Now, about those robots...

From Deirdre McCloskey:

If the nightmare of technological unemployment were true, it would already have happened, repeatedly and massively. In 1800, four out of five Americans worked on farms. Now one in 50 do, but the advent of mechanical harvesting and hybrid corn did not disemploy the other 78 percent.

In 1910, one out of 20 of the American workforce was on the railways. In the late 1940s, 350,000 manual telephone operators worked for AT&T alone. In the 1950s, elevator operators by the hundreds of thousands lost their jobs to passengers pushing buttons. Typists have vanished from offices. But if blacksmiths unemployed by cars or TV repairmen unemployed by printed circuits never got another job, unemployment would not be 5 percent, or 10 percent in a bad year. It would be 50 percent and climbing.

Maybe there is a limit. Maybe. But aren't we better off, regardless of that financial investment warning, planning for tomorrow's changes to result in similar outcomes from today's?



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A London Tale: the merely stinking rich shoved out by the filthy rich...

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Andrew Marr, who is pretty rich by most folks standard's is moaning in The Spectator:

A recent victim is Cork Street, for generations the heart of the commercial British art world. But as Spectator readers may know, it is ceasing to beat. Seven art galleries are going after Christmas, mostly to make way for flats for billionaires. Another four are to go next year. In a few years’ time there will still be galleries here but they will be run by international fashion houses who have the money. A unique part of London life, which grew by accident, will be destroyed by speculative investment.

I for one won't miss those galleries. And I'm pretty sure there'll still be a commercial art market for people to write about in The Spectator. However, it won't be in Cork Street - it'll be somewhere else, somewhere a little further out - perhaps New Cross or Stoke Newington.

And in moving out, these rich art dealers will push out what's there now - maybe some pleasant, treasured shops loved by locals. Perhaps the little corner shop where celebrities go once or twice a year in extremis when faced with a shortage of some essential (or a weird craving for a Snickers).

It has always been like this, the city. Changing. Dynamic. Exciting.

And when you get bored with this creative destruction, you retire - in Andrew Marr's case to a nice barn conversion in the Cotswolds or a farmhouse in Sussex. Forgetting, of course, that the barn once had cows in it and the farmhouse provided a home for generations of farmers.

There's something poetic about the various translations of Heraclitus' famous dictum (Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει) in Wikiquote :

Everything flows and nothing stays.
Everything flows and nothing abides.
Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
Everything flows; nothing remains.
All is flux, nothing is stationary.
All is flux, nothing stays still.
All flows, nothing stays.

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Schools, choice and competition - why we have to change

While scrabbling around the – mostly unedifying – debate about education in England it came to me that the problem really comes down to a fundamental disagreement about the idea of choice. Indeed this relates to several debates – health, social care, local government, housing. Put simply (and, I admit, perhaps just a little unfairly) the left sees choice as a problem whereas the right see choice as a solution. And the more complicated the particular service the less value our left-wing friends see in providing choice. Here’s the doyenne of wealthy left-wing commenters on education:

The intention is clearly to reintroduce the hierarchies with a vengeance, setting school against school, parent against parent and child against child.

The curse of choice – give parents a real choice (including the chance to join with other parents and teachers to set up their own school) and, says Ms Millar, chaos will ensue.

Why can’t parents just send their children to the “local school” and be done with it, these people say (secure in the knowledge that their local school in whichever leafy suburb the reside is a top performing school – or they can afford the cash for top up lessons to make up for any shortcomings at the school).

That option simply isn’t there for poorer parents – their local school isn’t like that, it’s dreadful, filled with out-of-control children and with teachers who’ve become so brow-beaten that they see getting through the day without being assaulted as something of a victory. And any children who may just want to actually learn something – get on in life, give themselves a chance – struggle. And too often fail.

The problem is that the left think that choice is too tricky an idea – that poor people aren’t able to decide which school is the best for their children. Allocations should be just that – a process whereby the state tells parents where their children will go to school. All this is justified by saying that choice, competition and variety are ‘unfair’ and will “set parents against parent”. Funny how we don’t see that in parts of society where there is real choice!

