Another week of creativity
I saw a council estate on TV last week where there was a lot of poverty and drug taking. The problems weren’t just lack of money, there was also a lack of nature. It needed green fields and they need trees to be planted. I also see lots of speed humps and traffic calming on the worst estates too.
The kids tend to be boy racers and so the powers that be on the council put in humps and make the kerbs stick out in the road and turn the estate into an awful place where drug taking and gangs thrive.
So called traffic calming devalues housing, so it’s not welcome in the posh areas. On council estates, it doesn’t matter, few people own their own homes. There is little pride on these estates, no leadership, no where for people to go except the pub. Some estate used to have social clubs, but most of those have closed down. I think they call it urban decay. In the 1980’s we had the Toxteth riots and Moss Side riots, we have seen riots this time both in this country and others. I suspect we are due to have more as there will be more ‘urban decay’.
Champagne and strawberries for the rich was my blog yesterday and I think it was fair comment on the social problems facing us. The rich do get richer and the poor do get poorer. The wholesale price of energy goes up and so the money changers buy it up on the commodity exchanges . British gas puts up prices, N Power follow and the rest of the cartel follow suit. We all get bigger bills this winter and the most vulnerable go cold and some will die.
Looking for thrifty bargains was Thursday’s thrifty blog. What else can we do, but shop around and try to save a few quid towards the gas and electricity bills. That means spending a lot less on luxuries, but I’m sure the companies that sell them will survive. Starbucks appears to be doing well, even in a recession. It makes you wonder who can afford to go in there… Costa Coffee was packed last week too.
How to write a novel | Suspense was my usual weekly blog about writing fiction. You have a computer and some imagination. Could you write a story? You could start with a short story and work your way up to a novel or a short novella.
Neodigital Art | inspired art was Tuesday’s art blog and I was inspired by my visit to Walsall New Art gallery on Sunday afternoon. I used some of the photographs that I took for that blog and a couple from Sandwell Valley too. I hope to be out again this weekend. The sun’s shining so far!
Can the Black Country afford culture was my Sunday ramble. That one even has a video! My Sunday rambles are always popular and I quite enjoy writing those. I don’t have to do any research!
I hope you enjoyed this weeks blogs, there are even more over on a zillion ideas. Please help publicise my blogs and if anyone needs a weekly column for a website, magazine or newspaper that is along the lines of my Sunday ramble; please get in touch. I’m a great believer that if we do what we enjoy, we not only live life as it is meant to be; we also do well. I could also do with the money that a copyright sale would bring.
Related articles
- Neodigital Art | inspired art (mike10613.wordpress.com)
- The scandal of British poverty (mike10613.wordpress.com)
- What happened when a City wealth manager hired a council estate boy with no A-levels (standard.co.uk)
Mike10613's Blog 
Do you mean the Panarama documentary about the Shadsworth estate in Blackburn?
That’s just a few miles down the road from me. They obviously had to pick the bad examples in the area or it wouldn’t make good TV would it? They didn’t show most of the stuff they filmed about the good points of the area, and the community spirit there. It was edited to serve their purpose. It’s like a lot of places. The good elements always outnumber the bad by a broad margin. Though I do find more problem families seem to be located in outlying areas of towns for some reason. The programme has received a lot of condemnation in this area and I’m not at all surprised.
19, October 2012 at 12:27 pm
Hi Carol,
I saw that Panorama programme. We have some deprived areas here, some would say the whole area is deprived. One estate I visit is like the one in the programme and is on the edge of town. They have a few shops and a Lidl, if they want to go shopping they have to catch a bus. There are a lot of good people, but the kids racing around on noisy scrambling bikes are the ones that get the attention. The estate has a reputation for drug taking. They dug the road up a month ago and it’s not seen as important so there has been a diversion in place for a month.
They do lump all the problem families together and that makes for an estate with a reputation. Some estates become so bad that they have had no choice but to demolish them and start again. These places need green spaces, decent housing and no ugly traffic calming. I live in a tree lined street, it could be better, but trees make all the difference.
19, October 2012 at 3:57 pm