Matthew's RSA blog

Do as I say, not as I do...

Yesterday we had David Runciman discussing his book Political Hypocrisy. Then today, Mangus Linklater comments on a similar phenomena in The Times.

Runciman begins his thesis by arguing that the easiest way to defeat a political opponent is by showing them to be a hypocrite. He then takes us through a history of policital hypocrisy and ends by defining two types of hypocrisy in the political sphere.

The first is personal hypocrisy, when, as in the case with Eliot Spitzer in New York, ones personal behaviour doesn’t match up to the political ideals that you have been advocating. The second is political hypocrisy, when a politician draws a veil over the political realities of a policy in order to deceive the public.

We, the public, are obsessed with personal hypocrisy which blinds us to the political hypocrisy taking place all around us. We hold politicians to impossible standards, comforting ourselves with the thought that they chose to live their life in the public eye, and therefore they must be the best of us.

And yet I wonder, given that we are all hypocrites in one way or another, aren’t these politicians that we castigate just demonstrating that which we say we want – humanity. There is nothing more human than the desire to hide your worst self, and surely that is even clearer in the mind of a politician.

We need to realise that if a politician has made mistakes in their life, or changed their view on a political position, that may well make them better people, and better able to make good policies in the future. It is not a character flaw to change your mind.

What is different and objectionable is when people judge others. That’s ultimately why the Conservative’s ‘Back to Basics’ policy failed. It sounded as though they were judging the public, and so when their personal peccadilloes came to light it was so profoundly damaging.

The public is easily swayed by the rhetoric of hypocrisy precisely because the public has lost trust in politics and to a certain extent in themselves. Although the argument still rages, again see the Daniel Finkelstein piece from this week, we can at least say that rising affluence is not resulting in rising levels of contentment and fulfilment. People are apparently less happy today, less content despite being more materially affluent than any time in history. The perception gap that I have referred to so many times is part of the public hypocrisy – enough is never enough.

Arguably, democratic politics contains at its very heart a meta-hypocrisy. On the one hand politicians pretend that it’s about doing what people want, when in fact representative democracy is little more than the process by which we can get rid of bad governments.

On the other hand politicians claim the public complains too loudly about their every decision; as if, somehow, our politicians would attain a state, where their behaviour would delight us.

We the people are constitutionally dissatisfied. These two myths, that of democratic accountability and of political venality are the two expressions of the position we find ourselves in – we are a people unwilling to be governed and yet not ready to govern ourselves.

This is a much more profound ‘hypocrisy’ than politicians who call for virtue but are sometimes guilty of vice.

I completely agree with Runciman’s recognition that hypocrisy is a particularly English, or at least English-speaking phenomena. I was reminded of the fact that not all countries have this puerile obsession with politicians bedrooms by the famous Mitteraund response to the Parkinson and Hawke affair when he said “Imagine having to resign because of adultery. If we did that in France, there would only be the poofs left in the cabinet!”

Savings Gateway

Maybe it was the end of a long day but I was pretty churlish about the Government’s pre Queens Speech on Radio 4 last night. In fact there is much in the announcements I like.

For example, while I understand the concerns of small businesses, the overwhelming employer view of the right to flexible working has been positive and I don’t see why this shouldn’t be the case with its extension.

I also hope consensual progress can be made on Lords reform and party funding.

But I particularly welcome the announcement on the savings gateway. This was a policy that was first advocated by the think tank IPPR when I was its Director. It is the sister policy to the Chid Trust Fund, both being aimed at tackling the growing inequality in asset ownership and the high proportion of people who have no saving at all.

By incentivising low income savers the policy encourages thrift and responsibility and so it can be seen as explicitly ‘pro-social’. When we were debating the idea several years ago some economists said it was wrong to encourage poor people to save as the ‘utility maximising’ thing for them to do was to spend all they had. But poorer people themselves tend to disagree.

Even if they only save a few pounds a month it gives people something to fall back on bad times and a nest egg for special occasions and life changes – the kind of thing many of us take for granted.

