Academics: Don't be Social Media Twits

I first joined Twitter some two and a half years ago following a course I attended on research leadership. (Crucible Cymru if you are interested @welshcrucible )  One of the sessions was on academic use of social media.  I had used Facebook previously and although I had never really engaged with the platform I had found it useful for research purposes, particularly for staying in contact with research participants. During the presentation on Twitter one of the other course attendees turned to me and said “Twitter is for idiots who just like the sound of their own voice and have got nothing to say” and that made me think it was probably a well suited medium for academics.

When I first started using Twitter I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, particularly when it came to Tweeting myself.  I really didn’t know what to say or how to say it, 140 characters is quiet alien to the academic school of writing which valorises wordiness over brevity.  My intention when I first signed up was to use it mainly for academic interests, finding out about other research and publicising my own, as reflected by my use of Twitter name @DrNostromo.  

It didn’t take me long however to find out that Twitter was a very powerful tool for engagement and engagement with various audiences.  As I have built up my followers I have been lucky enough to link with some leading academics in my field such as Graham Scambler (@GrahamScambler) and Peter Beresford (@BeresfordPeter ) and at the click of a button I can interact with them if there might be some issue I want to discuss.  On the other hand I can just as easily interact with other “ordinary” people whose opinion and take on events I also value, such as  @devine__ a young woman living in the north of England who works as a waitress and in childcare and @EastAnglear who works as a volunteer in a Citizens Advice Bureau and daily deals with the impact of recent government policies on the lives of everyday people.  Twitter is a great leveller in this respect, unlike journals or other forms of publishing all you need to get your voice heard on Twitter is access to a mobile phone or a computer.

I can just imagine that there are some of my academic colleagues reading this huffing and puffing and rolling their eyes and thinking to themselves  “ well why should I possibly want to engage with such people, what use would it be to my research, what use would it be to my career?” I’ve got no real answer to that question but when I was asked to write this short piece I asked my Twitter followers what they felt I should say and what was their opinion of academic Tweeters. One of the best observations came from @ItstartswithBee who tweeted “many an academic speaks excellent academia but poor layman and humanity.” For many a layman the world of academia is a remote and mysterious one and in relation to day to day activity is more often than not an irrelevance.  I don’t  think academia is an irrelevance or should be thought of as one but unless academics engage as academics in the growing social media discourse through the likes of Twitter and Blogging I fear that they will increasingly be viewed as such.  

March 2014

Understanding Life, Death and Ill Health on Benefits Street

The health of the people in economically disadvantaged (poor) communities in south Wales as elsewhere is relatively poor, and inequalities in health between the most and least disadvantaged are wide and getting wider.  This issue has been the focus of considerable academic debate since the 1980s and inequality, including health inequality, is now regarded more widely as the issue that the UK is facing. Health inequalities are some of the most basic inequalities, there is probably no starker inequality than being alive or dead. The consequences of this poor health are, as I have said, premature death but also long-term disability, and exclusion from economy and society. An example of these health inequalities in South Wales can be seen in the example  of the Cwm Taf health board area, which includes the former iron town of Merthyr Tydfil and the former coal producing area of Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT).  These two areas rank as worst overall in Wales for poor health, as measured by life expectancy, healthy life-expectancy and disability-free life expectancy. 

The term ‘deprivation’ disguises many different realities and conceals the strengths and assets which many of these communities contain.  Such communities therefore represent considerable and different challenges for social and economic development and health and welfare policy.  The greatest determinant of health is socio-economic inequalities which further contributes to the further widening of those inequalities. People find themselves unable to work, or able to work only at considerably reduced levels because of long-term ill-health and disability; and their wider participation in society is restricted.   In parts of the Cwm Taf area, situated within a classic well over 30 per cent of the population are living in poverty, on official definitions, and, as of 2009-10, 19 per cent of the population of RCT and almost 23 percent of the population of Merthyr Tydfil were claiming employment-related benefits.
   
