#BalhamOrTooting – a consultation exercise

www.BalhamOrTooting.org.uk
(see bottom of this post for the full website)

Crossrail 2 is the next of London's infrastructure megaprojects – it's a new underground railway line that will run north/south across the city, and relieve the Northern line and railways running though Clapham Junction. It'll take nearly 20 years to deliver, with the first trains estimated to be running around 2030. But it will transform large parts of London – including my patch, Wandsworth, which despite being in Zones 2 & 3 has poor connections into Central London (and partly explains why we have such high levels of cyclists).

The new line has included a station at Tooting Broadway since the route was initially put out to consultation in 2013. A station in Tooting makes a lot of sense as it's at the bottom of the Northern Line, and the area is ripe for regeneration: improving transport connections will unlock new housing.

My friend Dan Watkins – the Conservative candidate in the 2015 General Election – has led a strong campaign to put Tooting on the Crossrail 2 map, so when we found out last month that Transport for London was considering moving the station to Balham we decided to launch a campaign to engage the local population and see if there was support for a campaign to keep the dream of Crossrail 2 at Tooting Broadway alive.

Normally the Wandsworth modus operandi would be to do a combination of door-to-door petitions and email out a link to a Survey Monkey site. This time I suggested we did something different, so my friend Ben Guerin (an ace web developer) got to work on building a website aimed at raising awareness that there was a choice between the Balham and Tooting routes. I designed the graphics and finessed the text. We haven't spent any money on social media advertising.

First social media graphic

Second social media graphic

TfL produced a great map for the consultation

I also designed a leaflet that was delivered to all homes within walking distance of the stations – and at early morning raids on our local tube stations. The effort to get tens of thousands of leaflets delivered in the space of a week was immense – so well done Dan and team on the ground.

DL-sized leaflet

Dan's dodgy photography – something I can't do from the other side of the world!

And of course Dan followed up with local residents who signed the petition.



The results have shown strong support for the station at Tooting Broadway – which is unsurprising given that Balham is a lot more gentrified, and two stops closer to Central London on the Northern Line. Tooting will have to endure a more intrusive construction phase, but the benefits are much, much greater.

What I did find interesting is how support for Tooting Broadway extended in the areas close to Balham station – I used to live in the Heaver Estate area and would walk to Balham if I was catching the tube into town. A station at Tooting Broadway will see some people from Balham and Tooting Bec travel southwards, so perhaps these results are not that surprising after all.

Here's the infographic I produced which summarised the results. I also produced a version for social media (this required slightly different formatting). I love data – so laying this out was a real treat.



The campaign also helped raise the profile of Dan's work in the community, particularly around Tooting Broadway, where Labour has been historically strongest. I was surprised that local MP Sadiq Khan was so slow off the mark – after all, it's a crucial issue for the future of Tooting. Others noticed this too...

We're thrilled with the results, with a substantial majority of the 2500 people signing the survey living in Tooting. It's helped engage people with Crossrail 2's more detailed consultation – having filled out a number of these I know they're usually the domain of the more determined. And that's the point about politics, right? Yes we need politicians to champion causes, but change happens when whole communities are engaged and mobilised.

Tooting responses

Here's the full website:

The full website (background image stretched to render entire length of page)

Yvette Cooper needs to do more than just talk about Nordic models

Britain’s Left has been indulging in worship of Scandinavian social democracy ever since the tide started ebbing on the New Labour project, most recently on prostitution reform and the SNP’s vision for an independent Scotland. Thinking wistfully of Borgen beats the hard work of actually reinventing socialism, but I haven’t heard so much excited talk about the ‘Nordic Model’ since I was at school and Helena Christensen was practically everywhere. Happy memories indeed.

Last month Yvette Cooper announced that one of the pillars of her leadership bid would be childcare:

campaign[ing] for universal childcare – as other countries, including Scandinavia, have. That means breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, holiday clubs and free nursery places and childcare available full-time not just for three- and four-year-olds but two-year-olds too.

More details were promised, but I’ve waited… and waited. And to be honest if she has a hope in hell of becoming Labour’s leader she’ll keep shtum on her vision of Scandinavian childcare: a big part of the Nordic early years model is deregulation of politically sensitive things like childcare standards, and it would be a bold leadership bid that argued for loosening staff-to-child ratios. Indeed Nick Clegg engineered a high-profile coalition feud over this very issue in 2013.

Back then Labour criticised Liz Truss for putting ‘quality and safety at risk’ with her plans to allow greater flexibility in childcare ratios. Shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg said that ‘a childminder can have the very best qualifications, [but] they still only have one pair of hands’. The attack was clumsy and ideological; the government's proposals were ‘to allow nurseries to relax ratios only where they hire highly-qualified staff’ and bring us more in line with the northern European countries so admired by Cooper, where childminders cope perfectly well with more children than currently allowed in the UK.

