10.11.08
Posted in General at 12:06 pm by jon.pither
After sitting down and writing my previous blog post on Emotional Intelligence, Schools and Politics, I decided to contact my local conservative MP on the matter. As I mentioned, the particular mainstream party my MP represents had rebuffed teaching ‘emotional intelligence in schools as ‘ghastly’. I wanted clarification on exactly where they stand on the matter. So yesterday evening as I got back home a little blurry eyed from a week away at work, I was pleased to find that a letter had arrived from the house of commons, signed by my local MP. Here are its contents:
“Dear Mr Pither
Thankyou for your recent correspondance about emotional intelligence in schools.
Whilst we recognise that schools must ultimately make up their own mind on this issue, the Conservative Party does not endorse the teaching of ‘emotional intelligence’. However, we do recognise that children should learn how to behave properly, respecting others and controlling their emotions, and schools should certainly have a part to play this process.
Conservatives believe schools tend to be most effective in developing their pupils’ character when these considerations are built into the school’s ethos, permeating everything that the schools and its students do. High standards of behaviour should be expected at all times; children should be polite and courteous whether in or out of the classroom. In this way, good behaviour becomes the expected norm, promoted and enfored everyday. This comprehensive approach is likely to be far more effective than isolated lessons on ‘emotional intelligence’, the usefulness of which is questionable.
Our focus will be on ensuring that every child leaves primary school as a fluent reader. Too many children will struggle with reading when they start secondary school. There is enormous evidence that this has a very damaging effect on self-esteem and confidence.”
Here is my reply:
“Dear David Gauke MP
Thank you for replying to my letter on teaching emotional intelligence in schools. In reading your reply, I recognise that you took the time to read and understand my point of view for which I’m grateful. I would like to offer a short response to your clarification of where the conservatives stand on this matter.
As a software consultant, I often get told of where a client wants to be in five or so years from now. There’s usually an admirable vision such as ‘we want a flexible system that can be easily adapted, so that we can more quickly deliver software requirements to the business’. The thought process I try to encourage the client to go through is ‘given these are your wants, what’s currently holding you back right now from achieving these? And what ‘Hows’ have you identified already that will help lift these constraints in order to get you there’.
Given the Conservatives’ wants of ‘children should learn how to behave properly, respecting others and controlling their emotions’, I would want to ask the question of what’s currently stopping schools from doing this? And what ‘hows’ are there that can help achieve this? The Conservatives’s policy of concentrating efforts to ensure that when kids leave school they can read and write, and of making good behaviour an explicit part of a school’s mission statement certainly sounds like an admirable agenda.
But I do not think you can simply ask or use disciplinary measures to get kids to control their emotions. I think what stops them is that they aren’t aware enough of their own emotions in the first place. You cannot control what you do not understand.
‘Emotional intelligence’ is a measure of a person’s awareness of their emotions. This is crucial as awareness is a prerequisite for governance. As studies have shown, a person’s EQ has a greater impact on that person’s ability to succeed in life than their respective IQ. Unlike IQ, EQ can be improved through teaching emotional awareness. Why don’t kids leave school being able to read and write? Is it that teachers or the curriculum isn’t up to scratch? Or is it that we’re not spending enough time working with the kids to develop their emotional wellbeing?
I think the latter. I think the Conservatives are missing a vital trick with regards to how you actually want to achieve your aims.”
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09.03.08
Posted in General at 10:26 pm by jon.pither
Since reading up on the virtues of Emotional Intelligence I’ve wanted to know whether or not schools are making an effort to raise the collective EQ of the kids in the classroom.
EQ can boost a person’s life in many different quarters professionally and personally. EQ in essence is referring to a person’s awareness of their emotions. And since our emotions form a large driving factor in our decision making process it’s of crucial important.
There have been intriguing studies done with kids whose EQ was measured at a young age. One particular study shows that come exam time kids with a high EQ had outperformed the kids with a low EQ in SAT exams: “…the 210 point difference is as large as the average differences between that of economically advantaged versus disadvantaged children and is larger than the difference between children from families with graduate degrees versus children whose parents did not finish high school…”.
