CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Ideals and realities
BY BILL KIRKMAN
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The lack of a coherent implementation system often stands in the way of humane visions.
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PHOTO: AFP
Rare and expensive: Public transport is not given the attention it deserves.
FOR retired people living within reach of Cambridge, there is a huge bonus if they want to remain mentally alert. For 25 years, University of the Third Age in Cambridge (U3AC) has been offering an astonishing range of classes, courses, discussion groups and other activities to its members. It is open, at modest subscription, to all who are not in full-time employment. It is in a real sense a self-help organisation, whose members are frequently tutors as well as students.
It has of course one great advantage: the fact that it is in Cambridge. The place is full of people with a huge range of knowledge and experience, who are determined not to atrophy in retirement. This means that participation can be both stimulating and daunting. The Africa Forum which I attend, for example, is choc full of Africa experts.
A variety of subjects
Classes cover both the intellectual and the practical — Opera from Monteverdi to Verdi, and Animals in their Habitat, at one end of that scale, to Table Tennis and Knitting at the other. The most impressive feature of U3AC is the sheer scale of its activities. This year it is offering a total of 239 courses to its hundreds of members.
Traditionally — long before U3AC was founded — great attention has been paid in the area to the provision of education for all. This was the vision of the late Henry Morris, one-time Chief Education officer for Cambridgeshire, who invented the concept of the village college, which would be both a school and a centre serving the whole community. The first one was founded in 1930, and they still exist, although now much constrained by financial pressures. The village college serving the area in which I live currently offers a wide range of classes, from Egyptian Belly Dancing to Painting.
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I made the point that what U3AC offers is a bonus for people living within reach of Cambridge. Being within reach is also a requirement for using the village colleges, and here we come up against a problem. Public transport in rural areas is bad. A friend of mine, who does not drive, could not attend a class in which she was interested at our local village college because there is no bus between our village and the one where the college is situated. It is less than 10 kilometres away, but that is no comfort if you are old and have no car.
One does not have to be too much of a cynic to believe that no British government, of any party, in the past half century has had anything approaching a coherent transport policy. Many town centres are choked with traffic. The building of large estates of new houses takes place before the road system is improved to take the inevitable increase in traffic. Congestion therefore gets worse.
We are concerned about global warming, but many people are forced, because of the deficiencies of public transport, to make journeys by car which add to pollution.
The deficiencies are reflected not just in a lack of public transport but also in the cost of using it. As 2007 began, we learned of huge increases in the price of rail travel. The average rise in fares across the country is 4.3 per cent. The matter is complicated by the fact that the railways were privatised by a former Conservative government in a way which has made a "joined up" approach to services difficult to achieve.
Spiralling cost of travel
Friends of mine from overseas visiting London have frequently expressed horrified amazement at the cost of travel on the tube — the underground railway. On their next visit their horror and amazement will be greater; fares in London have just risen by over 30 per cent, and Britain's capital city now has the most expensive transport system in the world.
Why is this the situation in the U.K.? Many reasons are given by the experts, including the need for massive investment to make our transport systems more able to meet increasing demand.
I am not an expert in transport economics, but it seems to me that we have failed over the years to take appropriate steps to relate the needs of a changing society to the means of meeting them. In our affluent society, it is increasingly difficult for people to get to work at reasonable cost. In our aging society, it is increasingly difficult for older people to make use of facilities provided for them. Joined up policies are not our strong point.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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