Bill Scott's blog

According to MSN, it cost the Eavis family £780,000 to clean up after the Glastonbury Festival.  This is the biggest, most spectacular clean-up bill yet.  This was despite the involvement of around 1,300 recycling volunteers who came to the farm (that's about half the population of Somerset).  I don't understand how it costs so much.  Mind you, I don't understand why so much rubbish is dropped either, unless littering is part of the essential experience.  Is it?  Judging by the pictures of overflowing rubbish bins, littering is built into the experience.  There's nothing so sustainable as litter, it seems; anyway, it all adds £780,000 to GDP.  Maybe Eavis should partner with Untidy Britain for 2019.

There's no festival next year in order to give the land, village and local wildlife a chance to rest (according to Eavis).  You have to wonder what ageing MPs and geriatric rockers will do next June; not to mention the BBC.  How will it fill its overflowing channels in mid-June?

How about some jazz?

Great news from UNESCO.

On 20 June 2017, the National Platform on ESD, the UK´s supreme steering body for the implementation of the Global Action Programme on ESD (GAP), has adopted the National Action Plan for GAP implementation.  It defines 130 objectives and 349 measures to scale up ESD in all areas and at all levels of the UK education system.

Based on a two-year participatory multi-stakeholder process, collecting input from expert forums, partner networks and an online consultation for the general public, the action plan targets education plans and curricula as well as pre- and in-service training and education of educators and trainers in formal, non-formal and informal education. Furthermore, the plan focusses on strengthening ESD networks and good practice as well as whole-institution approaches to ESD.

The National Platform on ESD brings together 37 high-level representatives of politics, science, industry and society. It is chaired by a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Education. The ministries for environment, family, and economic cooperation and development are taking part in the Platform, as are representatives of the different parts of the UK responsible for formal education and schooling.

All members of the National Platform serve as advocates of ESD – also within their own organizations and institutions. They have been called upon to propose commitments in order to support the implementation of the National Action Plan. Furthermore, the UK´s big annual ESD conference, the “Agenda Congress”, bringing together 500 stakeholders on 27/28 November 2017 in Manchester will focus on accelerating the implementation of the National Action Plan.

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I know that all this sounds too good to be true, but it is – it's just not true in the UK.  Inevitably, perhaps, it's happening in Germany.  Here's more information:

• The Global Action Programme on ESD in Germany
• German GAP implementation structures

This could never happen in the UK.  That is not necessarily a bad thing.

"Maybe this year", I said to myself.  "Maybe this is the year I go – before it's too late in every sense."  Well, the nearest I got was the 1436 from Paddington to Castle Cary last Thursday.  It was a Festival Special crammed with rucksacks, bed rolls, guitars, and slim, well-to-do young(ish) people in a positive mood.

I found a seat in the quiet coach which remained so apart from some gentle strumming and vocal murmuration.  It was very good to share the train with such a happy band – even if they were utterly unrepresentative of the youth of the land: there was no austerity on show here.  The hardest part of the journey was getting off (before Castle Cary).  This was not because of some sudden urge to stay to the end; I had, after all, no festival ticket, and I was hardly dressed for the weekend.  Rather it was negotiating the half-abandoned luggage and bodies on the floor in order to get to the door.

I'd been in London for an even more positive occasion: the 70th birthday bash of the Soil Association.  This was a splendid event in every sense celebrating the first 70 years of the revolutionary movement to restore the integrity of the earth.  There were some positive young people here too, and the lunch was fantastic.  I may say more about the party at some later point, but for now, here's how Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall provided words of future encouragement:

Sylvia Plath's MUSHROOMS

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

At the recent NUS Services Convention, its member students’ unions unanimously approved a resolution for NUS to become 100% Fairtrade for the cotton products it sells.  This year, about 18% of the ~£4m of cotton clothing NUS sold to and through students’ unions was Fairtrade.  The new target is that this will be 100% by the time NUS turns 100 years old in 2022.

