The Manifesto Club will launch a new publication, The Myth of Racist Kids, at a lunchtime discussion at Civitas, 77 Great Peter Street, London SW1P 2EZ. The publication looks at anti-racist policies and the growing regulation of school life.

The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 led to a requirement on schools to report ‘racist incidents’ to local education authorities, which has resulted in the reporting of an estimated 250,000 incidents. Many of these ‘racist incidents’ involved very young children, and included cases of name-calling in the playground and arguments between friends. A growing ‘race relations industry’ has moved into the daily life of schools and even nurseries, with the aim of combating prejudice in children as young as three. This book argues that these policies bring officials into the playground: they have meant a growing regulation of children’s peer relationships, and the undermining of teachers’ ability to deal with classroom incidents. Worse, the growing myth of racist kids can actually create ethnic tensions, stifling the trend towards increasing openness and intermixing.

This is an INVITATION ONLY event. However, if you are interested in attending, contact the Manifesto Club: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Venue: MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Domstraße 10, D-60311, Frankfurt

Tickets: NB. This event is invitation ONLY. Please email info@novo-argumente.com.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, hope, courage and the sheer conviction that things could not carry on as they were triumphed over the repressive GDR state machine and ended the partition of Germany. With tremendous tenacity, people in Leipzig, Dresden, Berlin and then in virtually every town of Eastern Germany rose up and transformed Europe, helping to end the Cold War, with repercussions for the whole world. But did 1989 represent the resurgence of democracy that everyone hoped for?

Twenty years on, those events seem a distant memory. A kind of ‘unity blues’ appears to have taken hold of Germany. There is talk of a new ‘mental wall’ between people in the west and the east, where the economy remains fragile, with high unemployment and massive emigration alongside a few promising pockets of growth. At Frankfurt’s Museum of Modern Art (MMK), NovoArgumente is hosting a discussion about the legacy of 1989, about the causes of and possible answers to the current impasse in the unified Germany and beyond.

The event will be attended by Alex Hochuli, a guest representative from the Battle of Ideas Organising Committee.

Venue: Thai Theatre, London School of Economics, New Academic Building, 54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3LJ

Tickets: £7.50 (£5 concessions) per person. Tickets are available from the Academy of Ideas website.

For the past two centuries, the West has acquired treasures of the ancient world to fill its museums, so that visitors to the British Museum in London for example can see historic artefacts from all over the world. In recent years, though, various countries and even ethnic communities within countries have begun to demand the return of artefacts. Several North American museums were recently rocked by claims from countries including Italy that objects in their collections had been acquired illicitly. In response they returned over a hundred objects. Meanwhile a former curator of antiquities from the prestigious Getty Museum is currently on trial for conspiracy to traffic in illicit antiquities. In response to this controversy, UNESCO has encouraged the development of policies and laws which state that artefacts excavated after 1970 belong to the nation states in which they were found.

Where do treasures from the past rightly belong, and why? Should they be housed in the country of origin where locals as well as visitors can see them in their historic context, or in an institution with objects from everywhere? Often it is not clear what it means to say something belongs to a particular country. The Parthenon Marbles pre-date by millennia the formation of the Greek state, for example, while terracotta Nok sculptures found in Nigeria have little to do with that country’s culture today. Some argue the policy of repatriating such objects, along with ‘nationalist retentionist’ policies, promote divisive identity politics over a universalist appreciation of objects of art as part of world history. But is this just a self-serving argument on the part of Western institutions who already have much of the best ‘stuff’ from world history? Some argue museums should return objects or at least consult with the relevant communities as a form of reparations for colonialism. But does this unhelpfully politicise museums in the here and now? Others argue contentious artefacts should be entrusted to an international nongovernmental agency. But who might sit on this suggested nongovernmental agency and what power should they have? So are things best left where they are, or returned whence they came in the interests of fairness?

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Venue: Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Triangle Branch, Broadway and 66th Street, New York

Tickets: This event is FREE but ticketed. Please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

The run up to the US Presidential Elections last year seemed to buck the trend of entrenched cynicism and apathy that had come to characterise contemporary politics. Barack Obama’s rallies were often more like pop concerts or festivals, and many young people were mobilised to vote. Beyond broad generalities such as ‘hope’ and ‘change’, however, critics noted that specific political ideas and broader party principles seemed to be absent. Now we are in the midst of a severe recession: financial institutions and flagship businesses like GM are in crisis and jobs are being lost. So can President Obama deliver on his promise and deliver the change necessary for America to recover?

