The BBC has commissioned Sheffield University to do a major study on community change in Britain over the last 30 years. The main report by Daniel Dorling and his team is a golden pot of fascinating miscellanea and genuinely insightful social comment. It has also provided an opportunity for grotesque psychological generalisations. Anthropological statistics are always extremely dangerous for news organisations, and the BBC hasn’t held back. The biggest story it has trumpeted is that Britain has become a lonelier place. But how is loneliness quantified? Your loneliness is my joyful solitude. The rules drawn up by the Sheffield team were “based on the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived there for less than a year”. Full report is available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/01_12_08_changinguk.pdf

 
Weblink
03 December 2008
© Newstin