Are Comms the social media blockers? – In praise of Catherine Howe

Summary

Some thoughts from an awesomely amazing workshop with Catherine Howe of Public-i at Comms Camp earlier this year.

If you’re interested in public sector social and digital media, and are not following Catherine Howe of Public-i, please rectify this. No – really. Not following her is about as outrageous as not following Steph Gray of Helpful Technology in these fields. No, neither of them paid me to type this and no, I’m not due any contracts or commissions from them either. Some people are just that good in their fields that sometimes all you can do is sit back and admire – or point people towards them.

“Take me back – what was CommsCamp?”

I blogged about it here at the time - Puffles and I volunteered to help out too. Basically it was a big unConference gathering of anyone who was interested and passionate about local government social media. It ended up being heavily over-subscribed, so next year we’ll hopefully have an even bigger and better event! You’ll also note from that blogpost my first mention of Catherine’s masterclass.

“What did Catherine have to say that was so brilliant?”

She blogged about it here. Please read before continuing.

“Read it. Now what?”

No you haven’t. Please read it properly. She hosted a workshop that was all about unpicking the problems several of us seem to have had with press offices and communication teams. Catherine, who is doing a PhD in this field (the results of which I expect to be mind-blowing for the sector) took on a very awkward subject area and systematically deconstructed it in a manner where the real issues had nowhere to hide. Being able to do something like this in a very diplomatic manner takes a huge amount of skill and talent.

Are communications teams the blockers?

My instinctive reaction to that question (as far as local public sector institutions are concerned) has been “Yes”. The big issue being the fear of losing control of communications to other parts of the organisations. The other one is an inertia issue of social media being about communications, therefore it sits in the comms’ silo. The big barriers I’ve faced trying to build Teacambs – the Cambridge offshoot of the Whitehall Teacamp gatherings have in part included trying to convince communications teams that these gatherings are open to anyone in their organisation with an interest in public sector social media, not just people with the communications hat on.

Catherine’s workshop showed that the barriers are much deeper than one team

Rather than going through a “Why do we hate communications teams?” exercises, we started off brainstorming where all the barriers to uptake of social media may come from. Hence identifying human resources, legal teams, ICT teams and senior management was an eye-opener in itself. In part for me I’d always been aware of the barriers that these sides could throw up, but had never thought about exploring them in a systematic manner that Catherine took us through.

The way she led the next bit allowed us to identify a number of cross-cutting issues – ones that would not have been as visible or clear had we gone through each unit silo by silo. For example issues around data protection cover both legal and HR – as well as management. Getting something OK’d by legal and getting it OK’d by comms creates a time-delay that in a social media world may cause problems in terms of how you communicate – but then creates a resource problem if you want to go down the route of having every tweet OK’d by legal and comms. You can see the problem: it’s unsustainable.

Which moved us onto the next bit: If salami-slicing won’t work, you’ve got to rebuild your system in a manner that accounts for social media pressures

Which was the next bit – one that actually came out with more questions than answers – as it should have done. The reason being is that the way society is using social media is something that organisations are really struggling with. It genuinely is a societal change. I look at the way I interact with MPs on Twitter and compare it to how I tried to interact with politicians during my university days. (Days when emails were easily ignored). Just because your organisation is not using social media does not mean that social media users are not talking about you. Therefore how do you deal with it?

The lesson for senior managers is that they need to become familiar with at least the basics of social media (and the impact on organisations) in order to ask informed questions & take informed decisions. This ranges from who needs what skills sets to updating and monitoring corporate risk registers. How would your organisation deal with a social media firestorm that risks becoming a mainstream media firestorm?

One of the lessons for general staff is around skills: This could be in terms of upskilling – what are the new skills that you will need in a social media environment. Or – especially in the case of recent school leavers, how can you present and apply your social media skills to a work environment?

Communications teams as crisis managers

This was one of the points I took away from the session: with social media use, something is bound to go wrong. How do you manage and recover the situation?

This is where one of the new roles for communications teams is one of crisis management and recovery. Rather than having the traditional corporate communications teams of today, will we move towards a system of communications being centres of excellence within organisations – where individual teams go to communications teams for advice, rather than going to them to deliver the communications function of whatever piece of work that they are working on?

Food for thought.

 

“Time for revolution rather than evolution?” A response to Steph Gray & GovUK friends

Summary

Some thoughts from the Open Policy Teacamp

This blogpost stems from the Open Policy Teacamp that Puffles and I went to on 2 May, and from this article by Steph Gray, who you really should be following if you are interested in public sector social media. He used to run the digital engagement show at the Department for Business, something that has now been taken on by the equally brilliant Betony Taylor, formerly of a very big bank.

I’m particularly interested in the first bullet point Steph pointed out – the idea that each policy area should have its own blog. This aligns with some of my thoughts towards the end of my civil service days when I became convinced that each policy team would need to run its own social media operation similar to how civil servants use the phone today. Long time civil servants told me that the approach to social media is similar to how departments reacted to the development of first the telephone, and then the internet: i.e. you had to be trained to use it and only certain people were allowed to use it – from a terminal at the end of the office.

“Policy teams having their own blogs? Press officers would have a fit!”

You can see it now. The mainstream media taking tweets and blogposts as quotations for excruciatingly embarrassing stories on policy going wrong. Or is that only because of how our political system is structured? This was one of the things that came out of the Cambridge University Science and Policy Exchange talk I was at this evening, where each of the keynote speakers, Barbara Sahakian, Mark Stokes and David Nutt (the last, infamously sacked by Alan Johnson) indicated that our policy-making structures are not suited to scientific advice.

“You turn if you want to; the lady’s not for turning”

Ironic given that many of the attributes given to Margaret Thatcher were about her insights into policy as a scientist. The idea that ‘U-turns’ are bad isn’t necessarily a bad thing – especially if the evidence in front of you changes. But for the past few decades, the idea of a policy change (for whatever reason) has all too often been seen as something of a weakness.

Personally I like the idea of policy teams using social media – it makes for a much more transparent method of policy-making. It puts policy teams at the heart of the social media network, as the diagram below from an ancient slide pack I created ages ago illustrates

The problem of policy teams not engaging with social media means that they risk being outside of conversations that they really ought to be at the centre of. This is particularly the case with academic specialists and those with frontline experience on the ground. It can be just as useful to have a practitioner saying ‘this won’t work because in my experience, X, Y & Z’ as it is the academic saying ‘studies A, B and C indicate that this policy is fraught with danger.’ What social media can do is that it can level the playing field.

