It will be nice to return to the original point of this trusty blog, dear reader.  I want to tell you about the interesting people I’ve been meeting.  And I will.  But something’s been on my mind.

In a few months we’re going to have a General Election in Britain.  Every day until then, people will say it’s either time for a change or that the current Government should stand by their record.  The current crop of politicians stand accused of being amongst the most rotten in living memory.  If you’re looking to blame something on someone these days, the chances are (if it’s not a banker) it might as well be a Member of Parliament.

Here’s the problem;  The expectations we have of politicians are WAY out of line with what they should be.  To help explain myself, I’ve developed an analogy, though I warn you, it isn’t perfect;

If the country was a school, then what role do you think the politicians would play?  I’ll tell you what I think;

The janitors.

This isn’t to say that janitors aren’t important.  They are.  Extremely.  They have to ensure that the school is structurally safe, that the heating works, that people can use it every morning.  Of course, the janitors don’t make the decisions and so my analogy falls down here.  The mistake we make is to think instead that the politicians are the teachers or the pupils. That we should be looking to them to make the changes which lead to the school or country or world we want to live in.  They won’t.  They can’t.  They do not, and should not have the power to make this a great country.  They are an important part of making it great, but they do not have the power to ensure that it is, nor should they or do they lead its greatness.

All of the time, at the moment, we’re making this mistake. Imagine there is a lot of litter on the common.  We blame the council.  The council did not drop the litter.  Members of the public dropped the litter.  A school slips down a league table.  We blame the Government.  They didn’t sit the exams.  The pupils, teachers and parents all share responsibility for the results.

The main stream media are having a major love-in with politicians of both parties, and no good will come of it.  Perhaps it’s because they are interested in each other’s jobs.  Perhaps it’s because they work near each other in London.  Maybe it’s because they rely on each other for their very survival.  Is it easier to fill the time with tales of party political intrigue than going and finding something which is actually making a difference?  Whatever.  It’s ruining everything for everyone.  We’re sitting back and watching the country pick a fight with the janitor because the school is failing.  We need to wake up a bit.

The irony is that the elected MPs are only the thinnest layer of the political system.  Why aren’t we paying attention to the work that the millions of other public servants are doing?  Why are so many of the civil service seemingly banned from speaking in public?

Who is covering the latest innovations in business?  Who is shining a spotlight on the breakthrough techniques of social enterprise?  No-one.  Because they are all too busy gazing into the eyes, or beating up (depending on whether the camera is rolling) the MPs.

I’ve been to Downing Street.  I’ve met leading politicians of both main political parties.  I don’t speak for any of them.  I probably shouldn’t write about it.

We need to focus on the people who can actually change the way a country works.  Just in case I haven’t told you how I see this (I’ll stop in a minute), let me put it this way;  Politicians cannot change a country.  Not really change it.  Teachers, business people, parents, community leaders, social entrepreneurs, retired people and EVERYONE currently watching and listening as the politicians get the blame.  That’s who can and should make the changes.  We’re sleepwalking into a bleak decade if we carry on projecting the wrong expectations onto the wrong people.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some networking to do.

photo;  Special Agent

Would you like to earn half a million pounds a year?  Fully clothed, using a special chair, ten minutes in a Neil’s Yard shop could work wonders. Yes, the Walk-In Backrub is one of my guilty pleasures in London. Perhaps you should consider becoming a Back-Rubber too?  A ten minute massage could earn you ten pounds.  That means we will make five hundred and twenty five thousand smackers a year, each.  Doesn’t it? Of course it doesn’t.

Wonga is a short-term loans company.  If you have run out of cash at the end of the month (and in January, this is entirely likely), then they will consider offering you up to a thousand pounds.  And you’ll pay for it.  For a hundred quid, they will charge you seven if you pay them back in a week.  They also add a transaction fee.  I think I know a couple of people would pay that gladly at certain times of the year.  Of course, if you then express this as an annual percentage rate, it looks enormous.  It’s over 2,600% !  Wonga’s point is that they have not designed their service for people borrowing over a year.  It’s designed to carry you over from one day or week, to the next.  Either way, it will have some people complaining that it has become far too easy to borrow money, that lenders are being irresponsible. 