Caution: Creativity

On Tuesday we had Sir Michael Lyons in the house discussing his review of public service broadcasting. He made a powerful case, and stood up well to some searching questions from the audience (you can hear it shortly, and from next week will be able to see it in edited form on this website)

A key debate is whether the so-called ‘excess’ licence fee (the money was added in the last settlement to the BBC’s budget to cover the costs of digital switchover) should in time be given to Channel Four and other broadcasters to support them in their public service role, and thus ensure a diversity of content provision.

Lyon’s response is firstly that the BBC itself faces constant demands for better services (for example, more regional content) so it could spend the ‘excess’ many times over.

Second, while he recognises the problems faced by Channel Four as markets fragment and advertising revenues fall, Lyons does not think top slicing the license fee is the right response, particularly because to do so would change the character of C4 and thus be self-defeating.

But the core of the Lyons thesis is that what matters to the public is diversity of content and of platforms not diversity of supply. If this is the goal it is one, he argues, the BBC is quite capable of discharging on its own.

Michael Lyons has built a robust argument that is an effective counter to laziness of the excess licence fee argument. However, Channel Four too is making a strong case and the common sense view that we need diversity of supply in PSB as in other public services will be hard to resist.

As it makes it case the BBC will have, as always, to try to avoid the charge of arrogance. It was with this in mind that a particular article in The Times caught my eye. A woman is being threatened with a lawsuit by the BBC for posting free knitting patterns of Dr Who baddies on the internet (under a creative commons licence). This woman was forced to remove the patterns because of copyright infringement. The case continues, but I think that the BBC is missing a trick.

As we are entering an era of what Lawrence Lessig at the University of Stamford called a ‘read/ write’ culture, it is important that publishers begin to take notice of the benefits presented to them by fans.

In Japan the manga publishers have long had, and benefited from, a tacit agreement with their fans that they will look the other way when fans create new books about existing characters, sometimes taking them in entirely new directions.

Surely the BBC could, and should, view this model of shared intellectual property in the light of its public service role of encouraging creativity and innovation.

On an unrelated topic, the always engaging Daniel Finkelstein wrote a fascinating column yesterday about the happiness debate. It’s definitely worth a read.

Learning some tough lessons

Today is all about Education for the RSA. We are hosting our annual, standing room only Opening Minds Conference – poignantly there is also a report from the authoritative DCSF Select Committee MPs criticising SATS test (again).

There are two lessons to be learned. The first concerns the dynamics of policy development. Over time all policies end up generating unintended consequences. Today, when the Ofsted and league tables are part of every day life, and have a massive impact on school intake and by extension property prices it’s difficult to remember how relatively recent these measures are.

Before these were introduced there was a lack of information for parents to make informed decisions. Hundreds of schools were under performing year on year with few levers to tackle failure. SATS, league tables and published Ofsted inspections were not only necessary but inevitable in an age when the public demands, and can easily get hold of, more information. The democratising impact is that middle class parents always knew through the grapevine which schools were good and which not, the SATS system opened up that information to every parent.

The second is a lesson in humility. Systemic reform is difficult, not least when you need to admit that you may have been wrong. While the idea that schools should be held accountable for their pupils’ performance was absolutely correct, but the result is that pupils, teachers and parents now feel constrained rather than liberated.

The report from the DCSF Select Committee calls for a number of reforms to the current system; one of the most relevant to our mission here at the RSA is the renewed commitment to personal learning for pupils.

We have broadly welcomed the introduction of the new National Curriculum which is far more competency based (and in that way more similar to the Opening Minds Curriculum) and we are looking forward to broadening our curriculum for all the key stages with the Academy in Tipton.

The main criticism from MPs appears to be that the barrage of tests is being used, not only to assess pupils against national targets, but also to determine school funding, performance targets and teacher assessment. This creates a system where heads and teachers are understandably obsessed with testing ability, which leads to the aforementioned constraints on creativity in the classroom.

What is needed is a bit of thinking around how you motivate teachers to be creative in the classroom, and provide them with the tools for that creativity. Schools that teach solely to the test create linear thinkers who are good at memorizing facts and regurgitating them on demand – but schools whose teachers, parents, and pupils are actively engaged in a more imaginative learning process create lateral thinkers, able to work out solutions for themselves. And surely that’s what society needs.

Thinking about brains

Over the next few days and weeks I am planning to use my blog to outline the argument I intend to make in my second annual chief executive’s lecture to the RSA.