The global political climate has changed dramatically in recent years. The traditional debates between right and left, capitalism and communism – the interplay of which shaped the thinking of economic thinkers like Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes – lack salience today. So what ideological resources, if any, does Obama have to draw on? It often appears few politicians and commentators even understand what has happened and why – let alone how to resolve the problem. Many have sought to blame ‘greedy bankers’ or ‘greedy consumers’ and neglectful regulators – but is this a case of scapegoating rather than serious analyis? Western economies have become increasingly dependent on credit rather than production. So will attempting to kick-start these economies with a stimulus bill that is predicated on more credit creation get to the heart of the problem? Or do we need a more comprehensive, honest debate about the fundamentals of the economy, what is and isn’t working, and what has changed? Given all the failed experiments of the past, is there no alternative to how things are? Can citizens make a difference to these complex issues?

With thanks to our publishers, Random House and Palgrave Macmillan:

Venue: Sheffield Doc/Fest, Site Gallery, 1 Brown Street, Sheffield, S1 2BX

Tickets: Entry to this session and all other festival sessions requires a delegate pass. For further information go to: http://www.sheffdocfest.com

Many documentary makers are driven by a desire not only to document the world but to change it. So with the usual sources of funding drying up amid the recession, surely the opportunity to meet up with ‘social change film financiers’ is too good to miss? This is the idea behind radical new initiatives The Good Pitch, and Channel 4 Britdoc’s goodfilm.org. Campaigning NGOs and foundations as diverse as Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth, the NSPCC, Save the Children, the Soil Association and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust are now active funders of new documentary.

But do these new funding models compromise editorial independence? Nick Fraser, editor of the BBC’s Storyville strand, has suggested there are ‘big dangers’ that NGOs could edge out impartial journalism with propaganda, however benign. NGOs may well be trusted by audiences, but shouldn’t documentary makers be as sceptical of these funders as they would be of any other multi-national corporations looking to promote their interests through film?

When filmmakers are encouraged to promise ‘associated outreach campaigns’ to maximise the impact of their film and its message on behalf of social action funders, what distinguishes documentary film-making from mere political advertising? When goodfilm.org suggests ‘best practice’ means working on social-purpose films in order: ‘To try and change law and influence policy; To question the status quo; To care more about the world around them’, should we be inspired, or suspicious about new forms of audience manipulation? No-one would deny NGOs the right to make films, or indeed that documentary can be a powerful tool for social change, but what are the pitfalls of these new instrumental social action funding partnerships and the new passion for campaigning on film?

Venue: St John’s College, University of Oxford, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JP

Tickets: FREE but to reserve a place e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Tickets are available from the Academy of Ideas website.

There will be a drinks reception hosted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) following this event.

Many commentators have suggested today’s economic problems highlight a crisis in morality as much in the financial sector. It is argued that one of positive outcomes emanating from the shock-waves of the recession is that it opens up a space to assess society’s values. Of course, how we decide on future virtuous behaviour depends on our interpretation of past sins, on what and who we blame and for today’s difficulties.

The economic crisis is regularly presented as ‘payback time’ for human greed. The Labour-left Compass group notes approvingly that ‘In the current recession various corrections are taking place: blanket free-market approaches are being rejected, as are blanket individualistic and materialistic attitudes’. Green thinkers see the crisis as a timely reminder that we must curtail our economic activity and carbon-emitting lifestyles; maybe now we will finally accept the environmentalist mantra that less is more. Many argue for ‘Post-Crunch Corporate Ethics’ to rein-in risky ventures and penalise big business excesses. Some even argue the inevitable austerity on the horizon could encourage a return to shared values and bring a new social cohesion.

These cultural critiques of capitalism all agree we have over-reached ourselves, allowed economic growth to distort our priorities, and sacrificed the planet, and our own well-being on the altar of ‘filthy lucre’. But might we be learning the wrong lessons? If we demonise the aspiration to wealth as ‘greed’, how will society reward success and encourage the competitive spirit that so often drives social progress? What about innovation and experimentation? If every day, greedy bankers and capitalism-gone-mad are blamed for it all, while trust in politicians and the institutions of government is at historic lows too, who and what do we look to to change society for the better? Can we use the crisis as a spur to re-invent political and economic life?

The event will start by a short welcome introduction from Dr Chris Bickerton, lecturer, politics, University of Oxford; co-editor, Politics Without Sovereignty; blogger, Le Monde Diplomatique.

