Telling

Middle class revival?

I was in the Sunday Times last Sunday commenting on a "middle class revival". An advertising agency have produced a report pointing to an increase in the popularity of etiquette guides and tea shops (!) I thought it highly tenuous in terms of the evidence and came across like just another opportunity for chav bating (see previous post). My contribution states that people are still embarrassed to be described as middle class.

Bog problems

As a loyal user of public transport I have always held the belief that the people who complain the most about public transport are those who don’t use it. I never learned to drive and consequently all my fieldwork is conducted by rail, bus, taxi and walking. I’ve usually found this to be surprisingly efficient. Next week I plan to visit Finchley, Newbury, Eastleigh, Winchester, Croydon, Leatherhead and Stoke and I’m fairly optimistic about arriving everywhere on time.

So, it’s not like me to complain about public transport, but I did recently have the most odious experience on a GNER train back from Birmingham. I don’t want to go into too many details but almost all of the toilets were out of order and there was the most heinous smell permeating through the train. I was disgusted enough to complain to head office and received a £5 rail voucher for my trouble. I had forgotten about the matter, but I was horrified to discover via this blog that toilet trouble on trains has been chronic throughout the summer and is particularly bad on the new rolling stock. Those new Pendolino trains really are awful. The booking systems never work, the seats are uncomfortable and the serve yourself shop is confusing. I also finally found out what the highly annoying repetitive “beep beep beep” noise is on the trains. There is an emergency button in the toilets which looks very like the “lock door” button and some unsuspecting toilet-goers press it trying to lock the door. I strongly suspect the train companies didn’t do any consumer research whilst designing these trains.

Search the cemetery (dot com)

What is the value of the environment around us? Many green spaces have suffered from being undervalued, or simply not valued at all, because they are dismissed as externalities in economic calculations. Some environmentalists feel that green and wild space is priceless and should be cordoned off from mankind, whilst others increasingly believe that green space must demonstrate value in order to be conserved. The concept of value is creating some interest in policy circles, with "public value" proving a way of discussing how different kinds of value – aesthetic, educational, economic and community – can be measured and taken more explicitly into account in decision making.

So a key technique for environmentalists should be to taken different kinds of hidden value and make them more visible. My latest ploy is create a new form of educational value around my local (disused) cemetery which also acts as a mini-nature reserve in an urban area. I plan to create a website with each headstone linked to the census record of that individual whilst they were still alive. Spooky, but it would create a new kind of educational value around the green space, particularly as the cemetery is right by the school. Organisations like the Heritage Lottery Fund are increasingly demanding evidence of educational value in distribution of funds to small projects like this one.  Possibly doesn't have the same scope as say, err Friends Reunited, but could break new ground in the small world of cemetery enthusiasts...