Last year my subject was ‘pro-social behaviour’. The argument, in a nutshell, was that we will not be able successfully to respond to future challenges and opportunities unless we recognise that we as citizens need to change our attitudes and behaviours. I argued for a political discourse that was less ‘Government-centric’ - what should those in power be doing for us - and more ‘citizen-centric’ - what do we have to do to achieve the things that we want.

Since last year there have been a number of further contributions to thinking about citizen behaviour. The most recent is a short pamphlet from DEMOS featuring essays about public behaviour from leading politicians. The pamphlet is edited by Duncan O’Leary, who also pens an interesting concluding chapter. O’Leary argues that the utilitarian argument for intervening to change behaviours (in areas from parenting to public health) should be supplemented (and in same cases tempered) by an account of how we enhance the capacity of all citizens to feel in control of their lives as individuals and members of communities.       

O’Leary is right. For my lecture I chose the unwieldy phrase ‘pro-social behaviour’ to signal that thinking about future citizenship should start from a positive question about human capacity. This is the idea I want to build on in this year’s lecture.

I am interested in two dimensions of human development. The first element concerns individual human capacity and, in particular, what we beginning to understand about the content, adaptability and idiosyncrasies of our cognitive processes.

I will argue that we are entering ‘an era of neurological reflexivity’, by which I mean a time when we can begin to adapt behaviours and policies to a richer understanding of how our brains (and not just our conscious minds) work.

Observer readers will have seen a major article yesterday about IQ and whether and how it can be enhanced. This is just part of a bigger debate about how we can shape our brains to better adapt us to today and tomorrow’s world.

I want to link this idea to a theme I have explored in blogs and articles earlier this year; new collectivism. The claim here is that people are willing – are indeed enthusiastic – about working with others to create a better future but that they want to do this ways which fit with modern lifestyles and expectations.

I am not as clear as I need to be about how to link these two ideas but that’s one of the things I hope to work through in coming blogs.

Free as ...

This week I’ve been recalling the iconic line from Withnail and I, “Free to those that can afford it, but very expensive to those that can’t”.

This sprang to mind while reading in the Guardian about Freeconomics – Chris Anderson’s idea that companies are giving away many of their goods for free, and opening up new revenue streams elsewhere. For example, a colleague recently upgraded her phone with a particular network, and in return received not only a free new phone, but also an i-pod nano.

The business model here is based on the assumption that since i-pod will only play i-tunes formatted songs, Apple is broadening its consumer base. Given how cheap manufacturing has become, thanks to globalisation, it is actually a cost effective way of distributing goods and then making people pay for the services later.

In large part major corporates are responding to the rise of what Matt Mason (who spoke here yesterday) calls The Pirates Dilemma – which is about how corporations can compete / collaborate with the people who distribute their intellectual property without paying royalties or receiving consent.

The new economics of the internet is part of a more general reappraisal both of the ‘big’ economics of markets, risk and regulation but also the day to day economics of our own consumption patterns. Things can change quickly.

Twenty years ago the value of a family house in the London suburbs was equivalent to the cost of about 400 good quality video players. Now, even with the housing market slowdown, you could buy 16,000 multi functional DVD players for the price of the same house. In the 1980s we would have expected to pay a lot more for an item of clothing than a basic foodstuff but now you can get a perfectly serviceable t- shirt for less than a good loaf of bread. It’s easy to get disorientated about the real costs and value of stuff.

With food and raw material shortages, and climate change, a key issue in the politics of consumption is waste. Whether its white goods with built in obsolescence or the tons of good food we chuck into dustbins every day I wonder whether we are approaching the end of the disposable society.

We have no idea how much producing a kilo of meat costs in environmental or economic terms, we have no idea what the real costs of making our i-pod are in labour or any other sense. We suspect corporations of overcharging for cheap goods – and they may well be in some cases. But what we must do is regain some perspective on consumption, for the good of our planet, or even just for our own peace of mind.

The changing climate of climate change

There would appear to be a change in the air – and I’m not just talking about the weather. At the Commentariat event last night (fun, if slightly self indulgent) I heard someone from Spiked magazine confidently criticising the commentators’ consensus around climate change. This wouldn’t normally have been so worrying, but it was the third time in a day that I’d heard this kind of dissent.