One big challenge therefore is how to change both the political and media discourse around policy-making. Opposition politicians have an interest in picking out any sign of weakness in a policy – especially one that a minister has staked his or her reputation on. Hence even though the statistical evidence may indicate a policy is crashing and burning, it still continues because a minister has too much politically to lose if the policy is then changed or withdrawn. (Especially if the minister is then expected to resign over it – given that ministers quite rightly have to take policy responsibility for when things go wrong).

This also comes back to a point the Universities’ Minister David Willetts made at a talk I was at earlier this year. He said that while he was in favour of evidence-based policy-making, it could not ignore the wider political and democratic context of general elections  and governments that are elected by the people. Which is a fair point because as another academic at a different gathering said to me during my civil service days, if it was policy-by-evidence only – one that did not have democratic checks and balances, we could find ourselves living in a soviet-union-style technocracy.

‘Making policy based on imperfect information’

I remember complaining to one of my directors in my early policy days on the Fast Stream that I didn’t have enough evidence to make some of the recommendations that I was being asked to make. He said that this was one of the inevitable challenges of policy-making: you never have all of the information you want in order to make a decision. More often than not, ministers have to make decisions based on an incomplete picture. The best information available may not be all of the information that they need. The challenge for civil servants engaging in social media as a policy tool is sifting the ‘noise’ generated by social media users and sifting for the diamonds in the sand dunes.

“Anything else on what Mr Gray said?”

• The strict ban on ghost-writing indicates that whistle-blowing mechanisms need to be improved – in particular where civil servants are being pushed to do things that are in breach of their professional codes
• I like the idea of community managers – I’d go further and have them as being people who also go out and about all over the country to engage face-to-face as well as online. This role may also entail some trouble-shooting too where things go wrong – as they will do.
• On the ‘field force’ I’d almost be tempted to go further and make familiarity with social media a requirement for policy roles, with an expectation that in however-many-years time, this will be a basic requirement in policy – as will understanding of basic social media analytics. Have a look at the digital video introducing it in my resources page.
• I generally agree with the final four points – in particular the re-writing of the civil service code – and the management code too. This was something I had some very passionate debates with various civil servants during my final months in 2011. I was convinced that the code needed re-writing. They were not, saying that the code as it stood was flexible enough to handle social media. But this assumed a static policy-making model. If the policy-making model changes – e.g. MPs start replying directly to blogposts put out by policy teams, then what? (Officially, the minister responsible has to respond formally, but should such a letter be automatically be made public?)

“So…which policy team is going to go first?”

I get the feeling that this is what everyone is waiting for. Which policy team in Whitehall is on a stable enough platform (given the fallout from the recent local government elections) to try out a new method of policy-making where there is a significant level of engagement with social media users?

There’s also the question of finding one that is not particularly party-political, or one where the parameters of the big picture are broadly accepted. The reason for this is that where the parameters of the big picture are NOT broadly accepted, then this is an issue for party politics and the forums there.

And that’s the bit that I’m unsure about.

Where do you draw that line between party political debate and Whitehall policy-making? Bear in mind too that it is all too easy for civil servants to be drawn into what can be seen as a party political debate. Civil servants’ policy roles involve developing, implementing and defending government policy. It has nothing to do with attacking the policies of the opposition – or any political opponents for that matter.

For me, this is one thing I’d like to see the great and the good in Whitehall and Westminster explore in future discussions and events. The other issue is this: To what extent do ministers want to be influenced by the outcomes of social media engagement? This is important is because people won’t bother engaging if they see their engagement has no impact. If you go through a massive social media engagement exercise to develop policy only to see it vapourised by a meeting between a secretary of state and a senior lobbyist for a fabulously wealthy vested interest/party donor, then why bother? Does this then mean that a set of general principles need to be stated on how to go about developing policy in a social media world, or should it be left on a case by case, department by department basis?

Food for thought.

A year on from my breakdown

Summary

Why recovery seems further away than ever.

It’s been just over a year since I crashed and burned mentally. I’d like to say things have improved healthwise, but…have they?

The thing with mental health is that it’s not like a minor illness or infection where you take a course of medication and ‘job done’. It’s something that potentially stays with you for the rest of your life, something that comes in waves, in peaks and troughs. Much as you want to slay the fire demons in your mind, you can only force them to back down, knowing they will come back another day.

I’m glad that current and future younger generations are now in a place where their mental health is taken seriously. Mine was the last generation where it was assumed that if you were performing well in your exams, there were no problems. I performed well in my exams, therefore what was I complaining about? (Said my first form teacher at secondary school, blissfully oblivious to my emotional state at the time).

Not being able to work full time

This is probably one of the hardest things to deal with. In part there’s a societal expectation that I’m fighting against. Shouldn’t someone my age be in full time work with own house and own car? Well, I gave up on that one. Hence this.

The emotional impact stems from no longer having a positive vision for my medium to long term future. Well, any vision actually. In the past, I’d always had one – a coherent set of aims woven together to picture what life would be like if I made certain things happen.

On the outside, things seem fine. If I need to polish up for an occasion, that’s not a problem. Ditto for individual workshops, seminars or conferences. But you don’t see the mental scars behind the polish. The dry eyes screaming out for replenishment as a result of sleepless nights. The electric brain shock pulses that inhibit sleep. The permanent tension in my internal intercostal muscles.

What does recovery look like?

Not having the symptoms described above would be a start.

Stability – something massively under-rated by politicians and economists alike – is another. What I mean by that is a level of social and economic stability that can allow for some sort of planning. Frances Coppola absolutely nailed this point in her blogpost The Bifurication of the Labour Market. Why would anyone want to borrow to invest in the current economic climate – especially one where the medium term outlook is so miserable?

Freelancing alone vs teamwork – One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about the past six-nine months is the digital video projects. Not least because the final products have been ever so useful at training sessions (and at the same time emotionally makes me feel less ‘alone’ when facilitating!) There’s a world of difference between going it alone and working as and with a team on a daily basis. I don’t regret doing what I did leaving the civil service; I needed to. But let’s not underestimate the impact of spending day-in-day-out in the face-to-face company of yourself. Or in my case a dragon fairy.