The best thing about EQ is that unlike IQ it can be learnt. In some primary schools they are teaching it with measurable success. The article I just linked to reveals how in schools children are taught behavoural values such as “We are gentle, we are kind, we work hard, we look after property, we listen to people, we are honest, we do not hurt anybody.” In truth, and without delving further into the specifics of this particular case I admit to being unsure with this approach as it doesn’t seem to be preaching the values of emotional awareness.
Recently though I read about the ‘Rainbow Kids‘ approach. Here the focus is upon Emotional Literacy - kids are taught how to express how they feel. Starting with simple analogies like feeling ’sunny’ or ‘cloudy’ they then proceed to up their game so that they can talk about a wider range of emotions they come into contact with. What this approach reveals is that when they become ‘aware’ of how they feel they give themselves more options for resolving conflict. In general schools that pay attention to EQ tend to receive numerous advantages from better exam results to lesser incidents of bullying and truancy.
A simple google search will reveal the multitudes of advantages in teaching kids EQ, but there are critics out there. I’m rather dismayed by the comments of our shadow schools minister Nick Gibb: “This kind of stuff is ghastly. Schools have really got to focus on the core subjects of academic education and teaching children how to learn.”
I’m clearly concerned about voting for the conservatives if it means that this man would become responsible for the running of our schools. In direct response to his statement I would contend that by equipping kids with a higher EQ we enable them to “focus on the core subjects” more easily. That is to say that by looking at ways of improving our kids EQ we therefore set them up better for success. To use an old analogy, we get them sharpening their axes before we ask them to chop down a tree.
Also, if we don’t teach our kids this kind of “non core subject” material in schools such as emotional wellbeing and good behaviour then what happens if the parents don’t either? We’re in effect removing the safety net for our kids’ development. We perpetuate the negative cycle of bad parents raising future bad parents.
What really can I do though? If I vote instead for Labour then I stand a greater chance of exposing my kids to the horror that is Tony Blair’s “faith schools”.
Interesting times.
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07.22.08
Posted in General, Java at 9:03 am by jon.pither
I was involved in an interesting chat with some colleagues about the apparent incompatibilities between pair programming and being in the ‘zone’; a Zen like state where everything just clicks and one is able to perform seamlessly to their optimum ability given the present moment. From a developer viewpoint our egos become almost on autopilot as our hands reach out and tap away at the keyboard, the mind harmoniously serving up a variety of designs and strategies that may help us solve the problem at hand. We effortlessly approach excellence.
Psychologists refer to zone as ‘flow’. Daniel Coleman - author of Emotional Intelligence - describes flow as being “emotional intelligence at its best… the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performance and learning”. Emotions generate a plethora of thoughts for us, including distracting worries and concerns. Therefore having our emotions working for us enables us to be more focussed and to think more clearly and objectively about a specific problem.
Pair programming is a not stress free activity. Though it has been proven to raise productivity it does require more focus on the part of the developer - asking much more of them than were they coding solo. Being in a “pair” you are constantly required to explain your intricate thought processes to another person. You are challenged, and you have a responsibility to ensure that the person you are pairing with gets up to speed with the material at hand and that you are providing them with a progressive learning experience.
We need to appreciate that developers are humans, and sadly are not perfect coding punching-out machines. Pair-programming introduces an emotional burden on the developer. Thoughts such as how the other person in the pair is coping and performing are one of many, along with speculation as to what the other person is thinking… Are they frustrated that I can’t keep up? Are they worried I’m going too fast? Or worse still do they feel guilty for slowing me down? - a common concern as developers strive to be productive. In order to deal with these worries a whole new - totally justifiable - plateau of thinking opens up. The brain switches over from analysing the current software problem to instead work on strategies for making the pair more effective: ‘they have a need to see this area of the code-base as it will help them to contextualise the problem better… I want to get some “quick wins” to build our momentum as a pair, therefore it makes sense to pick off this little bit of low hanging fruit…’
I believe that whilst pair-programming has the capacity to inhibit flow, the emotional intelligence within us is the tool to help minimize the impact distractions have allowing us to closer reach a level of excellence on an individual level. EQ is essentially about being aware of our emotions and the impact they have on us - to realise when we’re worried, or when our frustrations are mounting. A higher EQ will not only help us to better meet our own needs, but it will give us more empathy and understanding to better meet the needs of the person we’re working with - to help us create a more effective “pair”. EQ is essentially about being aware, and the best thing about it is that unlike IQ it can be learned.
