Answers to Readers' Questions
Responding to Ask me Anything: 500 Subscribers Edition'
Thank you to everyone who submitted questions for last week’s ‘Ask me Anything’ - a great range of questions covering everything from education policy, favourite books, faith and live in South East Asia.
Without further ado, let’s answer them.
Improving reading skills feels like one of only a few things that government has really delivered in the last few years. Are there lessons to be drawn from that success in the multitude of other problems facing the country at the moment?
Improving reading skills was heavily driven by the focus put on phonics. If you look back at why phonics succeeded there are a number of factors:
The evidence was there to support it.
There was a degree of cross-party consensus, in that it built on an existing Labour policy - but then the Conservative Government took the needed measures to universalise, embed it and make it stick.
Implementation didn’t just rely on good will but on rigorous accountability measures that ensured it was implemented despite resistance from part of the system - particularly the phonics test.
When asked about this recently, Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister at the time, said:
The evidence was there. The political challenge was landing a new test in a sector where the unions are hostile even to existing tests. There are two things to that: I always tried not to be a polemical figure. The ideas I was promoting were challenging enough without me layering on top the “let’s be a typical aggressive politician”. Having a good personal relationship with union leaders and respecting their position allowed us to have proper discussions about policy that was informed and respectful.
And then having to compromise. Ideally when you introduce new tests, you’d publish results on a school-by-school basis, but I knew that would have been a step too far.
It’s just trying to understand when you have to compromise.
In terms of lessons for today, I’d draw out two things: Firstly, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve - and not just the headline aims, but how you’ll achieve that. Second, you need to actually have the right policy - one that will work. But thirdly, the status quo is a powerful force, whether that’s because of inertia or active opposition. You can’t just rely on hoping existing actors - whether that’s NHS managers, local councils, universities or anyone else - changing what they’re already doing: you have to build in the right incentive and accountability measures to drive change.
How have you been shaped by living in Southeast Asia?
Great question! For readers who aren’t familiar, I lived in the Philippines from 2013 - 2015, working in the British Embassy on trade and investment.
The trite answer is probably the true one: living in a very different culture makes you realise how many of your assumptions about what is normal or standard are actually culturally dependent. This covers everything from office and workplace culture to child-raising1. As a tiny example, conducting job interviews was very different there: people didn’t have the same expectations of questions, so you would have to ask different things to tease out the information you needed2. Even relatively modern things that shape a society - for example the fact that so many people in the Philippines have gone overseas to work3, meaning people may be raised by uncles and aunts, while the parents send money back to support a family - can be real eye-openers.
The biggest single way it’s shaped me, however, is reinforcing that a lot of our conversations about poverty are facile - particularly when we start claiming that poverty is the ‘cause’ of people not being able to take up opportunities, or becoming obese, or whatever.
The Philippines is a deeply unequal society. At the time I was there it had seven dollar billionaires, many other wealthy people, including those who lived at the same level as ex-pats such as me, a larger middle class, and many many people in serious poverty, both urban and rural. The GDP/capita at the time was $2,000 per capita - less than a tenth of that of the UK.
In the UK, the top quintile has a median income just over 4 times that of the bottom decile. In the Philippines, we employed three full-time members of house-hold staff - a driver, a maid and a nanny - and I earned approximately 50 times what each of them earned. And yet the wages we paid4 were well above the ‘official’ minimum wage5 and sufficient that our driver, for example, was able to afford to own his house and to put a child through college6 on it. This strata - so much poorer than us - would still be far, far above many others in the country.
It is obviously better to be rich than poor in the UK - and someone who earns £100k has things easier in many ways than someone who earns £20k7. Yet everyone is guaranteed a basic safety net, free educationa and free healthcare. No-one dies because they can’t afford antibiotics.
Furthermore, rich and poor both live ‘in the same world’. It is likely that both of the individuals mentioned above may go to the same pub, send their children to the same school8 and go to shop at Tesco or Sainsbury’s. They’ll both likely use local amenities, such as the children’s playground in the park, or a public library9. If you’re in a Pizza Express, the waiter serving you is someone who almost certainly themselves can, at times, eat in Pizza Express; if you go into the Apple store, the shop assistant is likely to be someone who owns Apple Products. In the Philippines, none of this was true: the rich lived in an entirely different world, using entirely different shops, services and amenities than the poor.