A Message From Merthyr

As a case study of some of the issues faced by these communities on the northern outskirts of Merthyr Tydfil there is an area of known as the ‘Gurnos’.  The Gurnos was initially constructed during the late 1950s and early 1960s to re-house those displaced by ‘slum clearance’ of dwellings around the former iron works and was seen as a symbol of renewal and regeneration.  The estate continued to expand until the late 1970s but the loss of industrial production and rising levels of unemployment were followed by corresponding increases in social problems, such as crime, educational underachievement and substance misuse. Currently the estate comprises more than 2,500 council built properties.  Owner occupation is relatively low at 27.5 per cent and Gurnos is one of the most deprived electoral wards within an already deprived area of Wales.

Gurnos symbolises many of the issues facing communities where the traditional heavy industries that gave a sense of identity and pride have been replaced by low skilled, low wage often transient factory work. This has created a sense of inequality and injustice, exacerbated by the proximity of economically buoyant Cardiff, and other affluent areas along the M4 corridor. The social reality of the area is informed by a certain notoriety well beyond the immediate locality and residents are only too conscious of this as it can compound the difficulties many of them face.  This has engendered suspicion and cynicism, presenting difficulties for the development of research or health improvement projects led by people from outside the area.

While many of the big levers for health improvement lie outside Wales, in policies for the UK or Europe, at the level of locality, community cohesion can off-set some of the disadvantages created by inequalities in the wider economy and society . The complexity of problems in some of these communities is not easily understood and the problem with much community-targeted health initiatives is not that the communities are apathetic or worse seen as feckless but often community members are treated as if they are laboratory samples that need to have interventions done to them rather than conscious interpreters of their own situations who are rationally responding to the situations that they find themselves in.

It is important that any initiative which seeks to successfully address health inequalities in any poor areas understands and engages with the issues and barriers that people who belong to that community actually face.  As an example, a healthy eating initiative that simply tells community members that the need to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day has little chance of success unless it engages with an understanding of the barriers that may prevent community members achieving this, be they psychological, cultural or logistic.  

The “Battle” of Orgreave: the Peterloo of our times.

It started like any other June day and who was I to know that it would end with the death my hopes and aspirations for an organised working class for at least the next ten years.

At the time of the great miners dispute of 1984- 85 I was living in Sheffield.  I was there as a refugee from the worst effects of the early 80s recession in South Wales.  The miner’s strike had started and escalated around the March time of 1984 and already I had been involved in organising a number of benefit and support activities.  Coming from the mining area of South Wales and having two grandfathers who were miners I felt a strong sense of solidarity with the NUM, their members and the dispute.  I had also seen what the Thatcher Government had done to the steelworkers of Sheffield in 1980. I was under no doubt that the Tories being Tories were intent on ending the problem, as they saw it, of organised labour.

As I said the day started as any other June day.  My girlfriend at the time was working in Worksop which was in the Nottinghamshire coalfield area.  The news had gone round, god knows how in those pre internet, mobile phone and social media days, that there was to be a mass picket at the Orgreave plant on the outskirts of Sheffield on that day. I knew that a number of my colleagues from work were intending to attend the demonstration and that there were coach loads of miners coming from all over the country were coming as well. My intention was to drop my girlfriend off at work and then go to the demonstration.  At this point Nottinghamshire had not been turned into the fortress that it would later become with police road blocks on every road in and out of the county. Therefore the journey to Worksop was straightforward. As I was returning and nearing Sheffield  and the M1 I could see coaches of miners  pulling off the motorway  on to The Parkway road that led to Orgreave. At the time I had a blue Transit van that I used for my work.  I followed some distance behind the coaches toward the turn off for Orgreave. As the coaches took the turning in to Orgreave there was a strong police presence and as the coaches past by, the police moved like some blackened scaled lizard across to block the road.  As I tried to follow the coaches I was stopped by the police line.  I told them that I wanted to join the demonstration but was told in no uncertain terms to continue down the Parkway and that if I didn’t I would be arrested.