Battle of Ideas 2009 End of Festival ‘WRAP’  Party

RCA Student Union Art Bar, Sunday 1 November 7.30pm – late
Carry on the debates informally over bargain price drinks in the festival’s activism and creativity zone, hosted by the RCA student Union

Children can benefit from the support of their parents when taking part in sport, just as in their school work or music lessons, but when does loving encouragement spill over into ‘pushy parents’ applying unfair pressure to succeed? Should children from a very young age be pushed to focus on being the swiftest, highest or strongest, or should children’s sport put healthy fun before competitive excellence? Even a success story like diver Tom Daley, who represented Britain at the Olympics last year at the age of 14, has been subject to intense pressure, and bullying about his fame, so is it worth it? Some schools have gone so far as to abandon competitive sports altogether, even scrapping sports days. Meanwhile, the government-backed Child Protection in Sport website warns parents of sporty kids that their approval is important to their children’s self-esteem and so, ‘You should not make negative, personalised comments or punish them in any way’. But is it the place of strangers to lecture parents on how to encourage their own kids? Is there a danger of demonising the kind of impassioned support and feedback that might spur children on to succeed at the sports they enjoy so much?

Commentators often argue it is selfish of parents to put children through hours of training to fulfil their ambition for their child to be a professional tennis player or an Olympic competitor, but top athletes generally think their achievements outweigh the loss of a ‘normal’ childhood. Few children can hope to reach the pinnacle of their sport, but isn’t a competitive spirit essential even to enjoying amateur sport? Is parental encouragement an essential antidote to the unambitious, ‘all must have prizes’ tenor of our times or do pushy parents take the joy out of sport for young people, turning it into a chore rather than a pleasure?

Our shopping habits have acquired the status of world changing acts. The UK now spends nearly £40bn a year on ethical products. We are told that the tea, coffee, chocolate, clothes or Christmas presents we buy will shape the fate of the poor in the developing world. Closer to home, farmer’s markets, organic foods and reusable bags denote responsible shopping, concern for producers and the planet. The internet is awash with shopping sites for eco-chic and ethical goods and services. Every supermarket parades the provenance of its goods, TV shows reveal the hardships of workers in garment factories in the developing world, and commentators recommend we buy fewer cheap clothes and darn our socks to reduce waste.

The recession has brought with it a plethora of advisors, keen to tell us how to shop, save, cook, eat, and live frugally and responsibly. We may save a few pence or spend a few more but can we effect serious change through our shopping trolleys? Are ethical gifts of goats or hoes for the poor really effective, or symptomatic of low horizons and moral posturing? Should we be counting the air miles on goods we buy or celebrating the great diversity of global goods now within our reach? Is ethical consumption a principled step forward, a retreat from politics, or just better than nothing? Are we all ethical shoppers now?

Schools now have a legal duty to promote community cohesion. Education Secretary Ed Balls has called on schools to do more in shoring up a sense of unity in a post 7/7 world, arguing they should be key sites for promoting understanding between communities and combating intolerance and religious extremism. The curriculum is seen as the solution. From September 2009 a new strand known as ‘Britishness and Diversity’ is to be added to the remit of Citizenship teaching. Former head teacher Sir Keith Ajegbo, author of the report that inspired Citizenship education, believes teaching ‘core British values’ will help strengthen national identity. Pupils will be encouraged to think critically about issues of race, ethnicity and religion, whether through current affairs, or historical studies of the legacy of the British Empire, for example. Recognising that ‘many indigenous white pupils have negative perceptions of their own identity’, all pupils will be encouraged to explore their own identity through educational programmes such as ‘Who do we think we are?’

Critics reject this increased role for schools in fostering community and social cohesion, and exploring identity. They argue schools are in danger of seeing their primary role being redefined from one of transmission of knowledge to social engineering; they warn against the ‘corruption of the curriculum’. Professor Frank Furedi argues in his new book, Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, that the curriculum has been overloaded with instrumental demands external to education. Academic disciplines are treated with indifference in an attempt to right social wrongs. The danger is that schools will not only be unable to solve what are in effect broader political and social problems, but that their traditional academic-based aims will be degraded in the process as knowledge-based subjects are hollowed out to make way more explicit and instrumental demands. Is it the job of schools to promote community cohesion or should such a task be outside of the remit of teaching?

‘Everyone has one novel in them’ so the saying goes. Only today the saying seems to have become a reality. Creative writing has taken off with a boom. The first creative writing course arrived in the UK in 1970 at the UEA, becoming a legendary breeding ground for novelists such as Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro under the tutelage of Malcolm Bradbury. Today there are over 200 postgraduate creative writing courses in the UK. But the creative writing explosion is not confined to the ivory towers of academia. From prisons to shopping malls, creative writing projects are anywhere and everywhere: from the Library of Unwritten Books, which encourages people ‘to spontaneously record their unrealised ideas, fictional tales, and personal histories’, to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) that challenges wannabee writers to knock out a 175 pages in a month, declaring that ‘the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly’. The message seems to be just pick up a pen and express yourself.  Anyone can and should write creatively.

