What is The Echo Chamber?

The Echo Chamber sends a weekly newsletter with views that are not discussed on metropolitan social media feeds. We take on a different topic every week and send to our hundreds of subscribers. We don’t send any spam. Sign up today!

Education

Pupils who live in rural locations do better than those in urban locations – however, this trend is reversed when it comes to the location of the school. Rural schools achieve worse results when compared to urban schools.

Location of Pupils

Location of School

Link the DEFRA PDF

General Levels of Education in Rural UK

The population who live in rural areas are more likely to have a qualification compared to those living in large towns and cities.

See the report here

Earnings and Business

You are more likely to be employed if you work outside towns and cities.

See the report here

You are more likely to work from home – especially if you live in a hamlet. (Data from 2013)

See the report here

However, your earnings will be less than those who work in towns and cities on average.

Data based on your workplace location

Data based on where you live

More in the report

But this drop in earnings is made up for by housing costs. If you live rurally you are more likely to have more disposable income.

For the reference click here

Rural Health

You are likely to live longer if you live in sparsely populated areas compared to urban areas. The infant mortality rate has also historically been a lot lower.

Male Life Expectancy

Female Life Expectancy

Infant Mortality

More on rural health here

Crime – Rural vs Urban

You are safer if you live in rural communities compared to cities. This is true of robberies, burglaries, violent crime and sexual assault.

See the report here

Summary

In some respects, we should take this analysis with a pinch of salt. When looking at averages, it’s difficult to see the discrepancies in inequality – the very poor and the very rich could balance out to create normal average.

Some evidence of this does come from housing affordability. For this section, DEFRA took statistics from the lowest quartile of earnings and the price of buying a house. Here there was an indication that there are greater inequalities in rural areas compared to urban areas because rural housing was deemed more unaffordable. When all the other statistics presented a picture of rural areas being better educated, more healthy and with households of greater wealth, these stats show that it is hard for those earning the least to find affordable housing.

The report is here

What is The Echo Chamber?

The Echo Chamber sends a weekly newsletter with views that are not discussed on metropolitan social media feeds. We take on a different topic every week and send to our hundreds of subscribers. We don’t send any spam. Sign up today!

Last week, The Echo Chamber looked at the influence Putin may have over American politics. It was clear that Russia was all over the news, and many American commentators were concerned about Putin’s relationship with Donald Trump. They believe they were ‘in cahoots’. A serious allegation indeed against a potential American President.

The Week, an extremely high quality and popular magazine also picked up on the story. They produced a fantastic front cover and the following editorial:

The text on that image may be quite small for many of our readers to inspect. So here is the top line story. Anne Applebaum in The Washington Post states that “Trump has never made any secret of his admiration for Russia’s President”. Paul Krugman in the New York Times is quoted as noting that Trump’s campaign manager also worked for the pro-Russian Ukrainian President ousted in 2014. Dana Milbank in The Washington Post notes that if the shoe was on the other foot, Trump would be throwing these allegations at his opponent with full enthusiasm.

The Week also puts a balanced view in from Julia Ioffe in Foreign Policy – she rightly notes that no hotels that Trump owns exist in Russia and furthermore offers the opinion: “the very fact we’re discussing Trump being a Putin plant will delight Putin”.

This was the point made in The Echo Chamber last week. When all the editorials were commenting on Trumps potential involvement with the Kremlin, we focussed on New York Times editorials which shows that it’s in Russian interest to spread paranoia. By reading up on The Internet Research Agency you’ll be more tuned in to how information is being presented to a Western world.

What you read shapes how you view the world

Please note, that above I have paraphrased a paraphrased article. I’m well aware of the effect chinese whispers can have on facts. However, I’m not intending to commentate on whether Trump is in ‘kahoots with the Kremlin.’

My commentary on this subject is to show how millions of middle-class, well educated people are potentially mis-informed by the press every single day. This in itself may be a fairly moot point – but we would like to point to many instances where we are mis-informed by our media, and indeed by the articles that are readily shared on social media channels.

This is yet another example of where popularist opinions and media can mislead you from what is actually going on. In a world which is becoming increasingly divided, it is becoming more important than ever before to be empathetic towards other points of view. But you can’t be empathetic to other points of view if you have no access.

This is where The Echo Chamber comes in – subscribe to our weekly newsletter today.

[In a fairly petty manner, we’d also like to note that we got there a full week before The Week too. Just for the record.]