 I knew the area well and I thought as it is pointless trying to argue with the police to get through the police road block  I could take some of the back roads I knew around Catcliffe and get to Orgreave on foot across the fields.   However, when I got there it was obvious that the police had thought of that as well.  There were police everywhere and many with dogs and no matter which way I tried to get across the fields there were police there to turn me back.  From what I could see though there were police everywhere  with the pickets vastly outnumbered.  From what I saw that day the so called “Battle of Orgreave” was no battle at all but a straight forward planned ambush by the police on the miners with the distinct impression of teaching them a lesson.   I was still a tad young and naïve in those days and had been shocked in the first instance that the police had prevented me attending a demonstration. I was still stupid enough to believe that we lived in a free country where we were allowed to protest. Also that day I witnessed, and not for the last time during that year, what could only be described as wanton police violence toward the protestors.  From what I could tell these were not just the local South Yorkshire constabulary but police that had been drawn in from all over the country and with what looked like instructions to do a very specific job which they carried out with gusto.

I could see no purpose in me running around the Catcliffe fields so I returned to my van to drive home. As I drove home the heat of the summer’s day started to kick in.  I was confused, angry and shocked by what I had seen.  I remember pulling in to a lay by on the way home as my head was swimming with the emotions I had running through my head.  I had been stopped from attending what was a lawful and planned demonstration and threatened with arrest.  From what I had seen the miners arrived in good spirits but were then just led into a trap by the police where they were corralled, surrounded, charged with horses and then just beaten up.  Again not for the last time during this dispute I was torn apart by the deep injustice of what I had just seen. In my stupid naïve mind I was convinced that when the people of Britain found out about what had happened this day there would be a national outcry and the police would be disciplined for their behaviour, what a schmuck I was!!!

That evening in my flat I eagerly awaited the six o’clock news fully expecting the fair and trustworthy BBC to recount the horrors that I had seen that day.  I looked on in disgust and dismay as the news reports painted a picture of rioting out of control miners attacking the police who valiantly fought back in order to restore law and order to this mindless rabble.  The news reports left you in no doubt that if you had any sympathy for this bunch of mindless vandals led by that raving loon Scargill you too must be part of this “enemy within”.  Later it emerged that these news reports had run some of the footage in reverse, “inadvertently” as the BBC later claimed.  The worst thing was over the coming weeks and months so many people bought it.  Many people who maybe didn’t particularly think of themselves as Tory supporters but just “right thinking” or “sensible” just bought in to the lie, hook, line and sinker that these militant miners were out of control and that sensible Maggie was being reasonable. Not the reality that this vanguard of the working class were fighting for their jobs, their families and their communities and the right of ordinary working people to have some say in the way that this country is run.

Following that fateful day at Orgreave ninety-five picketers were charged with riot, unlawful assembly and similar offences. A number of these were put on trial in 1987, therefore having to  endure two years of stress and uncertainty, but the trials collapsed, all charges were dropped and a number of lawsuits were brought against the police for assault, unlawful arrest and malicious prosecution. South Yorkshire Police later agreed to pay £425,000 compensation and £100,000 in legal costs to 39 pickets in an out of court settlement. Nevertheless, no officers have ever been disciplined for misconduct. Michael Mansfield the noted QC described the evidence given by South Yorkshire Police as "the biggest frame-up ever".    

