmund who Liverpool went on to play in the cup final.
The song has also been adopted by Dutch team FC Twente after it was officially given to them by the Anfield stadium speaker George Sephton during the last game in the Diekman stadium, before moving to the new Arke Stadion. Today, Twente fans sing the song before every home game. Elsewhere in the Netherlands, Feyenoord (see video below) and SC Cambuur have adopted the song as well.
Perhaps this was an unnecessary journey, but more likely a necessary pilgrimage to signify "solidarity" with the communities that sustain a society . . .
. . . and football creates society!
Additional football teams which now use the song include 1. FSV Mainz 05, TSV 1860 Munich, Belgium's Club Brugge KV and KV Mechelen, Japan's F.C. Tokyo, Spain's CD Lugo, Greece's PAOK and Indonesia's Bali United.
When legislator Tam Yiu Chung quoted the song during a Legislative Council of Hong Kong meeting it caused outrage.
In quoting the song he had sought to salute the Hong Kong Police, who had received widespread criticism for using excessive force against pro-democracy protesters. More than 2,000 Liverpool Football Club fans in Hong Kong condemned his inappropriate use of the song, comparing his support of the police action to the police actions in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, where South Yorkshire Police were found to have distorted facts relating to the unlawful killing by negligence of 96 Liverpool supporters.
Art creating society . . .
Aretha Franklin's recording of the song was played by John Peel in his first show following the Hillsborough disaster, when he became too upset to carry on broadcasting.
Andy Hunter reported for the Guardian (Tue 17 Mar 2020):
This year’s service was scheduled to take place on Wednesday 15 April, the 31st anniversary of the disaster that claimed the lives of 96 Liverpool supporters, and is to be the last held at the stadium, following a decision taken by families. After the latest advice on dealing with the spread of Covid-19, the Hillsborough Family Support Group (HFSG) has agreed to reschedule the service to a later, as yet unspecified, date.
TRUTH and JUSTICE
Apr 27, 2016 Crowds at the Hillsborough vigil in Liverpool sing You'll Never Walk Alone, the anthem of Liverpool Football Club.
In 2019, during a Take That concert at Anfield, lead singer and Liverpool fan Gary Barlow brought out a guest vocalist, Gerry Marsden – who had come out of retirement for the performance – and they sang the club's anthem “You'll Never Walk Alone”.
The song is on its way to becoming the "peoples anthem" when it comes to the Covid 19 coronavirus pandemic, and especially poignant in the expression of a deep appreciation for the self-sacrifice being made by health workers worldwide. The song is on its way to becoming the "health workers anthem"
Going viral . . .
When you walk through a storm Hold your head up high And don't be afraid of the dark At the end of a storm There's a golden sky And the sweet silver song of a lark Walk on through the wind Walk on through the rain Though your dreams be tossed and blown Walk on, walk on With hope in your heart And you'll never walk alone You'll never walk alone Walk on, walk on With hope in your heart And you'll never walk alone You'll never walk alone
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rodgers
The power of the crowd . . .
. . . growin' up!
Well, I stood stone-like at midnight, suspended in my masquerade And I combed my hair till it was just right, and commanded the night brigade I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd, but when they said, "Sit down," I stood up Ooh... growin' up
The flag of piracy flew from my mast, my sails were set wing to wing I had a jukebox graduate for first mate, she couldn't sail but she sure could sing I pushed B-52 and bombed them with the blues with my gear set stubborn on standing I broke all the rules, strafed my old high school, never once gave thought to landing I hid in the clouded warmth of the crowd, but when they said, "Come down," I threw up Ooh... growin' up
I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere, and you know it's really hard to hold your breath Swear I lost everything I ever loved or feared, I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth, but I got me a nice little place in the stars And I swear I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car I hid in the mother breast of the crowd, but when they said, "Pull down," I pulled up Ooh... growin' up Ooh... growin' up
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
The power of art . . .
First and foremost the Re:LODE Radio project is an art based activity going back, in various forms, to the LODEproject of 1992.
So, with each work of art there comes a strategy, a method and a purpose, and not always in a clear and conscious state, for unconscious processes have value in an artistic activity, just as much as those aims and objectives that are clearly set out, as for example in the Re:LODEMethods & Purposes blogpage.
The present discussion of the social and artistically expressive phenomenon of the transformation of a show song (by the composer and lyricist partnership of Rogers and Hammerstein), into a work of collective expression, and coming into existence in as many forms as there are "performances" and performers, is to raise the question:
Q. What's the use of art in a crisis (and in the present situation - clearly a crisis doubled)?
A. There are as many answers to this question as there are possible purposes to an art activity. But first let us begin with the song "You'll never walk alone".
Finding yourself alone . . .
Greta and Riccardo are short of paper but glued four sheets together to make an ‘Everything will be fine’ poster.
There is an article by Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo Italy, published in the print edition of the Guardian today (published on the Guardian website Tue 24 Mar 2020), under the headline:
Art helps children quarantined in virus-stricken Italy
Greta, six, and Riccardo Gabanelli, four, Bergamo
Coronavirus has pushed the city of Bergamo, Lombardy, to its limits; there aren’t even enough coffins to transport the dead. A thousand people have died here since the outbreak of the crisis. Crematorium ovens are unable to keep up, and the armed forces have to transfer the bodies to other cities.
Greta and Riccardo have run out of paper, when drawing is one of the most important activities that keeps them busy while shut in their home. For weeks, Italians have been hanging large paper sheets from their windows with a rainbow and the phrase “Andrà tutto bene” (everything will be fine).
Greta and Riccardo wanted to make one, too, but they can’t buy paper because shops are closed. To join in the movement, they managed to glue four precious sheets together. But as the days drag on, the children’s nerves are on edge. “I feel really bad, I get bored too much, and nothing’s getting better,” Greta repeats to her mother.
Michele Passalacqua, six, Palermo
People in Italy’s southern regions are bracing themselves as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases grows daily. In locked-down Palermo, Sicily, Michele has already found a cure for Covid-19.
“It’s a magic potion. You see, coronavirus is a small little creature, almost invisible. You can only see it using a microscope. It can jump from one spot to another. And there’s not just one. It can multiply. We have to use the magic potion to hit the biggest of them, the coronavirus monster that brought them to life. If we splash it with the magic potion, then all the other viruses will die.”
And if Michele’s strategy doesn’t work, he already has a plan B: the sun. Even if the World Health Organization hasn’t confirmed that higher spring temperatures might weaken the virus, Michele knows that the sun will kill it. “It’ll use a flaming sword,” he says. “Unless I discover the potion first. I’m even starting to get bored here in the house. Fine, I don’t have to go to school every day, but I miss my friends and classmates.”
Making art is communication and communication is a social act!
There's a power in the very "making" of a communication. You have to make the message make sense, in order to formulate, encode and then communicate the message. This is the case, even when no-one is present as yet, to receive, decode and interpret it.
Coronavirus lock-downs across the world have resulted in arts venues being closed for the duration. Polly Toynbee, in an opinion piece for the Guardian (Thu 19 Mar 2020) asks:
As one venue after another goes dark, the creative sector and its low-paid employees are in desperate need of support
After easing personal hardship, what of the long-term survival of all the creative teams being disbanded right now? The 830 organisations part-funded by Arts Council England rely mainly on £80m a month from ticket, bar and cafe sales: with outgoings and no income, how are they to survive? The puny £336m government subsidy to the council, cut brutally during the last decade, was always a fraction of what similar countries give to their arts. But beyond those subsidies is an entire ecology of smaller organisations that incubate creativity. They feed an industry that is a better long-term bet than the car industry, let alone airlines, from a booming film studio industry to video gaming and design.
