"Ageing well"

The 1995 Summerfield Lecture (in our Festival of Literature) was given by Rabbi Julia Neuberger. She gave a masterly survey of "The moral state we're in", considering some of the life and death questions which Brtitish society faces - or doesn't face. Tonight, she returned to Cheltenham to speak at the University of Gloucestershire on one specific question, how we deal with ageing, and how we could do better.

Her talk, as 15 years ago, was a tour de force. "We are an ageing society, and live in an inherently ageist society," was her message. China, Japan, and even America have much to teach us: older people need to mount the barricades for civil liberties, as Raymond Tallis urges. Where are our Grey Panthers?

From ageing to dying requires an acceptance, if not an embrace. Instead, with this transition we enter into taboo territory. "We need to contemplate our mortality with a kind of equanimity."

But it was't all fine phrases. Julia's a practical soul, and throughout her lecture you could feel her (ageing) audience abuzz with "Yesss!". In introducing her, Vice-Chancellor Patricia Broadfoot was right to predict it would be "far more exciting than the Cheltenham Races."

Student engagement in sustainability

I have been at a national forum discussing this today, at the University of Gloucestershire's high-tech Centre for Active Learning. "It's so important to get students to turn lights off!" exclaimed one speaker, as the sun beat down outside and the lights blazed away in the Centre where we all sat. Apparently, the computer mechanism works with some delay in adjusting the levels of light and heat. A bit like getting the Queen Mary to change course.

This seems to me to say it all. Students are well ahead of the game in their desire to live simply, and usually that's all they can afford to do anyway. But do their teachers always set them a good example? Even though their talk is all about sustainability, do they walk it? If not, it shows.

"Students have the numbers to make a real difference," said UoG Vice-Chancellor Patricia Broadfoot in her opening address. Yet "student status depends on conspicuous consumption," observed Gill Kelly of QMU, Edinburgh. How do we all discover the knack of habit discontinuity?