Overall I much prefer living in a society like the UK than one like the Philippines. I’m glad we have a good minimum wage, a strong safety net, an NHS that is free at the point of use and free education that is - in most areas - of decent quality. I’m open to discussions about what exactly a fair level of redistribution is that balances supporting people down on their luck and rewarding and incentivising people for their hard work and talents.
But at the same time I am very dubious about claims that poverty is at the root of many societal disparities - or that shovelling more and more money at these problems will solve them. When I look at what people in the Philippines were willing to do to help their children - or themselves - get an education and get ahead, it seems absurd to say that when those in the UK - with (mainly) good schools, free libraries (including internet access), free university and an almost endless number of charities and other schemes aiming to help the disadvantaged - fail to take up those opportunities, that money is primarily to blame. It has never been easier for those who wish to better themselves to do so. Indeed, we see this when we look at refugee or migrant communities in the UK, many of whose children achieve educational and life outcomes well above what one would ‘expect’ from their parents’ income levels. There is much more going on here than just poverty.
I'm always interested in which fiction books the people I subscribe to like. So, what are yours?
Ooh, great question! I’ll answer that in three ways:
The three most recent books I’ve read/am reading are Memory’s Legion, a set of short stories set in the Expanse universe; Clarissa Oakes, the 15th in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin Napoleonic War series; and The Golden Torc, a highly peculiar fantasy/sci-fi hybrid set in the Pliocene.
Some all-time favourites include The Lord of the Rings, Dune, Anne of Green Gables, Possession (A S Byatt), The Winds of War (Herman Wouk). I’m also very fond of authors such as Terry Pratchett, John Grisham and James Herriott.
If you want to solve a longer list - and have the patience to solve the clues - 100 books I like a lot can be found in Christmas Quiz V.
I'm perpetually disappointed by government failure to even try to address the obesity crisis. What do you think should be done about it? Or would you just leave well alone - personal freedom and all that?
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
CS Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on theology
The first question I'd ask is why do we think this is any of the state's business at all? What right do people set themselves up as judge over their neighbour on matters such as this - and what are the downsides? I believe the state should ensure everyone has basics, whether that is in terms of income, healthcare or education: it is not for the state to try to force society into a shape that extends life as much as possible.
Even for individual initiatives that may seem positive, the fact that the state sees this as its business at all contributes to the vast regulatory-industrial complex that is sabotaging our private sector productivity and underpinning the burgeoning growth of the public sector.
I entirely reject the 'saving the NHS money' argument for two reasons, one philosophical and one pragmatic.
Philosophically, the fact that the state provides what should be a base developed country entitlement - free healthcare - does not give it the right to dictate or emisserate our lives.
Pragmatically, most 'save the NHS money' arguments are phony. Most of us cost the NHS about the same, with most costs accrued during the last years of life, whether we die of cancer or heart disease. People who die younger and quicker actually save the state money! With obesity there is something to the argument that obese people cost more to treat, but given that the public health lobby lied - and are still lying - through their teeth on smoking (smokers save the state money; they typically can work a full working live and statistically die early in retirement before claiming much pension; lung cancer, sadly, is also, a quick killer as cancers go), we should have low confidence that they have accurately or in good faith quantified the real costs and savings if they make this argument they advance in any other area.
Evidence from other public health issues also shows that campaigners are never satisfied and immediately move on from one victory to campaigning for the next. Even on obesity, the rules on school lunches, and what snacks are allowed in schools, are already overly stringent - and yet still they push for more. As a SpAd, I had to push back against civil service proposals - egged on by public health lobbyists - who with gleeful ardour proposed to 'ban all cakes, including birthday cakes' and to 'restrict traditional British puddings to no more than once a week.' It's the very embodiment of Lewis's quote.
I suppose if you're asking which measures I find least objectionable, it would be measures that give individuals more information, such as food labelling, as well as restrictions on advertising, especially to children. And in the longer term, once generics come on the market, I suspect a significant minority of the population will simply be on Ozempic or equivalent, just as now many older men are on statins.