Lastly, I want to refer to the premise that “stress makes you stupid“. We underperform when our emotions run unchecked. I’ve seen first hand developers resigning from jobs they sought hard for because pair programming has been too much of a difficult experience. If we can improve our awareness of the distractions and difficulties pairing introduces - and in doing so our EQ - then we’ll likely make it easier for ourselves and the person we’re pairing with.
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06.27.08
Posted in General at 4:24 pm by jon.pither
So we left Yellowstone and headed to Salt Lake City en route to Las Vegas. These were good times as the journey was terrific. As we dropped altitude we re-entered lands of green fields and patchy dry lands - this was the view from the back of the car:
Glorious isn’t it? Worth the shot even though I had to hang out of the side of Cadilliac in order to take it. Here’s the intrepid team:
We had the more than serious mission to attend to of getting to Salt Lake City. Kath and I had established the system of me driving in the morning and Kath driving in the afternoon. This not only panders to the genetically proven fact that men are better with maps (in return women are better with landmarks), but it also enabled me to kick back and soak up the sun, and to have a cheeky beer whilst enjoying the ever changing landscape. I also listened to some Pink Floyd on my new funky red ipod which I’m loving.
Soon we entered the area of Salt Lake City. From my experience of Portland and Seattle I’ve become accustomed to the general beauty of a city with snowy mountains in the backdrop. SLC though has the mountains much closer and starker up against it - it’s a wonderful looking place. On the approach there we were flanked on both sides by mountain ranges and SLC sits comfortably in between them. It was a wonderful drive, and I’ve come to have a sense of regret that I did not pay much attention in Geography class at school; I found myself curious as to how these ranges were formed - there were markings and features in abundance that I didn’t quite have the smarts to make sense of.
Salt Lake City is an intriguing place. It’s very clean and spacious, and in being similar to Portland in some respects it seems very well organised and cared for. It’s also the epicentre for Mormonism - the church of the latter day saints. When walking around Kath and I popped into the Mormon complex for a look. I have concerns with religion, but with a completely open mind I found the people there thoroughly and refreshingly friendly exuding positive warmth. It was fascinating to experience a sort of microcosm of a completely different culture set in the heart of a big western city. That evening we went back there, and sat in on the Mormon choir rehearsal for their Sunday morning worldwide broadcast:
(image nicked from someone else’s blog)
The next day we set off for Sin City - Las Vegas. On the first part of the journey we flung the car via an attractive looking lake and took a snap:
I had a little bit of unfortunate luck with the drive to Las Vegas as the camera ran out of power. The drive was unbelievable. Entering the lands that the Grand Canyon occupies was breathtaking. Essentially the drive was a reduction in altitude. As we got lower the landscape around us got hotter; there was no more snow to be seen and our thermometer cranked up to 100 or so. But the scenery got more and more dramatic. Red coloured earth, eroded into canyons as far as the eye can see in staggering scale. As we drove down we twisted and turned through various rocky ranges - a drive I would recommend whole heartedly to those willing.
My last shot, doing absolutely no justice to the ride.
We arrived in Las Vegas. I can honestly say I was looking forward to Vegas. I’d won a game of poker during my time in Portland and so thought I had some smarts to handle myself at a table. When I saw however you had to spend 300 bucks or so just to get on a decent table and that they didn’t seem to play the same game that I understood, we decided we give the gambling a miss. To be honest I didn’t like Vegas and that’s an understatement. I at least thought that there would decent sidewalks to walk on and it would a pleasant experience to walk up and down the strip. But there are all kinds of people there explicitly selling girls and drugs and the place is a construction site full of pollution anyway. I feel the city represents humanity at it’s casual worst. There seem to be a lot of people that go there who don’t know what else to do other than drink and gamble. Vanity also rules here, especially poolside at the Bellagio where we were staying. Anyway enough ranting. I am grateful for the experience of going there - it added colour and variety to our already wonderful vacation.
It looks quite nice from the above shot…
Our hotel.
