Recently an email dropped into my inbox from The Big Issue. It was asking for my support for their Big Futures Campaign which required me to send a preprepared email to my local MP. No problem - click and off it went. What happened next gave some important lessons about campaigning by email.

The Big Issue is running a campaign to improve the Renters (Reform) Bill that is currently going through Parliament. The Bill is targeted at stopping no-fault evictions which is one of the leading drivers of homelessness. Although the bill removes Section 21 of the old Housing act, the mechanism used for no-fault evictions, the campaign points out that it is still riddled with loopholes that will allow landlords to evict tenants without a good reason.

We have been renters in the past and our experience has been mixed. During the recent renting of a house we had a sharp reminder of how little, if any, rights a renter has. The landlord installed a heat pump that caused over two months of disruption which included two weeks without any heating. When I complained about the situation through the letting agent and sought advice from Citezans Advice it turned out that there was nothing we could do about the disruption. When I was asked to get involved with The Big Issue’s campaign about limiting the powers of landlords I didn’t think twice about pressing the send button. The message I received from my MP said that he would reply within a week. One week went past. Two weeks went past and still nothing. I started to wonder why an MP promised to do something and then do nothing. But more importantly I asked myself: what does an MP do?

Rather than ranting about MPs in this post I decided to investigate how they represent their constituents. From Parliament’s web site it states: “When Parliament is sitting (meeting), MPs generally spend their time working in the House of Commons. This can include raising issues affecting their constituents, attending debates and voting on new laws. This can either be by asking a question of a government minister on your behalf or supporting and highlighting particular campaigns which local people feel strongly about.” In their constituency, MPs often hold a ‘surgery’ in their office, where local people can come along to discuss any matters that concern them. Most MPs are also members of committees, which look at issues in detail, from government policy and new laws, to wider topics like human rights. In all fairness my MP probably gets hundreds of emails each day touching on issues such as the cost of living crisis or the state of the NHS. However, this issue formed part of his parties manifesto and therefore I felt a reply along the lines of “we are delivering a manifesto commitment” would have been the minimal response. Then cynicism set in. I wondered how many people in his constituency were renters. But trying to find any real data was difficult. The best that I could find was an old Housing Report that suggested that there was about 17% people who were in private rented accommodation and they were probably not voters for his party. Therefore this issue more than likely fell into his ‘not important box’. After another week went past I resent the email, received the same reply, and to date he has not been in contact.

Just in case he got back I thought that I had better be clearer on the issues that the campaign was raising. I read through the Renters (Reform) Bill and went back to the Housing Act 1988 to check section 21. Both documents are a heavy read but I couldn’t find any obvious loop holes. I contacted the people behind The Big Issue’s campaign who are the Renters’ Reform Coalition, which includes big names like Shelter and Crisis, to find out more about the loop holes in the new Bill. But guess what? - they didn’t reply either!

What have I learned about armchair campaigning? First, investigate the issue properly: why is it important? who are affected by it? and gather all of the information from all sides of the argument to get a better perspective of the issue. Second, ask myself about my personal commitment to the campaign? There are many worthy causes but it is better to focus on the one where I have significant personal experience and where I can add my skills and knowledge. Thirdly, how effective is the campaign? Will I be a voice among many i.e. sending an email or can I get more involved to make a difference.

In my early career, which was many years ago, email was a new technology. I thought it was a great invention and would fire off lots of them across the company where I worked. One day my boss pulled me into his office and in no short terms told me to stop using emails. If the issue was important then I should either visit the person directly or pick up the phone. My recent experience has reminded me of his advice. Most MPs hold surgeries therefore the next time a campaign comes though my email that I feel sufficiently passionate about, there will be a knock on their door.

Waking up to some expert on the radio analysing the state of the economy is never a good start to the day. They are mostly negative and don’t tell me what I already could have guessed. During a recent discussion, I was reminded of a government minister’s comment about experts.

In 2016 Michael Gove, the then Justice Minister, was interviewed by Faisal Islam about the case for the UK leaving the EU. During the interview he was misquoted as saying that the British people “have had enough of experts”. The quote spread through the media like wildfire. He later clarified the quote in a follow up interview where he said “… people have had enough of experts from organisations with acronyms that have got things so wrong in the past.” He went on to discuss how the consensus on an issue should be challenged and tested and that things should not be taken simply on trust because of someone’s position.