Learning – One of the reasons why I turn up to lots of events is because of the amount I learn from people there. Even when I’m the one facilitating or presenting, I’m always learning from the comments and questions from other people. My style of learning is one that involves learning socially; one where I am with people, not on my own all the time. That’s why I’m not so good spending hours and hours in front of books, holed up in a library. In an ideal world, I’d have a couple of mornings/afternoons a week where I am at a college, learning in a social environment. The problem is that the direction of travel from the political class is one that makes this route more expensive.

Taking the fight to the fire demons – By that I mean no longer treading water on long term medication, but having an active, managed programme of treatment to help my recovery. The problem is that the sort of things I have in my mind are simply not available on the NHS, and I fear never will be. Having had bad experiences with my existing NHS trust, the idea of going back to sessions there fill me with horror. It’s as if I need to be taken out of my current environment and geographical surroundings if I’m ever going to break free.

Let’s get physical! – Well, it’s not as easy as that. There are days when the act of getting out of bed is traumatic. (Those are the days when I physically have to drag myself across the road to get out of the house). Yet in my mind I am almost panting like a dog with exhaustion, even though the rest of my body feels like it would quite like to do something active instead. It’s also been a year since I last did regular exercise too – a time when I thought things were going well but actually were not. It’s frustrating too because I like physical exercise. Not to the extremes of the gym-bunnies, but to a level where you can sprint to the traffic lights, leg it across the road and recover your breath very quickly without breaking sweat. That, plus doing so in a manner that, as my sister-in-law says doesn’t involve running like a ‘mum’.

“And the problem is…?”

Despite all of the things that I would like to get done, this permanent state of exhaustion means that my functionality comes in peaks and troughs, and is also to some extent dependent on medication. It’s one of the reasons why I commissioned some of my younger Twitterfriends to work with me on the digital videos. I knew I would not be able to complete them on my own – and certainly not to the standard they made them to.

This sort of explains why getting to a point where I can work more regular, stable hours is something that is going to take a few more years at least. At the same time, I can’t pretend that there isn’t a bit of a boredom factor hidden away in all of this too. Part of it stems from returning back to my home town after years away in London and Brighton. Once you’ve spent time away in somewhere larger & with more variety and accessibility than your home town, you begin to realise what the barriers and limitations are with it. This is something I am trying to work through in Cambridge at various levels while I still have the time. I’m still of the view that Cambridge could be a city far greater than the sum of its parts, but the silo nature of some of the organisations & institutions is preventing this. (That said, not everyone agrees with my viewpoint on this – eg stating that Cambridge is collegiate, not corporate in its nature & that this needs to be understood & respected).

The wider political and economic picture

It goes with the territory of much of what I’ve studied and also in the fields that I have worked in to be clued up on this. In one sense I have a strange admiration for those who ‘don’t do politics’ and who lead lives that, on the face of it are much more straight forward. I’m thinking of those people whose lives revolve around their family and their workplace, and who are content doing the job they are paid to do without a huge desire for promotion or greater responsibilities. There are still a couple of people at my local supermarket who started long before I was working part-time there in the mid-late 1990s. They’re still doing the same job – but without them, there’d be no fresh produce or dairy products on sale.

The problem I had was that there was too much ‘noise’ going on in my mind – too much other stuff going on that I felt the need to sink my teeth into at some stage in the future. I was never cut out for retail.

But that big economic picture is a problem. It’s a problem because many of the people that I interact with on social media are struggling in it. Many of them stupendously talented in a variety of different fields – far more so in their skills than I will ever be. And it hurts me to see them hurting. It hurts me even more because there is so little that I can do to alleviate things. I can’t pretend to be deaf or blind to it. The current political and economic status quo is unsustainable. It cannot continue. Something’s gotta give. We already saw symptoms of that in the local council elections last week.

“Complicated stuff!”

Three very complicated strands. There’s the internal physical and mental – ie what’s happening to and inside my mind and body. There’s what’s happening in and around the community I live in, and finally there’s the wider political and economic picture too. On the downside, it feels like my disposition is one where my wellbeing is in part dependent on things way outside of my immediate control. On the other hand, it means there are positive causes worth fighting for which others will benefit from too. If only I wasn’t so permanently exhausted I’d make a better go of it!

Cambridgeshire County Council elections: “hoo wun wot?”

Summary

Have UKIP exposed a major political faultline in Cambridgeshire?

The headline results don’t look good for any of the three main parties. (Phil Rogers has crunched the numbers here) The Conservatives have lost both their group leader (Nick Clarke, losing his Fulbourn seat to the Lib Dems) and control of the county council. The Lib Dems have had their presence slashed from 21 to 14, and Labour, while increasing their presence from 3 to 7, failed to take some of the key seats that perhaps some would have expected. UKIP on the other hand increased their presence in the north of the county, and now have 12 councillors on the council.

“Yo Pooffles, what was it you were saying about these elections?”

My thoughts were focussed on the city rather than the whole county – but that in part reflects part of the divide between city and county. I can’t help feel the sense that, south of the A14 we look to London rather than look out for all things north of us. The mistake I made was assuming that this election would involve the swapping of seats between the local Labour and Lib Dem types, with the Cambridgeshire Conservatives giving us more of the same under Nick Clarke’s stewardship. The only inkling of a change I suggested was one stemming from the retiring of a third of the existing councillors. I didn’t foresee the gains by UKIP leading to the loss of control of the council. I also didn’t foresee Nick Clarke losing his seat to the Lib Dems.

“Oh well Pooffles, at least you’re being honest.”

The other thing that held up from previous elections was the Green Party’s share of the vote, even though as widely expected their presence in local elected politics their presence was finally vanquished. They still polled 2,470 votes in Cambridge, despite an almost zero campaigning presence. I was one of a few people to pester & poke them into at least the very basics online, such as brief online biographies on their websites and reminding them (& other politicians from the other parties) to respond to the Cambridge Cycle Campaign questionnaire.

“So, people and things of note?”

Amanda’s back. Cllr Amanda Taylor won in Queen Edith’s for the County Council a year after losing her city council seat to Labour. Belinda Brooks-Gordon lost out to independent & former Lib Dem John Hipkin. Dan Ratcliffe came within a whisker of taking the Market ward for Labour. Ian Manning held on in East Chesterton (where Julian Huppert MP was once a councillor) despite a strong challenge from former Lib Dem Clare Blair, now in full Labour colours.