But should everybody try and write? Do more people writing mean more people are engaged with literature? Or are we diluting and dumbing-down the value of great literature by pretending that anyone can be an author? Novelist Jenny Diski had her foreword to an anthology of student writing rejected this year because rather than simply praising the work, she advised young authors to work harder at editing and redrafting. Is it better to take the NaNoWriMo approach and stop being so precious about the great art of writing, taking more risks and allowing more people to write by banishing the ghost of Dostoevsky? What can creative writing courses teach us about the art of writing? Isn’t literary genius something which is innate and can’t be taught? Who decides what great literature is and who can and can’t write anyway?

President Barack Obama inherited an American economy in severe trouble. Immediately upon entering the White House, Obama introduced the most wide-reaching state-led counter-crisis measures since the New Deal of the 1930s. The Obama administration’s ‘New New Deal’ includes bank bailouts, the largest peacetime economic stimulus package, a ‘toxic asset’ plan, government takeover of General Motors and new financial regulations.

Obama has said that getting the economy back on its feet is his number one priority, and it’s likely that his handling of economic affairs will be a major factor in determining whether his presidency is considered a success. Many praised the new American president for taking bold action and showing dynamic leadership. Polls have showed that Obama’s personal popularity has remained high, but as the recession has dragged on and unemployment has continued to rise, a growing number have begun to question the effectiveness of his policies. Has Obama gone too far in increasing government spending, or not far enough? Are the resulting huge US government deficits a temporary phenomenon, or will they cause a fiscal crisis in the near future? Does his government’s ownership of car companies and banks provide just short-term restructuring assistance, or do such moves herald a greater direct role for the state in the economy?

This session will seek to cut through the superficial assessments about Obama’s popularity and examine to what extent his administration’s initiatives can not only address the immediate downturn, but lay a foundation for longer-term economic growth.

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By 2030 there will be a 50 percent increase in the proportion of the population over 65, and an 80 percent increase in those over 80. As we get better at treating conditions of childhood and mid-life, the main business of health and social care will increasingly be the care of older people, often frail or disabled and often with long term illnesses - care and support rather than cure. Even now, around 60% of bed days in NHS hospitals are in people over 65.

However, there is growing concern that the elderly are increasingly seen as a burden on the system and that cutting-edge medicine and top-quality care is reserved for younger patients. A Daily Mail article this year entitled ‘Why does the NHS hate the elderly so much?’ quoted a British Geriatrics Society survey that found seven out of ten specialists believe the elderly are less likely to receive proper diagnosis and essential treatment. The campaign to lower the age for cervical cancer screening received wide media coverage following Jade Goody’s death. Yet free breast cancer screening stops at 73 even though the likelihood of the disease increases with age. Mental health and old age is a black-hole: in 2007 the Inquiry into Mental Health and Well-Being in Later Life found that older people with mental health problems are often ignored and receive little support.

Have the values and priorities of society, NHS staff and organisations caught up with the reality of an ageing population? Or are we still obsessed with youth, and in collective denial about the realities of ageing? The new Equality Bill will explicitly outlaw age-based discrimination in healthcare for the first time, but in the face of an economic downturn and likely constraints on public spending, is this simply unrealistic? When resources are scarce, perhaps it is only fair that we prioritise the needs of younger people, and let nature take its course with those who have had a ‘fair innings’. Or should we stick to the principles that each patient must be valued the same as any other?

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Enter any bookshop today and much professed fears about children and reading dissipate. From Harry Potter to Alex Rider, new writing for children is everywhere. Many have called the 2000s a new ‘Golden Age of Children’s Literature’.

Yet contemporary children’s literature is not an imaginative free-for-all. There is pressure to be relevant to modern children’s lives and this often takes the form of an ethical, as well as imaginative, narrative. From the gritty realism of Melvin Burgess’ Junk to the socially aware alternative world of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses, children’s fiction today often reflects a deeply flawed world. But are ethical concerns in children’s literature today the same as the moral fables of yesterday? Peter Hitchens called Philip Pullman ‘the most dangerous author in Britain’, claiming that Pullman was out to dethrone CS Lewis’ classic Narnia tales and supplant them with others that ‘proclaim the death of God to the young’.

But is Lewis’ 20th century view of Christian morality simply out-of-date for today’s kids, living in a de-facto secular and multicultural society? Are there some children’s books that are so out-of-kilter with today’s society and our moral values, they should be consigned to the dustbin of history? And shouldn’t fiction today help children to deal with current social issues and help them develop as responsible citizens? But does such socially concerned literature spell the death of escapism and imagination in children’s fiction? Isn’t it enough if a book simply entertains a child? And do classic children’s tales of the past have anything to offer our children imaginatively and morally?