The Association of Leading Visitor Attractions, Alva, has with the Museums Association one instant solution. You may have put it out of your mind, but Theresa May announced a Festival of Britain for 2022 to parade the best of Britain and its culture defiantly after Brexit. Bernard Donoghue, Alva’s director, calls for that £120m to be used right now to rescue arts, heritage and entertainment. That’s not nearly enough to stop vital organisations going under, but it’s an easy fund to raid right now. “Otherwise there may be no culture to display,” he says.
Re:LODE Radio would argue that the use of the term "display", along with the term "showcase", places culture into the market place, as a commodified and fetishised set of things. Rather than being an historical adjunct of Le Bon Marché, culture is "something we do", before it is commodified and displayed in an institutional "showcase", as in a department store or museum. A Festival of Britain is already an exhausted concept, a looking back to The Festival of Britain of 1951, that was itself looking back to The Great Exhibition. A real and progressive Festival of Britain, Version 2.0, would be international, would celebrate a Green New Deal, and be inspired by the amazing work of Rebecca Long Bailey that potentially prepares the United Kingdom for a practical programme of cultural, industrial and sustainable renewal.
Q. So, what is happening?
A. According to latest news published 23 December 2019:
Martin Green CBE, the mastermind behind the hugely successful Hull UK City of Culture 2017, and the former Head of Ceremonies for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has been asked by government to develop plans to curate, manage, and promote a UK-wide festival in 2022.
The Department for Digital Culture, Media & Sport blurb says:
The major nationwide festival, backed by £120 million funding from government, was first announced in 2018. As a UK-wide celebration of our creativity and innovation, the Festival will be designed in collaboration with the devolved administrations to showcase the best of our art, culture, heritage, design and technology sectors.
A "showcase" for "display" of the "best"?
Again, to quote the official blurb:
Culture Secretary Nicky Morgan said:
The nationwide festival will give us a fantastic opportunity to champion all that is great about the UK. It will be a tremendous showcase for our creativity and innovation, which will not only celebrate our values and identities, but will also help attract new inward business and investment.
Martin Green CBE said:
I am honoured to be asked to lead the Festival. As a passionate believer that art and culture has the power to bring people together, I am immensely proud to be working on the project to showcase and celebrate the cultural dynamism and distinctiveness of the UK.
There are three main aims for the festival that will underpin the planning process:
To bring people together to celebrate our strengths, values and identities, and boost pride throughout communities
To celebrate all four nations’ offer to the world, supporting our brand and helping attract new inward business and investment
To leave a lasting legacy across the UK.
Additional details on the festival will be made available in due course.
This is business as usual . . . . . . "supporting our brand", which means the status quo, and commodifying, buying and selling, everything and everybody!
The Re:LODE Radio project also seeks, as an art project, to bring people together, but in order to effect some practical change to the status quo, and to a purpose. The purpose is to ensure that people have a right to both life and an inhabitable planet.
Given this official blurb, and the fact that Liverpool and Hull are the key nodal communities in the LODE and Re:LODE projects (as set out in theLODEZones page), and given Martin Green's leadership in the Hull, City of Culture back in 2017, the question that needs to be asked is:
What is the "lasting legacy" in Hull of the City of Culture 2017?
This story in the Hull Daily Mail covering the University of Hull's full evaluation of the City of Culture is mostly positive, especially in considering economic benefits, but recognizes that legacy remains an issue:
A long-awaited full evaluation report by University of Hull researchers says the year delivered "positive economic impacts" for the city's visitor and cultural sectors as well as providing a general boost for business.
They also claim an estimated £676m worth of new public and private investment in Hull between 2013 and 2019 can "at least be partly attributed to the UK City of Culture".
However, the report suggests building a legacy on the back of 2017 has been a challenge despite the success of spin-off projects such as Back To Ours and the annual Big Malarkey Festival as well as the volunteers programme.
It says: "The Hull City of Culture 2017 project arguably did not give a sufficiently high priority to legacy and citywide cultural strategy considerations.
"The main focus of Hull 2017 was arguably on fund-raising and on the production and delivery of a wide-ranging and ambitious cultural programme, and there was little time and (human and financial) resources for legacy planning.
"The post-2017 legacy plan developed by Hull UK City of Culture 2017 Ltd. in the second half of 2017 and bequeathed to Absolutely Cultured was at one level visionary and ambitious, but also rather vague in terms of resources, responsibilities and modalities of implementation."
The report also highlights a lack of engagement by some secondary schools with 2017-backed cultural legacy projects aimed at young people citing limited time, resources and a pressure to meet national curriculum targets.
Professor Franco Bianchini, director of the university's culture, place and policy institute, led the research team.
He said: "Overall, we say being the UK City of Culture was an an enormous success for Hull across a range of areas, from arts and culture to the economy, society in general and health and well-being.
"In particular, the outcomes for Hull's economy were very striking with increases in visitor numbers, visitor spend and jobs in the visitor economy as well as a significant growth in the night-time economy between 2013 and 2017."
Business as usual? Art and culture creating economy?
The British Council website "showcases" some of the Hull City of Culture programme with five videos. Three of the five videos production design have a sound track that precludes the possibility of engaging with, or hearing, individual or collective voices. Two of this group of three videos concentrate on the public experience of art as a spectator of a public spectacle.
Art as spectacle is a familiar trope when it comes to this kind of cultural programme. In the run up to the European Capital of Culture year 2008, the home grown arts of Liverpool had to contend with the Capital of Culture company commissioning very popular but costly spectacular events from arts organisations, operating in an international context, and specializing in such large scale spectacle.
Art as spectacle, as a "free" spectacle, echoes strategies of social management and control that go back to the "bread and circuses" of ancient Rome. This phrase, originally from the Latin, panem et circenses, is a metonymic phrase critiquing superficial appeasement. It is attributed to Juvenal, a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century AD — and is used commonly in cultural, particularly political, contexts.
In a political context, the phrase means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace — by offering a palliative: for example food (bread) or entertainment (circuses).
Roman politicians passed laws in 140 BC to keep the votes of poorer citizens, by introducing a grain dole: giving out cheap food and entertainment, "bread and circuses", became the most effective way to rise to power.
[...] iam pridem, ex quo suffragia nulli / uendimus, effudit curas; nam qui dabat olim / imperium, fasces, legiones, omnia, nunc se / continet atque duas tantum res anxius optat, / panem et circenses. [...]
... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses. —Juvenal, Satire 10.77–81
Juvenal here makes reference to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to Roman citizens as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means of gaining political power. The Annona (grain dole) was begun under the instigation of the popularis politician Gaius Sempronius Gracchus in 123 BC; it remained an object of political contention until it was taken under the control of the autocratic Roman emperors.
