The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Close down the class divisions
Growing up, I couldn’t have told you whether my pals lived in council houses or the posh kind.
What their dads did for a living, the size and age of the family car or where on the social ladder they had been lucky enough to land were not topics that troubled our playground interactions. Not when there was important business to be conducted, like who could swing the highest and how to deploy the latest swearword to maximum effect.
The games may be more sophisticated for this generation but I don’t imagine it’s much different today.
As my horizons widened so did my circles. I’ve known people whose characters were forged on some of Scotland’s most notorious schemes and others who were privileged to enjoy the best private educations money can buy.
None of them have shifted me from the certainty we had it right as kids. Inherited wealth, or the lack of it, does not determine an individual’s cleverness, kindness, or any of the things that matter, and the place a person starts out from is no indicator of where their moral compass will lead them.
So there was something quite distasteful about the ‘no riff raff’ message that seeped out of a new £1 billion housing estate on the edge of Perth this week.
Those weren’t the exact words, but it does appear to have been the intent behind the ‘residents only’ sign installed at a playpark in the Bertha Park scheme following complaints that the swings and slides were being used by “children from social housing”.
The explanation, provided in an email from the factoring firm that maintains the park, caused outrage among parents, who claimed it was hurtful and prejudicial to local families, and among Courier readers, who commented in their hundreds when we reported on the controversy this week.
Springfield Properties, the developer behind the estate – a mix of private and affordable homes – has now apologised and agreed to take down the sign, accepting it had left some residents “feeling unwelcome”.
Hopefully the episode will turn out to be an embarrassing postscript in the story of Bertha Park as the fledgling community finds its feet and newcomers become neighbours.
But let’s not pretend what happened in Perth’s leafy suburbs is an isolated case.
The sign-poster here may have blundered by saying the quiet part out loud but snobbery and nimbyism are cold hard facts of adult life and it will take more than a few inclusive planning policies and affordable homes quotas to chip away at the divisions that persist in this country, or the harms they cause.
The attainment gap between children from the poorest and richest neighbourhoods has stubbornly refused to narrow.
That’s one reason why routes into education and employment are rockier for some people than others, leading to long-term impacts on health, wellbeing and lifespans.
Lingering class prejudice is another and the youngsters growing up in social housing will learn soon enough that they will have to scrabble harder to get on than those from posher postcodes.
Where you come from shouldn’t matter. None of this is fair but there’s a time and a place for them to get that message and it’s not in the playpark.
Elsewhere, we had more heartening examples of what can happen when people go out of their way to do the decent thing this week.
In Fife, Alison Sibbald was given a reminder of her late brother when a DIY enthusiast found his signature hidden under layers of wallpaper at her new home in Glenrothes.
Alister Dyson had written his name on the wall when he decorated the property in 1965 and after Margaret Cowin discovered it she set about finding Alison, who declared it a wonderful surprise to be reconnected with her past, more than 20 years after her brother’s death.
Even more remarkable was the tale of the stolen engagement ring reunited with its owner more than 30 years after it was given up for lost.
Metal detectorist George Taylor uncovered the trinket on an outing to Carnoustie beach and embarked on a quest to hand it back to its rightful owner.
With just the date and initials engraved on the inside to go on, he and a friend pored through marriage records until they found names from a 1963 wedding ceremony to match.
A search on Facebook led them to Dorothy Nicoll, 82, who had not seen it since a break-in at her home in Broughty Ferry in 1987.
Her husband Andrew died four years ago, never knowing what happened to the ring he bought with his earnings from a student job because the stone was the same colour as a pint of Export.
For Dorothy, its return is priceless and for George, the knowledge that his hobby has brought such happiness is the best reward possible.
Life’s better when we act with kindness and do the right thing by other people. It’s as true today as it was in the playground.