While we're talking about keeping our fuel bills down...

... here's an interesting item from today's science and technology section in the Guardian. As you'll see, it's about heat pumps: an idea that I haven't heard much about recently but always sounded interesting. One couple quoted in the article claim that their recent installation will pay for itself within seven years (compared with their oil fired system) and the technology is very simple.
Perhaps all new homes in Thatcham should feature a heat pump? The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister are on the case. According to the article they are 'reviewing options'. Meanwhile things are a little further forward in Sweden where 97% of new homes have heat pumps.

As an alternative to wind turbines...

...(see below) you could consider making your own electricity. There's an article on the subject in this week's New Scientist. It's available from the magazine's website but you'll need to pay to read it in full.

Keeping track of the blog (and lots of other things)

If you're interested in keeping track of changes to this blog and you don't know about web feeds take a look at this explanation of the idea at the always excellent BBC News website.

The BBC article explains what 'news readers' are - I'd recommend Bloglines which is based on a website. Once you've set up an account you can keep track of changes to websites which feature a feed, including this one and our Wiki. You'll find the link for the feed for this blog in the links section on the right hand side of this page.

To keep track of changes to the wiki, copy the address which appears in your browser's address bar when you click here into your newsreader.

Confused? Well, this will take a little concentration but after you've read the BBC article all should become clear.

Wind turbines

The company that runs the new wind turbine which is just visible from the M4 as you drive past Reading has also supplied two for the town of Swaffham in Norfolk. As you'll see from their website, a consultation with local residents identified that a large percentage of those who responded were in favour of installation of the second machine.

Would Thatcham residents be similarly enthusiastic? There's just one catch: one member of our team of volunteers has pointed out that the turbine in Reading meets the needs of 1200 homes. We'd need about eight Reading-sized ones just to meet domestic demand.

Wired Thatcham

One of the topics we're currently investigating as part of the Vision is the idea of the 'wired community'.

I've just stumbled across this excellent collection of links on the subject.

Websites and other internet applications have enormous potential for linking people together and getting them involved in different aspects of their community, but we obviously need to take account of the fact that web access is by no means universal. Do you have any ideas about how we could bridge the 'digital divide' in Thatcham, assuming that this would be a good thing? If so, we'd be very interested to hear from you.

What do 8-12 Year Olds Think of Thatcham?

You can find out by visiting our Wiki and downloading a summary of views expressed by children at Parsons Down School. Lots of interesting views and ideas were expressed. For example, problems crossing the road and the general issue of road safety featured much more prominently than in responses from adults.

The general issue of youth provision is being worked on by one of our Hot Topic teams. We have set-up a number of these teams, all involving Thatcham residents, to look at a range of topics which also include the town centre, transport and access, the environment, social and community, senior citizen provision amongst them. If you're interested in making a difference to Thatcham in any of these areas and would like to get involved please email us by clicking here.

Government Follows Thatcham's Lead

It's good to see central government catching-up with the Thatcham Vision Project. It has just launched it's very own 'wiki' - click here to take a look at it and here to look at ours which we set-up two months ago. A great idea, obviously, and there are some interesting links on the home page including one to the excellent IDeA website, which is about innovation in local government.

I'd like to offer a small suggestion to the Whitehall wikiers. Try to wean yourself off the jargon guys. This is a personal thing – I’ve written about it on this blog before - but I really do have a pathological dislike of management jargon. For instance, the following leaped off the home page and tried to strangle me:

'key competency' - translation: something really important we need to be good at

'embed innovative thinking within local government' - translation: ensure councils get better at improving things

‘joined-up working’ – translation: well that one needs a whole new blog entry of its own, but I guess that it’s a more 'muscular' (ugh!) version of ‘joined-up thinking’, another phrase which has been bandied about a lot over the last few years.

The quote from the usually lucid Peter Drucker is particularly impenetrable: if anyone can work out what it means do drop me a line via this email address.

But hey, it’s easy to criticise. Innovation is a subject which fascinates me and I’ll try to find some (of my own) time to explore and add-to the ‘e-innovations’ (oh dear!) wiki. You might like to do that as well because the whole point of a wiki is that it’s a two way thing: wikis are websites you can both read and write yourself.

Incidentally, the world's most famous wiki was in the news yesterday.

Thatcham Speaks

As you'll have noticed if you've visited the main website, we've started adding short interviews with people in Thatcham to the site. Just click the link on the home page - or on the interviews page - and you'll be able to hear what our first 'aural' contributors have to say.

The flow of responses to our 'Wishes' consultation exercise is increasing by the day - both via the online survey (also accessible via our home page) and the paper version, which are available from the library and Thatcham Vision Supreme Headquarters at the Town Council offices - see contact details on the main website.

