Will They Be Smarter?

I'm saddened by the reaction of too many MPs who signed EDM 908. In response to the recent report on homeopathy by the Parliamentary Science and Technology Sub-Committee Why aren’t more of our MPs as capable and focused as Evan Harris and many of the other MPs who serve on the Committee? Too many MPs seem to reject scientific evidence; something I find bizarre for a country where the sciences are promoted as being essential to the UK economy.

Is it really fear of upsetting a scientifically illiterate group of voters? Should I ask how scientifically literate are our MPs in general?

Are they simply afraid to challenge what seems like scientifically illiterate journalists in the press or perhaps the press editors and cheap magazines who may try to create a fuss in order to steal headlines? That just can't be an excuse can it? Well you might think so if you look at some good reporting on what is going on with the press. Try here, or here both by the energetic Ben Goldacre. And do not forget, the poor level of scientific literacy is expertly on show regularly on our TVs and radio programmes too. Take a look at this critique of just one radio programme on BBC Radio 4, a station normally considered to be the bastion of the highly educated among us by David Colquhoun.

Do I want MPs who show so little regard for evidence to sit in a jury let alone make decisions regarding the running of this country, preferring instead to court incompetent journalists rather than skilfully deal tabloid headlines, and poor programming the contempt they so obviously deserve? I do genuinely ask myself that question. There would rightly be outrage if a conviction failed due to a jury disregarding solid scientific evidence on the basis of not wanting to upset a particular group of society, wouldn’t there? Really, I do wonder sometimes if there are enough people in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords who have any idea why we no longer live in ‘The Burning Times;

Do they value evidence in their decision making, decisions that can and do affect our laws and freedoms, the health of the UK population, our standing as a world force in science and many, many other arenas, our security and even decisions that may send our armed forces to war? Aren’t enough of them trained in the evidence-based legal professional to understand the value of evidence after all?

These days, we come with both a vote and an expensive education, something MPs would do well to remember as they fight for the political lives. For years now, the MPs have informed the public that leaving education at the age of 16 is no longer a realistic option, not for those who wish to secure employment. Our way to success personally and nationally, they told us, is to improve our level of education by going up to university or find better skills training for the new post-industrial world we find ourselves in. More and more of our young people have risen to the challenge set to them by our political leaders. More and more adults have followed the advice too, increasingly studying successfully at colleges and universities as mature students. They have indebted themselves, immersed themselves in learning, working hard for the education our political leaders had for free. We are now a far more educated electorate than we were in the 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s.

Our politicians must meet those same challenges if we are to meet our national goals, our personal dreams. They must improve their skills, demonstrate strong valuable talents, abilities and qualities, if we, as a nation, are to continue to succeed in all areas of life. It should come as no surprise that, armed with our world-class educations, we are demanding world-class, capable political leaders; thanks to our educations we now understand what that means and are can communicate what we expect. We expect them to be just as capable, just as educated, and just as aware as we are. We will obviously be expecting significant talent with a wide range of capabilities and understanding to take their places on the benches. Just as our leaders demanded of us, we too are now demanding of them.

Could a group of MPs be so afraid of science that a refresher course in the basics would do them a great deal of good? For many years our politicians, our leaders have informed us we must take up the challenge of lifelong learning. They are responsible for performance, their ability to work to a high standard if they are to meet the expectations of their employer; you’d think they’d knuckle down particularly after recent parliamentary scandals. The employer, remember is every member of the voting public. Perhaps they should make use of their Individual Learning Accounts and take a science course at their local college.

The politicians of the UK should understand that they must demonstrate their ability to be professional, fair and just to the electorate; their employers. MPs will increasingly be required to demonstrate they have the necessary ingredients to lead us toward a future where we will rely more heavily on science and technology. If they don’t understand medical advances or space research, then how can we rely on them to ensure adequate decisions are made about the sciences, our technologies, new industries, and how we will resource them?