This time last year it appeared that all the UK, and even some American, politicians were on message with what could broadly be called the Stern Hypothesis: the climate is changing, humans have contributed hugely to this change, we should and must act now to mitigate our impact and adapt to those changes we can’t mitigate. But today people seem to be emboldened to question this scientific orthodoxy.

Richard Littlejohn, one of the most widely read columnists in Britain, recently wrote about how politicians are using ‘dodgy climate change hysteria to keep increasing taxes’. His overall point is that climate change isn’t happening, that the earth’s temperature is cooling (though I’m not sure what his source is), and that the Government’s agenda to implement green taxes is hurting the man on the Clapham omnibus (or rather in the 2001 Renault Espace).

Indeed, even looking to the American elections, climate change doesn’t seem to be an issue in the interminable Clinton v. Obama contest, and their increasing tone of protectionism doesn’t bode well for their commitment to global issues.

In some ways both Littlejohn and the American politicians are right. As people’s finances are increasingly stretched, and a downturn in the housing market means that people feel less well off, they may feel that all this talk of paying more taxes to facilitate climate change mitigation, or changing their lifestyles to reduce emissions and waste, is too much to ask when they are concerned about more pressing problems like paying their mortgage.

It was always going to be difficult to empower the individual to feel responsible for their own contributions to climate change, particularly when changes in global politics means that many less developed countries are justifiably piqued when asked to reduce their emissions (and economic growth) by developed nations who got us into this trouble in the first place.

Sceptics like Littlejohn are helped by the misnomer of ‘global warming’ – in fact climatologists would say that there is no inconsistency with the argument that humans are responsible for changes in our global temperatures and a drop in temperatures – the point is that our actions are impacting on the world, and this may take the form of some cooling and some warming, the point is that the climate is changing.

I don’t believe that ethical living, as some put it, is incompatible with a retrenchment in the family finances, quite the opposite. There are ways to live a full life that don’t involve driving a petrol guzzling car, or buying clothes made by children in distant countries, and there are ways to make such a lifestyle affordable as well. Paying more taxes to enable the government to deal with those elements that are outside our control, like what happens to the waste we inevitably create, is just a further cost that must be factored in.

There is a third, more hopeless view, falling somewhere between Stern and Littlejohn, which argues that it is pointless to tinker with car emissions and plastic bag bans because people will only make drastic changes in their lifestyle when they are forced to, the tragedy is, that assuming the science is right, by this time it will be far too late.

second thoughts

This week in Fellowship...

Wow, it's been a busy one, my feet have barely touched the floor.

Last week's event at the Baltic in Newcastle went well; I met lots of interesting enthusiastic people, several of whom promised they would check out the Networks platform after I had demonstrated it, and were excited by the opportunity to contact more Fellows and be more involved, unhindered by geographical distance.

I also got winked at by the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Then I got lost trying to find the station and had to jump in a taxi. But I managed to impress the driver with my knowledge of Sunderland's success under manager Roy Keane.

Back at home, I have started a social sciences course with the Open University. They are the biggest university in the UK, and the course 'Understanding Social Change' is their most popular and my tutor said that applications for the course had doubled since last year. Maybe this marks a growing appetite for social innovation and progress? Let's hope so.

It's the end of the day here, and now I'm going to do my homework. Hmm, voluntarily increasing my work load...what was I thinking?

Until next time

Information on how to join the RSA Fellowship, and how to nominate others here.

(Photographs by me - this one of my insightful note taking skills)

Commentary on the Commentariat

Tonight I am chairing an event hosted by the media analysis firm Editorial Intelligence (their events can be as good as ours but, as a business, they charge!). The subject is The Power of the Commentariat and more specifically a pamphlet with that name researched and written by Julia Hobsbawm and John Lloyd.

Based as it is on interviews with columnists and political insiders the research is largely anecdotal and the conclusions broad. Commentators generally claim neither to want nor to expect to have much impact beyond entertaining readers. However, politicians and their advisors say that columnists – particularly the most high profile and respected – can influence public opinion and decision makers.