International comparisons of national mandatory minimum staff:
child ratios for childminder care by child age (Gov.uk)

What Cooper has missed is that Nordic social democracy is distinctly pragmatic, with privatised railways, free schools and competitive selection for the Eurovision song contest. And the Scandinavian approach of light touch regulation with more children per adult allows people with better qualifications to be employed: the Institute of Education’s research unit describes Sweden and Denmark’s childcare provision as ‘characterised by high levels of staff training, involving at least 3 years education at a post-18 level’.

With parents empowered and free from government edicts, there can be innovation in childcare – another hallmark of the sector in the Nordic countries. Increased resources are needed, but UK expenditure on childcare is well above the OECD average and comparable to Holland. And most metrics suggest Dutch childcare is pretty good.

So if Yvette Cooper wants to lead her party back from the political wasteland she needs to engage with the nuts and bolts of childcare reform. Simply hoping her party members lap up talk of Scandinavia as a justification for spending money was an approach that was tested to destruction by Labour in the 2015 general election – and Cooper is no Birgitte Nyborg.

First published by Coffee House on June 9th, 2015

Four months of campaigning in Latchmere, AKA Operation 'Snatch the Latch'

I've had a few days to digest Wandsworth's 2014 borough elections – and my first time standing as a candidate. That in itself was hugely exciting as being able to tell someone that I will do my best is infinitely better than saying that I'm calling on behalf of John / Joanna Bloggs, who is / will be a great champion for their community, etc. It was a fun campaign, and I managed to get a few things done for people who were of the 'I'm not voting because you're all as bad as each other' persuasion - and hopefully changed their minds. But with a 35% turnout the reality is a lot of people just don't care about having their say in how the local council is run, which is a pity, as most of the services they use on a daily basis stem from the Town Hall rather than Westminster.

I was selected back in... February, I think? It seems like an age ago, but actually wasn't that long – and certainly not long enough to loosen the grip that Labour has on Latchmere, a ward that has never elected a Tory councillor – not even back in the days of 0% Poll Tax, when my friend Tim Loughton took Labour's majority down from 1500 to 300. Operation 'Snatch the Latch' was always a bit of a long shot. My result saw us hold our share of the vote at 2010 levels* (despite our government now sitting just behind Labour in the national polls), but I came fourth, just under 700 votes behind the last of Labour's three candidates. I campaigned hard, but it wasn't enough, and the sole consolation is knowing that we managed to tie down some of Labour's resources that would have otherwise gone to the neighbouring battleground ward where we squeaked in two councillors in a very tight contest.

There were some wonderful moments during the campaign. I made new friends, met people with fascinating stories and was occasionally distracted from canvassing long enough to make the process feel more like an exercise in getting to know a community than simply compiling a database on how people would vote. A woman told me about growing up in the slums that were cleared where the Winstanley Estate is now, and about how her grandfather remembered Battersea before it was heavily developed. Latchmere Road back then was simply a dirt track known as 'Pig Hill' and used as a route for taking livestock from Clapham Common to the market. One guy told me he'd be voting Tory because 'you don't solve a cost of living crisis by fixing prices – you do it by taking less money from us in the first place' – I should have passed his details on to Lynton Crosby. Another woman – previously canvassed as 'strong Labour' (but married to a 'strong Conservative') told me that 'Maggie Thatcher abolished me, but you seem lovely and so you can have a hug'. Apparently riding a fixie makes me 'far too cool to be a councillor'. And then there was the time I was biking down Sheepcote Lane on my way home from some canvassing, when a large A4 Pacific steam locomotive rushed past – an amazing sight, and almost up there with the view from the 20th floor of Dresden House.

Blue vs Red at Battersea Labour's HQ

Election day was madness – albeit carefully planned madness. I was humbled at how many of my friends came to help, and the memory of them 'knocking-up' our supporters in Battersea Fields and on the Winstanley will stay with me for a long time. I'm normally a fairly sedate cyclist, but I'm still a little amazed that I didn't have some horrific smack on May 22nd as I hared between polling stations, campaign teams and our committee room. Note to self: if standing for election again take extra shirts for polling day, as one of the Labour candidates told me afterwards that she'd thought I was a well turned out bloke in a tweed jacket, and was surprised when I showed up at the count looking like I'd run a marathon in my shirt, jeans and converses. We started at 5am, and by the time I got to the count I was – suffice to say – exhausted, but not so tired that I couldn't keep up the family rule of having a drink with the opposition once the results were announced. I'm sure this raised some eyebrows on our side, but it's a good tradition as it means you need to fight a hard – but fair – campaign, and ultimately we're still all residents of Wandsworth once the elections are done and dusted. And this is how I came to find myself playing fußball with Battersea Labour's parliamentary candidate Will Martindale and their organiser Sean Lawless as dawn broke on Friday, with one of their activists (clearly a Blairite) lumped together with me as 'Team Tory'. They are decent people who just happen to be profoundly wrong about how we build a better community and improve people's living standards. Labour beat us on the night, but we'll bounce back stronger – after all (as I pointed out to the comrades at 6am) that's what the markets are all about: good, healthy competition driving us on to better things.

