Blog posts February 2012
Utopia is temporary: why public services always need fixing
I began my day by dismantling the u-bend under our kitchen sink, because I needed to unblock it. It wasn’t pretty (or fragrant) but it had to be done.
In theory, it never should have come to this. A few years ago, a plumber told us we could keep our drain clear forever as long as we poured a bottle of vinegar down it every couple of months. ‘Well,’ we figured. ‘That’s pretty easy – we can definitely manage that for the rest of our lives.’
Now, I don’t know what the evidence base for the vinegar remedy is, but we did it consistently for a while, and our drains stayed clear. And...
Transforming public services: rethinking time
I recently watched In Time, one of the many science fiction films based on a really interesting concept, but that doesn’t do it justice, ending up in disappointment. Humans trade using the currency of time, and the poor are exploited by extracting their life force rather than their money, so that the rich can be immortal. If I need an excuse to have watched such a blatantly dodgy film it’s because I was on a 13 hour flight. If you think that's bad you should see my Jason Statham DVD collection.
Unsurprisingly, as mortal...
A publication worth checking out: 'Blue Skies: new thinking about the future of higher edcuation'
Following a spirited game of ‘whack-a-viking’ (not its real name) on one of the Pearson lobby ipads, our Head of Communications Kathryn Tyler and I had a great lunch with Louis Coiffait (@louismmcoiffait), head of research at Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning. Among other things, we talked about Higher Education, and the centre’s publication, ‘Blue Skies: new thinking about the future of higher...
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