   

Some of the younger readers of this might say ah well this was in the past this would never happen now.  Move on old man the world is very different now.  I would love to say that were the case but beware the arrogance of youth. Working class history is never taught in our schools.  We are always told what great states people Churchill and Thatcher were, but the real great people of this country  are ordinary working people, they are the ones who really make this nation. Peterloo in Manchester in 1819  http://bit.ly/1e0ZFES  is an example of how this is not the first time working people have been charged by horses for standing up for their rights.  There are also lessons for us today to be learned from what happened that day in Orgreave.  A couple of years ago I was in London when the UK Uncut group peacefully occupied Fortnum and Masons and as if to prove that old adage “history repeats itself, first time as tragedy second time as farce” the police went in heavy handed and arrested a load of mainly youngsters for what appeared to be no other purpose than to intimidate them  and “teach them a lesson” about protesting in the future.  I was inspired by those young people  and again angry at the injustice that they suffered just for wanting to protest at injustice in the UK and to have their voices heard, is that so much to ask for??.  Those who were attacked at Orgreave are still awaiting truth and justice and  we should all continue to seek it.  Both Orgreave and Fortnum and Masons have lessons for us all.  As I said at the beginning of this piece for me the hope for an organised working class died that June day in Orgreave, but then, as has happened so often in my life, I was wrong.  It did take me a long time to recover my hwyl (look it up) but I did get it back eventually but as the inspiration I took from the occupation of Fortnum and Masons showed me we are never really defeated until we get to the point where we stop trying.

Don’t believe what I saw with my own eyes?  Looks like other people saw the same as well. http://bit.ly/1jJa5tW

This is my truth, tell me yours.

"Newspeak" 1984: The Miner's Dispute and me

I remember New Year’s Day 1984 very well.  At the time I was working at the Leadmill in Sheffield http://bit.ly/1dIwckq which was a mixture of a community / arts centre and a live music venue.  Many of us who were involved in the place were part of the “alternative” activist scene as it were.  Among the milieu that used to hang round the place there was a certain Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley with his band Treebound Story and Henry Normal all of whom would go on to have illustrious careers in the entertainment industry and all of us would later collaborate in establishing the Dolebusters Music Festival in Weston Park Sheffield  http://bit.ly/1aDtEhw    as our way of protesting at the worst excesses of Thatcherism.  But I digress and the tale of Dolebusters might be for another blog entry.  On New Year’s eve of that year we had had an George Orwell 1984 themed party at the Leadmill along with our very own room 101; how were we to know at the time that this theme of our worst nightmares was about to come true as the year unfolded.

I had already been living in Sheffield for some five years then.  I had relocated there from South Wales in the late 1970s.  When I had left Wales coal mining was still a dominant industry.  Many of my school friends had taken apprenticeships in the pits when they had left school and both my grandfathers had been colliers working in local pits around the Merthyr Tydfil area.  I was aspirational though, not for me staying in The Valleys and going down pit.  From when I had been a kid I was determined to get out one way or another. Pneumoconiosis, or dust, had killed my one grandfather before I was born and a persistent memory of my childhood was of elderly ex coalminers stooped puffing , wheezing  and wrestling for every piece of breath as they paused clutching their chests and hanging on to the hand-rails on Twyn hill for support. http://bit.ly/1jmtEZ6  Also I had grown up just outside Aberfan http://bit.ly/17buxSr  and the day of the disaster and its aftermath were seared deeply into who I was and who I wanted to be and part of that was leaving the coal mines and the valleys far behind me. 

     

Although keen to get out of the valleys I was still proud to be a product of the land that had made me. Earlier in my life I had encountered the late great historian Gwyn “Alf” Williams who the following year was to take part in that ground-breaking documentary on Welsh History “The Dragon Has Two Tongues”.  He  had inspired me to be proud of a heritage that consisted of the Merthyr uprising,  the Tonypandy Miners and the legacy of Keir Hardy, a legacy of co-operation, socialism and radicalism.  The triumph of Thatcher in 1979 and the communal jingoistic madness that had besieged the country in 1982 during the Falklands War just reinforced my view that this model of a xenophobic, isolationist, individualistic and materially greedy British society was not a good one and certainly not one that I wanted to buy into.

