Someone writes in the Observer about allowing her eight year old twins to roam away from the coddling nest of home and called it Don't fence us in, Mum
Growing up in a west Yorkshire hamlet, I enjoyed limitless freedom from the age of four. Entire summers were spent playing in the woods and a derelict three-storey mill with perilous holes in its rotting floors......incidences of child abduction have remained virtually unchanged since 1950, yet today's 'caution culture' has dramatically altered how young people play...'Traffic is the main factor and it's an absolutely valid concern,' says Adrian Voce, director of the Children's Play Council. Although the volume of traffic-related accidents and deaths is falling, Britain still has the highest child road-death figures in Europe.
A number of people tell me that they could not survive without their cars. I don't dispute that fact at all - it is pretty obvious to me that much of Britain is constructed and designed to make people dependent on their cars. Even if that isn't the intention of many planning decisions, it is the inexorable consequence. An out-of-town supermarket eventually forces people to use it as it destroys the pre-existing town centres, not to mention the stranglehold the supermarkets have over the suppliers. A few years ago I visited a friend on the Cambridgeshire/Essex/Suffolk borders. We had fun going into a show home; for the rest of the day I saw a plethora of signs for new housing developments. As far as we could discern, there were no new schools being built, and certainly not within walking distance of these non-communities. For decades, it has been said that a major cause of social breakdown on council housing estates is the lack of community infrastructure. On the prosperous designer estates of Silicon Fen I can't imagine the anomie taking on quite the same characteristics, because the Henrys and Jessicas will be ferried from gym sessions in French to judo on horseback to structured play with Clementine and Rupert, but I would imagine it being pretty soul-destroying to be a child or teenager growing up there, cocooned from human contact by the hermetic seal of the motor car. The peak commute into Cambridge seems far more stressful, as a matter of routine, than my half-awake stumblings from bus to Tube to bus. (Admittedly, I have the dream commute, the worst aspect remains the bit down Brixton Hill, and I'm afraid I can't afford to live in Central Brixton - actually, I couldn't afford to live here if I hadn't bought ten years ago...).
Someone pointed out to me that she has no choice but to use her car, there isn't an integrated transport system. Fair point. I had a conversation with someone else (who I dislike intensely) who was moaning about her local council. They refuse to empty her bin because it's too full. She's been told they should be recycling more 'but I don't have time to recycle'. I giggled and said bluntly "Why not? It's only the future of the planet." She also complained that she wants a bench on a local patch of land, which seems an entirely reasonable demand. So I suggested that she did something about it eg drop a short note to her councillor, for a start.
It was illustrative to me. Benches don't appear on the local greenspace by magic. But if people don't ask for one, lobby for one, campaign for one, hold their local elected representatives for one, they will never be able to campaign for an integrated transport structure. Or even for a bus route to include in their Tudorbethan Housing Development. London does have an integrated transport policy, not by magic, but because for decades people have campaigned for it. When it goes wrong, as it often does, it goes wrong spectacularly, but when it works - more or less - it is amazing. I was quite shocked yesterday that a short bus trip up Mansfield Road, in Nottingham, which prides itself on its public transport cost us £1.20. That is the cash fare for a bus journey of any distance in London. I was also struck by the demography of our fellow passengers on a half empty bus (early Saturday afternoon), which, apart from us, seemed to consist entirely of pensioners and teenagers.
I think it's sad when I see people I know become tied to their cars when they have children, and yet as this article illustrates, the quality of childhood is being ruined by cars, curtailing their freedoms and causing dramatic increases in childhood asthma, both over time, and where traffic congestion is high.
I believe in, say, fifty years time people will see the turn of the century dependence on the motor car as a lunatic aberration. To get to that situation requires more than just observing the craziness of the current situation, wishing for change, and operating congestion charge schemes. It requires an analysis of the whole way we live our lives, from obesity and the junkfood culture, anti-social behaviour, climate change and world poverty. I think we are all 'against' these. I was going to make some quip about how many Edinburgh protesters will be going by car or plane, but actually, going by coach or train is not environmentally neutral. The simple fact of holding a mass demonstration in a central location is arguably part of the problem, not the solution.
And yet it would be idiotic to wish for a return to some mythical age when - allegedly - good quality food products were available at affordable prices in every local shopping parade. It's fanciful to assume that this was a happier era, because it only really worked because women knew their place was in the home, perhaps on valium, and men were expected to follow the same job and precisely same routine for forty years, only getting promotion when it was his turn, and woebetide if your sexual preferences didn't fit this model, or your skin was the wrong colour, or you rather fancied spending a day partying with relatives in the Midlands, and the night dancing with one's cohabitee in an 80s disco in a Kings Cross pub with late licence, and a Sunday nursing a hangover, happy in the knowledge that it is not necessary to prepare Yorkshire pudding and roast beef because you will just be heating a King Prawn Makhani and Rice conveniently procured by car from Streatham's out-of-town Sainsbury's supermarket.
