We need a new Nolan to restore trust in government.

Posted on by Leighton Andrews

This was my article on The Article

For most of his working life, Boris Johnson has behaved as though rules and social norms were meant for others, not him. So it was no surprise to learn that his boast that he ‘shook hands with everybody’ was made on the same day that SAGE’s behavioural science subcommittee had recommended hand-shaking should stop.

Next week marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Nolan report on standards in public life. For most of this last quarter‐century, the Nolan Report has provided the underlying ethical basis for public life in the United Kingdom.

Since Brexit, that has changed. Prior to the Brexit vote, ministerial transgressions would have been accompanied by a public outcry which would have shortened the ministerial lives of those involved. Post‐2016 they are being routinely ignored.

In this new era, ministers can perform badly but not be sacked. They can mislead Parliament but escape punishment. Ministers can undermine civil servants without consequence to themselves. Ex‐Ministers could ignore Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) rules and a year later become prime minister.

When the public inquiry into COVID-19 arrives, as long as it is held on a statutory basis and statements have to be given under oath, the current governmental consensus will break down. Already, in hearings of the Health and Science and Technology Select Committees, we have seen scientists and medical advisers having to admit that resource constraints affected early decisions on testing and PPE. The future inquiry will hear from representatives of the Welsh and Scottish governments who have already made it clear how Prime Ministerial announcements are being briefed without their involvement in the messaging. Advisers and officials are getting ready to break ranks, with the Cygnus pandemic flu exercise analysis now put into the public domain.

The question has yet to be put, but in due course we will see how advice on ‘the vulnerable’ was changed after the 16 March statement by the English Chief Medical Adviser that the vulnerable – which he defined as those advised to have a flu jab – would be asked to shield themselves. That amounted to a potential twenty million-plus people, so within a couple of weeks an algorithm had been created to sort ‘the vulnerable’ from ‘the extremely vulnerable’ and reduce the number being asked to shield to around 1.5 million. Meanwhile older and disabled patients were moved out of hospitals expected to be needed for COVID-19 patients into care homes, a decision which might have seemed rational at the time but we know now was carried out without proper planning or ensuring the availability of the necessary equipment and testing.

When the inevitable inquiry takes place, one of the questions it will need to answer is whether in this new era, the Nolan principles still apply. The Prime Minister’s personal conduct suggests that it does not.

Nolan recommended that, like senior civil servants, ministers who leave office should seek permission from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) before accepting a business role.

In July 2018, within a week of resigning as Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson signed a contract with the Daily Telegraph to write a weekly column. He did not apply to ACOBA for permission until two weeks after signing the contract. The Committee refused to grant retrospective advice, stating that Johnson’s actions were “a breach of the rules”.

In December 2018 Boris Johnson was also told by the Commons Standards Committee to apologise for his “over‐casual” failure to declare £52,000 worth of expenses. However, Johnson’s political career has clearly been unaffected by these transgressions.

Other apparent breaches of the Ministerial Code, including the duty to avoid confusing ministerial and political work, and to avoid using government facilities for party political purposes, or transparency over meetings with lobbying groups, appear to have been ignored. Boris Johnson hosted the launch of a political think-tank, the Institute for Free Trade (later re‐named the Initiative for Free Trade), at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The Ministerial Code places a responsibility on all ministers “to uphold the impartiality of the Civil Service”. They should be professional in their dealings with the Civil Service and give due weight and respect to the advice that they are given. In 2019, we saw the resignation of the UK Ambassador to the United States, Sir Kim Darroch, after his confidential comments on the US President were leaked to British newspapers. Darroch resigned after the refusal of Boris Johnson, to endorse him during one of the Conservative leadership debates. The former US ambassador to the European Union, Anthony Gardner, tweeted, ‘We are truly living during a religious war. Decency goes out the window and there is no sense of outrage’. Meanwhile, reports have multiplied about Civil Service departures and a decline in morale.

It’s doubtful how many now remember John Major’s hope that the Nolan Committee would be an ‘ethical workshop’.The Nolan Report depended on a shared political consensus about the norms which underpin standards in public life.

That consensus rested on peer endorsement within Westminster. It required peer pressure to uphold agreed standards. It demanded a media that endorsed those standards and ways of operating, and refused to downplay breaches of norms simply because the politician affected shared their views on a particular issue.

