IMPASSE ON LIVERPOOL’S HERITAGE STATUS?

 

THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

There are rumours that the long running row between World Heritage chiefs and Liverpool Council is about to deepen, opening the way for the city to be stripped of its international status.

UNESCO officials placed the city’s spectacular water front on a danger list in 2012 claiming the massive Liverpool and Wirral Waters developments would overwhelm the historic buildings. In July a UNESCO summit conference called for a detailed report setting out exactly what changes needed to be made to the multi billion pound 30 year development plan. It requested a response from Liverpool Council, Peel Ports and English Heritage by December but sources suggest there could be developments much earlier.

This may be because it is becoming clearer than ever that there is an unbridgeable gap between Liverpool and Wirral councils’ determination to back this transformational scheme and UNESCO’s insistence that Liverpool Waters would cause “irreversible damage to the Outstanding Universal Value” of the site.

Liverpool Council has insisted it takes the status issue seriously pointing to its vital role in attracting tourists. Others have said UNESCO officials are being unrealistic about the development needs of a modern city and if the price of going ahead with the development of 60 hectares of land to the north of the city centre is the loss of the status, then so be it. They also point out that there is no threat to the World Heritage status of Tower Bridge in London close to the 87 storey Shard building.

In one way it will be strange if this row reignites in August because this has been a slow burner. Peel first revealed its plans in 2007 and despite being given the planning go ahead precious little progress has been made. Of course the great recession came soon after the scheme was launched, but some take the view that UNESCO would be better advised to ease back on the threats and wait to see what projects actually come forward for development.

70 YEARS AFTER HIROSHIMA.

Jeremy Corbyn continues to inspire Labour activists with his clear policies on issues that his rivals obfuscate about. One of them is his belief that the UK should unilaterally abandon nuclear weapons.

It is an issue that has split the Labour Party since the 1950s when we acquired the bomb seven years after the Americans exploded two devices on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I have visited memorial sites to the devastation caused in both cities. One cannot fail to be moved by the huge death toll and the lingering suffering. I also reflect on the forecast that it was very likely that the casualties from a conventional assault on Japan would have been much higher.

Nuclear weapons have contributed to 70 years of peace between the superpowers but the cold words, mutually assured destruction, bring little comfort.

We are more preoccupied these days with localised terrorism than intercontinental war. Let us hope the two never become fused together.

ANDREW JENNINGS: WORLD CUP HERO.

It’s always good to have celebrities at big football draws. FIFA excelled itself last weekend when Vladimir Putin and Sepp Blatter presided over the draw for the 2018 World Cup.

It will be one of Blatter’s last appearances on the global stage and that’s thanks in no small part to a journalist I first met in Manchester in the 1970s…Andrew Jennings. I’m sure he worked for the radical magazine New Manchester Review. He later took his investigative skills to Granada and then to the BBC’s Panorama.

Andrew toiled on the story of FIFA corruption when most journalists didn’t want to know. Well done Andrew.

 

BUSINESS NEEDS TO WAKE UP TO BRAIN SCIENCE

 

NEUROSCIENCE KNOWLEDGE IS VITAL FOR HUMAN RELATIONS TEAMS

If you run a business, how do you get the best out of your staff? How do you ensure your workplace is one where people can achieve their best for you and themselves without feeling bullied or stressed?

These are pretty important questions when you realise that people attach as much importance to the workplace as a social forum as to being a place where they earn money for their labour.

That is one of the findings of the major advances that are being made in neuroscience, how our brain works. A conference was held about all this in Manchester during the last few days. It didn’t get much publicity. The media,universities, and business organisations (apart from Downtown) weren’t interested. But in a few years these findings will provide the scientific basis for most companies human resources and public relations strategies.

At the conference leading experts from around the world explained how the latest developments in neuroscience, emotional intelligence and psychology can help in a really practical way to improve the way your workforce is encouraged intelligently to think differently and reach innovative decisions.

The fact is that most people know far more about how their car works than how their brain works. And whilst on the subject of cars as far as the brain’s processes are concerned the way you speak to someone can have the same impact as getting your hand caught in a car door!

This conference came at a time of a major crisis in the reputation of many of our companies and institutions. From banking and phone hacking to MPs expenses and FIFA, we are in trouble with public perception. All this is not down to failures in regulation. Much of it is culture and values produced in the brain. So how does the brain work and how do we apply the new knowledge?

When I first thought about this subject I couldn’t fully connect how breakthrough research on the functioning of the brain could be directly linked to the world of HR and personal development.

It can perhaps be summed up with the statement that many of our assumptions about how the brain works are wrong. Many of our assumptions about what motivates people are wrong. Some of our well tried techniques for getting the best out of our workforces are at best out of date and often counterproductive.

One of the major issues for businesses is the challenge of change. It is happening all the time and the speed of change will only accelerate. But neuroscience can help people make that change. One part of our brain is primed and ready to provide us with a natural aversion to change. It is seen as a threat. People need to be given the tools to gain ownership of change decisions for themselves. We need to teach people how to learn for themselves.

We need to share challenges with workers, share information not believe that information is power and keep it to ourselves.

Of course enlightened management is putting some of this into practice already but having the scientific knowledge to back it up will help immensely.

I was particularly struck by the observation of one brain expert that whereas the common perception of the workplace is that it is a place where effort is exchanged for money; for the brain it is social space. The threat response is more powerful than the reward response. Being hungry and being ostracised provoke the same brain response. And don’t forget what I said about the car door!

There is scepticism that this is gobbledygook, or people don’t want to know for fear of getting it wrong. There are special challenges for small businesses. The need to balance theory with practical action and an acknowledgement that neuroscience is far from the whole answer to getting the best out of your workforce.

But neuroscience can certainly help you get a happy workforce.