A space to discuss the #Dilnot report

Tomorrow sees the publication of the Dilnot Commission’s report into the funding of care and support – a significant policy development for anyone interested in social care for people of all ages.

Discussion on Twitter has used the #dilnot hashtag for people’s thoughts and to share links/information regarding the Commission. I’ve also been using the dilnot tag for my (hopefully) comprehensive list of links relating to Dilnot on delicious.

This post aims to provide people with a space to discuss in more than 140 characters their thoughts, feelings and perspectives on the Dilnot report.

Of course, there will be plenty of debate in many different places, so there’s no particular reason why you should use just this post. Hopefully, though, it’s a useful place to start and you’ll join the debate.

I’ll update this page with responses from as many organisations and blogs as they are published – let me know any you think should be included.

By way of background, an excellent overview of the challenges Dilnot is seeking to address was written by Emma Stone at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. A great overview of what social care is has been written by my good friend George Julian, and the King’s Fund’s social care pages are also fab.

Please do get stuck in!

Man walks into a column, no.4: Type

This is a post by Phil

What kind of week have I had? I’m allowed to ask this rhetorical question because, as Dave Briggs points out in this excellent post, it would be ludicrous for me to pretend that I am not a real person talking to other real people. And ‘what kind of week have you had?’ is a perfectly normal way to begin a real conversation.

Social media and networking is above all about human beings and human relationships. […] So don’t be afraid to post what might seem at first to be trivial, or of limited interest. Much of the power of social media lies in serendipity – which probably drives people who like measuring stuff mad – and so by describing your dog walking route in one tweet might forge a link with a fellow dog walker who ends up being a vital business connection.

So: what kind of week have you had, Phil? How very kind of you to ask (although I should say that I’m willing to talk to you whether or not you are likely to become a vital business connection). 

This week I’ve been luxuriating in the prose of John Banville. This is one of those instances, I’m sure, of discovering a secret that’s not really a secret at all because virtually everyone else is in the loop already. Banville won the Booker in 2005, but I smugly chose not to begin with the novel that won (The Sea), instead opting for one of his first books, Doctor Copernicus. It’s chock full of astonishingly direct, undadorned yet luminously evocative passages, and reminded me a little of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall in its striking depiction of an aloof, otherworldy genius immersed in the muck and the mire of a filthier time. I’ll do a proper review at some point.

January has been a month of mixed blessings, reading matter aside. Like many, I began 2011 by deciding a spell off the booze would be a good idea, but then quickly discovered that things were grim enough without losing out on the chance to have a glass of wine or a cold beer at the end of a long, dark day. Problem is that, as our Antipodean cousins are known to expound, every beer’s a sandwich (mate), and so it’s little surprise that my parallel quest to shed festive poundage is going nowhere. I have no choice, it seems, but to endure a dry spell; wish me luck.

On the plus side, this has been the month when I discovered that, contrary to past experience, I actually can work productively from home. Oddly, the key seems to be Twitter. With my work laptop to one side and my Mac to the other, I find I have sufficient distraction to keep me on the straight and narrow. Because, certainly from university on, I’ve always found it impossible to concentrate when I have only one thing to concentrate on, if you know what I mean. I don’t suppose I am alone in this?

It was whilst working from home on Friday, proofing a document, that I discovered the answer to a question that has long puzzled me: why do so many intelligent, otherwise fastidious people insist on placing two spaces after full stops, irrespective of the manifest evidence – from books, newspapers etc. – that this is madness? A brief exchange on Twitter, initiated out of idle frustration, came up trumps: it’s all the fault of the typewriter.

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks ‘loose’ and uneven; there’s a lot of white space between characters and words, so it’s more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. Here’s the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. […] Because we’ve all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it.

Next week: I may or may not be writing about the delights on offer in a new publication from the Royal Society, in which leading scientists give their thoughts on the key questions for policy and society arising from latest developments in neuroscience. Until then, find me on Twitter @philblogs.

World’s most beautiful tweet: modesty #fail

In a poor attempt to get more publicity for the Hay Festival (think Radio 4, but even more middle class, snobby and elitist), Stephen Fry has announced “the most beautiful tweet“.

The writer of said tweet, on being honoured, was a classic Twitter #fail:

[Winner Marc MacKenzie] said he started tweeting because people kept telling him they enjoyed reading his Facebook updates.

“What I like about it is how my brain works. Occasionally I have these odd thoughts that come to me and they amuse me so I jot them down. I like sharing them and it’s an interesting form to work with.

“A certain percentage of tweets are tired cliche phrases so when they come into my head I think ‘That won’t do.’ I can’t stand triteness so I always look for ridiculousness in trite.”

I have thus taken the unusual, but absolutely necessary precautionary step of blocking Mr MacKenzie, in case his tweeting brilliance renders me unconscious.

Technologically happy, or better off in the slow lane?

