Category Archives: Uncategorized

The old National Institute for Adult and Continuing Education (long since merged with ‘Learning and Work’), and the old Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education (abolished by Thatcher’s Government) published a number of reports that still read well today The Government’s plan for Music Above Turn It Up: Our plan for music It couldContinue reading “The forgotten studies on adult education and learning for leisure”

The Deputy Chief Executive of the Cambridge Growth Company / Greater Cambridge Development Corporation highlighted huge governance issues that ultimately are outside of the competency of her organisation – and must be resolved by ministers The Cambridge Radio podcast hosted by Lewis Herbert is here *Declarations of interest: Have we got any better on solvingContinue reading “Beth Dugdale’s open question on Cambridge’s growth is a huge challenge for ministers”

I haven’t! Hence sleeping through most of the weekend and missing a whole host of events – such as the open day held at Mill Road Library Turns out heatwaves make it even harder for neurodiverse people to get decent sleep because we already struggle to regulate our body temperatures anyway, and trying to coolContinue reading “Have you recovered from the heatwave yet?”

With the final public consultation on the draft local plan for Cambridge due to start in a week or so, is anyone looking at linking up the new settlements at Cambourne, Northstowe, and Waterbeach New Town? Image: Towns and Trams, by the Campaign for Better Transport & Create Streets Above – detail of the newContinue reading “Are planners considering a Cambridge Orbital for the new settlements around the city?”

It’s so…beige! You can have a browse of the landing page here It looks very much like an ‘Apart-hotel’ rather than the boutique hotel some of us were talking about almost a decade ago when the Tories decided to ‘dispose of the asset’ and move to Alconbury – a few years before the electorate votedContinue reading “Proposals to turn Old Shire Hall into an aparthotel published.”

Successive governments only have themselves to blame for not requiring the infrastructure providers to construct what was needed – and for not funding the expansion of primary healthcare and new hospital provision The landing page for what locals have long called Addenbrooke’s still has the very busy A&E notice up As of Midnight+7mins on ThursdayContinue reading “Symptoms of too much Cambridge growth and too little infrastructure supporting it”

Cambridge City Councillors meet on Wed 15 July 2026 to approve a monster set of documents going out to public consultation on the future of the city You can: Additionally, this is an early notice for anyone interested in organising meetings or workshops – theme specific (eg transport) or area-specific (eg a village or aContinue reading “***Massive*** document drop by Greater Cambridge Shared Planning Service on future of city”

The Together Culture collective have a new project coming up. They are asking you to imagine what you’d build ‘if you had a million pounds to invest in community-owned infrastructure here.’ More details are at https://www.togetherculture.com/events “Given Cambridge’s housing and land prices, that might get you a small lock-up and a micro-forecourt if you’re lucky”Continue reading “Together Culture – co-operation in a University City”

Can someone make a high profile case for re-connecting a fast-growing Cambridge to the seaside by train like in the olden days? Image – The draft East of England Plan of March 2010 which you can read here. I wrote about it back in 2022 in a blogpost saying that not everything needed to beContinue reading “Reconnecting Cambridge by rail with east coast seaside resorts like Great Yarmouth”

Titled ‘Industrial and social conditions in relation to adult education’, the document was published in 1919 as a one of a series of interim reports, and yet it resonates far more than any corporate report of recent times. This is what it said about local government in paragraph 18 of the report “The general environmentContinue reading “The powerful case for lifelong learning by the Committee for Adult Education 1919”