It probably also depended on a public which had not yet reached the state of cynicism about parliamentarians that the 2009 expenses scandal produced. In the UK today, attitudes to Brexit determine attitudes to political norms. Sadly, as Alastair Campbell has written, we live in a ‘post‐shame’ world.

We can all feel human sympathy for a Prime Minister who has felt the brutal effects of COVID-19. But with the UK now recording the highest number of deaths in Europe, the current crisis cannot be reduced to a personal soap opera. And the Prime Minister will not get away with the usual flannel any longer.

It is not irrelevant to this crisis that we have a Prime Minister whose track record of breaking rules on business appointments or reporting of financial interests or scientific advice on disease transmission suggests they regard these as matters for people other than themselves. It is central to the inquiry that must come. We live in a post‐Nolan age, and Boris Johnson is its embodiment. If trust in government is to be restored, we need a new Nolan.

 

When the crisis is over

Posted on by Leighton Andrews

I published this on The Article on 16 April:

The Commission of Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks in the United States said when it reported that the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management. There will be a Public Inquiry into the conduct of the COVID-19 crisis in the UK, and it will be harsh in all four areas.

In every area of social life what seemed unthinkable has now happened. So, first, imagination. This, said the 9/11 Commission, ‘is not a gift usually associated with bureaucracies.’ The exercise of imagination needed to become routine. We know that pandemics featured as a high priority in the National Risk Register and there had been a pandemic planning exercise in 2016. But lessons weren’t learned. And it is likely that the government’s imaginative and cognitive bandwidth had been stretched by its Brexit planning and election fighting by early 2020 and that crucial decisions were delayed, in part because the necessary processing of the unthinkable did not take place early enough.

Policy. Policy changed alarmingly quickly with an about-turn in mid-March, even though many experts have said that the signs were obvious by February. As Professor Colin Talbot has pointed out, early in March, mass gatherings were ok. Then, but only after the Cheltenham races and the Stereophonics concerts and the Liverpool/Athletico Madrid game, they weren’t. School closures weren’t necessary, then they were. PPE wasn’t essential, then it was. Mask-wearing wasn’t necessary, now maybe it is. In the last week, leaks suggested that the Home Office still believes that 80% of UK citizens will get the virus. On March 16, the chief medical officer said all those who  were vulnerable – those who were advised to have the annual flu vaccination – would be asked to shield themselves. Then, after it dawned that this meant 19 million people, a revised version of this for the ‘extremely vulnerable’ – 1.5 million people – became the emphasis. Except that care homes, already housing thousands of the extremely vulnerable, were forgotten.

Capabilities. One of the successes of the crisis has been military logistics – the building of the Nightingale hospital in London, the Dragon’s Heart hospital in Cardiff’s international rugby stadium, and many others. The transformation of operational focus in the health services in the four nations has debunked criticism of the dexterity of the NHS. The development of the furlough and business financial packages are successes of government adaptability. There has been one important communications success – the clarity of the core message of Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives. But there are long-term issues which have demonstrated our over-reliance on global supply chains in respect of testing, PPE equipment and ventilator manufacture. Ventilator developments have been stop-start, with some schemes initially announced with great fanfares subsequently dropped.

Management. Implementation is always the forgotten end of policy. Unfortunately, over-promising and under-delivering has been the norm. Press conferences are full of mixed messages and uncertainty. Targets announced by ministers for testing and ventilator production have come and gone. There is silence about the work-streams the government is managing to deliver progress in different areas. The comprehensive financial package announced by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, one of those who actually sounds like a grown-up when he is holding a press conference, needs detailed clarification on its longevity and the money needs to be released sooner. Payment of Universal Credit was already taking too long and now there are millions more claimants. Some universities are on the brink of insolvency with no obvious rescue in sight.

Looking ahead now instead of looking back, it is obvious that as other European countries start to unlock their lockdowns that comparisons will be drawn and questions will be asked here. In Denmark, the equivalent of primary schools are going back. In Spain some businesses are re-opening. This week President Macron gave some examples of a phased re-opening when extending the French lockdown to 11 May. But the UK strategy for relaxing the lockdown is opaque. It’s not clear that one exists. As Keir Starmer has said, public trust will depend on transparency and openness. No-one is asking for a detailed timetable, but the strategy should give some indication of the factors that will determine how a lockdown should be relaxed, such as mass testing and contact tracing, as well as an indication of what happens if, as expected, there are future waves of the virus. Greater effort needs to be made to integrate the thinking of the devolved administrations, who will make the decisions on school re-opening, for example, with that of the UK Government.

