The worst thing about poverty is how deeply and unexpectedly it affects lives. When we begin to list that indicate poverty we think of a lack of food, a safe place to live, work, education, maybe at a most basic level of description: money. But, for me, it is the way that poverty deeply erodes some of the less obvious and yet fundamental aspects of life, that is the hardest and saddest thing to accept. (more…)
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Bertrand Russell
Poverty in the UK, or ‘relative poverty’, has achieved a general consensus amongst the political class and inspired a new narrative based on life chances, social mobility and ending child poverty. (more…)
The traditional discourse on the alleviation of poverty has always focused on what governments can do to eradicate or minimise the effects of poverty on their population or on populations across the world. Wikepedia estimates that approximately 1/2 of the world’s population suffers from poverty which indicates that it is a huge problem that needs co-ordinated government action. (more…)
One of the issues surrounding poverty, cited in research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is lack of media exposure; non-news broadcasts rarely mentions the subject, and when they do they tend to focus on extreme cases.
There’s an apparently easy response to that: the internet. The resources are there now to bypass - even influence - traditional media.
There are two obstacles though. (more…)
The other night I went to Education Unbound 2008, a debate on ‘how social technologies are blurring formal and informal learning‘. The panel comprised Dan Sutch (Futurelab), David Noble (Hillside School, Fife), Andy Gibson (School of Everything) and Catherine Howell (Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies). It was chaired by Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor at Channel 4.
As a 50.0 year-old I’m not particularly attuned to the finer points of web 2, so this took a while to assimilate, but some points stuck out that were particularly significant for citizenship. (more…)
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