After a couple of nights (in which we returned the car) we got to the local airport and flew out to San Francisco. I had high expectations of this city after listening to colleagues rave about it over and over, and I can happily say it did not disapoint. Firstly the geography of it is crazy - a very much hilly place. I liked it though, it’s a city with loads of character. We ate out in the North Beach area in a smooth little Italian and then the next day I temporarily stepped out of vacation mode and visited a colleague on a project there. After a brief catch up he took me to the local ThoughtWorks office which happens to have an amazing view of the city and bay (TW actually has two offices in the same building, and I met a long lost Swedish friend there who had the unfortunate circumstance of working all day in a room with no windows - tough break…).
After that, we hit Alcatraz:
And I got put behind bars - dark times:
Then we walked round the city
And then cycled the bridge:
And that was it. I really thought SF was a cool place. We flew from SF to Portland where we did some more shopping (we bought a load of suits at a billionth the price of what they’d be in the UK), then we went out for a meal with my old colleagues who were still there, and the next day we caught our flight back to blightly (after a quick hop to Seattle). We landed at 12.30 the day after that and by 1.30 I was in a five hour cricket match. I thought I did OK given the circumstances - a few good runs and a good laugh.
It was a terrific vacation.
This is Mnt Ranier as visible from the flight to Seattle from PDX.
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06.22.08
Posted in General at 4:56 pm by jon.pither
My time on a work project had come to an end. Now it was time for a vacation. We’d originally planned to drive from Portland (after a few days doing some shopping and checking out its fine gastro scene etc) to the Yellowstone national park, then on to Las Vegas via Salt Lake City, then to San Francisco via Yosemite, and then back up to Portland via a couple of places on the coast. Soon we realised this would add up to too much driving, and we refactored our plans somewhat making using of air travel to bridge some of the distances.
So the first thing vacation related we did was hand back my trusted funky red car. It’s been a pleasure; I was its first driver. After handing back the keys we promptly picked up a new one:
Originally we’d wanted a covertable, but due to lack of planning we ended up only being able to pick up a standard premium car from the rental. When we first got to the rental and saw the car they were going to give us we were a little disapointed. We complained (non-violently) that the car on offer was dirty and old, and the friendly folks gave us a ‘luxury’ Cadillac instead. I was pleased; I picked up another funky car with all the gadgets. So once we had the car we made our way in the direction of Yellowstone, with a night’s stop at a place called Boise.
The scenery to Boise was wonderful. I’d seen a bit of it before driving out to Hood River just passed Multonmah Falls, but as we entered into previously unseen territory the surroundings just got better. Portland is amongst forestry - a very much ‘green’ environment. As you ride alongside the Columbia River out eastwards the landscape begins to change: the temperature begins to rise, the trees become sparser and everywhere starts to appear a lot drier. If there was one photograph I could turn back time for and take on the whole trip, it would have been as we were entering this drier land but Mount Hood was still visible in the background covered in snow, utterly dominating the landscape. We were driving away from Mount Hood at the time, and saw it for the last time as we twisted and turned round a canyon. Goodbye old fella.
Kath at a view point. We were up a hill and land was flat for miles around.
Anyhow after a while we arrived at Boise in the state of Idaho, and we were pleasantly surprised at our accommodation Kath had picked out of the lonely planet guide book:
A very nice place. They had a chilled bottle of wine and cookies available to all.
We had a nice meal in Boise. It’s another liberal feeling place. The teenage population were not out getting wasted on alcohol as they would normally be back in my home town in the UK, but they were hanging around funky little coffee houses talking about politics, whilst some others where checking things out on their macs. Good times. Unfortunately though, we couldn’t hang around Boise for long as we had around 7-8 drive ahead of us. The next day we got moving, and we soon found ourselves travelling up into the mountains through breathtaking scenery into the heart of Yellowstone:
Some Bison. Here are some more with their calves:
The Bison seem pretty chilled out. I suspect it’s because of a lack of natural predators. For example 30 years ago or so the grizzly bear population of Yellowstone had learnt to beg off tourists for food. A large amount of them had to be killed in order to change their ways and are now recovering. Also similarly to most of the US the native wild wolf population was wiped out through a government funded extermination program, and having since been reintroduced to the area their numbers are steadily rising.