For me, the saddest thing in all this is that choice really will better advantage poorer families. There will still be unfairness and inequality – but we’ve got that squared in our current system – but as Mark Lehain from Bedford Free School observed:

The team I'm heading consists of educationists from a variety of backgrounds, with a range of different philosophies and beliefs. What we have in common is a sense that the existing system is failing too many children, and that if it isn't working after 60 years, it is unlikely to start doing so now. A fresh approach really is needed.

Only 70% of students who live in the area where we will set up – Kempston – attend the local upper school, and of those who do, this summer only 31% managed to get five good GCSEs including English and maths.

Other schools in our town are doing better – although in Bedford itself, only 42% of 16-year-olds this summer achieved the same measure.

Look at those numbers – that’s the story in a place that’s far from the most deprived in England – and say again that a few adjustments to our current system will serve children well? There has to be dramatic and substantial change - more of the same simply won't do.

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Change, management and 'getting out of the way'

Having spent a surprisingly good day at the Local Gov Camp, I thought I'd ponder on a puzzle posed (in a roundabout kind of way) by Emma Langman from Progression Partnership – should we “get out of the way”.

Now by “we” I think Emma meant leaders, managers and other boss sorts. And the argument is that, in these times of change (and yes the term ‘paradigm shift’ arose but I shall treat it with contumely) those bosses are actually in the way of achieving change. Management is the problem not the solution. You also need to note that we were talking about government not the wealth-creating part of the economy.

In which case the answer to “should we get out of the way” has to be yes. Government is overweening, often excessive and definitely over-managed. And managers within the public service have – too often – an incentive to sustain the current systems, staffing and methods.

However, the getting out of the way has to be permanent – much more of what we deem “public goods” can and should be provided through private initiative and market mechanisms. If there is to be a ‘paradigm shift’ it has to be away from providing services on the basis of public monopoly and towards a more dynamic model of delivery. To achieve this we need to escape from a planning mentality towards a recognition that dynamics derive from enterprising interaction rather than predict and provide approaches – if anything changes from the regime just gone it is the reliance on planned and targeted approaches.

Ironically the ‘unconference’ approach and participation technologies like ‘open space’ play to this idea of enterprise and collaboration (although too often collaboration leads to consensual mush) and perhaps begin to show a route out from the thicket of targets and the curse of tractor stats. What public sector managers need to display is the confidence to develop similarly trusting, dynamic and engaging approaches to service delivery – including really engaging with the idea of private delivery, co-operative or mutual action and competition.

My worry is that we will see little changing – all the talk of change will be lost in the rhetoric of securing services and sustaining activity and we will once again see the triumph of efficiency over effectiveness.

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Change, drunkeness and the threat of tutting

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Since everyone’s* burbling about change in that usual frantic new year kind of way I thought I’d join in. Not in the personal development sort of change narrative – that always makes me reach for the axe – but looking at the things that need to change (other than West Ham’s league position) to make living in England slightly less annoying and irritating. Here’s a few (feel free to add your own!):

1. We need to give kids a little more space and a little more understanding. Let’s stop and remember what it was like to be a teenager – perhaps that will put an end to the description of mild annoyance as “anti-social behaviour”

2. The cartel that is the big PubCos needs sorting out – stopping them dictating drink suppliers and prices would be a good start. We should also take the alcohol license off supermarkets. And please god, we’ll stop this ridiculous blaming of licensed premises for the behaviour of a few drunks

3. A little less pious piffle from “faith communities” would be welcome – why on earth do we give them a privileged position in our society? If they want schools, TV programmes, newspapers and fancy buildings that’s fine. But not with my money, thanks

4. More trust – quite rightly I have never been asked for ID in a shop. In fact no-one should have to carry ID just to get served. That way we might get a little common sense from those serving. Shopkeepers you don’t have to serve anyone – why hide behind ID cards?