Underpinning this, of course, is the sense of a vacuum in political leadership. For very human reasons, the Prime Minister is beyond criticism at the present time. He is politically untouchable. But the proper sympathy extended to him for his recovery cannot be an excuse for dither at the centre of government. Key decisions will have to be made. Clarity will be needed in all statements about future strategy. A sense of hope for the coming reconstruction period is crucial.

 

Rabbits do better in headlights

Posted on by Leighton Andrews

Somewhere in the thousands of words he has written over the last few weeks, Alastair Campbell said he had been suffering from ‘Covinsomnia’. Maybe it was in a tweet, because I can’t find it now. Anyway, last night I seemed to be suffering from a bout of Campbell Covinsomnia myself. I’m not sure why. I went to bed early and I was relaxed and ready for sleep. I made bread yesterday – Adrian Chiles, you forgot to remind us to grease the tin. I went for a bike ride. I cleared my email backlog during the day. I listened to the new Strokes and Laura Marling albums (yes, I’m getting value now from my Spotify account.)

I’ve been back to sleep since, but whether it was caused by the UK government or not, when I woke in the middle of the night,  I was turning over in my mind the latest woeful UK Government press conference yesterday afternoon. And the latest abject performance by political journalists. Alastair has written on several occasions about the questions he thinks need to be asked. Here are some of mine, with follow-ups for when The Usual Flannel (TUF for short) is given in answers.

  1. Will Matt Hancock’s target of 100,000 tests a day be met by 30 April? Yes or no? (If Hancock is doing the briefing and offers TUF, then ask if he will resign if the target he announced is not met)
  2. How many tests were done yesterday? (If TUF, ask ‘last week?’)
  3. Is testing central to relaxing the lockdown? Yes or no? If so, how many tests per day will be needed before the lockdown can be relaxed? What’s the point of the app if you are not testing intensively?
  4. The chief scientific adviser said the plateau, not yet reached, might last for two weeks or more. How many deaths does the government expect by 30 April? (If TUF, ask 25,000? 30,000?)
  5. Why did the chief scientific adviser say that countries are reporting hospital deaths only when France is reporting combined deaths? If TUF, ask what estimates does the government have for deaths at home or in care home settings overall.
  6. How many additional ventilators have now been delivered since the promise of 30,000 extra was made in March?
  7. Emmanuel Macron yesterday set out a plan for lifting the lockdown in stages. What is the UK government’s strategy for relaxing the lockdown? Could we see a similar staged response? (If TUF, ask what are the detailed work streams which the government is examining to allow a lifting of the lockdown).
  8. President Macron announced that all French people would be able to procure a mask. Does that feature in UK government plans for ending the lockdown?
  9. Does the government agree with the Home Office deputy scientific adviser who told Passport Office workers a week ago that 80% of people in the UK will get COVID-19?(If TUF, ask what is your current planning assumption for percentage of UK citizens who will be infected in 2020)?
  10. Does the government accept that the current death rate indicates that the recent Washington study suggesting 66,000 deaths in the UK by August is right?

There are many more questions. These are just the ones I want asked, and answered, now. A lot less TUF, please. The press conferences so far tell me that rabbits do better in headlights. And I’m talking about the journalists as much as the government spokespeople – who have been TUF-ing it out for months.

Coronavirus Curriculum Planning 2020-1

Posted on by Leighton Andrews

This is essentially me thinking aloud about the four post-grad modules I am scheduled to teach next academic year. Two weeks ago I said that if I was still here in the autumn – and I am planning to be:

Whatever happens, if I am here in the autumn, I will I know be teaching the social, political and economic consequences of coronavirus on at least two postgrad courses I lead.

In fact, I now think I will be teaching it on all four modules. All my teaching, aside from guest lectures, is in the October-January period, so I need to start some outline preparation. Here goes as I brain-dump some initial course thinking in a public value business school.