The Wikipedia article on Bread and Circuses includes this section on the Frankfurt School:
In 1944 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer released the book Dialectic of Enlightenment (German: Dialektik der Aufklärung). One chapter in this work, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception", would become hugely influential and a key element in the bibliography of what became known as the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. The book echoed the themes of Juvenal in the modern context of America's 1940s media landscape. Horkheimer and Adorno discussed the culture industry; they argued that entertainment is business and that culture had become commodified. The media audience, which consists of the people, would get accustomed to a certain type of content and demand more of the same, influence over the consumers would thus be established by the entertainment industry. The effect of these cultural products being distributed would be a mass culture designed to preserve the status quo of society. This paralleled Juvenal's thoughts on bread and circuses as an entertainment industry preserving the status quo of Roman society by distracting the common people.
Laura Brown pointed out in 2017 that the legacy of Liverpool's Capital of Culture has not included sustainable local investment in the creative community.
Preserving the status quo of Roman society by distracting the common people is a working model today to preserve capitalism, a system of social inequality, and a trajectory towards planetary disaster. And this is a strategy that works. But it works as an investment in distraction, while justifying costs by virtue, or lack of the same, in the obvious grand scale of these events.
Off the shelf spectacle . . .
The "success" of La Princesse in Liverpool was followed by commissioning another French company Royal de Luxe, based in Nantes, and specializing in gigantic spectacle, to perform Sea Odyssey: Giant Spectacular and Memories of August 1914 in 2014, and Liverpool's Dream in 2018.
Q. Who says this is Liverpool's dream?
A. Those who commissioned and paid for it with public funds! This is NOT cultural investment! It is distraction from distraction by distraction!
When it comes to people appreciating art, experiencing the transformative power in various forms of expression and communication, this is only possible when people are in a situation where their physiological and safety needs have been secured.
Satisfying the most immediate or base requirements for the population in Hull should include security from flooding!
Rising sea levels are a result of global heating. A local issue in Hull requires a global solution.
With 90% of Hull standing below the high-tide line, its devastating recent floods were a sign of things to come. Can the UK’s 2017 city of culture be retrofitted against disaster – or should its people think about moving on?
This graphic design is a version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in Psychological Review.
Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, some of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. He then decided to create a classification system which reflected the universal needs of society as its base and then proceeding to more acquired emotions.
The problem with hierarchies is that they are hierarchies. Basic human requirements include, food, water, shelter and security, but contact, communication, being a part of a societal grouping, are also essential to a developmental process and thriving of every individual human being. Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging and love", "social needs" or "esteem", and "self-actualization" to describe the pattern through which human motivations generally move. The logic of this model suggests that in order for motivation to arise at the next stage, each stage must be satisfied within the individual themselves.
However, art, or the opportunity to be expressive, and to share, a trouble shared is a trouble halved, is not far from the baseline of Maslow's pyramid.
Recent representations of Maslow's pyramid have included adding further sections, including WIFI and toilet paper, below the physiological level. There is a degree of fluidity in what people consider basic requirements, that reflects the social and material realities of our life experience.
The article from the Guardian Cities project (now finished) looking at the uncertain future of the maritime city port of Hull:
by Stephen Walsh (Wed 3 Jan 2018) has a particular quality in the reporting that brings home to the reader the impact and trauma of the consequences of global heating and climate change. It is worth reading in full:
Allan Fellowes had a rude awakening the day Hull flooded.
“It was raining very heavily,” he says of the previous night. “I woke up the next morning and I was looking at the ceiling and there were refraction marks on it. I noticed that the couch I’d fallen asleep on was moving a bit unusually. And I actually fell into [the water].
“I went out into the street and there were so many things happening. I was thinking: my God, what’s happened? Have I woken up yet? There were people going down the street in canoes.”
With 90% of Hull standing below the high-tide line, its devastating recent floods were a sign of things to come. Can the UK’s 2017 city of culture be retrofitted against disaster – or should its people think about moving on?
On 25 June 2007, a depression moving slowly across the UK brought sustained heavy rain to Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the Midlands. Around 100mm fell on Hull: a month’s worth in a day.
At Kingswood in the north of the city, the Yorkshire Water pumping station failed; water poured into the streets and people’s homes. As residents abandoned their cars to wade home, Humberside Fire and Rescue received over 1,500 calls in 12 hours. In West Hull they evacuated 50 residents of a nursing home and 90 more who had been stranded in a metre of water. One person they couldn’t save was 28-year-old Michael Barnett, who died of hypothermia after four hours trapped in icy water in a storm drain.
What made it all the more galling was that Hull seemed to have been ignored. Unlike reporting in other flooded parts of the country, national news coverage of the city was sparse, provoking comparisons with the Blitz when Hull’s name was edited out of the newsreels.
The clear up, if anything, was even more traumatic. While the council and Yorkshire Water disputed liability for blocked drains and unmanned pumps, hundreds were left to cope in temporary accommodation. Many had no insurance.
But as bad as 2007 was, could it just be a foretaste?
According to the UN, the world is currently on course to heat up by 3C by 2100. The resulting sea level rise could see a radical redrawing of the map of East Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and East Anglia – areas that are already among the fastest eroding coastlines in Europe. Speculating in May 2017, Dr Hugh Ellis, head of policy at the Town and Country Planning Association, said: “We need to think about moving populations ... We need to be thinking: does Hull have a future?”
Doomsday pedlars have both history and today’s extreme weather events on their side. The East Riding’s crumbling coastline abounds in stories of towns lost to the waves. None fell as far as Ravenser Odd: in 1299, this trading port at the mouth of the Humber rivalled the newly chartered King’s-town upon Hull for prestige and wealth; less than 70 years later, it had been swallowed up by the sea.
In 2013, a record tidal surge spilled over the Albert Dock and came within centimetres of overtopping the tidal barrier, the city centre’s main defence. Flood damage in the city itself was minimal, but more than 500 properties were evacuated in Keadby, Lincolnshire, after a hole opened up in the bank of the river Trent; residents also had to be rescued in Burringham, Gunness, Amcotts and South Ferriby. On the north bank of the Humber, riverside communities were flooded from Spurn Point to Goole.
“Water comes from all directions in Hull – it makes it uniquely vulnerable to flooding,” says emeritus professor of geography Lynne Frostick, an expert in Britain’s estuaries and adviser to the Environment Agency on flooding. “Hull’s at risk from the North Sea. We’ve got rainfall: Hull is like a basin with the taps on full if it’s raining hard [with] very few overflows. There are risks from ground water flooding in parts of the city. If you asked for planning permission to put Hull where it is now, you’d probably be refused.”
The 2013 floods, she explained, resulted from the collision of two natural forces. “The lowering of [atmospheric] pressure on the water surface in the North Sea causes it to rise up into a bulge,” she said. “When that is superimposed on a spring tide, it causes a very high tide.”
These effects will only increase as sea levels rise, and a warming atmosphere also means more violent rainstorms. It’s not a question of if Hull floods again, Frostick says – but when.
Walking along the River Hull at low tide, it’s hard to imagine this silted trickle ever posing a danger. But, for centuries, the water has frequently spilled over on to the surrounding low-lying streets and warehouses. The river’s tidal barrier was supposed to put an end to that – and so far it has, protecting 17,000 properties from more than 30 surges since 1980. But the kind of “hard” flood defences Hull relies on – barriers, walls, pipes and pumps – offer diminishing returns in a rising tide.
Living With Water, a new partnership between the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water and Hull and East Riding councils, is trying to rethink Hull’s approach to “work with water, not against it”, as Frostick says.