It has never been easier to buy a Kit Kat.  At the newsagent, petrol station, or winking at you at the Tesco till, they are everywhere.  They are also easier to eat than ever.  No more crafty scarecrow, slicing the foil with a taloned fingernail on a moonlit night.  If Kit Kats are your weakness, you could be in trouble.  Should it be made more difficult to buy one?  Or should we finally give two fingers to the idea that everything today is the seller’s fault? 

It’s too easy to blame the financial crisis, or our love of credit cards on the banks.  At some point, someone is going to have to start asking how irresponsible it is to take out a loan which you know you can’t really afford.  To accept that the reason you have put on a stone since Christmas is not the fault of Ronald McDonald. And  getting stuck in the snow, when you could have stayed at home and knew it was going to dump it down was not the local council’s fault. 

I know all of this because I am as guilty as the next person.  I borrowed the money, I ate the Big Mac, I went out when I should have stayed in.  The author of my January gloom is me.  I need a break.  I need a back rub.

 

Did you ever see Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves? The one with Kevin Costner. Do you remember the bit at the end, when King Richard appears, played by Sean Connery? “I will not allow this wedding to prosheed”, says Sir Sean, and we breathe a sigh and think; thank goodness you’re here.

In a board meeting, when someone in their seventies intervenes, with a blast of common sense. Thank goodness you’re here. When a friend turns to you, at a tough time, and all you can do is laugh at the situation. Thank goodness you’re here.

Today, when I watch senior politicians of all parties, I don’t get this warm and comforting feeling. When I switch on the TV and see our leading broadcasters, even on the BBC, I don’t feel it either. Now for my most troubling confession; When I watch Question Time and see members of the great British public take our political masters to task, I don’t get it either. In fact, I feel worse not better than before.

Don’t feel sorry for me.  It’s not all bad. I feel it when I sit around a table with Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project. I feel it when I sit down with Liam Black, founder of Same Wavelength (and previously head of Fifteen) or with Gail Greengross, director of Business in the Community. I feel it with my family and friends. What do I mean by ‘this feeling’? Do you know what I’m talking about? The feeling that things are going to be alright. That the world has not taken leave of its senses. That we are powerful and not powerless to change things. I think you know what I mean. I can come back to the politicians, broadcasters and ‘the public’. In the meantime, it’s just the two of us. Thank goodness you’re here.

“I could stay lost in this moment forever,

Where every moment spent with you, is a moment I treasure”

Aerosmith.

It is 1995 and I’m sitting in a General Studies lecture.  Seen by many as the easiest session of the week, it’s a rare chance to hear school visitors from the so-called real world share their stories.

Today, a mother has come to tell us the tale of how her daughter almost lost her life by joining a cult.  She is nervous.  She fidgets as she is introduced.  As she begins to set the scene, she looks ups.  Something has caught her eye.

“Excuse me.  If I could ask you not to take notes please.  I don’t want anyone writing any of this down”

She looks afraid.  In that moment, her audience of sullen teenagers is gripped.  It is one of the most memorable talks I have ever heard.

Looking back, I take two things from this experience.  Firstly, that in a time when so much information is freely available, being told something is a secret is special.  It creates a bond. 

Secondly, there is something wonderful about paying full attention to someone, something, anything.  Not taking notes, not fiddling on a laptop, not gazing out of the window.  At TED in Oxford this summer, there was a strict rule.  Unless you were sitting in the very back row (traditional home of trouble makers), all phones and laptops were to be switched off.  We were encouraged to tell our fellow delegates to desist, should we spot them breaking this rule. At first, this felt silly, patronising even.  Quickly, it made sense.

This week, a number of colleagues have been at Le Web, a major conference in Paris.  Photos show a sea of laptops in the crowd and the conference website reveals an endless waterfall of messages emanating from the audience.  I accept that some people think better when doodling and know from personal experience how Twitter, for example, can be a stimulating back-channel to an onstage debate.  I tend to change my view though, when the person speaking has a powerful story to tell.  I wonder how many people at events these days are actually listening.  Really listening.  Paying full attention.  I know that, all too often, I’m not.   