* Apparently our result in Latchmere was the best of any opposition held seat in Wandsworth.

First published by Bright Blue on June 2nd, 2014

The Camino offers an insight into the European debate

The Camino de Santiago is the historic pilgrimage route across northern Spain, and as a cultural melting pot it had the recent misfortune of being dramatised as a ghastly film, packed with characters you’d normally walk a long way to escape.

Fortunately the reality is much better, and when I walked the 650 miles from Lourdes to Finisterre this summer the sole person I consciously avoided was an American college kid who sauntered along singing at the top of his voice while emitting a powerful body odour. That he was dressed only in boxer shorts with feathers in his dreadlocks didn’t help matters.

Nonetheless it’s the people who make the Camino a lifetime experience, and offering some wonderful insights into the differences in mentalities across Europe and further afield. I spent the first week plodding across the Pyrenean foothills in endless rain, without seeing a single soul walking west. Company came in the form of random encounters with the locals, particularly around meals. A priest from India at the Bétharram Monastery wanted to talk about the great batsmen his country had produced as we drank broth seated on the long benches of the refectory, with the other monks completely confused until we moved on rugby. And the waiter at one of the bistros who resignedly acknowledged that the French way of life was doomed, which seemed pretty reasonable given that most shops seemed only to be open for a couple of hours in the morning, and with local farms still almost pre-industrial in their miniature form.

On the morning of my third day the butcher in Arundy attached a large scallop shell (the traditional symbol of pilgrims en route to Santiago) to my pack, and from then onwards every boulangerie was a chance to warm up and talk to the intrigued locals, although saying I was walking to Santiago felt fraudulent given that Galicia was still a fair few mountain ranges – and 1000km – away.

So making it to the popular starting point of St. Jean Pied-de-Port after a week on the road was a bit of a relief. Passing through the town’s fortified Porte St. Jacques I was met by a cacophony of languages, frenzied unwrapping of new equipment and nervous anticipation of the first major challenge of the main Camino: following Napoleon’s steep route over the Pyrenees. The sharp early morning climb wasn’t brutal enough to stop the wild hand gestures and emotional outpourings of the girl from California. Nor did it stifle conversation with the chain-smoking chap from Stuttgart, who didn’t understand that a ‘C’ in GCSE German meant my grasp of his language was limited to menus and the occasional war film, and constructing sentences with ‘potato salad’ and ‘hands up’ didn’t seem conducive to the spirit of the walk, or European harmony.

The route itself is inherently cultural rather than deeply scenic, but that’s part of the joy of traversing a large country – you take the rough with the smooth. The back streets of Spain’s isolated villages revealed some of the Iberian Peninsula’s desperate poverty, interspersed with stonkingly beautiful towns: medieval Viana, where Cesare Borgia is buried, was particularly pretty. Dormitories ranged from charmless municipal accommodation to the isolated medieval pilgrims’ hostels where Mass was celebrated by candlelight. And of course the mountains of Galicia were spectacular, more than making up for the afternoon spent walking past Burgos airport and endless kilometres trudging along roadside footpaths.

Hours of conversation with my fellow pilgrims (very few of them British) as we passed though countless settlements also hammered home some important cultural differences. Dutch incredulity at Spain’s lavish yet half-built motorways that intersected our route. The abundance of hairdressers in the smallest of French villages, and American bewilderment at poor European service. The spectacular mountain settlement of La Faba that was run by a German confraternity, where for the first time in weeks I enjoyed a clean shower that worked, with immaculate bunks and a laundry service, my thanks for which were met with a blank “What else did you expect? We are German!”

There were – of course – frequent sightings of flagpoles flying the gold stars of the European Union. I pointed out to my Spanish companion that this enthusiasm would be unthinkable in England, much to his surprise. “Really?” he asked. “Surely we’re all brothers? Aren’t you proud of Europe in the UK?” I felt awful breaking it to him that back in Blighty the EU is seen as a cousin at best – the sort you hear very little from during the year, before agonising about deleting from the family Christmas card list.

First published by Egremont on November 6th, 2013. Read the daily blog I wrote while walking the Camino at matthewsoccasionaladventures.blogspot.co.uk

Power ballads and funny hats: why Eurovision matters

I love the Eurovision Song Contest. Tragically for me it isn't some sort of ironic interest based on poking fun at the funny hats, weird beards and implausible busts – I actually have the wretched thing in my diary and look forward to it each year, although up until now it's been something of a secret shame.