Over the next few weeks (with a break over Christmas, of course) we'll be holding the first meetings of our 'Hot Topic Teams' which are looking at issues like the town centre, youth provision and transport. A full list of teams is available at the Hot Topics page, also on the main website.

Lastly we're going to post some of the comments and ideas we've been receiving at our 'wiki'. See the link in the right hand column of this page to visit the wiki.

It's all go, to say the least!

Wishes to date

We’re beginning to get lots of responses to our ‘Wishes’ consultation campaign, which you can take part in by clicking here.

Here are some examples of the wishes that people are sending to us.

I wish…

… ‘for a larger, better equipped library. Thatcham’s population continues to increase – this amenity needs to follow suit. It is important to many people for multiple reasons.’

… that there was a bridge over the level-crossing.’

…for an improved shopping are with ample free parking – this would be to include some ‘High Street’ names desperately needed would be a clothes shop for adults as well as children.’

…there was a wider range of shops, even smaller versions of big brand shops, or independent ones. A small Burger King, Pizza Hut, clothes shop for children and adults and a proper coffee shop.’

When are you going to be sending us your wish?

Three (plus or minus) wishes for Thatcham

There are two versions of our Wishes for Thatcham exercise. We're distributing a paper based version via schools, Thatcham library and other public places. We launched our web based version today - you'll find the link on our home page which you can visit by clicking here. The link is just below our online poll.

The aim of the wishes exercise is not to produce a wish list (as in 'that's just a wish list'). We're using the idea of wishes to tap into people's aims and aspirations. Asking people 'If you could make one wish related to a change in Thatcham what would it be?' - which is something I started doing shortly after I started working on the project - produced some interesting, and revealing, results.

You'll find out about the way that we are collecting wishes when you visit the survey. As you'll see we've taken the idea a little further and are asking people to think about ways that their wish could be turned into something real. The online survey talks about 'bridges and barriers'. Bridges are factors which exist now which could enable the change to happen and barriers are things that could prevent it. This is a plain English (well, almost) version of a widely used technique which you can find out all about by clicking here.

Eventually we're also going to help ensure that our wishes are rooted in reality by introducing the brand new concept of SMART Wishes (a first, I think, for the Thatcham Vision project). Click on this link and follow some of the references to find out what SMART is all about. If you've ever been involved in planning in organisations, you'll probably know already.

The benefits of talking to each other

You don't need to be a sociologist to know that people don't talk to each other as much, or know each other as well, as they used to. I remember my Grandmother's house in South East London in the early 1960s. It was a hub of activity for the extended family, many of whom lived in the surrounding streets. For a child Christmases were magical: a knees-up around the piano, not a TV is sight, dozens of people in the house.

Ten years later that had all changed. The family had dispersed not only to different parts of London but also to other parts of the country (and other countries). We never got together in quite the same way again.

This sense of separation and isolation in our communities is almost tangible: look at the 9' fences which are built between the tiny gardens in new housing estates, for example.

Perhaps people want to keep themselves to themselves: maybe that's partly why the (and my) extended family broke down. But it seems that there are real benefits to getting people engaged in thinking about their community. See this interesting speech, by 'Minister of Communities’ (you all knew that we had one of those, didn’t you?) David Milliband for more on that subject. If you agree – or disagree – with what he had to say, feel free to post a comment below. (One of my goals for this week is to see if we can persuade Mr Milliband to come down and have a chat with us, down here in deepest Berkshire.)

Scenarios, processes and that sort of thing

In spite of my dislike of management jargon (see below), there are useful ideas available from the wonderful world of business planning which we're going to be using during our project.

One of them is called 'scenario planning'. It's a very simple idea which has been used to good effect by organisations like Shell - in fact this particular idea was invented by someone from Shell.

Scenarios are often described as 'stories' about possible plausible futures. They aren't intended to be predictions, not least because it's pretty much impossible to predict what will happen in the future (if you know any differently, do drop us a line!). Instead they are used in two ways - to help people to think about things and to test the specific plans they come up with. If you'd like to know more about this, there's a very good website on the subject here.

If you'd like to join in with the work we're doing on this kind of thing, we'd be delighted to hear from you! Click the link to our main website (on the right of this page) to find our contact details.

Good news for premature evaluation sufferers

I met someone yesterday who was deeply sceptical about the Thatcham Vision. That’s fine, of course: people should be sceptical about everything. Being sceptical means not accepting things at face value, digging beneath the surface, asking questions, thinking hard, testing ideas and so on. Sceptical is good.