Although newspaper readership is falling, many columnists are now bloggers and arguably the opinionated, iconoclastic tone of the political blogosphere represents the next stage of the ever expanding realm of opinion which has seen the number of national newsprint columnists rise from a handful thirty years ago to several hundred now.   

Although I am a blogger I am no great fan of the opinion piece. In general, their one sidedness, polemical tone and overwhelming tendency to present politicians as self interested second-raters (something which of course distinguishes them from the selfless generous, socially transformative profession of commentators themselves), the tide of columns in daily newspapers contributes to the unhealthy atmosphere in which politicians find it ever harder to confront people with the difficult choices we face as a society.

My disillusionment with the commentariat (which has nothing at all to do with the fact that no one has ever offered me a regular column) was sealed when I developed an intellectual game based on reading the most opinionated columns.

The game is simply to read the column then consider your view. Then spend a few minutes constructing the best, equally opinionated, counter piece. Not only is it easy to do, but at the end of the process you will tend to find yourself now holding a diametrically different opinion.

Subject to even a cursory deconstruction columns reveal (and of course there are exceptions) not reality but the lens through which the columnist is viewing reality. And because we, their fickle readers, prefer to feel self righteous than challenged, that lens is generally one in which the poor reader is the blameless victim either of the venality or our rulers, or of some other class of citizens who are comfortingly described as being completely unlike us in their motives or interests.

What has arguably made the rise and rise of the commentator more pernicious is that over the last generation the profession has moved from being similar to a theatre critic - experienced, informed, authoritative, somewhat aloof - to being a rowdy audience, seeking to disrupt the performance on stage with catcalls and rotten tomatoes.

What matters less now is the weight and coherence of the opinion expressed more the capacity of the writers to whip up the rest of the audience – me or you – into a state of self righteous rage, booing the actors and demanding our money back.

I am chairing a panel of commentators tonight so may be it will be my turn to be thrown off stage. 

Beginnings...

Freshly back from the bank holiday weekend – and it feels that spring has definitely sprung, and the cobwebs are clearing.

The past few weeks have shown enormous promise and progress in terms of the Newtworks project, and much us this is down to the enthusiasm of Fellows.

With this in mind I hope you won’t find it too self serving if I start this weeks blog with this fantastic contribution from FRSA Tessy Britton.

Six months after the launch of the Networks project I feel more enthusiastic about it than ever. This is not because the practicalities seem easier, but the importance of what is being attempted is genuinely quite thrilling.

The RSA Fellowship is made up of extraordinary people, drawn to the RSA undoubtedly because of the organisation’s uniqueness and breadth of vision.

Where the RSA networks project adds to our Fellowship enormously is the invitation to participate. The shift in paradigm from being an interested but largely passive member to valued contributor is a really significant one.

It changes the questions from ‘what is the society doing for me?’, to ‘how can I contribute?’, it challenges our passions, time, imaginations and our commitments. It even challenges our abilities. It shakes us up, sometimes uncomfortably, to examine how, on a very personal level, we can not only talk about social change, but do social change.

The RSA is now saying to us that it is holding open a new sort of space for our ideas to be heard, to be animated by conversation with others and to be supported in many different ways. This is an incredibly inspiring thing to do, mostly because the long-term success of the developing network is dependent almost entirely on the interest and enthusiasm of Fellows to enter this space.

By these actions and attitudes the RSA is exposing the possibilities that are energised by individual generosity. It is rejecting the reductionist, remedial view of society and humanity and is firmly putting its trust and confidence into our innate capacity for collective good.  What could be brighter or more optimistic?

Take this paradigm out of the RSA into local government for a moment.  Imagine a local council where they put real value into their members – all of them.  What would happen if those members were stimulated, inspired, encouraged and supported to form connections and groups in those communities for positive social change?

It can be hard not to envy the nimbleness that other innovation groups can offer, especially in these early stages. However, the RSA comprises a disciplinary diversity and geographic penetration that is wholly unique – and it is through its determination to create these connective opportunities, these equalities and freedoms across disciplinary, social and regional boundaries that I feel some of the most exciting projects will emerge over time.

While others may surely look for evidence of innovation in the output of social projects already, I am simply delighting in watching and helping the process, which for me is the real innovation.   And it is amazing.