Tweeting Tories Steve Tierney and Samantha Hoy were shot out of the sky. From a ‘young people in politics’ perspective, I think it’s a bit of a shame that Samantha’s no longer on the council – even though I do not share her politics. What’s interesting with her vote is that her core support from her Wisbech North by-election win remained broadly in place. It’s as if the extra percentage points of people that turned up to vote this time around all went to UKIP or the independent candidate. It was  I’m also kind of sad that my webmasters Andy Bower and Tim Haire faired so badly in Romsey and Cherry Hinton respectively. The joys of being selected to fight a seat that is traditionally someone else’s stronghold.

The social media wasteland of South Cambridge

One of the things I noticed was that all of the interesting social media exchanges between candidates were from/of those standing on the other side of town. Coleridge remains a social media wasteland, with little incentive from any of the other political parties to encourage Labour’s four councillors to engage on this platform. The lack of diversity (four White males) across the slate of councillors is also noticeable too – not that the other parties were challenging them on this. All of the five parties standing in my ward selected male candidates.

One of the reasons why I go on about social media is because of the long term societal trends. At present, activists from all parties locally tell me that they get next to no interaction from local residents through social media channels. Yet as I’ve mentioned before, are campaigners using social media in a manner that complements their offline activities? That’s a challenge that goes for local campaign groups and charities too. It’s not like young people in particular are not using social media. They are. So why is it that local political parties, community groups and campaign groups are not making nearly as much of an impact with young people locally as they could be?

Kings vs Queens: Turnout

The Kings Hedges ward/division that elected Fiona Onasanya for Labour managed a turnout of 23.5%, while the Queen Ediths ward/division that elected Amanda Taylor  managed 40.2%. Why the big difference in turnout? It’s not something that can easily be explained by affluence. The lowest turnout was recorded in the university heartland of Market, while the highest turnout was in West Chesterton – a difference of nearly 20 percentage points.

Faultline Cambridgeshire

I had a look at an online map of the county just now, looking at transport links. Scanning the half north of the A14 vs south of the A14 reveals a startling picture of differing transport infrastructure. Cambridge is connected east and west by the A14 above it, as well as by a (run down) railway line going to Ipswich and Norwich. It is connected to London by the M11 motorway and by two rail lines. That’s what happens when you get a permanent secretary at the Department for Transport who used to go to Cambridge and wants an easy journey back to college alumni dinners. It must be true, Sir Humphrey told me on telly. But in places like March, Wisbech, Chatteris and Ramsey in comparison…not nearly as well connected to Cambridge as they could be.

That’s not to say transport alone will solve the problems. The size of Cambridge’s housing problems could lead to developers springing up gated communities close to where improved transport hubs are, which wouldn’t do existing communities any good at all. It’s one of the reasons why I think in my neck of the woods, gated community developments should be banned. I can understand pressure for gated communities in areas of high crime and anti-social behaviour, but as Cambridge & South Cambridgeshire isn’t such an area…exactly.

So…who has that positive vision for the county then?

Well…this is what I’m waiting to find out when the council meets for the first time following the election. For a start, the Conservatives will have to elect a new group leader. That leader will then need to start negotiations with the other parties to form some sort of a coalition or agreement on how to run the council given that no party has overall control.  (Con = 32, LD = 14, UKIP = 12, Lab = 7, Ind = 4). Should the Conservatives try to run the council as a minority party or seek some formal coalition/agreement with either the Lib Dems or UKIP? How stable would any of those three arrangements be?

All of this makes the council’s first full meeting on 21 May all the more interesting. So much so that Puffles and I might rock up to see what it’s all about. The two issues that Cambridgeshire County Council has nominal control over are education and transport. I’m interested in education because I am a school governor, and I am interested in transport because I am dependent on public transport, not being a car owner.

Trains and Cambridge

You’ve heard me jump up and down about the Oxford to Cambridge rail link – one that Ed Miliband so publicly backed recently. (Next time he’s back we’re going to ask him about how policy developments on that commitment are going!) But actually it goes further than that.

Once in a generation: A rail prospectus for East Anglia

Remember I mentioned how cut-off the north of Cambridgeshire was from the rest of the county? This prospectus provides a fairly comprehensive blueprint of what to do about it. That’s not to say I don’t have criticisms of it, but at least someone is trying to get people and organisations together. Yet at a county political party level, the fall in the number of seats held by Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens (traditionally pro-public transport) can’t have gone unnoticed. In a council where there is now no overall control, smaller parties can have a greater influence. The question is which one will be able to influence the greatest?

Long term impact of the county council election

The Conservatives

Nick Clarke had a very strong presence on Cambridgeshire County Council. Now he is gone, as is party control of the council. Two external shocks delivered by the electorate. Not only that, it was a party on its right flank that took advantage. One thing both locally and nationally the Conservatives are going to have to learn very quickly is how to fight off opponents on its right flank – especially one fed by the mainstream press. In the short term, they’ll need to convince the county that it has a core group of competent councillors to take control, and a competent leader to lead the council and be a sound media spokesperson too. Just as Labour have a zero presence outside of Cambridge City, the Conservatives have a zero presence inside it at county council level. (They have one borough councillor – Shapour Meftah in Trumpington on Cambridge City Council).

Liberal Democrats

Interestingly they got a smaller percentage of the vote but got a couple more seats than UKIP. Part of the reason for this is their method of campaigning – concentrating resources on the seats they are most likely to gain/hold rather than spreading resources across a wide area. Hence why the Lib Dems haven’t been seen in the ward I live in. Tactically sound, but it does nothing to enrich the political culture of the county.

That said, part of me thinks that the fall of the Lib Dems at a local council level is bottoming out. It’s as if they have lost most of the seats they were going to lose as a result of going into coalition at a national level. That said, they still lost a third of their seats on the county council – although they held a couple of key battleground seats that could easily have fallen to Labour. It’s still all to play for in the 2014 elections where Labour will go in guns blazing to take hold of Cambridge City Council – the final local council elections before the 2015 general election.