Everybody these days seems to know best about how to raise children - apart from parents. From politicians issuing statements on how to ‘improve parenting’, to policy initiatives designed to promote better parental behaviour, to countless TV shows and self-help books produced by self-appointed experts, ‘parenting’ has come to be seen as the must-have skill of the twenty-first century. And it is one all parents must learn. But is parenting a skill that can be practised according to the prescriptions of accredited practitioners? Are parents so bad at bringing up their children that they need classes and official support in matters of everyday family life? What accounts for the popularity of parenting advice? Isn’t it really time we stood up for ourselves and our families against the relentless pressure to conform to the prototype of the perfect parent?

This session discusses the new book Standing Up To Supernanny, written by Jennie Bristow with the Academy of Ideas Parents’ Forum. Contributors to the book will join Bristow in a roundtable discussion to launch a Parents’ Liberation Movement - and discuss where that might start.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded to the economic crisis by calling in March for ‘a return to the values of the good society’. A true son-of-the-manse, he invoked a time when ‘hard work and effort was valued along with enterprise, honesty and integrity’. Certainly, there is a consensus across British politics that our values are in crisis as well as our economy. The Joseph Rowntree Trust’s Contemporary Social Evils report declares Britain is beset by problems like drink and drug abuse, family breakdown and rampant individualism. Similar concerns about ‘Broken Britain’ led Tory shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley to suggest the recession might be ‘good for us’, because ‘people tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol… and spend time at home with their families’. The predominant critiques suggest today’s crisis is a symptom of our addiction to consumption, and a good society should focus on well-being and happiness instead.

The global crisis is regularly presented as ‘payback time’ for human greed. The Labour-left group Compass notes approvingly that the recession is working as a corrective against ‘individualistic and materialistic attitudes’. Others argue for a ‘new corporate ethics’, with financial risk-taking and rampant capitalism indicted by events. But is the recession really a problem of ethics or morality? Is there a danger the new anti-capitalist ethic amounts to little more than risk-aversion and paralysing regulation? What about innovation and experimentation? If we demonise the aspiration to wealth as ‘greed’, how will society reward success and encourage ambition, and the competitive spirit that so often drives social progress?

We are told to reject ‘me, me, me’ individualism, but must we choose between selfishness and altruistic sacrifice, or might we form bonds of solidarity around collective self-interest? And is a bit of individualism really so bad anyway? Debating what we mean by the Good Society allows us to imagine how society could be rather than accepting the status quo. But as we search for a new kind of politics, will we rekindle idealism or instead adopt ‘post-recession virtues’ that - far from allowing us to move society forward - will reconcile us to less ambition, less freedom and less capacity to shape society?

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Energy efficiency and energy saving play a big role in energy policy. Everything from loft insulation to public transport is used as a carrot to encourage us to use less energy and the UK’s energy minister claims that introducing smart meters ‘will empower all consumers to monitor their own energy use’. Meanwhile the ‘stick’ of taxes and rationing threaten in the background. Some campaigners go even further, telling us to cut out flying. Is this about helping consumers to make better choices, breaking our energy ‘addiction’ or is it a patronising and authoritarian intervention in individual choice?

Campaigners urge us to switch our lights off for Earth Hour, while arguments for building new plants are met with a cynicism about energy giants’ profits and cosy corporate relations with government. But when EDF’s ‘Save Today Save Tomorrow’ campaign urges individual consumers to reduce their consumption and British Gas sells energy-saving gadgets alongside power, it seems as if everyone is joining the energy-saving bandwagon. History shows that despite gains in efficiency, growing economies need a lot more energy. Today this point is made by emerging economies in favour of not signing up to stringent carbon-reduction agreements. But is it time to change the expectation that economic growth means more energy use? Proposals for a Green New Deal argue jobs and growth can be found through maximising efficiency, while some even argue that more provision merely encourages carefree, even luxuriant, energy use. Meanwhile, an energy crisis looms, only delayed by the recession itself.

As the developing world uses more energy, are we using more than our fair share? Does increasing energy use in China and India make personal sacrifice here irrelevant or does it make it more urgent? Is changing our energy lifestyles a necessity, unrealistic, or unacceptably authoritarian? And what about a future where we are not obsessed with reducing consumption?