NUS says that forced labour of students is a real issue in Uzbekistan, as is child labour in Pakistan, and it knows that much of the cotton in its non-Fairtrade products originates from Pakistan, with, possibly, some from Uzbekistan.  It says that Fairtrade is the only guaranteed way to track cotton back to the exact the field in which it was grown, and that this also gives it certainty that people have not been exploited in the growing and harvesting of it.

Inspired leadership.

Cheering news that a kindergarten in Schleswig-Holstein is giving toddlers a say over things such as what games to play and which food to have for lunch.  The Times quotes Kristin Alheit, the Social Democratic Party social affairs minister of Schleswig-Holstein:

“Young people can and should learn about democracy.  When kids take part and are taken seriously, that shapes them for life.”

Indeed.  In our jargon, this is student voice at work, except that these children don't talk about their preferences.  Rather, glass beads are used for the votes.  When deciding on which flavour of cake to have they are asked to place their bead on a table next to an apple, piece of chocolate or a lemon.  They can also decide on wider school issues such as a new piece of playground equipment by delegating two class representatives who serve on the school kindergarten council.

Heike Schlüter, the deputy head of the school said that the children can differentiate between, and deal with, various situations very well.  But she added that there were clear limits on what the children could decide for themselves and they would not be able to vote against items in the school constitution.  Nor, presumably, in favour of changing the constitution.

The children had taken up their voting rights enthusiastically, Ms Schlüter said.  The main stumbling block to a democratic kindergarten, she said, were the adults who were used to retaining all the power and were reluctant to adapt to the majority view.  As accepting the tyranny of the majority is a key democratic principle, cake seems a good place to start.

I read an article on parenting the other day as it's never too late to learn.  It only really contains this piece of advice:

“… it should be enough for us to remember that our children are human beings, worthy of the same ethical treatment we give to our friends, other relatives, and even to strangers.  So protect your children, provide for them, be good to them, and make memories with them.  Apart from that, don’t expect to have very much say in how they turn out."

Sound advice, it seems to me, even though the last sentence may well shock many people.  The article’s focus is the age-old issue of nature v nurture;  heredity v environment, and has a lot to say about twin studies – which I intend to ignore in what follows; just as I'm staying away from the vexed question of intelligence.

Reading the article took me back to 197something and a debate at the Cambridge Union where the US genetics & IQ guru, Arthur Jensen, was sub-heroically trying to argue that intelligence was X% inherited and Y% influenced by environment (ie parenting and other socialisation).  I forget the exact figures, although X > Y, of course.  It was a one-sided affair as there were six people opposing Jensen.  One was Stephen Rose; another was a bloke from the USA called Jerry Something.

I had already read enough to know that Jensen's certainties were certainly misleading, as was his spurious precision, but it was Jerry S who made the main point for me.  He said that it was obvious that intelligence was 100% inherited and 100% influenced by environment.  In other words, genetics set a limit, and parenting decided how close you got to it in your life.   This appealed to me at a common sense level.  Looking back on it, however, the very notion of a limit was far too deterministic and, well, limiting.

I held to this 100 – 100 view until a conference that I've already written about where Richard Lewontin's keynote changed this view of human intelligence and inheritance. Lewontin qualified the idea of environment to include not just parental and societal influence, but also all the influences that apply before these can begin.  These are [i] the unpredictable and varying biochemical inundation that a foetus experiences whilst in the womb; and [ii] the random, quantum-level decisions that are made, particularly in the developing brain, during development (both pre- and post-natal).  These are described in the article in this way:

"... the environment matters, but not just the environment that the child experiences in the home.  The environment in this sense is far more nebulous and hard to nail down — behavioural geneticists call it the ‘non-shared’ environment and it includes anything that causes two siblings to be different from each other.  And I really mean anything.  The psychologist Steven Pinker puts it this way: ‘A cosmic ray mutates a stretch of DNA, a neurotransmitter zigs instead of zags, the growth cone of an axon goes left instead of right, and one identical twin’s brain might gel into a slightly different configuration from the other’s.’  In other words, we should not presume that random chance plays a vanishingly small role in making us the people that we are today."

