Matthew's RSA blog

Put that in your pipe...

Is the Government really intent on reclassifying cannabis despite the advice of drug experts, police officers and the evidence that cannabis use is becoming less popular among young people?

This policy is apparently based on the idea of ‘sending a message’ about society’s disapproval and the harm caused by drugs. But is legislation the best way of sending a message, particularly to young people?

As the father of teenage sons I sometimes hear them talk about their peers smoking ‘weed’. For them it seems to be an aspect of identity, with smokers seen as a subset of what used to be called grungers; teens who wear baggie jeans, have long hair and spend a lot of time in their bedrooms listening to bands like Nirvana and their various imitators. My sons have different lifestyles and reference points so they tend to be disparaging about this particular subset of teen culture.

The point is that in all these discussions I have not once heard the idea that young people’s choices about cannabis are based on the law.

Indeed it is almost the reverse, as cannabis (the majority of which is now grown in the UK) has become easier and easier to get hold of it has lost some of its connotations of rebellion leaving young people to take a dispassionate view of its effects and its effects on those people who take a lot of it.

For me, and this is a view which echoes the excellent work of the RSA Drugs Commission, the more we can encourage young people to talk openly and pragmatically about drugs the more likely it is that most young people will make an informed choice.

While experimentation, rule breaking and pushing the boundaries of experience are all a natural part of growing up, spending most of your adolescence in a haze and becoming less mentally and physically fit than your peers is simply not a very smart thing to do.

The more you criminalise an activity the harder it is to have such a debate; ‘it’s against the law, what is there to discuss?’

Whatever happens in today’s elections the Government has some work to do to reconnect to voters. For a Government that claims to be both progressive and evidence-based, being seen to ignore evidence and good governance principles in favour of headlines in some newspapers (as it did yesterday in the decision not to increase the prisoners’ maximum weekly wage to the princely sum of £5.50) means that the battle of the headlines may be won but the war of credibility will be lost.

Money, money, money

Investment and the sub-prime crisis aren’t normally topics for my blog – but recently two pieces, one in the Times and the other in the FT caught my eye.

On the one hand you have the always entertaining Jonathan Guthrie in the FT. He points out that the sub prime crisis is leading to an inevitable bonanza for litigators. In the US this has already begun in earnest, and Guthrie suggests it will soon start in the UK.

As he memorably puts it ‘Rating agencies must feel as vulnerable as a nude gymnast performing squat jumps in a porcupine farm’. If the US model is anything to go by they have reason to be nervous, as pension firms sue ratings agencies for diminution of share value.

In the Times Jamie Whyte, author of Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking, says that the idea that, in the light of the sub-prime experience, we should regulate to protect investors from bad advice and bad investment is tantamount to arguing that because we should regulate romantic relationships to reduce the possibility of people being jilted.

For Whyte the very idea of regulation in an area of free choice is problematic; ‘Once risks are known, regulating them is worse than useless. It can only move the price of risk away from, and usually above, the market price. It encourages financiers and investors to seek profit in areas where the regulators are not imposing their burdens – namely those where the risk are poorly understood’ 

Now, Guthrie is not advocating litigation merely predicting it, and litigation is not exactly the same as regulation (although if successful litigation establishes case law it will tend to have a similar impact to liability imposed by regulation). But these articles point to two different views of the rights of the consumer or investor.

Whyte relies on the principle of caveat emptor, while Guthrie suggests that people who have taken bad advice will naturally seek redress against those who gave them the advice.

The RSA’s Tomorrow’s Investor will be exploring just this dilemma. We will expose a selected group of small and ‘indirect’ investors to a comprehensive picture of how decisions are made about ‘their’ money. We will explore how sound are these decisions and also their ethical dimension.

At the end of the forum the question is whether, when the investors have these insights, it makes them want be more active, to have better protecting or more effective intermediaries. I’ll make sure we send Jonathan and Jamie our findings.       

'The centre cannot hold'?

I know, I know, everyone tells me to write shorter blogs…maybe next time

Looking forward to Jack Straw’s speech here tomorrow. The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (as is his title) will be officially launching our Prison Learning Network. I understand that Jack plans to say some very interesting things about how to embed the criminal justice system more concretely in local communities.

I’m sure there will be a couple of new announcements in Jack’s speech. These will add to the seemingly unstoppable tide of policy ideas, proposals and commitments emerging every day from Government. Although I find myself agreeing with a lot of what I hear, I can’t help wondering about the sheer scale of the Government’s objectives.