UKIP

UKIP are here to stay for the next few years unless they implode Kilroy style. Irrespective of what people think of their elected councillors as individuals, them as a party or their policies, they face the same basic challenges that any other political party making the sort of huge gains they did, face. The first is being trying to work out what their new duties and responsibilities are – mindful that not all of them would have expected to have been elected. The second is a reflection of the media headlines about the non-vetting of candidates. UKIP did not have the local party infrastructure to scrutinise the applicants that wanted to stand under its banner.

Part of the challenge they may face is simply getting to know each other as individuals before organising as a co-ordinated body on the council. That goes for other councils where they have a sizeable presence too. Finally, this also means that there are a much greater number of people that the media can now go to in order to get the ‘official’ UKIP line. How do you co-ordinate the views of that many elected representatives in a party that prides itself as being outspoken and straight-talking?

Labour

Labour started from an incredibly low base of three councillors during one of their lowest points in the Gordon Brown years. They now have seven councillors, which at least in terms of party morale on the council feels like they are less isolated than before. As the council has no overall control, it will be interesting to see how the Labour group chooses to make its presence felt, as well as how they deal with a UKIP presence that is greater than theirs.

Given that Ed Miliband is promoting his ‘One Nation’ brand, the test for local Labour types is not in Cambridge City, but beyond. Cambourne, Chatteris, Huntingdon, St Ives, March, Wisbech…why such a small Labour presence there? Which one would make a good target town for future elections?

The Green Party

From a plurality of political parties sense, the demise of the local green party has been a depressing affair. Councillors and activists from the three main parties in Cambridge City have all said to me they enjoyed the Greens’ presence on both councils. They didn’t particularly agree with their policies or personalities, but it meant that issues that might otherwise have not been raised, were raised. (Which meant that someone had to formally oppose them).

Back in October 2012 I moaned about the lack of social media presence from the Greens. I made the point then that in the previous local council elections they polled just below 3,000 votes in the city. In the county council elections they polled just over 2,400 – again despite a next-to-zero campaigning presence. This shows that there is a strong residual bedrock of Green Party sympathisers that will vote for the party so long as there is someone standing. In January 2013, Green Party Leader Natalie Ben came to visit – of which I took Puffles along to see what she’d have to say. Over 50 people turned up on a cold January Friday night to meet her. Yet at the same time, a talk organised primarily on social media with Tony Juniper a few weeks ago (who took 3,800 votes for the Greens at the 2010 General Election in Cambridge), only attracted a handful of people.

So…what next?

Let’s wait till the first council meeting and see how things turnout.

“I don’t want your charity, I demand my rights!”

Summary

Why the utterly avoidable factory collapse in Dhaka demonstrates the need for citizens’ rights over corporate ‘charity’

Some of you may have spotted retailers from all over the place scrambling to say that they will compensate the families of those that died in the factory disaster in Bangladesh. Laura Kuenssberg has been keeping an interesting tally of the firms that have become embroiled in this. And rightly so. Watch out for the crocodile tears from big UK and multinational corporations saying how outraged they are about what happened.

It goes without saying that these firms make a huge amount of money from outsourcing production. Just days before the factory disaster, Primark’s sales were reported to have boosted profits for their corporate owners to the tune of over £400million. But hey, they’re giving the consumer what they want, aren’t they? And who am I to criticise those people in the UK that genuinely cannot afford more expensive clothes in these depressed economic times?

The outsourcing of responsibilities with economic activities

I have a huge issues with this – and for some time. I remember during my university years spitting with fire over some corporate PR clone saying how she was just as outraged that manufacturers of their garments were being forced to work in slave-like conditions that broke local laws as well as ‘corporate guidance’ from the commissioning brand. But in many cases these days, brands are literally that: Brands. The goods are made by third or fourth party firms – whether in clothing or electronics. Have a look at the small print on standard electrical items and you’ll find many that say they were manufactured by some company that you’ve never heard of, but were made for the ‘brand’. This was where the supermarkets got stung.

Back in the late 1990s when I first stumbled across The Onion, I found an article that spoofed how one big label was going to stop manufacturing and focus on adverts instead. What they may not have realised at the time was that they were years ahead of their time – predicting the future. It’s as if such brands are now just a mega co-ordinated procurement operation: Outsource the manufacturing to the non-Western countries, outsource your political lobbying to lobbyists, outsource your legal advice to a big city law firm, outsource your consultancy work to one of the big four, outsource your advertising to a big agency, outsource your sales to franchise firms or department stores, stamp your brand on the goods manufactured and on the adverts, and wait for the money to role in. Anything goes wrong, blame the organisation that you outsourced to.

What about consumer boycotts?

What Laura Kuenssberg has shown is something activists have known for years: That nearly all of the big brands and firms are operating in a manner that outsources much of their manufacturing and sales. Switching from one brand to another is meaningless. Again, look at the list of manufacturers Laura K mentions. What’s the point of switching from one brand to another if so many use low paid labour with poor working conditions (compared to what we have in the EU)?

The ‘added value’ is in the brand, not in the product. It’s one of the reasons why so many brands are able to get away with selling garments made from poor quality fabrics with poor craftsmanship at such high prices. This is more of an issue for the so-called ‘luxury brands’ that have sidelines making things like polo shirts or nightclub shirts as far as menswear is concerned.

“Yo Pooffles, aren’t you taking away consumer choice you freedom-hater???”

Right: Let’s nail this ‘consumer choice’ myth once and for all.

Consumer choice is a concept that is dependent on a number of very strong assumptions. For ‘choice’ to work, you need the means to exercise it. This includes but is not limited to:

 

• Money
• Availability of information
• Knowing how to use/interpret said information
• Having the time to interpret said information

I unpicked this in an earlier blogpost here, citing the example of electronic audio equipment in particular. Do you know what half the stuff mentioned in the technical requirements for electrical goods means? Do you look at the specifications on laptops with the clear knowledge as to which components are better than others, able to visualise by how much and have a knowledge of which combinations of components and software are going to meet your needs? If so, good luck to you, but for the rest of us, it’s not so straight forward.

“Yo Pooffles, are you saying I’m too stupid to read a label?”

Not at all. But some people may not be able to read labels for a variety of different reasons. Being partially sighted or blind is one of them, being dyslexic might be another. (As a wearer of glasses, having broken them on more than one occasion when out and about made me realise just how dependent I am on them). Also bear in mind adult literacy remains a problem in the UK. How many people have the knowledge and the confidence to properly cross-examine that sales rep on the goods or services they want to buy?