Time plays tricks on memory  but looking back on it now it was obvious the show down was coming. It had only been ten years previously that a miner’s strike had brought down the Tory Government of Edward Heath something that evidently irked Thatcher.  In 1981 she had backed down from a confrontation with the miners but by 1984 buoyed up by her victory in the Falklands and having had time to make her preparations and formulate her strategy she was ready to do battle with the one last great leviathan of the organised working class, the NUM.  Prior to the dispute already the media were playing their insidious game of portraying Arthur Scargill as an untrustworthy loon.  Recent revelations have shown that everything that Scargill was saying was true even though at the time Ian MacGregor the head of British Coal wrote to every miner in the UK to discredit what Scargill was saying in relation to pit closures http://on.fb.me/LMshrh .  When you see that the truth has finally come out about the MacGregor hit list and the lies that were spread by Roger Windsor if any man deserves an apology from the UK  It is Arthur Scargill.  He fought for what he believed in and for his members’ best interests and for that he was vilified, arrested and harassed.  Think about the case of Arthur Scargill and how the truth is finally coming out after thirty years when you try to make your mind up about events that are currently in the public eye.  If a democracy is to operate as a democracy then it is necessary for citizens to have access to information so they can make informed decisions when they are voting, but as the miner’s strike of 1984 – 85 illustrated Orwell predictions of “Newspeak” came true and most terrifyingly in a way that most people, even to this day, are not even aware of.

The Idea of a University

There have been some articles in the past few days about how the elite Russell group of UK universities are still a very difficult place for the more disadvantaged in society to access. http://bbc.in/1bMtdS8   As someone who comes from a poor background and works in a Russell group university I have been prompted to write this blog based on my own journey to my current career.

Some of the more erudite among you will realise that the title of this post is derived from a talk/ lecture, paper by that noted Catholic academic theologian Cardinal John Newman. There are I believe some fantastic ideas expounded in that series but I am no Cardinal Newman and what I wanted to do here is just lay out and discuss some of my own thoughts and ideas about the University system in the UK at the moment. Why I wanted to write this piece is as I go about my day to day activities and come in to contact with various people I find that there are some strange ideas out there about the University sector is and what Universities actually do.

Generally in the UK it is said that the Universities have three missions. Teaching, research and the mysterious third mission.  Exactly what this third mission is not as easy to describe as the relatively straight forward first two but it has something to do with the involvement of universities with society. Sometimes the terms outreach and engagement are used in relation to this sort of activity. To illustrate this with my own working load model as I work at a research institute most of my work involves research but occasionally I do teach mainly as a guest lecturer. In addition, almost on a voluntary basis, I work with a number of community groups /  agencies and charities in a mainly advisory capacity and I see that as an aspect of fulfilling my third mission activity.

In relation to the wider UK University sector the situation is not that straight forward.  Although over the past thirty years we have seen a massive increase in the amount of people accessing HE at the same time it has to be said that not all Universities have been created equal. For instance back in the 1970s -80s you had Universities and Polytechnics and then in 1992 under John Major’s Government  many of the Polytechnics and Higher Education colleges became “New Universities”.  However, simply allowing these institutions to have the same name does not mean that they are the same type of institution.  Over these past twenty years institutions have developed in to at times being teaching Universities or research Universities. For example in 1994 the Russell Group of the top 20+ research universities was formed.  These Russell group Universities receive approximately three quarters of all research grants in the UK.

Therefore, even with this exponential growth the sector is far from a level playing field. The Universities who do not get so much research funding are also therefore more dependent on their income on student fees so recruitment, retention and marketing is a key concern for them.  In that period of time, between 1993 and 2010 in the UK the percentage of people with a University degree has gone from 12% to 25% . Of course this has increased competition between graduates for posts and again unsurprisingly all degrees are not equal.  I was recently talking to a recruiter for a London based technology company who told me that they are so overwhelmed for applications for graduate level jobs that their first sifting process for reducing the number of applications they consider is taking out all the applications that do not have a 2.i or a First class degree from a Russell group University!!!  Now that does strike me at somewhat harsh but I suppose that is just the reality of the sector response to market forces.  While it is still the case that generally if you have a degree  you will have a higher salary, the market is very competitive out there these days and it is not just having a degree but what degree you have.