Government from the Inside – From the Minister’s Viewpoint (PLT435)

You can find a link to the module overview here. It is essentially an overview of the Ministerial life, from appointment to leaving office. It looks amongst other things at Appointment and the first 100 days, Ministers in Cabinet, as departmental leaders, in the Chamber and Committee, working with and against the Opposition, Ministers and the Media, pressure groups and ministers, evidence for ministerial policy-making, leaving ministerial office. It covers UK and devolved ministerial life.I am planning a book for Palgrave Macmillan based on the course which I have now taught for the last three years.

Students are assessed through an end-of-term essay. These are on topics they choose and are always interesting. Last year one student elected to look at Norman Fowler and the Aids Crisis, which has some parallels with today’s crisis. If I took a coronavirus lens I guess I would look through the course at how the virus has disrupted the marking of Boris Johnson’s 100 days in office; how COBR (A) has worked in co-ordination, including with the devolved administrations, how scrutiny of evidence has developed in Parliamentary committees, how pressure group and media criticism has influenced ministerial policy, and the role of daily press briefings in crises, the collation of evidence in an emerging crisis and the building of ministerial discursive capacity, Opposition input in the crisis, and maybe some futurism about ministerial reputations in the crisis and their likely scorecards after leaving office.

I am already collating materials, from press reports to parliamentary inquiries and government documents, which includes much of the advice that went to SAGE. (To be fair to the UK government, a lot of material has been published in respect of the evidence base and their assumptions). There is also a considerable amount of material on managing crises in the interviews with former ministers on the Institute for Government’s Ministers Reflect series. No question then that coronavirus will feature on this module.

International Business Management (BST448)

This is one of the core modules on Cardiff Business School’s MSc. in International Management. I have been teaching this module for the last two years and it has had a significant ‘tech’ focus, which has enabled the exploration of themes around globalisation, based on my recent research. In postgrad terms it’s a large module with about 140 students, a very high proportion of them from China. Who knows how or if this will change next year? The COVID-19 outbreak has sparked all kinds of writing about the future of globalisation, networks, re-localisation, etc. The COVID-19 outbreak also lends itself to a straightforward introduction for management students to PESTLE analysis.

There are significant opportunities here obviously to look comparatively at governmental and political responses, business impacts in different sectors, the role of technology in surveillance of the disease (and obviously surveillance more generally), and how the disease may affect international business development, including global value chains. It may allow students to bring their own country by country observations to the forefront.

Think I will definitely be teaching COVID-19 and its impact on the the global economy this course, but it may require some re-writing.

Leading Policy and Delivery (BST652)

I was involved in co-developing our new part-time MSc in Public Leadership . This autumn I will be teaching the module about leading policy into delivery over three sessions. I guess that COVID-19 will become one of the cases that we will interrogate as it will be directly relevant to everyone’s immediate experience. Our students come from a variety of public service backgrounds.

Unlike the ministerial module above, the focus will be more about the impact on public service delivery. So I can see us covering its impact on the relationship between the making of policy and its implementation on the ground; thefeedback loops between frontline delivery and policy-making; collaboration between services,  both devolved and non-devolved; integration of third sector in delivery; what this means for target-setting, capacity- building, resilience planning, governance.

Much of this would have been discussed on the module in any case. But there is quite a lot to plan for here. And I think the agenda will expand as time goes by.

Strategic Planning and Innovation (BST680).

This year we began teaching a postgraduate Diploma in Healthcare  Planning in Wales. I am one of two academics teaching on the Strategic Planning and Innovation module. To a degree, our emphasis, as the NHS Wales Deputy Chief Executive, Simon Dean, said at Cardiff Business School in 2019, is that what matters most is the planning, not the plan. Though this was devised before the COVID-19 outbreak, we already had considered planning for unexpected emergencies and crises and ways in which governments did this in a variety of spheres, from terrorist outbreaks to a no-deal Brexit. COVID-19 forces consideration of previous planning exercises for pandemics.

This module from my perspective probably needs some adjustment but less overall than the others, as the key themes are there in outline, but need drawing out with reference to the current crisis, and the evidence materials published by the UK Government already mentioned above are directly relevant.

That was a brain-dump on behalf of my course planning. Now I need to allocate time for teaching preparation for each of these modules.