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Responses to the economic crisis have ranged from ‘boss-napping’ in France to factory occupations in London and Belfast. It might appear there is a new militancy afoot, but the bigger picture is that responses are typically individualistic, even therapeutic, such as personal grievance procedures against bullying bosses and demands for counselling for over-worked, ‘stressed out’ employees. Unite is even providing personal fitness lessons to Honda workers in Swindon during a four-month shutdown.

Where ‘collective’ responses do occur, they can take a surprisingly altruistic form. A recent survey of distribution workers found they are prepared to be flexible if it will stop colleagues losing their jobs. The Swindon Honda workers voted in May to accept a temporary pay cut to save jobs. Over 400 such ideas have been submitted to the ‘Keep Britain Working’ campaign. Do these initiatives represent a new solidarity, or fatalism and despair? Is it better to be pragmatic than to make demands that seem unrealistic? What role is there for the unions?

Is the best recession-proofing strategy simply to work on one’s CV? Even before the crisis, Lord Leitch wrote in a government report that if ‘skills were once a key lever for prosperity and fairness. Skills are now increasingly the key lever’. The unions agreed, demanding accredited life-long learning and training opportunities for their members. Can qualifications protect us from the recession? In our service-oriented ‘knowledge economy’, the training on offer is often in generic ‘competences’, such as the ability to listen, or work with others. Does up-skilling in these ‘soft skills’ leave workers with anything of value beyond flexibility and compliance? What is the best way for all of us to protect our livelihoods?

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The African National Congress (ANC) stormed to victory in the euphoric atmosphere of the first democratic election of 1994 promising ‘Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!’ As they celebrate their 15th anniversary in power and look forward to hosting the World Cup in 2010, the world’s eyes are once again on South Africa and on the ANC. Will they be in the dock for failing to live up to their promise? Or will Jacob Zuma’s government be hailed as a model for other developing democracies? What has happened in 15 long years?

Critics point to the rising crime rate, the modest housing programme, the failure of the education system and the poor quality of public services. Controversy also surrounds the racialised affirmative action programme of Black Economic Empowerment, which led to a ‘brain-drain’ and has failed to live up to its promise of providing jobs for the millions of people who voted for the ANC.

Supporters say the ANC is still dealing with legacy of Apartheid; that 15 years is not long enough to judge their performance and that after the euphoria they are now buckling down to real politics. This year, though, more South Africans voted for opposition parties to rule out the possibility of the ANC changing the constitution with a two-thirds majority. Is the democratic process deepening? Or could South Africa come to resemble Zimbabwe? What prospect is there of Western levels of development for all?

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Healthcare and the NHS are in a state of flux: the shift toward prevention, target-setting and-cost cutting are motivating many to seek new ways of working. A new breed of designers is at the forefront of arguing for the re-designing of the delivery of services based on ‘patient needs’. This means improving their experience of healthcare, and measuring success by ‘patient satisfaction’. This isn’t simply about designing things to be more convenient for patients in hospitals and surgeries, however, but is part of a wider trend towards using design to encourage people to change the way they live, and adopt healthier lifestyles, preventing illness.

Encouraged by a new breed of policy makers, designers believe they are better able than politicians and clinicians to nudge people into making healthier choices, by transforming the physical environment, improving food labelling, creating incentives to lose weight or give up smoking, and even re-thinking how a receptionist answers the phone. It is hoped that of all of this and more will influence how people behave – with regard to their own health and the services they consume. But will services re-designed around a patient’s experience be enough to transform healthcare, and is all of this genuinely about empowering patients to make the right choices, or really about the nanny state making choices for us?

Everyone agrees healthcare needs to be improved, but can attempts to alter patients’ and staff’s behaviour succeed? And will focusing on patient satisfaction be enough to transform the NHS and wider healthcare provision? Or does this only obscure the economic, political and infrastructure problems that underlie the failings of the health service? At a time when healthcare faces drastic cutbacks, some argue it makes economic sense to discourage people from choosing unhealthy lives and becoming a drain on resources. But is it the place of designers to implement such a contentious agenda? Will making patients accept the ‘terms and conditions’ of a health care system before being allowed to access its services be good for anyone?

Millions stayed up to share that historic moment on 21 July 1969, when sci-fi dreams became reality as the first human being set foot on the moon. Forty years after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, misty-eyed space enthusiasts are queuing up to demand a return to the Space Age. Why is it so long since Man last went beyond low Earth orbit? What happened to the risk-taking philosophy of early space exploration, to the sense that the conquest of space is a universalist human mission, transcending national boundaries? While some see President John F Kennedy’s 1961 commitment to reach the moon by the end of that decade as an inspirational act of leadership, others draw attention to the political context - the Cold War – pointing out that the ‘space race’ with the Soviet Union was bound up with the arms race. Even at the time, critics argued the moon landing was a waste of money that would have been better spent building hospitals or alleviating poverty.