After all, it has been 300 years or thereabouts since the Enlightenment. In future years, we may well find ourselves facing more challenging, more technological and yet more complex scientific questions. Yet, the demonstration that homeopathy is no more than a placebo at best, has been straightforward and intellectually simple. But we still have sugar pills sold as remedies, we still make them available on the NHS, we still have them labelled in misleading ways shamefully fooling our parents and grandparents. This just isn’t rocket science!

Expertise in the art of spin is no longer be an effective tool for our leaders; we now have the experience, the tools and we have gained the confidence a world-class education provides. With that confidence we are increasingly demanding leaders who are fit for the job. We will no longer tolerate a system of leadership where those in government see themselves as the sole holders of expertise and knowledge, who rule on our behalf taking the difficult decisions we do not understand. Because, now they are no longer the keepers of expertise and understanding. We possess expertise and understanding of equal if not greater than theirs.

This small country gave us so many scientific greats including Joseph Black, James Watt, Alexander Fleming, Robert Watson-Watt, Joseph Lister, James Clerk Maxwell, Watson & Crick, the recent Nobel Laureates Paul Nurse, John Sulston and Tim Hunt among so many others.

Surely our politicians can appreciate, and use good old-fashioned Enlightenment? They can begin by withdrawing their support for EDM 908 now.

Find out about the candidates standing for election in your constituency. Don’t accept what they will spin to you, instead make it clear you want substance and ability; they are after all, attending an interview and you are the employer. Be a good employer and communicate clearly to your potential MP exactly what performance standards they are expected to meet; they don’t necessarily need to have earned a doctorate though that might be useful, but they do need to understand what science is and what it can be used for. Like all employers you should regularly review your employee’s performance over the coming years.

The British people have earned that appreciation and respect over the past few centuries. Our would-be representatives would do well to follow suit.

How Big Do You Want It?

For months I’ve been running for the duvet and hiding under it. Every time I heard Gove, that man Duncan Smith or Cameron mention ‘Big Society’ I’ve been so frightened I just have to go and hide under the duvet. For four months now Cameron and been squawking those two words. Over the past week or so, life has become intolerable as he does his best to impersonate a parrot, a parrot desperately trying to show off his language skills. It’s really upsetting. I can’t stand it.

Last night, we had our national treasure, Paxman, attempt unsuccessfully to prise out of Cameron what he means by his ‘Big Society’. His explanation was as skillful as any I’d expect from the most eloquent parrot; there was no explanation, just the parrot ducking up and down, swinging his head from side to side while he clings onto his perch parroting. But we all know what he really means, don’t we?

Government is too big for Dave and he wants to shrink it down to a size more suitable to his tastes. Services will be auctioned off, this time to newly created charities rather than the city whizz kids who blew the value of our infrastructure at the casino. The last time we had Tories living in No10 Downing Street we had television adverts, paid for by us of course, telling us of the auctions of telephone shares, shares that were quickly gobbled up in the trading rooms, used as gambling chits by the wealthy. Now, our part in the deal will presumably be to volunteer our time to work for these charities. Unpaid, naturally. Yes, the last time we were promised financial riches, this time we are being promised Presbyterian hard work to enrich our souls. Those who gorged themselves at the trading banquet now have so much free time, I have no doubt they will become the beneficiaries of management salaries as they organise and inform, explaining their organisation charts to those enriching their souls with free hard work.

No longer will you be settling down in front of your TV to watch the latest episode of ‘In The Thick Of It’. Instead, you will be trotting off to put in a shift each night as a social worker helping the poorest, struggling families, the single, the homeless, the married or pensioners who can no longer land on the safety net of the disappearing welfare state when work is thin on the ground, the middle classes forced to stand in line for charity food once their meagre savings have vanished and insurance terminated. Perhaps we’ll be mopping out the newly created charity school your neighbours thought would be better suited for the local children. Don’t forget to mop down the sparkling office for the new headmaster/MD fresh in from the City will you? Once you’ve finished the offices there will be the maths class to tidy. If you’re lucky the maths teacher may well be one of those bright young things from the bank we see on TV adverts to teach basic savings skills to children. Hadn’t you noticed? The banks have been giving us a preview of their clerks teaching basic arithmetic in our schools already as the banks attempt to find new younger customers! No need for pesky graduate teachers now that we have all those free bank staff.