For me, that randomness might explain a lot more than why twins can be different, and is why I like this idea a lot.  It also gives something of the lie to Philip Larkin's pessimism for one thing.

Is this the end of the nature / environment debate?  I doubt it, but it's enough for me for the times being.

I have heard back from Ofsted's Seam Hartford about its forthcoming curriculum review, and about whether the public could take part.  His letter said:

"The current phase of this work is focused on gathering evidence about the curriculum on the ground.  We are conducting visits around the country to build our understanding of what is happening in primary and secondary schools, and colleges.  We are drawing on research evidence and expertise to help us frame this work.  At this stage, however, our questions are for schools, rather than the public.  This is why we are not yet inviting comment through our website.  Once we have evidence to share, we will be publishing it and inviting comment from anyone who is interested in this area of work."

No timescale was suggested, and so those "interested" will just have to keep looking at the website.  It's worth reminding ourselves that it's not just a question of being interested in the curiosity sense, as we all have an interest, ie, a stake, in what is taught (and not taught) and why.  I suppose I am a bit surprised that special visits have to be made to "build understanding" of curriculum, but I guess that's a reflection of what a neglected area it all is these days.

People & Planet will publish its latest University League in November this year. The rankings will include 150 UK universities that receive public funding and have degree awarding powers.  All such universities will automatically be included in the table.

• 50% or more of the data will be taken directly from the Higher Education Statistics Agency's latest Estates Management Record - published on 11 May 2017.
• 50% from information made public on the university website.

Reporting will be under these 13 headings:

1. Environmental Sustainability; Policy and Strategy
2. Human Resources for Sustainability
3. Environmental Auditing & Management Systems 2016
4. Ethical Investment 2016
5. Carbon Management
6. Workers Rights
7. Sustainable Food
8. Staff and Student Engagement
9. Education for Sustainable Development
10. Energy Sources 2016
11. Waste and Recycling
12. Carbon Reduction
13. Water Reduction

The data on section 9 comes from websites and so what gets reported depends on how well the institution flags it up – and how it is described.  Happily, P&P offers consultancies to universities to help them maximise their returns.  This isn't quite how P&P puts it.  They say ...

"... People & Planet offer consultancy to students, student unions, universities and colleges; this includes workshops/trainings as well as attending university staff meetings/sustainability events/ sustainability boards.  People & Planet work on the University League for 6 months of the year and during this period are able to provide support to universities in the form of a University League package - this might include data, artworks, media support or bespoke consultancy by phone and email.

So there's no excuse any more for coming bottom – no matter how bad you are at sustainability.

The BBC reported that the UK achieved a new high for solar electricity being transmitted through the grid: 8.7 GW (24.3% of power) –  on Friday May 26th.  It wasn't clear from the reporting whether this was an average figure or one at a particular time.  Given that the Grid tweeted about the record around 1300 on the day, I guess it was the latter.  I wonder what the % was averaged out across the whole day.  Less than 24.3%, of course.

In a statement of the blindingly obvious, a Grid spokesperson said:

"The record level of solar power was achieved largely because of to the clear and sunny weather on Friday."

She added, just in case we'd not quite grasped the significance of this:

"It would have been significantly harder to reach if it had been cloudy."

Dear me!  NB, I suspect the puzzling "of to the" phrase was down to the BBC's grammar police trying to change "due to" to "because of", and getting distracted.

The BBC added that, "alongside the contribution from solar, 23% of power came from nuclear sources, 30% from natural gas and just 1.4% from coal.  Wind, hydro power and biomass were also used."  It's surprising, perhaps, that there was any coal used at all, but this could have been because there wasn't quite enough wind.  You can follow the ups and downs of all this here and watch the demise of old king coal in almost real time.

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And then, at 1300 on June 7th, renewable energy resources set record figure of 18.7 gigawatts (~51% of demand).  This is a report in the Independent saying that gas usage was lower than any renewable source, but the numbers are confusing.  There is still a lot of nuclear in there, but that didn't get a mention.