Yellowstone itself is an area of volcanic activity. One of the reasons I wanted to go there is that it’s one of the few ’supervolcanoes’ in the world. If it were to erupt to it’s true potential it would put the world into a nuclear winter, trigger a mini ice age and wipe out a billion people or so. These are precarious times, and so I hope you can understand my reasoning for wanting to check it out:
Yep, it’s still active folks. In fairness it hasn’t gone off for 70 thousand years, and the last ‘biggie’ eruption that could do us some damage was over 2 million years ago. But still… it’s heaving like a sleeping giant…
There are geysers everywhere. In fact Yellowstone struck as me some sort of prehistoric land. It’s a beautiful self sustaining ecosystem, high up in the mountains. There’s loads to see, from mud volcanoes to spectacular canyons.
Kath and I at Yellowstone lake. We’re wearing the same clothes because it didn’t occur to us that Yellowstone would be a cold place. We had to buy a load of stuff from the gift shop. In fact, we had an altogether much worse surprise. About to go to dinner we locked the car (as you do), and we tested the car handle… it opened. What? I got Kath to walk a hundred metres away with the car keys, and although we’d locked it, the damn thing opened again. I could even start it - it’s a push button start, so as long as the key is near (which is wasn’t) the car it starts up. Anyway to cut a long story short after two hours of performing various tests on the car with an operator giving us instructions the rental company finally agreed to dispatch a tow-truck and a new car to us. They were especially unhappy because their nearest depo was 300 miles away. Later that evening though, thinking that perhaps we’d not been given the best instructions I managed to hack the intelligent driving system and turn-off the automatic unlock feature. Nightmare. Still, that was on the first night and it didn’t stop us having an amazing time.
An underwater geyser
We made some friends with the locals
A bit of hiking
You have to be there to appreciate this
These shots are of Yellowstones grand canyon. I have loads more photos than I could upload here. Yellowstone is well worth going to if you’re thinking about it. Just be sure it doesn’t go off when you’re standing on it.
Couldn’t resist one of the mud volcano.
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06.20.08
Posted in General at 6:01 pm by jon.pither
I’m staying in a hotel in Leeds. I’m walking around the hotel room (it’s quite big) talking to my Nan on the phone, pacing back and forth, and the door bell goes. I immediately wonder: what kind of caller could this be at the hour of 9pm in the evening? Not wanting to terminate the phone call unnecessarily, I opened the door with the phone still against my ear.
A lady – probably early thirties - wearing a fair bit of makeup and a large black leather coat was now standing right in front of me. She was smiling, and murmured some sort of hello. I replied back a mixture of “Hello”, and “Can I help you?”, and then as the realisation began to dawn on me of what was actually going on I more urgently uttered “No!, Er, No thankyou” all at the same time. Given my surprise, I’d essentially lost the ability to converse in rudimentary English. She continued to look at me, though her face was now starting to mirror my own which was portraying a look of profound confusion. She then sort of grunted in a polite way (I don’t think English was her first language), and intimated that she should come in. I continued my slur of words ‘Err, I don’t think… I’m sorry?’, and then I realized my Nan was still talking to me on the phone. Tersely, I said goodbye to her in order to deal with the situation at hand, and then I gave myself a mental slap in order to focus. I then began to wonder of whom in their right mind would have possibly paid for what was presumably a professional to come visit me this evening…
Fortunately though, a door opened behind her and a chap’s head appeared. He said in well spoken and perfectly respectable English: “Err… hi! I think you’re at the wrong door, please come on in’, followed by a quieter: ‘don’t knock next time’.
I shut my door.
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Posted in General at 5:46 pm by jon.pither
After a three month stint in Portland, Oregon, I’m back now in the UK. In fact I’m working on a project in Leeds; currently I’m on the train heading back to London with the green English countryside whizzing on by in the background.
Portland’s been a great experience. I’ve made new friends, met new colleagues, learnt a lot about what it takes how to transform a large IT department to become more agile, explored various areas of ruggedly impressive countryside, and found out a fair bit about myself too. I’ve also picked up a lingering addiction to fine coffee which I’m wondering if I should try and shake or just stick with.