Experts are important. They study a subject over a long period of time and with experience they can solve complex problems. There are many examples ranging from doctors and surgeons to plumbers and electricians. Without these experts life would be very difficult if not painful. But there is another type of expert that pops up in the media who adds very little to improving our lives. A good example is in economics. They never give any insight into how an economy works or better still how it could be improved. They can hide behind technical terms that require Google, or ChatGPT, to translate. I have yet to find a clear definition of ‘productivity’ never mind any ideas of how it affects everyday living or how it can be improved. I have lost count of the number of times I have contacted an expert in economics asking for more information about their subject and been met by silence ( yes I have checked my spam folder ). I can only conclude that silence means that they have no time for the general public which is ironic because they are usually pronouncing something that may affect our lives.

Michael Groves is correct in that experts should be challenged. But more specifically they should be challenged about how they improve peoples lives. In the case of doctors, surgeons and plumbers the effectiveness of their impact is obvious: we recover from an illness or the toilet has stopped leaking. But when the we question the insights of an expert in economics we are usually dismissed as not knowing enough to understand the complex issue. However, when a person in a position of power asks a question then they are forced to give an answer. One of the most effective challenges to expertise was made by Queen Elizabeth II. When she was touring The Bank of England, during the Financial Crisis, she asked: why did nobody see it coming? which received a lot of shuffling and looking at the floor. The Queen was asking a question that we all wanted an answer to. It took over four years for the Bank of England to come up with an attempt at an answer!.

I would propose the following criteria for any expert: how do you know that your expertise is understood by the wider public so that it can be challenged? and how has the application of your expertise improved peoples lives? If the government followed this criteria when distributing tax payers money to developing expertise in a subject then we may start to get value for money, and I would get a better start to the day.

Will poverty ever be made history? Lord Bird hopes so and in an attempt to eradicate poverty he has created an all party group in Westminster to tackle the problem. However, the group must ask some searching questions about previous government policies so that the same mistakes will not be repeated.

The all party group’s stated aim is to: “… bring entrepreneurialism to the heart of government, looking at how funding structures could break the cycle of poverty rather than reinforce it. We work with business-minded organisations invested in creating long-term solutions that lift people out of poverty and into self-sufficiency.” For many years Lord Bird has argued that instead of pouring taxpayer’s money into tackling the symptoms of poverty, it should solve the more difficult social problems at their root cause. He illustrates his argument with the statistic that 80% of the social pound is spent on helping the poor get through that day or that month. His approach to eliminating poverty aligns with its aim of the The Big Issue, which he started in 1991, to give people a “hand up, not a hand out”. In general, tax papers money should be spent on developing peoples potential so that they can contribute to the rest of society rather than keeping them stuck in poverty.

A study from the US reviewed their government’s anti-poverty policies. There were some successes but they have left children more exposed to poverty and with an estimated 12.5 mn people in “deep poverty”. I’m sure that it is a similar performance for the UK. Reviewing previous government initiatives would give insights into what works and what doesn’t work. The lack of success will be complex and could include: targeting the wrong problem, lack of real commitment to the policy, not enough resources and changes in governments. But there maybe other issues such using the wrong approach to develop a policy. For example why not ask the people who are in poverty what would help?

However, care must be taken that looking back doesn’t get stuck in “paralysis by analysis” and it takes too long. There is an emergency in people’s living standards and new solutions need to be found urgently. One way that might help is applying the framework developed by Lord Bird to classify the impact of different initiatives. It is called PECC: Prevention, Emergency, Coping and Cure. This could be applied to any policy review to identify its aim and then ask what worked well and what didn’t.

Poverty has cast its shadow over peoples lives for hundreds of years. If we are to make it history then we must look back and learn from the effectiveness of previous policies that succeeded rather than repeating the same mistakes.

In a recent Big Issue article, Sir John Bird argued for a new way of thinking about the many problems that the UK is facing. But what would a new way of thinking look like?

The article lists a wide range of problems: the on-going effects of Covid, the impact of the Ukraine war on the cost of living and the changes to the economy from Brexit. Added to the list are the impact of geopolitics on the UK such as the changing relationship between the USA and China and the erosion of the environment and climate change. Sir John identifies the root of the problems: “We have had appalling political and social leadership for much of the past 23 years, since we entered the millennium. All the big problems we have to navigate now are largely due to the decisions our global leaders have taken. The galloping rate of crisis after crisis has been orchestrated by some of the most miserable thinking imaginable”. He then calls for a revolution in thinking strategically to get through the current set of emergencies. I would add that the new thinking needs to solve poverty and inequality.