Actually, transparency of manufacturing is an issue here too.

It’s something that came up in HorseMeatGate – which I blogged about here. Just as with clothing, outsourcing is a big part of the problem with our food too. Hence complaints from various quarters that we as citizens (I don’t like the term ‘consumers’ because that implies we are like sheep that simply eat stuff without thinking) have become separated from how we produce things. (From food to clothing to manufactured goods). If the general public is blindsided to how things are made, why should a cash-strapped regulator be any better informed?

“Hey Pooffles, I don’t like the sound of that – you being on the side of freedom-hating regulators!!!”

It’s a paradox isn’t it. Freedom is not free. Whose freedom are we talking about? The freedom of people here to buy clothing that is priced ridiculously cheap? The freedom of people not to be killed in the workplace that such cheap clothes are made in? The freedom of UK firms not to be undercut by other firms that exploit their workforce employed at lower labour standards with lower environmental standards? What about their freedom from want and freedom from fear? Founding pillars of the welfare state?

Freedom is not free

It requires people to protect those freedoms – as we have seen in numerous campaigns around things like legal aid: The right to legal representation. The right to have your legal rights upheld – and the workers that died in that factory certainly did not. That’s why the European Convention on Human Rights has a separate court ultimately to uphold those rights.

Yet if freedom is not free and requires a cost to uphold it, then tax-evading big businesses aren’t helping things. Taxes that could otherwise be spent on education and law enforcement could have prevented such a factory as the one in Dhaka from operating in the first place. As this article states, the factory was illegally constructed. That factory should not have been in business. UK firms should not have been buying products from it. UK firms should not have been selling goods made from it. By doing so, those firms undercut hundreds of other retailers whose products were made in compliance with the law.

OK Puffles, what are you going to do about it?

The response from Primark as reported in The Guardian speaks volumes.

“But the company stopped short of meeting the demands of campaigning organisations and trade unions to sign up to a building safety action plan aimed at preventing a repeat of the disaster, in which at least 382 people were killed.”

Which comes back to the title of this piece. Is it corporate handouts to the immediate victims of the disaster that will prevent such things from happening again, or is it the proper enforcement of sound workers rights?

“Hang on Puffles, don’t Primark have a Code of Conduct?”

Good point – lets have a look at their ethical trading standards. Remember such things have become big marketing speak since the 1999 anti-capitalist demonstrations. Cynics call it greenwashing. Call it what you will. In the case of the factory disaster, I’m interested in how they ensure factories meet their published Code of Conduct – which is here.

“When selecting new factories, we require them to go through a process which entails a comprehensive audit of labour standards against our Code of Conduct. Audits are conducted by our own regional ethical trading teams and external partners. Our external partners are selected on the basis of their local expertise, specialist skills, robust practices and innovative methodologies.”

A list of their ‘partners’ is here. If, as is being reported, the factory in Dhaka was constructed illegally, then there has been an almighty failure of corporate governance – not just with Primark but with all of the other firms that sourced goods from there. Indeed, Matalan have put out this press release. Note the full webpage address and note that they have commissioned professional crisis communications consultants to deal with this. Remember what I said about the brand earlier?

If I was a shareholder for Primark’s holding company, I’d be asking very detailed questions about why the firm’s ethical code of conduct (and the systems in place to enforce it) failed so disastrously – and what steps the management board is going to put in place to rectify it.

The big question: Should there be a public policy response to this?

Yes. One that will benefit workers being exploited by these large industries, and one that could also boost domestic producers too.

Would you be happy for people in your family to work in such conditions as in that factory? If not, why is it OK for other people’s families to work in such conditions? This is a point about universal human rights. Not a particularly popular cause in the media these days, but someone has to argue for it.

The European Union should bring into force minimum acceptable standards under which goods and services exported to the EU can be produced under – with the threat of fines and tariffs for those that seek to undercut those standards.

Pretty straight forward really. If you want to export your goods to the EU, you have to meet the minimum standards that the EU requires firms operating inside the EU to meet.  The impact of this on living standards across the world could be huge – and have a far greater impact than any aid programme.

Large and/or multinational firms (defined by the volume of trade activity and/or imports beyond a certain financial threshold) should be financially liable in EU nation states for the shortcomings of their suppliers in non-EU countries where they cannot demonstrate a comprehensive and robust system of checks and controls to ensure that the minimum rights of workers mentioned above, along with compliance of local laws are being abided by. 

Why so? It deals with the problems of outsourcing responsibility, and forces the big brands to act, rather than trying to greenwash their way out of the situation. It shouldn’t be acceptable for corporate firms to make one-off payments to their victims without dealing comprehensively with systematic failings that condemned hundreds of innocent people to their deaths.

Such a move might make clothes more expensive. It might mean reduced profitability. But given the scale of profits and the ability of multinationals to export them to tax havens, doesn’t this limit the benefits the general public gets?

At the same time, for those in favour of ‘markets’, is it not better for goods to be priced in a manner that reflects fully the costs of production, rather than trying to externalise costs onto the workforce through poor conditions, the state/charities to mitigate poor conditions, and the environment through pollution?

More food for thought.

“Will 38 degrees please stop spamming my inbox?”

Summary

Some thoughts on 38 degrees following comments from a number of MPs, Westminster & Whitehall insiders, and seasoned campaigners

I took Puffles along to an event on the ‘social mediatisation’ of politics at the London HQ of the European Parliament – somewhere which Puffles is becoming a bit of a familiar face. There were more than a few familiar Twitter people there, including Puffles’ chum Stella Creasy. (This is what a besotted dragon fairy looks like). It was during the exchanges in the first session that the online campaign group 38 Degrees was raised – and torn to pieces.

“38 Degrees? Is that like an 80s soul tribute band?”

No, you’re confusing them with the Three Degrees.

“What is/who are 38 degrees?”

The link here should explain. Essentially it’s an online take of petitioning, just on a massive scale. So massive that their 2011/12 company accounts make for a very interesting read. Not in an *Oooh! They’ve got something to hide!* kind of way, but actually it’s something that anyone who has taken part in, is active within and/or who has fundraised for 38 degrees may learn from. In particular to inform how they hold their full time staff to account. Because it’s a big operation, spending over £1million in that financial year.

“£1million?!!? Where did they get the money from?”

