Personal politics

I have a problem. I want to try to find out why people behave in the way that they do but I can't find a way of asking that will get a straight answer.

Last summer, for Olympic purposes,  Scarborough was linked with with the London Borough of Hackney. The idea was to develop sporting links between the two places with a particular emphasis on young people. Not a bad idea but not a lot came of it, but that's a story for someone else to tell.

Now at the time I had an odd personal interest in both places. I had a son born in Hackney who was living in Scarborough and another born in Scarborough who was living in Hackney. For the purposes of this post all this means is that my 25 year memories of Hackney had had a recent update and so I would happily go around telling people what they had in common.

Firstly, Scarborough is not quite the middle class place that outsiders imagine. Three of the Council's ward's are among the 10% most deprived in the country with transient populations, high teenage pregnancy rates, self harming drug use and lots of other problems that you'd normally associate with an inner city area. Not like the rest of North Yorkshire at all and therefore sometimes a bit of a mystery to the County Council.

Another thing that  Hackney and Scarborough have in common is that they both have thriving artistic communities. This is because they are both relatively cheap places to live but also because they both possess interesting local environments. In Scarborough its the sea and the moors, in Hackney, to keep it simple, the colourful multi ethnic mix. 

But, one thing about the artists in Hackney is that at some point in the last 25 years they have embraced the bicycle. You can spot a gallery opening by the bikes dangling off every available railing. Cycling has become cool.

This hasn't happened in Scarborough, yet. There's a handful of us that are likely to turn up on a bike and that's it; we really can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Now,  because of the nation's recent cycling successes, I tried sounding out some Scarborough artists to see if we could make something of this and begin getting a few more of them on bikes.

But, whenever I tried to talk about it the discussion immediately turned personal and I found it impossible to get past a list of excuses and on to a general discussion of the phenomenon, "But I live too far out of town", "But I've got heavy sculptures to transport", "But we live at the top of a hill", "But my bike cost a lot of money so I wouldn't dream of leaving it on the street"...

My old friend Mike, who has kept up a beautifully written blog, Idiotic Hat, for over 5 years, noticed this blog and last week wrote a post  that directed people here. In this he mentions how annoying moralisers can be and, whilst I undoubtedly do moralise, he suggested that at least I try to support my observations with facts and good science.

So, to restate the problem, either your attemptedly neutral efforts to find out what's going on get turned into a personal challenge or else your arguments are challenged, not on the basis of there being some flaw in the argument, but because you in some way don't personally live up to the implied consequences. Neither Al Gore nor The Prince of Wales help themselves by living obvious lives of luxury whilst suggesting that the world would be better if we didn't, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. 

If you're a member of the Greedy Selfish Party then no one expects you to be anything other than greedy and selfish, but if you're into the politics of the environment then the first attack is invariably one of hypocrisy. 

The challenge is to work out how to shift the debate from one particular person's personal behaviour, either the proselytiser or the proselytisee, and on to the systemic reasons why we behave in particular ways. For example, if we build our towns and cities around the needs of motorists than it shouldn't be too surprised that lots of people choose to drive.