Michael Young, Baron Young of Dartington (9 August 1915, Manchester - 14 January 2002) was a British sociologist, social activist and politician. During an active life he founded or helped found a number of socially useful organizations. These include the Consumers' Association, the National Consumer Council,blank">http://www.ncc.org.uk the _Open University, the Open College of the Arts and Language Line, a telephone-interpreting business.
Young's father was an Australian violinist and music critic, his mother a bohemian painter and actor. Until he was eight, he grew up in Melbourne, returning to England shortly before his parents' marriage broke up. He attended several schools, eventually entering Dartington Hall, a new progressive school in Devon, in the 1920s. He had a long association with the small school, as student, trustee, deputy chairman and historian. He studied economics at the University of London and qualified as a barrister.
He helped bring the Labour Party Government led by Clement Attlee into office, single-handedly writing Labour's 1945 manifesto as the Party's young Director of Research. He left the post in 1950 and began PhD studies at the London School of Economics in 1952. His studies of housing and local government policy in East London left him disillusioned with the state of community relations and local Labour councillors. This prompted him to found the urban studies think tank, the Institute for Community Studies, which was to be Young's principal vehicle for exploring his ideas of social reform and creating over sixty institutions. Its basic tenet was to give people more say in running their lives and institutions
With Peter Willmott, he wrote the ground-breaking study, Family and Kinship in East London (known affectionately by sociologists as Fakinel - invariably pronounced with a cockney accent) and, alone, he wrote the influential satire The Rise Of The Meritocracy in 1958, originally for the Fabian Society although they refused to publish it. It led to a change in Labour's thinking on equal opportunities and coined the word meritocracy. Young intended the word to have negative connotations, and he later became disappointed with the way in which subsequent governments (especially New Labour) came to suggest that a meritocracy is something worth striving forblank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,514207,00.html. It was at this time too that Young began work on the Consumers' Association, the National Consumer Council and the Open University. He fostered the work of many younger researchers and "social entrepreneurs", founding the School for Social Entrepreneurs in 1997. Among the former was the collection of social studies in medical care, led by Dr. _Ann Cartwright. Aspects of the work of Michael Young are now being developed by the Young Foundation, under the direction of Geoff Mulgan, a former policy advisor to Tony Blair.
He was a fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, from 1961-6, and President of Birkbeck, University of London, from 1989-92.
Throughout his life and particularly in later life, Young was concerned for older people and that society should take notice of them. He co-founded the University of the Third Age and Linkage, bringing together older people without grandchildren, and young people without grandparents. For his work, he was made a life peer as Baron Young of Dartington, of Dartington in the County of Devon in 1978.
Young married three times. In 1945, he wed Joan Lawton, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. They divorced, and in 1960 he married Sasha Moorsom, the novelist, sculptor and painter, with whom he had a son and daughter. They worked together on several projects, including in the townships of South Africa. After Sasha's death in 1993, Young married Dorit Uhlemann, with whom he had a daughter. Toby Young, Michael Young's son with Moorsom, is a celebrity journalist and writer, best-known for his book, How To Lose Friends and Alienate People.
Michael Brian Young (born October 19, 1976 in Covina, California) is a Major League Baseball shortstop currently playing for the Texas Rangers.
Young was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles in the 25th round of the 1994 draft but did not sign. He did sign three years later, when the Toronto Blue Jays signed him in the fifth round of the 1997 draft. He was traded in 2000 with pitcher Darwin Cubillan to the Rangers for Esteban Loaiza.
Michael Young (born March 8, 1952 in Montgomery, Alabama)
Has a 25-year entertainment career encompassing all areas of production. A TV Emmy Award winner (recognized for ABC's Kids are People, Too, ESPN Sports and CBS' Miss Teen USA) he was also part of the launch teams at CNBC, and The Disney Channel. Michael began his career at QUBE, the world's first interactive TV network, created by Warner Communications, where his show won cable TV's first ACE award for entertainment series.
Michael David Young (born February 21, 1962 in Hanford, California) is a former professional American football wide receiver in the NFL for ten seasons for the Los Angeles Rams, the Denver Broncos, the Philadelphia Eagles, and the Kansas City Chiefs. He currently serves as Executive Vice President of the Colorado Crush of the Arena Football League.
Michael Young (born August 15, 1944 in Port Credit, Ontario) was a Canadian bobsledder who competed in the 1960s. He won two medals at the 1965 FIBT World Championships in St. Moritz with a gold in the four-man event and a bronze in the two-man event.
The following year, he would be severely injured during a four-man competition at the bobsleigh track in Lake Placid, New York when his sled hit the superstructure of the track at Turns 13 and 14, known as the "Zig-Zag Curves", damaging his face. Young was rushed to the hospital in Lake Placid, then flown to a hospital in Montreal to undergo extensive plastic surgery. This crash killed his fellow compatriot Sergio Zardini and also featured future FIBT president Robert H. Storey.
Young got involved with bobsleigh thanks to his cousin Vic Emery while still a student at the University of Western Ontario. Young and the rest of the four-man crew would be honored in Canada's Sports Hall of Fame. Young also finished 11th in the two-man event at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble.
He would later emigrate to the United States in 1975, settling in Denver, Colorado. Young would later move to Dallas, Texas where he is a business consultant.