It’s all in their accounts linked above, with mentions of grants from charitable trusts here. It’s one of the reasons why they have to submit an annual report: Charitable trusts have a number of terms and conditions regarding governance of organisations that they make grants to. Compared to other think tanks and campaign groups, they’ve actually been pretty transparent. But transparency isn’t the issue: it’s their campaigning tactics that are causing problems

“Yeah Pooffles, that’s the whole idea of campaigning: To annoy the hell out of politicians until they back down and do as we demand!”

Well…not quite. There different ways and means of achieving your ends. The question at the moment is whether 38 degrees are achieving their desired aims. Page 3 of their annual report indicates what those are.

I’m just going to pick a few blogposts from over the past couple of years that are critical of 38 Degrees’ approach:

• Beyond 38 Degrees of your wallet 
• 38 Degrees’ Strategy is Spoiling the Potential of Email
• Can 38 Degrees translate online ‘clicktivism’ success into off-line activism?
• How not to do a digital campaign

Each of those articles speaks for themselves and I’ll leave it to the authors of those articles to defend their blogposts.

There are however, a few things that I’d like to pick up on

1) The nature of broad brush clicktivism is that it can annoy the hell out of the people you want /who are on your side, as well as those you are seeking to persuade

Both Julian Huppert, my local MP, and Stella Creasy have mentioned this. This reflects how the 38 degrees approach needs to be refined quite significantly so that the activities or the organisation don’t become an unnecessary burden on those who are otherwise sympathetic to the cause they are promoting.

Given that MPs have limited back office staff, valuable time has to be spent culling inboxes when such time could be spent helping constituents. In the grand scheme of things, many MPs take their constituency work very seriously – not least because they have a public and constitutional duty to ALL the people that live in their constituency, not just those that voted for them. For an economically deprived inner city area like Stella’s in Walthamstow, this is a serious issue because she gets thousands of cases to deal with every year – as does Julian as it turns out. Every minute spent dealing with a direct-mail-style email from a campaign group is a minute not spent on someone’s constituency issue. An MP’s first duty is to their constituents too, not to some direct-emailer from outside the constituency.

2) What is the statistical basis for the claims made of 38 Degrees’ claimed successes?

See the bottom of page 2 of their annual report. What I’m not questioning is whether or not 38 degrees had an impact. They clearly did. What I am questioning is the extent, positive or negative, it can be quantified. This we may probably never know – not least because ministers have a political interest in downplaying the influence of an organisation that in the grand scheme of things is hostile to the programme of the Coalition. Also, how do you put a number on it?

You also have the eternal problem of left-wing turfwars. Someone could make a spoof radio show called “Whose campaign is it anyway?” The serious point is what Zoe Stavri calls ‘astroturfing’. This Twitter exchange makes for interesting reading on that front - it was that exchange that kicked off this blogpost, as several of my more academically qualified Twitterfriends started throwing tough questions. Seriously kids, dismiss them at your peril – they know their stuff.

3) Turfwars (sort of continued from above)

This is something that remains a tension as each group tries to brand every other protest going as ‘their’ protest. The bedroom tax was one of them. Is this  What some of Puffles’ Twitterfollowers have accused 38 Degrees of doing is the online equivalent of what far left organisations do with their pre-printed and mass-produced placards around every passing bandwagon. It reminds me of the tensions in Brighton when I lived there over a decade ago – around the time of the big anti-capitalist demonstrations. The tensions are best described in this pamphlet Monopolise Resistance from 2001. “This is a protest, not a paper sale” was something I regularly saw when autonomously-minded activists organised local demonstrations, in particular the 2001 Brighton bin men strike & occupation. At the time I was a volunteer at the local library, internet cafe & information centre at the then Gardner Street premises of the Brighton Peace and Environment Centre. Hence feeding my mind.

The point on turfwars for me is just as much about control as well as giving genuine credit to those who played an essential part in changing the outcome of something important. For me, the student protests of 2010 demonstrated that people don’t want to do the ‘top down’ style of activism anymore – where they are the footsoldiers to be directed to the next campaign front at the whims of a central steering group or committee. To be fair to 38 Degrees, they engage with their activists on deciding where to campaign next. But again, having done this the criticisms are on what they do next. In particular, at the top of the list should be identifying who is already campaigning on the issues, and then asking said people/groups: “How can we help you achieve your campaign aims?”

“But Pooffles! They are using social media, and this is good, isn’t it?”

Well, they are using social media tools, but are they using social media? They are not one and the same thing. Just because you are using social media tools doesn’t mean that you are using social media. Social media implies a conversation. In particular, it implies some sort of feedback mechanism that allows you to analyse the responses & constructive criticism you get back. Mass email-spamming campaigns don’t really allow for that. Ditto with using Twitter as a broadcast function only. You are using the tool, but not for the purpose it was necessarily designed for. Think of using a saw as a hammer. You are using a saw but you are not sawing.

Having built up a significant membership and financial base, the challenge for the likes of 38 Degrees is to refine (significantly) how they deploy both. How can they evolve their campaign tactics and not remain stuck in 2010?

“Any suggestions?”

The two that stem to mind are:

• Overhauling electronic campaigning systems so that you are going beyond what is now being treated as email spam by both MPs and departments of state. Campaign email-spam is very easily processed and dismissed by departments of state.
• Making use of the huge breadth and depth of expertise within your membership base. Rather than treating all of your members as identical ‘droids’ to be directed en masse, can you identify who has what expertise, bring them together online and/or face-to-face and encourage them to ask much more specific, targeted questions of those in power?

On the second point in particular, have a look at the staff profiles of 38 Degrees. Who has experience of being a nurse on an overburdened ward? Who has experience of being a secondary school teacher in a run down inner city comprehensive? Who are the tax experts that have done accountancy qualifications? Who are the environmental scientists who can unpick the data and statements that form the basis of press releases? In a nutshell, who are the people that could speak on behalf of your campaigners but from a vantage point where they cannot be dismissed as ‘professional campaigners’ but where those in power have to engage with the substance, given the expertise of those that you put forward?

Food for thought.

Hacking local democracy – a response

Summary

A response to Emma Daniel’s post on reinvigorating local democracy

Emma‘s short blogpost is here - please read it before going further.

One of her early questions is: “Why does local democracy need a reboot?”