The reason that I am recounting these changes in the higher education system over the past twenty years is with this expansion of the sector the market is becoming increasingly difficult to understand and as is always seems to be the case those who know how to play it are doing better under the system.  When I went to University in my late 30s as a mature student over ten years ago now( how that came about should be another posting) I didn’t understand these differences between universities and the main reason that I went to the one that I did, which was a “good” university but not one that was considered among the top flight, was simply that it was on my doorstep. Now that the market has increased with a lot more University places on offer and the possibility of graduates  coming out with debts of £27,000 it is those with a better knowledge of how the system works who can most benefit from it, as it always has been. 

As is always the case the rich and well connected know the system and know how to play it.  You only have to look at senior figures in the government, business, judiciary and academia and their backgrounds to realise that.  If the UK were in fact in anyway a meritocracy would we have so many Eton and the like old boys (and it is mainly boys) in positions of power?  The working classes account for some 37% of the UK population while university recruitment from the working classes is 32.5%. That throughout the whole sector while for Oxford and Cambridge it is not much over 10%. Just in general within the Russell group recruitment from the working class (whatever that means in this day and age of under and unemployment) is below average.    

The exclusion of the poor from the higher education sector is further compounded when you realise that within this categorisation of the working classes the long term unemployed are not counted. So the figures seem to indicate that for the poorer that are going to University they are not reaching the so called “elite” institutions with the corresponding increased opportunity for a future career.

So who is to blame for this situation? Is it the Russell group, is it the schools, Is it the universities in general, is it the government.  Is it the poor because of their lack of aspiration and unwillingness to challenge the system?  My own view on this is to quote the old sociologist joke. (And goodness knows I am an old sociologistL)

Q: How many sociologists does it take to change a light bulb?

A: There’s nothing wrong with the light bulb it is the whole system which is at fault. :-)  

A Blue Flag With Yellow Stars

I was recently asked to contribute to a current affairs programme on the BBC Wales (The Wales Report) looking at:

• 1/ under employment  in South Wales and
• 2/ the ramifications of the UK leaving  the European Union (EU). 

I was more than happy to contribute particularly in relation to the continued membership of the EU by the UK as it never ceases to amaze me as I go about my daily life the amount of people that I come across who are just generally antagonistic to the EU and the European project in general.  Particularly for residents of the South Wales Valleys I really don’t understand it!!!  When people say “Well what has the EU ever done for us?” I just say look around you.  How often do you see building projects  or other initiatives badged with that little blue flag with yellow stars? Are people blind?

Considering we are one of the poorer areas of Europe our towns and cities and our roads are in remarkably good condition and a significant element of that is related to EU funding.  I really don’t want to get into the minutiae but initiatives such as the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)and the European Social Fund (ESF) have ploughed billions of money into the Welsh economy for over ten years.  Now I don’t want to make out that everything is rosy in the European funding garden, far from it.  Considering the length of time that particularly The Valleys  and West Wales have been eligible for the highest level of Objective One/ Convergence funding it could be argued that not as much has been achieved as might have been.  Broadly I would agree with that argument, however I also believe there are a number of different factors that have conspired to make that the case.  It is too simplistic and easy to blame bad management of the programme and projects, as some have.  True, there has probably been an element of this but I believe that the issues are far deeper and more complex.

