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The automobile took over because the legal system helped squeeze out the alternatives.

I know this is primarily about the US but it deals with the primacy of the car, which is something we all live with.

The Lisbon Story: a film by Wim Wenders

I recently watched the curious 1994 Wim Wenders film The Lisbon Story. It is the story of a sound engineer who is called to Lisbon by his filmmaking friend. When he arrives he discovers that his friend has disappeared, it is not a thriller about a missing person but rather a meditation on sound, people and identity. I found it thrilling.

Wenders has long been a favourite director of mine. His recent film Salt of the Earth is one of my favourite films of the past few years, and I have long admired his work.

The Lisbon Story is really a snapshot of a city and a continent in flux, as Lisbon was re-entering the EU, at the same time. Wenders is certainly celebrating the removal or borders and the European project, capturing it at a point when it was still more idealistic.

I visited Lisbon a couple of years before and the Lisbon that is depicted is very much the Lisbon I remembered, in fact it brought back lots of memories. Of the hotels I stayed in, the streets I walked. Lisbon then was very much changing, there were still traces of the beautiful old buildings; the breakfast room in my hotel was beautiful,like a room straight out of an Eca de Quieros novel, but much of the hotel was ugly sixties. Watching the film it all looked a little dishevelled, the city looked rough around the edges but at the time it didn't feel like that.

Wenders seems to have a knack for capturing the fleeting time of the moment, like in King of the Road, or Buena Vista Social Club and in particular that moment of change. It seems to be all in the details he capture, in this case the elegant but crumbling house, the fading modern towers, the uneven streets and iconic trams.

And as for plot imagine The Third Man but with less narrative urgency.All in all it was a joy.

On a recent cloudy visit to Lochgelly I saw an excellent example of 'Palaces for the People'. The first is the Lochgelly Miners Welfare Institute, probably that grandest of all of the Miners Welfare clubs certainly in Fife; the one closest to my home is plain, simple and made of timber. The institute was an expression of a collective will from the miners themselves. When it was built before the establishment of the NCB and collective expression was frowned upon by the disparate owners. In my family lore it was the mines of that era were the sort of place that you turned up every morning hoping to get a day's work. That the miners wanted to build a grander building than function demanded I feel show the aspirational nature of the project.

The second building was the local co-operative shop. Although not pictured in the picture some of the building is still a Co-op shop; although the days of a big co-operative department store in a village of 6,000 people is long gone. Again the building is more substantial and ornate than it needs to be.

Lochgelly also used to have an Opera house(now demolished), a different co-operative society and there seems to have been a push to create a model town to lift the residents, that they were more than their jobs.

The third picture is of the Lochgelly Centre, the current library, theatre , cafe and community space, one of the best in Fife and perhaps exists here as a continuation of the Palaces built in previous generations.

#palacesforthepeople #lochgelly #co-operative

Palaces for the People: a review

That was a quick and interesting read. Chock full of ideas, whilst never straying too far from the basic premise, we need a social infrastructure as it saves lives, and public infrastructure must support the social.

It supports these arguments with my evidence both empirical and anecdotal, and makes a compelling case.

Whilst I agree with the premise there is something I would like to add about the palace part. Eric Klinenberg talks of how Andrew Carnegie wanted his libraries to be grand spaces, and I think this is an important point. Living in Dunfermline where there is a magnificent Carnegie library that has just undergone a multi million pound redevelopment the place grand buildings have in the minds of its users is huge. Maybe it reinforces the message that all people are worth it. Maybe it also makes the spaces more permanent, harder to sweep away.

This book really spoke to me about some things that I have long been interested in. The place of social infrastructure in society but also architecture to support that. So over the next few weeks I will explore this further. But get you copy of Palaces for the People, perhaps from your local library.

#palacesforthepeople #eric Klinenberg #Carnegie library #dunfermline

99% Invisible with Roman Mars is a tiny radio show about design, architecture & the ninety-nine percent invisible activity that shapes our w

What a great episode of the always excellent 99% Invisible. I immediately went and bought the book.

As a Dunfermline boy I have always had a complex relationship with Carnegie. I love my Carnegie library, hate how he earned the money to build it (and the leisure centre and theatre endowed by Andrew Carnegie).

I will report back about the book when I finish it.

#99percent invisible #radiotopia #Carnegie #dunfermline #palacesforthepeople #carnegielibrary

“The British icon that most resonates with me is Big Ben—a giant clock,” the artist Mark Ulriksen said, about his inspiration for this

Little else to say😥

Today I went skiing, for what is probably the only time this year. This is Glencoe and it had it's best face on, at least for a couple of hours.

The reason for just one skiing trip this winter is that the just hasn't been enough snow to justify the trip up north. This is shaping up to be the winter with one of the lowest levels of snowfall on record in Scotland. Such a contrast from the winters of my childhood, when you could reliably ski from Xmas to Easter and often beyond.

Now I know of all the measures of the changing environment this is one of the most trivial, certainly in comparison to the deadly floods in the Midwest, or the storms blowing through Southern Africa (and I don't ever recall hearing of those types of storms in southern Africa)but we still live in a world where people will deny it.

