COVID, my latest view | I go before a judge | Catherine Howarth activism | Tassos Stevens Theatre
My most popular recent post is where I take a look at COVID and reflect on what the end game looks like. I also went before a judge this week to make our case over 75 minutes at a tribunal on Disability Living Allowance for my son. Quite a lot of the process is like going to court (which I’ve also done, representing myself), see more below.
Recently, I had a lovely chat with Tassos Stevens on theatre-making, covering the importance of play and agency, and interactivity.
On investment and activism, I have a great conversation with Catherine Howarth on how individual share holder activism can work.
I am co-hosting a Sustainability UnConference now Sep 10, with Improbable Theatre leading the OpenSpace format. Let me know if you want to come - and if you are interested in sustainabilty you should come!
Contents and these Links end of letter:
➼I’m co-hosting the Sustainability Unconference now on Sep 10
➼Catherine Howarth, podcast on activism (with me)
➼Tassos Stevens, podcast on theatre (with me)
➼My latest thoughts on COVID
➼Cal Newport on making work more effective
➼How to level up coastal towns (my reflections)
➼UK disability benefits tribunal (my experience)
➼ESG Stocks not in a bubble (Bridgewater)
➼Overuse of Gini co-efficient (Vitalik)
➼US has forced China to boost domestic chip technology (Dan Wang)
➼New American University thinking (Eghbal)
Coastal towns - I consider that local specifics vary a lot and maybe demand drivers are a very important factor. I spent a few days around the coastal towns of Exmouth and Sidmouth near Exeter in Devon, south west England. Exmouth and Sidmouth have wealthy areas, I believe in parts more wealthy than Whitstable in Kent which I reflected on in the last letter. While on the surface Simouth should have quite a lot in common with Whitstable being a coastal town reliant on tourism, the nature of the infrastructure, buildings and the seeming wealth of the pensioners, the vibrancy of the high street (versus the equivalent in Herne Bay) had a different quality to them, and a wealthier (and presumably healthier) feel. I didn’t explore as closely as Whistable but it made me reflect that if you want to “level up” these areas, a small team of people need to go in and perform a study that would be closer to the fields of social anthropology, geography, and local economics. This is as opposed the high level economic study one can do (and have done) from a London-based central government team. The answers for Sidmouth will be different to Whitstable although I suspect it might be more about finding, creating, nurturing demand than it would be creating a “tech cluster”.
I reflect on my tribunal experience, it’s complexity and video hearings. Facebook friends have comments in this FB thread. We had the experience, this week, of going in front of a judge and the first tier tribunal for a disability living allowance (DLA) appeal. (We won). My son is autistic and he was awarded the highest rates in 2017, but on application renewal the DWP DLA case managers downgraded his awards. The actual arguments have technical and medical aspects to them (for instance, autism is accepted in law to qualify as an incomplete development of the brain) so I won’t recount them here, but if you are interested, reply and I’m happy to talk you through them. I do have 2 more general observations on video hearings and the complexity of the system.
I am very keen on video hearings. Of course there are caveats with the technology and access and whether “justice can be done” in for eg. criminal cases where examining witnesses may still benefit from an in person process but for many civil proceedings, and for these type of tribunal hearings on education and benefits they are much superior. There are positive impacts on costs, efficiency and time but in many cases I can see it is less stressful for the participants, and therefore they can make their strongest cases for justice. I have sat as a juror on a case at the Old Bailey, and prosecuted for myself an obscure garden land law case in the London County Court. While I can see a mix of pros/cons in criminal cases, I can see only benefits in the civil case for being on video.
The judge, doctor and expert on our tribunal were perfectly pleasant and professional but I do view the currently complexity of the DLA system to be beyond the resources of many of the families and people who need DLA the most. The ability to have the correct information, and to relay the appropriate information back to questions is not simple. The DWP deals with 3.8 million DLA + PIP (Personal Independence Payments). This number increased with the introduction of PIPs (as the criteria on net became broader), which I believe the then UK chancellor/government was not expecting, which I also believe (although this is heavily debated) has led to a more aggressive stance from DWP on assessments and in general a culture that was assessed to be poor and indifferent. Supposedly, Amber Rudd in 2019 signalled a new approach. But the facts remains that before this:
“... PIP did not deliver the government’s targets for savings or the expected reductions in numbers on benefit. Spending and numbers on benefit continued to rise by 15 to 20% more than forecast for PIP by 2017 to 2018.
At the same time, it resulted in damaging experiences for many claimants – part of the reason for the current lack of trust in DWP. It also has high decision overturn rates, a 73% appeal overturn percentage for PIP from 2013 to 2019.” (vs 38% in 2010).
I don’t have the answer here. Groups that help such as Citizen’s Advice and Contact are good but stretched themselves, and outreach to those who need help most is difficult. The application forms do not lend themselves to providing the information needed to meet certain legal tests.
Our tribunal reviewed 162 pages of evidence. The DWP had lost all our 2017 application else the bundle would have been closer to 300 pages of evidence.
While I do not have the answer, I have two suggestions: take a bonfire to the bureaucracy and assess people fairly. If the government is serious about giving people what the legislation and law (that they enacted) allows then it needs to make the system simpler and assess people fairly, and more people would access their entitled benefits.
Or, if the government wishes to curtail this budget. It needs to propose restricting the criteria and putting that into law and reaping the political benefits/fallout for doing so.
What we have at the moment is a system set up to control the budget by complexity and bureaucracy.
Some of my friends suggest this could mostly be a service design challenge. I accept that this could be a factor, but my intuition is that this is not the whole story and at least for DWP there is also a political calculus.
I came back to review my latest thinking on COVID now that the UK is reaching the end game where the disease is endemic.
