Just last week the – increasingly inane – Breaksfast Show on BBC 1 TV was headlining the story about older people being given free admission to swimming pools. At 6.41 am I emailed the show pointing out 1) the story only related to England and 2) Wales had been doing it for years:
“I don’t know about Scotland or Northern Ireland but your news item about swimming should at least point out that us older people in Wales have had free swimming for a long time.
So, do you mean, “the UK government has decided that older people in England should join those in Wales and get free admission to their local swimming pool”?
Please: acknowledge that there are four nations, that we do things differently (free prescriptions, swimming, hospital car parks et al) and credit the devolved governments accordingly ….”
I cannot have been the only one since the bulletin was changed – it became more accurate “in England”, “local authority pools” etc, but still no mention that anywhere else might already be in the lead.
Now theBBC Trust has told the corporation the blindingly obvious – get your national coverage right: make it national, not English, not parochial London. The surprise is not the conclusions, but the surprise at something anyone with half an eye or ear could have detected in 24 hours watching or listening to the BBC.
I used to be agnostic about the idea of the home nations taking control of their own news output. Two things have changed my mind: the ability of the BBC to produce national news programmes (in Welsh, but they are always subtitled as well) for S4C and the absolute inability of London based journalists to get even the simplest things right. So, slash the BBC’s central budgets; devolve news to the nations; boost Wales’ (and Scotland and Nor
thern Ireland’s) indigineous media industries. And if that means lots of narrow minded (bigoted even?), blinkered, second rate London journos getting sacked – bring it on.
Wales and the Welsh
Surprise? – the BBC ignores wales?
Just last week the – increasingly inane – Breaksfast Show on BBC 1 TV was headlining the story about older people being given free admission to swimming pools. At 6.41 am I emailed the show pointing out 1) the story only related to England and 2) Wales had been doing it for years:
“I don’t know about Scotland or Northern Ireland but your news item about swimming should at least point out that us older people in Wales have had free swimming for a long time.
So, do you mean, “the UK government has decided that older people in England should join those in Wales and get free admission to their local swimming pool”?
Please: acknowledge that there are four nations, that we do things differently (free prescriptions, swimming, hospital car parks et al) and credit the devolved governments accordingly ….”
I cannot have been the only one since the bulletin was changed – it became more accurate “in England”, “local authority pools” etc, but still no mention that anywhere else might already be in the lead.
Now the BBC Trust has told the corporation the blindingly obvious – get your national coverage right: make it national, not English, not paraochial London. The surprise is not the conclusions, but the surprise at something anyone with half an eye or ear could have detected in 24 hours watching or listening to the BBC.
I used to be agnostic about the idea of the home nations taking control of their own news output. Two things have changed my mind: the ability of the BBC to produce national news programmes (in Welsh, but they are always subtitled as well) for S4C and the absolute inability of London based journalists to get even the simplest things right. So, slash the BBC’s central budgets; devolve news to the nations; boost Wales’ (and Scotland and Northern Ireland’s) indigineous media industries. And if that means lots of narrow minded (bigoted even?), blinkered, second rate London journos getting sacked – bring it on.
Could Wales be a world leader in computing for childrens’ learning?
Ok, so it’s not a new idea – one laptop per child, but in Wales it started to have political legs in February this year when Plaid Cymru announced it as policy. It hasn’t quite made it to the One Wales compact now they are in government, but perhaps it should, but with a twist.
I suggest that the Wales Assembly Government really think through this idea and connect together several important strategic goals:
- Wales wants to be a knowledge economy, creating wealth through ideas
- as a small country Wales can afford to be innovative in its policies, reaching out to parts where larger (eg the UK) governments fear to tread
- it could provide world leadership in the development of learning by children using ICT, developing skills amongst its teachers, software industries etc
- by supporting a world-wide programme to aid some of the most disadvantaged children it could be seen as a leading force for economic development in the third world
- it could actively support the EU policies designed to thwart the intellectual and technological stranglehold that Microsoft uses – often illegally – to cripple innovation and the development of ‘open software (see debate in UKParliament last week, and groan…).
All these things in one go? How?
Well, the famous One Laptop Per Child programme is designed to create a really low cost computer that can be used in the developing world. But this isn’t some crippled, hand-me down, second grade, or worse second hand, “not good enough for us, but ok for them” bit of opportunist commercialism.
No, it’s one of the most exciting pieces of technology around. It’s the iPod of computers for children, no less. Go see here.
One important aspect of the programme is that all the software being developed is open source, so anyone can help improve it. Much of those improvements could lead in other applications to commercial exploitation.
It’s designed, bottom up to be multi-lingual: well, that ticks the Welsh cultural box. And all the learning materials are being designed from scratch with the expectation that the work in one school will rub off on all the rest.
The founder’s original concept was that this idea should only be for the developing world. But it’s been a struggle – surprise, surprise – to get the volume of orders – it needs millions – to get it going. So next month Americans are being offered the chance to buy one of these extra-ordinary devices at a cost that will enable OLPC to make a free one for use elsewhere: at a price that’s still less than anything you can buy with Mr Microsoft’s stuff on it. It is called G1G1.
So: decide on OLPC for every child and young learner in Wales; create a learning infrastructure where our teachers, technicians, IT staff and developers are all part of a giant development hub; integrate learning with children overseas, share the experience of innovation with others, and benefit from theirs too. And, at one stroke, put Wales on the world map as a prime supporter of OLPC, not just in Wales, but worldwide.
The economic and learning paybacks could be immense.
The value in our children being part of a worldwide transformation of other childrens’ learning would be without price.
In the past Wales sent its teachers around the world (I had two Mr Davies’ in my London secondary school). They gave the country an enviable reputation for the quality of its teaching. Let’s do the same with OLPC.
Leaders in short supply for the public sector
Here’s an article that both confirms my worst impressions and suggests that we have a lot of work to do: Good Money Thrown at Bad, Simon Caulkin, Observer 22 July 2002. We work a lot in the public sector especially in the arts and the fire services (strange pairing I know but it works for us, and them!). Increasingly we are doing work that involves issues of leadership, cultural change and organisational upheaval. And it needs a steady supply of capable people.
Simon’s article argues that massive investment in the public sector is going to be wasted without those people resources. And he is right. We have looked at projects recently that need to be led by a calibre of people that don’t exist within the existing organisation. Attracting people from outside the public sector is difficult and expensive. And quite often there simply isn’t time to ‘grow’ people from inside.
It needs a different kind of investment – over a long time to achieve a sea change. It means admitting that the private sector hasn’t got all the answers (Marconi, Enron, British Rail etc) – indeed does it have any that will assist in the public sector?
We are touting ideas for long term change. Developing a new breed of entrepreneurial leaders for the public sector. It remains to be seen if there’ll be any takers.
Only Connect 