Carola sings Evighet in Melodifestivalen 2006 (STV)

The Swedes are to blame. In 2006 I lived in Stockholm, and they take Eurovision rather more seriously over there. Melodifestivalen is the country's annual talent show that selects their Eurovision entry, and I was horrified to find my friends, who previously exuded Scandinavian cool, staying in to watch it with unnerving enthusiasm. Carola was the eventual winner: her act was typical schlager, a wonderful Swedish word that sums up all the craziness of Eurovision-esque power ballads, cheesy dance music and lengthy hair billowing with wind machines running at full tilt. Carola's song reached #1 in the domestic charts, was promoted around Europe and finished a very credible fifth in the year Finnish monster rock act Lordi swept away all before them.

But I think the whole Eurovision business neatly sums up some of the failings we have in understanding our European partners. Our entries – recently more towards the nul points end of the spectrum – mean we've become accustomed to sneering at the madness on stage each year, and consoling ourselves with just how good the British music industry really is. The red tops do their best to drum up interest in whatever act the BBC has strong-armed onto a plane, but inevitably singing in Eurovision is seen as a hospital pass, with the contest joining siestas, eating horses, long road trips Eastwards and all the other clichés we like to belittle Europe with. We're just too cool for Eurovision.

So when it comes to the actual contest finals the unfortunate performer we've dispatched invariably doesn't stand a chance against acts who are rather more established, and who see Eurovision as an opportunity to build their profiles as commercial recording artists. I had no idea who Bonnie Tyler is, so I asked my cousin, who described her thus: 'I think she's a... something from the... I'm not entirely sure actually'. The Sun charitably called her a veteran. Either way her Eurovision song won't be gaining much airtime in the bars and clubs around London, whereas the opposite was true for Loreen in Stockholm last year.

We did actually choose someone decent a while ago – Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a song for Jade Ewen in 2009, took her on tour around the Eurovision nations and ended up delivering our best result in years. Casting my mind back I seem to remember Britain being genuinely excited about the 2009 competition because Jade actually had a chance of winning. Her career progressed as a result, showing that Eurovision is worthwhile if you actually engage in it seriously, rather than dismiss it as a stitch-up by scheming foreigners.

Likewise griping about bloc voting (when all the Nordic countries vote for each other, etc.) betrays another misunderstanding about Europe. In the democratic voting-by-text era people still stubbornly dish out high points for their neighbours – just as we do with Ireland. But this primarily reflects the degree of cultural integration across the regions of Europe, which makes sense when you put it in context with UK voting – many of the German acts feel like something we might actually hear on the radio, whereas Latvian music just sounds weird. As a result Germany and the UK regularly (indeed reliably) vote for each other. Just don't call it an Anglo-German voting pact – it's just another one of Europe's many little cliques built on proximity and interaction.

First published by Egremont on May 17th, 2013

Nimbyism? That’s not even the half of it.

Pity the poor Nimbys. Not only has the government’s horrible new planning regime come into force, but last week we heard the pro-HS2 lobbyists describing them as ‘posh people standing in the way of working-class people getting jobs’. Even Isabel blames them for wanting to preserve the idyllic views from their breakfast room window. Being a nimby is so last century.

Alas, calling the naysayers nimbys simply glosses over one of the biggest problems facing our society, namely how government deals with the built environment. This has little to do with preserving greenfields, areas of outstanding natural beauty, Jerusalem – or indeed nimbyism. It is simply that building houses in the countryside inherently designs significant expense into people’s lives. Little consideration is being given to how people are meant to travel to work, with developments usually far away from the local railway station, and money available for local infrastructure from Section 106 levies woefully inadequate.

So the lovely garden that the nice Nick Boles wants families to believe is their right has a nasty price tag attached ever so discreetly: the cost of a season ticket on our state subsidised railways and running two cars on our congested roads, with the cumulative loss of more than a working day a week in the commuting grind rubbing salt into the wound. We’re placing ridiculous and entirely avoidable stress on families, and commuting is penalising people for poorly designed cities.

The good news is that we already have lots of houses fit for families; the bad news is that they’ve mostly been subdivided into flats, a perfectly rational market response to the changing shape of British society. Of course we haven’t built enough houses, and yes, immigration has seen demand soar. But Britons are also leading different sorts of lives from a few decades ago: we marry later, and are more likely to divorce, meaning that fewer people are interested in the old concept of a ‘family home’. We’ve failed to build accommodation in line with the demands of 21st Century life, and the result is soaring rates of flatsharing in poorly converted apartments. Incidentally most young professionals must look at the protests over the bedroom tax with disbelief – in the private rented sector spare rooms get filled very quickly, and sharing your home is common if you’re young and saving for a mortgage deposit.