COVID is going to be endemic. To have a sense of what that is like think: the common cold, flu and measles.
In part, this is because of vaccine hesitancy and higher virulence of new COVID strains
This means in any 5 year period the chances of avoiding COVID is close to zero even if vaccinated. (You may well not have symptoms though). (Note Iceland is seeing notable mild cases in a heavily vaccinated popn)
Vaccination will make COVID infection for the vast majority like the common cold
But, significant groups eg elderly, immune compromised, diabetic etc. Will continue to have elevated mortality risk and even a minority of healthy individuals will die.
There will be long-term impairment from Long COVID. After effects of severe COVID infections that will place a minority of people in cognitive decline with “brain fog”. It’s uncertain if this will reverse as there is some suggestion we might have treatments that work (including vaccines themselves). See Lancet paper link end
Masks may have some defence against super spreading events and some indoor transmission, but over a 5 year period will not prevent inevitable infection. Part of their use would be indoors to protect unvaccinated or immune compromised.
Near term, the range of plausible outcomes in the UK in the next 4 to 8 weeks ranges from mortality/hospitalisation wave overwhelms hospitals to the wave is manageable. Vaccines have impaired the link between infection and mortality, but unclear if it will be enough (though I currently think it looks like it is, see FT graph above). Very reasonable assumptions can see both scenarios. (I currently believe most regions will fall under manageable but some local areas with lower vaccinations may be very stressed cf. Missouri in US, Ed Yong article for Atlantic - links at end. I weight my belief about 60%-70% and base it on looking at the Warwick models, the Imperial models and the work of James Ward (links at end). Anyone who has tried scenario modelling can see from these models that very small changes in assumptions are leading to very different outcomes. Also, that local factors will diverge greatly from national averages.)
If my outlook is correct this has implications on personal levels and medium term “new normal” living.
Boosters or regular vaccines (like flu) will be annual ( prelim Israel data is suggesting waning protection maybe after 6-12 months) events
if you are immune compromised you may want to consider asking for triple or quadruple boosters to try and ensure a response and if you are able to track t-cell memory or a more comprehensive protection test then do so.
Long COVID disease will have to be dealt with
a structural larger burden on healthcare systems is here to stay
mental health resilience and related challenges will need addressing
certain low friction public health measures eg masks indoors, might remain in some form
And so, overall as second order effects:
-new ways of working are here to stay in some form
-the value of giving people in person meetings will rise
(And so my November post last year has held up well, except that the lab leak hypothesis is now maybe 50/50, IMO and also my list of 58 items that COVID will affect
Further general observations and notes: ....Rich countries have not in particular helped poor countries very much. Some rich countries are even letting vaccines expire rather than sending abroad. (Note even recently expired vaccines probably work). This does not bode well for other international co-operation challenges eg climate.... Blog here on latest COVID thinking.
Tassos Stevens chats to me on making theatre and play.
Tassos Stevens is artistic director of Coney.
We chat about pivotal moments of theatre and explore what interactive and immersive mean for theatre.
The importance of play and “making belief’ as opposed to “suspending disbelief”
How to involve audiences in agency and what Tassos advises for young people interested in theatre.
Transcript, Podcast and video here. One for theatre makers.
Catherine Howarth on Shareholder activism
How does individual shareholder activism work? How does personal agency and systems change work together in a theory of change? How do we become change makers? What did Catherine's mother teach me?
Catherine is Chief Executive of ShareAction. She coordinates civil society activism to promote responsible investment.
We chat about Catherine’s journey into activism and the theories of change that have influenced her.
We discuss how poetry, Ursula Le Guin and feminism have impacted us.
How to convince open minded skeptics to your cause.
Note, we speak positively on Kate Clanchy and her book on teaching poetry which has many positive intentions and stories, but there is a current pushback on some of the language she has used with respect to some neurodiverse and ethnic minorities, which is worth noting.
Transcript, Podcast and Video here.
Links this week:
➼I’m co-hosting the Sustainability Unconference now on Sep 10
➼Catherine Howarth, podcast on activism (with me)
➼Tassos Stevens, podcast on theatre (with me)
➼My latest thoughts on COVID
➼Cal Newport on making work more effective
In this interview Cal makes the case that constant messaging is detroying people's productivity amongst other stresses at work. Provacative and if true could be huge gains from different ways of working. Long-time readers know I am sympathetic to this.
➼ESG Stocks not in a bubble (Bridgewater) (FT)
Quant perspective (so not really what I do) but from a heavy weight firm.
➼Overuse of Gini co-efficient (Vitalik)
Semi-technical from a leading crypto thinker, coder and billionaire.
Of interest for inequality stats.
➼US has forced China to boost domestic chip technology (Dan Wang)
If Wang is right, this is a pivotal second order long-term impact of US sanctions. It will force Chinese companies to rely on and invest in domestic chip tech and other tech which they currently use US for. On a 20 year view I think Dan has a 60% chance of being right... which is actually a moderate disaster for US power.
➼New American University thinking (Eghbal)
On what a more inclusive (and successful) university model might look like in practise.
→Story of plinky, how I found my podcast jingle
→Effective Altruism grant funding. Good source of funding for a potentially large variety of impactful projects.
Previous podcasts:
➳Lee Simpson is a master improv performer and theatre director. I had a lovely conversation with him which left me dwelling on many things.
➳My conversation with Anton Howes on innovation history.
➳ I talk with birdgirl aka Mya-Rose Craig. Transcript and video here. And podcast version
➳I chat with Rebecca Giggs on her new book looking at humanity through the lens of the whale. There is video and a transcript. Self-recommending.
➳Leopold Aschenbrenner podcast on university at 15 and existential risk.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to forward this letter to anyone you think might be interested in signing up.
Archive and repeat words below. Stay well, Stay safe, Ben