This is one of those cases where – unlike watching The Mighty Swindon Town FC, say – I have no particular privileged insight gained from years of experience, but Rich assures me that This Is OK and that concern about quality or expertise never kept a good blogger down (and anyway, as my boss said to me in a meeting the other day: “for heaven’s sake, get on with it Phil”).

Several interesting articles caught my eye in the last couple of days, each bringing a different perspective on the link between social networking technology and happiness/mental health. First off is this from TIME magazine, reporting research by BCS – the British Chartered Institute of IT – which finds that, irrespective of income:

IT has an enabling and empowering role in people’s lives, by increasing their sense of freedom and control, which has a positive impact on well-being or happiness.

Obviously the fact that this was commissioned by an IT institute means we should tread a little carefully, but on the other hand the findings are based on secondary analysis of a large-scale (N=35,000) global survey, and I guess the results have some intuitive appeal. One of the report authors goes on to say:

Whether young or old, we’re all social beings, we all have a need for the things IT access facilitates.

Hmmm… Next up was something I heard on the Today programme this morning (also reported here): the Mental Health Foundation suggesting that higher than expected levels of loneliness amongst younger people are partly down to the double-edged sword of technology. As the BBC News piece about the research has it:

Nearly a third of young people questioned for the report said they spent too much time communicating with friends and families online when they should see them in person.
Whether this has any genuine biological impact is unclear, but it has been suggested that physical presence is needed for the hormone oxytocin to be released – believed to be the chemical process underpinning the relationship between social contact and healthy hearts.

As I suggested earlier, I have absolutely no expert opinion on whether this is valid or not and would be interested to hear what people out there who are better placed than me to comment (not hard) think.

Perhaps part of the answer comes in the content of a third article, a neat piece by John Rentoul, writing in The Independent, who is precise enough to distinguish between the function of something like Twitter as “a news service” – a means of conveying information quickly and efficiently – and its role as a social networking platform.

But whilst I agree with Rentoul about the utility of the ‘rolling commentary’ function of social networking (leaving aside the fact that an RSS aggregator does similarly well), and its value in terms of ‘connectedness’ (but really only if you have the kind of job where the bigger your network the better – where you want or need to be ‘connected’ to as many of the right people as possible – a political journalist, for example), I struggle to agree with him when he says:

…the social interaction of Twitter is just as valuable as that of real life. […] Twitter social life is faster and more gregarious than face-to-face. It doesn’t have the depth, of course, but it avoids the downsides of “real interaction” – pretending we’re not in; not answering the phone.

A position exaggerated for comic effect, no doubt, but still… seriously? Laying my cards on the table: I really struggle to see how, unless used very sparingly indeed or as ‘a tool of the trade’ (and therefore not also part of life outside of work) heavy use of social networking technology doesn’t have a negative effect on a different form of connectedness: with the people, places, thoughts and feelings of the here and now. And if there’s one thing that’s well-established as a key ingredient in promoting happiness and mental well-being, it’s exactly that kind of ‘mindful presence’ in the world around us, isn’t it?

Debating the debate: responding to my fisking

The 3 leaders’ debates have been and gone. Stef gave me a good fisking after the first debate, based on a post I wrote a few weeks ago. Now taking the long view, I thought I’d respond to each of his points.

Note: my original points in italics; Stef’s argument in italics below.

1. Debating points and issues in the debates won’t really be the aim. Instead, it will be used as an opportunity to trade blows, irrespective of the content of those blows
Stef: Some real issues were aired and some interesting debates did occur, albeit they were somewhat stymied by the short amount of time available for each question.

After the first debate, it did seem that some interesting debates might occur. But they didn’t. I was wrong in the sense that the debates would be used to trade blows. Instead, they were used to just say and then repeat their key messages. This wasn’t really 3 debates; it was one debate repeated 3 times. (And the format of the debate, as Stef rightly says, stymied the debate.)

2. What goes on in the debates is almost neither here nor there; it’s how they get spun afterwards that matters.
Stef: Whether the debates were of Aristotlian profoundness or playground pettiness, how they get spun afterwards was always going to be as important, if not more important than the debate itself. This does not invalidate the debates themselves, what went on in the debate did make a difference to how the debate was spun.

My original point safely holds. There were clearly prepared lines and put-downs which were echoed in the post-match spin. Related to point 1 above, the debates weren’t genuine debates; they were just an opportunity to establish and repeat key messages, not debate the merits or otherwise of each other’s policies.

3. I’m not one of those that complains about the American-isation of politics, and in particular the cult of personality in politics. The leadership debates will do nothing to assuage people who do complain about this.
Stef: Agreed.

We were agreed on this, so I don’t need to re-emphasize I was right in the first place.

4. Does anyone remember the one-to-one interviews between Jeremy Paxman and each party leader during the 2005 general election? If you do, you’ll remember they were not known for their jibber and jabber on policy issues but instead adversarial tosh focused disproportionately on specific issues (e.g. the number of illegal immigrants in Britain).
Stef: [T]here was a disproportionate amount of focus on the issue of immigration. Yet because of the uniquely non-adversarial format of the debates, we got into more detail and more clarity on policy positions than any PMQs or Question Time.