But before we start working out what a new type of thinking would look like we need to analyse the problems with the current type of thinking. It is important to realise that most organisations are looked upon as systems e.g. health system, education system, benefits system, banking system, political system and so on. Roughly a system can be defined by something having inputs, then something happens to the inputs to produce outputs. In the case of the health system, sick and injured people go in and in the majority of cases, healthier people come out. There is a similar situation with the education system: young people go in and young adults come out with the skills to develop their careers and play their role in society. However most problems arise when there is an interaction between the systems. A clear example is between the NHS and social care where lack of coordination has produced bed blocking. Similar problems can be seen at the strategic level where the food system is destroying the environment, increasing health problems and is a major contributor to climate change. When a problem occurs in a system, for instance the education system, then the call is for more resources, but many of the problems are caused by factors external to the system like parental support for child eduction, impact of new technology, the influence of social media and inequality.

A new way of thinking would take into account the interrelationship of systems, as in the interaction between primary health care, i.e. GPs and secondary care i.e. hospitals. Because people cannot get easy access to a GP they turn up to Accident and Emergency with their problems which creates an overload on the emergency service. Another example is the food system, which in the the UK is market driven by food manufacturers and supermarkets, which produces high levels of obesity. Obesity costs the NHS a massive £6 billion annually and is set to increase to over £9.7 billion each year to 2050. A new form of political and strategical leadership must have the capability to understand not only the systems that are in the UK but their interrelationship.

Sir John Bird’s article picks up on a number of major problems in the UK which are against a background of an increasingly hostile world. There are techniques that look at the interaction between systems which could help to solve some of these problems. But we need a new crop of political leaders that have the intellectual capability to understand how the different systems that make up the UK work, or don’t work, together. The new political leadership must have the capability to communicate a way through the problems in a way that people feel motivated to be part of the solution.

One day a teacher set a problem for the class that he thought would keep them busy for at least an hour. But a student solved the problem in about a minute. How he solved the problem is a reminder of how maths should be taught.

The story goes that in the 1780’s a provincial German teacher wanted to keep his class busy for a while. So he set them the problem of adding up the first 100 numbers i.e. \(1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 ... 100\). After about a minute, Carl Friedrich Gauss, walked to the front of the class with the number \(5055\) written on a piece of paper. The teacher thought he had cheated but didn’t know how. There appears to be no record of how Gauss solved the problem therefore the story has taken on mythical proportions and speculation has been rife as to how the young Gauss solved the problem. Although he had the ability to carryout complicated calculations, something that he had from the age of 3, I suspect that he used his ability to look at maths problems in a different way.

To see how he could of solved the problem so quickly let’s look at a simpler problem: adding the first \(5\) numbers i.e. \(1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5\). Rather than using a pen and paper and adding up first \(1 + 2 = 3\) then adding \(3 + 4 = 7\) and so on let’s lay the numbers in a the following pattern:

\[\begin{array}{c c c c c} \bullet & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet \\ \hspace{1 mm} & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet \\ \hspace{1 mm} & \hspace{1 mm} & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet\\ \hspace{1 mm} & \hspace{1 mm} & \hspace{1 mm} & \bullet & \bullet\\ \hspace{1 mm} & \hspace{1 mm} & \hspace{1 mm} & \hspace{1 mm} & \bullet\\ \hline 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 \end{array}\]

What Gauss probably spotted was that if he added the last number to the first and the second last number to the second one etc. the columns always add up to the same number:

\[\begin{array}{c c c c c} \bullet & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet \\ \circ & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet \\ \circ & \circ & \bullet & \bullet & \bullet\\ \circ & \circ & \circ & \bullet & \bullet\\ \circ & \circ & \circ & \circ & \bullet\\ \circ & \circ & \circ & \circ & \circ\\ \hline 6 & 6 & 6 & 6 & 6 \end{array}\]

Now the picture shows \(6\) rows by \(5\) columns which gives a total number of dots of \(30\). But only half the dots were the original numbers therefore dividing \(30\) by \(2\) gives the correct answer of \(15\). Of course it would need a very large piece of paper and a long time to draw out the dots but what Gauss probably saw was a pattern for the solution. Gauss’ insight can be generalised for the total sum of any number \(N\), i.e. \((N+1) \times (N) \div{2}\). In the case of the number set by the teacher then we have \((100 + 1) \times 100 \div 2\) which gives the answer \(5055\). Gauss took problem that used addition and solved it by turning it into a multiplication problem which is quicker to calculate.

Maths has to fit into a busy school curriculum. To get through a wide and varied syllabus the teaching of maths can be reduced to rote learning: this is the problem now apply this formulae to get the solution. If a bit more time was allowed for students to play with the problems and explore different ideas then they would gain a deeper understanding of the subject and might even have fun!

Gauss turned out to be one of the greatest mathematicians of the 18th century whose influence is still felt today with many of his ideas used in the current maths syllabus. During his career he never lost the approach of looking at problems in a different ways which often led to breakthroughs in maths. Few students will turn out to be like Gauss but allowing them time to explore maths in a playful way would increase the much needed levels of numeracy.