We opened with Lewis, so we'll end at the other end of the culture spectrum, with a picture from SMBC comics, which is sadly untrue: public health experts already have far, far too much legislative power.
You show a high degree of religious literacy and understanding of/sympathy for socially conservative views and lifestyles (many of which are religiously-informed), yet as far as I can tell you don’t have a personal faith. Could you explain a little about why that is (if that’s not too personal) and, more broadly, what do you think could be done to improve religious literacy and sympathy across Whitehall amongst politicians, policy thinkers and civil servants (as my experience is that it is often pretty lacking)?
Great question. I grew up in a fairly standard, vaguely CofE household, with bible stories and religious assemblies at primary school. At university, though, I became good friends with quite a few committed Christians and, while they didn't convince me they were right, it did lead me to look into it a lot more and gain much more respect for faith as something intelligent people could believe in, rather than just something old-fashioned and obviously wrong. My wife is Christian and we've agreed to bring up the kids in the faith, until they're old enough to decide for themselves.
I suppose more broadly my sympathy comes from two sources:
- Although I don't share it, I can see the strengths in terms of community, morals and purpose that often come from faith. Over the last two decades I've shifted from a more Dawkins view (it's a parasitic meme) to one that is more of the view that seems to be expressed by people such as Haidt, Ali or Holland (that faith - or at least Christianity; I can't speak for other faiths - is a socially positive meme).
- Christianity and the Bible play such a fundamental part of British culture and heritage, to the extent that it's really pivotal to understanding so much literature, art, and so on - as well as our connections to the past. I find it peculiar that as a nation we would voluntarily kneecap ourselves by excising so much of our national heritage (there is so little in many schools, now), even if we don't think it's literally true. I don't get the sense that other non-Western cultures do this.
On policy makers: it's hard. I agree that this is something policy makers often get wrong; there was a great paper I read a few years ago that talked about how FCO staff often underestimated the extent to which foreign leaders and politicians were genuinely influenced by their faith. I do think this may, counter-intuitively, get better as the number of people who identify as Christians decline, as there may be more of an appreciation that this is a minority that has to be understood and effort made to understand, like any others. But overall I think that all faiths are going to have to continue to fight for basic freedoms, particular where their values are in conflict with an increasingly hegemonising progressive worldview.
You are about to be sitting on an economy class flight to Auckland with a twelve hour stopover at Ulaanbaatar airport (where you cannot leave the terminal building). The airline does not offer in flight entertainment (and neither does Ulaanbaatar airport), however, you get to choose to sit next to a person (fictional or non-fictional) of your choice.
Who would you choose from among the following categories (and why):
I've answered this literally, in terms of who I think I'd find most interesting and enjoyable to talk to:
Current British politician: This feels a bit hard to answer as I know quite a few personally and more professionally: I'm not sure I want to answer 'Which of your former bosses was your favourite?' in a public forum!
Former British politician: Winston Churchill - amazing life experiences and I imagine a very entertaining companion, too.
Non-British politician (past or present): David Ben-Gurion - founder of a nation.
Fictional character: Gandalf - as well as being very wise and possessing much lore, all the hobbits seem to find him very likeable.
Religious figure: Can I have dead people? If so, Chesterton.
Sportsperson: Gareth Southgate - he seems like a very thoughtful and interesting guy
A great set of questions - thank you all!
Many people in the Philippines save a portion of the umbilical cord to put in a baby book, just as people in the UK do with a lock of hair or first tooth. The nurses in the hospital were very surprised we didn’t wish to keep ours.
For example, the standard UK opener, ‘Why have you applied for this job?’ would quite frequently get the honest but not particularly helpful answer ‘To earn money to support my family’ until I figured out I should stop asking it.
8.5% of their GDP is from remittances.
Fairly good by local standards.
Which itself was much higher than many people earned.
Think community college/vocational college, not Harvard.
Roughly full-time minimum wage.
Yes, there is a level of house-price selection. But almost every school has some children eligibile for free school meals in it.
Both of which were rare verging on non-existent in the Philippines.
"a larger and [larger?] middle class"