One method is “natural flood management”, using green spaces to hold then slowly release water following an extreme event. The council has started creating its own “aqua-greens”, and is planning a new nature reserve, close to the Bransholme estate, to act as a natural sponge.
Alex Codd, Hull city council’s planning manager, also favours smaller-scale interventions. Water butts fitted as standard to new houses, he says, could stop rainwater from swamping the drainage system during heavy storms. Unfortunately, the simplest solution – not building in a flood-risk area – is not an option for a city that is 90% below high-tide level. “If we don’t build in the flood plain in Hull, the city will cease to exist,” he says. “[We’ve set] design criteria that developers have to adhere to. If you’re building in this part [of the city], you have to raise the floor level. There’s a very clear standard they know they have to meet.”
Householders are also being asked to prepare for increased flood risk: signing up for Environment Agency flood warnings, and having a “flood plan” to safeguard irreplaceable possessions. But so-called “property-level protection” – such as anti-flood doors and air bricks, non-return valves, sumps and pumps – is more controversial. Bransholme resident Nick Fitzgerald, who was flooded in 2007, considered property protection but found it too expensive. “We’re at the end of the row,” he said. “For house-level protection to work, you’d have to do a barrier for [everyone]. It would cost thousands.”
“The Environment Agency tells people to be prepared,” said Heather Shepherd of the National Flood Forum, who in the aftermath of the 2007 floods helped set up a support centre to advise on insurance claims and flood resilience. “But the people we were dealing with in Hull couldn’t afford protection in their houses. They didn’t have that sort of money. Also, it’s really hard to perceive what’s going to happen. You need impartial surveyors to tell you what you need and none of it’s cheap.”
In the public realm, Yorkshire Water has spent £16m rebuilding its defunct Kingswood pumping station, and the Environment Agency is repairing ancient pilings on the river Hull, as well as planning to invest £42m on improving 19km of tidal flood walls. Will it be enough?
Paull, a riverside village six miles east of Hull, is a good place to address this question. Its new flood wall offers a sweeping panorama across the Humber: from the chimneys of Killingholme power station to the Humber bridge; just to the west lies the Siemens factory where wind turbine blades stand glinting in the sun.
Paull was badly damaged by the 2013 tidal surge and its new flood defences combine soft and hard measures. An intertidal saltmarsh, designed to flood at high tide, protects agricultural land and encourages wildlife. Meanwhile, along Main Street, the concrete flood defences have been raised with reinforced glass panels.
With its new glass wall, Paull seems a great advertisement for Living With Water. But despite resembling a Low Countries landscape – nearby agricultural land was actually reclaimed from the Humber in the 17th century – its flood defences can’t compare with the modern-day Netherlands. While today’s Rotterdam is protected by the mighty Maeslant storm surge barrier, built to withstand a one-in-10,000-year storm, Hull must rely on smaller-scale flood mitigation schemes and appeals to personal resilience. A Humber barrier was rejected in the 1980s because of the large number of commercial ships using the estuary, and because of cost: the Environment Agency won’t say how much, though the Thames barrier, opened in 1984 at a cost of £584m (or roughly £1.6bn at today’s prices), gives some idea.
But what price apocalypse? Towering over a retirement home in the village of Hedon is the Kilnsea Cross, reputedly the last remnant of Ravenser Odd. According to the 14th century chronicler, Hull’s medieval twin town had it coming: “By its wicked works and piracies, it provoked the wrath of God.” Still, after 2007 and 2013, it’s hard not to feel empathy for “the enclosed persons, removing thence with their possessions, [leaving] that town totally without defence, to be shortly swallowed up.”
Hull’s latter-day flood survivors know all about “removing with their possessions”. Allan Fellowes had to get rid of many of his belongings – including his “floating” sofa – after the flood, and now divides his time between Hull and a houseboat in Norfolk. “At least on a boat I won’t get flooded,” he says.
The Guardian Cities project
This article was part of the Guardian Cities project that was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation (Oil that glitters is not gold) as part of the 100 Resilient Cities project.
Among the 100 Resilient Cities are five cities situated within the LODE Zone Line, including Cali in Colombia, Jakarta in Indonesia, Medellín in Colombia, Melbourne in Australia, and San Juan in Puerto Rico.
Jakarta, like Hull, has a problem with rising sea levels, but made worse by a geological process resulting in the metropolis steadily sinking. In a city of millions it is the poor, as usual, who have to cope with regular inundations. The Information Wrap for Glodok, a district of Jakarta, includes this article:
Extreme weather events and rising tides and sea levels are the result of global heating.
A local issue in Hull requires global solutions as well as local solutions.
The lost towns of the Humber
Stephen Walsh's article mentions the village of Hedon, where we may find the Kilnsea Cross, reputedly the last remnant of Ravenser Odd.
Ravenser Odd, also spelled Ravensrodd, was a port in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, during the medieval period, built on the sandbanks at the mouth of the Humber estuary.
The name Ravenser comes from the Viking Hrafn's Eyr or "Raven's tongue" referring to the lost sandbank promontory, the modern successor of which is now known as Spurn Point. The town was founded by the Count of Aumale in the mid-thirteenth century, and had more than one hundred houses and a flourishing market by 1299, when it was granted a borough charter.
In the 13th century the town was a more important port than Kingston upon Hull, further up the Humber, and was represented in the Model Parliament of 1295, but as the sandbanks shifted the town was swept away. Storms over the winter of 1356–57 completely flooded the town, leading to its abandonment, and it was largely destroyed by the Grote Mandrenke storm of January 1362. The site is now completely underwater.
The Grote Mandrenke storm is an example of a once in a hundred years extreme weather event, that because of global heating and climate change will, without rapid and significant carbon emission reductions, will become increasingly frequent.
Somewhere Becoming Sea was an exhibition at the Humber Street Gallery and part of the Hull City of Culture programme in 2017. Included in the exhibition was Isabella Martin’s work North Sea Semaphore, that was shown on paired monitors on both floors of the show. In each she stands waist deep in the waves, plaintively semaphoring from one coast to another: from the Netherlands to the UK, from Denmark across the coastal border to Germany.
Telecommunication
We think of telecommunication as a modern phenomenon, an electric radio wave form or cable based technology, but the word itself reflects a basic idea that has had a long history. The use of the word, beginning in the 1930s, comes from French télécommunication, from télé-‘at a distance’+ communication ‘communication’.
Semaphore Re:LODE and Bidston Hill
This is Bidston Lighthouse, that will become a communication hub for Re:LODE Radio, all things being equal, when the Covid 19 epidemic has passed. The Re:LODE@ Bidston Hill blogpage introduces the significance of this place to our project.
Stephen Pickles,
the impressive curator of Bidston Lighthouse and its legacy, shares his
research on the parallel histories of Liverpool and Hull when it comes
to the history of telecommunication, on this Hull-Spurn telegraph webpage:
Both Hull and Liverpool have traditions of telecommunications, born out of the ports’ hunger for information.
