Sefton Park, this gently misty Spring morning
9 April: It was a lovely quiet, misty morning, very calm and peaceful; but there’s something just down here which isn’t quite what it seems… No worries! Everything is fine…
R.I.P. Jo Cox MP
Today, 15 July 2016, marks the funeral of Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen who was murdered on 16th June whilst carrying out her constituency duties. Jo Cox was a serious and committed Labour politician, previously a humanitarian worker. She was also the mother of very young children. Nothing can make this awful loss better, but I was very touched that a good friend from Mauritius, who for many years made his home in the UK, sent me this poem to share our grief and belief in goodness above all else.
Here is Daniel Labonne’s poem:
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), Britain’s Foremost Black Classical Composer: The Centenary Legacy
Just a few days after this year’s Slavery Remembrance Day, on 23 August, we mark also the centenary legacy of the black British music composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who died one hundred years ago, on 1 September 1912.
What follows is a version of the article which, as Executive Chair of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation, I posted on the Huffington Post UK website to acknowledge this significant milestone.
To read more about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s legacy, or to comment, please visit Hilary’s professional website here, or the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation website, here.
Saving Water, Saving Lives ~ WaterAid’s Big Dig And Fundraising Continues
Perhaps you’ve had a holiday this summer in a nice hotel (as I have!).
In that case you probably had a notice in your room from The Management, suggesting you might like to save water and other resources by not asking for new bedlinen every morning. Fair enough, it’s your choice one way or the other. But it does give pause for thought about how much water we all use, every day. So here are a few ideas about how that moment of reflection can give rise to positive action:
Could you find time on 15 September just to go for a walk, to help WaterAid?
To read more about WaterAid, or to comment, please visit Hilary’s professional website here.
Ed Miliband Is Concerned About Immigrant Workers; He Should Also Worry About Large, Wealthy Families And Dwindling Resources
Rick of Flip Chart Fairy Tales has written a very thoughtful piece about Ed Miliband’s recent speech on ‘ordinary’ people’s concerns around so-called immigrant workers. Miliband and Rick are right that this needs to be discussed openly, not least to encourage responsible debate. But I have suggested in a response to Rick’s blogpost that there’s also another dimension to be factored in, viz, population in the demographic sense, and the economic / resource demands especially of large, wealthy indigenous families.
To read more of this article and to comment, please visit Hilary’s political website here.
Beating The Safe Water Deadline In Rural Malawi: WaterAid’s ‘Big Dig’
One of the most memorable stories I ever heard was from a civil engineer who was asked about the achievement of which he was most proud. He immediately said it was being invited to first turn on the tap which he had installed to deliver clean running water to an African village where there had previously been no supply. And now Water Aid has decided to share in real time their account of an even more ambitious project in Malawi, set against demanding deadlines…
To read more of this article and to comment, please visit Hilary’s professional website here.
Liverpool’s Hope Street Celebrates The Queen’s Jubilees And The 2012 Olympics
Hope Street in Liverpool has long been a place for celebrations.
The street, deservedly famed for its music and theatre, links Liverpool’s two cathedrals north-to-south, and its universities and colleges, east-to-west. It is inevitable therefore both that the Queen should visit Hope Street many times – not least in 1977 for her Silver Jubilee – and that the Olympic torch should be paraded along Hope Street (today, 1 June) as part of its three month tour of the UK before finally reaching the 2012 London Olympiad.
Shaping The Future (North West Wales)
I was pleased recently to be invited to become an Ambassador for the Shaping the Future programme in North West Wales. This programme aims to ‘put human potential at the heart of regional development’ – an aim with which I immediately felt aligned; as I did also with the intention to create sustainable economic diversity by encouraging skills development, with retraining and redeployment for the highly-skilled employees of the Wylfa and Trawsynydd nuclear power sites as their careers are threatened by decommissioning.
To read more of this article and to comment, please visit Hilary’s professional website here.
The Spirit Level Documentary Film Campaign
The Spirit Level, a book by Professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, has already had a profound effect on the debate about equality (or the lack of it) in modern societies; and now the printed page is to be followed by a documentary film. The money is needed very soon. Given the significance of this timely development in the equality debate, I have attached below the message inviting interest, received today from the Equality Trust, an organisation set up by Wilkinson and Pickett. Do support this venture in any way you can.
To read more of this article and to comment, please visit Hilary’s professional website here.
Understanding How The Pakistani Community in Blackburn Relates To Public And Private Institutions
Blackburn on a Saturday afternoon… and an invitation to join discussions with business, mosque and council leaders from the Pakistani community, as the Insight Out project comes to an end, with dedicated time to face outwards and engage additional concerned citizens. It was a wide-ranging, open-hearted debate about what Pakistani heritage Blackburn residents might do to improve the outlook for both their own and their neighbours’ communities. The move towards real action, I sensed, has begun.
To read more of this article and to comment, please visit Hilary’s professional website here.
Dreaming Realist 