11 Mar

Don’t be such a scientist

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

It’s unhappily easy for our earnest efforts to fall on deaf ears, especially if (like me) you’re a bit of an egg-head. It would be lovely if people listened attentively to our reasoned arguments, but any academic psychologist could tell you it ain’t so.

The Bad Science movement has roundly bashed the media for dangerously misrepresenting science. Ben Goldacre angrily lays blame at the feet of humanities graduates (like me?) who write and make editorial decisions about scientific subjects without any understanding of the subject or even getting the basics of the scientific method. Just recently we have seen climate scientists have their names dragged through the mud by, er, journalists and editors who obviously don’t realise how much of a non-scandal “Climate Gate” really was.

So do we fight back with Goldacre-style condescension, taking the arguments to pieces and shouting at humanities graduates like me? That probably won’t get us too far.

Randy Olson’s book – yes, what a good name for a scientist – takes you through five basic lessons that he picked up after jacking in his career as a marine biologist and tenured professor to do film school and acting classes. I’ve summarised them in my page about communications theories. I would, without hesitation, say that every Green should read his book if they want to counter climate change deniers, or in fact to communicate just about any political issue.

What does it boil down to? Basically, don’t reel off a factual argument in a condescending manner. Instead, think of your subject like a story; arouse their interest, connecting to their emotions and gut instincts, then build a strong narrative that delivers your message in a way that fulfills their expectations. If you’re trying to beat a blockbuster-style conspiracy theory like Climate Gate, do it with an even better movie plot. Sounds obvious, but goodness me we can be bad at it!

24 Feb

Getting OpenStreetMaps out in London

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

How could the Greater London Authority, Southwark Council or tenants on estates use OpenStreetMap? I regularly use it to get around, but of course I’m an OSM nerd. Most people have never heard of it, which is a shame because they could really benefit from it.

This evening I introduced the Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations to the project, handing around some printouts showing how OSM has many estates much better mapped than Google, and how we have nice (but very incomplete) public transport and cycling maps which are much more useful for your average tenant than a map for car drivers.

Everyone seemed really enthusiastic, which was lovely! One lady thanked me for getting the name of her estate right; it changed in 1979 but lots of maps still have the old name.

So I’m going to do some workshops with tenants on a couple of estates to get them started, probably using Walking Papers, and we’ll see where we go from there.

In a different world, I’ve been talking with Emer Coleman who heads up the London Datastore, a fantastic Open Data initiative. She’s enthusiastic about making public data available for OpenStreetMap, about entering OSM data sources in the Datastore, and collaborating where public authorities struggle to gather information like cycle parking stands or building accessibility.

On Tuesday evening Emer and I met up with Gareth who leads on GIS in the GLA, Christopher Osborne from ITO, Muki Haklay from University College London, and Harry and Shaun from OSM, to discuss all this. We aren’t gunning for paradigm shifts overnight, but it’s good to start developing a relationship and talking about how to get those ideas right. Gareth is also going to broker us into the world of London Council GIS bods.

That’s quite enough OSM for one week. Now back to getting elected and holding down my job!

22 Feb

Boris the culture commie?

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

Are free photos evil? I’m going to stick my neck out and defend the Greater London Authority for setting up a Flickr group where Londoners can submit photos to be used on the GLA web site. A few photographers are upset that anyone can now get decent photos for free from citizens who donate them. Shocker. These photographers want the GLA to use our taxes to pay them for their hard work.

I’m sorry, but that’s just plain ridiculous. Should we condemn the GLA for using free software for their web site, instead of paying for a proprietary content management system? Dearie me. Look, the web has changed many creative industries and bust the business models of those few who were charging for stuff that lots of us will happily share quite freely. Get over it.

This storm-in-a-lens-pouch has been picked up by the venerable Boris Watch and the Telegraph, who both seem to sympathise with the photographers. They echo the photographers and conflate this issue with the way that the police and the More London security guards act stupidly towards photographers, as though this has anything to do with the GLA (a different organisation) inviting its 7.56 million citizens to contribute their lovely photos to the GLA web site.

The great collection of photos in the group – including a few of mine – suggest that most people are quite happy donating their work.