 

Against car-cophony

Posted on by Leighton Andrews

I intend to buy a new car soon. My nine-year-old Saab can keep going for a while longer, but they don’t make Saabs anymore, the keys are falling to bits and the cost of buying and then programming a new key is disproportionate to the value of the car. The Saab I bought back in 2007 was equipped to run on both lead-free petrol and bio-ethanol – (once memorably described in the Guardian as a sort of ‘flammable muesli’) though the only petrol station I knew that supplied bio-ethanol soon dropped that option, and in any case early on there were serious questions raised about the ethics and sustainability of the product which continue today.

It’s worth considering the failure of the bio-ethanol option in the UK as those who subscribe to a technologically determined view of the future now seem to be out to persuade us that we will all be driven around in self-driving cars in the not-too-distant future. At a recent discussion at Cardiff’s Innovation Point on Educational Technology, the audience was asked if they expected to be riding in a self-driving car within ten years, five years, two years, or never. I believe I was the only person to opt for ‘never.’ I’ll come back to why I think that in due course.

A good summary of what the technological determinists claim was given by Simon Kuper in Saturday’s FT (my comments in brackets). Simon’s a good writer but this time round I found myself saying ‘I don’t agree with his take on this’:

  • driverless cars could allow cities to cut vehicle numbers by about 90% (fanciful weasel word ‘could’)
  • they will reduce accidents by around 90% (not convinced)
  • pollution and carbon emissions will drop, because the cars will be electric (begs a lot of questions on the production of that electricity)
  • ‘the old, the disabled and teenagers will suddenly gain mobility’ (my 86 year-old mother could drive now thanks, when she gets her new hip sorted, plenty of teenagers and disabled people do now)
  • people will save fortunes by ditching their cars (we’ll see)
  • driverless cars won’t need to park because ‘the driverless car is the perfect cheap taxi – it can drop you at work, then go off to collect somebody else’ (when does it recharge?)
  • cities will charge you for owning your own car – ‘if you think personal cars will survive as status symbols, remember that horses were once status symbols’ (but TV didn’t kill cinema, Khan Academy hasn’t killed schooling. Remember, back in 2000 Michael Lewis forecast that TiVO meant the end of commercial television as we know it. ITV has had a great run)
  • congestion will drop ‘as driverless cars can drive in dense packs, won’t get lost and won’t have to circle around looking for parking’ (guess we’ll have lots of wifi recharging then somehow – how?)
  • The police won’t racially discriminate by pulling over black drivers – or indeed any drivers (racial discrimination isn’t stopped by autonomous cars)
  • The tedium of commutes will disappear as you can use your driving time for other things. (commutes are tedious on trains, buses and tubes – why would driverless cars be different?)

Kuper also warns of job decimation in the automobile and associated industries from car manufacturers to taxi drivers to insurance companies. He acknowledges that ‘only 6 per cent of the biggest US cities’ (not sure what that 6% actually represents) have factored driverless cars into their long-term planning though industry experts expect driverless cars to be on our roads by 2020. (wait till there’s insurance against failure of autonomous cars)

Meanwhile, in the Harvard Business Review this month, the CEO of Nissan and Renault, Carlos Ghosn, sets out how these companies are planning for drivers to be able to choose whether to drive or not and explains why he isn’t scared of Tesla, Apple or Google parking their vehicles on his lawn. He says ‘I don’t hear anyone say “I love driving in traffic jams” or even on highways with miles and miles of road ahead’.

Well, personally, I do enjoy driving on highways with miles and miles of road ahead, particularly on French Autoroutes, though not so much on the A470. Has Ghosn never heard of Route 66 (https://roadtripusa.com/route-66/ ) and the romance that thousands if not millions have attached to that over the years? The song itself has been covered by Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones and Natalie Cole.

But it’s not the determinists’ rejection of the human factor that drives my scepticism of driverless enthusiasm. Nor is it the aesthetic objection that driverless cars are ugly, outlined by Tyler Brule. After all, I guess if Apple gets involved, design will be a key factor  . Nor the safety issues resulting from potential DDoS attacks on the Internet of Things with their dystopian nightmares of self-attacking cars (very Maximum Overdrive ) or state-sponsored Russian hackers running amok although these are real, terrifying and unresolved issues. Nor that, according to the FT, aggressive drivers see autonomous cars as easy prey. I expect there’s a video game for that. Presumably, being more of a luxury product, cars will have better security than cheap cameras, but little is ultimately impregnable.

