The longest journey starts with a single step
Regular listeners to the Moral Maze(hi Mum) will spot the connection between Michael Buerk and David Aaronovitch. The former has been the long-time presenter and chair of the programme, the latter was a very accomplished stand-in earlier this year. But this week there is another connection – immigration and jobs.
Today in The Times, Aaronovitch is fighting a brave rear guard action against the widespread but erroneous view that immigration creates unemployment and drives down wages. Given how many people – the latest being Ed Miliband – seem to have bought the ‘immigration is bad for the poor’ line, David’s determination to base his opinions on the actual statistics is an example – to misquote TH Huxley – of slaying a seductive hypothesis with an ugly fact.
Last night after our Moral Maze conversation about the morality of bailing out the Greeks (or should that be bailing out the banks), Michael Buerk was telling me about a recent visit to Herefordshire. Knowing me to be a bleeding heart liberal, the great man was as circumspect as possible in asking why it is still the case that Eastern Europeans migrants are willing to take jobs which indigenous youth refuse (I imagine he might have posed the question in somewhat more forthright terms if his interlocutor had been my fellow Maze panellist, Michael Portillo).
From their different perspectives both David A and Michael B agree that the problem about unemployment in areas where there are jobs is more to do with the readiness and willingness of local people to work than the impact of migration.
Why is this? The political right’s argument will tend to focus on the failings of the unemployed and will prescribe a more authoritarian regime in terms of benefit conditionality. The left may point to low wages and the poverty traps created by reductions in the value of in-work benefits. There may be validity in both arguments.
But I think other things are at play too. One might be what could be called the narrative of work. My suggestion to Michael Buerk was that Eastern Europeans may be willing to do tough work for low wages because they see this as part of a bigger life story. Perhaps their ambition is to settle in the UK or maybe to return to their mother country with enough money to set up their own business. In contrast, young people with limited skills and expectations of career progression may see the choice as simply between being free to hang around on limited benefits (perhaps occasionally topped up occasionally by cash in hand odd jobs) versus the constraints and indignities of a menial job which only gives them a few pounds a week more spending money, by the time things like transport, uniform etc have been paid for. This is not to condone those who choose not to take opportunities but to suggest that motivation is not just a matter of proximate choice but also wider life narrative.
I don’t know if there is any authoritative research on this but anecdotally it seems that employers who have a good reputation for looking after and progressing staff (M&S, McDonalds) will attract plenty of applicants for jobs even though starting wages are modest. Also relevant is research undertaken a few years ago which showed that many working class young people had a pretty sketchy understanding of the labour market and the range of careers that existed in any sector, such as health care.
I guess all I am saying is that part of encouraging young people to take on opportunities which offer limited short term benefits is to provide information and encouragement so that they see this as being the first step on a bigger project of personal growth, financial independence and career development. Ministers are currently mulling over whether to abandon independent face to face careers advice so perhaps this is another reason to suggest they shouldn’t. It’s also why I hope we at the RSA can take forward the promising work we have been doing around providing mentoring for students in FE.
Getting young people to take up modest opportunities (and we shouldn’t forget that in some areas there are no opportunities at all) is about sticks and carrots but also about advice, encouragement and support, and in that we can all play a role.
Maximum impact
Often an issue engages us because over a short period of time it has come up from different angles in different contexts. For me themost recent example concerns the way the RSA describes social impact. The issue cropped up at a recent Trustee meeting in relation to different views about how we should judge the success for RSA projects. For some Trustees the most important thing is impact on the ground, others would like to see evidence that we are influencing policy makers and breaking through more consistently into the national media.
Then, on Friday, we had an internal meeting involving senior managers where there was discussion of a paper proposing the development of single corporate framework for assessing impact. Finally, on Saturday in Todmorden I saw a great example of the RSA making an impact – in this case supporting a fantastic initiative which has built great social capital in town – but also one which it is quite hard to capture as a conventional output.
So I feel these questions need further thought and having such great readers – who are generally enthusiastic about the RSA – I thought that over the next few days I might share some of my thought processes with you.