So are we right to keep our feet on the ground and focus our energies on problems closer to home? Or might reaching for the stars once more give us a new sense of purpose and ambition in all spheres of life? Should we reach even beyond the moon? If the US and Russia are no longer prepared to lead the way, will China and India become the space powers of the 21st century? Is the Space Age a thing of the past, or can and should we expect space travel to be part of our future?

The election of Barack Obama in November 2008 represented to many Americans the promise of real political change. Amid war and economic recession, Obama’s historic inauguration in January drew millions to line the mall in Washington DC and stirred hope in the hearts of a nation.

In the current political climate, such high expectations of a politician are rare. The jury is still out on whether Obama can deliver on the changes he promised. His economic stimulus package has been far from uncontentious and has hardly resolved America’s deep economic problems. Although his foreign policy has struck some conciliatory notes, with overtures towards Iran and the pressing of the ‘reset button’ with Russia, Afghanistan has now become Obama’s war. Back home, Obama’s post-racial stance has been questioned following his choice of Supreme Court candidate and his intervention in the “Gates-gate” fiasco. The president’s flagship policy of healthcare reform has not only met opposition from Republicans, but has also raised questions from Democrats wary of increasing the US budget deficit. Despite claiming on the campaign trail that ‘change comes to Washington’, after six months in office, Congress still has highly unfavourable ratings, even if Obama himself maintains the confidence of a majority of Americans.

One year after his election, has President Obama lived up to the hype? Does his administration really represent a new broom to sweep the cobwebs away – or now that the dust has settled – is there a return to politics as usual at the White House? In new circumstances, what would ‘politics as usual’ even mean? Has Obama set his sights too high… or not been ambitious enough? 

Critics used to be feared and respected for their ability to make definitive judgements on everything from conceptual art to catwalk fashions. This mattered not just for the success – or failure – of the individuals being judged, but for shaping culture more generally. Critical acclaim for 18th-century actor David Garrick changed how we viewed Shakespeare as well as actors. Hazlitt was Romanticism’s critical muse, while Kenneth Tynan championed the post-war realism of plays like John Osborne’s Look Back In Anger. It could even be said that criticism makes us who we are, forming, as Roger Scruton puts it, ‘part of the great transition from youthful enjoyment to adult discrimination’. Today criticism can still – sometimes literally – define our tastes, with the Evening Standard’s Fay Maschler described as the ‘most feared and respected restaurant critic’ in London.

But society often seems to have disavowed its critics today, particularly where high culture is concerned. If anything, tough criticism is less associated with the arts than lifestyle journalism and light entertainment, from Fay Maschler to Simon Cowell. Some fear the dearth of in-depth critical writing reflects something deeper. With teachers wary of criticising students lest they damage their self-esteem, and professional journalism giving way to amateur blogging, are we the midst of a crisis of judgement? From politics to pop, some argue robust debate has collapsed to be replaced by a culture in which everybody’s opinions must be respected.

Are we no longer comfortable with criticism and authority today? Who needs a coterie of ‘official’ critics when anybody can publish a blog or write a reader’s review?  Is this a liberating democratisation, empowering the man and woman in the street? How can we refine our own judgement without a wider culture of criticism? Do we risk reducing critical clarity to a competing cacophony of unexamined prejudices? Isn’t a society that is afraid to make critical judgements one that surrenders to paralysis and puerility? What is the role of the critic and why should we listen?

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Forget the police: a new crime-buster is on the block. Designers claim they can lead the charge in the fight against crime. The government backed Design & Technology Alliance Against Crime is leading a programme ‘to develop innovative design solutions to help prevent robbery, to crime-proof hot new gadgets and to embed public safety in the design of new public spaces’. In schools, design ideas are being developed to reduce bullying, fighting and petty theft. Designers are also working on ways to reduce alcohol-related antisocial and criminal behaviour, while materials experts have designed toughened glasses that lessen the damage caused by glassings in bars. Better design can also reduce traffic violations perhaps better than cameras and policing. The Kensington High Street scheme got rave reviews from design bodies when nearly all guard rails and barriers segregating road users from pedestrians were removed, reducing speeding and accidents.

We can all benefit from such innovations; who wouldn’t want better bike locks or services like ‘Immobilise’ which allows people to register their valuables and have them returned if stolen? But critics object that many of these initiatives involve manipulating the public to change their behaviour whether they like it or not. When crime-busting features are automatically included in products, clothing and even in neighbourhood layouts, are the public not denied choice?