The scope of central Government is subject to continuous and sometimes substantial change. In the 1980s the privatisation of utilities meant Government went from running industries to providing a framework of regulation. More recently, Labour’s alleged ‘control freak’ tendencies have been somewhat belied by two massive transfers of power away from Whitehall: the independence of the Bank of England and devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

But the extra items coming onto the Cabinet agenda dwarf even these shifts away from the centre. As well as all the responsibilities Labour inherited in 1997 has been added the whole slew of law and order, security and identity management issues, responding to climate change, and a growing set of complex ‘behaviour change’ challenges like obesity, poor parenting and binge drinking. Gordon Brown is also seen to be prioritising international development and national values and identity. Yesterday it was briefed that the Government plans major reforms on Party funding, the House of Lords, a Bill of Rights and the voting system.

I am all for constitutional modernisation and – recalling how difficult it was to get senior Cabinet ministers to sign up to this kind of thing when I worked for Tony Blair – I envy the political authority Number Ten has to drive radical change. The question is whether any corporate centre, even one as full of clever people as Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, can manage this scale of external challenge and internally generated initiatives. 

There are libraries of research and recommendation about modernising public services and the civil service but in a brief internet search ahead of writing this piece I couldn’t find anything that spoke directly to the sheer scale of central Government’s task. Among some of the more thoughtful newspaper columnists there is a growing critique of Labour’s competence in governing, but while some ministers may be overactive, terrorism, climate change and binge drinking weren’t problems made up by Whitehall.

The obvious strategy to deal with central overload is devolution, and as I have said before, the Government really does seem to be trying to hand more power to local authorities. But is this enough, especially when central Government will still be held accountable for overall public service performance and if things go badly wrong? I have spoken about the need to move from a ‘government centric’ to a ’citizen centric’ way of thinking about social change but can Government itself facilitate this?   

This is a very broad brush attempt to open a debate. Another way of kick starting it is a proposal of my own. How about Government transferring responsibility for major areas of constitutional and democratic reform (like voting system, Lords and party funding) to Parliament? Parties would still have their own policies to which they would be accountable at election time, but the task of policy development, consensus building, as well as the detailed drafting of legislation would move from Downing Street, the Cabinet and Whitehall to MPs backed by a beefed up Parliamentary secretariat. This would arguably be in line with Gordon Brown’s commitment to enhance the status and powers of Parliament. It would certainly take some tricky items off the Cabinet table.

Oligarchs, the fall of communism and the RSA

For reformers history has a hard lesson. Those who offer the prospect of change can unleash desires and expectations which not only sweep away the old order but make the citizenry impatient with the attempts of those same reformers to manage transition.

This thought was provoked by seeing a full-page advertisement for Louis Vuitton luggage in the FT featuring former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A man who history will no doubt judge as a great leader and reformer who was rejected by his own people in favour, first of the excesses of Yeltsin, and now the authoritarian nationalism of Putin and Medvedev.

It is, I know, risible to draw comparisons between the fall of Communism and the reform of the RSA. One involves overthrowing decades of central power and exposing an ageing oligarchy to openness and accountability, the other happened in Russia.

But seriously… The RSA has benefited from great leadership in the past. In recent years the decision to develop the vaults showed great vision, making John Adam Street an exceptional venue and helping to put the House on a sound financial footing.  Among other achievements, my predecessor Penny Egan oversaw the development of our research programme and worked with the Trustees to get agreement to our Academy (on which front things are going well). Now, the over-riding reforming goal is to enable the Fellowship to work as a powerful network of civic innovation.

Progress has been impressive. The open space day on November 22nd was a powerful launch pad for phase one of the project. We now have getting on for 400 Fellows and invited guests participating on the RSA Networks platform. Last week we had a very positive meeting of regional officers, who are clearly committed to greater Fellow engagement and real world impact.

But I also sense some impatience that the process of change is not even faster. 2008 will be a watershed year for the RSA Fellowship with momentum building as the year goes on. As I never cease to remind people, the 2007-8 budget contained virtually no money for Fellow engagement and organisation, in the year ahead we intend to spend upwards of £250k on Network organisers at JAS and fieldworkers to support Fellows' initiatives outside London.  In a few months we will see the regional websites integrated in the new national website. And as the year proceeds, first new Fellows, then all Fellows in selected localities will be invited on to the RSA Networks platform.