Last year the RSA Trustees agreed to launch a new strapline: twenty first century enlightenment. The feeling was that this worked at several levels. It combines a reference to our eighteenth century enlightenment origins with a commitment to be relevant in the century ahead. It refers to our mission to open up new ideas to the world. But the strap line also referred to a more substantive conversation about the Society’s modern mission which had been taking place among Trustees and in other RSA forums.
Twenty first century enlightenment means different things to different people, but I gave my personal take on it in my 2010 annual lecture. In essence this was an argument of three parts:
1) For the world to meet major challenges and to flourish in the 21st century we need a step change in human capability, including significant changes in the ways we think and behave: in short we need citizens who are more engaged, more resourceful and more inclined to be pro-social.
2) If we seek to enhance human capability we need to understand what drives human behaviour. From disciplines as varied as neuroscience, behavioural economics, sociology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology new, more complex and more nuanced accounts of human nature are emerging to challenge the formerly dominant myth of homo economicus.
3) Putting together the challenges generated by the modern world with new thinking about human behaviour provides an opportunity to reconsider the way we have come to interpret some of the founding ideas of the post enlightenment era; namely autonomy, universalism and humanism.
As I say, this is just my take but it helps to explain why measuring impact is a tricky problem. The relationship between our mission and what we do is reasonably clear, the difficulty comes when we move from what we do (output) to what we want to achieve (outcome).
The thirty five million on-line views of RSA events proves we are making ideas interesting and accessible to a mass audience. But apart from the many positive comments on YouTube and other places how do we know that those ideas are having an impact beyond entertainment? And should we more ambitious about using the events programme to surface new issues in ways which really have an impact on public discourse?
Our projects in areas ranging from design and education to social networks and behaviour change all relate to questions of human capability. We can point to good publications, rising media profile and concrete real world impacts such as our Whole Person Recovery work in Sussex or the achievements of our Academies, but if we wanted to aim for a more profound long-lasting influence and change what would it be and in what areas would we focus?
As my day in Todmorden vividly showed, our investment in supporting Fellows’ activities is starting to pay off in an ever growing level of Fellowship activity (as another example, last week saw over 150 people attend a Profit with Purpose network meeting here in London). But can we aspire to all these disparate initiatives coalescing into the RSA Fellowship making a substantial contribution to civil society?
In focussing on outcomes rather than more easily measured outputs there is a danger that the discussion becomes rather abstract and speculative. But I also think that part of the RSA being a truly innovative organisation could be that we try to judge ourselves by distinctive criteria, developing new metrics and making new kinds of arguments about impact. One possibility, for example, might be that we use the forthcoming Fellowship survey to ask some deeper questions about how being a Fellow changes people’s sense of social efficacy and responsibility. Social network analysis (an area in which the RSA is now seen to be a leading practitioner) might also enable us to see how our work ripples out beyond our immediate stakeholder groups.
I hope to return to these issues later in the week and – as always – I’ll be interested to see of readers have their own perspectives.
It’s incredible, it’s edible, it’s Todmorden
I am writing this on the way back from a fantastic day in Todmorden, the home of Incredible Edible Todmorden. I can’t say catching the last train back to London from the bleak badlands of Stockport is my idea of a good Saturday night but the journey was certainly worth it.
I’m sure many of my readers will know about IET. It is a fantastic project based on the simple idea of local people growing food. The driving force behind the project is Pamela Warhurst. She told me the idea occurred to her and her friends after she heard a lecture by Professor Tim Lang, so there was a nice symmetry when my trip ended with me introducing Tim at a packed meeting in Todmorden’s wonderfully preserved Hippodrome Theatre.
Before the event I had been shown round the IET green route which included Pam’s original private rose garden, which is now a tiny public garden full of vegetables and herbs. My guide Estelle then showed me the raised beds planted by the canal, the places where standard issue municipal prickly bushes had been replaced with edible plants, and the health centre which has a border of strawberry plants maintained by a GP who used to grow strawberries in Poland as well as a raised bed planted with medicinal plants. Most of this has been done without asking for permission (or only asking for it after the planting) and all of it by volunteers.
