Andrew Lansley apology: depressing
It is depressing that Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley has agreed to apologise for his comments about the health consequences of recession.
He simply said on his blog (no longer available) that by reducing consumption on things like booze, fags and sweets a downturn can be good for our health. Not only is it true but it is a rare example of a politician engaging seriously with what the downturn will mean for us.
Governing politicians (here, and particularly insanely in the US) are like drug dealers encouraging us to get hooked to debt again, while the Conservatives try to imply there is another way out of the crisis without ever quite telling us what this is and why no other Government in the world seems to agree with them. In contrast Andrew Lansley said something honest and thought provoking – no wonder he was forced to recant.
Why I will avoid Virgin
The recession poses a question to businesses. In the face of declining demand do they work even harder, cutting margins and providing a great service to attract customers in a buyers’ market? Or do they adopt a slash and burn policy of making money wherever they can regardless of the longer term consequences for their brand. Of course, companies with monopolies will be more likely to adopt the latter approach – Virgin Trains being a case in point.
Last week I was forced to cough up three times the pre-paid cost of my train ticket from Manchester to London because I caught a train 30 minutes earlier than the one I was booked on to. There was no lack of unreserved seats on the train I caught and, had there been, I would have been happy to stand. Indeed, given that the pre-ordered ticket was reduced price I would have accepted paying some kind of inconvenience fine. But for Virgin the issue isn’t fairness – it is screwing the passenger. This may be why the ticket inspectors treat those who are on the wrong train (there were three in my carriage alone) as if they are fair dodgers.
What is really galling is that while Virgin is charging me £48 for my minor misdemeanour of travelling I am unable to get any recompense for Virgin’s many failings. Late trains, closed buffets etc. This morning on the way to Birmingham I was next to an overactive heater. To avoid expiring I was down almost to my underpants by the time we reached New Street. I have little or no choice but to use Virgin and to pay even more to do so next year. But in a classic Taylor act of impotent rage I will spend the rest of life avoiding any other product with the Virgin brand.
Where do ideas come from?
Where do ideas come from? As I tour around the country – yesterday it was Leicester – talking to Fellows this question keeps nagging away at me. (Before those of you who are only reading in the hope I will say something indiscreet about my time working for Mr Tony click on another site, I should say there are some interesting insights to gained from what we are doing here at the RSA.)
The idea of enabling the Fellowship to move from being an inward-looking social club into being an outward-looking network for civic innovation (that beeping sound is your Windows cliché checker) is gaining ground. The forces of conservatism (small ‘c’), as the aforementioned former leader once called them, are in retreat. The question now is not ‘why should we?’ but ‘how do we?’ – which, it turns out, is a much harder question.
It involves creating the right spaces for ideas to emerge (on-line and off-line). It means developing a culture in which bad ideas die elegantly and good ideas thrive. It forces us at HQ to be clear about the kind of backing we can give to emerging ideas.
But where do ideas come from?
Three answers, three implications for how we work. Ideas come from giving creative people in interesting combinations time to work together. The Leicestershire Fellows group I met yesterday told me they wanted ‘to do something about older people’. But, as we talked, it became clear that for some people this was about meeting needs, while for others it meant addressing negative perceptions of ageing. From this disagreement started to emerge the idea that we should meet older people’s needs by drawing on their strengths – a great conversation, but probably only a tenth of the way to developing a good idea. Through creating more enjoyable informal spaces for Fellows to meet and talk, and replicating this on line, we can allow ideas to emerge, evolve and mature.
Ideas come from the urgency and focus provided by a problem. Drawing on its incredible networks, its brand and its national resources, the RSA Fellowship should be able to respond quickly and generously when a need arises that we can meet. We can develop local solutions derived from an international network of experience and expertise. I have a fantasy about a Fellow saying ‘this problem we’ve got in Stoke-on-Trent, well I’ve been sent a really good idea by a Fellow who tackled something similar in New Jersey (or Melbourne, or Paris or New Delhi)’.
Ideas occur to us in the shower. When Fellows have that Eureka moment they should be able to stand shivering and dripping by their computer throwing the idea out to the wider Fellowship. While I’m being watery, the RSA should be a pond into which we can skim our half formed idea pebbles. Most will sink without trace (I have an interesting thought every day and a useful one every month) but some will set off ripples.
Thank you to the Fellows in Manchester and Leicester who got me thinking this way. The transformation of the Fellowship won’t be easy. But whereas before it felt like digging ourselves out of a hole, now it feels like we are trying to climb a mountain – just as hard but much, much more fun.
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The economy: how do we adapt?
There is page after page of newspaper analysis and comment of yesterday’s mini budget but the top line critiques of the package may be rather confusing to those without the time or inclination to dig deeper. Darling is criticised simultaneously for doing too little to boost the economy (there is widespread scepticism about the impact of the VAT cut), for borrowing too much and for raising taxes in two years to help pay for that borrowing (in fact, the Government’s main medium term strategy to tackle the deficit is tight restraint on public spending from 2010 onwards).
There is a widespread view in the print media that the Government has somehow cheated in managing to achieve higher popularity ratings while the economic news worsens. Today is payback time. George Osborne is back on form and no one is asking whether, at a time when we should be boosting people’s confidence, it is responsible for him to say everyone earning over £19,000 will soon be worse off. In fact someone on that salary will – according to the Conservatives’ own figures – lose five pence a week!
But Labour can’t complain. Whatever the merits of yesterday’s package we shouldn’t be starting from here. It’s true – as I have said in the past and Larry Elliot said more elegantly than me yesterday – that most of us played our part in fuelling the debt bubble. It is also true that by wanting low taxes and action to tackle inequality and improve public services, public opinion created the political dilemma to which more Government borrowing was the answer. But politics is about leadership. This Government, and those like me who have advised it since 1997, have to take responsibility for not explaining the real choices and stopping the party before it all got out of hand.
Unless the whole of society is willing to follow the Government’s model and go deeper into debt, it is difficult to see how things will improve. Indeed the best bet must be for a very long period of sluggish growth. Even if things do pick up slightly next year, with interests rates already very low and the Government not able to offer any extra fiscal stimulus, it is difficult to see how a crawl back to recovery will become a march.
So we are back to the question of how we adapt. On the one hand, we have to lower our expectations as private and public sector consumers. On the other, and more positively, we must explore and exploit untapped social capacity.
To take one example, there is already a social care funding crisis. Unless we can reduce unnecessary dependency and increase voluntary effort the care gap will grow into a chasm. Public funding won’t help us out, nor can we expect people to suddenly start saving lots more for their old age. If there is an answer it involves some combination of mobilising voluntary effort, increasing the productivity of public investment (especially so it goes into maintaining people in independence rather than paying for dependency), fostering innovation (so, for example, we can create an effective intermediate labour market of people, many of whom may be retired themselves, being paid for a few hours caring work here and there), and much better collaboration between the different agencies and NGOs working in the field.
If things are going to be as tough as many people suspect, social care is only one of the many needs that are only going to be met thought this combination of pro-social behaviour and innovation. As I will be telling an RSA meeting in Leicester tonight, there couldn’t be a more important time for the RSA and particularly its talented and conscientious Fellowship to be turning outwards and asking what difference it can make.
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