This is a thought that’s been on my mind for quite a while now. Despite the attention paid to personalities, politics is meant to be about solutions to make a country better, and to give opportunities to people to live full and prosperous lives. At least that’s the idea! Sometimes we succeed, sometimes politics is reduced to drivelling debates about which person is leading which party and who is writing what in the newspapers. Anyhow, politicians make policies, that’s why they’re called politicians. How do we go about crafting policies? We hold consultation, we create research institutes and think tanks, we ask experts how to respond to a particular crisis. There are many ways.
One way I like in particular is despatching ministers to foreign lands to find out what’s going well abroad. I used to enjoy hearing my grandmother talk about her many trips around the world with various education secretaries – she was a departmental private secretary at the Department for Education under Gillian Shepherd, Ann Widdecombe and Margaret Hodge amongst others. As a child I already knew that the Swedes do education better, or that was the general opinion anyway. And when I got older I had the opportunity to travel to places like Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium etc., where living standards are far higher than here in the UK. As a thinking person I’m always intrigued when I visit one of these countries; I want to know what they do differently to us that results in a better life for their citizens. So I understand the rationale behind sending ministers off to learn lessons, and I think we should do it even more.
But! I think we’re failing to learn the lessons. We must be, because whilst the Labour government has done an awful lot to improve things like healthcare, education etc. since we’ve been in government this time around, I strongly believe that the United Kingdom with all of our wealth, industriousness, academia and innovation, could yet be a better place to live. I think it’s wonderful that we have universal healthcare, a relatively good education system and some of the best universities on Earth. But try comparing public transportation in Geneva or Zurich with London or Manchester. There’s no comparison! And there’s also no excuse! Infant education in Scandinavia is far superior to our own, and the devolved Welsh government has recognised this and now provides some of the best infant education in the world (3-7 year olds), based on the Scandinavian model of learning whilst playing.
And this doesn’t just apply to policy-making in the UK. I’m certain that there are lessons in almost every country in the world which could be shared with neighbours and other countries further afield. Surely in our modern age, with the level of internet penetration as it is, we should be able to share best practice and good ideas more efficiently. Nowadays, it’s done through ministerial visits, think-tank research and the like, but if there were a central bank of ideas, which policy-makers all over the world could log into, surely that would be more efficient and would reduce the cost and effort required to extract this knowledge. Experts, such as academics and civil servants posting ideas, could post the initial outline, and if a government agency or politician wants to use it, they could pay a consultancy fee in return for the poster fleshing it out. Eventually this could spread to other areas, such as business, culture, social entrepreneurship etc.
The web revolution that is web 2.0 (sorry for the cliche) has opened up communication channels that didn’t exist before. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are bringing people closer together, which is great. But beyond making connections, there’s no specific value that you can attribute to these tools. Of course there is a lot of intangible value in bringing people together more efficiently, but I wonder if a global, web-based idea bank aimed at improving societies and lives, could actually work, and could lead to a revolution in the way we learn and govern.
It’s only been since the start of the year that I have experienced Australian/Kiwi (antipodean) coffee culture in London. Since a friend introduced me to Flat White (flat-white.co.uk) in Soho, and really enjoying the coffee there, I’ve been intrigued as to why antipodeans make such nice coffee, and happy that some of them have decided to bring it to these shores. I’ve also recently discovered Fernandez & Wells (Beak St and also Lexington St, also in Soho – fernandezandwells.com), which was voted the best coffee retailer in London by TimeOut magazine, and has also featured in various other publications. I started going last month, and have been back as often as I can over the last few weeks. The coffee is expensive at £2.50 for a latte (there’s no sizing, just the regular size), but the quality is unsurpassed. If you’re in town, and if you want to taste genuine coffee instead of the Starbucks bucket of hot milk/Pret burnt coffee, do go and try it.
Here’s an admission: I’m addicted to notebooks. No, not the computing kind but the paper kind. I have so many of them, some I use and some I (try to) preserve. My favourite by far is the Helvetica Moleskine, which is a limited edition version of the popular Moleskine notebook. Moleskines have been used by many an intellectual or artist over the centuries, from Henri Matisse to Ernest Hemingway. I must admit it took me a long time to convert – I was originally reluctant to jump on the bandwagon.
