Here's a thought, based on our experience as a rural community: as public sector funding has fallen, the already small amount flowing to rural areas has fallen fastest. The services that we cannot take on (road maintenance) have got ludicrously bady, and the county has spent more money arbitrarily lowering speed limits than on making people's journeys shorter and more pleasant. National government barely notices the countryside has people who live in it.
The end result has been a fallback on a mentality of "if we don't do it nobody will" and some services have improved e.g. our locally created and operated community bus visits more places and carries more people than the subsidised services that preceded it (born here residents tell me best ever service).
At that point increasing pride in your local community is inevitable; equally pride in those larger institutions is going to fall. Is there a fix? Maybe. But making larger local government areas isn't it.
Sometimes local communities develop local currencies and/or timebanks. These are great for developing mutual care. They tend to happen when there is a group of people who feel that the local area is particularly deprived or they have a particular common interest, that may be occupational - e.g. babysitting circles, agriculture, construction work.
Faith communities are great for mutual care, but many people find it off-putting to be asked to accept a creed that is more specific than the quest for goodness and mutual care.
A WhatsApp group or similar for a street may help develop mutual care. It may be sparked by controversy over a planning decision, or by Crimewatch activities. The presence of a disabled person living alone on the street may engender a care plan.
Older people may usefully develop local mutual care plans, in preparation for a decline in their self-sufficiency.
Members of a drinking circle at a local pub may be very helpful to each other.
It seems to me that drivers will keep to even a low speed limit in their own village, even if they grumble about it being lowered, but driving through any other village there is no respect for the 'other' speed limit.
We need less of this 'otherness' we all have the same blood in our veins, we are all one human race. Seeing 'brothers' as 'others' is an optical illusion.
Observation from villages in Oxfordshire suggests the compliance rate among locals is less than 10%. Tourists tend to be most compliant, which I assume is because they think the speed limit was changed for a good reason i.e. a known record of dangerous conditions in the area. I have observed similar behaviour patterns in the Gower, where locals ignore the blanket 40mph, slowing only in the same areas they would have slowed before.
We are constantly being told, by the right wing press and parties, that the country is broken. It is not; but the protagonists of this alarm assert this fact in order to normalise proposals that would otherwise be deemed too extreme to be considered acceptable.
I was born and bred in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales, where people looked out for each other. Some years ago my, London-born, husband and I moved to Caerwent, Monmouthshire. We feel welcome, have lovely neighbours and we participate in local activities. I volunteer at our local Village Hall and my husband comperes the annual and long-standing Village Show. We have organised two book fairs in the village hall with proceeds shared between the hall and Macmillan Cancer Care. I can't see us moving from here!
Here's a thought, based on our experience as a rural community: as public sector funding has fallen, the already small amount flowing to rural areas has fallen fastest. The services that we cannot take on (road maintenance) have got ludicrously bady, and the county has spent more money arbitrarily lowering speed limits than on making people's journeys shorter and more pleasant. National government barely notices the countryside has people who live in it.
The end result has been a fallback on a mentality of "if we don't do it nobody will" and some services have improved e.g. our locally created and operated community bus visits more places and carries more people than the subsidised services that preceded it (born here residents tell me best ever service).
At that point increasing pride in your local community is inevitable; equally pride in those larger institutions is going to fall. Is there a fix? Maybe. But making larger local government areas isn't it.
Sometimes local communities develop local currencies and/or timebanks. These are great for developing mutual care. They tend to happen when there is a group of people who feel that the local area is particularly deprived or they have a particular common interest, that may be occupational - e.g. babysitting circles, agriculture, construction work.
Faith communities are great for mutual care, but many people find it off-putting to be asked to accept a creed that is more specific than the quest for goodness and mutual care.
A WhatsApp group or similar for a street may help develop mutual care. It may be sparked by controversy over a planning decision, or by Crimewatch activities. The presence of a disabled person living alone on the street may engender a care plan.
Older people may usefully develop local mutual care plans, in preparation for a decline in their self-sufficiency.
Members of a drinking circle at a local pub may be very helpful to each other.
Other suggestions.....
Re lower speed limits & villages.
It seems to me that drivers will keep to even a low speed limit in their own village, even if they grumble about it being lowered, but driving through any other village there is no respect for the 'other' speed limit.
We need less of this 'otherness' we all have the same blood in our veins, we are all one human race. Seeing 'brothers' as 'others' is an optical illusion.
Observation from villages in Oxfordshire suggests the compliance rate among locals is less than 10%. Tourists tend to be most compliant, which I assume is because they think the speed limit was changed for a good reason i.e. a known record of dangerous conditions in the area. I have observed similar behaviour patterns in the Gower, where locals ignore the blanket 40mph, slowing only in the same areas they would have slowed before.
We are constantly being told, by the right wing press and parties, that the country is broken. It is not; but the protagonists of this alarm assert this fact in order to normalise proposals that would otherwise be deemed too extreme to be considered acceptable.
I was born and bred in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales, where people looked out for each other. Some years ago my, London-born, husband and I moved to Caerwent, Monmouthshire. We feel welcome, have lovely neighbours and we participate in local activities. I volunteer at our local Village Hall and my husband comperes the annual and long-standing Village Show. We have organised two book fairs in the village hall with proceeds shared between the hall and Macmillan Cancer Care. I can't see us moving from here!