Ironically, the conference I have referred to, which has been excellently reviewed, was on the theme of the real-time web.  We miss so much because, in the words of Aerosmith, we don’t want to miss a thing.

Tomorrow, politicians, scientists and campaigners from around the world will meet in Copenhagen for landmark talks, aimed at resulting in a global deal on Climate Change. 

I’m not qualified to get into the science, however I’d like to ponder why we don’t care more, and do more about this important subject.  Here are a few ideas which you may not hear being put forward over the coming few days.  I’m sure that there are hundreds of possible theories.  Here are seven;

1)  We don’t care more because we don’t care about each other. We are brought up to be afraid of strangers and not formally disillusioned of the myth that ‘they’ are dangerous. We don’t grow up connecting with people in other countries, so when we are told of their plight, we find it difficult to get our heads around this.  Modern languages are now optional in schools, which adds to how disconnected we and our children are from the rest of the world.  We don’t have enough substantial global networks, so we rely too much on politicians to represent us.

2)  We don’t care more because we don’t care about our descendants.  We don’t care about our ancestors either.  We are not able to imagine where we come from or what will happen to our genes.  We know that the people who will pay the price for our mistakes are our grandchildren and their grandchildren, yet we find this too difficult and abstract to imagine.

3) We think that ‘change’ sounds exciting.  Any business guru worth their pinch of salt will tell you that we must embrace and accept change.  This is of course nonsense.  If we were talking about Nature’s Destruction or Global Pollution, we would not feel as if this was something to accept. 

4)  Global Warming, when you’re based in a cold and wet country, risks sounding attractive.  This may not be as flippant as it sounds.  Names are important.  Some might care more if they were taking a stand against Global Wetting.   

4)  Too many spokespeople are ‘posh’.  George Bernard Shaw said that “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him”.  In Britain, we confuse conversations about class with conversations about accent.  I have been in enough situations to suspect that millions of our fine country take an instant dislike to what might be called ‘posh’ accents.  Although this might be annoying and a great shame, it is true.  Until we have role models with a wider range of regional accents, this dislike will too often be connected with the substance of the conversation itself.

5)  We have become suspicious of politicians and, recently, scientists.  We tend to be sceptical of anything they say, and as long as they are seen to be the main spokespeople for any movement, we will not buy into it.

6) We don’t care because we don’t understand what’s in it for us.  We must continue to underline how a certain type of food actually tastes better rather than the fact that it is better for the earth.  Similarly, saving money will matter more to many families than saving energy.  We must inspire people to make changes which they will personally benefit from and this benefit must be clear.  The motivating force cannot be penance or guilt. 

7)  We don’t know who to agree with or ‘believe’. The democratisation of voice, the idea that anyone can share their view, brings many benefits.  One risk is that we confuse volume with authority.  We begin to agree with people who quite literally don’t know what they are talking about.  As objects in the mirror may appear closer than they appear, so sources of information closest to us may appear louder, or more authoritative then they really are.  So the verdict of a global panel of scientists can be overturned by a single attention-seeking journalist, or indeed blogger.

So, I suggest;

1) More programmes to connect schools globally.  Gemin-i (with whom I am working) is a great example.

2) ‘Stranger Safety’ schemes to integrate communities and undo the unwitting damage of Stranger Danger thinking.

3) More airtime to genealogy enthusiasts, with a moment to imagine the future of families.

4) A concerted avoidance of phrases with ‘change’ and ‘warming’, replaced by ‘pollution’.

5) More lead spokespeople who are neither ‘posh’ nor ‘politicians’

6) More explanation of the personal benefits of anything being introduced

7) A clearer representation of the weight of certain opinions, as opposed to the relative flimsiness of others. 

Regardless of the science or the overall temperature, it seems to me that we humans are killing our planet.   I hope it’s useful to think about why, in the hope that some solutions may come from a proper understanding of the causes, not just the symptoms. 

I’d welcome your thoughts!