The Fellows' recruitment journey will be re-designed to stress the scope for networking and civic engagement. And I hope that on the Networks platform we will move from a fascinating discussion on how to make RSA Networks work to the development of projects about change in the outside world.

How far and how fast we go ultimately depends on Fellows themselves. Our role is to support the change. But creating the right infrastructure can't happen overnight. It requires a step by step increase in investment and for us to learn and adapt as the change develops. I have a Trustees' away day next week and will be working with them to agree ambitions goals for the next three years.

Transformation is possible as long as we all - Trustees, Fellows, regional officers - are part of the change, enjoying its highs but also working together through the challenges it is bound to present.

A quick post as I prepare for our AGM this evening

The project continues...

The last few days have given me lots more opportunities to talk to Fellows about our plans for the Fellowship to become a network for civic innovation.

A great day in Bristol with the Wales and West Region turned up a couple of interesting ideas for RSA interventions.

The first was for us to host an impartial and rigorous debate on the Severn Barrage proposal that has been put back on the agenda by recent ministerial announcements and a report from the Sustainable Development Commission.

The second was for us to work with the excellent Watershed Centre and DEMOS on a project around making the night time culture in the harbour area less exclusively focussed on young people and drinking.

Like most of the other ideas we are mulling over these are only on the drawing board. But they are interesting examples of what emerges when we ask the question: "How can the RSA make a difference?"  Any answers you might have are, of course, welcome.

The challenge will be encouraging Fellows to do as much development work as possible at local level and then - when we are happy that the project is a sound one - thinking about how we can best use the RSA's resources (and particularly the wider Fellowship) to bring these ideas alive.

These are among the important issues we will be discussing at our Fellowship engagement event here on 22 November. We have over 200 Fellows signed up so far which is great news.

The event will be helped by some valuable preparatory thinking going on through the Open RSA network on Facebook. Open RSA met here the other day and generated some very useful ideas. Part of the event was live blogged by Bill Thompson and is available here.

Also, thanks to the ever-enthusiastic Ann Packard for organising a really well-attended and lively meeting of the Fellows' creative industries special interest group. I am sure Ann will be telling us more about this group as it develops its activities, and in time I hope the group will develop its own thoughts about the impact the RSA might make.

Farts and ecology...

Yes, I know it's a cheap joke (and only funny if you know we have an RSA project called Arts and Ecology).

But there is a serious point. On Monday I was honoured to attend a lunch with Helen Clark, the very successful Prime Minister of New Zealand.

The focus of the discussion was sustainability and the bold and ambitious plans the NZ Government has made as they aim for carbon neutrality by 2050.

Two of the big challenges for NZ are what is tastefully referred to as 'pastoral emissions', and the impact of transporting NZ agricultural goods around the world.

The former is a big problem and there is to be a major international conference on the issue later in the year. In this area I suspect we will need technological solutions rather than appealing to the cows themselves!

But while it may be hard to talk about pastoral emissions without a snigger, it is not so easy to understand why so little attention is given to the contribution of shipping (especially freight shipping) to global emissions.

These emissions are on a par with those of aviation, so is their lower profile in debate simply because that we find it hard to believe that the sedate movement of boats can be as damaging as the roaring acceleration of planes?

I remember a wonderful cartoon of a huge rabbit tearing down New York skyscrapers while in the foreground among pedestrians going calmly to work, a bystander is saying: "I suppose if it was a giant gorilla people would be taking it seriously."

It may seem odd to think of cow farting and shipping as big issues for the future of the planet, but they are.                  

Why I want an early election...

The fact is that Governments (and dare I say Oppositions too) make better policy when they have some time to let difficult change pay-off.

On election footing the horizon of politicians is no longer than a couple of months, and the demands of popular support tend to drive out those of policy rigour.

So, whoever wins, given the need to grasp some big nettles, I can't help thinking it would be better for us all if we had a Government with a five year mandate.

Developing the citizens of the future

One of my priorities at the RSA has been to build on the reputation and current strength of our work on education.

Our Opening Minds curriculum is taught in over a hundred schools and has influenced planned reforms across Key Stage 3 (11-14). We now want to work with a range of partners to develop insight and ideas across other key aspects of schooling.