5 Feb

Power to the people!

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

Labour have never really understood how to empower people and their community groups, although they do love to talk about it. Take this recent article by Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander, where they say “the right kind of state action is not a drain on individual empowerment; it can enhance it”.

Great, so why have they been party to a state that has taken ever more power away from people, replacing citizenship with shallow consumer rights? How do you get beyond slogans and soundbites to genuinely empower local people?

In a recent blog entry I wrote about the money side of the equation – how you can enable local people to directly invest in projects that will improve their neighbourhood, a topic Matt Sellwood has some interesting thoughts on. You could also use tools like participatory budgeting, made fun by the unsurpassably brilliant The People Speak, or really make the most of the Sustainable Communities Act. But what about the people themselves?

Labour have too often confused the voluntary sector with community groups. A lot of people depend on and benefit from the work of the voluntary sector – just look at the fantastic Peckham Voluntary Sector Forum, for example!

But what about those of us who would just like to be a little more involved in our neighbourhood, who would like to start a group to grow some food, or a knitting club, or a campaign to improve some cycle lanes? For us, the voluntary sector is too unweildy, slow and offputting. Who has the time to establish a constituted organisation to apply for funding and hire a venue for a public meeting? Who has all the right local contacts to hand?

Local hero Eileen Conn mentioned the idea of Community Development Officers to me recently. On reflection I think she’s spot on. You need people who can be visible at a very local level, running training events on basic organising skills, helping local people to lead rather than trying to lead them, signposting sources of support, getting them to build co-operative relationships, encouraging them to take risks, and linking them up with councillors who will make the council system work for them (as opposed to just “representing” them). London Citizens do this quite brilliantly with existing schools and religious groups.

The final piece of the puzzle is a community-run community centre. Eh? Well, a place that’s bit more like Access Space, the Rising Sun Arts Centre and CRISP than your typical council-run building with their rules, regulations and detached staff. Mix a settlement up with freecycle to provide rooms, computers & photocopiers and you’re half way there.

Real life, real local campaigns and clubs, are far more fluid than council bureaucracies. Rather than offering us false consumer choices in public services, whilst introducing timid reforms to open those bureaucracies up a little to citizens, why not do it the other way around? Give local people the skills and financial tools to make a difference their own way.

30 Jan

Telling the Green story on housing

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

How can we tell a simple, persuasive story about Green housing policy? Tom Hill sent me this challenging article about the US Democrats’ recent failure to turn solid facts into folksy stories, reminiscent of George Lakoff’s past work on their failure to frame issues correctly (read this and this).

I’ve been doing some work recently on the Green story about the recession, and what the Mayor of London should do in response. A big part of this is the Green story on housing, since the housing bubble is both a structural weakness in our economy and a negative consequence for the majority of people for whom it is far too expensive. Jenny Jones has recently published a great report explaining the downside of the story, and we’re working together on a follow-up describing a range of rather complex solutions.

So how can we tell our positive story on housing in a way that people can connect with, that will win their emotional sympathy without triggering justified intellectual cynicism? The cynicism should be dealt with by our detailed report, but here’s a first and rather long attempt at the story:

We all want a home we can afford, that we can make our own, and if possible to build up a stake in it for our retirement – a fair approach to housing.

The Labour government has tried to solve this by providing subsidies to big business builders, who offer slightly cheaper private housing that just becomes completely unaffordable later on. Everyone who struggles to afford this can get state handouts – housing benefit or social housing – paid for by the profits of big business, making us all dependent on their success.

The Green Party would hand ownership and control of our land and homes to communities. Instead of expensive short-term subsidies, we would support pensions and other long-term investments into housing that is owned and run by local communities. You could build up a financial stake in your home, and you would pass it on to the next generation at a permanently affordable price.

Does that make sense? I’d love to read any comments and thoughts.

29 Jan

Eco taxes going down in the UK!

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

I came across a shocking statistic today: environmental taxes are decreasing in the UK!

The total revenue has risen slower than inflation between 1999 and 2008; from around £32.6bn in 1999 to £38.5bn in 2008. If it had grown with inflation over that period it would have stood at £41.4bn in 2008.