Frustratingly house building companies – almost uniquely – deliver products that the market doesn’t want. Unlike cars, cameras and computers where ‘new’ is aspirational, the building industry is churning out a product that only a quarter of home buyers would actively consider, a damning indictment that you’d think would merit a stiffer response than the Government merely ‘telling them to think a bit about it’. RIBA has already pointed out how bad regulations are for new homes, with people having to store food in their cars as kitchens haven’t been properly designed. Tragically the new planning regime will merely compound these failings, with swathes of new houses financed by state credit, built in the wrong place and for the wrong target market, and the opposition brushed off as heartless to the challenge of the ‘yet-to-haves’.

First published by Coffee House on April 11th, 2013

The mentoring challenge

As a photography student I loved the lectures and hours spent in the studio, making mistakes and getting lost in my work. But one of the most important parts of my development was listening to the professional and amateur photographers who came to show us their work. Some were seasoned pros, others had graduated more recently – but they all helped broaden our horizons. Our lecturers promised them nothing more than a bottle of wine and a captive audience, but they inspired us. Some subsequently became friends, and further helped me to find my feet.

Fast forward a couple of years, and I moved back to London, began to build my client base, and discovered that I’d learnt more in six months as a working photographer than I had in two years of photography school. That – of course – is pretty similar to most industries!

But I also realised that in the era of expensive higher education, I could help the sixth formers studying photography in the schools around where I lived in south London, and potentially steer them towards or away from photography at university. I’d benefitted from other people putting their time in to me, and mentoring was a debt I needed to repay. I rang all the secondary schools in the two boroughs my home was straddled between, and offered to talk to their students, show them some of my work and equipment, and explain how photography had transformed my life.

What surprised me was that of the dozens of schools I contacted, only two were interested. One had a strong focus on the creative arts – with a fantastic head of department, who regularly took her students to see exhibitions in town, and practically bit my arm off when I explained why I wanted to get involved. The other was a new 6th Form college with three quarters of the children receiving free school meals, and an inspiring head of sixth form who wanted all her students to have an adult mentor who could give them an insight into the professional world, contact that she was adamant would help them maximise their potential and broaden their horizons.

As a careers and skills mentor I’ve been able to help my students learn the rules of the game, recognise the value of volunteering in developing CVs, etc. – the things that are subconsciously drilled into students with parents working in the professions. And last week I got an email from one of my sixth-formers who’d been offered a part-time job after I prodded her into a round of door-knocking in the field she wants to study when she finishes her A-levels.

Likewise, I hope I’ve opened new horizons for my photography students, as well as given them a glimpse of the professional world on the other side of the expensive creative colleges. And I’ve helped the school’s art department buy equipment that enhances their teaching and persuaded my suppliers to sell gear at cost so that the children are learning with the same tools that they will use if they go and assist commercial photographers. Their excitement when I showed them how to shoot magazine cover portraits in their classroom was a priceless experience.

Of course, it isn’t exactly news to anyone that mentoring is hugely helpful – as I found out when I was a student photographer. The Department for Education’s latest guidance describes how ‘mentoring programmes and mentoring relationships have greater potential than others to maximise impact’, but frustratingly only acknowledges learning mentors (i.e. helping with day-to-day school work) and peer mentors (helping with bullying, moving to new schools, etc.). Nothing on helping children to see the bigger picture of what life might be able to offer them when they finish school, or about their university choices (an area where the state really could do with some help).

I remember a confident young girl telling me at the start of her A-levels that she wanted to do law at one of the UK’s top five universities. She’d chosen to study A-levels in law, general studies, media studies and psychology, and was nonplussed when I told her she would seriously struggle to get a place at the likes of Cambridge or UCL with her subject choices. Her teachers had told her she simply needed lots of A* grades, and the notion that some subjects are seen as ‘soft’ was unwelcome news.

Mentoring can play a big part in breaking down barriers in education and the early years of employment. Many people mentor at schools, but we don’t have a national culture of putting something back into the education system – particularly from white collar workers. How do we change this?

Some local authorities recognise the benefits of mentoring, yet fail to understand that it isn’t a command process – an appeal from a local education authority or council don’t really inspire people in the same way that being directly involved with a school does. I’m not particularly interested in jumping through whatever hoops Lambeth council might have in store for me; conversely I feel a strong sense of loyalty towards the two schools who were initially interested in how I could help their students. They took me purely on my enthusiasm and work experience (and current CRB form), but without spirit sapping paperwork that would deter most people.

There are difficulties: it is easy to match mentors with students in London, while there will be parts of the country where the need is greatest, but where there is a relative lack of people who are able to help. The good news is that mentoring doesn’t require significant money or time from schools – it just needs political leadership in encouraging people to knock on the door of their local school, and ensuring teachers are receptive to the idea of outsiders helping make education truly transformational.

First published by Platform 10 on March 28th, 2013

Why £9,000-per-year university tuition fees aren't such a bad thing (and Tony Blair agrees with me)

Children in their last year of school are gearing up for what one contemporary Scottish philosopher calls ‘squeaky bum time’. A-level exams in the summer suddenly don’t seem so far away, and shortly the contents of acceptance and rejection letters from institutions will start being broadcast in Facebook status updates up and down the country.