The project is now having impacts across the town. Small businesses are being created including a soap maker who uses IET herbs. All the town’s schools are involved, especially the high school where a BTEC in agriculture is proving very popular and where a local sustainable fish farming social business in being developed. And in case IET sounds like it is one of those worthy but achingly middle class green initiatives, its ideas are also being implemented by a local social housing provider.
It is hardly surprising that visitors from all over the world are flocking to Todmorden to learn more about IET. Today, people from twenty existing or putative schemes like IET gathered to share ideas, discuss experiences and develop collaboration.
For me the project packed extra impact for two reasons. The first is that RSA Fellows have played an important role in developing supporting and publicising IET. I met some fantastic Fellows during the day, the kind of people who give the Society a good name whenever they mention their association. The second is that the project fits so well with the idea that we need to close the social aspiration gap (the gap between the future people say they want and the one we are likely to build unless we are willing to change some of the ways we think and act). I have said that closing the gap means encouraging people to be ‘more engaged, more resourceful and more pro-social’. By getting people to think about food and the impact of our food choices, in encouraging people to grow and cook their own food, and in mobilising volunteers from all sectors of the community IET as well as demonstrable building civic capacity IET is a microcosm of the new ways of living we need.
So, it’s ten to ten and we’ve only just left Stoke on Trent but, for once, I’m not complaining.
Three ways to win the wine
With capitalism collapsing, living standards tumbling and public services crumbling it is time for some Friday fun and distraction. So today I am asking for completion entries. The best contribution wins a fine bottle of wine from my own personal cellar (actually, it’s a cardboard box but you get the idea).
I was so miserable the other night I bought a National Lottery scratch card. I didn’t win anything but I was intrigued that the card contained six different games. Of course the total odds of winning remain unchanged but I guess it has the psychological effect of making us think we have more chances. So this weekend – on the same principle – there are three ways to win:
Sweets for readers…
I have in the past written about my irritation at the ways some companies try to exploit their relationships with customers. A minor, but grating, example is the attempt by WH Smith to foist upon me a huge chocolate bar every time I buy a newspaper. Now, call me an old puritan, but chocolate is not very good for you and so to encourage vulnerable customers (hungry in the morning or energy-sapped after work) to eat a massive bar is to tempt them to sinfulness. What next at the WH Smith till, a gin and tonic, a crack pipe?
Perhaps, I would be less affronted if there was some attempt to personalise the offer. The other day I bought New Scientist and Prospect (choices which show me to be a sophisticated and complex kind of chap) only to be slighted with the frankly demeaning offer of a 500 gram fruit and nut bar.
So, competition one, is to suggest an appropriate confectionery to match a customer’s choice of newspaper or magazine. Here are a couple of example to inspire you: Sun readers would clearly be most tempted by a Yorkie bar. It is big, bold and obvious and we can almost see it in our mind’s eye resting next to the redtop on the dashboard of a long distance lorry driver. In contrast, FT readers should surely be offered a Toblerone: pricey, sophisticated and making the reassuring association to Swiss bankers.
Unique adjectives…
This is less original but I would still like some more examples for my list. The quest here is for long- established but idiosyncratic (the more idiosyncratic the better) connections between particular nouns and adjectives. Examples include the Corby trouser press which is so often ‘ubiquitous’, a who’s who (as in ‘the gala dinner was a real who’s who’ of the plastics industry’) which is frequently ‘veritable’, and losers (especially British ones) who can be relied on to be ‘plucky’. I’m not sure quite what the criterion is here but you kind of recognise the real thing when you see it.
Counter intuitive combos
It has been said that ‘dog bites man’ is not a story but ‘man bites dog’ would be. On the same basis your chances of media profile rise significantly if you can combine a profession with a surprising attribute. For example, intelligent footballers are almost guaranteed a newspaper column and a slot on Radio 5. Back in the 70s and 80s the press loved right wing trade union leaders like Eric Hammond. A vegan taxi driver would a surely be offered a daytime cooking series on a cable TV. So, given how much people crave celebrity what counter intuitive combos would you suggest to someone searching for media stardom?
The wine could go to the best single entry or a set of three of a consistently high quality. If you don’t want to enter yourself you can still pop in over the weekend and vote for the best of those who have.