As a percentage of GDP over that period it fell from 3.5% to 2.7%. As a percentage of the total taxes and social contributions in the UK, it has also fallen behind. In 99 it peaked at 9.7% of total tax revenue, then fell to 7.2% in 2008.

Environmental taxes made up a lower share of our economy and tax revenue than at any time since 1993, when the ONS records begin. So much for shifting the tax burden from income to environmental damage!

20 Jan

The cost of housing doubles in London

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , .

Halifax have published a great little fact sheet on some key housing trends over the last 50 years. The most dramatic is that the cost of buying a home has risen 273% above incomes over that period, with the sharpest rise during the 2000s when they rose by 63%.

This is the increasing cost of housing adjusted for increases in income; or adjusting for inflation to state rises in real terms, for economists. Imagine if food or heating bills rose that quickly compared to incomes!

Whilst the property-owning journalists hail this rise in house prices, more and more people are squeezed out of the market, or forced to sacrifice huge chunks of their salary to repay mortgages.

Jenny Jones published a report on the housing crisis in London recently. She shows that over the past decade the cost of buying a home doubled in London, well above the national rise of 63%. This makes the misleading boasts of our Tory Mayor – as he fails to even meet his own modest housing targets – all the more sickening.

Unless we double the number of homes we build, which is pretty unlikely, or we make a radical shift away from home ownership, this trend is set to continue for another decade. But our Labour government and this Tory Mayor are both  committed to mostly building homes we have to buy, with a very small minority available for affordable rent, almost no land being held by communities to keep it affordable, and pretty much no support for alternative models like co-operatives.

11 Jan

Might eco-nagging encourage more shopping?

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , .

Here’s another reason not to try and terrify people out of conspicuous consumption, aside from the basic flaws in the “eco angel” approach and recent evidence that moralising is putting people off ethical consumerism.

Some interesting research by Swiss psychologists found that warnings about death has the ironic effect of making some smokers want to smoke even more! The reason? They derive a self-esteem boost from smoking; warnings about death sent these smokers to a trusty source of self esteem to overcome that downhearted feeling – death-bringing cigarettes!

So next time you tell someone that buying too much crap might cause planetary collapse, it’s fairly likely that your nasty nagging well send them running for a standard Western self-esteem boost: shopping.

7 Jan

Snow in The Gardens

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , .

Oooh I couldn’t resist, how we English love our slight dusting of snow!

7 Jan

Can the community regenerate Peckham?

Posted by Tom Chance in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

Can a local community pay for its own regeneration instead of relying on developers with tall blocks of flats and massive government grants? I got thinking about this again after reading a jargon-fuelled paper on urban rights and renewal sent my way by local hero Eileen Conn. The author writes about communities owning, or controlling, their urban environment, and being able to determine how to spend “surplus value” (Marxist terminology for capital that rich people and governments accumulate off our backs). How could local people in Peckham, for example, decide how money is spent in the area?

Here are two quick steps that are decidely practical compared to the ivory tower academic paper.

First, give people more control over the property and land in Peckham. At the moment you either buy a home and the land it sits on, or you rent from a landlord, or you rent from the council/a housing association. So you’re either wealthy, or at the mercy of somebody over whom you have little control. If all new housing in Peckham was built by mutual housing associations – where the association builds the house on a corporate loan, and as a member you pay a monthly amount to buy equity in the association so it can service the loan – we’d have the choice of gradually building up equity (like owning a house) in an affordable way (like living in council housing) and have the advantage of having a direct voice in how the co-op runs the homes. To seal the deal, the co-op could own the land through a community land trust, making it permanently affordable.

Second, enable people to invest their savings in local improvement schemes rather than abstract bank accounts. Use Southwark Credit Union and community finance co-ops like the Wessex Community Assets to directly invest local people’s money in good schemes, like helping shop keepers do up their shop fronts, investing in new mutual housing schemes, or helping Peckham Power bring renewables to our buildings.

We’ve plenty of money in Peckham. Not the mega-bucks that big developers could bring, or major government regeneration schemes shower on consultants. But enough to revitalise the local area, if we take more control over our local area.

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