In terms of self development, I’ve learnt about better ways of communicating to others (techniques such as “non-violent communication” which I’d like to develop), and I’m pleased that I’ve gained some self understanding through learning about emotional intelligence. I hope to write about these bits of learning in the not too near future, perhaps when I’m back on a train next week.
Portland itself is a clean, lovely city. It’s my observation that it’s the friendliest place I’ve been. People want to chat all the time and it’s been a pleasure making so many new friends. I also love the kind of new-age, liberal, hippy vibe that Portland has going on. It’s a smart city, where people are digesting books at places like Powells books, playing music at open-mic nights, exploring the countryside around them, basically enriching their lives. I’m a proud Londoner, frequently extolling its values of dynamism and acceptance, but in my opinion we still get dragged down by issues of class and stereotype (i.e. what it means to be a ‘city’ person, English people keeping a stiff upper lip etc). It doesn’t feel as liberal or as open-minded as Portland, where a good many more issues can be explicitly laid out on the table. But hey, that’s my subjective viewpoint - I’ve hardly lived it up in London to the extent of a good many of those around me.
So, I’ve come here to talk around a few more pictures and experiences of my closing weeks in Portland.
This is Leadbetter point state park. I read about this place in a magazine. Apparently after a good 3-4 mile hike you can arrive at a zen like place where the pacific sea meets the Columbia river. There’s supposed to be a sense of nothingness there amongst undisturbed wildlife (some birds doing some rituals in the sand). After a good 3 hr drive I arrived at the park and I found… fear. It’s kind of strange to explain. I rocked up to the car park (in my funky red car), and immediately ploughed into dense forestry in order to get to the beach. After a small while it occurred to me that I was all by myself here. There were no other cars in the carpark and I be could miles away from anyone. Then my ignorance of Oregon’s wildlife began to kick in. What about snakes? Spiders? All that kind of weird stuff… I was on a trail and it never seemed to end. Then I found fallen trees in the middle of the trail - clearly it hadn’t been subjected to much use in the months prior.
I admit, I turned around after a couple of miles. Screw it - I reasoned I didn’t want to get bit by some strange spider with no one around to help and no mobile reception.
But then, after I’d returned back to the carpark and did a re-assessment of the situation I got frustrated with myself. The risks of getting bit by a spider didn’t seem strong enough to make me miss out on seeing this zen like place I’d travelled all this way out to see. So I pulled myself together, accepted the fear, and went storming on back into the forest. Belong long I’d gotten further than before. I kept looking out for the sea amongst the trees but it just wasn’t there. Then I had to jump across puddles… then find a way around a swamp… After a while I’d picked up a large stick and started ‘pole-vaulting’ large areas of water. Then I came across a part of the trail where it was completely underwater. Already committed, I went for it, soaking my trainers and jeans in the process. After this and back on to dry land I turned a corner… and everything was flooded; all the bottoms of the trees were submerged and the trail was no longer visible. I once again considered the unknown possibility of underwater snakes and suchlike, and then admitted to myself I’d given this endeavour my best shot and I turned back.
But the scenary I did see (the other-side of the peninsula was easier to reach), was beautiful:
A couple of weeks after my wife arrived into PDX. I’d been ticking down the hours until she arrived - happy times! Soon she wanted to see the sights Portland and the surrounding area had to offer, and so we wasted little time in checking out Multnomah falls:
Lo and behold though! Kath had arrived during the city’s Rose Festival! We took station at my now trusted wine-bar, met a couple of new friends, and sat back and watched as a parade went through downtown:
It went on to become a very pleasurable evening:
Thanks Portland!
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05.10.08
Posted in General at 12:13 am by jon.pither
Last weekend I decided to have a day trip out to a state park in order to get some hiking done. I chose Silver Falls which is about an hour and a half south east of Portland.
It has about ten falls, and there’s an 8 mile hike which conveniently takes you round them. Apparently a bunch of chaps built it for a dollar a day during the great depression.
As you can just make out, you can walk underneath some of the falls which is kind of interesting:
It was a very nice day, a beautful place.
I think the locals in Portland are spoilt for the natural countryside around them, as well as for having plenty of good restaurants.
A good day out!