As we seek to widen the scope and reach of our work, our Academy in Tipton will be the practical embodiment of our ambition to develop a new model of schooling to develop the citizens of the future.

The opening of the Academy will coincide with the launch of the first five of the Government’s new 14-19 Diplomas. By 2013 there are supposed to be 14 of these Diplomas in areas ranging from Hair and Beauty to Engineering. The Diplomas are being introduced alongside GCSEs and A levels and represent a watered down version of Sir Mike Tomlinson’s recommendation that all post 14 provisions should be delivered through a single diploma framework.

Although many in the education world find it hard not to see the Diplomas that are being introduced as a missed opportunity to overcome the academic vocational divide, everyone recognises that even delivering the current proposals is a huge challenge.

So it is worrying to read two recent progress reports. The first is a detailed assessment by the Commons Education and Skills Committee. While the Committee recognises that the process of introduction is still officially on track, they raise a number of concerns ranging from the general – the clarity of purpose among those involved in designing the fist five Diplomas - to the specific – the inadequacy of giving teachers just three days training in how to teach and manage the courses, or the logistical challenges of 14-16 year old students receiving their learning in more than one institution.

The second report was from the Edge Foundation and confirmed the worst fears of those who held to Tomlinson’s original vision. Edge’s survey of teachers and FE lecturers found that almost two-thirds of them believe the Diplomas will have a lower status than GCSEs and A levels. The Government’s stated aim that the Diplomas will be seen as relevant to students across the ability range lacks credibility among those who most need to believe it.

It is hardly surprising that there are teething problems with the Diplomas - the timetable set by the Government is very ambitious. Major change processes rarely look entirely convincing at their halfway point.

The real cause for concern is that the Diplomas are trying to do an incredibly hard job in bridging the academic vocational divide. This is a task that has been tried and failed repeatedly, but it is vital if our education system is to provide opportunities and fulfilment to learners and the right skills for the economy.

But success more than anything else relies on the whole secondary and FE system throwing its weight behind reform. The combination of the major practical barriers to delivery and the continuing evidence that many teachers and schools (particularly those catering for more privileged pupils) have failed to engage with Diplomas, suggest that the odds of success are diminishing.

Given his commitment to education and skills and to widening opportunity to all it is difficult to see any more urgent issues in Gordon Brown’s Prime Ministerial in-tray.

State empowerment: Future or fad?

Thanks to those who responded positively to last week's post. With yet another crazy RSA week behind me I can only add a few lines.

Among lectures chaired, speeches made and interviews given, this week I hosted a supper for a range of people involved in the idea of empowerment and participation.

Charlie Leadbeater started us off with aspects of the thesis in his new book - 'We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity'. You can view it as a wiki and add comments or edit it online.

The discussion was wide ranging but recurrent themes included the scope for empowerment as a public sector strategy, the implication of this for equity and accountability and whether empowerment is fundamentally an individualistic or collectivist solution (of course, it can be both).

There were good examples such as individual budgets for social care clients and carers, or provision for disaffected school pupils. But underlying the discussion was the question: is the idea of the empowering state the next big thing or just the spirit behind isolated bits of good practice? Is it the future or is it a fad?

The idea that public services should seek to give people a stronger sense of self confidence, autonomy and responsibility to others lies behind RSA initiatives as diverse as Opening Minds and our approach to long term drug users.

For me it is a key plank in pro-social strategy. Maybe it's because politicians of all parties like the word, but 'empowerment' can too easily mean everything and nothing.

Through more of these suppers and the in-depth work of our programme I hope the RSA can add some rigour to the optimism and idealism of those who think a reformed public sector can help more people take greater control of their lives as individuals and community members.

What should we make of all this?

The debate over tackling climate change is interesting but a little confusing. I first heard of the Conservatives’ ideas about aviation arriving on Sunday morning at Sky News to do their paper review. I welcomed the idea of a personal aviation emissions allocation as this is broadly in line with the RSA’s own proposal for personal carbon trading.

The next day the FT suggested that my support for the Conservative idea – which is both green and redistributive - was some kind of rebuff for Gordon Brown ahead of his own speech. As it turned out the Chancellor, referring to the important deal negotiated by Angela Merkel, emphasised the need to take continental and global action on climate change.