The deadline for art and design schools is later this month, and last week I had coffee with a student I mentor to look at her portfolio and university application. Her work showed plenty of promise, but as we talked I realised that while she was desperate to do a photography degree, she wasn’t particularly interested in using it as the foundation for a career taking pictures – she just liked the idea of studying photography, and would do something different after her graduation.

She’s by no means alone. We have a large number of students in creative tertiary education, many of whom realise during their studies that enjoying something at A-level (often taken as an alternative to boring ‘academic’ subjects) isn’t enough to sustain them through the long hours of working in the studio at their university. Others quickly find out that that their work simply doesn’t cut the mustard when they enter the saturated graduate marketplace. And – being completely blunt – the tertiary sector’s vast oversupply of creative graduates unable to work in areas where their degree have prepared them for is nothing short of scandalous.

To someone with a rose-tinted view of the whole university experience this probably sounds harsh. University is about growing up, finding one’s feet in the world, etc. Yet the ease in justifying a degree in the creative arts is symptomatic of the distance we have yet to travel in shifting society’s attitudes towards tertiary education.

The wretched ‘50 per cent of school leavers going to university’ aspiration was a misplaced and profoundly damaging New Labour ploy to seduce parents. It was also politically very smart: ‘thanks to the government my child is the first in our family to have a university education’. The policy flooded the workforce with graduates, and sent a clear signal to students that choosing not to do degrees made them second best.

At the drop of a hat sixth formers saw areas like photography that really should only be one or two years in duration as the gateway to the newly hallowed university education – albeit in a technical subject that doesn’t give them the transferrable skills and intellectual rigour that employers associate with degrees in subjects like history or geography. Private schools also need to take some of the blame: it’d be a rare headmaster who tells parents that their child isn’t university material having taken £150,000 in fees over the past five years. Better a degree in photography, music journalism, etc, than no degree at all, or so their logic flows.

The danger is that students are supposedly now paying for the bulk of their education. Fundamentally this is a good thing: America’s dominance of the top 100 universities is plainly and inescapably due to their system of fees – not my analysis, but that of Tony Blair in his autobiography, who (rightly) points out that when it comes to recruiting academic staff “those who paid top dollar got the best”.

Tuition fees also address the small matter of successive governments failing to fund universities properly. And as a Head of Sixth Form friend of mine pointed out, “if you’re not intelligent enough to realise that £9,000 a year to go to a top Russell Group university is a bargain, then you really shouldn’t be applying to those places in the first place”.

The scrum of blue chip firms recruiting on Britain’s top campuses hammers home the value of forking out for the best education the UK can offer, and the new fee levels will help ensure that graduates from UCL, Cambridge, etc, can expect their qualifications to stack up globally (with salaries to match) and help ensure our universities continue to churn out world leading research.

Incidentally, as someone who mentors students in two of South London’s most deprived schools, I was really pleased to hear from the teachers there that the new fees structure and bursary support is more favourable for those from less affluent backgrounds than the previous government’s scheme – which is exactly as it should be. Nevertheless I remain to be convinced that many of the wide-eyed UCAS applicants for photography and music journalism degrees will actually find that their three years of undergraduate study has transformed their employment prospects.

More importantly, will their studies enable them to repay much of the £18-27k in tuition fees that they’ve taken on, full of enthusiasm for whatever creative A-level subject they dabbled in at school? Or will they find they’ve been sold a pup by institutions who are desperate to prop up their student rolls with courses of dubious value? It’s interesting to hear Pam Tatlow of the Million+ think-tank (representing many former polytechnics) describe this year’s small increase in university applications as a “recovery”, whereas the market behaviour from this year’s students seems to indicate that for some of the institutions Million+ represents the decrease in rolls of 50-60% could well be terminal. And while this plays out the Treasury’s exposure to the student debt it underwrites grows and grows – after all, the government pays for your education until you’re actually in a position to reimburse it.

So where does this leave my enthusiastic photography student? Higher student fees are here to stay – Mr Blair himself saying that “once introduced as a concept, there [is] no looking back”.

For some disciplines this must surely spell trouble for the idea of three year degrees. The higher end providers of vocational courses will flourish, but institutions without the cachet of the Slade and LCC may well have to rethink how they deliver education to increasingly savvy consumers. Photography, journalism, graphic design, etc. are hardly lucrative careers, so the American concept of shorter ‘associate’ degrees for some vocational and creative subjects seems very sensible: students avoid the £10-15k involved with a third year of study, and employers provide the final polish in the initial stages of paid employment.

My student wants to experience tertiary study, so understandably a single year course doesn’t appeal. I did a two-year photography diploma in New Zealand, and by the end of it I was desperate to finish and get stuck into winning clients and getting proper commissions, as well as avoid an expensive third year – the money saved being more than enough to buy a decent studio setup.