This is reflected in the fact that in 2017, both cities hosted completely independent art projects with the same title: “I wish to communicate with you”. You see, in the International Code of Signals, the flag for the letter “K” (pronounced “Kilo”), when flown alone, means “I wish to communicate with you”. In Hull, this inspired a full-colour makeover of the Thornton Estate. Back in Liverpool, “I wish to communicate with you” was the title of a project by artist Yu-Chen Wang, as part of the New Observatory Exhibition at FACT, curated by Sam Skinner. Another outcome of Yu-Chen Wang’s project was a short film, shot mostly at Bidston Observatory and Bidston Lighthouse, entitled – wait for it – “I wish to communicate with you” and screened at FACT on 27 September. This was my first and probably last appearance as an actor.
Liverpool and Hull share a more historic connection. In the first half of the 19th century, both cities had optical (semaphore) telegraphs, connecting the port to the coast, and both were built by the same man, Barnard Lindsay Watson.
Naturally, I wanted to find out more about the Hull-Spurn telegraph. So I asked almost everyone I met, including historians, archivists and guides, at lighthouses, libraries, museums, and lightships, whether they knew anything about, or even heard about, the Hull-Spurn telegraph. No-one knew anything. Most looked blank. Only one or two thought it rung a bell.
This brings me at last to the main purpose of this post, to set down what little I know about the Hull-Spurn Telegraph.
In an earlier post, I noted that a certain Mr Boaz proposed, way back in 1803, to construct a system of telegraphs linking Liverpool to other major seaports in the United Kingdom, including Hull. Although the Admiralty did establish a line of coastal signal stations in 1804, it wasn’t until much later that commercial telegraphs began to appear, the first of these being Barnard Lindsay Watson’s Liverpool-Holyhead telegraph in 1826.
1839 was a tumultuous year for Watson. January brought the great gale of 1839, which laid waste to much of the Liverpool-Holyhead telegraph. Watson started to re-build. In the original telegraph, each station had a single tall mast with three pairs of semaphore arms, each of which could signal a digit from 0-9, and an extra indicator on top. The new telegraph had two, shorter masts, each with two pairs of arms, giving an enlarged vocabulary of 10,000 words. Around this time, in an effort to raise funds, Watson announced that only subscribing vessels would be reported by the telegraph.
In March of the same year, the Hull Chamber of Commerce and Shipping commissioned Watson to survey potential sites for a telegraph along the Humber.
The Liverpool Dock Committee didn’t take kindly to all this. This was not the behaviour the Trustees expected of an employee. Watson’s outside interests could no longer be tolerated. Watson had been allowed to sell his propriety flag signals to ship-owners for many years. But when the Dock Committee learned that he’d been secretly collecting intelligence for insurance companies, it was the last straw.
In May 1839, the Liverpool Dock Committee dismissed Watson. The re-construction of the Liverpool-Holyhead telegraph was completed under a new superintendent, Lieutenant William Lord, R.N.
Perhaps relieved to be freed of his obligations to the Liverpool Dock Committee, Watson pressed on with the construction of a new telegraph linking Hull to Spurn Head. The telegraph opened in September 1839.
The line criss-crossed the Humber estuary, with stations at Hull, Paull, Killingholme, Grimsby with the last (or first station) at “New Sand Light”. So, where or what exactly was “New Sand Light”?
It probably wasn’t on the Spurn proper, if Geoffrey Wilson’s sketch in his excellent book “The Old Telegraphs” is to be trusted. My guess is a lightship at the Bull Sands station, which was establised in 1832. Watson himself mentioned “the valuable assistance afforded me by the Corporation of the Trinity House, in granting me permission to place a telegraph on board their floating light off the Humber”.
The messengers . . .
Water levels and the tides are themselves messengers of a kind, bringing to the shoreline and coast, information as well as inundation, a metric of global environmental and climate changes that result from the emission of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, and acidifying of the oceans. The Messengers was the title of an art and telecommunication based proposal for the Capital Of Culture 2008 in Liverpool, an art project instigated by e-space lab.
Q. What do we mean when we say: ‘We cannot afford to wait. Climate policy makers must put water at the heart of action plans’?
A. Climate delay is almost as dangerous as climate denial. Every country in the world must work more quickly.
Extreme weather events are making water more scarce, more unpredictable, more polluted or all three.
Humans need water to survive, as do all the systems we rely on: sanitation, healthcare, education, business and industry.
Action plans to tackle climate change need to be integrated across different sectors and coordinated across borders. And they must have one thing in common: safe and sustainable water management.
On World Water Day, UN warns that more than half the global population lacking access to safely managed sanitation
Decades of chronic underfunding of water infrastructure is putting many countries at worse risk in the coronavirus crisis, with more than half the global population lacking access to safely managed sanitation, experts said as the UN marked World Water Day on Sunday.
Good hygiene – soap and water – are the first line of defence against coronavirus and a vast range of other diseases, yet three quarters of households in developing countries do not have access to somewhere to wash with soap and water, according to Tim Wainwright, chief executive of the charity WaterAid. A third of healthcare facilities in developing countries also lack access to clean water on site.
Fiona Harvey then writes about how the UN report addresses the benefits and potential synergy of tackling water issues and carbon emission reductions simultaneously through practical applications of a coordinated water policy.
One possible source for renewed investment in water is through a better understanding of the links between water issues and water infrastructure and the climate crisis, the UN report suggests.
While trillions in investment have been poured into reducing greenhouse gas emissions around the world in the last decade, through clean energy and low-carbon technology, few resources have been devoted to the water supply. This year’s UN water report has found that opportunities are being missed to use water projects to cut greenhouse gas emissions while improving access to clean water.
Sewage treatment is a clear example: wastewater gives rise to between 3% and 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, more than flying. Processing sewage can turn wastewater from a source of carbon to a source of clean energy, if the methane is captured and used in place of natural gas. Currently, between 80% and 90% of wastewater around the world is discharged to the environment with no treatment.
Farming methods can also be adapted to use water more efficiently and cut carbon at the same time, because when soils are better managed they hold more organic matter, more carbon and more water – rendering them more fertile as well as sequestering greenhouse gases.
That makes investing in water a “win-win-win”, in terms of improving people’s lives, generating economic growth and helping to cut carbon, the report found.
Yet of the hundreds of billions in climate finance devoted to developing countries in recent years, projects involving water made up less than 1% in 2016, the latest year for which full figures were available, according to the report.
“Water does not need to be a problem – it can be part of the solution [to the climate crisis],” said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of Unesco. “Water can support efforts to both [reduce greenhouse gases] and adapt to climate change.”
Jennifer Kishan in Kolkata reports for the Guardian on how two water activists in Kolkota tap into the acute need conserve the water supply in Kolkota (Thu 19 Mar 2020):
There is light drizzle as Vijay Aggarwal and Ajay Mittal manoeuvre their two-wheelers through the labyrinthine alleyways of Kolkata’s Tiljala road slum.
As the three gather their tools, Aggarwal says: “It literally took two minutes to install a tap on this pipe – in return we have just saved the city gallons of water.”
It was a casual moment that spurred Aggarwal into action. “In July last year, I was dropping my son off to school when at a traffic signal, I watched water gush out of a tap-less roadside pipe,” says Aggarwal, who runs a travel and tourism agency.
Irked by what he saw, Aggarwal, 40, returned with his friend Mittal, 29. They bought taps at the local hardware store, hired a plumber and fixed 12 pipes on the street. The Fix for Life campaign to conserve water in Kolkata was born.
In a country where safe drinking water is a development goal, Kolkata relies on its treatment plants to meet 95% of its needs. The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) produces 450m gallons of filtered water every day at its three main treatment plants.