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05.05.08
Posted in General at 1:40 am by jon.pither
Ok it sounds a little crazy at first. General elections every year? Surely then policies would be even more short term? People would get tired of voting? What about the cost of government context switching?
All valid questions. I’m not saying I have all the answers but I have a hunch that something this radical might work. UK and US politics as we know it is broken. Masses of people vote for specific parties for no better reason than because their family has always done so. Tune in to political debate programs and the politicians spend more time deriding each other’s ideas than extolling the virtues of their own. You can’t blame them, they have a simple conflict of interests. They have to balance being bold enough for an idea to actually work against ensuring it’s not too radical or risky as to provide ammunition for the opposition. They can’t rely on any trust from the other parties whatsoever. They become forced into watering down their policies.
We live in an age of having two monolithic parties. In the UK it’s Labour and Conservatives, in the US it’s the Democrats and Republicans. A modern politican has to have an allegiance to one of these parties, and must devote their efforts to making sure their party is in power as well as thinking about what may be good for the country; it’s another conflict of interests.
We all know there are problems. To list just a couple: the fact that the younger generations have turned away from politics, and the disturbing amount of money a party must generate in order to gain power. Worse still, after recent wars people have lost trust in government.
So how would elections every year help? Let me take on the most obvious concern with this approach - that policies would be even more short-sighted as to only last a year. I think this is the gut reaction, but in actuality I think the opposite would happen. I would imagine that politicians would worry less about the churn of political parties and focus more on policy. Why?
Four or five years represents a big block of time in which political parties can seek to align the country to their own vision. In short they become fully responsible for the running of the entire country after a term. In order to safeguard power for the next term they seek to take credit for what’s good about the country by removing the policies of preceding parties and delaying policies of their own before they’re safely back in control with a long road ahead of them.
Switch it on its head. What happens if every year there’s the threat of being removed from power? In fact now the threat is constant; it’s a part of life. It’d be impossible to spend even more time worring about it, and the public would demand they wouldn’t. Surely, since democratic elections are part of everyday life rather than defining moments every several years, the focus would natually switch to the policies themselves. There’s simply not enough bandwidth in the year for big parties to devote the relative time they currently do to get in power. Voters wouldn’t want them too anyway; there’s not enough capacity in their own daily lives to pay attention.
Indeed what would that mean for the big parties? I suspect there’s not quite so much the requirement for them if the average term were only a year. What sustains these political behemoths are the advertising campaigns, the conferences, the desire to win the ‘big elections’. If these things are substantially diminished, the parties themselves will probably start to fragment. We’d end up with smaller, more focus parties.
Thinking about it further, if there are more, smaller parties, then would they not be inclined less to attack each other with the ferocity that they do now? Each one would represent less of a big target. What we may see is more harmony between the parties with less of a devotion to ripping apart each other’s ideas, and more of an appetite for taking them on and extending them. Taking this vision even further, it can be imagined that politicians themselves would switch party more often, and essentially voters may stop focussing on parties altogether and instead on individual politicians with ideas.
Who knows? If the price of making a mistake is not as high as your entire party being kicked out of power for a term lasting years, politicians may be inclined to be bolder and to actually admit their mistakes when they happen. Other parties, not focussed so much on potential blood letting of a big partisan animal may be more accomodating.
What about the voters? Wouldn’t they get turned off voting every year? Well, if a huge number of people stop voting because they can’t maintain an interest in politics, rather than just tuning in every few years then maybe just let them. I know there’s a load of people out there that passionately believe everyone should vote, but come on, really should they? Watch the news and people give their reasons for voting that are ‘I’m voting X because my family has always done so’. ‘Party X matches my values’. Do we really trust the current parties to maintain their own values? In any case this sounds like a road to fundamentialism.
I think we’d be better off whereby the only people that vote are the people that are interested in the policy development of their country. I think yearly elections where anyone can still vote if they want to would safeguard this. If voting is not the rare, presitigious event that it is now and instead a way of life they I imagine we would have better quality voting.
Obviousley I’m being an idealist. We can though point to such a change on a much more micro scale. In software engineering which itself a complex field with many human problems, we’re seeing a change from the old way of doing things, where testing is done and user feedback sought after a lengthy development period to a new way where the ‘dials’ are turned right the way across and testing happens on a continuous basis with user-feedback captured in weekly iterations. When executed well it works. Unlike the old way where it didn’t.