Nor am I hostile to technological developments. I love my iPhone, iPad, Macbook Pro and digital technology generally. Though I realized as soon as I started this article that I would sound to some like the DCMS civil servant whom Damian Green once described to me in the mid-nineties (when he was working in John Major’s Policy Unit and I was working for the BBC), as someone who was ‘not quite convinced that television would catch on’.

I don’t doubt the innovation that is going on at Tesla, which announced last week that it has installed the hardware – a camera, ultrasonic and radar package – in its cars in preparation for when the software becomes available, which it will then download to you. Build and they will come? Maybe. After all, with an alleged $4.5 billion in government subsidies you’d hope that was true. Tesla’s pitch is clear:

Self-driving vehicles will play a crucial role in improving transportation safety and accelerating the world’s transition to a sustainable future. Full autonomy will enable a Tesla to be substantially safer than a human driver, lower the financial cost of transportation for those who own a car and provide low-cost on-demand mobility for those who do not.

But as Ben Evans points out (hat-tip Dave Jones for the reference) :

Very few people in the field think that autonomy will be possible without a LIDAR sensor any time soon (LIDAR makes building a 3D model of your surroundings much easier), and very few think it will be possible even with LIDAR within 5 years. Many think 10 years (or longer) is more realistic. [LIDAR = Light- detection and ranging]

In the States, outline Federal policy on driverless cars has now been produced. You can watch a video on that here:

 

My objection to all this driverless car-cophony is that, as ever, it is putting the product before the people: the question shouldn’t be, how do we adapt cities to driverless cars, it should be, how do we ensure cities are liveable spaces and design transportation systems that help people live healthy, sustainable lives in those cities? To take a European city which has probably done more than most to achieve this goal, Copenhagen, where an estimated 40% commute to work by bike, it has been the investment in high-quality public transport systems – including driver-less light metro, by the way, and cycle-friendly routes – which matters.

image

That doesn’t mean Copenhagen isn’t thinking about the future of transport in its city: it’s thinking smartly about how to capture and use data, including mobile phone data, to continue its development as a sustainable and green city, with its intelligent traffic lights giving priority to buses and bicycles – not cars, driverless or otherwise.  Focusing on cars, autonomous or not, will give you car-focused not people-focused solutions. Let’s focus on the human space, and develop the technology to make it more human, not focus on the technology as the pivot. Back in Wales, this guy has some good ideas too.

Back in the 1980s, the Welsh cultural critic Raymond Williams warned against the notion of ‘technological determinism’:

The basic assumption of technological determinism is that a new technology – a printing press or a communications satellite – ‘emerges’ from technical study and experiment. It then changes the society or sector into which it has emerged. ‘We’ adapt to it because it is the new modern way.[i]

In fact, argues Williams, there is always a social context for the development of a technology, and how technologies advance depends on the material and corporate interests of those who have developed the technologies. As John Gray subsequently argued, ‘new technologies never create new societies….they simply change the terms in which social and political conflicts are played out.’ When it comes to decisions on regulatory issues, corporations seek to co-opt regulators and politicians into a belief that the technological needs prescribe certain outcomes, or as Des Freedman  puts it:

That there are no alternative paths and that resistance is futile because technological development is pre-determined. Technological determinism, therefore, is a discursive means of highlighting novelty and paving the way for structural changes that are seen to be necessary.[ii]

Or back to Tylor Brule again:

There’s also something rather depressing about all the hoo-ha surrounding driverless vehicles and the general demonisation of four wheels under private ownership. For starters, a car that does everything in automated fashion for the owner is yet another nail in the coffin for common sense, aiding and abetting in the abdication of responsibility for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians (or bringing a spike in lawsuits).

Second, it renders most of the taglines of the established carmakers completely redundant as they cower from lobbyists and the tech sector alike. And third, it’s eradicating all the sense of thrill and risk that makes it exciting to be human.

So, no, I don’t plan to be riding around in a driver-less car. Aside from my bike, which I’ve been pleased to ride into the university on many occasions since I started in September, I want a small, fuel-efficient car with great Bluetooth and a fabulous sound-system. Any recommendations?

[i] Raymond Williams, Towards 2000, 1985, p 129.

[ii] John Gray, ‘The sad side of cyberspace’, Guardian, 10 April 1995; Des Freedman, ‘A ‘Technological Idiot’? Raymond Williams and Communications Technology’, Information, Communication and Society, 5:3, 2002, p432