Apart from domestic and commercial complexes, KMC also provides potable water to the streets and slums for a few hours every day through an estimated 17,000 roadside pipes. For the 5 million people who reside in the city and 6 million who commute daily from the suburbs for work, this freely available safe drinking water is a life force.
However, a recent KMC survey conducted in six of its 144 wards estimates that 30% of the water simply runs down the drain. The survey found about 10% of the wastage was due to these roadside pipes that do not have taps.
“We had installed taps earlier but they are regularly stolen or broken,” says Mainak Mukherjee, the director general of KMC’s water supply department. “A large part of our budget is dedicated to providing clean drinking water. Kolkata is also one of the few cities in India where water is tax-free.” But without taps most of these efforts go to waste.
Since July, every weekend members of Aggarwal’s civic society group, Active Citizens Together for Sustainability (ACTS), conduct “water drives” to fix taps. “In these last eight months we have conducted over 70 drives in several pockets of the city,” says Mittal. “On our most productive day we fix about 30 to 35 taps.”
The target is to have fixed 1,500 by Sunday, which is World Water Day.
One of the lessons learned in times of crisis is how important every action by every actor is, especially when it is aiding a constructive response to a crisis. This is the case with the present situation where the current health crisis overshadows the even greater danger of the climate change crisis.
Yesterday it was reported in New Scientist that Greta Thunberg believes she has the Covid-19 virus.
24 March 2020
By Adam Vaughan
Greta Thunberg says she and her father, Swedish actor Svante Thunberg, appear to have been infected by the coronavirus.
In an interview with New Scientist, the climate change campaigner said they had both experienced some symptoms of covid-19 after a recent train tour of Europe together. The pair were travelling before restrictions were imposed in several countries.
However, she stressed that neither of them have been tested for the virus, as Sweden is only testing people with the most severe symptoms and those in at-risk groups.
Thunberg, who started her school strike outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018 to demand far more ambitious action on climate change from the country’s government, took part in her 83rd strike last week. The movement behind the walkouts, Fridays for Future, has told strikers to conduct protests virtually due to the pandemic, which Thunberg said was a collective decision taken at an emergency remote meeting.
Thunberg is pleased with how strikers responded to the call to stay off the streets. “I think people have been very good at that within the movement, respecting each other and people in risk groups. Even though we are young and are not primarily the ones targeted by this virus, we still stand in solidarity with those in risk groups, and I think that is a very beautiful thing.”
Thunberg said the pandemic and climate emergency shouldn’t be compared, because both of them need to handled together. “One does not outrule the other,” she said.
However, she added: “The corona[virus] crisis really shows that our current societies are unsustainable. If one virus can wipe out the entire economy in a matter of weeks and shut down societies, then that is a proof that our societies are not very resilient. It also shows that once we are in an emergency, we can act and we can change our behaviour quickly. And as long as we have solidarity and common sense, we will get through any crisis.”
School strike for climate goes digital . . .
The present challenge is to use social media platforms to create group based collective protest a positive example of crowd-power, especially in lock-down and social distancing times, when feeling alone may lead to depression and despair.
How to make politicians and capitalist corporate interests accountable is the question. This includes the capitalist interests of the social platforms themselves. For example this video is age-restricted.
Why? Is it because it in invites the viewer to:
Donate to War Child & Grenfell Foundation?
YouTube knows the answer but is NOT telling!
How about a crisis of surveillance capitalism?
It won't be the same after all this, politically, economically, ideologically . . .
There has been a flurry of articles over this past week reflecting on the possible consequences of the present crisis.
William Davis begins his opinion piece (Tue 24 Mar 2020) discussing the term 'crisis':
From this, we also get terms such as critic (someone who judges) and critical condition (a medical state that could go either way).
A crisis can conclude well or badly, but the point is that its outcome is fundamentally uncertain. To experience a crisis is to inhabit a world that is temporarily up for grabs.
The severity of our current crisis is indicated by the extreme uncertainty as to how or when it will end. The modellers at Imperial College – whose calculations have belatedly shifted the government’s comparatively relaxed approach to coronavirus – suggest that our only guaranteed exit route from enforced “social distancing” is a vaccine, which may not be widely available until the summer of next year. It is hard to imagine a set of policies that could successfully navigate such a lengthy hiatus, and it would be harder still to implement them.
It is now inevitable that we will experience deep global recession, a breakdown of labour markets and the evaporation of consumer spending. The terror that drove government action in the autumn of 2008 was that money would stop coming out of the cash machines, unless the banking system was propped up. It turns out that if people stop coming out of their homes, then the circulation of money grinds to a halt as well. Small businesses are shedding employees at a frightening speed, while Amazon has advertised for an additional 100,000 workers in the US. (One of the few, and far from welcome, continuities from the world we’re leaving behind is the relentless growth of the platform giants.)
The decade that shapes our contemporary imagination of crises is the 1970s, which exemplified the way a historic rupture can set an economy and a society on a new path. This period marked the collapse of the postwar system of fixed exchange rates, capital controls and wage policies, which were perceived to have led to uncontrollable inflation. It also created the conditions in which the new right of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan could ride to the rescue, offering a novel medicine of tax cuts, interest rate hikes and attacks on organised labour.
The 1970s inspired a vision of crisis as a wide-ranging shift in ideology, which has retained its hold over much of the left ever since. The crisis involved a contradiction that was largely internal to the Keynesian model of capitalism (wages were being pushed up faster than productivity growth, and destroying profits), and an overhaul in the dominant style of business: out with rigid heavy manufacturing, in with flexible production that could respond more nimbly to consumer tastes.
There was also an important spatial dimension to the 1970s crisis. Capital abandoned its iconic industrial strongholds in northern England and the American midwest, and (with help from the state) headed towards the financial and business districts of slick global cities, such as London and New York.
For over 40 years after Thatcher first took office, many people on the left have waited impatiently for a successor to the 1970s, in the hope that a similar ideological transition might occur in reverse. But despite considerable upheaval and social pain, the global financial crisis of 2008 failed to provoke a fundamental shift in policy orthodoxy. In fact, after the initial burst of public spending that rescued the banks, the free-market Thatcherite worldview became even more dominant in Britain and the eurozone. The political upheavals of 2016 took aim at the status quo, but with little sense of a coherent alternative to it. But both these crises now appear as mere forerunners to the big one that emerged in Wuhan at the close of last year.
We can already identify a few ways that 2020 and its aftermath will differ from the crisis of the 1970s. First, while its transmission has followed the flightpaths of global capitalism – business travel, tourism, trade – its root cause is external to the economy. The degree of devastation it will spread is due to very basic features of global capitalism that almost no economist questions – high levels of international connectivity and the reliance of most people on the labour market. These are not features of a particular economic policy paradigm, in the way that fixed exchange rates and collective bargaining were fundamental to Keynesianism. They are features of capitalism as such.
Second, the spatial aspect of this crisis is unlike a typical crisis of capitalism. Save for whichever bunkers and islands the super-rich are hiding in, this pandemic does not discriminate on the basis of economic geography. It may end up devaluing urban centres, as it becomes clear how much “knowledge-based work” can be done online after all. But while the virus has arrived at different times in different places, a striking feature of the last few weeks has been the universality of human behaviours, concerns and fears.