Over the years I have been involved in, in one way or another with a number of European funded projects  and it has always struck me one; how difficult it is to get the money in the first place and two the amount of bureaucracy involved in running such initiatives  that comes via the European bureaucracy such as the Welsh European Funding Office (WEFO).  This beaucracy in particular is incredibly risk averse and because of this it stifles any innovation or flexibility in project delivary.  This might be all very well and good if we are talking about building a road but is not conducive to a successful outcome if an initiative is trying to identify and implement strategies to assist people in accessing employment.  The whole system seems weighted against any form of innovation or change of project delivery.  All the bureaucracy seems interested in is ensuring targets are met even if things change and they are the wrong targets.

One can point to the easy targets such as the £6.1M of EU money that went to the likes of AWEMA

or my own  personal bugbear the anachronistic Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)   but the reality of the situation is unsurprisingly that things are a lot more complicated than that.  If the UK were to leave the EU and Wales lose European funding I am convinced it would make a palpable impact on the people of Wales. It has been estimated that 200,000 Welsh jobs are directly or indirectly linked to membership of the EU.  In a nation of a little over 3 million that is an awful lot of jobs.  More fundamentally EU funding has been used to improve and support some of those very basic things in life that we often just take for granted and don’t notice but make all the difference to our quality of life.  At its most basic Europe has experienced a fantastically long period of peace.  Historically the continent has been blighted by wars precipitated by one “nation” or group conspiring to ensure that their interests or beliefs are adhered to rather than the wider interests of the people of the continent .  I know that it may be a little far fetched to argue that this period of European peace is simply down to the EU but it must be said that these days disagreements are resolved via debate in places like Brussels rather than in train carriages in woods following years of bloody battles.

Peace is something that many of us take for granted as it is something that we have known all our lives, in a relatively short period of time it seems many have come to take for granted  something that our parent, grandparents and great grandparents yearned for.  On top of that those little things that we can enjoy during peace time such as meeting friends and having a coffee in a smart town centre, having a picnic in a pleasant park or taking our children or grand children for a swim in a municipal pool.  It is these little things that make all the difference to our lived lives and to those of us who live in Wales just open your eyes and have a look around you and notice how often projects and initiatives tht are improving these basic pleasures have a little blue flag with yellow stars.

For a good Blog post on Wales and the EU have a look at: http://bit.ly/11OUXja 

Dr Nostromo

 9^thJune2013

Remember the Children of Oradour-sur-Glane

I do not normally watch the “topical debate” TV which is on on a Sunday morning but this morning for some strange reason I did.  Tony Blair was on the programme, the former Labour Prime Minister of the UK.  While not a massive fan of the man due to his Iraq  policies and various other reasons he is probably the Labour Prime Minister that I have had the most time for during my life time and when the interview came round to the topic of the European Union I found myself agreeing  with everything he said.

As I have said before many in the UK unfortunately are reluctant Europeans and we have suffered for it in the past and unless we change our attitude toward The Union I fear we will suffer for it in the future. There does seem to be in the UK very little stomach for the European project with the general feeling “what’s in it for us”.

I would have thought that one very quick look at history might at the very least give a hint as to what use the EU has been to the people of Europe.  Just cursory look through the pages of wars in Europe (http://bit.ly/WBy0PE ) would show that post 1945, particularly Western Europe, has been relatively conflict free.  From its nascent beginnings at the post war 1948 Hague Conference surely this co-operation between the nations of Europe has contributed to this long period of relative peace.

Europe the continent has produced some amazing achievements, but the blight of the continent has been conflict and war. Throughout the various European countries towns like Pisa, Arras, Exeter, Swansea, Coventry, Dresden and Berlin, among others,  have paid a terrible price not just in the precious lives of their inhabitants but also in the destruction of culture, history and the ethereal soul of those communities that many are still struggling to recover from.

While it is true that  towns on the UK mainland such as Coventry, Plymouth and London experienced extensive bombing and human misery but many towns and cities of mainland Europe experienced the sheer trauma of occupation and often the accompanying atrocities. If in any doubt just think what happened in Oradour-sur-Glane and that was just one town in one war.  The history of European war is unfortunately littered with such stories.