I know there could be problems such as the context switching of governments changing every year. Firstly I’m not suggesting they do change every year, just that each year we have elections. Plus I would argue governments would benefit from being more dynamic, less static, more transient, more flexible. Their ideas should outlive them, not the other way round. There might be some issues with logistics, for the example the overhead of running the elections, but to help mitigate this we could switch to purely online elections. If such a system were feasible, the price of some people not being able to access the internet would be worth the gain of having an efficient low cost voting mechanism.
I used to be unsure about democracy seeing how it’s so broken in the world. But I don’t think it’s democracy that’s broken as it’s just a simple directive. Rather it’s the implementation.
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04.28.08
Posted in General at 1:09 am by jon.pither
A busier week than most. The working week was cut short (although some days were much longer than others) because I’d arranged to head over to Chicago. It’s a “home-office day” aka a “mini away day” for ThoughtWorks. Essentially I get to travel over to one of the offices and meet other folks from the company, to hear our chairman say his thing, and to hear what my fellow developers have to say on the subject of developing software.
I missed the first part of Roy’s speech because the night before I’d arrived in the city in a somewhat exuberant fashion, eager to get cracking on the city’s nightlife scene. After an hour and a half sitting in horrendous traffic from the airport to the hotel, and then for what seemed like an eternity getting Lotus Notes to agree to open up an email of where my company’s party was, and after a brief stint of getting lost, and a verbose exchange with the doorman who wouldn’t let me in because I’d left my passport back at the hotel, I finally managed to make it in to a trendy underground venue which promised to serve up free booze and great conversation. I met lots of new people and a couple of old friends from times gone by.
The next day I woke up with a bit of a sore head, and a feeling of revulsion when I looked over the side of the bed and saw a giant, mostly uneaten delivery pizza on the floor covered in ants. Hmm. I’ve now learnt good and proper that alcohol measures in the US are a lot stronger than in the UK; best to avoid the G & Ts that lack the T.
Anyway the mini-away day was good, I enjoyed some of the sessions that gave me a chance to learn what ThoughtWorks studios were up to. Dennis Bryne from my ThoughtWorks immersion days gave a good insight into Erlang. All interesting stuff. In the evening I felt strangely rejuvenated, and after accosting our chairman Roy with my theory of how we ought to have general elections once a year - during which as a fellow idealist he was very receptive and helpful - I wanted to hit Chicago’s nightlife again. How could you not want to, when it’s this beautiful?
It looks even more fantastic in real life. With a couple of colleagues, we hit a snazzy little restaurant:
and I picked up a truly American proportioned steak:
After we hit a jazz bar and had a couple of cocktails. I had a fun time hanging out with a couple of colleagues soaking up the atmosphere. Before long I realised it was getting late and so made my way back to the hotel, stopping along the way to take another picture:
The next day I woke up determined to make the most out of a day in Chicago, before my flight was due to take off at 8pm. I hit the ThoughtWorks office, which is vastly superior to the UK one. For the hell of it I sat in on a couple of interviews during a “super saturday”; a big recruitment drive. Then I embarked on a river cruise - an ‘architectural tour’ of Chicago.
Chicago’s skyline has a similar history to that of Seattle in that it was first built with wood before a big fire came and levelled it to the ground. Chicago then proceeded to invent the sky-scraper, and they’ve never stopped building them since. During the tour we road along a couple of rivers that cut through the city’s centre and learnt about the evolution of these buildings from Gothic, Art-deco, ‘Modern’ and now postmodernism. It was good to get an appreciation.
Trump’s new tower.
Some buildings are older than others…
That big-un is America’s biggest tower, the sears tower. It lost the crown as the worlds biggest and is now third. There is another one being built in Chicago though - The Spiral - which will be over 2000 feet (the Sears is around 1300). It’s a pity though that there are pesky people in Dubai who are building the world’s tallest at 2300.
After the tour I made my way over to check out one of Chicago’s suburbs - Lincoln Park - which was very nice. Then I got my flight home, picked up my funky-ass red car (did I mention it has a sun-roof?) and then woke up the next day in trendy Portland.
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