In fact, the spread of smartphones and the internet has generated a new global public of a sort we have never witnessed before. Events such as September 11 provided a glimpse of this, with Nokias around the world vibrating with instructions to get to a television immediately. But coronavirus is not a spectacle happening somewhere else: it’s going on outside your window, right now, and in that sense it meshes perfectly with the age of ubiquitous social media, where every experience is captured and shared.
The intensity of this common experience is one grim reason that the present crisis feels closer to a war than a recession. In the end, government policymakers will ultimately be judged in terms of how many thousands of people die. Before that reckoning is reached, there will be horrifying glimpses beneath the surface of modern civilisation, as health services are overwhelmed and saveable lives go unsaved. The immediacy of this visceral, mortal threat makes this moment feel less like 2008 or the 1970s and more like the other iconic crisis in our collective imagination – 1945. Matters of life and death occasion more drastic shifts in policy than economic indicators ever can, as witnessed in Rishi Sunak’s astonishing announcement that the government would cover up to 80% of the salaries of workers if companies kept them on their payroll. Such unthinkable measures are suddenly possible – and that sense of possibility may not be easily foreclosed again.
Rather than view this as a crisis of capitalism, it might better be understood as the sort of world-making event that allows for new economic and intellectual beginnings.
In 1755, most of Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami, killing as many as 75,000 people. Its economy was devastated, but it was rebuilt along different lines that nurtured its own producers. Thanks to reduced reliance on British exports, Lisbon’s economy was ultimately revitalised.
But the earthquake also exerted a profound philosophical influence, especially on Voltaire and Immanuel Kant. The latter devoured information on the topic that was circulating around the nascent international news media, producing early seismological theories about what had occurred. Foreshadowing the French revolution, this was an event that was perceived to have implications for all humanity; destruction on such a scale shook theological assumptions, heightening the authority of scientific thinking. If God had any plan for the human species, Kant concluded in his later work, it was for us to acquire individual and collective autonomy, via a “universal civic society” based around the exercise of secular reason.
It will take years or decades for the significance of 2020 to be fully understood. But we can be sure that, as an authentically global crisis, it is also a global turning point. There is a great deal of emotional, physical and financial pain in the immediate future. But a crisis of this scale will never be truly resolved until many of the fundamentals of our social and economic life have been remade.
Walking and methane gas emissions? A time for multitasking . . .
Re:LODE Radio is reminded of an oft quoted remark made by the US President Lyndon B Johnson about Gerald Ford at the time he was a Congressman, that: “He can't walk and chew gum at the same time.”
What he did say was “He can't fart and chew gum at the same time.” The US media deliberately misrepresented the remark in the interests of decency.
He built up an impressive record of flat-earth conservatism. He voted against federal aid for education and housing, repeatedly resisted increases in the minimum wage, tried to block the introduction of medical care for the elderly, and consistently fought any measures to combat pollution. At the same time he supported virtually all increases in defence spending.
One of his few deviations from the classic rightwing agenda was to support Lyndon Johnson's civil rights legislation. But that did not save him from the presidential quip (later sanitised for a prissy American public) that "Gerry Ford is so dumb he can't fart and chew gum at the same time".
The "Walk and chew gum" idiomatic phrase has come to be used often in reference to multitasking, and that appears to have a strong association with gender stereotyping.
Q. Is multitasking really possible?
A. Pursuing two goals simultaneously is something the human brain can just about manage. Pursuing more than two goals is unmanageable.
Some research suggests that the human brain can be trained to multitask. A study published in Child Development by Monica Luciana, associate professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, discovered that the brain's capability of categorizing competing information continues to develop until ages sixteen and seventeen. A study by Vanderbilt University found that multitasking is largely limited by “the speed with which our prefrontal cortex processes information.” Paul E. Dux, the co-author of the study, believes that this process can become faster through proper training. The study trained seven people to perform two simple tasks, either separately or together and conducted brain scans of the participants. The individuals multitasked poorly at first but, with training, were able to adeptly perform the tasks simultaneously. Brain scans of the participants indicate that the prefrontal cortex quickened its ability to process the information, enabling the individuals to multitask more efficiently. However, the study also suggests that the brain is incapable of performing multiple tasks at one time, even after extensive training. This study further indicates that, while the brain can become adept at processing and responding to certain information, it cannot truly multitask.
People have a limited ability to retain information, which worsens when the amount of information increases. For this reason, people alter information to make it more memorable, such as separating a ten-digit phone number into three smaller groups or dividing the alphabet into sets of three to five letters. George Miller, former psychologist at Harvard University, believes the limits to the human brain's capacity centers around “the number seven, plus or minus two.” An illustrative example of this is a test in which a person must repeat numbers read aloud. While two or three numbers are easily repeated, fifteen numbers become more difficult. The person would, on average, repeat seven correctly. Brains are only capable of storing a limited amount of information in their short-term memories.
Laboratory-based studies of multi-tasking indicate that one motivation for switching between tasks is to increase the time spent on the task that produces the most reward (Payne, Duggan & Neth, 2007). This reward could be progress towards an overall task goal, or it could simply be the opportunity to pursue a more interesting or fun activity. Payne, Duggan and Neth (2007) found that decisions to switch task reflected either the reward provided by the current task or the availability of a suitable opportunity to switch (i.e. the completion of a subgoal).
A French fMRI study published in 2010 indicated preliminary support for the hypothesis that the brain can pursue at most two goals simultaneously.
So, theoretically, as well as practically, only political cynicism prevents our collective brain from tackling both the present crises, namely, climate change and global heating, along with the global health crisis impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.
In the Guardian Journal section for Tuesday 24 March 2020, along with the Opinion piece by William Davies, one of the editorials says it all:
Headed Environment, the editorial says:
Political cynicism must not be allowed to derail action on global heating
Difficult and almost impossibly daunting as it may seem, the world is faced with not one but two existential crises and two races against time: the coronavirus and the climate emergency. dealing with both is going to require extraordinary focus and resolution.
Already there is a whiff of political opportunism in the air. last week, the Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš, said that the €1tn European Green Deal, unveiled and enshrined in law by the European commission barely three weeks ago, should be put to one side. Member states, he advised, should concentrate all resources on combating a pandemic which, one by one, is shutting down societies and economies. Along with other eastern european states such as Poland, the czech government has been reluctant to acknowledge the scale of action required to combat global heating, which would have a severe impact on fossil fuel industries in their countries.
The extreme urgency of defeating Covid-19 scarcely needs stating. But Mr Babiš broader suggestion has been rightly rejected. "this is one of the very reasons why we presented the climate change law: to avoid that climate action, a generational task, is obfuscated by more pressing and immediate challenges," said a Brussels spokesman. Frans Timmermans, the Dutch commissioner who is leading the EU response on the climate emergency, has made the same point.
The new climate law commits member states to zero emissions by 2050. a stringent new target is also to be set for 2030, which will be enshrined in the law.
Mr Timmermans has said that the climate law will act as a "compass" for the next 30 years as EU member states seek sustainable forms of growth. in these extraordinary times, local imagination and creativity in developing a sustainable future will be at a premium. There are at least some hopeful signs that such thinking is taking place.