Why is it then that our creative universities stubbornly persist with courses that seem aimed at lining their own pockets and propping up a ill-conceived system? Sure, politicians and society at large need to take some responsibility for fostering the often dubious allure of ‘going to uni’, but there’s a horrible irony in institutions aimed at nurturing creativity being so painfully regimented and unoriginal in what they offer today’s young talent – and cheerfully milking them dry at the same time.

First published by Egremont on March 8th, 2013

A building weakened by red tape

"I was inside the main hall when the quake hit. As the building's tower came down, the noise and dust was unbelievable. The bottles, plates and glasses were like shrapnel flying all over the place. The three chefs were preparing a lobster bisque, which went all over the floor but missed them, as did a pan of hot fat. They came out through the dust looking like ghosts. We didn't have the composure to stop and grab our wallets and car keys - we just bolted."

Alan Slade

Octagon Live owner Alan Slade was short on sentiment as he looked back at the ruined building he'd narrowly escaped from, with his concern entirely focused on ensuring his staff were all out.

After the previous September 4 quake he'd had funny mannequins attached to the emergency scaffolding that had shored up the stone walls.

"I just remember looking at one of the mannequin's legs sticking out of the rubble and I just felt sick - my joke had backfired on me."

In retrospect, it was an unusual holiday purchase. Alan Slade, owner of a thriving wedding business in Australia, was visiting Christchurch when he heard the Trinity Congregational Church on the corner of Manchester and Worcester streets was for sale.

"We owned a number of churches in Australia, but when we saw the Trinity building we couldn't believe that such a precious icon of Christchurch would be for sale," says Slade. "It was a treasure: the interior was unmatched, and the ceiling was the jewel in the crown."

He admits that buying the building was a weak moment. "My wife says it was bought by a guy with a big heart and very little brain."

The church was designed by Benjamin Mountfort, the architect behind Christ Church Cathedral and the Provincial Council buildings. What followed was a 13-year renovation that transformed the site into Octagon Live, Slade's quirky vision for a restaurant with live music performances. Mountfort's vision of "beauty though a lack of ornamentation" was preserved.

"The building's H1 historical registration meant that everything we did needed consent, which took forever. The roof had a lot of water damage: repairing that with matching timbers was a long job. We even restored the dilapidated 1871 London organ to superb recording condition. Finance held us up, as things always cost more than you'd expect, but it was worth it."

The restaurant opened in 2006 and, after a quiet first year, business grew rapidly, with a strong following built on the restaurant's food and live music.

"By the third year we were second on TripAdvisor.com's list of recommended restaurants in New Zealand. In the season before the earthquakes we were booked out every day of the week," says Slade.

With four music schools in Christchurch, the restaurant was also instrumental in nurturing young talent.

"Learning to perform for an audience - rather than at them - is a critical skill. Where else in town can you learn that? We were strongly recommended by some of the teachers, and we always had a long queue of musicians hoping to work with us."

The building's acoustics garnered rave reviews, with pianist David Helfgott stopping by every six months to play.

Behind this success was an ongoing tension over heritage issues with the city council and the Historic Places Trust.

"When you take on a building like this, you do it with your heart, not your head. You are as keen to protect it as anyone. You don't want to cut corners, and preserving the building's integrity is vital. But the Historical Places Trust suspects every owner of deviousness."

The September earthquake hit Octagon Live hard, with more than $600,000 required to rescue the building. "We were allowed to take emergency action to build a frame to hold up the tower, but the retrospective consent ended up costing $8000 - for something I'd done to save the building."

The restaurant was closed for only two months, with the local community pitching in. The Boxing Day earthquake caused yet more damage.

Even though it was the building industry's traditional holiday period, Slade had 11 workers and two cranes onsite repairing the damage the day after, and the restaurant was open a day later, with the public enjoying the mannequins that adorned the temporary braces holding up the exterior walls.

Trinity Congressional Church was significantly strengthened in 1975, explains Slade.

"The engineers at the time strongly suggested earthquake proofing the tower by temporarily removing the roof, which would have meant some damage to the wooden shutters. They were over-ruled by the Historic Places Trust.

"Just recently, the engineer from the 1975 assessment told me that the tower was severely compromised, and warned that it was unsafe. Now it has come down as predicted. We were incredibly lucky no-one was underneath it at 12.51pm, but it was the conservative attitude of the conservation movement and the Historic Places Trust that caused the danger in the first place."

Slade believes this attitude in the heritage preservation industry amplified the consequences of the Christchurch earthquake.

