This week the BBC is running a series of news items based on a poll they have commissioned by ICM research into neighbours and neighbourhoods. These links will take you to articles on the BBC site dated Tuesday 6th and Wednesday 7th May. Over a fifth of the people surveyed nationally believed that neighbourhoods have become less friendly in the last five years. More than a third of those surveyed wouldn’t trust anyone in their street with their keys. Half of those surveyed haven’t spoken to more than six people in their street in the last week. One in ten had not spoken to anyone in their street in the last week.
How would Dry Drayton fare in such a survey? Are we becoming less friendly here as everywhere else seems to be in the UK? Is this a symptom of the ageing population here? This survey puts great store in changes in the level of contact, but is that the right thing to be measuring? Isn’t the quality of contact even more important than quantity. Perhaps the real question is “How is Dry Drayton faring in terms of positive, supportive, non-aggressive, non-critical, old fashioned neighbourliness?”