In the city of Utrecht, plans have been unveiled for the largest purpose-built pedestrianised residential area in Europe, which will attempt to harness the virtues of the sharing economy. The Merwede estate will house 12,000 people on a 60 acre site. transport will be provided by bus and train networks and a shared pool of bikes and cars - one car for every three families. Schools, shops, sports and medical services will all be within walking distance, and water from the local canal will be used to heat the area. the intention is for the district to become close to energy neutral.
Utrecht is one of the fastest-growing cities in the Neterlands and is projected to add 100,000 people to its 350,000 population by 2040. In terms of factoring in a necessary environmental dimension to new construction, Merwede looks like the best practice. It is the kind of project that is relatively small scale, but repeatable. It helps of course that the Dutch have a historically passionate relationship with the bicycle. But as the EU attempts to hold the line on implementing its green deal, many more Utrechts will be required.
Vision of Merwede . . . .
. . . a future Utopia?
Q. What's his beef? A. Half price at Morrisons!
Today's Guardian Journal section begins with an Opinion piece (and a completely incongruous ad from Morrisons) by George Monbiot, that contains multiple warnings (as expected) and anguish (and possibly mixed with understandable anger), that fits perfectly with the moment:
We have been living in a bubble, a bubble of false comfort and denial. In the rich nations, we have begun to believe we have transcended the material world. The wealth we’ve accumulated – often at the expense of others – has shielded us from reality. Living behind screens, passing between capsules – our houses, cars, offices and shopping malls – we persuaded ourselves that contingency had retreated, that we had reached the point all civilisations seek: insulation from natural hazards.
He ends his piece making a point about how capitalist interests are a stumbling block to change, and that those who have wantonly dismissed the dangers of climate change have more recently been as equally dismissive about the Covi-19 pandemic. He writes:
Sunk costs within the fossil fuel industry, farming, banking, private healthcare and other sectors prevent the rapid transformations we need. Money becomes more important than life.
There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down on denial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19. Witness the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who claims that the coronavirus is nothing more than “a little flu”. The media and opposition politicians who have called for lockdown are, apparently, part of a conspiracy against him.
Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life. This coronavirus reminds us that we belong to the material world.
Is this existential crisis a result of the destruction of the material world we label nature?
Nature is complicated, a complexity that is also found in the word, in its use in the English language, and which is "perhaps the most complex word in the language", according to Raymond Williams in his Keywords, even surpassing the complexity of the use of the term "culture".
This is the result of a search on Google for images of nature, where the algorithms come up with the following in an implied hierarchy, arranged from left to right, and beginning with beautiful, then photography, wallpaper, flower, green, landscape, drawing and ending in this screenshot with "waterfall".
This matrix of images and concepts reflects back to us more of what we might term "culture" than what scientifically we might understand as "nature". The fact that "photography" comes after "beautiful" underlines the notion that, as Marshall McLuhan rightly observes in Counterblast, that photography, along with cinema, substitutes itself for realism. It is a non-verbal language.
Only one of the images in the screenshot above contains a human being, an image that is being used to illustrate a study on how being in the countryside boosts wellbeing, supporting an article that asks "How much nature do we need?" This question, in lock-down mode, is entirely relevant and topical, but also has a cultural history that goes back to Romanticism and its occasional celebration of "nature" over "humanity".
This well-known and especially Romantic masterpiece was described by the historian John Lewis Gaddis
as leaving a contradictory impression, "suggesting at once mastery over
a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it. We see
no face, so it's impossible to know whether the prospect facing the
young man is exhilarating, or terrifying, or both."
"High mountains are a feeling - The hum of human cities torture"
As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics
Here are some extracts from the article:
Tip of the iceberg
“Pathogens do not respect species boundaries,” says disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, an associate professor in Emory University’s department of environmental sciences, who studies how shrinking natural habitats and changing behaviour add to the risk of diseases spilling over from animals to humans.
“I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak,” he says. “The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg.”
Humans, says Gillespie, are creating the conditions for the spread of diseases by reducing the natural barriers between host animals – in which the virus is naturally circulating – and themselves. “We fully expect the arrival of pandemic influenza; we can expect large-scale human mortalities; we can expect other pathogens with other impacts. A disease like Ebola is not easily spread. But something with a mortality rate of Ebola spread by something like measles would be catastrophic,” Gillespie says.
Wildlife everywhere is being put under more stress, he says. “Major landscape changes are causing animals to lose habitats, which means species become crowded together and also come into greater contact with humans. Species that survive change are now moving and mixing with different animals and with humans.”
“There’s misapprehension among scientists and the public that natural ecosystems are the source of threats to ourselves. It’s a mistake. Nature poses threats, it is true, but it’s human activities that do the real damage. The health risks in a natural environment can be made much worse when we interfere with it,” he says.
Ostfeld points to rats and bats, which are strongly linked with the direct and indirect spread of zoonotic diseases. “Rodents and some bats thrive when we disrupt natural habitats. They are the most likely to promote transmissions [of pathogens]. The more we disturb the forests and habitats the more danger we are in,” he says.
The market connection
Disease ecologists argue that viruses and other pathogens are also likely to move from animals to humans in the many informal markets that have sprung up to provide fresh meat to fast-growing urban populations around the world. Here, animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold on the spot.
“Wet markets make a perfect storm for cross-species transmission of pathogens,” says Gillespie. “Whenever you have novel interactions with a range of species in one place, whether that is in a natural environment like a forest or a wet market, you can have a spillover event.”
“The wet market in Lagos is notorious. It’s like a nuclear bomb waiting to happen. But it’s not fair to demonise places which do not have fridges. These traditional markets provide much of the food for Africa and Asia,” says Jones.
“It is wild animals rather than farmed animals that are the natural hosts of many viruses,” they write. “Wet markets are considered part of the informal food trade that is often blamed for contributing to spreading disease. But … evidence shows the link between informal markets and disease is not always so clear cut.”
Changing behaviour
So what, if anything, can we do about all of this?
Jones says that change must come from both rich and poor societies. Demand for wood, minerals and resources from the global north leads to the degraded landscapes and ecological disruption that drives disease, she says. “We must think about global biosecurity, find the weak points and bolster the provision of health care in developing countries. Otherwise we can expect more of the same,” she adds.
“The risks are greater now. They were always present and have been there for generations. It is our interactions with that risk which must be changed,” says Brian Bird, a research virologist at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine One Health Institute, where he leads Ebola-related surveillance activities in Sierra Leone and elsewhere.
“We are in an era now of chronic emergency,” Bird says. “Diseases are more likely to travel further and faster than before, which means we must be faster in our responses. It needs investments, change in human behaviour, and it means we must listen to people at community levels.”
Getting the message about pathogens and disease to hunters, loggers, market traders and consumers is key, Bird says. “These spillovers start with one or two people. The solutions start with education and awareness. We must make people aware things are different now. I have learned from working in Sierra Leone with Ebola-affected people that local communities have the hunger and desire to have information,” he says. “They want to know what to do. They want to learn.”
Fevre and Tacoli advocate rethinking urban infrastructure, particularly within low-income and informal settlements. “Short-term efforts are focused on containing the spread of infection,” they write. “The longer term – given that new infectious diseases will likely continue to spread rapidly into and within cities – calls for an overhaul of current approaches to urban planning and development.”
The bottom line, Bird says, is to be prepared. “We can’t predict where the next pandemic will come from, so we need mitigation plans to take into account the worst possible scenarios,” he says. “The only certain thing is that the next one will certainly come.”