The challenges ahead are great and I am not convinced we will do enough in time to prevent a catastrophic change, but today in the mountains it was all joy. They even have an electric vehicle charging station, so perhaps next winter it will be an electric vehicle I take up.

#skiing #Glencoe #climate change #snow #sunshine #scotland

'A system that produces beggars needs overhauling' Martin Luther King jr Happy Martin Luther King Day 💜

This is a companion link to my earlier post. A question we never ask; Are private schools immoral? Although this is mostly talking about racial inequality in the US, I think it can also extend to social inequality on Scotland. By the way, my answer is yes.

I am rather proud of the Scottish Government this week, and in general of late. I thought it was a good budget and starting to move towards tackling some of the pressing problems in the country, of course I would like more but within the limits of the powers on offer and as a minority government it was a pretty good effort. Of all the headline grabbing elements of the budget it was one of the quieter bits that made me smile most. The reworking of business rates for fee paying schools in Scotland is the biggest step towards equality, I was going to say reducing inequality but that feels like a soft version of the same thing. A good week for Scotland.

#common space #commonweal #independent schools #Scottish education #inequality #Scottish government #Scottish budget #finance minister

When you hear about Christians supporting right wing and far right wing political figures, this seems to offer a counterpoint.

The Scotch Whisky Association vs the People of Scotland

Capitalism's Ugly Face

Yesterday was one of those days when it is OK to be proud of your government. If a governments job is to protect its citizens, then yesterday the Scottish Government won a long overdue win for the people of Scotland. In the other corner we can see a trade association showing up capitalism at its venal worst.

It has been five years since the Scottish Parliament passed legislation mandating the minimum pricing of alcohol, but it is only now that the government has finally gotten passed the last legal challenge.

It is to the eternal shame of the Scotch Whisky Association that they found every court to appeal the legislation, never finding a court that agreed with their position. But appealing to the last and all because the Scottish Government wanted to ensure that alcohol couldn’t be sold for less than water.

Scotland has a lethally dangerous relationship with alcohol and the Scottish Government wanted to slow down our access to the cheapest booze, the sort that problem drinkers tend to gravitate toward.The news reports have been filled with the stories of the 3,000 plus alcohol related deaths in Scotland but this is only the tip of the iceberg. The leading weapon in Scottish assault cases is the Buckfast bottle(one of the products in the crosshairs of the Scottish legislation). Because of cheap booze our A&E departments spend most Friday and Saturday nights looking like a war zone.

We are not even close to the end of the the problems, alcoholics live in society, they live with spouses and families, with parents and siblings, with children. Only someone who has lived with the terror of an alcoholic on a binge will know the genuine terror, the sense of clinging on until the pass out and peace is regained, as an adult dealing with this is hard, for a child it is causing deep emotional scars that may come back to haunt society generations later, allowing the effect to ripple out further than you can imagine.

Now this legislation may only make alcohol a little bit more expensive, but alcoholics can only drink until there is no more(it is a strange sense of relief when 10pm hits and you are then dealing with a finite amount of alcohol). If that means that they have 20% less to drink then it is 20% less traumatic. Relationships may survive 20% less, A&E will be significantly quieter with 20% less. Children will sleep better with 20% less.

What enraged me was that the Scotch Whisky Association fought this legislation. It will now cost a minimum of £14 for a bottle of spirit. I don’t believe that SWA members sell many bottles at that price point. For a long time they have been working to increase the value of their product, creating a high quality high price product treasured around the world. They should have welcomed this legislation clearing out those who give whisky a bad name. But instead they chose to fight.

They claimed this was against free trade rules, so to defend one of the tenets of capitalism they fought to the end, for the right to do what they wanted for as long as they wanted disregarding the social cost that someone else will pick up, just to ensure that they maximise profit.

It will be a few years before we get an idea of just how many people this legislation saves, and by extension and idea of how many lives that we can lay at the door of the SWA.

Today was a small victory, a small step toward a better country.

#minimum pricing #scotland #scottish government #scotch whisky association

A school system aiming for equality now that sounds like a good idea. The same high quality education for all children how did that become a radical idea?

It is time for charges

I know it has only been a month since the Harvey Weinstein rape allegations have been in the news, and it feels like it has rightly and fundamentally turned the world on its head, but it is time for prosecutors and HR departments the world over to start taking action. It is time for charges to be laid out, it is time for the predators to face the full force of the law.

At the moment people like Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK, Kevin Spacey, Donald Trump, Michael Fallon, Roy Moore and many others are being tried publicly in the press, and sackings are good, public shaming has its place but if this moment is to take its place in changing the world for the better then the serious crimes alleged must be matched with criminal charges. Let's see the legal process swing in to action.

The world has known for a long time that this sort of behaviour is wrong, we need now to act on that behaviour no matter how powerful the perpetrator. Without the law there can be no justice. Without the law this will carry on for ever.

euphemismfordeath

This is an interesting take on the weekends tragic events. I guess when you have 160 years of being right you have a rich archive to draw from.

I am sure the abolitionists would have thought that these issues would be a thing of the past by now😢

Cristiano Ronaldo

Is it curious that Ronaldo has decided he is leaving Spain due to problems with the tax authorities and he is likely to end up in the UK? What does that say about the way we monitor taxation?

#cristiano ronaldo #tax #uk

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