"Maintaining our old buildings is incredibly important, but the heritage framework in this country has worked against keeping buildings in good condition. Spirit-sapping bureaucracy stands in the way of routine jobs like replacing weak stones. Even repairing roof tiles requires consent, and the damage that three weeks' rain can do while that is processed can be enormous. Many of Christchurch's treasured buildings are now in a pile, and the narrow-mindedness of the conservationists in the council and the Historic Places Trust played a substantial part in that. Sadly they will probably never be held accountable."

With thoughts turning to rebuilding the city, Slade is confident that Octagon Live will be a key part of the new city. The structure is considered saveable by engineers and the organ should be fine.

"I do think this is the time for us to radically change our approach to protecting our heritage," he says.

"I'd be very sad if we have to replicate our old tower stone by stone. The earthquake is a tremendous opportunity to be bold and adopt modern technology - the guts of the Cathedral Spire could be made from carbon fibre, for example. It is better to preserve elements of our heritage safely, rather than taking risks to keep whole structures. But we hold on to the essence of Christchurch, and I think the new desire for a low-rise city will allow our heritage buildings to dominate once again."

At the moment, issues are tied up with the inability to access the CBD.

"My chef's knives are stuck in the restaurant's kitchen. It's a simple thing and it sounds pathetic, but it's important to him. I can't access my payroll details. We don't know how long we'll be kept out of the centre of town for. They're talking about Christmas - heavens, I'd be expecting to have my building restored and my business running by then."

First published by The Press on March 12th, 2011

Photographing a pilgrimage

I wrote this piece for the Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage's 2009 fundraising carol service to explain why I had joined them that year to take photos. I've been back to Lourdes with them each year since, travelling as my disabled cousin's carer, and continuing to document the Pilgrimage's work. You can see a slideshow of the work I produced from 2009 here.

Most of the Ampleforth pilgrimages to Lourdes since 1980 have involved one (or more) members of my family. This year there were four of us. The Plummer clan's previous would be reasonable grounds for suspecting me of a) having an interest in cameras, and b) being a committed Lourdie. Rewind three years though, and things were rather different.

Dad's Catholicism is half-hearted at best. Likewise, the one time I remember him with a camera was shooting five minutes of video in the Disneyworld carpark before realising the lens cap was still on. Mum is agnostic, the result of attending Wellington's Convent of the Sacred Heart school, where the nuns excelled in producing well educated women with little interest in God. Both made huge sacrifices to give me a fantastic education, which I mention to balance the distinct lack of enthusiasm they had for my early attempts with a cartridge film camera given me for my 6th birthday. I can clearly recall Mum saying that she wasn't buying me any more film because all I did was take dull pictures that were a waste of money to develop. Looking back, she was right.

In the following two decades my contact with Catholicism was pretty much limited to Dad's insistence that I received my First Communion. I remember filling my gold-covered communion workbook with drawings of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and Richard Branson's trans-Atlantic speedboat, so it's a safe bet to say the date was late in the summer of 1986. And in retrospect my first confession of 'being mean to my sister' seems rather sweet.

But as I got older something about God didn't click, and I was lucky that my housemaster at Westminster was sympathetic to my boycott of school church services. And having talked to Dad about belief I decided that enough was enough. I walked up to St. Augustine's – where I had been christened 19 years earlier – and told the bewildered Father on duty that I'd come to resign from the Church.

At this point a pilgrimage to Lourdes seemed an unlikely prospect. But with my parents working full-time I'd grown up spending a lot of time with my aunt Elizabeth Plummer and her boys Rupert, Mark, Andrew and Richard. Trying to figure out why people I loved (and who I considered sane) were interested in what Mum described as 'a week of God-bothering and anointing each other in the fields' was a tricky one. A detour though Lourdes during a camping holiday in the Pyrenees – and the abiding memory of umpteen gift-shops selling plastic Virgin Mary waterbottles – added to the confusion.

And so to the 21st Century. Digital cameras meant I was free to learn and experiment with my photography, and 12 months ago I finished two years of photography school. My final year was spent documenting New Zealand's newly decriminalised sex industry, and it dawned on me that the camera is a powerful tool for accessing places that are far from the everyday. Personal projects are a key part of a photographer's portfolio and career development, and so with my cousin Rupert's encouragement I rang Anna Mayer [the Pilgrimage Director]. For me, the week would be a chance to finally see Ampleforth's pilgrims at work, and in return I'd offer the Pilgrimage a detailed visual record of 2009 in Lourdes. Having been given the green light, I remember Richard chuckling when I asked him if we'd be attending Mass more than a couple of times during the week.

45 rolls of Kodak Tri-X later, and with a month of developing and scanning late into the night, I have a much better idea of what the pilgrimage is about. Lourdes is a wonderful place, where people (if not gift shops) are at their best. I don't think my views on God have changed, but the profound impact of Jesus as a teacher of decency and kindness is manifest. The patience and humour of the sick and healthy together is wonderful, with the ward party on the final night unexpectedly moving. Being a pilgrim with Ampleforth this year was a privilege – thank you!