But this person was also deeply negative about the Vision. In my view negative is bad. Very bad. Being negative certainly isn’t the same thing as being sceptical, although they often get confused. Negative is when your first response to an idea is to find everything that’s wrong with it. I can understand why people are negative – we live in trying and stressful times: I’d be concerned if I met someone who wasn’t a bit negative from time to time.

But to be honest, negativity – particularly as the very first reaction to a new idea – really winds me up. If you want to kill an idea the best way to do so is to be negative. Trot out the usual excuses: ‘we tried that before and it didn’t work’, ‘it might work there, but it won’t here’, ‘we’ve never been any good at doing that sort of thing’ and so on. There are dozens of variations on that theme. (The ‘we tried that before’ line is particularly weak I’m afraid: won’t bore you with the details here – drop me an email by clicking here and’ll tell you what I think is wrong with it.)

In a nutshell, I hate negativity because it stops useful things from being done. This is a subject on which I could bore for England: it’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Some years ago I came up with a name for the condition suffered by people who exhibit a severe negative response to everything: I call this Premature Evaluation. Premature Evaluation can be very unpleasant, but luckily there are cures available these days. Of which more in later posts.

And I shouldn't leave you with the impression that everyone is negative about the project. That, I'm pleased to say, is very far from the case.

Research into Vision Projects

If you are interested in researching into vision projects in general http://www.sustainable.org/creating/vision.html
is worth a visit. It has loads of general information on the subject plus details of tools for analysis etc. It also contains links to a number of project sites.

A UK based Vision project

It is interesting to see how Vision projects are moving in America and our exchange of information with the city of Racine have proved to be most useful. In the UK, Weston Super Mare has been running a Vision project for some time now and their situation is in quite a mature condition. Their site - click here - makes interesting reading, have a look at:

Government housing plans questioned

The Thatcham Vision certainly isn't just about housing, but central government's plans to ramp-up the rate of house building in Southern England will - one way or another - have major consequences for many aspects of Thatcham's future. This is certainly a topic in which we're taking a close interest.

A new report from The Countryside Agency and English Nature raises fears about the environmental impact of the plans. See this story in today's Observer. A particular problem identified by the report relates to additional demands on already stretched water supplies. If the climate of Southern England becomes more and more like that of Southern Spain, this will cause some interesting problems.

No need to panic though. I'm sure that someone in central government has thought this all through very carefully.

Racine USA - online meeting

Following Tony's discovery of the Sustainable Racine website, we've been exchanging emails with Aaron Hertzberg the project manager, and Bonnie Prochaska, its Executive Director.

Aaron has very kindly offered to participate in an online meeting on Monday 31st at 8.00pm our time via Microsoft Messenger. Bonnie would like to have joined us as well but she’ll be away at a conference.

If you'd like to be involved - either to ask questions or to 'watch' the discussion live - please email me by clicking here and I'll explain how you can and provide you with some details that you need. If you aren't familiar with how to use Messenger either ask a passing teenager or go to Microsoft's MSN Messenger home page, where everything is explained very clearly. Drop me a line if you have any problems. Once you’re signed up on Messenger you can experiment with it before Monday by chatting briefly with me, if you like.

If you haven't used Messenger before, it's very useful for this kind of online meeting or conference. I often use it for three way 'meetings' between colleagues in Dar es Salaam, Grenada and Newbury! It's very easy to use and set up and has lots of benefits, not least the fact that it's free.

The Racine project does seem extremely interesting. Like Thatcham Vision, it's part of a country-wide initiative: see the 'about us' page here for more details and some very interesting ideas.

Do other towns have Vision Projects?

Vision projects are used all over the world, their success is based on good input from the town’s residents. Try searching on line for vision projects, I received 94 million responses when I tried it. I have a lot more to look at but I was particularly impressed to see how Racine, a town in America, had set about their Vision Project and, just as important, how they have used the results to ensure their wishes were turned into reality. Have a look at http://www.sustainable-racine.org/ and check out some of the newsletters.

New contributor

My name is Tony McDonald. Having enjoyed living in Thatcham for 18 years I am keen to input into how Thatcham develops, which is why I have volunteered to help with the Thatcham Vision project. I am currently researching how other locations around the world have set up and used Vision teams and will be posting some of my findings on this Blog.
Just a bit about who I am. I recently retired from a lifetime working in the telecommunications industry, enjoy walking, cycling, watercolour painting and am heavily into conservation in the area.

Binge selling?

Many of the comments we're receiving are from people who feel intimidated when they go into the town centre in the evening and after dark. We'll be publishing their comments on our Wiki very shortly.

This is a problem in many town centres, of course. Here's an item from today's Observer about how some pub chains are responding to the changes in licensing hours.