Low voter turnout and low voter engagement are two reasons. Given that local councils spend a fair amount of taxpayers’ money, it’s in their – our – interest even, that someone keeps an eye on what they get up to and what they spend it on. But why should voters be bothered about local democracy when so much is taxation and spending is controlled by Whitehall, or where service delivery is outsourced? Democratic vs contractual accountability anyone?

Follow the money 

The problem is that for all the rhetoric around localism in recent times, following the money shows that much of the revenue raised and spent by local councils is done by central government. Only a small chunk comes from business rates and council tax. Combined with that, there are a number of statutory duties and services that local councils must provide – because the law says so. Once those statutory duties are accounted for, there isn’t really that much left in terms of genuine flexibility on taxation and spending.

The Coalition is trying to do some things step-by-step in more urban parts of the UK – in particular its City Deals, removing budgetary control from Whitehall departments and devolving those decisions to cities and city regions. (Cambridge is one of those on the list). Will this make much of a difference? It remains to be seen – but that alone won’t turn things around, much as such relaxing of the reins is welcome. Parliament in particular will be interested in how robust systems of accountability and scrutiny are too. Are individuals blessed with multiple skills, talents and competencies putting themselves forward for election, being selected by parties and getting elected on high turnouts in genuinely competitive contests? I’ll leave you to be the judge of that.

“Oh Hai! It’s elecshun tyme! Can I haz your vote?”

Or so goes the oft-heard complaint about voters only hearing from politicians around election time. I can understand the sentiment, as well as complaints from the other side saying that politicians and activists (in their dwindling numbers) do a hell of a lot of work that’s seldom seen by the public.

Puffles scrutinising Cambridge City Council from the rafters

I took Puffles along to a full council meeting. I was only aware of it because I found out about it on Twitter at a time when I was in walking distance of the Guildhall, following a very full day of workshops for a couple of organisations.

I can empathise with anyone who feels that the last thing in the world they want to do is to stay up till nearly midnight after a full day at work, watching their local council. Especially where they are debating things that, to the general public can often feel more complicated than needs be.  ”The A14? It’s been a nightmare for years? Why can’t you guys just sort it out?!?!” (Actually, my take is the A14 passes through so many local authority areas that ministers over the years should have pulled their fingers out and sorted it, rather than leaving it for under-funded local authorities to ‘get together in a strategic partnership to resolve the issues.’ There are some things that should not be devolved. Nationally critical or nationally important infrastructure is one of them.

Who has time for local democracy?

This in part is where those of us who care about it (myself included) need to make the case to those around us as to why it is important, and then make its functions more accessible to more people. Part of the problem with current approaches is that little consideration is given towards the groundwork needed before the annual appeals for people to vote, or people to stand for election are made. (There are leaflets in my local library from the county council, as well as web pages such as this one).

What do you mean by ‘groundwork’?

Much of this involves face-to-face contact – difficult at a time when people feel that there are so many other competing pressures. Where do people go? Do councillors and officials go where the people are? What isn’t helping at the moment is the closure of so many public services which serve as meeting points and social hubs – especially for those that need the most support.

Why can’t people go to shopping centres or supermarkets?

The privatisation of public spaces is why. Ever tried organising a protest inside a shopping centre, or leafletting outside a shop? Anything that even looks like it would get in the way of people shopping is seen as a big no-no. But in this society it’s where you find lots of people. Whether they are in the mindset of being open to talking about political issues is another thing, but if you can’t even get near the car park, it’s a meaningless debate. Thus we find ourselves in a situation where criminal justice legislation used to deal with the symptoms of anti-social behaviour has also criminalised political activism in the same spaces at the same time. If you get turfed out of a shopping centre because you were leafletting, returning could have you up on a charge of aggravated trespass.

Can social media get round this?

I’ve always said that social media works best in campaigning when it complements (adds to and improves) existing offline activities. It will never be a replacement for it. The challenge for politicians and activists here is getting conversations going. Locally on their own forums, this has proved particularly difficult. On Twitter, we have a local politics bubble here, frequented by a number of local councillors and activists from the big three parties. However, interaction by other third parties is often very limited – mainly to a handful of regulars. While some of the exchanges make for interesting reading for those interested in politics, how do you go about opening the exchanges up to other local people? (Remembering all the time that Twitter has its own skewed demographic).

There are a number of features that can help open things up to wider audiences – ones that many of us social media natives take for granted.

Using electronic calendars

The first is the scheduling of meetings and events in people’s electronic diaries and calendars. Facebook events, Eventbrite etc all have these features. Shouldn’t local councils make these features as standard on any public meeting and event that is being put up?

Finding out which people act as hubs/hives for their communities

This doesn’t need to be social media specific, but allows you to use limited resources to publicise meetings and events. There’s also a role for schools and colleges too – in particular any courses that touch on things to do with local history, geography and politics. Are the teachers of those courses being engaged with and are they encouraging their students to take an interest in local politics?

Training up local councillors, journalists and activists to use social media

I’m lucky here in that a number of local journalists are regular social media users. But others are not. Cambridge people, I volunteer for a local charity that provides free 1-2-1 social media training. Outside of Cambridge, you may find other ones listed here. I also still have an open offer of hosting free workshops to activists in the four main local (to me) political parties too – none of whom though has yet taken me up on them. There are also lots of free online guides too – my digital videos on Twitter, Facebook and blogging being some of many.

The challenge here is to deliver training in a manner that encourages people to interact with their local community. Not so much ‘here’s how to send a tweet’ but rather ‘these are the accounts/feeds from your local area that you might be interested in’. There also remains the ongoing issue of people’s fears: staying safe online.

Finding out where the debate is already taking place

During my university days I became aware of the website Urban75 and it’s forums. It hit the headlines back in 2002 when Brian Paddick, then Commander of Lambeth Police was  unmasked as a contributor towards those boards – something described by webmaster  Mike Slocombe here.

Here was an officer who was prepared to directly engage with the community he was paid to serve

Paddick was ahead of his time – and the media firestorm that followed only showed us a glimpse of the fate to befall many a social media pioneer since then. But the point remains that active community boards – and even local newspaper boards too – are also a channel from which to engage and listen to people.

So…to conclude?

Social media has a role to play, but a number of the big barriers are not social media related. There are some quick-wins – such as with event organising. There are others that will need a more considered approach. That includes how to co-ordinate and sequence the actions required, as well as identifying who can/needs to do what.