I know it’s all a bit silly but as I travel to Lancashire tomorrow for what looks like a splendid RSA event in Todmorden I must have something to take my mind off the end of the world and the form of West Brom.
NPM – RIP
It is surely time for a new concept of public services to emerge from the rubble of the increasingly discredited paradigm of New Public Management (NPM)? It will take a generation for a new way of thinking to become dominant and, given the challenge it represents to current practice, there is no guarantee that it will succeed. But – and here the contrast with NPM is stark – the process of challenge and reform can itself mobilise and inspire public servants and wider civil society.
The core ideas of NPM – greater reliance on market based mechanisms and contracting out, greater separation of decision making, professional and process functions – have been in the ascendancy for at least two decades. Today, the evidence of their failure is all around. Public service productivity has stagnated and fallen in the countries where NPM has been most fully applied. In the UK, the Private Finance Initiative – which as well as being a crude way of circumventing short term public spending limits is also heavily influenced by NPM thinking – is now exposed as a disaster (by the way, unless someone in Whitehall gets a grip quickly Payment by Results will be the next PFI). And this morning in The Times we read nurses’ leaders admitting that the professionalisation of nursing and separation of medical and caring functions – again based on NPM ideas of efficiency – has in essence destroyed that quality of their vocation (the combination of vocational skills and caring ethos) the public most valued.
The new paradigm calls for the re-socialisation of public service, a process which requires us to challenge not just the ideas of NPM but the deeper bureaucratic/professional foundations of public service practice. Two examples from current RSA sources make this idea concrete.
Writing in the latest edition of the award winning RSA Journal, Robert Whitaker exposes the disastrous record of modern psychiatric care. Outcomes for people with severe conditions have failed to improve. Indeed the evidence suggests not only that outcomes were better 150 years ago, before modern psychiatry was invented, but that they are also better in developing countries which lack the infrastructure of modern mental health services. In essence, we have turned conditions which were seen by sufferers and communities as challenging but manageable and episodic into conditions which are now seen as chronic, debilitating, and requiring lifelong pharmaceutical and therapeutic intervention. Increasingly the evidence indicates that psychotropic drugs are better at creating mental illness than curing it.
A different approach to vulnerable people with challenging behaviour has been adopted by the RSA Whole Person Recovery project. This seeks to turn post treatment recovery into a community based process. The integration of recovering addicts into the community as full and vocal citizens and the mobilisation of the community as partners in recovery enables better outcomes for individuals and enhances civic capacity.
It is time to re-conceptualise public service goals as the outcome of social processes. The role of politicians, public managers and professionals is to serve and support those social functions. So, for example, instead of children’s learning taking place in schools with the occasional (often tokenistic and patronising) attempt to ‘engage the community’, children’s development into adulthood should be seen as a function of families and communities with schools being judged by how well they support and enhance that social process. Professional norms need to refreshed by reference those things we value and seek to enhance in civil society. The goal of good nursing practice should be to replicate the values of familial care and community compassion in a professional setting.
As in all paradigm shifts, that from new public management to socialised public service will involve continuity and gradualism as well as transformation. The conceptual core will shift but the circles of practice around it will see overlaps between the new and the old. (So, for example, the new paradigm is just as critical of public service producerism as is NPM, but whereas the latter seeks remedy in public servants imitating market actors, the former exhorts respect for the strengths of what Avner Offer calls ‘the economy of regard’.)
Defenders of NPM will fight on. Like post war communists distancing themselves from ‘actual existing socialism’ they will say the problem lies not in the theory but that fact it has not been properly or fully applied. But the question now is what will emerge from NPM’s ashes. Its death exposes both the limitations of the New Labour model of top-down modernisation (of which I was an advocate and architect) and the gaping disconnect between the valuable diagnosis of the Big Society and the dispiriting practice of public service reform under the Coalition.
Most of all, the new paradigm offers the only credible way of addressing the social aspiration gap which exists between our hopes for the future and our current trajectory. Unless we start to close that gap the guiding light of social progress – which is essential to the legitimacy of liberal market societies – will, in time, be extinguished.
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