We did get into a bit more detail about a very few things; but focusing disproporionately on specific issues – particularly immigration, interestingly enough – did happen. The debates were narrow in their focus.

5. The worry about ‘losing’ the debate, or being the subject of a terrific putdown is precisely what leads to the score-draw results assigned to most presidential debates of the last 12 years. Even though this is the first time debates have been held here, the tendency will be for the candidates to play it safe.
Stef: Yes, it was a play-it-safe debate for all the candidates but especially the ‘incumbents’ but Clegg did better because he played it less safe. Here’s betting that the next two will be a bit livelier. A real good put-down may win it.

The perspective of the 3 debates shows that the debates were primarily safe. For all the media tried to find one, there wasn’t a significant moment in any of the debates.

6. Most people think these debates will be good for Gordon Brown. I don’t agree because (1) the Tories are good at precisely this sort of thing, being the presentation of policy rather than what the policy is; and (2) it depends which Gordon Brown turns up. I suspect it will be the one that has turned up at Prime Minister’s Questions for the last 2 years, which is no good thing.
Stef: Patently wrong on both accounts. Cameron inexplicably failed to present himself and his policies at all well, usually his forte. Brown, clearly dreading the event, actually did much better than he thought he would. Although in my opinion he came ‘last’ it was not by much and he, along with Cameron, can only improve over the next two debates.

I was certainly wrong on (1): Cameron did an awful job in the first debate, did marginally better in the second and was his best in the third. Brown was consistently stodgy. The polls for each of the debates bare this out – only in rogue polls did Brown not come third.

7. The spare wheel: there will have to be air time for Nick Clegg as leader as the Lib Dems. This will just be embarrassing for everyone concerned.
Stef: Erm, I’ll let Rich defend himself on this one. Yes the Lib Dems won’t be the largest single party but hell, the kaleidoscope has been well and truly shaken.

I wouldn’t try to defend it: Clegg clearly did well. I’m going to write a post on my wider thoughts on the Lib Dems over the last two or three weeks.

8. Which television stations will cover this? If not everyone can cover every debate, what will the implication be?
Stef: 9 million viewers for a 90 minute political programme on ITV without adverts is absolutely astonishing. The Sky debate will have next to bugger all viewers, mores the shame. What I’d give for a Channel 4 debate with the mighty Jon Snow.

The ITV debate had 9.4m viewers – around 37% share of the viewing audience that night if I remember correctly. Sky had just over 4m and I still don’t know the figure for the BBC debate (which I expect will be the highest viewing audience). This partly anticipates my riposte to point 9 below, but I don’t think the turnout will be higher than the 1997 election (i.e. 71.4%). Viewing figures aren’t much of a proxy for this, but I think the media is more excited by them than the voting public.

9. Does anyone seriously think the debates will engage a wider audience than those engaged in politics anyway? I doubt it very much.
Stef: Policy by anecdote warning! This weekend I had my first ever party political conversation with my brother whom is not atypical of the disengaged voter but a good proxy. He did not watch the debates but read about them afterwards and looked at some of it on YouTube. His verdict. Cameron “Don’t trust him” (Incidentally my mother thought he looked like a porn actor) Brown “Doesn’t know what he’s doing” Clegg “Seemed straightforward and normal”. Policy by anecdote completed. This is why anecdotes are, in the right context, very powerful. My brother and many like him will possibly vote for the first time ever because of the debate and many may well vote Lib Dem, fundamentally changing the political landscape in this country. This would not have happened without the debate.

I’ll leave the point about whether or not the landscape has been changed by the Lib Dems to a later post (here’s a quick preview: I don’t think it has). But I stand by my original point: the leaders’ debates have not engaged a wider audience than those engaged in politics anyway. Ultimately, this will be borne out by the turnout of the election. But beyond the bubble that the media has created, and which has been supported by social media (especially Twitter), I suspect a significant proportion of the public will remain disengaged by this general election.

A lonely tweeter at a conference

It’s an unusual experience being the only person tweeting at an event or conference. At an event a few days ago (launching the Right to Control) I was probably the only person who everyone else thought was being rude by spending a lot of my time playing on my phone – the ‘playing’, of course, being me tweeting, along with an associated hashtag (#RighttoControl).

The irony here is that being the lonely tweeter at a conference made what I was doing more necessary. There are loads of great examples of conferences where everyone is tweeting and using the relevant hashtag (e.g. #ukgc10). I hope, though, by tweeting, some people who either couldn’t make the Right to Control event or are interested in it generally will have got some impression of the day. I also hope that some people who are skeptical of Twitter can see this use of it as a way of sharing information.

If either of these things are true, I’m happy for some of the other delegates to think I was just a bloke playing with his phone.