Last week in Brussels David Cameron urged the EU to take a strong role in tackling climate change but at the same time revealed that his only partners in his putative new centre right European Parliament group is the Czech ruling party, whose leaders are apparently unconvinced that global warming is real! In a further twist, Brown favoured voluntary measures on domestic fuel efficiency over Tory proposals for regulations and taxes; a neat reversal of conventional political point scoring.

What should we make of all this? Obviously it is good that the politicians are putting climate change centre stage. After last month’s grim IPCC report (itself probably erring on the cautious side), there was nowhere left to hide on the issue. Environmental groups must feel like the only girl at the ball so assiduously are they being courted. Put both Brown’s and Cameron’s ideas together and you have a pretty serious action plan. Brown is right that action must be taken internationally; Cameron that the domestic requirements of such agreements will not be met by voluntarism alone.

But there is a danger in the environment being seen as a political fad. As the sociologist Stan Cohen brilliantly analysed in his book 'States of Denial', most of us rely on a capacity to turn our faces away from difficult truths. Thus were most Germans under Nazi rule able to deny responsibility for the Holocaust and even otherwise progressive white South Africans willing to live with Apartheid. And maybe it is how we can live affluent Western lifestyles while a few thousand miles away African children starve?

In persisting with denial we rely on certain mental tropes such as 'it's not really happening', 'it's nothing to do with me' or 'there's nothing I can do about it'. By making climate change feel like an issue of political point scoring rather than unarguable science and clear moral responsibility we run the danger of providing an easy route for denial.

Ultimately I believe we can tackle carbon emissions and have better lives, but in the short term we face some tough choices. Once this row is over, our politicians should try to find a basis for an agreed way forward.

I heard last week that the average readership for a blog is one so I am gratified to see that at least six people read mine:

Andrew and Praguetory - I agree there are some good blogs and I should stop talking only about the negative ones.

Ewan - yes, we need to think of new ways to use technology to engage young people in politics (something we will be discussing in our internet conference later this year).

Leen Petre is right to remind us of the digital divide, although it isn't so big when you look at satellite TV or mobile phones.

Trevor - we are currently thinking about doing some work on prisons.

John - I liked the idea but I can't say I hold out much hope that citizens would pay a voluntary tax to politicians however good their cause.

It’s going to be a busy Thursday

"In the years roughly coincidental with the Netscape IPO, humans began animating inert objects with tiny slivers of intelligence, connecting them into a global field, and linking their own minds into a single thing. This will be recognized as the largest, most complex, and most surprising event on the planet. Weaving nerves out of glass and radio waves, our species began wiring up all regions, all processes, all facts and notions into a grand network" (Kevin Kelly: Wired)

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to complain about it.” (quoted by Slugger O’Toole)

Thursday is a busy day for the RSA. As well as unveiling the long-awaited report of our Drugs Commission we will be hosting a major conference on the social impacts of the internet. Speakers include George Osborne MP, shadow chancellor who seems to be the leading politician with the best grasp of this issue; Mick Fealty, the aforementioned Slugger O’Toole; and Brian Appleyard, author and journalist. The quotations above define for me the big question. Why is it that the web which has been so transformative in so many parts of our lives has done so little to strengthen democracy and civic society?

For some this is inherent in the technology. Generating content and browsing the internet is the individualistic act of one person sitting at one computer. Why would we expect it to be suited to the collective tasks of deliberation and community action? But in fact while there has been an explosion of sites like MySpace which allow people to celebrate their individuality, there have also been innovations like the 'wiki' and complex virtual worlds which only work because people collaborate on a shared system and outcome.

For others the fault lies in the political system which has simply failed to understand or respond to potential of the web. From this perspective things like the Downing Street website and e-petitions or David Cameron’s weblog are superficial and tokenistic; politics must be willing to go through the kind of re-engineering that has been experienced by the entertainment or travel industries.

I am dismayed by the passive aggressive tone of most political blogs, and wonder why the web seems so much better as a tool to mobilise protest rather than action. But I suspect the answer lies not in wishing people were different but in innovation which can tap into people’s latent desire to shape their own collective futures. While Web 1.0 may have simply reinforced 'us and them' political discourse, Web 2.0 offers huge scope for new forms of ‘us and us’ engagement. The wiki has huge potential as a policy deliberation tool but we need good applications (the RSA is working to develop one for our Fellows).

So, on Thursday, as well as discussing where we are now, I hope we give time to think about how the next wave of web innovation could help us work together to make our world a better place.