Cameron obviously missed those classes. If he’d bothered to show up to basic maths class, he’d understand ‘too big’ isn’t a number. Maybe he did and we aren’t supposed to realise. Our part in the deal is not to notice the watery homeopathic trick he hopes to play on the public. The reason why the North East of England seems to have such a large dependency on employment provided by government agencies is because in comparison the private sector is failing, and failing badly. Think about it. Take 100 people of working age. 20 of those people are out of work. 43 people are employed by the state, perhaps in the health service, social work departments, the police force, fire brigade, job centre offices etc. The remaining 37 people are employed in various businesses. They will be cleaning hospitals, offices, selling food, clothes, beer, producing software, working as security guards, building houses etc. Now doesn’t government look huge! If only the private sector was as successful as we’d all like it to be those 20 people would be working in the private sector, and as such their improved health would lessen the load on the health service, they’d mean less work for the benefits agency and a whole host of services the unemployed need just to get through the misery of unemployment. We’d have a 43 to 57 ratio and instantly government would be much smaller in proportion. Just like that!

But the private sector is failing our economy. Cameron’s answer is this. Transfer 30% of the jobs from the state to somewhere else, his new idea of social entrepreneurship. That will be 30 state workers and 50 private workers. How many of those 13 transferred workers retain their salaries at the same rate (if at all)? Nevertheless Cameron will have succeeded in reducing the size of his government. Rather than cutting government to reduce it’s size to something he would consider comparable, why, oh why is it beyond Cameron and any of his City friends to simply increase the size of industry? If industry created 5 million jobs in the north east of England, doesn’t he understand government would be trifling in comparison?

I am under no illusion. Despite the impressive personality of a parrot, a species not noted for complex rational thought, I think Cameron understands proportions perfectly well. He is unable or unwilling to develop the green and industrial jobs we need. His friends in the City too. They have no wish to pay decent wages for good work to those who seek decent safety standards, decent employment law and a decent standard of living for communities. Those unfortunate enough to find themselves living in the third world have yet to fully exploit the benefits that come when workers organise themselves, insist on human rights, dignity, decent standards of health, safety and nutrition. But they will.

The Tory solution is to convert government jobs to private sector jobs. That way the cabinet get to keep their government jobs, their salaries and pensions but with so many fewer tasks to complete each day; a sadly hilarious efficiency drive and the joke will be on us. The financial winners will not be those asked to participate in the Calvinistic austerity of hard work and no pleasure. The big losers will be those finding it impossible to live on £9 a day benefit, a benefit they will have to spend on community charge, taxable fuel and increasingly expensive food while jobs are scarce after the bank disaster destroyed their varied careers, further hounded as scroungers, accused of idleness, and left threatened, frightened by the state lest they cheat for a fiver, the very state who failed them so badly from the beginning.

Money will be made and you can rest assured it will not see the pockets of the volunteering public, the unemployed, the sick or the retired. The money will leave the economy winging over the electronic routes straight to the nearest tax haven. The British disparity between those that have and those that have not will widen further, the problems created by Thatcher will go on for another demoralized and ailing generation.

While I listen to that phrase as the needle sticks on the same phrase, the vinyl goes round and round, over and over again, I rush to hide under the duvet, the same horrified response when the birds attacked in The Birds.

Parrots, with their beautiful feathers and sharp claws, and sharp beaks can be nasty.

I’m saved, and the David Attenborough DVD loads. Life in the Undergrowth is a calming saviour.