Designers can’t be blamed for working on lucrative government contracts, but is the ‘design establishment’ compromised by aligning itself with explicitly politicised agendas like ‘the war on crime’? Are designers pandering to panics about rising crime levels where in reality, crime is not escalating, despite the headlines? Is there a danger of turning communities into experimental playgrounds for designers? Or is designing out crime simply an opportunity to improve our lives for the better, and even - to quote the Design Council – ‘stop violence and save lives’?

Monday 16 November is the start of the Anti-Bullying Alliance’s (ABA) 2009 Anti-Bullying Week, focusing on ‘cyberbullying’ by text and on the internet. The ABA aims to ‘reduce bullying’ and ‘create a safer environment for children’. But why has bullying become such a big issue in recent years? The notion that children can be ‘scarred for life’ as a result of insults hurled at them by their fellow pupils has become accepted as common sense. As a result, the raft of behavioural codes that now regulate playground behaviour, and the increasingly interventionist role of adults in children’s disputes, is seen as a necessary and humane development. Anti-bullying initiatives are widely considered an unquestionable good thing, since critics would appear to be apologising for bullies. But with the definition of bullying expanding to include electronic name-calling and even exclusion from particular friendship groups, is the issue less clear-cut than it seems? And do anti-bullying campaigns really work anyway?

Critics suggest anti-bullying initiatives can do more harm than good. If teachers are encouraged to protect pupils from every playground spat, could it undermine children’s ability to to handle difficult events in the future? Does the concern with cyberbullying reflect an unhelpful broadening of the definition of bullying? Or is it imperative that adults try to nip potential problems in the bud before they escalate?

Nuclear energy is being embraced by some as the best solution for meeting rising power needs and respecting the environment. New nuclear plants are under construction in China, India and elsewhere, although in the UK and USA they remain on the drawing board. Across Europe the question of new nuclear plants has been put on the agenda and countries are considering reversing previous commitments to close their nuclear reactors.

People want green energy, but are worried about risks - from waste, proliferation and accidents. Nuclear’s potential is often overshadowed by its destructive history – from Hiroshima through to Chernobyl. But are governments too ambivalent today about nuclear to give it the support it needs to succeed? Although political opposition seems to have slackened, with leading environmentalists now voicing their support for nuclear energy as a response to climate change, other difficulties stand in the way: a lack of engineers, shortage of funds for investment and sundry barriers to development. The possibility of nuclear fusion – producing energy by joining atomic nuclei rather than splitting them – holds out the promise of cheap power without the waste produced by existing fission technology. Yet the promise of cheap clean energy has not been universally welcomed. Some argue that the dream of fusion is a mirage that encourages us to ignore the problems of climate change.

Is nuclear power a disaster waiting to happen or could it help create a more resilient energy system and bring energy to the developing world? What does the current climate of thinking on fusion research tell us about today’s attitudes to energy? Is the new nuclear age an exciting solution to energy challenges or a dangerous threat to the future of mankind and the planet?

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The state is one of the UK’s biggest employers. Even with calls for major cuts in the midst of recession, most jobs today seem to be in the public sector, either directly or in state-supported quangos and social enterprises. With the effective nationalisation of major banks, the state looks to be colonising the world of work. What does this mean for Britain’s working culture? A recent survey found many public sector workers derive satisfaction from the sense they are playing a socially useful role, but detractors complain public sector jobs are overprotected and public sector workers have it easy. The private sector is seen as more self-interested and ruthlessly cut-throat, but also more efficient and enterprising, as well as being the real source of wealth. How significant are the differences between the two working cultures?

In recent years, the distinction between the state and the market has become blurred, with the introduction of the market into the NHS and education, and the development of the Private Finance Initiative. Many more jobs are ultimately supported by the state – from jobs in the arts to those in NGOs and charities, which don’t necessarily share the traditional culture of the public sector. Meanwhile, some say relentless form-filling, a target culture, performance-related incentives, privatisation and outsourcing have all but destroyed the public service ethos. They argue employees now have the worst of both worlds – lower pay and endless bureaucracy, but also greater scrutiny and insecurity rather than professional pride and a sense of being valued. And in the private sector, the new agenda of ‘corporate social responsibility’ means businesses and their employees are also concerned with the ‘public good’.

What effect have these developments had on Britain’s working culture, and is it the right one to kick-start economic growth? Commentators sometimes praise hard-working immigrants, prepared to go beyond the 9 to 5, unlike overpaid, municipal jobsworths and work-to-rule public sector trade unionists. But are British workers really so bad? And is private sector discipline the only way to foster entrepreneurialism and quality?

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