5. And a great deal more fun – more festival lights, bands playing in parks, farmers markets, street vendors, buskers, jugglers, open air theatre, pavement art and village galas. Put less into opera houses and fancy London theatres and more into accessible popular art that really makes places fun

6. Oh, and please, less tutting!

*by everyone I of course mean a couple of people on twitter
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Can I be ten again, Sir?

When I was ten….

We climbed over the fence to play football in the school grounds (it is only a rumour that we climbed on the roof) & could cross the fields to Elmers End Cricket Club and watch them play – and so long as I was back for tea no-one bothered

With Jeremy Lesuik I got the bus and tube to go to football – Highbury, Stamford Bridge, Upton Park – on our own and paid for from our pocket money. And in the Summer a trip to The Oval or Lords for cricket

Mr Sparks took us to the old golf course to play cricket – on occasion up to twenty or so playing an impromptu game. In bad weather he took us swimming. We walked the two miles there and back to South Norwood pool

There was the ‘Front Room Space Race’ – building the biggest Lego rocket – and the matchbox races: sprints, rallies and loop-the-loop

When the subbuteo men broke (and finally refused to be re-glued) we played the game with my sisters farm set – minutes to go and it’s Sheep 2, Cows 1…

And climbing the cherry trees and digging for Roman remains in the garden (which of course we found in abundance)

Playing cricket with a big plastic ball and the roses as fielders – and ducking my Mum’s sandals when we knocked a flower off

Back then bikes were old, slightly rusty and lacked brakes – but we still raced down The Glade (with my little brother in the old pushchair – and that didn’t even have steering)

…there wasn’t any “Attention Deficiency Disorder”; there were fewer social workers; no CRB checks; there were coppers who clipped you round the ear or, worse, took you home for Dad to thrash; we had no computers or TV and only partial central heating (told you we were posh) but….

… there were clippies on the buses; old men with allotments who didn’t mind you scrumping so long as you helped to pick the soft fruit; lino you could slide on down the hall; and ‘The Clitheroe Kid’ or ‘The Men from the Ministry’ on the radio signalling the approach of Sunday lunch

It may be old age and I’m sure my specs are rose-tinted but….

….can I be ten again, sir?

Afghanistan: so what's changed?

I have been re-reading Meyer & Brysac’s wonderful “Tournament of Shadows” – a breathtaking gallop through the “Great Game” and the contest for central Asia between Britain and Russia. I doing so I’ve come across three quotations that say so much about our present entanglement in Afghanistan that I thought I’d share them with you:

The first is attributed to Dost Mohammed the Afghan ruler ousted by the British in the (ultimately disastrous) 1st Afghan War:

“We have men and we have rocks in plenty but we have nothing else”

So why were we there? For sure it was not to serve in any way the interests of the Afghan people. And has anything changed?

The second quote is from Sir Henry Rawlinson, warrior scholar, Tory MP and leading advocate of the “Forward School”:

“In the interests then of peace; in the interests of moral and material improvement, it may be asserted that interference in Afghanistan has now become a duty and that any moderate outlay or responsibility we may incur in restoring order in Caboul will prove in the sequel to be true economy.”

Rawlinson’s concern (and how familiar this sounds) was that Afghanistan contained “…a machinery of agitation…” ideal to act on the “…seething, fermenting festering mass of Muslim hostility in India.” Put simply we should take action in Afghanistan to protect ourselves from violence and terrorism – now where have I heard that said?

Which brings us to the third quotation which comes from Sir John Lawrence – Viceroy of India in 1863 and the advocate of what his detractors called “masterly inactivity” over the perceived threat from central Asian and Afghanistan in particular.

“I am firmly of the opinion that our proper course is not to advance our troops beyond our present border, not to send English officers into the different states of Central Asia; but to put our own house in order by giving the people of India the best government in our power, by conciliating as far a practicable, all classes and by consolidating our resources.”

So there we have it – Afghanistan contains nothing of strategic interest yet some promote the fear of the Muslim mob while others argue that good government at home will manage that problem and that involvement only begets violence and division. Nothing has changed?